Greenhouse Summer (42 page)

“Da,” said Ivan. “We must preserve Big Blue Machine like last polar bears in Siberia or remaining bits of Amazon rain forest or quaint folk music of Urals.”

“Even from own evil assholery!”

“
Especially
from own evil assholery. Considering that evil assholes are not so good at preserving
themselves
. Considering that is main thing that makes them assholes.”

“And how do you expect to do this?” asked Eduardo.

“
We
don’t do it, Ramirez,
you
do,” Ivan told him. “Is fair Bad Boys must do
some
little service to earn money.”

“Indeed,” agreed Eduardo, “but how do you propose we earn it?”

“Maybe we ask handsome prince?” Stella Marenko suggested. “Maybe today he proves he is not just another pretty face?”

And all at once, Eric was the center of attention. The Marenkos turned away from Eduardo to focus on him. And Eduardo himself was smiling thinly, as if he saw what was coming and found it both amusing and just.

And so did Eric. It was obvious.

“A contract?” he said. “On Davinda?”

The Marenkos nodded.

“A negative option contract? I verify that Davinda’s climate model will prove that Big Blue’s Condition Venus disney hides the real thing or I prevent the full catastrophe from happening by canceling the Sunday demonstration by . . . permanently removing their human central processing unit from the circuit?”

“Da,” said Ivan. “Either Condition Venus is proved on Sunday or demonstration is canceled and
nothing
happens. Big Blue looks stupid, but survives and we keep them on short leash like nice dancing bear. Next year, maybe even another UNACOCS. And we pay for contract either way. Better than poke in eye with sharp stick, eh, Ramirez?”

Eduardo pondered this. But not for very long.

“It’s your contract to accept or refuse, Eric,” he said.

“I made it, I’ll take it,” Eric said immediately.

After all,
he
had talked the syndic into this situation. And by making it a free choice rather than an order, Eduardo Ramirez had given him the opportunity to redeem himself. It was more than the right career move. It was doing well by doing good.

“Thank you, Eduardo,” he added upon this reflection.

Eduardo acknowledged his understanding with a mere nod of his head and a wave of his hand. But it was enough.

“Oobla di, oobla da,” Stella Marenko sang off-key, popping her fingers, “life goes on.”

And she poured them all big shots of pepper vodka.

What people! Eric thought again as they raised their glasses in a silent toast. What people to have on your side!

And now Eric Esterhazy was beginning to understand what side it really was. And that they
were
all on it together.

The fiery vodka slid down his gullet and ignited a warm glow of comradeship in his stomach.

Which did not sour until after the Marenkos had left, leaving him sitting there alone with Eduardo Ramirez, indeed not until Eduardo also got up to leave, and hit him with it as a casual parting afterthought.

“Oh, one more thing, Eric, should it come to pass that you must indeed remove Davinda, we obviously cannot afford to have the good deed credited to our account or that of the Marenkos . . .”

“Obviously,” agreed Eric blithely.

“So we should, as your mother would put it, pin it on a fall guy . . . or in this case
girl
, since no one else is available.”

Then it was that the pepper vodka, like Eduardo’s words, gave Eric a hard sour sock in the stomach.

“
Monique Calhoun
?” he exclaimed. “You’re ordering me to pin it on Monique Calhoun?”

Eduardo gave him one of those expressionless stone-faced looks that could mean anything. “Call it. . . . an operational suggestion,” he said. “A personal decision, Eric, not an order.”

“With personal responsibility for the results . . .”

“Exactly,” said Eduardo, and left it at that.

Nor did Eric wish to press him further as to exactly
what
would be the personal results if he. . . . opted to ignore such an operational suggestion.

When Avi Posner showed up unbidden at the Ritz instead of calling, Monique Calhoun did not expect him to be the bearer of happy tidings. She had been in the shower when he called from downstairs, and while she told him she needed ten minutes to get herself presentable, his unexpected advent left her too apprehensively curious to do anything more than dry her hair, slip on a dress, and step into a pair of shoes.

When she opened the door to the suite, Posner barged in without a greeting, and sat down heavily on a sofa in the parlor. Only when she had seated herself in a plush velvet armchair across the coffee table from him did she notice, to her astonishment, that he had arrived bearing a large gilded cardboard box of fancy chocolates.

Posner?
About to get romantic? At a time like this?

But the look on Avi Posner’s face was anything but hearts and flowers.

“First the good news,” he said grimly. “The principals have accepted your proposal. Tonight you take Davinda to
La Reine de la Seine
, you enlist Esterhazy’s aid, you get him into one of those bordello boudoirs, and you . . . ah, pump him. If you succeed in verifying that he is not a Siberian mole, your reward will be promotion to head of the Bread & Circuses’ Paris office after Mamoun retires next year. . . .”

“And the bad news . . . ?”

“I’m not through with the good news,” Posner said, though neither his expression nor his tone of voice made that contention credible.
“The rest of the good news is that even if it turns out that you cannot exonerate Davinda, you still get Paris. Provided . . . provided you accept the bad news.”

And, fidgeting with downcast eyes like a shy teenage boy tremulously courting his heart-throb, he handed her the box of chocolates.

“But Avi,” Monique exclaimed in total perplexity, “I
love
good chocolates!”

“Open it,” said Avi Posner.

Monique did.

No chocolates.

Inside the chocolate box was a gun.

A gunmetal-gray carbon-fiber automatic pistol with a fat barrel heavily perforated at the muzzle end.

Monique stared woodenly at the gun, then at Posner.

“The bad news,” said Avi Posner, “is that they’ve given
you
the contract.”

“Avi! You know I can’t—”

“Yes you can,” Posner said in a voice that seemed made deliberately robotic as he fixed his gaze on a spot somewhere above her head. “This weapon fires a high-velocity cloud of spent-uranium flechettes. With it, a rank amateur such as yourself can blow the head off a bull elephant at any range within twenty meters.”

“You know damn well that’s not what I mean!”

Posner sighed, nodded, shrugged.

“They
do
have an operational point,” he said. “If Davinda is found in a boudoir on
La Reine de la Seine
shot with just the sort of weapon a Bad Boys operative might use for the purpose, who would believe that anyone but a Bad Boys operative performed the removal operation? Let alone someone like you. You have access and deniability. Quite clever, really.”

“
Clever!
”

“If Davinda
does
have to be taken out because they can’t trust what his climate model might do, this provides the best damage control for the client,” Posner said. “They loudly claim that Davinda was killed by Greens to prevent his climate model from proving that Condition Venus was inevitable. And if the Siberians then try to counter with those recordings, they won’t be believed because the client will
then sound a lot more credible claiming the
recordings
and not the white tornadoes are the frauds.”

“I can’t do it, Avi. I’m no killer. I’ve never even held a gun in my life.”

“That’s why you’re perfect.”

“No!”

Posner sat there silently regarding Monique for a moment, seemingly not studying her, but pondering something else. And then shaking his head as if rejecting it.

“Obviously this reaction was not unanticipated,” he said, “and having offered you the carrot, this is where I’m supposed to brandish the stick.”

“Which is?” Monique snapped, more angrily than fearfully.

Posner shrugged, shrugging it
off
, or so it seemed. “Severe career consequences. Expulsion from Bread & Circuses on charges of defrauding the syndic.”

“Bullshit!” said Monique. “They expect me to commit murder over stuff like that!”

“Also a reaction that was not unanticipated,” Posner said. “So this is where I’m supposed to intimate that if you don’t accept the contract on Davinda, they put one on
you
.”

He held up his hand before Monique could utter a protest.

“But I’m not going to do that,” Posner said. “I’m going to do something worse.”

“
Worse?
”

Avi Posner nodded. “I’m going to appeal to your conscience,” he said. “I’m going to try to convince you that it would be immoral for you
not
to take this contract.” His eyes hardened. “And I am going to succeed.”

“I doubt it.”

“You volunteered for this mission because—”

“I didn’t volunteer to kill anyone!”

“You volunteered to do your utmost to find out the truth about Davinda, did you not? And you were willing to abandon all personal modesty and shame to do it? Why?”

“You know why! Because I couldn’t countenance your killing Davinda without finding out. . . .”

Monique caught herself short, sensing the yawning trap opening up before her.

“Because you knew
you
had a chance to find out and I didn’t. . . ?” Avi Posner said softly.

Monique just sat there numbly, seeing it coming at her with an awful inevitability now, but unable to do anything to stop it.

Posner took the box with the gun from her slack hands. “You are going to have to ask for this back, Monique,” he said. “If you don’t, it will be given to me, or to someone else, who, unlike you, has no chance to find out whether John Sri Davinda is a Siberian mole or the potential savior of an otherwise doomed biosphere. Whose contract will simply be to take no chances.”

Posner smiled ruefully at her. “So you see, Monique, you have no escape. If you refuse to take up the gun, you will be just as responsible for Davinda’s death as if you did. More so, because then it will be certain.”

“S-s-sophistry . . .” Monique stammered.

“If you refuse and Davinda is
not
a Siberian mole, someone else will certainly kill him,” Posner said coldly. “And that will be the end of a climate model that might save the biosphere of this planet from certain destruction.”

“I never said I wasn’t willing to go along with trying to find out the truth,” Monique told him. “I volunteered, remember? But—”

“But if you learn that Davinda
is
a mole and Lao
is
a plot to destroy the only organization with the climatech to save the biosphere from possible destruction, and you are too pure to do what the situation requires, then what . . . ?”

Monique just stared at him.

She knew.

But she was unable to voice it. Even to herself.

So Avi Posner did it for her. And perhaps in the brutal moral calculus he was applying, that was the closest she could expect to come to receiving mercy.

“Then to avoid committing the crime of murder, you might become guilty of a crime worse than genocide, a crime too awful to even have a name.”

He took the gun out of the box, offered it to her like a poisoned valentine.

“No good deed goes unpunished,” he said.

“You bastard . . .” Monique whispered, and took it.

“LIGHT HER UP, EDDIE!” SAID PRINCE ERIC Esterhazy as
La Reine de la Seine
warped away from the dock.

“Rock and Roll!”