Free Cowboy Angels by Paul McAuley Page B

already working here. In this sheaf, in New York. I was taken off my job and grilled by Ralph Kohler’s people for six hours straight. They were going to send me home, but David Welch persuaded them to let me help out.’
    ‘Welch likes to play games, Linda. He’s using you.’
    ‘He thinks there’s a good chance my father will try to make contact with me if I’m out on the street in plain view. What’s wrong with that?’
    ‘You can let me out right here. Then you can turn this taxi around, find David Welch, and tell him that I think he’s crazy.’ Stone tried the door; it was locked. He rapped on the plastic partition and said, ‘That wasn’t a suggestion, by the way. Stop right here.’
    Linda looked at him in the rearview mirror with cool defiance. ‘What are you going to do if I don’t? Shoot me?’
    Stone felt a little pang of guilt and wondered if Tom had broken one of the golden rules of clandestine service and told his daughter about what had happened when SWIFT SWORD had fallen apart. ‘I came here because your father asked for me, because I’m his friend, and because he saved my life once upon a time, and I still owe him. I don’t know why he’s been doing what he’s doing, but I do know that you don’t want to get caught up in it.’
    Linda said, ‘I thought my father died three years ago, Mr Stone. Now I know he didn’t, I want to help find him and bring him in safe and sound.’
    ‘You’re being used, Linda.’
    ‘We’re both of us being used, Mr Stone. Maybe we can figure out how to make the best of it.’
    Stone had to admit that it was a good point. Linda definitely had a stubborn streak a mile wide, just like her father, but she also appeared to be sensible and level-headed, and she had been working right here. She had local knowledge. Maybe he could turn this around, Stone thought. Pay back Welch in his own coin. He leaned forward and spoke into the cluster of holes drilled in the partition. ‘You can drive me to the scene. When I’ve finished there, we can try to work something out.’
    ‘You won’t regret it, Mr Stone.’
    ‘And you can slow down, too. Before we get a ticket.’
    ‘You don’t like my driving?’
    ‘I guess it’s been a long time since I was in a New York taxi. A long time since I last saw you, too. What were you doing, before David Welch brought you into this thing? I take it you’re working for the Company now.’
    ‘I’m part of a team that’s liaising with the local FBI, trying to break up criminal gangs that are smuggling deserters out of the country. The desertion rate amongst our troops is three per cent and rising. A few want to find their doppels, or the doppels of their wives or sweethearts, but most of them want to get to Canada. Canada is neutral in this sheaf. Once they’re over the border, they’re gone. The gangs help them get across, and then squeeze them for interest payments on the fee.’
    ‘So you’re a field officer, just like your father.’
    ‘Actually, at the moment, I’m more on the analytical side of things. I was seconded from DI to help run a data-management system - computer work, basically. But I get to sit in on interviews with suspects, and I’ve been on a couple of raids, too.’
    ‘How do you like it, out in the field?’
    ‘I was working with the forensic crew both times. I didn’t come in until after the assault teams had taken out the bad guys. But it was still a buzz.’
    ‘I guess it must be,’ Stone said, remembering his first field actions. How it had all seemed like good clean fun until he’d had to shoot someone.
    ‘I majored in anthropology at NYU before I joined the Company,’ Linda said. ‘This is my first time through the mirror, and I end up back in New York. It’s different, but not that different. There’s the aftermath of the war, of course, and the Dodgers and the Giants are still here, they didn’t move to the West Coast, but it isn’t like it’s a foreign country. Apart from