The Mandel Files (44 page)

The second floor was a living room, carpeted in a thick steel-blue soft pile. Its furniture was modern, matching timber-framed leather chairs and settee, a low ceramic coffee-table, and rose-teak executive desk with a recessed Olivetti terminal.

Cupboards and a glass-fronted drinks cabinet were fixed to the wall, purpose built, they fitted the shallow incline perfectly. Light shone through a single frosted glass window half-way up the wall. The brickwork had been left uncovered, scrubbed clean.

The dumpy woman who’d accompanied Greg on the hover-craft was waiting at the top of the stairs. Which was impossible, because she was following him up. Had to be twins.

But that revelation was blown straight out of his mind by the next person he saw. Kendric was talking earnestly to Leopold Armstrong. And Greg knew he’d finally met the person who’d organized the blitz on Philip Evans’s core.

England’s ex-president was fifty-seven, but still trim and fit; his meaty face had a few more lines than Greg remembered, his mop of neatly cut silver hair was combed back tidily. He wore a simple Shetland cardigan over an open-neck cotton shirt. So ordinary. Almost homely.

Greg had thought he was beyond any further surprises, but he just stood and gawked until Gabriel bumped into his back, and her curse was sliced off in mid-flow as she caught sight of Armstrong.

He looked both of them over, taking his time. The tip of his tongue moistened his lips. Greg resisted the ridiculous urge to straighten his rumpled dinner jacket.

Mark clattered up the stairs behind them, and hustled them forward. The little living room was beginning to get crowded. Hermione had stretched out in one of the two leather chairs, feigning lethargy. In addition to the man who’d met them outside there was another obvious hardliner hovering around Armstrong, just waiting for Greg to try something.

“Sit him down, Neville,” he said. “Before he falls.”

The man who’d met them outside the tower stabbed his forefinger at the settee, and Greg collapsed into it gratefully. Gabriel joined him after a second thrust.

His name had given Greg the key, placing the face; astonishing the trivia a mind can hold. Neville Turner: junior Home Office minister in the PSP government, second-in-command of the People’s Constables, one of the many shadow figures orbiting Armstrong’s periphery.

Armstrong now held up Greg’s Trinities card, a prosecuting counsel with a bloodstained, fingerprinted knife.

“You’re a Mindstar veteran,” he said. “What on Earth are you doing consorting with scum like this?”

He was setting the tone, speaking normally, no threats, no gloating dominance charades. The ex-president was concerned only with facts, reality; he didn’t possess time to waste on life’s inessentials.

“Only a total paranoid would be frightened of ghosts,” Greg said.

The Trinities card was pocketed. “You mean Philip Evans?” Armstrong asked. “I admit the potential of that fancy NN core of his alarms me. He was remarkable when he only had a human brain. A giga-conductor with a transcendent Evans masterminding its marketing strategy would be a definite setback for me. He’s so depressingly efficient at that sort of thing. A clever man. Pity we have opposing political viewpoints. But that’s life.

“However, the conflict between Evans and me goes much deeper than that, as I’m sure you’re aware.”

Greg stared at him dumbly.

“Good Lord, he never told you, did he? Think on it, Mr Mandel. You’ve seen Event Horizon’s Prowlers at work, I believe?”

“Yes,” No ultra-hush there, he wasn’t giving anything away.

“Military hardware, Mr Mandel. Good quality American military hardware, as provided by that vicious profiteering little arms merchant, Horace Jepson.”

Greg started. And Leopold Armstrong caught it. “Didn’t you know? Oh yes, Mr Mandel, Jepson is a US government convenience. He sells to their allies, discreetly, mark you, and in return their IRS overlooks Globecast’s somewhat irregular tax returns,” He shook his head. “I don’t know what all the fuss about you is. You’re not half as good as everyone says. But then Mindstar never did fulfil its promise, did it?”

“You were worried enough, I remember,” Greg said. “You and your People’s Constables. Never had much joy catching us, though, did you?”

Armstrong pursed his lips. “Quite. Well, now you have the facts, make the connection.”

Greg read the anger in his face, sharp-focused determination, riding him hard. Armstrong was vengeance seeking, said his native intuition, a strong clear message. “My God,” he said wonderingly. “Philip Evans blew up Downing Street.”

Gabriel threw Greg a quick startled glance, then twisted sharply to look up at Armstrong.

“Very good, Mr Mandel,” said Leopold Armstrong. “The electron-compression warhead was brought into the country by one of his Prowlers, smuggled into Downing Street by his security division’s hardliners. Kendric here tells me Evans laughed when the warhead exploded, thinks of himself as a more successful version of Guy Fawkes, no doubt, très romantique. He obliterated me once, Mr Mandel; just believing I was dead was enough for the country to march in rebellion against the PSP. But now, now that bastard has exploited his money to do it to me again, to do it to all of us. Immortality, Mr Mandel. He has bought himself immortality, with his imperialist power, his obscene personal wealth. Another twenty years I’m good for, and a lot can be done in that time. But what is a pitiful twenty years to Evans now? He has eternity. He will see me dead again, for real this time. And do you know what the real ball-kicker of it is? He won’t even care; my actual death will be of supreme indifference to him, Because to him, secure in his present incarnation, we are all less than nothing. That, Mr Mandel, cannot be allowed to pass unchallenged. That is why I risked blowing my cover, all my preparations. Because I am not going to allow him to escape death. Death is universal, making us all equal in the end.”

“How about you, di Girolamo?” Greg asked. “You believe all this crap? You’ve got enough obscene personal wealth to translocate your memories like Philip Evans. You going to die when you don’t have to?”

Armstrong put on a pained expression. “Please, Mr Mandel. Kendric and I are not going to be driven apart by your desperation. Our mutual interests are too strong.”

“I can’t figure you,” Greg said to Kendric. “You knew about the giga-conductor, yet you let Julia buy your family house out of the Event Horizon backing consortium. Why? You’ve kissed goodbye to a fortune.”

“A deal,” Kendric said thinly. “In return for informing the President of Philip Evans’s NN core I will be given Event Horizon on a plate; not some derisory percentage, all of it.”

“After it’s been nationalized,” Armstrong interjected smoothly. “Then naturally an international financier of Kendric’s stature would be a perfect choice as chairman. Regretfully, his appointment would have been difficult to justify if Evans junior had exposed his earlier impropriety, which is why he agreed to sever their financial link. But she won’t be in a position to issue such paranoiac ultimatums for much longer, after all, we can hardly allow a teenage girl to run a company so important to the country’s economic prosperity, now can we?”

“Julia Evans will be stripped of her wealth and power,” Kendric said. He looked straight at Greg, smiling mechanically, a slim line of flawless white teeth showing. “You understand, don’t you, Mr Mandel? You know how it is between Julia and me. There was a time when it was a fun game, she was an excellent player. But unfortunately she is too young, she does not fully comprehend the rules of this world. If I do not take Event Horizon from her, she will use it to harm me, my family house. What would you do in my place?”

“She understands the rules perfectly,” Greg retorted. “You just don’t like losing. Seventeen years old, and she can outsmart you from dawn till dusk. You shouldn’t be worried, Kendric, you should be terrified. But then you are, aren’t you,”

Kendric’s lips closed. “It is not I who will feel terror.”

“No?” Greg asked scornfully. “You even misjudged your new partner here. Armstrong isn’t interested in vengeance, he’s like you, he’s after the giga-conductor. You’re just his front man, a cheap puppet.”

“You do have tenacity, don’t you, Mr Mandel?” Armstrong said. “Perhaps that’s why Event Horizon hired you. But you’re wrong. The money accrued from giga-conductor licence production will be split between us. A valuable source of income to further my aspirations.”

“Aspirations,” said Gabriel. “What aspirations?”

“Ah yes, Miss Thompson, isn’t it?” He affected to notice her for the first time. “My return to mainstream politics.”

“You can’t be serious. You’ll never resurrect the PSP.”

“Not the old Party, no. It’s a fool who doesn’t learn from his mistakes. My new organization will be structured along different lines.”

“Tentimes,” Greg said. “You’ve been paying for Tentimes and the rest of Charles Ellis’s hotrod team to screw up all those companies.”

“Indeed, and my people have been quick to point out the inevitable failings of the free-market system. There is a large groundswell of resentment building against the New Conservatives and their mismanagement of the economy. One I intend to encourage.

“Bollocks,” Gabriel snorted. “No matter how bad things get, nobody’s going to vote for hard-left policies again. You don’t understand just how much people hated everything you stand for.”

“Miss Thompson, if you could still see into the future you’d know that I’m not aiming for the grand slam this time. You can only ever do that once. I was very unlucky in that events beyond my control conspired to put an end to PSP rule. The energy crisis, the Warming, the Credit Crash. No government could withstand that combination. Take a look around at other countries. How many of the leaders of ten years ago remain in power today? We were the ones who were blamed. People don’t like to blame their own greed and exorbitant life styles. They want someone to hold responsible. And government gets it in the neck every time, from outbreaks of food poisoning to hurricanes. Blame the government.”

“From protesters being whipped to death in the street to seed potatoes being dished up on the tables of Party members,” Greg said.

“Those kind of incidents were inevitable to start with. But the abuses were solvable, given time.”

“You had ten years,” Greg said. “All they ever did was get worse.”

“The people who made up the PSP’s local committees were unused to power. If they had been allowed to establish themselves, then we would’ve seen stability. But of course, Mindstar and that plague of urban predator gangs incited trouble in the cities, goading the Constables.” He flexed his hands in agitation. “We were...misrepresented.”

Gabriel laughed unsteadily. “What’s the matter, Armstrong? Did you think the hard-left had a monopoly on political agitators?”

For a moment Greg thought he would hit her, but the ex-president eventually sighed resentfully. “This time I have settled for a more slow-burning form of reformation. There are thousands of my appointees still in place throughout the civil service, primed and waiting. “The New Conservatives will soon have to order an intervention as the private and denationalized companies begin to falter, bringing them back into the government fold. My people will assume the management duties, with a great deal of success. And I shall direct them, president in all but name and public visibility.”

“We’ll fight you,” Greg said levelly. “We’ll fight you with everything we’ve got. Bows and arrows if that’s all that’s left, we’ve done it before. And we beat you before.”

“Yet here I am. This seems to be the month of miraculous comebacks.” He laughed, and grinned round at the faces in the living room. “I do believe I’m talking to a reactionary. However, I don’t intend to spend hours justifying my actions to you, Mr Mandel, nor debating the pros and cons of centrally controlled economies. You were brought here to answer questions. And that is what you will now do.”

Greg thought he must’ve flinched, certainly he stiffened.

“No, no, we don’t go around beating confessions out of people here. There are much simpler methods. But understand one thing, Mandel, you are going to die. Just as soon as you have provided me with every byte I require. How you die will be decided by your behaviour. The old easy way or hard way; you can have a bullet through the head, quick and clean. Alternatively, you can be dumped into the old river bed, alive and kicking.”

“It doesn’t make one fuck of a lot of difference in the end, does it?”

Armstrong picked up a cybofax from the coffee table and sat in the last remaining leather chair. “Think about it,” he said knowingly. “Dwell on it. You might find your attitude adjusting. Neville, we’ll begin now.”

Turner opened a drawer in the rose-teak desk and extracted a spaghetti tangle of nylon straps and optical fibres. “Take off your shirt,” he told Greg with a doctor’s examining-room impartiality.

Greg thought about it. Refusing would be a rather trivial token, the shirt would only be cut or ripped off. Besides, he was thinking of being slung into that bottomless mud. God curse Armstrong. He shrugged out of the jacket and began on the shirt buttons, Flakes of dried blood wedged under his fingernails.

“Good,” Armstrong said. “Quite an ironic twist for you, Mr Mandel, I imagine. On the receiving end of a lie detector for once.”

Turner velcroed a strap around each of Greg’s wrists. They prickled, minute needle-tipped sensors probing into his skin, tasting salinity, heat, conductivity, heart-rate. The St Christopher was flicked to one side and another strap went round his neck, tightening noose-style.

Leopold Armstrong’s fingers drummed on his cybofax. “I have a number of queries. And you’ll answer each one honestly. For every lie you make we’ll break a bone in Miss Thompson’s body. The bigger the lie, the bigger the bone. Understand?” Again, there was no malice, Leopold Armstrong was just telling it the way it was.

“Yeah,” Greg replied, as a tiara band was placed on his head. Turner pressed an infuser against his arm. There was a bee-sting of pain, turning to an ice-spot.

“Relaxant,” Turner said, and began plugging the optical cables into a gear module which was already interfaced with the Olivetti deck. The cube lit with scrawling sine waves. He sat in the swivel chair behind the desk and began typing. Data rolled down an LCD display. “Name?” he asked.