He hangs up. You pull into the Motel 6 and do what you're told. The new phone is another disposable burner. Julian, you realize, isn't hiding from the Second Inquisition. He's using what they think they know to move them around the board, in a game you don't fully understand.
You wonder if the Banu Haqim fully understands the game he's playing. Probably not.
As you get back in your Mitsubishi, your new phone buzzes when an email arrives with a zipped executable file. You stop to check the email and commit it to memory, because it includes an updated list of keywords the SI is scanning for.
Next
Traffic is thick that evening, so it takes you almost two hours to reach your destination. You turn left at a Circle K and have no problem finding a parking spot near a chain-link fence. You step back and examine your car, satisfied; you can reach it from multiple directions.
Your knockoff Panerai says 8:25 p.m.
St. Basil's is a baroque monstrosity that looks like an invader from an older and darker city back east. Its bricks are discolored, its windows high and narrow, and one doomed attempt to modernize the structure just makes it look like a prison with a single watchtower of dingy glass and black steel. You can feel the sickness emanating off St. Basil's, the impossibility of healing.
You watch the main entrance for a few minutes, feeling out the rhythms of the patients and staff, then walk around to the emergency entrance.
Neon yellow ambulances look like space invaders among the crumbling gray bricks. A few EMTs are outside smoking cigarettes under the No Smoking sign. Another entrance is locked and heaped up with trash: broken beds and furniture that no one ever got rid of. You don't see any other ways in that aren't locked with mechanical or electronic locks. There aren't a lot of cameras out here. That's good to know.
You shoulder your duffel bag, walk into reception, and immediately understand why Lettow gave you a pass key: the place is locked down like a liquor store. The reception desk is behind shatter-proof plastic, the elevator is locked with a key code, and the main double doors that lead deeper into the hospital aren't just locked, they're watched by a private security guard. The waiting area is full of people slumped in slashed-up wooden chairs with orange cushions. It smells like apple juice and bleach.
Julian babbling something about how modern statecraft is largely a project of internal colonization…whatever, you have a key. You swipe yourself through.
The light flashes red.
Next
So of course you try again, because it's just an old-fashioned magnetic strip card. The light flashes red again.
The guard—bright yellow Taser on his left hip, Ruger LC9 on his right—hasn't looked up from his game of Candy Crush, but one of the receptionists is watching you. Shit. This is your first night working for the Tucson Camarilla, and things have already gone sideways. You can't just stand here running this busted card through again and again, and this isn't the sort of place you can talk your way into. You scan the waiting patients, counting the junkies. There are a lot.
Does one of them have bite marks? Some amateur vampire didn't lick the wound clean. Or worse, the Kindred here are so thin-blooded they don't even have that ability. Instead of worrying about that, you focus on finding a way in.
There are three ways inside from this room: the double doors with the card reader that won't read your card, a staff door that's locked from this side (and you can't exactly pick a lock in front of the guard), and the elevator, which is locked with a keypad. You saw some unattended entrances outside, but all the ones you noticed had mechanical locks. Maybe you missed one—you could search again, though it wouldn't be easy to skulk around outside without drawing attention.