books. 'Exploitation of Assets'? 'Leasing of Lubrication Equipment'?
In Salt Lake, he had been given sundry goods to buy his way where money was no good. He had opened his magic suitcase and offered her a selection of drugs, but she politely declined. She drank only mineral water from the well-stocked fridge. She didn't even want to eat anything, although Duroc guessed she was on the point of starvation.
All she really wanted was to stay.
Duroc didn't care either way. Simone Scarlet was as good an accessory for his disguise as any. She expected so little, asked so little. He felt under no pressure from her. It was almost as if she were a blank onto which he could project whatever he wanted from a woman. Last year, there had been Sister Harrison in Salt Lake, but she had been caught in adultery with another man and publicly stoned. She was in a coma. Since then, Duroc had only known a succession of interchangeable bodies, interchangeable smiles, interchangeable cheerleader strips. Kandi, Randi, Mandi, Sandy, Cyndi, Mindi, Nikki, Vikki, Rikki, Buffy, Muffie. Simone Scarlet was perhaps the first American girl he'd had sex with whose first name didn't end with an 'i' sound.
He wriggled into his black silk robe, and got out of the bed. Captain Machsler would be here soon. They had talked over the phone earlier, and arranged a time for the meeting.
He considered the sombre black Josephite outfit hanging in the closet, but opted for a lightweight tropical number.
Simone lay on her back under the nets, stretching out like a long, thin cat. She had been an honour student. Math, Chem and Geology. She had had a place waiting for her at Tallahatchie Tech when the indenture men came for her.
Duroc saw a cockroach, easily seven inches long, scuttling out from under the double bed. He bent over swiftly, and pinched the insect between thumb and forefinger. Simone ughed in revulsion and he held it up, its six legs wriggling in the air, mandibles working. The creature was fascinating, monstrous. It twisted round, trying to clamp some flesh in its mildy-venomed jaws. Duroc held it carefully, and smiled.
'Ladybug, ladybug,' he cooed, 'fly away home…'
He dropped it into his barely sipped drink, and prodded it down past the icecubes and the fruit chunks with the plastic stirrer. Then, he clamped a coaster over the top of the glass, and watched the insect drown. It took a long time. The new breed of cockroaches were hard to kill.
'Your house is on fire, your children are gone…'
Finally, the thing stopped kicking and floated dead in the drink.
Simone was watching him with a horrid fascination.
'Why do you do that?'
Duroc took off the coaster, and gulped down a swallow of bug-flavoured cocktail.
'Whenever you kill something, it makes you more alive.'
The girl didn't question his answer.
There was a knock at the door. Simone made a pull for the quilt, drawing it up over her nakedness. Duroc signed to her to lie there still, and opened the door.
Machsler was out of uniform, but was unmistakably a soldier even in jeans and T-shirt. The shirt bore a familiar survivalist logo. 'Kill 'Em All—Let God Sort 'Em Out.' The officer held a battered briefcase, and wore a cowboy-style sidearm slung in a leather holster on his hip.
'Mr Duroc?'
Machsler shook his hand, and sidled into the room, looking over his shoulder. Duroc gently closed the door.
The soldier looked around, as if expecting a gang of Maniax to be lurking in the closet. He stared at Simone.
'Don't mind
Machsler obviously wasn't sure about that, but decided he could live with it. He hadn't met the same person twice since Seth got him on the hook, so he must be used to nervous situations.
'Can I get you a drink? Some iced tea? Co-Cola?'
The soldier shook his head, and paced the room like a caged tiger. Duroc noticed he kept his hands above his waist. That way he would have a chance to get one up in front of his adam's apple if someone looped a cheesecutter over his head. The Special Forces trained its people thoroughly.
'You have the money?'
Duroc patted his top pocket.
'Good.'
'You have the merchandise?'
Machsler held up the briefcase. It had a fancy lock attached to the old leather.
'Then we can do business?'
The soldier sat down, case in his lap. He was sweating, and scratching at the bites on his forearms. He was tattooed with the symbol and number of his unit, and his blood group and medical details.
'Are you from New Orleans?' he asked.
Duroc shrugged. 'My accent, you mean? No. I am from Paris, France. But that was a long time ago. I am a citizen of Deseret, now.'
Machsler was satisfied. The officer was the captain of the high school football team, ten or fifteen years on, fighting to keep his ball-player's body despite too many gassy beers, greasy chilli dogs and butt-flattening hours at a desk. All those 'i' sound girls had been over him like a cheap suit when he was a kid, but those days were past. Maybe he had an expensive wife, who insisted on being called by her full 'a' sound name. Not Cyndi but Cynthia, not Mindy but Miranda. Probably, he wanted to send his kids to a pricey PZ school with well-dressed killers as security guards, not to some public hellhole where the blackboard monitors forced fourteen-year-olds to turn tricks in the lunch hours, the canteen had a semi-official smacksynth dealer and the school clinic knew more about abortions than grazed knees. America still had dreams, but these days the pricetag was high. Too high for honest public servants.
'Look, it's not my business,' began Machsler, 'but what do you want with this stuff? It's fifteen-twenty years out of date. Very low priority.'
'You are right. It is none of your business.'
'Okay, okay.' The soldier was regretting his involvement in this transaction. Duroc could see that it was problematic for the man.
Nguyen Seth had been cultivating Captain Ronald Machsler for three years now, pulling him towards the Faustian bargain all men must make. At first, it had been the usual army surplus scam. The Elder's agents had approached the Captain and offered him a good price for ammunition, slightly behind-the-state-of-the-art weaponry and bulk supplies of medicinal drugs. The Church of Joseph had its own supplies of those commodities, of course, but Captain Machsler had to get used to dealing with the Devil, had to get in deep enough not to kick when the. real bite came. They had tested him by asking for confidential documents. Troop dispositions along the Rio Grande.Wall, the codenames and cover identities of some military intelligence personnel in Managua, the routes of some nuclear waste convoys. It was stuff Seth had no interest in, but Duroc had cast an interested eye over the material, and disseminated it on the underground nets. A minor gangcult took out one of the convoys and, for thirty-eight hours, were in possession of enough weapons-grade plutonium to win them a seat at the United Nations. Turner- Harvest-Ramirez put them out of business, but the raid served to convince Captain Machsler that he was deep into Seth's pocket. Since then, they had been blinding him with silly requests, for almost random information. Having been forced to dredge up a lot of barely-classified documents about long-abandoned plans for military intervention in Central America and rejected designs for long-range missile transportation, Machsler was thoroughly confused. He must be putting his current commission down to the same quixotic interest in military ephemera, which was just what Seth wanted. There would be a few more blind requests over the next year, just to keep the soldier in the dark, but this was the important leak. Duroc was taking personal receipt of this briefcase.
He slipped the cashcard out of his pocket, and laid it on the coffee table. The hologram shimmered in the light. It was real gold. Machsler whistled unconsciously.
'A pay rise?'
'You do good work, Ronald. Elder Seth thinks you deserve it.'
