03. The Maze in the Mirror (23 page)

In other words, the others could do it without them.

But it's big, real big, so there's a requirement for absolute security and no margin for any kind of leak or second thoughts or it's all over. The Company had a lot of faults but if there was just a hint dropped that they picked up they'd come running in force. That meant you either went along with the plot or they got rid of you. After all, if it worked you wouldn't need the organization any more anyway, right? And if it didn't you wouldn't be around to care. And that put the burden on Pandross to keep the questionable ones on the straight and narrow. Unless Pandross felt he was marked for an early grave because maybe he couldn't be trusted, either.

Damn it! It came down to the same key question every time. Which side was Pandross on? The go or no-go side? If I could just figure that one out the rest of the thing would fall into place.
I must have finally burped enough or gotten too hung up in logic loops or something, because I drifted off.

The next thing I remember was hearing this horrible, piercing scream. It didn't sound close but, man, it had to be not only close but super loud to get through that door and those walls. I was on my feet in an instant, even though I had nowhere to go and might just have been hearing some kind of sacrifice or something or never be told what the hell was happening, but I always felt it was better to be prepared. I pulled on my pants and slipped into the boots and hadn't had time to lace them before there was a clanging at the door and it opened wide and sudden.

Two black-clad monks were there and they weren't fooling around. Neither had their cowls up and I could see real meanness in those guys, the kind of look that can freeze blood. They were also packing sidearms and those sidearms were in their hands. Ugly looking weapons-I hadn't seen their like since I gave up Saturday morning kids' shows, but I had no doubt that these shot more than colored light or darts.

They seemed surprised to see me, which I thought odd, and finally one said, "You! Come with us!" in the kind of tone you don't argue with. It was a thick, guttural accent but it was impossible to tell whether he had one of the translator modules on or if he really knew a little pnglish. At any rate, I came.

They went to Maria's door and opened it, one covering the other who did the opening. I heard her shout a string of unmistakable curses in a very loud voice at them in her own language, but she
was there. "Get on robe and come!" the same one snarled at her who'd come for me.

She was maybe a few seconds, but while we waited for her all hell seemed to be breaking loose inside the place, particularly below. There were shouts and bells clanging and reverberating all through the cavernous interior and I thought for sure we were under some kind of attack.

Maria came out, looking bedraggled and weary, and gave me a look that could only be described as welcoming. She'd been going nuts in there, that was for sure. She ignored them and asked me, "What is going on?"

"Who knows?" I responded.

The English-speaking black robe turned and said, "Follow me. Both of you!"

Well, we followed, sandwiched in between the two armed men, going down from the balcony and on to the main floor and then into the cathedral or temple or whatever it was. There were black robes everywhere and nary a brown robe in sight-it was clear that black was security and Tarn's own force, while brown was really the priesthood.

We were marched up the center aisle right to the point just below the altar, where a number of security men stood, some facing out, others in. They moved aside a bit for us and I could see that directly in front of the altar, maybe where the priest would pray to that stupid-looking idol, was a brown-robed figure, his garment stained with blood, which wasn't that unusual because there were two very large and impressive-looking swords sticking out of his back.

My immediate thought was that somehow
Pandross had gotten to Tarn and was showing off his hit in a very spectacular way. I turned to the English speaker. "Did anyone touch the body?"

"No. Only to be certain he was quite dead. Little wonder that he is. The force of the blows are such that both swords are stuck well into the flooring under him. We are awaiting the Master."

I felt a sudden surge of relief. Then it wasn't Tarn. I could see that now-the shape of the body and the head was all wrong. My relief wasn't just because I liked the guy; I figure that if he'd gotten knocked off while we were here there was no way we'd talk our way out of here and back to the Labyrinth, and even if we did we'd be dead meat, Typhoid Marys to the others.

"Who is he?"

The security man shrugged. "We have no idea. Perhaps we will be able to run him through our files, but he is unfamiliar to us."

"He wasn't some spy knocked off by one of your boys? You're sure?"

"Impossible. We would never do that
here,
and not like
that.
Besides, anyone who could get this far is not one we would wish to kill before he was thoroughly interrogated."

I nodded. "You mind if I take a look? I'm experienced-I won't disturb anyone."

"Take care," warned the man, and I intended to, but I walked forward and noted that Maria was right behind me, more fascinated than anything else by the gruesome sight. I reached down, carefully pulling back the cowl, and grabbing some of the long hair I raised the head to get a look at him. If his back was ugly, his face was even less pleasant, but I heard Maria give a short gasp of recognition and my respect for her went up a notch because she'd recognized him.

I mean, he had a beard now, and that face was really gross, but still, clearly, it was the face of Lothar Pandross.

7.

The Phantom of the Labyrinth

"You have some explaining to do," Quin Tarn told me a bit sternly.

"Oh? And what do I need to explain?" I asked innocently. "I was locked up tight and sound asleep when it happened. As if either Maria or I could have driven those two swords into him at all, let alone with that much force, even assuming we'd mastered the trick of walking through walls."

He looked at me intently. "You know just what I mean. Quisquot-my chief of security, the one who knows some English and brought you down -is very good and very experienced. He noted that while the woman, here, gasped at the recognition, you
smiled."

"Well, at first I was afraid it was you," I admitted, "but as soon as it was clear that it wasn't, I wanted to see if I knew the guy. I do admit I was expecting somebody else-a Company spy, perhaps-but when I saw that it was another Pandross, well, I got the message and I think you did, too."

"Indeed? And what message is that?"

"I knew from the start that Pandross had faked his own death, and that he knew I knew it," I told him, hearing Maria gasp again and then give me
dagger-like looks. "How is not worth going into right now. Pandross killed Pandross-or, rather, a double of Pandross. He probably has lots of them around. Most top security men do-the ones who have a sufficient number, anyway. He probably had the medical scan of that victim stuck in from the start, years ago, and just updated it if anything happened to him, so that the computer autopsy would verify that he himself had died. That gave him an unprecedented freedom in which he held the keys to security and the knowledge of the entire underground network but was accountable to none, all of whom thought him dead. I was the only one who could have exposed him, but until I understood his motives it seemed more prudent to keep it to myself. Since he'd gone out of his way to make sure I knew he was still alive even before I knew he was supposedly dead, I figured he'd contact me at some point and I'd learn what it was all about. In a way, he just did."

"I take it, then, that you do not believe that our body there is Pandross, either," the rebel leader commented.

"Probably not, but we'll never prove it one way or the other, will we? Not unless Pandross shows up again. If it is, then we have another player in the game, somebody Pandross trusted. Somebody capable of getting in and out of here past your best security system. I doubt it, though. This is a cynical security man's way of sending us both a message -that your operation leaks like a sieve, which I can believe, and you are, therefore, incredibly vulnerable, and that Pandross or whoever is behind this is fully capable of taking you out. The fact that it was also done while I was here shows that our player or players is using me for their own purposes somehow."

Quin Tarn seemed a bit nervous at that. "Then I must leave this place, burrow deeper."

"I wouldn't. If he'd wanted to take you out he could have. The fact that he walked right past your security, with his victim, and killed the victim in cold blood and in such a theatrical and public manner illustrates this. He's telling you to really tighten up your security, that's all. And when word of this gets out to the others, they'll become paranoid as all hell. He'll have shut me down because the others will cut and run. Shut down your grand project, too, most likely."

"Is that such a bad thing, I wonder?" Tarn mused. "Could that be the object of his playing around? Might Pandross think as I do?"

"Maybe. But we can't completely discount the idea that that's the real Pandross there. That he was here in secret monitoring me, maybe checking on me or maybe to contact me or maybe to contact you. That somebody else, somebody who's a traitor in your own organization, recognized him and did this to keep him quiet-in which case we have, as I mentioned, an unseen player with motives of his or her own. I mean, how many duplicates of himself can he have that he can waste them this way? And it's sure a lot riskier to do it this way than to, say, send a note or tap into your communications line. No, whoever did this did it partly because they wanted me to be no longer certain that Pandross was still alive and kicking. Hell, considering our discussion, I wouldn't put it past
you
to do it like this to get just the results we're talking about."

Quin Tarn sighed. "Perhaps. I will send the body to my own labs to be analyzed and autopsied anyway to see if there's some way of determining if he was or wasn't the real one, and even now we have sealed the place off and are working to install much more sophisticated security. Clearly geography and routine measures are not enough. But what would
you
have me do about this, sir?"

"Me? I'd sit on him. If you seal up this place tight and if you run checks on your security staff and guards to make sure you have no traitors or infiltrators, then the others won't know it happened. One might-if the killer can get out of here or get a message away. That might just give me an edge and keep them above ground."

"I might do that-but if I did so, then the project would continue, even at its reduced pace with us all away from it."

"Uh huh. But releasing this might accelerate that project instead of stopping it, too. That's the other lesson here-you all aren't as safe in your holes as you think you are. Pandross knows you all better than you know each other. It was his job. Sit on it, if you will. Let's see just what hand is being played here."

Tarn thought about it, then sighed. "Very well. I will 'sit on' this, as you say it, at least for now. At least until you get far more information. Until you have enough to decide whether or not this is a case you truly wish to solve."

Maria was so glad to get back to that hot desert world she wanted to strip, but since Tarn's agents were there and we knew we were dealing with newly cleared people who would rather have kept
us than let us go if they hadn't been ordered otherwise, we just regained our original jump-suit style clothing and headed back into the Labyrinth itself as quickly as possible. If they couldn't keep us, they sure didn't want us around. They had a real crew on that desert access world working hard on what was probably the only main access into Tarn's world, making it solid as a vault, and they wanted nobody around who could describe what they were doing. I could have told them they had more worries than us, but I decided not to. Somebody like Tarn should know better.

There had to be other conjunction points- weak points-between this desert bridge world and Tarn's than just this convenient one. Any security man worth his salt and with the proper instruments and enough time could find them. Tarn could guard his main entrance all he wanted -his killer almost certainly got in and out through a basement window maybe hundreds or thousands of miles from here.

I was, in fact, counting on that and praying that it was thousands. That would mean that whoever it had been would have a very long and arduous trek back to that "window" and then also have some problems moving on the desert world to a weak point useful enough to get into the main Labyrinth. I probably had days, but if the murder was well prepared in advance and was set up by agents working for Pandross, I might have weeks.

When we got back to our little office hideaway, we barely had time to relax before Voorhes called.

"How did it go with Tarn?" he asked me.

"Very instructive," I responded. "Also nasty. There was a murder while we were there-not
Tarn, but an agent of somebody else for sure. Tarn is keeping it under wraps for a while and I'd appreciate your doing the same. We are on to something here and it's big and it's complicated and it's ugly, but I can't say any more yet. Any other invitations come in?"

"Uh, well-a murder you say . . .
Hmph!
Yes- we have most of them set up. Why?"

"If I could see Mancini next it would help a great deal," I told him.

"Mancini? Why?"

"Damn it! You and the rest have got to stop doing that if you want me to get this done for you! You want this done or are you just running me around to keep me busy? I'm sick of fighting for everything I need to do this job. I want Mancini. Period."

Voorhes seemed a bit taken aback, but, hell, like I told Tarn, I didn't
volunteer
for this. "Well, I'll see what I can do. Anything else?"