Sandy hangs up, sighs, checks his watch. He’s already late for half a dozen appointments, and he’s still got twenty calls to make. In fact he’s going to have to pinball around all day and tomorrow morning to get ready for this rescue operation. No rest for the weary. He lids some Buzz and Pattern Perception, starts tapping out a phone number.

As the line rings he thinks about it.

Now he knows that Jim is working with Arthur, and Arthur is working for Raymond, and that Raymond is pursuing a private vendetta for private purposes—and perhaps making a profit on the side, or so it appears. The shape of the whole setup is clear to him.

But now—now he’s in a situation where he can’t do anything with what he knows. All his detective work was done with the idea that he could tell Jim something Jim didn’t know, help him out, perhaps warn him away from trouble. Tell him what was really going on, so that he wouldn’t continue thinking he was part of some idealistic resistance to the war machine, or whatever he is thinking—so he could get out of it before something went wrong.

Now Sandy can’t do anything of the kind. In fact he has to hope that Jim does a good job of it. “Come through for me, Jimbo.…”

Chapter 70

70

Lemon gets a call from Donald Hereford in New York. It looks like a sunny evening in Manhattan.

Hereford gets right to the point: “Have you gotten all of the night watchmen out of the plant out there?”

“Yes, we did that right after you visited. But listen, the Ball Lightning team reports some significant breakthroughs, and I thought I should tell you about them—”

Hereford is shaking his head. “Just keep the situation in the plant stable, especially in the next few days.”

Lemon nods stiffly, frustration tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Do you know…”

Hereford frowns. “We’ve found the source of the difficulty. He’s doing it for hire.”

“And he’s been hired by?”

But that’s going too far. Hereford looks out at New York’s big harbor, says, “Let’s not talk about this anymore now. Later we might be able to discuss it more fully.”

“Okay.”

He’ll never find out anything more about this, Lemon realizes; it’s happening on a level he isn’t on, it’s above him. Part of him is galled by the realization; part of him is happy not to know, not to be involved. Leave this sort of thing to others!

Hereford is about to switch off when Lemon remembers something else. “Oh, listen, we’ve gotten a request from our legal representative in Washington, to file an appeal in the Stormbee decision.” He describes the situation in detail. “So, it sounds like another appeal and we’ll really have a good chance of success.”