The Albino Knife (15 page)

As he was many places, Wall was also here.

It was not necessary for Cteel to go anywhere, but this was all part of Wall's game; he wanted those who were in his employ to think there was a network of living people involved in all this.

The holoproj winked into life as Cteel entered, and the image floating in the stale air was of a man Cteel had never seen.

"Yes?" Cteel said.

"The Commander hasbade me to direct you to theTiboburraMedicalCenter , where you are to collect a certain doctor, one Elbu ra Jambi, and his equipment and assistants."

"All right.Anything else?"

"The medic will be conducting a certain experiment at the zoo. See to it that he has the full cooperation of the staff and any items he deems necessary."

"Understood."

Wall dissolved the image, sending it back into his vast memory stores, and watched through his photomutable gel cameras as Cteel left the building. If Jambi's experiment worked, the timetable would be advanced considerably. If not, well, Wall had nothing if not time.

In any event, there were other things that needed to be done, and Wall set about doing them.

On Mti, in the student complex, a dissident group that thoughtitself a well-kept secret suddenly found in its electronic mail an offer of aid in the circulation of its literature of revolution. The students would be cautious, but in the end, they would accept the help.

Large monies were always well protected, and even Wall's abilities could be thwarted when one began speaking of electronic sums in the billions of standards. True, he put all of his energies into it, he could eventually bypass many of these wards, but it was not necessary. Not every organization was as careful as galactic banks and stock exchanges, and into a number of these less-guarded computers Wall could reach.And did. He had enough credit of his own, of course, but causing certain key businesses to either fail or succeed through his manipulations was part of his plan.

Causing union trouble was easy enough, since unions were almost always paranoid by nature.

"Are you sure about this?" the union leader asked.

"Of course I'm sure," said the image of a man who never lived save in Wall's projection. "The bastards are trying to break you. I'll upload the evidence and you can see for yourself."

"Thank you, citizen worker."

"It is my duty, citizen worker. No more."

"How much explosive we talking about here, pard?" asked the gunrunner.

"A thousand kilos of shapegel.Military grade."

"No problem, but not cheap, you know?"

"I am a reasonable man. We can negotiate, can we not?"

"Why, sure."

It amused Wall to use the tactics of his former enemy. He wondered if perhaps Khadaji himself wouldn't find it amusing as well. Of course, humor depended on one's relative position to the effect, but still, even Khadaji would have to see some irony in Wall's moves, had he but known who was responsible. Alas, he would not know, not until it was too late to really appreciate it.Much too late.

There were others to be called.

"Nobody sees Maro," the man said to Dirisha.

They were in a small pub called the Pregnant Pelican, on a back street near the water in the bad part of Dogtown, and that was saying something. The man across from her had insisted on meeting her alone, but Dirisha knew he had accomplices scattered through the meager crowd in the dim room. Dirisha herself had triggered her dentcom the second she'd entered the place, and her friends could hear the conversation easily from their hidden positions outside the pub.

The man across from her called himself Dub, and he was an oily-looking little character with stainless and platinum teeth plates carved into needle patterns. Depilated, he wore hair and eyebrow tattoos in a formal style popular on Vul maybe ten years past.

"Nobody sees Maro, huh?He invisible?"

"If he wants, yeah.And besides, he ain't even onplanet. He's got a lot on his mind, he don't come here often."

Dirisha had picked out two of the little man's muscleboys in the crowd. They might be hard, but they weren't very good, and too obvious to anybody with half her training. She figured Dub was good for at least one other to watch his back and she wanted to spot him before she made her point. So far, the third man had been more careful than the others, and she hadn't seen him.

"Then how do I get to him?"

"Through me."

"I worry that something might get lost in translation.Nothing personal."

Dub flashed his custom teeth, looking sharklike for his effort. "I'm like a recorder, fem. It gets passed exactly like it gets said."

Dirisha shook her head. Black Sun—they would rather be called "The Organization"—had been around for a long time. The name might have changed, but the criminal underground was the same. There had always been something like it and Dirisha figured there always would be.

She finally spotted the third watcher.The bartender. A good move, that, since he would be expected to keep his gaze roving over his customers.

Were there any more? She didn't think so. There was a quick way to find out.And if she were wrong?

Well, life was risky, wasn't it?

"Look, Dub, supposing I impress him somehow. Think that'll get me in for a face-to-face?"

The little man shrugged. "I doubt it. Maro, he don't impress real easy."

Dirisha smiled. "Well, suppose we try?"

She shot the first two while she was still seated, thewhump !of the spetsdods loud in the enclosed space.

Dub's eyes widened and his mouth gaped as Dirisha had to stand to get a clear shot at the tender, who'd moved to the end of the bar to serve another patron. She'd made it look as easy as she could, offhand; she hadn't even looked away from Dub for the first two, using her peripheral vision to find them.

As soon as the first shots went off, people started dropping to the floor, hunting for cover. A handful of weapons came out, but nobody still awake need worry about Dirisha and apparently nobody wanted to risk pointing a gun in her direction.

She settled back into the chair and waved one hand lazily at Dub. "Think that'll do it?"

"Y-you're crazy!" He kept his hands on the table, fingers spread wide.A wise move.

"Probably.But I've got some serious business to discuss and I don't want to filter it through a ferret like you. I expect Maro can find me."

"You are in deep shit, fem!"

"Not from you, friend.And I figure Maro is too smart to flatten me without knowing who I am and what I want."

Dirisha stood and walked away. She allowed herself toswagger a little as she did. What the hell.

Maro was pushing sixty, a lot of natural gray in his black hair, but he had a lean, hard look. He wore a plain silk jumpsuit, dark blue, and his hands were laced together on the otherwise empty desk as Dirisha walked into the office. He sat straight in the chair. His face was neutral, no anger or fear in it; he was simply watching her.

They were on the second floor of a business building, running to bland earth-toned carpet and walls, the kind of place that could have been the headquarters of almost any kind of operation. Dull, quiet, safe—if you bought the picture.

The guards had scanned and hand-searchedher carefully, though they'd apparently missed the dentcom; her spetsdods were gone, and she hadn't tried to smuggle any obvious weapons into the meeting. She was not, however, unarmed.

Maro leaned back in his chair and waved at the seat facing his desk. One desk, two chairs; those were the room's only furnishings. There were no tapes, no paintings on the wall, nothing else.

Dirisha sat. She also leaned back and propped her left ankle on her right knee, her hands resting on her shin and boot.

"Why shouldn't I have you killed?" he said. His voice was calm, full of power, confident. "If I let somebody thump my people, it's bad for business."

"Nobody got hurt," she said. "And I don't think you want a war."

He smiled. "You think I'm afraid of your three friends listening in on your dentcom?"

Dirisha smiled. He'd prepared for this meeting with at least a little investigation. Good.

"No, I don't think you would be, though it would be a mistake to discount them."

"I can field an army against your three matadors," he said.

"We had a guy take on an army once; he did okay. And how many matadors do you think there are?

You might be good enough to beat them all, though I doubt it, but a war would surely be bad for business."

"Point taken.What is it you want?"

"There's somebody giving us a hard time. We want to know if he's connected to your organization. If he is, we want to know why he's on us. If not, we'd like to ask you to help us find him."

"Let's assume for a minute that I don't know who planted the bombs at the Dogtown warehouse," he said.

Dirisha scored another point in Maro's favor.

"Why should I help you find him?"

"He's going to be bad for your business as well as ours. A lot of people are looking for this guy. A lot of rocks are going to be turned over. Some of your operations are under some of those rocks. No offense meant."

"No offense taken. And if I help you find this person, the heat gets turned down."

"No lower than it was before, but yeah."

He raised one hand and touched his chin lightly.

"I do biz," he said, "and what you have said makes sense. And I like your nerve. My people will be in touch."

Dirisha nodded. "Nice talking to you."

"You took a big risk coming here," he said.

"Not really."

"The room is wired for zap," he said."Every part of it, including where I sit. The field is variable, state-of-the-art—it can be set to tickle me while at the same time it will fry whoever is across the desk.

All I have to do is say the word. You're unarmed. No matter how fast you are, you'd never be able to get to me before you died."

Dirisha pulled at her boot heel, peeling from it a thin sheet of material that matched the color of the spun dotic. She raised it slowly so Maro could see it.

He blinked and sucked in a short, sharp breath. He didn't know what it was exactly but she could see that he knew what it was in general.

"Sonderstat," she said, laying the dark square onto the desk. "You can pound it, burn it, or eat it and it won't do anything other than flatten, smoke or give you indigestion. But if you run an electric charge through it or put it into a working zap field it will go boom. Even a hand wand might set it off. Piece that size would take out this room, rooms on both sides and maybe the one above and below it."

"Nice," he said. "My guards will be sorry they missed it."

"What you get when you hire second best."

"We'll be in touch," he said.

Dirisha stood. She was almost at the door when he said, "What about the other boot heel?More explosive?"

"Inactive biocell battery," she said."Doesn't show on a scanner. Good for one shot of juice if you rap it twice."

"Of course.A pleasure to meet you, Fem Zuri.You ever need a job, look me up."

"Thanks."

Since Massey had beenSoldatutmarkt , one of the elite troops run by the Confed, Khadaji thought that was a good place to start. The infamous spy-soldier group had been disbanded, those who weren't killed during the revolution, but some of the leaders survived. Khadaji had the names, and several of the highest-ranking survivors still lived on Earth. Perhaps he should pay them a visit.

This was more, than just a kidnapping and attempted killings on the matadors, he felt. And whatever was going on was a lot more complex than first he'd imagined.

Best hefind out what. Soon.

Chapter Thirteen

"SO WHAT DO we do now?" Sleel said. "Sit and wait?"

He and Geneva and Dirisha were sitting or standing near the mirrored wall of the gym, watching Bork do squats. The big man was naked, save for a sweatband, groin strap and half-fingered lifting gloves; the flexsteel bar across his shoulders was loaded with plates. Dirisha figured the weight must be about three hundred and fifty kilos, counting the bar. There was a rack behind him so that if he leaned back it would catch the bar, but that was the only safety.

Bork squatted, and muscles bulged and veins stood out all over him as he went down. He came up fast enough so that the flexsteel bar bent, and the weights bobbed up and down on the ends when he stopped at the top.

Geneva said, "You could use him to teach anatomy. He looks as if he's carved out of something; no fat at all."

"I could probably manage that much weight," Sleel said.

Dirisha and Geneva smiled briefly at each other.

Bork did another rep, his fifth.

"To answer your question, no, we don't wait," Dirisha said. "Maro and Black Sun may or may not be able to find out anything. While they are looking, we keep our own motors running."

"To where?"Sleel said.

"Earth."

Both Sleel and Geneva turned from watching Bork complete his seventh squat to stare at Dirisha. Sleel said, "Earth? But you said that's where Emile was going."

"He can't cover the whole planet by himself," Dirisha said. "He's running down oldSoldatutmarkt leaders.

We have another reason to go there."

"Yeah?What?"

"We need to see a man about a computer."

"What are you talking about?" Geneva said.

"Ever hear of Jersey Reason?"

Geneva and Sleel both looked blank. Bork arrived at that moment, wiping the sweat from his face with a towel. "Jersey Reason the thief?" he said.

"Ex-thief," Dirisha said. "He's retired these days. But he kind of keeps a hand in.An electronic hand."

"Whatare you talking about?" Geneva said again.

Dirisha smiled.

Many of the upranks of theSoldatutmarkt had been imprisoned after the Republic took power, and rightfully so. Some managed to disappear, to take new identities and new faces, and those who chose quiet and unassuming lives mostly got away with it. While theSoldatutmarkt had been full of cruel men and women, it had never become quite the arm of slaughter as had some of the more infamous elite armies of history. Some of the troops had been no more than good soldiers doing what they thought was their duty. Some of these men and women were known, though the Republic had not chosen to unmask and punish them. The Republic had its reasons for so doing.