Eileen Reed - Ground Zero Part 6

"Was she moving when the door opened?"

Tanner blinked hard. "No. I didn't see her move. Why do you ask?"

"I want to know when she died," Eileen said.

"Oh," Tanner said in a dazed voice. He was very pale.

"Did you know Terry?"

"Not really. I worked with her, but we weren't friends."

"Do you know someone who would want to kill her?"

Tanner looked down at his own large hands, as though he were trying out the idea on himself. He opened his palms wide and looked at them.

"No," he said finally. "I don't. I really don't."

Eileen nodded. She expected that answer from everyone she questioned. At first, that is. Later, when the heat turned up on all of them, someone would start to talk.

"Okay, then, let me ask you some questions about today. Tell me what you did today."

"I work on the Truth Team during the Game," he replied obediently. "I watch the true picture of the War. We have to-"

"What do you mean, 'Truth Team'? And what's a 'true picture'?"

"Urn. Well, we play both teams-Enemy and American. Because our satellite and intelligence operations might screw up, just like in real life, the Simulation tries to duplicate that by rolling the dice."

Tanner smiled at her confused expression, the first smile she'd seen.

"Let me explain. Say you think a submarine is three hundred miles north of Bermuda. What if it's actually one hundred miles south? The American Team sees a little submarine flag north of Bermuda, and the Truth Team sees a little submarine flag south. The Enemy side would have proper coordinates for their own subs and missiles, but they'd have best guesses for ours. The Truth Team knows what we call 'truth,' so we can a.n.a.lyze the Game data later and figure out how the system worked."

"So where's the Enemy Team?" Eileen was confused. Were there Gamers she didn't know about?

"Oh, well, we play the Enemy Team for the Games, mostly. Today it was a full-scale Game with Flag Officers involved. So the Germans played the 'Mad Sub' scenario this time, with real missiles. But they were duds, you know."

"I would hope so," Eileen murmured, feeling even more confused.

"We usually play the Bad Guys in the Truth Room. Sometimes I play the Chinese, the Arabs, the j.a.panese-"

"The j.a.panese? You've got to be kidding."

"No," Tanner said. "We play everybody. I mean everybody. I've played a War Game where Great Britain tries to take us back as a colony. I liked that one. I guess you know this is all cla.s.sified. Major Blaine said to tell you everything we could."

"Yes, I have a clearance. So you play Bad Guys and you know the true state of the Game," Eileen said. She fought another distressing moment of doubt, and cursed Harben for getting her into this mess. "You have your own room in the Center for this?" At his nod, she said, "Did you leave your room during the Game today?"

"No, I didn't," Tanner said. He was starting to look a little better, but now the color drained away from his cheeks again. "Art and I were there the whole time, and we sit in the same room. Doesn't that mean we both have alibis?"

Eileen didn't say anything.

"Yeah, I guess not. We could be in on it together, right? Or maybe I sneaked out while he wasn't looking, or the other way around. It would be tough, though," he added, " 'cause we have to talk a lot to keep the Game running smoothly. We also monitor all the computer equipment, and feed the loops in for the President and SAC-Strategic Air Command."

"I see," Eileen said neutrally. Tanner nodded in understanding.

"Sure, you have to have proof."

"Let's talk about Terry again. Why wasn't she liked around here?"

If Tanner was uncomfortable with the rapid change of subject, he didn't show it.

"Did Nelson tell you we didn't like her much?" he asked, then held up his hand. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't ask you that. Don't answer."

"Okay," Eileen said, smiling. "I won't. Tell me why you didn't like her."

Tanner thought this over for a moment.

"I-well, Terry wasn't a very good engineer," he said carefully. "I would have to explain something to her three or four times, and if I didn't write her a memo and date it and keep a copy, she'd come back and say I never told her the information. I don't know how to express this-when you work together as closely as we have to, you have to develop trust. And the Simulation world is a wicked place. You'll be halfway through the development cycle and all of a sudden the whole world will change. When the lab at Lawrence Livermore got that Brilliant Pebble to really work, we had s.p.a.ce Command hammering at our door, wanting to hook up Brilliant Pebbles into our simulation right away.

"A lot of the technology we just have to extrapolate. That means we make it up, on the fly. Lots of stuff is still being tested. Some of the stuff is only theoretical. So we take what we know and make up the rest. What's the flight characteristics of a Patriot Missile? Well, we use data from the Gulf War, take into account the improvements, and simulate nuclear missile impacts instead of Scuds. What happens to a Patriot when the sensors are blinded by a nuclear flash? How do you succeed in target acquisition when you've got sophisticated jamming...?"

Tanner stopped. He'd been making a speech.

"Sorry."

"It's all right. Go on," Eileen said quietly. She loved people who babbled. Babbling was good. Babbling was great.

"I guess I'm not even talking about Terry. But then again, maybe I am. When you walk into a software engineer's office and you tell them to drop all their work on a s.p.a.ce-based laser and start working on Brilliant Pebbles, you need someone who'll shove six months of work onto a back shelf and smile when they do it. And produce a Brilliant Pebble simulation that'll work."

"And Terry wasn't like that."

"No," Tanner said, and his gaze dropped to his hands. "I guess she'll never get any better now."

"What did Terry do when you asked her to simulate Brilliant Pebbles?"

"She complained. That's okay, everybody does. But she would do it in a really mean and ugly sort of way. One time 'Berto forgot about an interface-hmm, an interface is a way for two elements to communicate, okay? 'Berto was working on a communications satellite model, and he forgot about some jamming information that Terry needed to be aware of for her work. So he went to tell her, and I overheard her really giving it to him rough, if you know what I mean."

"What did she say?"

"Oh, something like, 'Thanks for forgetting this, 'Berto, is there anything else you've forgotten?' in that biting Terry sort of way. But when she'd forget something, which was always happening, you know, that's just the way it works, well, she'd pretend that she'd told you and you forgot."

"And you let her get away with it?"

"Well, Miss-er?"

"Reed. Call me Eileen," Eileen said, and couldn't help smiling again.

"Miss Reed, we had a saying here on the War Game Team, just between us little guys. The saying was, 'Whatever Terry wants, Terry gets.' "

There was a little silence. Eileen wrote, knowing Tanner was flus.h.i.+ng without looking up, keeping her eyes to her notebook to give him s.p.a.ce to recover.

"Because Lowell Guzman is a.s.sistant Game Director."

"Yes," he said.

"Would someone kill her because of that?" Eileen asked. "And why?"

"I don't think so. I don't know," Tanner said. He looked at her with a clear green, anxious gaze, asking for her to somehow understand that he didn't do it, he would never murder Terry Guzman. Eileen had often seen the look before, sometimes on a murderer's face.

"Thanks for your help," she said neutrally. "I'll probably be contacting you again, but if you think of anything, could you call me at this number?" She held out her card.

"Okay," he said, and nodded exactly like Atkins, an eager jerk of the chin. Another suspect glad to escape the clutches of the police, Eileen said to herself. He took the card and stood up.

"Let me walk you out," she said, getting up. "Maybe you could direct me to the john? And maybe the coffee machine?"

Tanner showed her to the bathroom, but he was gone when she came out. Eileen figured she'd missed her chance for coffee, but when she got back to the conference room there was a plain blue mug on the table near the chair where she'd been sitting. A ribbon of steam rose from the cup into the air, and her next suspect was already seated and waiting for her.

7.

Denver Animal Shelter.

When the animal shelter woman brought Fancy's collar and leash to him, Tabor almost wept. He could imagine his little darling pacing in confusion, locked in some wretched little concrete box. She could never understand why he had to leave her behind. The shelter woman looked at him with a flat and carefully nonjudgmental face that felt as d.a.m.ning as spittle.

"Here's your collar and leash, sir," she said.

"Thank you," Tabor whispered. He had allowed himself to forget this side of the spy business. He'd become settled in, complacent, and now his dog was going to die and he faced an uncertain future.

He did, however, carry his Bahamas account. His savings were safe. And he had one last piece of information to sell, the last doc.u.ment his contact had smuggled out of Schriever. With that, he'd be able to give up the business and have a real life. Open a restaurant in Georgia. He'd always wanted to do that.

But he'd never, ever have another dog, he promised himself. He carried Fancy's leash and collar to the car. He could hardly see through his tears as he drove out of the parking lot. He turned on the winds.h.i.+eld wipers, but that didn't help.

Gaming Center, Schriever Air Force Base.

A young man was sitting in the chair opposite Eileen's, liquid Mexican eyes meeting hers without flinching. Eileen settled herself in her chair and took a sip of her coffee. It was excellent, so far removed from police coffee that Eileen almost choked on the first gulp.

"Joe's guest coffee mug," the man said. "He must have decided you were okay. Roberto Espinoza." He reached out and shook Eileen's hand firmly.

"Not Lowell," Eileen said grimly.

"No, he's still pa.s.sed out," Roberto said.

Eileen knew the accent in Roberto's soft voice. The phrasing was definitely Los Angeles barrio. Roberto carried the bones and skin tones of the nearly pure Mexican Indian, a high narrow forehead and chin with the flat, angled cheekbones that made little pouches below the eyes and kept the face ageless. His nose could be called European, but Eileen had taken several anthropology courses in college and knew the Mexican Pyramids carried profiles like Roberto's. The total effect was one of almost overwhelming male beauty. Eileen supposed Roberto had earned the tough, uncompromising line of his shoulders in more than a few schoolyard fights.

"You're from Los Angeles?"

"Straight from the barrio, senorita," Roberto said, and flashed a set of straight white teeth. "I guess you've been there yourself, if you can tell where I'm from."

"Yes," Eileen said, and opened her notebook to a fresh page. Roberto's purely Mexican good looks and the tailored suit made Eileen wonder, for a moment, what the world would have been like if the Aztecs had carried smallpox to the Spanish instead of the other way around. Much was made of the Aztecs' brutal human sacrifices atop the tall temples, but little about the culture that attained a level of civilization that allowed such temples to be built. How would the Aztecs have fared against n.a.z.i Germany? Perhaps the trials at Nuremberg would have ended in a different sort of spectacle than hangings.

"I saw Stand and Deliver, can you believe it?" Roberto spoke resignedly and quickly, as though he'd told the story many times. "My elementary school math teacher hauled a TV and a VCR in and made us watch it. I musta beat up a dozen kids that week, 'cause of course I cried. d.a.m.n movie. The actor, what's-his-name, teaching a whole cla.s.s of dumb barrio kids to ace a calculus cla.s.s. So that's what I did, too. And here I am, and that's my story. Inspired by a dumb movie."

"I saw it, too." Eileen smiled. "How old are you?"

"Twenty-three. This is my first job out of college. I have a computer science degree from UCLA."

"Why did you come here?"

Roberto shrugged his shoulders.

"I was recruited. Government contractors need to fill quotas for minorities, and I had good grades. I had my choice, Miss-Excuse me, I don't know your name?"

"Eileen Reed," Eileen said. "Call me Eileen."

"Eileen, then. Well, I got a lot of offers, and this one paid the most and looked like fun."

"Has it been fun?"

For some reason this struck home. The smooth planes of Roberto's cheeks darkened slightly and the deep black eyes glittered for a moment.

"Until today, yes."

"Did you know Terry well?" Eileen s.h.i.+fted in her chair and took a sip of coffee. The coffee made her think, distractingly, of Joe Tanner.

"I don't know if I knew her," Roberto was saying. "We all work here very closely, but she was-well, she was Terry." He frowned, his brow crinkling in distress. "I can't believe she's dead," he said slowly, as if to himself. "I-"

"Yes?" Eileen asked gently.

"I just can't believe someone would kill her," Roberto said, and Eileen knew that wasn't what he was going to say.

"We've been told she wasn't easy to work with."

"She wasn't." Eileen waited, but the black eyes didn't falter and Roberto offered nothing more. Eileen s.h.i.+fted in her chair and took another gulp of coffee.

"All right," she said finally. "Let's go through the War Game. Everything you did, everything you saw."

When the door finally closed behind Roberto, Eileen flipped to a fresh page of her notebook. She didn't feel particularly bad, though. These Gamers were bright, educated, and totally rattled by the murder. She was getting a lot of good information. It would fall into a picture, eventually, and the murderer would appear from the puzzle pieces.

The person Roberto sent in was a rather short, freckled man with thinning wheat-blond hair and a friendly face.