A Song Called Youth (109 page)

Watson turned to look at him, knowing he’d made a mistake in bringing Giessen in, and wondering how big an error it had been. Giessen—“The Thirst”—could have been a tax investigator. He was a prim, ferret-faced, sartorially elegant little man who had been, inexplicably, excused by Rick Crandall from wearing a uniform. He wore a real-cloth suit two hundred years outdated, a Victorian outfit, ludicrously anachronistic (“looks like a bloody actor in a Public School revival of an early Shaw play,” Watson had muttered), modeled on an old tintype of a certain Dr. Gull, who’d been “seen on der fringes of der Ripper investigation.” But Giessen’s methods were very up-to-date. He’d patched into the Crime mainframe on the plane from Dresden, and fed in a collation program of his own design. Already he’d confirmed Watson’s guess: that the assassin of Le Pen was most probably the New Resistance officer known as Daniel “Hard-Eyes” Torrence.

“You’re not here to second-guess my planning or policing tactics,” Watson told Giessen. He couldn’t exactly upbraid him: Watson’s post was something like an Internal Affairs officer. Watson didn’t outrank him, or vice versa. Giessen’s was a post independent of rank, but reeking of authority.

Watson saw digital-compressed mayhem from the corner of his eye.

“Bloody hell,” he muttered, turning to the monitor in time to see the hijacked Jægernaut reducing a convoy of armored cars and I.S. vehicles to scrap metal. It simply rolled right over them. “How did they get it? Who did they bribe? Those men are supposed to be our most loyal . . . ”

“There is a report of a black market in drugs,” Giessen said, clearly making a conscious effort to control his accent.

Watson glared at him as Klaus foned in orders to the chopper to ignore the Jægernaut and concentrate on Processing Center 13. Why was this fetishistic lunatic maundering in non sequiturs? “There’s always a black market in drugs!”

“Not always in der—in the military,” Giessen said. “Sometimes ja, sometimes no. Now, we haf a—we have a trade in US Army experimental fighting-drugs. Oxycontin, stimulants, tranquilizers. I have reason to believe that some of our sentries are using them. I also suspect that these resistance terrorists are selling them under some sort of . . . cover. You see, there were sniping attacks on SA sentries around the Jægernauts and other installations. They seemed to reach a peak intensity about two weeks ago and then stopped when so-called ‘street people’ began coming around to sell zese—to sell these drugs.”

Watson stared. The man had been here only hours! How had he found out so much? He must have had some preliminary studies done. Must have realized he was to be called in.

Watson cleared his throat and lied rather clumsily, “Well, of course . . . we knew about that.”

Giessen allowed himself a self-satisfied smirk. “Yes, most certainly. The connection is clear: through the sniper attacks the resistance deliberately built up in the sentries a constant fear for their lives, then through intermediaries they offered them drugs, knowing they were very much ready for them. They introduced the addiction into the Army to poison it, to weaken it—and to obtain access to sensitive areas. A man becomes addicted to something, he will sell secrets, he will allow access—even to the Jægernauts,
ja
?”

Watson swallowed. “This is Steinfeld’s doing. The man is devious.”

Giessen nodded. “I have come to the same conclusion. He would be a better target than this Torrence—but, not likely to be as emotionally vulnerable.”

Watson blinked. “You’re going after Torrence through his emotions?”

“
They’ve got some kind of surface-to-air missile . . . ”
crackled a voice on the emergency frequency. Chopper Two, at center 13. “
Evasive—”

No good. The dancing digital image blanked out. The guerillas had blown the chopper from the sky.

“What about Chopper
One!
” Watson roared.

“Engaging a rooftop machine-gun emplacement,” Klaus said.

“Get it away, that’s a decoy! Deploy to the street, stop those bloody trucks!”

“The Jægernaut is on the scene, it’s blocking the chopper. They’re increasing altitude but—”

“
Microwaves—”
Chopper One. “
Microwave beam from the fucking Jæger—”

Then a scream muted by transmission—and another monitor blotted out.

“Why not bring a second Jægernaut to bear?” Giessen suggested.

Watson spun on him, spraying spittle in his fury, taking his frustration out on Giessen. “Because, damn you, we have only one other here, and it’s the bleeding wrong end of town! We can’t run it through the middle of town! The French went half mad when one of our lads rubbled their bloody Arc de Triomphe. The Jægernauts are to be used to attack cities fully occupied by an enemy—they’re a weapon of siege! We’ve had a cunt of a time doing damage control on that one, lying through our bloody teeth—we can’t plow through the middle of town, those things destroy wherever they go . . . ”

“I see, of course, they need a special route. It was a bad suggestion, Herr Watson.” Giessen gave a thin, maddeningly patronizing smile.

Klaus was listening tensely on the fone; Watson could tell he was getting something nasty. “Well, what is it, Klaus?”

“Their trucks! The Jægernaut completely routed our boys and the guerilla trucks are away. They’ve quite escaped with their load of Jews and Negroes . . . ”

Sometimes human planning lines up neatly with chance; sometimes synchronicity vibes sympathetically; sometimes there is serendipity.

When it happens, you have a holiday from fear, you can lie to yourself cheerfully about how it’ll all turn out. (And sometimes, it does indeed turn out well. Sometimes.)

When Torrence returned to the safe house, he found he was resonating sweetly with things for the first time in a year or two. First there was a sense of relief: they’d taken the refugees to the meeting place where they were turned over to those who’d agreed to take in the stronger escapees—taken in by hundreds of decent Parisians who were among the NR’s “auxiliary.” The most grievously ill were taken by the “underground train”—carried on stretchers, through the old Metro tunnels—to the north of the city, where other partisans waited to take them to outlying hospitals and sympathetic doctors. It had taken a long, difficult while to organize, and it had gone off well, and they had been lucky.

Another serendipity: Smoke had been at the meeting place, an artillery-ruined square in the north of Paris where the evacuation trucks left off their long-suffering human cargo. Smoke, and an American newscaster named Norman Hand.

Hand and his technicki assistant had videoed the refugees, interviewed those who could talk. With enormous satisfaction, Smoke watched Hand’s skepticism melt into horror.

Then had come the safe house, which seemed warm and snug after the “bullet weather” of the firefight. They had the space heater going, and the six male refugees they’d recruited were fed warm broth and a little rice—Roseland fed them, almost weeping from happiness and release—and Torrence thought:
If we don’t accomplish anything else, we’ve made this difference. Hundreds freed from the Fascists. Among them, some children.

He was just sorry they’d had to blow up the Jægernaut. He’d been tempted to try to get it to Second Alliance headquarters, use it to stomp them good, turnabout is fair play. But the Jægernaut would have crushed civilians, getting there. So, instead, they’d used it to mangle a couple of roads and railroad lines important to the Fascists, and then trashed it.

Now he sat in a corner near the rattling electric heater and ate his soup, his thoughts turning to Claire—and to his sister Kitty.

Kitty had a new baby, was working with her husband on the Colony; both of them happy with their promotions, proud of having come through hell together. Kitty was doing all right. That was something else to hold on to.

Claire’s letter had come off affectionate, but also a little irrationally petulant. As if she was reproaching him for hanging around in her head when she was trying to get some work done. He would have liked the letter to have at least hinted at romance. Maybe she was deliberately forgetting their intimacy. She seemed to suggest that he should find some other . . . outlet.

When you have time, just live,
she’d told him.
Try to feel some warmth, even though I know it’s hard to do there. Try to get close to people. That’s survival, too.

He was still pumped up from the fight, the escape, the sight of the Jægernaut coming down like a slaughterhouse hammer on the swine at the Detention Center. He was almost high on the knowledge that they’d made a material difference . . . 

It was hard to just sit here and watch the others; watch Smoke and Hand talking to the refugees and Pasolini cleaning her weapon—as she tried to be an example of the perfect soldier, another overcompensating female—and Musa and Jiddah, half-seen through the door into the next room, on their knees, praying toward Mecca. And Bibisch . . . 

Who sat down beside him, dipping a bit of sourdough bread into her bowl. She glanced at him out of the corners of her eyes, then looked fixedly back at her soup.

Oh,
he thought.

Well, she was pretty enough. Curly black hair, delicately elongated Frankish features, softly brooding gray-blue eyes; very handsome, her face, if a little dour. She wore shapeless clothes, as all the women here did, so it was hard to know if . . . 

He winced, mentally imagining Claire telling him off for his sexist speculation. For wondering about Bibisch’s tits and ass. Her legs.

Demeaning, Claire would say. And she’d be right.

But still, he wondered how those long legs looked in moonlight . . . 

Synchronicity, serendipity: Bibisch suddenly turned to him and said, “Did you see the moon? It is so bright tonight. The clouds blow away, the moon come in,
c’est tres jolie.”

“Yeah, saw it when I was coming in.”

“You look . . . happy. This is abnormal for you, yes?”

He smiled. “Yeah, well, I’d be pretty fucking abnormal if I was happy around Paris nowadays, Bibisch.”

“Your fucking is abnormal?” She seemed interested.

“That’s not what I meant, it’s just an—Forget it. You know, I didn’t know you spoke much English.”

“I am not very good on it, so I do not like to, you know . . . ” She shrugged. Inconspicuously, she moved closer to him.

“Your English is better than my French.”

“
Toujours.
Bad English is better than bad French. French,
c’est fragile.”
She said it “frah
-sjheel.”
The French pronunciation bringing onomatopoeia.

An outburst from Norman Hand distracted them. “I still can’t believe this could be going on without NATO and, I don’t know, without the UN knowing about it.”

Smoke said patiently, “I’ve told you: they know about some of it. But there was a war on, Hand, remember? There are hundreds of thousands of refugees, there are destroyed economies, there is starvation in pockets all over the continent, there is pestilence, there are bands of paramilitary groups jockeying for power, factions fighting for control—the so-called international ‘authorities’ are dealing with all that, they can’t sort out the SA-created suffering from the suffering that comes from the aftermath of war. They’ve got their hands full. They can’t see the goddamn forest for the trees. We need you to bring this out where people can see it.”

There were two rail-thin Oriental men among the group of refugees from the concentration camp; one of them tried to explain things to Hand in Korean, rattling it off arcanely for a full minute as Hand tried to tell him, “I’m not Korean! I don’t understand! I’m Vietnamese!”

The other Oriental sat up excitedly. “Vietnamese! Me Vietnamese!” Then he reeled off a couple of feverish paragraphs in Vietnamese.

“I’m Vietnamese, but I don’t
speak
Vietnamese!” Hand protested weakly.

The Vietnamese broke off, looked at him with raised eyebrows.

Torrence and Bibisch laughed. Bibisch leaned over against Torrence, as if simply to share a confidence, but he felt her linger over the casual touch, press a little closer than necessary. He felt his manhood harden. He was that pent up.

“I heard this Hand when he arrive,” she whispered, “he is bitching about the quarters to stay in, no hot water, he was so jet lag, he want a good meal, this was like a kidnap almost, he said.” And then she made a noise like a puppy whimpering.

Torrence and Bibisch laughed till tears came. Hand snapped a glare at them, sensing he was the object of some unheard drollery.

Torrence looked at Bibisch and stopped laughing. She looked gravely up at him. “You can see the moon,” she said, “from the storeroom, if you open
 . . . 
I don’t know the word:
la
fenêtre . . . ”

He nodded. His throat was dry; the pants at his crotch were taut. “You want to, um, check out the moon?”

She stood, nodding, and went to the stairs. He followed her, aware that some of the others were trying not to stare at them. They climbed the narrow, winding, creaking stairway, two flights, to the top of the old police station. There was a storage room, dusty and smelling of mildew, packed with weapons in crates, and the single window. Ornate black bars over the glazed window, this side. Light streamed through the window; the rest of the room was a jumble of sharp-edged shadows. They crossed to the window, and he tried to open it. It hadn’t been opened in years; wouldn’t budge. He was a little embarrassed at being unable to open the window; then felt foolish at wanting to look strong to her.

“It’s old,” she said, “and the wetness, it makes the wood . . . ”

She shrugged, looking at him. “But the moonlight is still here . . . ” She motioned at the window with a tilt of her head, without taking her eyes from his. “The moon is there, but . . . ”

He looked at the window glass. The moon was distorted by the glaze, was big and blurry, as if the moon’s light had been evaporated into a milky spray, something to bathe in.
Her skin in the moonlight . . .