“Turn off,” Gessa advised, looking at the phone.
“If I do, he’ll be here in person—”
Ring, ring, ri—
“Let me spell it out for you,” I snapped at Marlowe. “I am done. Finished. Out of patience, time, and interest in anything to do with you—”
“This isn’t about me! This is about the weapons—”
“What weapons?”
“What weapons?”
It was approaching screech territory. I pulled the phone away to save my hearing, and saw Sven wince. I took the party into the hall, because it wasn’t fair for everyone to have eardrum damage.
“You know damned well what weapons!” Marlowe was yelling. “They couldn’t have used all of the ones they took from Radu on the consul, not with a single man carrying them! Which means the rest are still floating around out there, along with who knows how many others!”
“And?”
“And?”
“And what do you expect me to do about it? I have fifty other things—”
“Not now. This is priority one!”
“Not for me.” I made it final. “You’re the one with the resources for a job like that. One more person isn’t going to help you play hide-and-seek across the city, and I have—”
Marlowe cut me off. “I want to know what you know—everything. Every tiny detail. We’re dealing with a ticking time bomb—”
“Why a time bomb?” I asked, and immediately regretted it.
Because I’d forgotten and put the phone back to my ear.
“Because that bitch isn’t talking!” Marlowe yelled, at front-row-at-a-death-metal-concert decibels. “Even Mircea can’t get anything out of her, and whoever was working with her is still at large, leaving us with two very ugly scenarios!”
“Such as?”
“Such as I can’t talk about this over a phone! There’s no telling who’s listening—”
“Everyone, if you keep screaming.”
“—and there’s certain terms I don’t need showing up in a file somewhere!”
But then he told me anyway.
“Such as number one: she was working with loyal confederates, who are even now tracking down the rest of those damned weapons, and smuggling them . . . somewhere we don’t need them to be. Giving her partisans a war-changing advantage should we ever invade!”
“Should? I thought that was the plan.”
“Until last night! But until we find those weapons, it’s suicide to even attempt it. No one is willing to send their people in there as things stand!”
“Okay,” I agreed. “That’s bad.”
“And number two isn’t any better. If her associates aren’t loyal, then they are sitting on a trove of . . . power . . . like nothing we’ve ever seen. Those fights have been going on for decades! They involved thousands of . . . people . . . especially after Geminus began enlarging and promoting them. There’s no telling how much . . . power . . . they currently have—”
“You think they’re going to sell it.”
“Of course I think they’re going to bloody sell it! And while I have people watching the black market, what if they don’t go there? What if they decide that, instead of selling it off in dribs and drabs, and taking a chance on getting caught every time, they just make one big sell? To our enemies who will fucking use it to fucking end us?”