Off the Edge (The Associates) (12 page)

There were two ways to LL2: the elevator—if you had a key, which she did, or the liquor delivery hatch. You needed a key for the liquor hatch, too; they kept it behind the desk. She knew because she’d gone down there last year, helping one of the barbacks bring up wine when the dumbwaiter was broken. That would be the sneaky way to go.

“Are they with him? Is he alone?”

Sujet furrowed his brow, lips drawn to the side, his look concerned. “You shouldn’t cross this line, Laney. Not even you.”

She wasn’t worried. She had nothing to fear from the Shinsurins except for their rabid overprotectiveness.

“Are they down there with him?”

Sujet glanced at the ceiling.

“They’re up top?”

“New convention arrivals. Niwat, Dok, and Jao are entertaining on the 17th floor.”

Laney went behind the desk and grabbed a cup of coffee, and when the girls weren’t looking she nicked the key to the hatch.

New York

Dax was alone in the back of the limo when the alert on his mobile came through. Macmillan’s earpiece had been destroyed. Dax swore under his breath.

To the naked eye, an Association earpiece looked like a bit of wadded-up paper, like a gum wrapper. Associates typically carried them in their pockets until they wanted to communicate with Dax. It was a good system; bottom-of-the-pocket garbage was never seized in a search.

From what he could tell from the damage readout, this one had been crushed.

It happened. An earpiece could be lost in a fight and stepped on. But what Macmillan was doing shouldn’t have him fighting. Or getting killed.

Nearly four in the morning in Bangkok. But Rio would still be up. He called the assassin and sent him back to the Hotel Des Roses to poke around.

The limo pulled up at a curb in front of a red awning. Dax scooted over to let Zelda in.

She wore thick round glasses and a mod scarf over her short brown hair. She’d always been a colorful dresser, even at the agency.

“Daniel Xavier,” she said as she shut the door. She’d always liked Dax’s colorful middle name, given to him by his very Greek parents in a little row house in Pittsburgh some 38 years back. Daniel Xavier Heraclides.

“Macmillan has gone dark,” Dax said as the driver pulled away.

“God help us.” Zelda turned her face to look out the window. The buildings flashed by, faster and faster. “When?”

“It could be nothing,” he said. He wished he knew who the Russians had hired to go after Macmillan.

“He shouldn’t even be out there,” Zelda said. “He needs rest.”

“I know,” Dax said.

Macmillan had been one of their best operatives for years, but Zelda was right—they’d been running him hard. The man needed rest. Except nobody else could hunt Jazzman the way cool, unflappable, high-performance Macmillan could. He was also wildly motivated—the TZ would surely remind him of the Mexican train bomb. In some ways, Macmillan had been living on that train for the past decade, helpless to rescue his people, trying over and over. Like a desperate player in a never-ending nightmare.

No, he’d never gotten off that train. It’s what made him such a fine Associate.

Philosophers said that the individual shouldn’t be sacrificed on behalf of the many. Dax agreed with that, but he sacrificed good people anyway. He and Zelda did it all the time. How could they help it? They knew things nobody else did, thanks to Dax’s ability to see cause and effect.

One ill-advised word in a Prime Minister’s speech could branch into two reactions that would branch into four reactions and then sixteen, and not all of them significant, but Dax could see the one branch that would lead to catastrophe.

There was no voodoo to what he did; it was logic. Information. Knowledge. These things were available to everybody. Why couldn’t everybody see what he saw?

Dax’s mind was dark with webs of cause and effect.

Zelda licked her thumb and swiped it across Dax’s jaw. “You could at least wipe the lipstick off before we meet the Colonel.”

“What’s he going to do? Fire us?”

“Decorum is important, even when you’re the smartest man in the room.” She licked her thumb again and rubbed his jaw. “My poor Greek boy.” She frowned. “Is that a tooth mark?”

He thought back. The one in his office just now hadn’t been a biter, but there was the stranger at the restaurant, one table over. They’d ended up in the bathroom. She’d ripped him up a bit. “Probably.”

“You can’t use sex as medication, Dax.”

“Beg to differ.” He needed something to ratchet him down, and sufficient quantities of drugs and alcohol only wrecked him.

Zelda rooted around in her purse and pulled out a makeup bag.

“I’m not wearing makeup.”

“Then don’t let women bite your face. Now sit still.” She dabbed a bit on. “Were things up today?”

“By 34%,” he said. “I’m going to have to create some losses.” Dax ran the legendary Heraclides Fund, a large, successful hedge fund that made investors very wealthy. He’d gotten bored with making money early on; the Heraclides Fund was only a cover job now. These days, Dax put his attention on keeping the balance of power intact. Keeping World War Three from happening. And stopping the most despicable crimes.

He’d met Zelda over a decade ago, back when they were both in their twenties. He used to call the CIA whenever he saw dangerous cascades beginning, and she got assigned to be his handler. Unfortunately, his predictions had been too accurate—Zelda’s bosses had started to suspect him of involvement in the disasters he foresaw.

Zelda knew differently. She’d begun to shield him, and to work on her own to prevent catastrophes. Years as an operative in the field had given her tremendous resources.

Forming the Association had been Zelda’s idea.

Dax had the foresight and people skills; she ran the execution and the strategy. She stayed the silent partner. Safer for both of them.

It was a dark path they walked. They were hardly better than vigilantes, no matter how noble their goals might be.

“Keep it quiet about Macmillan,” she said. “We don’t need the Colonel panicking.”

The CIA had sent the Colonel to pressure them about the TZ, to stress its importance, something Dax didn’t need to hear. A full 87% of the scenarios involving the TZ getting sold ended in biological and nuclear exchanges.

“Rio will find him,” Dax said. “Rio is very attached to Macmillan.”

“We need Macmillan out of the equation,” she said. “As soon as he identifies Jazzman, he’s out. He’s coming apart.”

Dax said nothing. It was true, of course. The only surprise was that it hadn’t happened before.

Macmillan had first come to their attention via rumors inside the terrorist Mero’s organization—a gringo prisoner who claimed to have tracked Mero with nothing but a voice recording.

It had piqued their interest, to say the least.

Zelda herself had gone into the field to check out the story. She learned about the train bombing, and soon had a name: Peter Macmillan Maxwell, Ph.D. Records showed him losing his family and fiancée in the event. Maxwell had listed a Mexican national as his contact on the medical forms: Alfredo Domingo.

Professor Alfredo Domingo was a Caribbean creole specialist and a friend of Maxwell’s; Domingo’s seaside villa had been the Maxwells’ destination. From Domingo, Zelda learned that Maxwell had new theories on the way slang spread, and apparently he was doing some sort of work on psychological and aspirational aspects of pronunciation. Domingo felt certain that Maxwell could use what he knew to track a man.

Dax and Zelda had been thrilled. It had taken them a full year to locate the elusive Mero—and they had resources. Networks.

This linguist had nothing but a recording.

They sent Rio in to kill Mero and extract the man. By the time Rio had reached Mero’s camp, Peter Macmillan Maxwell was a walking, talking death wish who could see nothing but vengeance. The man had lost everybody, after all. He’d spent a night helping other survivors pull the dead and dying from wreckage in the dark, bug-infested jungle, and then survived weeks of beatings from Mero’s men. In hindsight, they really should’ve patched him up a bit, psychologically speaking.

Instead, Dax had him thrown into the harshest wilderness survival training possible. Macmillan had turned out to be tenacious as well as brilliant, and quite a talented fighter—one of those men who was good at everything. Dax sometimes suspected Macmillan might have eventually managed to kill Mero on his own.

At any rate, they’d needed Macmillan in the field, ASAP, so they’d wound him up and set him off as a mere shell, disconnected from everything that made a man human.

Dax and Zelda had no use for happy, well-balanced Associates—they tended not to deliver. Darkness was predictable; happiness was not. Happy people had the luxury of simply being. And they had more to lose.

Dax and Zelda worked a delicate dance of keeping the Associates from self-destructing while engaging their demons.

Dax took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.

“Your head?” Zelda asked.

“I’m fine.” He replaced his glasses.

“Okay,” she said quietly.

“There’s a special place in hell for us,” he said.

She straightened his tie as they pulled up to the restaurant. “I’ll bring the flame-proof croquet set.”

Bangkok

A Dr. Pepper craving—that was Laney’s excuse for her four a.m. stroll. The front desk girls believed her. Sujet didn’t, but he’d keep quiet.

Tamroung Road was busy even at four in the morning. Mostly that was because of all the hotels in the neighborhood, but then, Bangkok tended to be restless and vibrant at all hours. It was a nice night, with a slight breeze cutting the oppressive humidity.

She strolled nonchalantly around the corner. The street that ran up the side of Hotel Des Roses had just two lanes, and it was darker and gloomier than grand Tamroung Road. Which suited her just fine. She stopped at a square manhole in the sidewalk—the liquor delivery hatch, the secret way to get into the basement. She’d walked over it many times and never thought about what was beneath until the night of the dumbwaiter crisis.

Voices from the other direction. She slunk into the shadows as a couple stumbled up the street, clasping the key, feeling like a spy, shocked at herself for even going this far.

Oh, the Shinsurins would so unhappy if they knew. Niwat would think she didn’t trust them to handle this. Rajini would feel betrayed. Laney could hear her:
why didn’t you wake me up if you were so concerned?

But Laney was tired of leaving her fate to others.

When the coast was clear she crouched at the hatch. There was supposed to be a locked door below it, and two people were supposed to open the doors simultaneously from either side, like an armored car or something, but Pramod the busboy had told her that it was a big hassle for the receiving guys, so they often left the inner door open. She hoped it was open now.

She unlocked the outer door and slowly pulled it up. She tried the inner door. Sure enough, it fell open—with a loud bang that nearly stopped her heart.

She froze, listening for sounds.

Nothing.

She climbed partway down the metal ladder, easing the outer door down over her head until it snicked closed. Down the rest of the way she went, into a concrete corridor lit by garish fluorescent lights. This would be lower level one, aka LL1. She snuck past the liquor storage area and kept on, passing some sort of mechanical room, and then a door with warning signs about chlorine. The massive hotel pool would be nearby. She found another stairwell; this would lead to LL2—the basement security area that housed the shooting range.

And the detention area.

She headed downward into the sticky, stuffy depths, every nerve on high alert. The stairwell terminated at another locked door; her shooting range key worked, as she suspected it might. She snuck in and closed the heavy metal door, leaning against it, sweating. Shaky.

Past the point of no return. If Niwat caught her here, she’d be turned out for sure. Well, hell, she might have to leave anyhow. She needed to know firsthand what she was dealing with.

She proceeded down the dark hall toward a splotch of light cast through an open door. She froze when she heard the faint strains of voices. Arguing. A woman’s voice. No—a TV. A
Wanida
rerun, it sounded like.

She crept in further, then knelt and peeked into the room. TVs lined the walls, but two guards were fixated on the TV in the corner. The Thai soap opera was just starting.

She crawled past and tiptoed on down the hall. She crept around the corner and down another hall to the end. After a few more turns and one dead end, she found an unmarked door with a dirty window in it. The detention area.

She peeked in.

The room was dim, lit only by a buzzing fluorescent bulb in the corner, but she could just make out what looked like a jail in there—bars marking off a square cage in the corner. Too dark to see if anyone was in there.

Was she really doing this?

Hell, yeah.

The door creaked when she entered. She froze like a rabbit, listening.

Nothing. She eased the door closed and just stood there, squinting into the gloom of the cage. Her breath caught when she finally made him out, sprawled in the shadows with his back to her, bright hair faintly illuminated by the anemic light.

Not moving.

Her pulse raced. The Shinsurins wouldn’t kill a man just to protect her.
They wouldn’t.

She moved closer, straining to see if his chest was rising and falling. They’d clothed him in pants and a T-shirt that appeared to be soaked with sweat. Surely that was a sign of life.

“Come back for more target practice?”

She jumped at the voice.

“Because you could certainly use it,” he added.

“Lord, I thought…” She closed her eyes in brief thanks that he was alive.

“A regular Annie Oakley.” Still he just lay there, like a wounded beast.

“I’m not in the mood for jokes. I want to talk about Rolly.”