“When’s he coming?”
“I don’t know. It might be tomorrow. It might be in thirty years’ time. It might be never. Or I might have caught him before he ever reaches Velaines.”
“Uh, right, okay.”
“Now turn around.”
“What?”
“You heard.” She got to her feet, the little weapon still pointing at him. Sabbah reluctantly turned to face the door. His hands were grabbed, forcing him to drop the maidbot box. A cold band of malmetal coiled around his wrists immobilizing them. “What the hell…”
“You’re under arrest for theft.”
“You’ve got to be fucking joking! I said I’d help you. That was the deal.” He turned his head to try to look at her. The weapon was jabbed into his jaw.
“There is no deal. You made a choice.”
“That was the deal!” he yelled furiously. “I help you, you get me off this rap. Jesus!”
“You are mistaken,” she said relentlessly. “I didn’t say that. You committed a crime. You must face the consequences. You must be brought to justice.”
“Fuck you, bitch. Fuck you. I hope your terrorist blows up a hundred hospitals, and schools. I hope he wipes out your whole planet.”
“He won’t. He’s only interested in one planet. And with your help, we can stop him from damaging it further.”
“My help?” The word came out as a squeak he was so shocked. “You stupid bitch, you can suck me and I’d never help you now. We had a deal.”
“Very well. I will lodge a plea with the judge, asking him for leniency.”
“Huh?” This was so weird it was doing his head in. Right from the start the woman scared him. He wasn’t even sure she was a policewoman anymore. More like a serial killer.
“I will tell him you cooperated fully, and agreed to be my informer. The file will not be encrypted when it is attached to your court record. Do you think your friends will access it when they see you receiving a light sentence? Will they be happy about what it says? My colleagues have already arrested them for tonight’s robbery, by the way. I expect they’ll be curious about how we knew.”
“Oh, goddamn.” Sabbah was near to tears. He wanted this whole nightmare to end. “You can’t do that to me. They’ll kill me, a total death. You don’t know what they’re like.”
“I think I do. Now, are you going to tell me when my target turns up?”
So through clenched teeth he said, “Yes.”
And that had been the way of it for nine years. He’d been given a suspended jail term for the robbery, and made to perform two hundred hours’ citizen service. It was the last time he’d done a job—well, anything major, anyway, just the occasional rip off.
And every three weeks there would be a message in his e-butler’s hold file asking him if the man had come. Every time he replied no.
Nine years, and that superbitch had never let it go. “Time,” she’d told him on the way to the police station, “lessens nothing.” She’d never said what would happen if he didn’t tell her. But then, it wasn’t something he wanted to find out.
So Sabbah walked for several blocks, leaving the chapter house behind. That way his e-butler would be operating through a cybersphere node that wasn’t anywhere near the building. The chapter had several tech-types; heavily idealistic about total access they all sailed close to anarchistic beliefs, believing all information should be free. They also smoked things they shouldn’t and played sensory immersion games for most of their waking hours. But they did have an unnerving habit of delivering the goods when databanks had to be cracked for the cause. Sabbah wouldn’t put it past the Party’s senior cadre to mount a simple surveillance operation around the chapter building.
His e-butler entered the code she’d given him. The connection was placed immediately, which was unnerving if not entirely surprising. Sabbah took a deep breath. “He’s here.”
Adam Elvin took his time in the lobby of the Scarred Suit club while the hostess dealt with his coat. His retinal inserts adapted to the low lighting easily enough, bringing up an infrared profiling that banished shadows for him. But he wanted a moment to take in the whole scene. As clubs went it was pretty standard; booths around the wall, each with an e-seal curtain for privacy, tables and chairs on the main floor, a long bar with an extensive number of bottles on the shelves, and a small stage where the boys, girls, and ladyboys of the Sunset Angels troupe danced. The lighting was low, with topaz and purple spots casting their shady beams onto the dark wood of the fittings. The music was loud, a drab software synth that kept up a constant beat for the performers to remove their clothes to. There was more money in here than there should have been, he thought. That made it protected.
At one o’clock in the morning, every table was taken, and the crowd of lowlifes around the stage was enthusiastically waving notes in the faces and crotches of the two dancers. Several booths were occluded by shimmering force fields. Adam frowned at that, but it was only to be expected. As he watched, one of the Sunset Angels was led over to a booth by the manager. The force field sparkled and allowed them through. Adam’s handheld array had the capacity to pierce the e-seal, but the probe would be detected.
So many hiding places was a risk. Again, one he was used to. And in a protected joint, they wouldn’t take kindly to police.
“Excuse me,” the doorman said. He was being friendly, not that it mattered, cellular reprofiling had given him the same kind of bulk as Adam, except his wasn’t fat.
“Sure.”
The doorman glided his hands above Adam’s jacket and trousers. They were heavily OCtattooed, the circuits fluorescing claret as they scanned for anything dangerous.
“I’m here to meet Ms. Lancier,” Adam told the hostess as the doorman cleared him. She led him around the edge of the main room to a booth two places down from the bar. Nigel Murphy was already there.
For an arms dealer, Rachael Lancier wasn’t inconspicuous. She wore a bright scarlet dress with a low front. Long chestnut hair was arranged in an elaborate wave, with small luminescent stars glimmering among the strands. Her rejuvenation had returned her to her early twenties, when she was very attractive. He knew it was a rejuvenation, possibly even a second or third. Her attitude gave her away. No real twenty-two-year-old possessed a confidence bordering on glacial.
Her bodyguard was a small thin man with a pleasant smile, as low-key as she was blatant. He activated the e-seal as soon as Adam’s beer arrived, wrapping the open side of the booth in a dull platinum veil. They could see out into the club, but the patrons were presented with a blank shield.
“That was quite a list,” Rachael said.
Adam paused for a moment to see if she was going to ask what it was for, but she wasn’t that unprofessional. “Is it a problem for you?”
“I can get all of it for you. But I have to say the combat armor will take time. That’s a police issue system; I normally provide small arms for people with somewhat lower aspirations than yours.”
“How much time?”
“For the armor, ten days, maybe two weeks. I have to acquire an authorized user certificate first.”
“I don’t need one.”
She raised her cocktail glass and took a sip, looking at him over the rim. “That doesn’t help me, because I do need it. Look, the rest of your list is either in storage or floating around the underground market, I can pull it in over the next few days. But that armor, that has to come from legitimate suppliers, and they have to have the certificate before they’ll even let it out of their factory.”
“Can you get the certificate?”
“I can.”
“How much?” he asked before she could start on her sales pitch.
“In Velaines dollars, a hundred thousand. There are a number of people involved, none of them cheap.”
“I’ll pay you eighty.”
“I’m sorry, this isn’t some kind of market stall. I’m not bargaining. That’s the price.”
“I’ll pay you eighty, and I’ll also pay you to package the rest of the list the way I require.”
She frowned. “What sort of packaging?”
Adam handed over a memory crystal. “Every weapon is to be broken down into its components. They are to be installed in various pieces of civil and agricultural equipment I have waiting in a warehouse. The way it’s laid out, the components will be unidentifiable no matter how they are scanned or examined. The instructions are all there.”
“Given the size of your list, that’s a lot of work.”
“Fifteen thousand. I’m not bargaining.”
She licked her lips. “How are you paying?”
“Earth dollars, cash, not an account.”
“Cash?”
“Is that a problem?”
“Your list will cost you seven hundred and twenty thousand. That’s a lot of money to carry around.”
“Depends what you’re used to.” He reached into his jacket and pulled out a thick bundle of notes. “That’s fifty thousand. It’s enough to get you started and prove my intent. Once you’ve assembled the list, give me the location of your secure warehouse where I can send my machinery. When it arrives there, I’ll pay you a third of the remaining money. When you’ve installed it, I’ll pay you the remainder.”
Rachael Lancier’s poise faltered slightly. She gave her bodyguard a glance, and he picked up the notes. “It’s good to do business with you, Huw,” she said.
“I want daily updates on the state of play.”
“You’ll get them.”
Chief Investigator Paula Myo left her Paris office three minutes after getting the call from Sabbah. It took her eighteen minutes to get across town to the CST station. It was only an eight minute wait on the platform for the next express. She arrived on Velaines within forty minutes.
Two senior detectives, Don Mares and Maggie Lidsey from the Tokat metropolitan police, were waiting for her when the taxi delivered her to their headquarters. Given the level of the request for cooperation from the Intersolar Serious Crimes Directorate, the two detectives had no trouble requisitioning a conference office and departmental array time. Their captain also made it clear to them that he expected them to provide genuine assistance to the Chief Investigator. “She’ll file a report on
