“The name’s from his mother’s side of the family. Long line of Geddys. How about you? Do you have a name?”

“Call me Tom.”

“Is that your real name?”

“Of course not. And you really need to sit down.”

I sat in the chair next to the woodstove. I crossed my legs and put my left hand on my thigh so I could see my watch without obviously checking it. Five minutes had passed since I had left the car. Ten to go. I said, “There’s no point dancing around. Just tell me what you want.”

Tom pulled a chair away from the wall and put it in front of me and sat in it so that our knees were almost touching. When he spoke I could smell his breath, sour and pungent, as if he’d been living on black coffee and brie. “No offense, but you people must be pretty stupid if you don’t know what we want.”

“Who’s we in this case? You? Your tranche? Your sodality? Your Affinity?”

“Come on, Adam. We want your brother Aaron to vote on the Griggs-Haskell bill without interference. We know Tau has a different preference, and we know Tau is in possession of some video footage that might embarrass Aaron right out of the House of Representatives. We suspected something like that before we picked up Geddy, though he was kind enough to confirm it—right, Geddy?”

Geddy inspected the floorboards and said nothing.

“If you’re making a threat,” I said, “you need to be explicit about it.”

“You’re the folks making a threat. In your case, Adam, a threat against your own brother! We’re just responding in kind. So don’t talk like you have the moral high ground here.”

I had drawn this man’s face, years ago, in Vancouver, working from Rachel Ragland’s description of the men who had come to question her. (Bald as a bottle cap, she had said, head like a bread loaf, mouth that opens like a puppet’s jaw.) If this wasn’t the same man, it was at least someone who matched both the description and the drawing. Rachel had also mentioned the Het tattoo: same size, same place. So it was no surprise the guy seemed to know me. He worked for Het security, and he could have been keeping a file on me (and Amanda and Damian) ever since the disastrous Vancouver potlatch. He might even have been involved in the murder of Meir Klein.

I said, “You’re still not telling me what you want, Tom.”

“What we want is a guarantee that Aaron will be allowed to cast his vote unmolested, as God and the electorate intended.”

“God and the electorate and the Het lobby.”

“Sure, if you like. And let me emphasize, we have no interest in harming Geddy. But if you were to walk out that door with him, both Het and Aaron would be hanging in the wind. He’s our leverage against Jenny, and without Jenny you have no acceptable case to make. The video by itself won’t convince anybody. Jenny’s the key. So we need to be in a position to bargain. We need Jenny to know something bad might happen if she joins this conspiracy of yours.”

What this told me was that he didn’t know Tau had secured a second affidavit from one of Aaron’s recent girlfriends. As far as Tau was concerned, his threat was meaningless. Amanda had made it clear: the video would be released whether or not Jenny consented … and whether or not Geddy was still being held captive.

But I couldn’t tell him that. In all likelihood he wouldn’t believe me. He certainly wouldn’t consider it grounds to give up Geddy. And if, miraculously, he did believe me—or if he successfully communicated the news to some higher echelon of the Het command chain—I would have betrayed my own Affinity by revealing the secret.

Of course I had already betrayed Tau by lying to Trevor. But I hoped I could be forgiven for that once Geddy was safe. I figured I could make Trevor and Amanda and maybe even Damian understand why I had done what I was doing.

“So,” I said, “what are you proposing? Or do you have to wait for instructions before you can answer that question?”

He smirked. There was a twinkle in his eye: he actually looked merry. “That’s such a tired stereotype—hierarchical Hets, always need a boss to tell them what to do. Some truth in it, of course. When it comes to collective action, yeah, we make sure we’re all on the same page and doing the right thing. Situations like this, field operations? It’s not brain surgery. You send along someone who can assume the authority to issue orders. Pending the end of the blackout, I’m that person. If you think we’re paralyzed until the phones work, you’re not just wrong, you’re stupid.”

I looked at my watch. Twelve minutes had passed.

“So,” he said, “all I want to do here is lay out the terms. We can’t give you Geddy. Not today. You understand that, right? There’s no promise you can make that will secure his release. We need Aaron to vote as intended, and we need to hang on to Geddy until then. What I want to say is, that doesn’t have to be a hardship. The vote’s scheduled for next week, unless the crisis postpones it, and we can make Geddy perfectly comfortable until then. At an undisclosed location, of course, but somewhere comfortable and private.” He turned to give Geddy a puppet-jawed grin. “Think of it as a vacation. Eat, drink, relax, watch videos until this mess gets resolved. Het picks up the tab, and then you go free.”

Geddy continued inspecting the patch of floor between his sneakers.

I said, “And in exchange?”

“Isn’t it obvious? You have people down the road contemplating some kind of rescue attempt. Which, excuse me for saying so, is a truly idiotic idea. Which I imagine you hatched precisely because you’re out of contact with the, uh, Tau consensus, or whatever you call it. We both have so much to lose from a move like that. Somebody gets hurt. Or there’s police involvement, which neither of us wants. Or the conflict escalates out of control. A ridiculous risk.”

“You’re asking us to give up everything we’ve worked for since Klein was killed.”

“What, because of that bill before Congress? I won’t kid you; we want Aaron’s vote. But we’ve got our hands on lots of other levers. And even if this vote goes against us, what the fuck does that buy you?”

Fifteen minutes. The radio on my belt crackled. I said, “I need to check in with my people.”

The Het guy shrugged and said, “Keep it brief.”

*   *   *

Trev and I had arranged a kind of code. When I answered his call he said, “You’ve been in there a while—everything okay?”

Which meant the initial stage of the rescue plan had been set into motion and was evolving smoothly. Had there been a problem, he would have asked me what was taking so long. If the plan had been cancelled altogether, he would have told me he was getting impatient.

And I said, “We’re still talking.”

Which meant: Come get us ASAP.

Radio silence followed.

*   *   *

Tom said, “We need to wrap this up. I’m sure you know we have our vehicles behind the house. What’s going to happen is, my people will put Geddy in one of those vehicles and we’ll convoy down Spindevil to the highway. Nobody gets in the way. Nobody follows us. No contact until Aaron casts his vote, at which time we get in touch and tell you where to find Geddy. The video footage stays locked up in the meantime, or, if it does get released, Jenny Fisk tells the press it’s not authentic. That’s a win-win situation.”

“It might be,” I said. “Except we have no reason to believe you. You say you won’t hurt Geddy—”

“As long as Aaron isn’t interfered with, you can count on it.”

“History doesn’t bear out that assertion.”

“No idea what you’re talking about.”

“I was on Pender Island a few years ago when one of your guys shot Amanda Mehta. Maybe you remember that. You’d been trying to squeeze information out of Rachel Ragland, looking to find something you could pin on me or Amanda or Damian Levay. Then you sent some asshole with a rifle to intimidate us. Unfortunately he was also an incompetent asshole.”