The Scorpion's Gate Read Online Free Page B

minutes north,” MacIntyre said as he stretched the phone cord while reading the location off the map on the coffee table. “I want a ten-mile radius at Focal Level 7. What time will you have it?”
    The Focal Level System was like a lens opening, or stop, on a camera, only the camera was 200 miles up in space. Connor remembered that seven was a real close-up, the kind that almost let you read the words on street signs. She realized that MacIntyre had taken her seriously enough to play a special chit, an after-hours personal request to divert a satellite from the targets that had been agreed upon just that morning by an interdepartmental committee from CIA, DOD, NSA, and the IAC.
    MacIntyre put the red phone back in the cradle with his right hand and simultaneously picked up the intercom handset with his left. “Deb, order us the usual pizza, then go home, thanks.” The Deputy Director plunked down heavily in the chair again and smiled at his young analyst. “Now we wait. I hope you like anchovies.”
    At moments like this, Rusty MacIntyre felt like a one-armed paperhanger. He and Rubenstein had tried and succeeded in keeping the IAC small; that way they avoided the bloat that had made the CIA so ineffective. But small also meant that Rusty usually ended up doing everything from editing reports to arguing with OMB and the Congress for more money, to hanging out and eating pizza late at night with young analysts.
    It also meant he hardly ever got to see his wife. After ten years they still hadn’t gotten around to having a kid and now—with Sarah at thirty-eight—it was almost too late for them to start a family. She never complained about it. “Not to decide is to decide,” Sarah would say to him, “and I’m fine with that.” Maybe she actually was fine being childless, since she enjoyed her work at Refugees International so much, but Rusty wasn’t fine with it.
    “Oh, I forgot: here’s your change from the pizza,” Susan said, placing four quarters on the small tabletop.
    Rusty MacIntyre smiled at his young analyst. Then he took his empty glass and placed it under the table. Susan gave him a double take but said nothing. Silently, MacIntyre palmed the quarters, placed one in the middle of the table, and pressed his thumb on it. Clink. The coin had disappeared. And then another. Clink. Susan Connor looked under the table, where two quarters sat in the glass. Then MacIntyre did it two more times, apparently pushing the coins through the table.
    Susan Connor ran her hand across the tabletop. “How did you...?” she asked, picking up the glass.
    “Amateur magic, a hobby of mine. But it’s also a lesson. Not everything is as it appears,” Rusty said, sitting back in his chair. “Here’s how...”
    “Blttt... Blttt...” It was the secure phone. It was almost eleven o’clock and the satellite’s ground site manager was calling. The image MacIntyre had requested could now be called up on the Intelwire. As Deputy Director of IAC, Rusty had few perks, but one he did have was a 72-inch flat screen connected to Intelwire. On it popped an amazingly high-resolution image of the Arabian Desert, in the middle of which a red crosshair cursor was blinking.
    Using a handheld control, MacIntyre zoomed in and out and moved the cursor, quickly scanning the circle he had asked for, with its 10-mile radius. Connor could not keep up with her boss’s search and was getting vertigo from the image on the screen as it zoomed and swerved in front of her. It was as though she were looking down on the Arabian Desert from a blimp just yards above the sands. Suddenly MacIntyre stopped and sat back down behind his desk.
    “Helluva haystack, Susan,” the Deputy Director said, shaking his head at the perplexed analyst. “Helluva needle.”
    “I’m not sure I understand, sir. What was that on the image?” Connor was perched again on the edge of the couch, a plate on her lap filled with pizza crust ends and tomato-stained