World of Fire (Dev Harmer 01) (15 page)

“Damn.”

“It was our one major tactical weakness at the start of the war. High command couldn’t transmit orders without there being a good chance that the Plussers would eavesdrop. The same went for commplant contact among troops on the battlefield. We got round the second problem by going old-school and resorting to shortwave radio transmission.”

“What about the first problem?” said Graydon. “Oh wait, I think I remember. Wasn’t there some kind of trick?”

“Yes. Military intelligence advised the top brass to start using cryptic crossword clues instead of straightforward sentences. The Plussers just couldn’t make head or tail of them. They lack the necessary capacity for lateral thinking.”

“Ha!”

“Of course it meant that every battalion had to have its resident ‘word nerd’ to translate strings of puns and verbal rebuses into meaningful instructions. Those guys became our linchpins, the members of personnel we could least afford to lose. They were also brainiac introverts with almost zero combat savvy. It made for some interesting times. But it worked, that’s the main thing. Our edge over Polis Plus. It’s how we won the war.”

“Or forced the Plussers into a stalemate, some would say,” Graydon added.

“Hey, any end to a war that isn’t capitulation is a victory. We beat them because of the human factor. No question; at a purely intellectual level, they’re smarter than us by far. Their minds process at a rate ours can’t hope to compete with. What they don’t have is a knack for creative thought.”

“They can’t think outside the box because, for them, there
is
no outside the box.”

“Yeah, who said that? It was President-Marshal Ferreira, wasn’t it? She was right. And it applies still, even with TerCon officially on a peacetime footing, even when there’s no war on but a cold war. Hence ISS employ people who are sometimes reckless. Irresponsible. Cavalier, perhaps. Even – how to phrase it? – a damn liability.”

Kahlo showed no emotion at having her own words quoted back.

“Because that sort of person operates in the Plussers’ blind spot,” Dev concluded.

Graydon raised his glass to Dev and drained the last few drops.

“Oh, I like this fellow,” he said. “Astrid, don’t you like this fellow?”

Kahlo said, “I judge people by their accomplishments, not their personalities.”

“Of course you do. Of course you do. But you can’t deny he has a way about him. I’m feeling more optimistic already.”

“All part of the service, Maurice,” said Dev.

“Now, if you two don’t mind, I have work to do. My inbox is bulging. No rest for the elected. Dev, pleasure to meet you.”

“Likewise.”

“And Astrid? I’m glad you survived your close shave with the freight shuttle. Had that gone worse, it would have been a terrible thing. A terrible thing.”

As they re-entered Graydon’s office from the balcony, the floor began to shiver underfoot.

“Oh, for –” Graydon gripped the back of a chair.

The tremor increased in intensity. Furniture began to dance, and the ornaments trembled.

The vibrations pulsed and pulsed like waves breaking on a shore. Dev wondered how sturdy the rock arch was. He envisaged it fracturing at the base, cracks shooting up its sides like lightning bolts, the whole thing crumbling, collapsing, tumbling in pieces...

Then his eye fell on the bottle of Yamazaki whisky. It had shimmied across the sideboard all the way to the edge, where it was teetering, about to fall.

He dived across the shuddering room, arm outstretched. The bottle tipped off the sideboard. He caught it inches above the floor.

The tremor dwindled, then petered out altogether.

Graydon unclamped his hand from the chair back and smoothed out his tie. Dev passed him the whisky bottle, which he took with solemn appreciation.

“Quick reactions. Thank you.”

“When something precious is threatened, I try and keep it safe,” Dev said. “That refers mostly to my own life, but it applies to other things too.”

“Like my city, I trust.”

“Very much so.”

17

“W
ELL,
HE
COULDN’T
have been nicer,” Dev said in the elevator on the way down. “Almost decent – for a politician. It’s no surprise he’s governor. I’d have voted for him.”

“Suck-up,” said Kahlo.

“It pays to get on the good side of people in power.”

“Hence your stunt with the whisky bottle.”

“That? No, I’d have done that whoever owned it. Good booze is a work of art.” He studied Kahlo’s hard expression. “You really don’t like him, do you? What is it between you two? He try to impose budget cuts on the police or something?”

“The answer can be found in the file marked
None Of Your Damn Business
.”

“Only, you and me, the two of us...” – Dev waved a hand back and forth across the space between them – “I feel like we’re starting to bond. Overcoming our differences. In the light of that, we should feel free to open up to each other. It’s what pals do.”

“I know you’re being facetious,” said Kahlo. “That’s why I’m not holding you down right now and trying to punch some sense into you.”

“No, but really. You and Graydon. What’s up?”

The elevator came to a halt and Kahlo strode out into the foyer without another word.

“Tough nut to crack,” Dev muttered to himself. “But I’m like pliers. Apply enough pressure, sooner or later the shell gives.”

Patrolman Utz had some bad news. “Apologies, ma’am, but we can’t leave for the time being. That tremor just now, it damaged a section of the rails. A couple of support pylons across town are looking suspect. The entire network has been shut down as a safety precaution while an engineering team sends out inspection drones to take a look.”

“How long?”

“Half an hour, I’m told. An hour at most. If it’s only those pylons, they’ll isolate that section of track and restart the rest of the network in phased stages.”

Kahlo took herself off to a corner of the foyer, where she sat and caught up with paperwork via commplant. Like most people teleworking, she appeared to be in a deep trance state. Now and then her lips might move, silently mouthing the sentences her brain was transmitting.

“So, Utz...”

“Yeah?”

“Her and Graydon.” Dev jerked a thumb at Kahlo. She was far enough across the foyer to be out of earshot, but he kept his voice low anyway. “He seems to like her more than she likes him. What’s the dynamic there?”

“It’s not exactly a secret,” said Utz. “You run a search on the chief, you’ll soon find out.”

“They used to be lovers? Is that it? And it ended messily?”

Utz laughed. “Shit, no. How old do you think he is?”

“So hard to tell with you Alighierians. No UV damage. Maybe he’s had a few skin rejuvenation treatments, too. I’d guess forty? Forty-five?”

“Older than that. Old enough to be her father.”

“Well, that doesn’t preclude them from being lovers.”

Utz laughed again, louder. “It does when he
is
her father.”

Dev spent a few moments digesting this fact. “No way.”

“Why not?”

“The surnames, for starters.”

“Kahlo is her mother’s maiden name. She was born Graydon. She changed it... I don’t know when. Sometime around when she became a cop.”

“What for?”

“Guess what? I’ve never asked. Not my place. Her background is her own affair. She’s a terrific chief of police, she’s firm but fair, she runs the force like a champ – that’s all that matters to me. She doesn’t allow her home life to get in the way of her work. She certainly hasn’t let the governor being her daddy affect her administrative policies in any way.”

“She didn’t get to be where she is because of who her father is, then?”

“I’d say the opposite,” said Utz. “She made police chief in spite of him. But listen, you can look it up for yourself. It’s all online somewhere. Biogs, blogs, news items...”

Dev booted up his commplant and plunged into Alighieri’s insite. He ran a basic search on Kahlo and alighted on her official CEPD page. She had risen fast through the ranks, since signing up as a cadet at the age of eighteen. She was a sergeant by twenty-one, a commander by twenty-seven, and chief of police by her early thirties. She had a long list of citations to her name and had been TerCon-commended for her crime clear-up rate several times.

A bit of an overachiever.

A murder case a few years back had won her plaudits in the local press. A child had died in a frenzied attack, stabbed dozens of times and sexually violated post mortem. The main suspect had been the girl’s widower father, who had been stupor-drunk on the night in question and couldn’t categorically state that he wasn’t to blame. When he was arrested, a lynch mob mentality took hold over Calder’s Edge. Citizens stormed police headquarters, baying for the man’s blood.

Kahlo, as the principal investigating officer, went out and spoke to the angry throng. She managed to convince them to return to their homes, promising them that justice would be served.

In the meantime she had been painstakingly building a case against another suspect, a neighbour of the dead girl, a man who had suffered sexual abuse himself as a child and had a history of violent behaviour. He was, by the sound of it, a stone cold hardcase, and Kahlo’d sweated him for thirty-six hours straight before she was able to make him crack and admit that he had broken into the house while the father was out cold on the bathroom floor, entered the girl’s bedroom and done the deed.

By patience, stamina and attrition, she’d obtained a confession from the guilty party. By tact and diplomacy, she’d saved an innocent – if negligent – man from being torn apart by the crowd.

Little wonder that the position of chief of police became hers when the previous incumbent stepped down.

Further digging unearthed her familial ties to Maurice Graydon. Graydon had, it turned out, been governor of Calder’s Edge for nearly twenty years, more than half his daughter’s lifetime. Prior to that, he had been a miner and a trade union representative. A man of the people, but with the instincts and charisma of a born politician – a devastating combination.

Kahlo’s mother, Soraya, had also been a miner, a driller rig driver. She had died when Kahlo was in her mid-teens. Some sort of industrial accident.

Dev could not dredge up any explicit connection between Kahlo’s mother’s death and Kahlo’s decision to join the police force. Perhaps there was none.

It was significant, though, that she had signed up as Astrid Kahlo, not Astrid Graydon. Somehow the loss of her mother had driven a wedge between her and her father. Family tragedies could do that. Grief and loss were powerful catalysts. If there had already been discontent simmering between Kahlo and Graydon, Soraya’s demise could have brought it to the boil. Dropping the Graydon name was a symbolic act of rejection.

Since her father was already in high political office by the time she embarked on her career in the police, the change of name suggested that Kahlo could also have been exhibiting independence, a desire to go it alone, free from the perceived patronage of Governor Graydon. Otherwise, any promotion she gained might have looked like nepotism. Also, her fellow officers might have been inclined to treated her with kid gloves, knowing she was the governor’s daughter. Most of them would have been aware of the truth anyway. But Kahlo had been sending a message:
I may have been born a Graydon, but I choose not to be one now
.

Fascinating.

Dev closed the search. Kahlo had pried into his background; now he had pried into hers. That made them even.

“Busy?”

Kahlo was standing in front of him, hands on hips. Dev had been oblivious to her presence until she had spoken. That was often the way when you went sifting through information; you zoned out and lost situational awareness. The insite became a vortex that sucked you in.

“Just, er... checking out the indigenous porn.”

“I’ll bet you were.”