members. Federation personnel and VIA agents are, of course, exempt.’ The Supremo smiled at this display of her organisation’s generosity.
In the moment of silence before Olympia continued, Alex raised her hand.
‘Excuse me, ma’am?’
Many faces turned to look at Alex. The Supremo had not invited questions.
Olympia scanned the crowd; on the big screen her face had darkened a shade.
‘And you are—?’
‘Alex Bishop, VIA Special Agent, London.’
‘Ah, yes,’ Olympia said knowingly after a brief exchange of glances with Lerouge.
‘And your question, my dear?’
‘Given your confidence that the current crisis can be resolved within the next six months anyway, I wondered what the reasoning was behind the tightening of controls on registered members? The Federation’s enemies aren’t registered. Isn’t that the whole point?’
In the front row, Rumble’s shoulders seemed to sag a little. Garrett twisted round in his seat to sneer at Alex, and then whispered something behind a cupped hand in his boss’s ear.
Olympia flinched a little. ‘We feel that under the present circumst—’
‘Ma’am? Excuse me, I hadn’t finished. And are we to take it that the new tax on Vambloc and Solazal will be lifted once production returns to normal?’
The crowd seemed to hold its breath while Olympia Angelopolis paused for a long moment. Her eyebrow twitched. ‘These are highly pertinent points,’ she finally said in a measured tone, ‘which will be fully discussed at a later time. Thank you for your questions. Now, moving on…’
Alex slumped back down in her seat and smiled to herself as the talking resumed. The Supremos skirted around the issue of the remaining new measures and went on to discuss their plans for major organisational improvements within FRC admin departments. All typical politico talk, Alex thought, designed to distract and cajole when all they wanted was to tighten their grip on everyone.
Time passed, and Alex eventually tuned out and turned to thinking about what the Ruling Council had in store for her later. There was going to be some kind of private disciplinary hearing, for sure. What might come of it? No VIA operative had ever been terminated for neglect of duty, but they could easily revoke her Special Agent status.
She’d do her best to fight her corner. Whether Harry Rumble would stand up for her remained to be seen.
Sidelights automatically lit up in the aisles as the conference droned on and the window of sky in the glass dome above the conference hall grew steadily darker. Every so often from her vantage point at the height of the auditorium, Alex spotted a delegate shoot a furtive glance her way and whisper to the vampire sitting next to them. She ignored them. She’d become more interested in watching Xavier Garrett in the front row.
For some time now, he’d been looking more and more restless, shifting constantly in his seat, looking at his watch frequently and looking over at the exits. He was acting the way a human would if they urgently needed to go to the bathroom.
Something was plainly eating him.
On stage, the Supremos moved with funereal pace from one point of the agenda to the next. Alex hardly heard a word of it. With each passing minute, she was becoming more focused on Garrett. He was virtually jumping up and down in his seat, bursting with impatience about something.
Then, as Olympia and Lerouge paused between items and the audience broke into applause, Alex noticed a commotion down at the auditorium entrance. A messenger had slipped into the hall looking agitated, and was talking to the security guards. As the audience went on applauding, the security guys began talking on their radios.
Something was happening. As Alex watched, the messenger was allowed through to speak to Olympia and Lerouge. A lot of frowning and discussion, and then, to a general mutter of surprise, all seven Supremos suddenly left the stage and filed out of the room under security escort. An announcer came on stage and announced that the conference was being temporarily suspended; the talks would resume in just a few moments, and would everyone please remain seated while the ushers came round with refreshments?
As the announcer hooked up his mike, Garrett suddenly jumped out of his seat, hurried past the front row without a glance at Rumble, who was deep in conversation with another VIA chief, and slipped away through a side exit.
‘Acting a little strangely, Xavier,’ Alex murmured to herself. She had to know more.
‘Hey. Where do you think you’re going?’ Verspoor said as she stood up.
‘To catch the new Baxter Burnett movie,’ she told him innocently. ‘It’s playing at the UGC multiplex in town. Can’t miss it.’
‘You sit back down right now,’ Bates ordered, pointing at her seat.
‘Sorry, guys,’ Alex said with a smile, and punched them both simultaneously in the head. The blows would have killed humans. Verspoor and Bates flopped unconscious in their seats. ‘You were pretty boring company anyway,’ she muttered.
Nobody in the rows ahead of her had noticed anything. She hurried out between the seats, trotted down the sloping aisle and made it to the side exit unseen.
Just in time to see Xavier Garrett disappearing around a bend in the plush corridor. He was talking on a mobile, glancing at his watch again, hunched over with a secretive air.
‘Go,’ he was saying into the phone. ‘Go!’ He was flushed, quivering with excitement.
‘Hey, Garrett,’ Alex called after him, running to catch up. ‘What’re you so worked up about?’
Garrett turned to stare at her. He flipped his phone shut. ‘You’re not supposed to be out here.’
‘Who was that on the phone?’ Alex asked him. She could hear a noise in the distance. A steady, rapid-fire thump-thump-thump. Building fast, doubling in volume every second.
‘Nobody,’ Garrett said.
‘You were calling someone.’
The sound was rising like a violent storm coming up out of nowhere, getting ready to tear apart everything in its path. It was the unmistakable rapid beat and turbine roar of helicopter rotors, hovering over the building. The windows began to rattle in their frames.
‘I was calling my wife,’ Garrett whined.
Alex shoved him. ‘Bullshit.’
‘Don’t you touch me.’
The noise was getting even louder.
‘It was you who tipped Stone off about Venice, wasn’t it, Xavier? Nobody knew except me and Harry. Listening at the door’s a very nasty habit. And it’s my guess you’re the one who told them Rudi was my informant.’
He backed off a step. ‘You’re way out of line, Agent Bishop.’
‘What’s Stone paying you?’ She had to shout to be heard over the noise.
‘More than you can imagine,’ Garrett yelled. He stumbled away from her, pulling a 9mm Beretta from his jacket. Aimed the heavy automatic in her face. ‘It doesn’t matter anyway. It’s all over for you now.’
Alex stared into the pistol’s muzzle. Just four inches down that little black hole was the nose of the copper- jacketed bullet, hollowed out and filled with the Nosferol that she now was sure Xavier Garrett had helped the Trads steal from the Terzi plant.
One flick of his finger, and the bullet would cross the space between them in a tiny fraction of a second and bury itself in her brain. That would only be the start of her troubles.
A trained agent would have shot her without a flicker of expression. Alex knew that, because she was one of them, and had trained many of them herself. Xavier Garrett was not one of those. From the white of his knuckles on the grip of the Beretta and the crazed look in his eyes, she could tell he’d never pointed a pistol at anyone in his life before. And someone who’d never fired a shot always flinched first.
He flinched.
She moved.
The gun boomed in his hand and hot gases burned past Alex’s face as the bullet screamed by her ear. Before
