Cowboy Angels by Paul McAuley Read Free Book Online Page A

remembering something that Tom Waverly had once told him.
    ‘It’s easier to believe he was turned or that he’s working on some unsanctioned action of his own,’ Welch said. ‘He always did have a wild streak.’
    ‘Who is Eileen Barrie? Does she work for the Company?’
    ‘In the Real she’s a mathematician. And so are her doppels.’
    ‘Every one of her? That’s pretty stable.’
    ‘There are a couple of sheaves where she doesn’t exist, or where she died young. But in every other sheaf she’s a mathematician, usually working on some aspect of quantum theory. She’s more stable than Elvis.’
    ‘Is she working on something important? Something someone might not want her to work on?’
    ‘Forget the woman, Adam. We want to find Tom and bring him in, safe and well. We think you can help us.’
    Stone let that we go for the moment. He said, ‘Why me? Nathan Tate worked with Tom on more operations that I did. Jimmy McMahon worked alongside Tom and me in the American Bund sheaf—’
    ‘Jimmy McMahon retired last year after he suffered a heart attack and had a triple bypass. And Nathan Tate was working the case, until yesterday evening. The Cluster used a travelling-salesman program to work out which doppels of Eileen Barrie were most likely to be targeted next. Nathan was working protection for one of the candidates. She was living in New York, the Johnson sheaf. Tom planted an incendiary device in her house. It started a fire that drove everyone outside, and Tom shot and killed Eileen Barrie and Nathan Tate with a .308 rifle from about two hundred yards.’
    ‘Tom killed Nathan?’
    Welch nodded. ‘Yesterday evening, New York City, the Johnson sheaf. Like I said, there’s only one functional gate, and we have it locked up. But there’s a complication. In addition to Eileen Barrie and Nathan Tate, Tom also killed a cop who happened to be the nephew of the mayor of New York. The local police have been authorised to use terminal force against him. I want you to come back with me. I want you to help us find him. If the locals get to him before we do, they’ll shoot him down like a dog.’
    ‘Who sent you? Was it Knightly?’
    ‘Not hardly. The Old Man is still wearing a diaper and drooling out of one side of his mouth. He hasn’t even learnt how to talk again.’
    After the Church Committee had presented its findings to a closed session of the Senate, Dick Knightly had been tried on charges of conspiracy to conceal the involvement of Special Operations in clandestine activity against governments in other sheaves. He’d suffered a massive stroke after he’d been sentenced, and was serving a twenty-year term in the hospital ward of a minimum security facility in the Florida Everglades.
    ‘Why I’m here,’ Welch said, ‘I happen to be working for the Directorate of Diplomatic Support in the sheaf where Tom made his last hit, where he’s locked in right now. The guy in charge of the investigation, Ralph Kohler, asked me to reach out to you because one of his men found a note at the scene.’
    ‘Tom left a note?’
    ‘Carved in the bark of the tree he used as a sniper’s position: I’ll talk to Stone .’
    ‘That’s it? You came all the way out here because someone who may or may not be Tom Waverly carved my name on a tree?’
    ‘I came here because Tom Waverly wants to talk to you, Adam. I know you and Tom had a bad falling-out over SWIFT SWORD, but I also know that he saved your life, once upon a time. Are you willing to try to save his?’

    Susan said, ‘After I sent Petey to find you, I asked Colonel Welch point blank why he was here, but the slippery son of a gun wouldn’t give a straight answer.’
    Stone said, ‘It’s how he is. Don’t take it personally.’
    ‘One minute you’re ploughing, the next you’re packing. So forgive me for being kind of curious.’
    Susan, slender and tousled in jeans and one of her dead husband’s shirts, its tails tied in a knot above her navel, had