River Runs Red (The Border Trilogy) Read Online Free Page A

with a sequence of letters punched into it—trying to decipher the code it carried. This time of year, Truly and Loesser were alone, and the babbling fountain running beside the sculpture would help keep their conversation private from anyone who might wander by.
    “What is it, Jim?” Loesser asked without preamble. He knew Truly never went by Jim, but he regularly pretended to forget. Just one more illustration of the way he felt about Truly. Loesser was an assistant to the director of the National Clandestine Service, or an assistant to that assistant; Truly could never be certain how many levels from the top his supervisor really was. Loesser would fire Truly in a hot minute if he thought he could, but he believed Truly to be protected by his father, former United States Senator Willard Carsten Truly. Truly did not share that belief, but Loesser’s conviction had worked out for him anyway. He had arranged for Truly to be given ownership of the Moon Flash project, which was as close to being fired as one could get while remaining on the agency’s payroll.
    “One of our people has been killed.”
    “An agency employee?”
    “One of my people,” Truly amended. “A contract operative. Lawrence Ingersoll. Winston brought him in, after the first World Trade Center bombing.” Barry Winston had been Truly’s immediate predecessor in this post, until the day he ran a hose from his exhaust pipe into his car window and sat in his sealed garage listening to Sidney Bechet CDs until the car ran out of gas. His housekeeper found him two days later.
    “One of Winston’s charlatans.” Loesser sipped his coffee, his hard gray eyes appraising Truly over the cup’s rim. His hair was short and silver, neatly combed, and he affected the air of an old-time parson who disapproved of virtually everything and everyone created since the end of World War II.
    “They’re not all charlatans,” Truly began. At Loesser’s disapproving frown he stopped. “I don’t necessarily have a lot more faith in them than you do, Ron,” Truly said. In fact, although when he had accepted the job, he’d had no faith at all, he had since grown to respect their abilities more than he had expected. He would never admit that to Ron Loesser, though. “But you’ve assigned me to deal with them, and I’m doing that. Now one of them is dead. And it’s not just that. Another one told me she called him last night, to ask him to look into—I know what you’re going to say—a disruption in the ley lines. He agreed to check it out, and the next thing anybody knew his house burned down, with him inside. He didn’t even try to get out, and the arson investigator’s initial conclusion is that the fire began where he was sitting, although they couldn’t find any source of ignition or fuel there. It all sounds suspect to me.”
    “He’s a U.S. citizen?” Loesser asked.
    “Yes.”
    “And there’s no definitive evidence of foul play? Have the locals completed their investigation? Probably not, if it all happened last night.”
    “Of course they haven’t. I don’t know how big Creede, Colorado is, but it’s no major metropolis. It’s going to take them a while.”
    “Then let them do what they have to do,” Loesser said. “No sense in you running off to Colorado. You’d just be in the way, and we don’t have any indication that this is any of the agency’s business. We don’t mess around with American citizens inside the U.S.”
    He said that last part as if he were explaining something that Truly had never heard before. “But he works for us.”
    “Part-time. He works for others, too, right? Or for himself? What’s to say this is at all related to what he does for us?”
    “What Millicent Wong told me, for starters.” He left out her warnings of global catastrophe, which would just muddy the water even more.
    “Unless Millicent Wong pays your salary, Jim, you ought to give more credence to what I tell you.” He crushed the empty