Chapter 66: Joining the Team
"Effective immediately, Simon will be joining your team on a provisional basis."
Beckman delivered the news with the particular economy of a person who had decided something and considered the deciding more important than the announcing. She didn't explain further. She didn't have to.
The briefing room beneath the frozen yogurt shop was not what Simon had expected — larger, better equipped, the kind of space that made the retail cover above it feel genuinely absurd by comparison. He took it in without comment, which seemed to be the appropriate response.
Casey gave him a look that communicated nothing specific. Sarah gave him a look that communicated cautious acceptance. Chuck gave him the look of someone who had just been told the rules of a game had changed.
The orientation was brief. Sarah covered the basics — the nature of the operation, the team's structure, the standing protocols. When she got to the part about Chuck's specific capability, Simon arranged his expression into something approximating appropriate surprise.
"So the database is literally in his head," Simon said. "That's — I mean, does that feel heavy? Physically?"
He was asking with more personal investment than the question implied. The Intersect's weight in his own skull was something he'd adapted to gradually, the way you adapted to carrying something long enough that the carrying became the default state.
Chuck shrugged. "You get used to it."
"Enough," Beckman said from the screen. "New mission. A former KGB operative named Sasha Banachek is in the city. She has a genuine encryption chip — not the compromised version — and she's looking to sell it. We need to recover it before it changes hands."
"Simple enough," Casey said. "We grab her, get her talking."
"She spent fourteen months in a Bulgarian facility," Beckman said. "Nobody got anything from her. She's resistant to standard interrogation methods." She pulled up a file. "However. There is one person she's known to respond to. A former operative who got closer to her than anyone else on record. His name is Ron Montgomery."
Casey went still. "Damn it."
Everyone looked at him.
"He was my drill instructor at the Farm," Casey said. "Failed me twice. Holds it over me every chance he gets." A pause. "Also one of the best operatives ever produced by this agency, which makes it worse."
"Your feelings about Montgomery are noted," Beckman said. "Finding him using the Intersect is your first priority. Chuck—"
"Okay, I'm going to stop you there," Chuck said, already moving toward the stairs. "I appreciate everything that's been done with this space, genuinely — the renovations are excellent — but I am done being shot at, hung off buildings, and placed in situations where my continued existence is statistically uncertain." He reached the upper landing. "I'm going back to the Buy More. I'm going to have a quiet, slightly embarrassing, completely non-lethal day. Enjoy the mission."
He left.
Beckman watched the empty stairwell. "Is the asset going to be a problem?"
"No, General," Sarah said, already following. "I have it."
Beckman shifted her attention to Casey and Simon. "Regardless of the asset's current disposition, I need that chip. Find Montgomery."
"Yes, General," they said, in approximate unison.
The screen went dark.
Simon looked at Casey. "Montgomery. Tell me about him."
"Legend of the agency," Casey said, with the tone of a man giving a compliment through clenched teeth. "Old school. Ran operations on every continent. Made contacts no one else could make. Closed cases that everyone else wrote off." He paused. "Also the most insufferable man I have ever met in a career full of insufferable people."
"Like a real-world version of Bond?" Simon said.
Casey looked at him. "What's Bond?"
Simon caught himself. Right. No Bond films in this world. "Nothing. Something I misremembered."
"The point is," Casey said, "Montgomery is real, Montgomery is capable, and Montgomery is currently located in Palm Springs according to the last known address in the file." He checked his watch. "Which means we leave in ten minutes."
Sarah came back down the stairs with Chuck behind her — a different Chuck than the one who had left, still reluctant but present, which was as much as anyone could reasonably ask.
"Palm Springs," Sarah said. "All four of us."
Simon went to get the car.
Palm Springs was a hundred and twenty miles southeast of Los Angeles — an hour and change in light traffic, somewhat less in the Mustang with Simon driving, which was the understanding they'd reached without quite discussing it.
The address led them to a residential complex that was trying hard to be upscale and achieving something closer to comfortable — older buildings, palm trees, a pool that nobody was using. The kind of place that housed retired people and people who had stopped caring what their address said about them.
Montgomery's unit was on the second floor. Chuck reached the door first and raised his hand to knock — and stopped.
The door was already open. Not wide, just ajar. The way doors looked when they'd been opened from the outside and not pulled fully shut.
Simon and Casey had their weapons out before Chuck's arm had finished coming down. Sarah covered the right angle. Simon took the left. Casey pushed the door open with his foot and they went in.
The apartment had been searched. Not ransacked — that was the wrong word. Ransacked implied chaos and haste. This was deliberate. Drawers opened and left open, contents moved systematically, sofa cushions checked and replaced. Someone had been here looking for something specific, and they'd been professional about it.
"Over there," Simon said quietly.
Two hairy ankles were visible beneath the edge of the bed in the main bedroom, toes pointing at the ceiling, completely still.
They moved through the doorway in a stack — Casey checked the closet, Simon checked the bathroom, Sarah covered the hall. Clear on all sides.
Casey crouched and lifted the edge of the bed skirt.
Ron Montgomery was lying on his back under the bed, arms folded over a bottle of whiskey that was three-quarters empty, eyes closed, breathing with the deep regularity of someone who had reached a very specific level of unconsciousness and was comfortable there.
Chuck looked at the scene for a long moment.
"I feel like we might have the wrong address," he said.
"We have the right address," Simon said, holstering his weapon. He looked at Casey. "This is your legendary operative?"
"I reserve the right to revise my opinion," Casey said, with the expression of a man watching a personal mythology collapse in real time.
"What do we do?" Chuck said. "Also I keep having nightmares about bodies, so if we could establish that this one is alive—"
"He's alive," Casey said flatly. He lifted the bed skirt further, gripped Montgomery's ankles, and pulled.
Montgomery slid out across the hardwood floor with the unceremonious efficiency of furniture being moved. He didn't wake up.
Casey looked at what he'd produced and appeared to briefly reconsider his career choices.
"We take him with us," Simon said. "That's the mission."
"He's enormous," Sarah noted.
"Casey's enormous," Simon said. "It'll balance."
Casey lifted Montgomery in a fireman's carry that looked difficult and made look effortless, which was the thing about Casey — the capability was always there, quiet until it was needed.
They filed out to the parking lot.
Simon opened the trunk.
Casey looked at it. Looked at the unconscious Montgomery draped over his shoulder. Looked at Simon.
"The seats are full," Simon said.
Casey deposited Montgomery in the trunk with the practiced care of someone who had done similar things before, if not exactly this. He straightened up, closed the lid, and turned to Chuck, who was staring.
"Problem?" Casey said.
"Absolutely not," Chuck said immediately. "This seems fine. This is fine."
"Get in the car," Casey said.
Chuck got in the car.
Simon started the engine and pulled out of the lot, heading northwest toward the highway and the long road back to Los Angeles — four people in the car, one in the trunk, and a mission that had so far raised considerably more questions than it had answered.
Standard operating procedure, as far as he could tell.
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