'You wonder why you're still alive. It's more than just Saxon. There's something I want to know.' When she didn't answer he took her chin in his hand. 'Who is Janus? What did he show you?'
The limousine swung around Building C, where the council chambers were located, and pulled to a halt on the gravel drive in front of the United
Nations Assembly Hall, the white pillars rising up across the entranceway behind it. A handful of Swiss security staff stood on the upper steps, while Belltower guards waited at the drive. Standing in a line before the nearby library, a group of reporters trained their camera drones on the vehicle as one of the guards opened the rear door, allowing Elaine Peller to exit; the Humanity Front's media relations staffer and personal assistant to the founder stepped clear and addressed the hovering cameras.
'Mr. Taggart will make a short statement. He will take no questions.'
As she finished speaking, Isaias Sandoval was the next to step out; his thin Hispanic features were perpetually set in a nervous frown, and today was no exception. Despite what they had been told by the authorities, Isaias had been awakened in the predawn light by what could only have been an explosion out on the bridge near their hotel. He was still smarting that his employer had outright refused to take his advice about postponing the meeting with the UN science board.
William Taggart followed him out into the bright light of the day, smiling warmly and sparing the cameras a fatherly nod and a wave. The face of the largest pro-humanist movement on earth appeared, as ever, impeccably groomed and perfectly at ease; and yet he never seemed to lose the cool sense of intent, the quiet, scholarly charisma that made so many people listen to him.
Taggart stepped around to the front of the limo and nodded again. 'My friends,' he began, 'it fills me with hope to be here today, to talk to these good people and present our point of view to them. At no other time in human history have we found ourselves at so delicate a juncture, when the very nature of what we are is under threat by scientific avarice ungoverned by any moral code or-'
It happened with unnatural speed and violence, with a fierce, controlled power that could have come only from the union between human will and machine strength. A muscular figure in a security officer's jacket slipped out from behind one of the Belltower patrol vehicles and punched the closest guard with such force that he spun and bounced off the hood of the car. The man swept in, pivoting on one leg to kick away a second
Belltower trooper, the heel of his boot smashing the gold visor across his face. He dropped, blocking the falling blow from a crackling electro prod as a third man tried to tackle him; the attacker rose back just as quickly, brutally snapping the man's arm against the direction of the joint, putting him down in a screaming heap.
All this in less than a few seconds, every motion and attack powered by nerve-jacked, hyperaccelerated reflexes and brute-force cybernetics.
'Get back in the car!' Sandoval was shouting, grabbing at Taggart's suit jacket, pulling him toward the rear of the vehicle. On the steps, the
Swiss police officers were rushing forward, pistols out. Taggart stumbled against the limo, panic in his eyes, catching sight of Peller as she fumbled at the door handle.
Taggart's personal guards were two thickset men, both of them ex-military, trained and strong with it; but they were still only men, neither of them with a single augmentation, as the Humanity Front's founder demanded of his staff. For all they could do, they could not match the speed of their attacker.
He put them down as they blocked him, both bodyguards striking together, trying to split his focus. In one hand he had a heavy-frame revolver, and he used it like a club, shattering the nose of one man in a gout of bright blood. The other of Taggart's guards took a shattering strike to the knee that broke bone. His gun didn't clear its holster; instead, a following hit spun him into the dirt.
Taggart was at the door, Sandoval's hands on his back, shoving him toward the armored safety of the limo's interior.
Isaias turned and the killer was there, his face twisted in a grimace, cold augmented eyes that still held a spark of very human anger. 'No, please don't!'
Kicking the door shut, the assassin threw Sandoval to the ground and leveled the revolver at William Taggart's head.
The target raised his hands in a gesture of self-protection.
All around there was screaming and shouting, the buzz of the drones, the clatter of weapons snapping into fire mode-but Saxon didn't hear that. The only thing that reached him was Taggart's question.
'D-did they send you?' he stuttered. 'Was it them? Did they send you?'
The Diamondback's hammer clicked to the ready and he held the aim. The moment stretched like tallow, becoming long and fluid, extending away. All it would take would be the slightest pressure on the trigger. One shot and one kill, and it would be done.
He had no reason to care about William Taggart's life. Men like him detested what Saxon was, thought him to be less than human. How much pain had the Humanity Front and their radical cohorts in Purity First caused for people like him?
And how much more blood would be shed if he did this? How much more persecution and death would come from this one man's murder, here and now? Was that a fair trade for Anna Kelso's life?
'Fuck!' Saxon's curse exploded from his lips and he let the gun drop. He couldn't do it. He could not let himself be Namir's weapon in the
Illuminati's secret war.
Confusion flooded Taggart's face. 'Who…? Who are you?'
And then another voice echoed in his skull. 'You gutless prick. I knew you'd choke when the time came.'
From the corner of his eye, Saxon saw a shimmer of sunlight off the lens of a rifle scope, up on the roof of the library building. 'Sniper!' he roared, grabbing a handful of Taggart's jacket and pulling him down behind the limousine. His cry was drowned out by the crack of a heavy caliber shot.
Taggart fell out of the sight line, the hum of the round buzzing scant centimeters from Saxon's cheek; in the next moment he heard a wet thud and a strangled cry.
Turning, he found the Peller woman on her back, a blossom of red growing on her chest, blood staining the white gravel beneath her. Her sightless eyes stared up into the cloudy sky.
Saxon spun and aimed his gun toward the rooftop, but Hardesty was already moving, vanishing into the library. Amid the confusion and the chaos, he vaulted the hood of the car and ran for the windows of the building, scattering the reporters like panicked birds.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Palais des Nations-Geneva-Switzerland
Building B was the library, the archive, and the League of Nations Museum, closed today because of security concerns over the meeting and as such empty of visitors. Saxon broke in through a ground-floor window and blinked his cyberoptics through their scan modes, sweeping the big chamber for motion. Lines of high bookshelves formed shadowed lanes running the length of the building, and above a balconied area contained the glass cases of the museum exhibits and the interactive hologram tour guides.
Hardesty and Saxon found each other at the same moment; the sniper was moving with the Longsword rifle at his hip, and in one fluid movement he swung it up to his shoulder and fired.
Saxon vaulted to the floor, landing in a tuck and roll as a heavy rack of books exploded into confetti. He was in the worst place he could have been. Hardesty had the height advantage, looking down from the second floor, and the range to make the high-powered rifle work for him;
Saxon had a revolver with a single bullet.
It wasn't just the lay of the land that was working against him. Outside, the Swiss police were gathering their wits and he had maybe a minute before they would pile into the library, mob-handed. And he knew one thing for certain; if he was going to find Anna Kelso, he would have to go through Scott Hardesty to do it.
As if on cue, the sniper called out to him. 'Hey, limey! Thanks for the help, man. No matter how this plays out now, you've done the job for us!
