It took Ferguson and Guns several hours to walk back to Guns’s hotel from Science Industries. Ferguson sat down on the couch; the next thing he knew it was several hours later and Guns was shaking him awake.
“Corrigan needs to talk to you,” Guns told him. “Sorry to wake you up, Ferg.”
“What time is it?”
“Oh eight hundred hours.”
“In real time that’s what, eight in the morning?”
“Something like that. It’s six o’clock at night back home. Eighteen hundred.”
“What, you got two clocks to keep track?”
“Only my head.”
Ferguson rolled out of bed, splashed some water on his face, and went down to the hotel café to get some coffee. All he could find was tea. He took two cups back to the room, did a quick scan for bugs to make sure no one had managed to sneak in while they were sleeping, and called The Cube.
“Ferg, how are you?” asked Corrigan.
“Can’t party like I used to,” he told him. “You get that information I told Lauren about? Science Industries?”
“Yeah. There’s an encrypted PDF file waiting for you to download. You can read it at the embassy.”
“Why the embassy?”
“Slott will explain. Hold on.”
“Great.”
Slott came on the line after a short pause.
“Good morning, Ferg.”
“What’s this about the embassy?” said Ferguson.
“We want soil samples from the waste plant, and as much other information as we can come up with. Seoul’s got to be involved.”
“I can get the samples without them.”
“There’s no need to cut Seoul out,” said Slott. “I want you to brief Ken Bo. He’s the station chief.”
“Me?”
“You have someone else in mind?”
Ferguson scratched the side of his head. Tea was fine as far as it went, but it wasn’t a substitute for coffee.
“It’ll take me a while to get up there.”
“Listen, Ferg, this situation is volatile, seriously volatile.”
“Yeah, I know the drill.”
“Ferguson, for once, will you listen to what I say?” snapped Slott.
“I always listen to you, Dan,” said Ferguson, who found Slott’s uncharacteristic anger amusing. “The question is whether I pay any attention to it.”
“If you need backup, ask for it, all right?”
“My middle name is Please,” said Ferguson. He took a swig of the tea and practically spit it out. “Listen, I gotta go. I think somebody’s trying to poison me.”