Night and Day (Book 2): Bleeding Sky by Ken White

you consummated your relationship with her.”
    “Excuse
me?”
    “Your
physical relationship with Miss Tindell. Hudson mentioned it in his debrief
after training last winter.”
    Nick
Hudson. He was the second trainee Bain had sent, and I’d actually liked the
son-of-a-bitch. I would have liked him a lot less if I had known he was a
snitch.
    “I’d
prefer to keep that kind of personal information personal, if you know what
I mean.”
    “Of
course,” she replied. “Rest assured that only General Bain and I have access
to the debriefs. He or I conduct them personally.”
    That
was about two people too many with access. “But in answer to your question,
yes we did and no we’re not doing any more.”
    She
nodded. “I gathered that.” They probably asked about it when they were
debriefing the trainees that came after Hudson. “Your personal life is your
own business, Mr. Welles. But the general likes to have as much information
as possible on people he works with. For security purposes. For example, if
Miss Tindell was compromised...”
    “Could
we not talk about this?” I asked, interrupting her. “I understand the
general’s reasoning. I’m not enthusiastic about having my sex life included
in your files, but I’ll handle it.”
    “Of
course,” she said, smiling as she stared over the steering wheel. “I was not
going to enquire further.”
     
     I
didn’t know if it was some quiet meditation or the talk about my affair with
Sara, but whenever it was, by the time we hit the city, the tension about
her upcoming meeting with Anna Thodberg seemed to have melted away. Takeda
was calm and relaxed once more.
    “The
company commander will meet you at your office at fourteen hundred tomorrow
afternoon,” she said.
    Two
o’clock. That would give me time to see Jimmy and take a look at Jackson
Square, get an idea of what I’d gotten myself into.
    “He’ll
go over the deployment of his force at that time and discuss any changes you
might want to make,” she continued. “I will meet you at twenty-one thirty
tomorrow night at your office and we’ll go to meet the ambassador together.
If the ambassador is delayed, I will call you.”
    “Nine-thirty
is fine,” I said. “I’ll either have Brenner meet us there and he can come
along, or I’ll have him meet us at Jackson Square.”
    “Do
you wish me to incorporate him in my operational plan?” she
asked.
    “We’ll
figure that out that tomorrow night. If you think he might be helpful to
you, for all those reasons that you can’t discuss, I don’t have a problem
with it. He’s not trained well-enough to handle Night and Day cases on his
own, so he can either work this assignment or find a stool at some uptown
slurp-club for three or four nights. Anyway, General Bain is paying for his
time on this job, so he might as well do the work.”
    She
nodded.
    “There’s
another thing,” I said. It was something that had occurred to me while I
looked out the window on the drive into the city. The memory of an unhappy
young woman, arms folded across her chest, staring at the ground.
    “Yes?”
    “Trooper
Martinez,” I said. “You know her?”
    “Not
personally. I am, of course, aware of her security infraction and her
punishment.” She paused. “Why?”
    “Is
she any good?”
    “She
is a competent trooper,” Takeda said after a moment of silence. From her,
that was high praise.
    “You
know, to me it seems like a waste to have a competent trooper cooling her
heels inside the Area Operations Center, escorting people around, when she
could be doing what she’s good at.”
    “I
don’t disagree. You have a suggestion?”
    “As
a matter of fact, I do,” I said. “If I’m going to be commanding almost two
hundred Security Force troopers, I should probably have somebody close at
hand who knows more about how things work than me. And I don’t think it
makes any sense to tie up the company