Sinclair
Somewhere in Maryland
After getting a chopper to a private airfield east of Gaithersburg, Maryland, Sinclair and Entwhistle crossed the tarmac to a waiting Lexus hybrid SUV. As dusk leached color from the landscape, they drove north on Route 97, a pleasant drive through soft hills and farmland, to intersect with I-70 toward Baltimore.
“Winter and Wilson are still in Virginia and Jersey. Neither will be available tonight, maybe not even tomorrow.” Entwhistle closed his laptop where he’d been decrypting the latest messages.
“Anything new from Spruill?” Sinclair was driving for two reasons: one, he liked it, and two, he couldn’t stand the way Brits drove in the States—very shaky.
“Since he started the stake-out? Nothing.”
“Next time he checks in, tell him I want half-hour updates—even if it’s about his fingernail clippings.”
Entwhistle re-opened the laptop, started encrypting a terse transmission. They drove in silence as the vehicle’s headlights played over the trees and meadows lining the winding road. As Sinclair glided around a gradual bend, a deer stood poised to spring across the road, then flinched back under the beam of the light. Just what they needed right now was a collision—that would be just about enough delay to jeopardize the operation.
Sinclair rubbed his chin with the back of his hand, an unconscious gesture he’d displayed most of his life. So how did he feel about this assignment? Did he really care if it went south? His superiors had evidently cast it into the “maybe file,” the status for anything not worth getting top-tier hands dirty.
The Guild had survived by applying basic rules of economics to other aspects of human conduct in the geopolitical and military arenas. From what Sinclair had managed to glean from his ability to read between the lines, the Guild ascribed quotients of risk-to-benefit, and based most strategic decisions on a series of formulae tested through centuries of hands-on application. They had mastered the manipulation of global conflicts, investing in both sides of every war, and profiting beyond imagination.
While he found a certain level of interest in this kind of planning and execution, he didn’t care enough to push himself up through the ranks to learn it well. Sinclair, when being honest with himself, was a man who had given up not only his idealism, but his need to excel at anything ever again. He was just doing a job—that was it.
As he drove along in silence, he let his mind wander, replaying old scenes and incidents from his life. Flash-cuts of video memory: days at college, basic training, his first apartment, the birth of his first child. All of it seemed so long ago, so foreign to him. Like watching a docu-bio of someone only vaguely familiar. It had been so long since anyone had used his first name, he barely remembered it himself. Symbolic, really, how everything he’d ever felt important in his life had begun an inevitable slide into meaninglessness—including his position within the endless labyrinths of the Guild. Did he truly care about anything now?
Sinclair grinned softly, as he tried to imagine what his superiors would think if they ever divined his innermost thought. It made him smile—because they may already be doing it. Maybe that’s why he spent most of his time holed up in an abandoned base on a forgotten island…
“Interstate 70 coming up,” said Entwhistle.
“I see the ramp.”
Entwhistle glanced at his watch. “Spruill missed his check-in.”
“Did he acknowledge your last message?”
“He did indeed.”
Sinclair knew how easy it was to wander off schedule. “Give him fifteen minutes before we get concerned.”
Entwhistle nodded. “I figure we have at least 40 minutes to his rendezvous point. More than enough time to put himself in a jolly jackpot.”