Voyagers II - The Alien Within (18 page)

“Do you mind if I tape our conversation?” Baker asked, beaming his most disarming smile at Nicole Appert.

She stared with obvious distaste at the tiny black oblong that Baker placed on the coffee table. An Linh, sitting on the sofa beside him, looked at it, too. It was unlike any tape recorder she had seen before; a row of tiny white lights were blinking across its back, where Madame Appert could not see them.

A voice analyzer, An Linh realized. Cliff’s going to check on whether she’s telling the truth or not.

Nicole leaned forward in the dainty Louis XVI chair in which she was sitting and picked a cigarette from the gold box next to the pocket-sized recording machine on the polished wood coffee table.

“You said on the telephone that you are friends of Dr. Stoner,” she said in Gallic-accented English as she put the cigarette between her lips. Before she could reach for the lighter, Baker scooped it up and lit the cigarette for her.

“Yes. We’re trying to locate him.” He was wearing a casual tweed jacket over his denims. Comfortable clothes. Leather patches on the elbows. Very British. The outfit usually put an interview subject at ease.

But not Nicole Appert. “How long have you known Dr. Stoner?” The suspicion in her low, throaty voice was obvious. The lights of the voice analyzer turned amber.

In French, An Linh replied, “We are television reporters seeking to interview Dr. Stoner. We know of him by reputation.”

She noticed that the lights on the analyzer’s circuit faded to cool green as she spoke.

Nicole blew a puff of smoke toward the ceiling and leaned back in her chair. “Ah. I see.”

And the lights stayed green, showing that the stress in her voice had eased.

“He was here, wasn’t he?” Baker asked. An Linh was surprised to see the voice analyzer’s lights turn orange as he spoke, indicating heavy tension.

Nicole regarded them silently for a moment, her eyes shifting from Baker to An Linh and then back to the Australian again. She was a petite woman, An Linh thought, small but elegant. The simple blue frock she wore must have cost a fortune. This living room was filled with priceless heirlooms. Nicole Appert was rich, and intelligent, and despite her tiny frame she seemed to An Linh as delicate as a black widow spider.

“Perhaps you should come back when my husband is here.”

“We don’t have time to spare,” Baker said tightly.

“This afternoon. Claude has gone to give a lecture at the university. You picked the one morning of the month when he must be there.”

“We really need to know whatever you can tell us,” Baker insisted. “Now.”

But Nicole shook her head. “This afternoon. Come then, and we will both talk with you.”

An Linh started to reply, but Baker put a hand on her thigh to restrain her. He looked around the living room, at the antique furnishings, the exquisite fabrics, the bookshelves stacked neatly, precisely, the curtains that framed the long windows. Without a word, he got to his feet, stepped past An Linh, and went to the glass-fronted cabinet that held miniature china dolls and delicate fossil seashells.

Nicole half rose from her chair. Baker raised his arm and smashed the glass front of the cabinet with his elbow. The shattering noise made An Linh jump, startled.

“What are you doing?” Nicole demanded angrily. She got to her feet and turned toward the telephone terminal, sitting on a high table against the wall.

Baker picked up a jagged piece of broken glass and swung back toward her, holding it up to her face.

“Sit down!”

An Linh gasped. “Cliff, what—”

“Shut up!” he snapped. Insanely, An Linh noticed that the voice analyzer lights burned hot red now.

Nicole resumed her seat.

Baker leaned over and scratched the sharp edge of the glass the length of the antique coffee table. The sound made An Linh’s blood run cold. She stared at the scarred tabletop.

“We don’t have time to play games,” Baker said, his Aussie accent stronger than An Ling had ever heard it. “Where is Stoner? Where has he gone?”

With cold fury, Nicole said, “It may interest you to know that Dr. Stoner instructed me to tell everything to whoever inquired about him.”

“Did he now? Then start telling!”

Nicole spoke swiftly, in English, her voice murderously low and enraged. The voice analyzer’s lights flickered red and amber, but Baker was not watching. He stood over Nicole, staring at her, the shard of glass in his upraised hand. An Linh sat there on the sofa feeling more terrified of him than the Frenchwoman apparently did.

Finally Nicole stopped.

“That’s it?” Baker demanded. “He’s going to Africa and that’s all he said?”

“That is all.”

“I don’t believe you!”

“I do,” said An Linh, rising from the sofa.

“There’s got to be more,” Baker insisted.

“There is one thing,” Nicole said.

“What?”

“Yesterday Keith told me that his daughter is married to a Peace Enforcer.”

“In New Zealand,” said Baker.

With a hating smile, Nicole said, “The largest contingent of Peace Enforcers in the world is deployed in central Africa, trying to keep the war there from spreading further. Perhaps he learned that his daughter is there, with her husband.”

Baker rubbed his chin with his free hand. “Right. Maybe so.”

Nicole seemed perfectly calm, not the slightest bit afraid of Baker. An Linh saw her glance at the cabinet, as if checking to see if anything more than the glass had been broken.

“What’s her name?” Baker asked.

“Eleanor, I think.” Nicole reached for a fresh cigarette. An Linh realized that the one she had been smoking had fallen to the floor when Cliff smashed the cabinet. “Yes, Eleanor is his daughter’s name.”

“Her
married
name!”

Shrugging, Nicole replied, “That I do not know. I have not seen her since she is ten years of age.”

“He didn’t mention her husband’s name to you?”

“No.”

“You’re sure?”

“Cliff, she’s telling the truth,” An Linh said. She bent down and picked up the recorder/analyzer. “She’s told us everything she knows.”

Baker looked from An Linh to Nicole and back again. Then he broke into a boyish grin.

“Yeah, I suppose so.” Gently he laid the glass shard on the scratched coffee table. “Sorry I lost my temper.”

Nicole nodded curtly, then got to her feet. “There
is
one other thing that might be of interest to you.”

“Really?”

“A notebook that Keith left here.”

“Notebook?” An Linh echoed.

“Where? What’s in it?”

Nicole stepped around the coffee table and went to the desk next to the windows. “I believe Claude put it in here….” She rummaged through the top drawer for a moment.

Turning back to face them, she pointed a small onyxplated automatic pistol at Baker’s chest. An Linh’s breath caught in her throat. Baker’s grin vanished.

“Now, you swine, you will put your hands above your head while I call the police.”

Baker remained utterly still. “You’re not going to use that thing. It’s probably not even loaded.”

Perfectly calm, her eyes flaming, Nicole said, “It is fully loaded, I assure you. And I know very well how to use it.”

The Aussie’s grin returned slowly to his face. It looked more than a little forced to An Linh.

“No,” he said. “I don’t think you’ll shoot us. Come on, love. Time for us to go.”

He turned slowly and started for the door. An Linh followed him, feeling the gun and Nicole’s eyes focused on her back. Baker hesitated at the door and turned back toward the Frenchwoman.

“I’m really sorry about this. G’bye now.”

He opened the door and allowed An Linh to go out into the hallway first. Nicole raised her arm and fired once. The shot sounded enormous in An Linh’s ears, like a cannon blast. Baker lurched through the doorway and stumbled against her.

“Sonofabitch!” he screamed. “The damned cunt shot me!”

An Linh staggered under his weight. Blood was spurting from his shoulder. Past his half-collapsed form she saw Nicole Appert coolly surveying them, her lips almost smiling.

“
Bon
,” she said. “
Et maintenant la police
.” And she slammed her door shut.

Fortunately the elevator was still at this level; no one had used it since they had come up in it. An Linh tottered toward it, with Baker in her arms, and let him fall in a heap to its floor. She slid the cagework door shut and punched the down button. The elevator whined to life while other apartment doors popped open and nervous, curious, suspicious faces peeked out.

“Come on,” An Linh said when they reached the street level. “We’ve got to get out of here before the police arrive.”

Tugging him up to his feet, she hauled Baker out of the elevator, across the marble-floored foyer, and out into the rainy street where their rented car was parked.

“She shot me,” Baker kept muttering. “That crazy old lady shot me.”

An Linh nearly slipped in a curbside puddle as she dumped him into their compact sedan. She could hear the singsong wailing of approaching police cars. She slid behind the wheel and drove out of the narrow street, heading for the Champs Élysées and the hotel that Madigan had booked for them. Two police cars passed them, sirens blaring, as she swung out onto the broad avenue, windshield wipers flapping. Baker gripped his shoulder and swore through clenched teeth all the way to the hotel.

By tugging his raincoat over his shoulders, An Linh got the Australian through the hotel’s minuscule lobby and up the tiny elevator to their room. It was also small, with barely enough space for a double bed and a bureau.

Baker collapsed on the bed, groaning. An Linh pulled the raincoat away and saw that his tweed jacket was soaked through with blood. She reached for the phone terminal on the night table beside the bed.

“Who’re you calling?” Baker asked weakly.

“Madigan…he’ll get the local Vanguard people to take care of you….”

“No. Not Madigan.” He propped himself up on his good arm, wincing. “Gimme the phone.”

An Linh swiveled the picture screen toward him and lifted the keypad from the terminal. Handing it to Baker, she watched him tap out a twelve-digit number.

The phone screen stayed blank, but a voice said, “Yes? May I be of assistance?”

“Blood,” said Cliff Baker. “Blood.”

Immediately the voice replied, “Keep this link open for thirty seconds.”

“Aye.”

The voice sounded strangely flat and sexless to An Linh. A computer’s synthesis, she guessed. And the single word “blood” was probably a code signal that the computer recognized as an emergency.

“Terminate link,” said the voice.

Cliff leaned a thumb on the phone’s off button.

“What was that?” An Linh asked. “Whom did you call?”

“Those friends I told you about. They’ll have a medical emergency crew here inside of an hour.”

He sank back onto the pillows and closed his eyes. “Christ, it hurts!”

“Let me call a doctor,” An Linh said.

“No! We’ll both end up in a Frog prison. And don’t call Madigan, either. What we learned isn’t for Vanguard. It’s for the movement.”

An Linh sat on the edge of the bed and watched the pain scribe his face with deep lines.

“Cliff,” she blurted, “I’m scared.”

“You’ll be all right.”

“Not me! It’s you that I’m worried about.”

“They’ll take care of me.”

“But you’re still bleeding. How long should we wait—”

The phone chimed.

An Linh started to reach for it, but Baker stopped her with an upraised hand. “Keep the picture off. If it’s Madigan, stall him. Don’t tell him what that trigger-happy old lady did, and above all don’t tell him what she told us about Stoner!”

It was the concierge, not Madigan. A gentleman and a young lady were downstairs, asking to see them.

“What’s their names?” Baker whispered. An Linh asked the concierge.

“
Monsieur Van et Mademoiselle Gard
,” the concierge’s raspy voice answered.

Baker grinned against the pain of his shoulder. “They’re okay. That’s the code.”

Van and Gard. As An Linh told the concierge to allow them to come up, she thought, At least somebody in the World Liberation Movement has a sense of humor.

Van was an Oriental. Chinese or perhaps Korean, An Linh judged, from the size of him. He looked like a professional athlete, a football player, perhaps, or a boxer. He said nothing at all, simply took a position by the window and watched the street as silently and intently as a robot would.

Mlle. Gard was very French, younger than An Linh by at least five years, and talkative enough for all four of them. She was pretty, too, except for the misfortune of a Gallic nose. Nothing that a bit of plastic surgery could not fix, though. She was the paramedic, and she jabbered and clucked and
tsk
ed as she worked on Baker’s shoulder. An Linh helped her to ease Cliff’s jacket off. Then she cut away his shirt, jabbed him with an anesthetic, and probed for the bullet—blathering blithely away all the time. An Linh decided she was covering up her nervousness, although the young woman’s hands were as steady as her flow of chatter.

“How did you get to us so quickly?” An Linh asked, as Mlle. Gard sat Baker up on the bed and started bandaging his shoulder.

“We are your backup team,” the girl replied, cocking her head slightly toward the Oriental still staring out the window. “That one and I. We were parked outside the apartment building when you came out. If the police had tried to follow you, we would have cut them off and given you time to get away.”

“Then if you saw that he was injured, why didn’t you come into the hotel with us?”

“That was not our assignment. We were told to back you up and then await further orders. When we received the command to give him medical attention, we came immediately to the hotel.”

Discipline, An Linh realized. And organization. Whoever these people are, they’re not amateurs.

“But who gives you your orders?” she asked.

The young woman smiled at her. “If you need to ask such a question, you must not be told the answer.”