*
There turned out to be Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington, D.C. The jet touched down and taxied for a long time, winding its way among hangars and maintenance buildings. The structure it finally stopped near, Dryden couldn’t identify. It was single-story but sprawling. It had poured concrete walls and no windows. The men unbound his ankles, left his wrists tied, and led him off the plane into the early sunlight. They walked him into the building through the only door he could see in its wall; it opened on a sterile white corridor with a few doorways on either side. They guided him through the first one on the left, into a room the size of a basketball court. There were long metal tables here and there, folding chairs clustered around a few of them. There were aluminum-and-canvas cots stowed against a wall. The men grabbed one and locked its legs into position. They set Dryden down on it and zipped his ankles again.
“Sleep if you can,” one of them said.
Two stayed behind to guard him. They took chairs from the tables and sat next to the door. The others left and closed the door behind them.
Dryden shut his eyes.
*
Footsteps in the corridor. Dryden came awake in time to see the two men stand from their chairs. A second later the door swung inward, and a man in his fifties walked into the room. Athletic build. Black windbreaker over khaki slacks and an oxford shirt. Dryden got the impression the guy had been a soldier once but had been something else for a long time since.
“Martin Gaul,” Dryden said.
The man nodded. Behind him, half a dozen men entered the room. Some of them carried computer equipment: a ruggedized tower case, a keyboard, a big flat-panel display. They got to work setting it up on the nearest of the metal tables.
Last through the door was a man who reacted to the sight of Dryden’s bruised face.
“Christ, Sam.”
Cole Harris crossed to the cot and crouched beside it. He looked the same as he had the last time Dryden had seen him, a few months before. Six foot three, built like a tree trunk, the same haircut he’d had since basic training.
“Fuckers could’ve cleaned you up, at least,” Harris said.
“They checked me for a concussion. Nice of them, I guess.”
“Do me a favor,” Harris said.
“What?”
“Tell these guys everything. Every detail, the last three days. Everything you know.”
“I’d like to know what you know,” Dryden said.
“You will. They’re going to tell you.”
At the table, Gaul’s men had the display turned on. It showed a blank blue screen while they set up the computer.
Gaul came over to the cot.
“Why don’t you get these off him?” Harris said, indicating the zip-ties. “I don’t think he’s going to go next door and steal Air Force One.”
Gaul nodded. He gestured to one of the men at the door.
*
It took an hour to detail the three days. Dryden left out Dena Sobel’s name, along with anything that could allow her to be identified, but otherwise withheld nothing. While he spoke, Harris stepped out and came back with paper towels and a bottle of rubbing alcohol. He dabbed at the cuts and the swelling and cleared off the congealed blood.
When Dryden had finished, Gaul sat staring at nothing for a long time. He seemed to be marshaling his thoughts, preparing what he had to say.
“Why were your men armed with tranquilizer guns in Chicago?” Dryden asked. “Up until then you’d been trying to kill Rachel.”
“And you along with her,” Gaul said.
If there was any apology in the man’s tone, Dryden missed it.
“Let me just run through it in order,” Gaul said. “It’s best for me if you’re up to speed, and”—he glanced at Harris—“in any case, your friend insisted on it.”
Harris nodded.
“So here are the bullet points,” Gaul said. “I’m the head of a defense contractor, Belding-Milner. Our major rival is a company called Western Dynamics, and in the field of genetic R&D, they’ve been ahead of us for years. Two months ago I got Rachel in my custody; she was a remnant of the original military research, years back, that both of our companies had based their work on. Rachel was a valuable object to study. It wasn’t just about what she was; it also mattered what she knew. She and her two friends—I guess you met them—had been shadowing our two companies for years, keeping up on our progress. Easy enough for mind readers to do that, and they had good reason to: We might have developed things we could use against them, for one. In any case, when my people interrogated Rachel, she had no reason to hold back what she knew about our rival. She didn’t care if we learned that stuff. She told us all about them, including something new they had in development. Not just the antenna sites, and the current testing being done with them. Something else.”