bearing snaps of the Soviet Union. And then she remembered why she liked this place so much. The early Explorer satellites—Explorer 1, which launched in ’58—marked the start of modern espionage, at which she was expert.
Jim leaned over the case.
“Unmanned surveillance,” he said. “Take the human factor out of things, and nine times out of ten, it goes better.”
“Your confidence in me is overwhelming,” she said. “I am touched.”
She leaned over the case, too, and pressed her fingers onto the glass. He left smudge prints; she did not. She never would, and in this was a reminder that you are often born perfect for the life you get. When she was eleven weeks fetal, thanks to the genetic perversion dermatopathia pigmentosa reticularis, the cells in the upper layers of her skin were marked for death. Six months later, she was born with no fingerprints. Luckily, other symptoms attached to the disorder did not present. Her hair was thick, her teeth were intact, and the rawhide that should have been her hands and feet was but your average volar padding. No, it was better than average. Smooth and soft. She had no friction ridges on the parts of her most likely to extend themselves in love, which was depressing, since in the transmission of love one hopes for (a) friction and (b) cells buoyant and irrepressible. She left no trace of herself wherever she went.
Jim moved down the aisle. His shoes slapped the concrete. “Esme, this is the deal: You need to send people down to Cincinnati again. I want round-the-clock surveillance on the house. He bites his toenails, I want it on camera. You so much as see a toy sword, and I’ll have ATF shut him down. This time, you have to produce. We can’t go in there cold.”
Did Jim have a warrant? Of course not, though she knew better than to ask.
“If that’s what you want,” she said, trying to imply that surveillance would not produce anything, but without faulting herself for it. “No problem.”
“Put whatever team in place you choose, except this time, I want them to report to me.” She rolled her eyes, but more to roll back the panic that would show in them any second. “You know I don’t work like that,” she said. “Either I’m running things or I’m not.”
He frowned. “I gotta go see my wife in a few days. Wife, lawyers, divorce. My life is a shit storm. Don’t make it worse.”
Esme nodded. She wanted to get out of there. So much to do. “You should take me with you sometime. For backup.”
“Then I have to go pick up my daughter, which means seeing my in-laws. You know what’s the last thing I want to be thinking about when dealing with those people? Your psychotic fuck of an ex-husband.”
She linked her arm in his and tried, despite her ogre face, to remind him of their intimacy. He was Jim Bach. Her Department of Defense liaison and paramour of use. A henchman. Also a facilitator of plans brewed by men who were part of the furtive and freakishly right-wing Council for National Policy, though if asked, it was, No, no, never heard of those people, no way, no how.
They had been working together for a year. Before him, there were others, though all with the same bugbear, the Helix, and, in turn, Thurlow Dan. No one knew exactly when Dan had become such a threat, just that in 1995 he was that annoying socialist whose rhetoric offended people powerful enough to have him watched, but by 2005 he was doyen of a movement with reach. So Esme’s orders were more urgent than ever: produce enough intel on Thurlow to make the case and shut him down.
They walked past the space shuttle Enterprise, where a little boy was saying, “It’s too heavy to fly, Daddy, it’s too heavy,” and throwing himself on the floor as he did so. At the door, Jim stopped and faced Esme his way. Pinched both her arms and squeezed—the squeeze hostile and sexual in equal doses—and said, “Esme. Lynne. I’ve never told you how to do your job before, only now I have one piece of advice.”
She freed herself of his grip. “What’s that?”
“Don’t fuck it up.”
All the way home, she tried to feel nothing. But it was no good. For her, anxiety was like many people talking at once: no clue what anyone was saying, just that no one was happy about it. And so, if you