Rat Runners (29 page)

“I don’t know anyone named Manikin,” she replied automatically.

“You know her as George, but that is just her play-acting,” he grunted, crouching down so that he could look into her eyes. “She was pretending to be your friend, fooling you to get what we are after. I need to know if she and her friends got this thing, the brundleseed. You can tell me. They will not harm you. They will be dead soon, so there is no need to be afraid of them.”

No, she should be afraid of him instead. But he didn’t have to say that.

“How could I know if they have it?” she asked. “I don’t even know who they are.”

“We cannot know this for sure,” he replied, shrugging. “You must convince me. If you do not, I must convince myself. Believe me when I say that you do not want that.”

Nimmo heard the ringing tone and felt a tightness in his throat. This was it. Nearly four hours had passed since Manikin had been abducted. It had taken nearly half that time for FX to locate Paul Cronenberg’s phone number. The remaining two hours had been spent waiting for him to switch on his phone. A few seconds after it started ringing, he answered.

“Cronenberg, you don’t need to know who I am, but I have what you’re looking for, so listen up. I’ve got the cards and one of the brundleseeds too—one that works.”

There was a pause, no doubt so that the man could wave one or both of his mates over to listen in.

“So why are you callin’?” he asked in his Northern Irish accent.

“Because Move-Easy has a friend of ours, and he’s liable to kill her if we don’t get her away from him. We need your help to do that.”

“Is that right? And whut are yeh offerin’?”

“You can have the lot, pretty much. We just want to take a couple of the cards for traveling money, and we want out. We’ll leave London—the whole bloody country if we have to. We’re out of our depth and we know it. We just want out. But we’re not leaving without our friend.”

“And whut? You want us to take dine Move-Easy for you? Yer jokin’, right?”

“No. We have a way to get in, and get her out. What we need is for a couple of fake coppers to show up at just the right time … just to distract
your
competitors for a few minutes, so we can get clear. Do that and you can have the cards and the brundleseed.”

“How do we know you even have the seed?”

“You don’t. You’ll just have to take the chance.”

There was another pause—a longer one this time. Then:

“All right, let’s hear it. Where and when?”

When Nimmo finished his call, he put the phone’s handset down in its cradle and looked at Tubby Reach, who was regarding him with amusement.

“Well played,” Reach chuckled, his belly starting a wave of shakes that rose all the way to his soft jowls. “My people are almost done with Scope and FX. You ready for your turn?”

“No,” Nimmo replied in a tense voice. “To be honest, I’m still not sure I want your bloody surgeons putting me under.”

“Hey, it was
your
idea. Don’t you got
no
faith? I ain’t tried to take one of these seeds off you, ’ave I? And you know I could if I wanted—but your old man saved my life once, so you get special dispensation. Besides, I like what you got goin’ here. You got trust issues, boy. Where’s the love? You’ve known me your whole life.”

“That’s why I’ve got trust issues.”

“Ooh, that stings! OK, enough stalling. I’m doin’ this on the house ’cos you’re takin’ on my biggest competitor and I’m happy to sponsor the match. Now, what is it the Yanks say? ‘Get your game face on,’ boy. You gotta get tooled up.”

Nimmo nodded and took a deep breath.

“How do you rate our chances, Tubby?”

“You must be goin’ soft, Nimmo, to be askin’ me questions like that. But since you ask, I’d say it’ll be like throwin’ three hamsters into a pit of hungry dogs. Still … should be good for a laugh, eh?”

WALKING ALONE INTO Ratched Hospital, Scope made her way down into the maze of utility tunnels in the basement level, where she was intercepted by one of the many sentries who wandered around in the guise of porters, security guards or cleaners.

She was handed a pair of blacked-out contact lenses before being led inside, as if she was a stranger to the Void. Putting the first one into her left eye, she made to put the second one in and dropped it, cursing, and looking around the floor for it.

“Ah, sod it,” she grumbled. “I’m not using it if it’s dirty anyway.”

The troll frowned at her and went to take another set from his pocket, but she gave him a pained look and gestured to her right eye.

“Look, I’m
blind
in this one, remember? Easy’s made his point—I’m on probation, OK? Come on, let’s go.”

With her left eye covered, she shouldn’t have been able to see a thing, so she let herself be led as if she was blindfolded. As they walked, she tested the extraordinary zoom lenses of the camera that had grown inside her right eye socket. With perfect clarity, she watched, and recorded, the troll as he tapped in the four-digit access code that unlocked the door to the Void. The numbers 9491. But there was so much more that she could make out in her surroundings. She could tell where she was by the smells around her. She could identify the functions of the rooms they passed, even the kinds of cleaning fluids that had been used to clean them, right down to their chemical make-up, along with anything else she breathed in through her nose.

As she walked, a read-out appeared in the vision of her right eye, detailing a complete breakdown of her guide’s breath and body odor, his aftershave, deodorant and hair gel. The chemical analyzer that had formed in the roof of her mouth could give her a comprehensive analysis of any concentration of molecules it found in the air. This new digital ‘sense of smell’ made her a human bloodhound—or at least it would, when she learned to use it properly.

All the corridors into the Void linked up and channeled you through the security checkpoint. She was stopped there, as her body was being scanned, x-rayed. They would be searching for any hidden means of recording information of any kind, any way of transmitting signals. This was where she felt her first real cold dart of fear. If her new implants were going to be spotted, it would be here and now. It took every bit of self-control she had not to tremble as they walked her through the scanners.

But then she was ushered on, down the echoing corridor. The pungent aroma of cigar smoke was thick in the air of Move-Easy’s audience chamber. Waiting until she was instructed to do so, she took out the single lens and handed it to the troll, who then left the room. Sitting on one of the couches in the sunken area of that 1970s throwback of a room was the orange-skinned villain himself. He stared up at her with those icy, empty eyes of his, through a thin cloud of smoke.

“My Little Brain,” he said in the tone of a fond but disappointed father, taking the cigar from his lips. “I’ve been worried about’cha. I fink you been led astray, love. Those vermin’ve bin fillin’ your head with strange ideas.”

“What do you mean?” She frowned, acting a little hurt. “I was just doing the job you sent me out to do. When I heard the Turk had grabbed Veronica, I figured you didn’t need me on it any more, so I came back. And here I am. What did I do wrong?”

Move-Easy’s face was impossible to read. He took another puff of his cigar and gazed at her some more.

“What did you do wrong?” he repeated, as if pondering the question. “What did you do wrong? It’s a matter of principle, darlin’. A breach of trust. These vermin ’ave turned out to be wrong ’uns and no mistake, and it seemed to the boys who was watchin’ that you fit right in. I wonder if you’ve forgotten where your loyalties lie. I don’t feel like I can trust you no more.”

“Funny, that’s what
they
said about me too. Which is ironic, considering.”

“Considering what, darlin’?”

“Considering it was
Nimmo
who reesed them.”

Move-Easy sat up a bit straighter, laying his cigar in the ashtray. He clasped his hands together and leaned forward.

“How so?” he rumbled.

Scope kept her eyes level, not quite meeting his, but not avoiding his stare either. She had lied to Move-Easy before, but never at the risk of her life. The fear was almost enough to dissuade her from what she had to do next. But then she lifted her head slightly, and met his eyes. As she did so, the powerful zoom lens on her eye-mounted camera focused tightly on his right iris and took a photo. She would need that soon.

“He had the box all the time, but he’d kept it hidden. He was Chuck Farley. But we only found out afterwards that he had the brundleseed too. That implant—the one you’re looking for. The one
everybody
seems to be looking for. He’s done a runner with it. And when he did, Manikin and FX told me to sod off. They didn’t trust me. So
I’m
getting it from all sides. And Nimmo’s got the cards, and the implant.”

Easy picked up his cigar again, but didn’t take a drag.

“This implant—this … brundleseed—you know what it does?”

She nodded.

“Reckon you could figure out how it worked?”

“If I had an unused one—or one that was still working in someone’s body. But they’d have to be
alive
for me to be able to use it.”

“And Nimmo has one?”

“Yes.”

Easy sat back and took a long, long drag before blowing out a lungful of smoke.

“You’re back ’ome now, luv, but you’re on detention, you ’ear me? You’re stayin’ in for the next few days. No access codes for the doors, no goin’ outside and no surfin’ the bloody web or phone calls to the outside, you got me?”

Scope nodded.

“Good. It’ll be safer for you that way. Things is about to get violent, darlin’. Don’t want you gettin’ caught in the crossfire, now, do we?”

As soon as she was dismissed, she hurried to her lab. She had almost made it to the door when Tanker came out of his computer room. Dressed in his usual cargo pants, hoodie and a red baseball cap, he looked delighted to see her. Her heart sank—he was the last person she wanted to run into.

“Scope, hey! Jesus, long time no see. How was life out in the sun?”

“Blinding,” she replied. “Sorry, Tank, I’ve got a job to do for Easy…”

“What, you can’t take a few seconds to say hello? Come on, tell me what the hell’s been goin’ on? I know about the brundleseed, Scope. Easy told me, but nobody’s fillin’ me in on what’s happenin’. This is huge …
massive
! It’s so bloody unfair I’m being left out of it! Come on, girl—let me in on it!”

“Look … later, OK?” She waved him away. “I promise, I’ll tell you all about it later.”

“I heard Easy’s got Brundle’s daughter in the cells—is that true? Tell me that much at least.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Scope told him, nodding. “He’s got his daughter.”

“Maybe I should talk to
her
then,” Tanker sniffed.

“Maybe you should keep out of it, Tank,” she replied. “Easy’s letting the dogs loose on this job. I’d keep my head down if I was you.”

Stepping into her lab, she closed the door behind her and took out her mobile. There was no phone signal, of course—communications with the outside world were tightly controlled by Tanker and Move-Easy’s other tech people. But the wireless connection that could link her phone to her computer was switched on. She left it that way, and waited, her heart pounding.

FX APPROACHED MOVE-Easy’s Void just as Scope had done, and was met in the utility tunnels by one of the trolls. He told the man with the cruel eyes, the bad teeth and the tattooed hands that he needed to see Easy—that he had something the boss wanted.

The contacts blocked his vision very effectively, but like Scope, FX had grown new senses. Inside his skull, one brundleseed had grown into a processor that could read anything with wireless connectivity. With a thought, he could access any RFID around him, which supplied him with masses of information on the objects and equipment in his environment, including the villain’s clothes, half the contents of his pockets, and the signs at each junction of the corridor. Right now, he was in corridor AI, block 13.