speculation away as pointless. “All right, thank you. You can let him know I’m on my way.”
“Thanks, Ms. Cerise,” the woman behind the desk said.
Cerise nodded and went on past, to ride the moving stairs up to the main lobby. She had to wait for an elevator—not unusual, so late in the day—and stood for a long moment staring at the elevated track that carried the compound-to-compound shuttle. The frame embedded in the massive grey-glass wall was designed around the track and its enclosure, the brass struts radiating like a sunburst from around the triangular entrance. Even on a cloudy day, the metal seemed to gleam with a light of its own; in better weather it was spectacular, and Cerise allowed herself a quick moment of regret, wishing it were sunny. It was easier, at the moment, to think about architecture. The elevator came then, and she stepped inside past the hurrying squad of brightly dressed secretaries, keeping her mind blank as she rode up to the twentieth floor.
Coigne was expecting her, of course—security had, inevitably, notified him of her arrival—and the secretary, a quick-moving, painfully serious woman, waved her on into the inner suite. The door to Coigne’s office stood open, and she paused there, tapped once on the black-enameled metal of the frame. Coigne looked up with well-simulated surprise, beckoned for her to come in.
“I heard from the Treasury today,” he said, without preamble.
Cerise seated herself in the guest’s chair, arranging her skirt to show a comfortable amount of thigh. She had dressed carefully for the meeting with Mabry, in the black and hard fuchsia that was her trademark, and knew she looked good. She had realized long ago that it annoyed Coigne to find her attractive, and she enjoyed the delicate game of provocation. “I’m not surprised,” she said. “I assume they’re interested in Trouble?”
Coigne frowned. “If you were expecting them, Cerise, you might have warned your staff.”
“I thought,” Cerise said, “that they were capable of handling routine matters.”
“The Treasury doesn’t seem to think it’s routine,” Coigne said. “Neither does your staff, for that matter.”
Cerise hid her irritation, an annoyance mixed almost equally with apprehension, and said, “I don’t see the problem.”
“No problem,” Coigne answered, and laid gentle stress on the word “problem.”
“However, they do want to talk to you.”
“So I’d heard.” Cerise leaned back in the padded chair, crossed her legs and let one foot swing, the shoe hanging momentarily from her toe before she pulled it back. “I gave a precis of our information on the intrusion to the Interpol agent handling the case—given that we’re multinational, I thought it’d be good to have someone from there looking into the matter—but I’d be happy to provide the same information to Treasury.”
“They know that you used to work with Trouble.”
“It’s no secret.”
Coigne eyed her thoughtfully, thin face expressionless, the grey eyes paler than the clouds seen through the windows behind him. He was framed against the ocean and the sky, the water gone cold and grey-green in the dulled light; his fair hair looked washed out, ugly against the strong greys On the horizon, a rustred shape was briefly visible: a ship, a tanker maybe, standing out to sea.
“Listen to me, Cerise,” Coigne said at last. Cerise did not move, did not change her politely attentive smile, but every muscle in her body tightened. She recognized that tone all too well: Coigne meant every word, and would back them up, precisely and exactly, with all his considerable skill and resources. “I want this Trouble—I’ve told you that before, and I mean it. I don’t intend for us to put up with this kind of shit from two-bit crackers. I don’t really care if this is the woman you used to live with, but if it is, I expect you to put her away. You work for me now—for Multiplane—and don’t forget it.”
“All right,” Cerise said. She sat up abruptly, enjoying her anger. “You’ve said your piece, now listen to me. I will put a stop to this new Trouble—who is not my ex-lover; my ex-lover is back and thoroughly pissed off on her own account—and I don’t need your threats to make me do my job. I have a system to protect: that matters to me. But I am not going to be able to do it while you or Treasury are breathing down my neck, and I’m not going to find him or her or it on the nets. You want me to catch this new Trouble, fine. But I’m going to need more freedom of action than you’re used to putting up with. And if you won’t give it to me, I don’t want to hear any complaints about me not doing my job.”
Coigne blinked twice, looked down at his desktop, looked back at her, his face still without readable emotion. “What do you need?”
Cerise paused, startled by his capitulation—which means that he wants this new Trouble, much more than I realized— said, slowly, trying to hide the fact that her own plans were still unformed, “First, I’ll need to make Jensey—Baeyen— acting chief for the duration.”
Coigne nodded.
“Then—” Cerise took a breath, pulling her thoughts together. “I’ll need to devote myself to this job exclusively. I have net access, I’ll want extra time without questions, and I’ll want a company car—no driver, just the car. Also leave, with pay, no questions where or why, and a company draft, at least ten thousand.”
“You should have that in your budget,” Coigne said.
“I’ll need your signature on the forms.”
Coigne nodded. “You’ll be going after her—or him—yourself, then?”
“Yes,” Cerise said, and realized that she was shaking. She folded her hands, laced her fingers together— she had not expected Coigne to agree, still had not realized how important this was to him—and smiled deliberately. “It’s my job, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Coigne said, “it is.”
Cerise pushed herself up out of the chair before the silence could grow into a threat. “Then I’ll pass this information to Treasury, and put things in train.”
Coigne nodded again. “Send me the papers. I’ll approve your requests.”
“Thanks,” Cerise said, and turned toward the door. Coigne’s voice stopped her in the doorway.
“Don’t fuck this up.”
“I don’t intend to,” Cerise said, and let the door close gently behind her.
She made her way back to network security like a woman in a dream, barely aware of the delicate pastel murals that decorated the public spaces or the carpets chosen to be soothing. She showed her ID to security, a stocky woman sitting hunched behind the bulletproof glass of her cubicle, and went on into the main room. It was very quiet, the only sound the gentle hum of half a dozen individual stations mingled with the softer hiss of the environmental system. Her staff, Sirico, Macea, Czaja, and the rest, sat or sprawled bonelessly in their cubicles, supported by the heavy chairs, out on the nets. She ignored them, stepped into her own office to find Baeyen sprawled vacant-eyed at her station in the outer office. Her mouth hung slightly open, and a thin line of spittle trailed down her chin. Cerise walked past her, knowing better than to try to reach her from the realworld, went into her own office, and keyed commands into the waiting machine. A few seconds later, Baeyen’s icon flashed onto the screen.
“Boss?”
“Sorry to interrupt you,” Cerise said, “but we’ve got a project to set up.”
“Let me close this down,” Baeyen answered promptly, “and I’ll be on my way.”
“Thanks,” Cerise said. The icon vanished, and she turned her attention to the schematic of the corporate net that bloomed automatically in her screen. Everything seemed to be in order, and live security was tight; she touched another key sequence, and confirmed that her extra watchdogs were in place. So far, so good: all that remained was to warn her people to check again for viruses. She flipped away the schematic, typed a code command, and added identifying icons from machine memory; an instant later, the screen split, showed Czaja’s flying-crane icon in one half, Alec Zemtzov’s dumptruck, bright as a child’s toy, in the other.
“Boss?” Czaja said.
“Sorry to drag you away,” Cerise said again, “but I picked up some—worrisome—news at lunch today, from Interpol. Seems that the Eurocops have been finding viruses in a few of the intrusions, and they gave me a sample disk. We need to scan for it right away.”
“We ran a solid scan as soon as it happened,” Czaja said.
He was in charge of the section of the net that included Corvo’s research volume. “We didn’t turn up anything—”
Zemtzov’s icon flickered, signaling an interrupt. “Nothing that matched existing patterns, anyway.” His on-
