Amanda's Eyes (29 page)

End game, and we both knew it.  We
were on his turf and to say he had the upper hand would be the understatement
of the century.  That didn’t mean I intended to roll over and play by his
rules.

Not as long as I had a choice,
anyway.

The minute he turned Grand
Inquisitor on me—a mood swing I expected sooner rather than later—and made with
the ultrasound, heroic resistance would die a quick and painful death.  Followed
by the rest of me, ten seconds after I spilled my guts.  That being the case, my
best shot was to postpone the inquisition as long as possible.  Draw out the
prologue and pray for a miracle.  Not the most proactive survival strategy, but
it was all I had.

I ignored the invitation to blubber
like a baby and beg for mercy embedded in Conover’s opening gambit and asked, “Where’s
Dennis?  Is he all right?”

“For the moment.  Of course, that
could change, if you don’t cooperate.”

“Give me a break, Malcolm.  You and
I both know that will change no matter what I do.”

He acknowledged the truth with a shrug,
as he studied my face
. 
“You don’t seem surprised to see me.  How long
have you known?”

“Long enough.”

“Sidorov.”  He pronounced the name
like a death sentence.

“Before.”  I wanted to knock him off
balance and wipe that smug smile off his face.  I awarded myself a homerun when
said smile melted into a half-frown.

“Impossible.  How?  Who told you?”

I slowly shook my head.  “You know
me, Malcolm.  Never reveal a source.”

“You might as well; you will
eventually.”

Fear coiled heavily in my belly, but
I battled it down and changed the subject.  “It was the business card, right?”

Come on, Charon, impress me.  You
know you want to.

It took him a heartbeat to follow my
course change, but the
I’ve got you where I want you
smile gradually reappeared. 
“Figured that out, did you?  You have to admit it’s a great gimmick.  Designed
in-house.  We sandwiched nanocircuits between two layers of cardstock and built
in the capability to activate the circuits remotely via satellite.”

“That’s how you tracked us.”

He was really enjoying himself now. 
“I didn’t track you.  I didn’t have to.  You flew straight into my arms.”

“You wish.”  But we
had
been
off course.  “How did you pull it off?”

“Let’s just say I have a business
arrangement with NavStar’s chief systems designer.”

I had to fight to keep the shock off
my face.  The NavStar Corporation holds one of the few monopolies allowed by
international law.  With billions of John Does piloting vehicles ranging in
size from subcompacts to semis, world governments finally decided a universal
navigation system was the only way to standardize air-traffic control and avoid
intercontinental chaos in the skies.  NavStar won the contract, gave the world
UniNav, and the rest is history.

I narrowed my eyes.  “You expect me
to believe you got to NavStar’s head geek?”

“With the right intelligence and/or the
right incentives, you can breach any system or organization.  We’ve proven that
time and time again.”

No argument there.  Their ability to
hit targets the rest of us considered unreachable was one of the Ferrymen’s
main
claims to fame.

“So that’s why our van changed
course
.”

“Um-hm.  My operative at NavStar built
a trapdoor into the software according to my exact specifications.  As soon as we
activated the nanocircuits embedded in it, the business card transmitted the
appropriate signal to your onboard computer and co-opted the navigation
system.”

“You hijacked the van, then knocked
us out.”

He nodded.  “Otherwise, you might
have ejected over New Mexico and lived to fight another day.”

Implying that was now out of the
question.  I shoved the fear that he was right out of my mind and rolled on. 
“KZ-14?”

“Yes. 
The cardstock was impregnated with
it.  Heat generated when the circuits activated kicked off a chemical chain
reaction, and the gas was released.”

“Couldn’t have been a very big dose,
packaged in a business card.”

“Barely measurable,” he agreed. 
“But in an enclosure that small, three hundred micrograms of super-concentrated
KZ were more than enough.”

We were running out of topic in a
hurry, so I frantically wracked my brain for a fresh tack.  “The chip.  On my
spinal cord.”  A slight widening of his eyes told me I had surprised him again. 
“I was at Sadie Carter’s virtopsy.”

“Ah.”

“So about the chip.”

“What about it?”

“Can it be removed?  If it can and
is, will the effects be reversed?”

He stared at me like I was nuts,
then shook his head and stood.  “I know what you’re trying to do, but you’re
only postponing the inevitable.  Last chance.  Tell me what I want to know, and
I’ll make the end quick and painless.”

I swallowed hard, but managed to
keep my voice steady.  “No, you won’t.  This is personal, right?  I want to
make you pay, you want to make me pay.  Same as the courier.”

“Of course I want to make you pay,
but it’s not personal.”

Oh, like that made it better.  On
the contrary, I felt irrationally slighted.  Like if it was personal for me, it
should be personal for him, too.  Maybe I
was
nuts.

“Payback is never personal,” he
explained patiently, “it’s simply good business.  Make someone an example, you
send a message.  The stronger the message, the more likely it is people will
think twice before crossing you.  But I might be willing to trade public
relations benefits for expediency.”

“No dice.”  He shrugged and took a
step toward me but paused when I blurted, “You won’t get away with it, you
know.”  B-movie line, but the best I could do.

“I won’t?”  If the twinkle in his
eye was any indication, my melodramatic warning amused him all over again. 
“Who’s going to stop me?”

“CIIS.  They know all about you.”

“They may know about me, but they
won’t arrest me.”

“I wouldn’t bet on that, if I were
you.”

“Bets are for suckers.  A few hours
from now, this ranch house will burn to the ground, apparently with me in it.  By
the time the feds sift through the ashes for my remains—which, of course,
they’ll find, complete with the proper DNA—my Boatmen will have scattered to
the four winds, and I’ll have slipped into one of a dozen prepared identities. 
I’ve got twenty billion credits spread over fifty numbered accounts.  I’ll lay
low for a week to heal from the cosmetic surgery, then quietly revamp the organization. 
We’ll reopen for business before you know it.”

“You don’t have a few hours.”  I
tried to sound more certain than hopeful.  “The cavalry is already on its way.”

“I hate to disappoint you, but
you’re wrong.”

“You sure about that?”

“As sure as I am of the fact that the
same device that assumed control of your navigation system broadcast a downed-vehicle
code, too.  Your would-be rescuers are too busy scouring the Sangre de Cristo
Mountains to search for you here.  I’m afraid you’ll be a far-from-fond memory
long before your so-called
cavalry
arrives.  Besides, they would never get
past our defenses.”

“Armed guards and a force shield up
to fifteen thousand feet.  Yeah, we know.”  His annoyed frown marked another
small victory.  “I’ll admit you’ve got an impressive setup,” I continued, “but I’ve
heard that with the right intelligence and/or the right incentives, you can
breach any system or organization.”  A satisfying zinger, but it backfired on
me.

“Then I had better not waste any
more time,” he said, starting toward the gurney and sliding his right hand into
his pocket.

Visions of peewee ultrasound devices
flashed through my brain.  Shackled by my own body, panic and despair crashing
through me, all I could do was shake my head.  By the time my lips formed a
soundless, “Wait!” he was on me.

It wasn’t what I expected.

The gizmo Conover pulled out of his
pocket had nothing to do with sound waves and everything to do with
high-pressure jets of pharmaceuticals.  The common injector—favored by doctors
and junkies alike—was a bit longer than my index finger.  With a plump black body
and a stubby barrel, it could have passed for one of those old timey derringers,
if you lopped off the downward-curving grip and stuck a square, clear-plastic
syringe in the business end.

I teetered between weak-kneed relief
that I wasn’t in for the ultrasonic torture treatment and a fresh surge of
alarm as I watched him push up the sleeve of my pullover and shoot me up.

“What was that?  What did you give
me?”

“Harpatinol,” he said, re-pocketing
the injector.  Sitting back down, he crossed his legs and smiled.  “Known in
the vernacular as a truth serum.  A few short minutes from now, you’ll be
semi-conscious, unable to initiate conversation, but ready, willing, and able to
provide honest answers to any question I care to ask.”  He cocked his head.  “What?”

“I thought you would do me like you
did Sadie.”

“Who?”  His brow furrowed briefly
but cleared when he gave an absent wave of his hand, almost like he was shooing
a fly.  “Oh, her.  Federal agents are inoculated against psychoactive
medications.  You weren’t.”

“Lucky me.”  Was it my overactive imagination,
or did I already feel the drug’s silky tendrils unfurling in my bloodstream?  It
couldn’t possibly work that fast, could it?  Instinctively steeling myself
against a (real or imagined) creeping urge to relax, I blurted, “Why are you
doing this?”

“And to think they say there are no
stupid questions.  I
did
give you a chance to volunteer the information.”

I shook my head.  “I don’t mean
this, with me.  I mean the Ferrymen.  Why?  It’s not like you need the money.”

“You’re right, I don’t.”

“Then why?”

“What good will it do you to know that
now?”

“What harm will it do you to tell me
now?”

He pursed his lips and narrowed his
eyes, probably deciding whether or not to humor me.  Finally, he shrugged.  “Killing
is human nature.  Has been ever since Cain dropped Abel.  Every minute of every
day somebody, somewhere, offs somebody else.  Or wishes they could.  We’re all
killers at heart.”

We’ve all got it in us to go either
way.

“Maybe,” I granted grudgingly, “but
we don’t all give into the urge and the ones who do aren’t usually cold-blooded
murderers for hire.”

“What you call cold-blooded, I call
professional.  Of course, realistically speaking, every hit is a crime of passion. 
On some level, at least.”

“How do you figure?”

“Well, on the one hand, you’ve got
your amateurs.  Somebody sets them off, and in a fit of passion, they do the
deed themselves.  Nine times out of ten they make a mess of it and get caught.

“On the other hand, you’ve got your wishful
thinkers.  They either don’t have the guts to get their hands dirty, or they’re
smart enough to admit they don’t have the skills to commit murder and get away
with it.  But they still want somebody dead, and they want it
passionately
enough to pay big credits to make it happen.  That’s where professionals like
us come in.  We can satisfy their bloodlust by proxy, because we’ve got the
nerve, the skills, and/or the tactical ability they lack.”  He paused before
concluding, “So I suppose you could say I do it because I can.”

“That’s the bottom line?  You murder
people because you
can
?”  The fact that my outraged disbelief was muted,
hazy, and short-lived spoke volumes about the Harpatinol’s progress.

“And because I love it, have ever
since my first safari at age ten.  The hunt.  That heady sense of power you get
when you take a life.  By the time I was sixteen, I realized I had a unique
skill set.  I started looking for a more challenging and rewarding way to use
it.”

“Hunting humans.  For money.”

“Wiliest prey there is, and the
market was certainly there.  Demand grew so quickly, I knew the day would come
when requests for my services would outstrip my individual ability to supply.  I
decided to put together a team.  Handpicked each operator.  Recruited them
young and trained them myself.  My Ferrymen are the best in the world. 
Nobody is beyond our reach.  And
nobody can stop us.”

“Omnipresence and omnipotence?”  My
voice sounded way too mellow, but I couldn’t seem to work myself into a sweat
over it, and the will to even try was slithering through my fingers like a greased
rope.  “See wha’ happens when you start ta believe your own press?  Think you
can play God.”

“Who’s playing?”  He stood, leaned
over me, and thumbed up my eyelids.  “Your pupils are dilated.”  Straightened
and laid two fingers on my wrist.  “Pulse is slow but steady.”

I was drifting now, distant and disconnected. 
“Was’sat mean?”

“It means it’s time for our chat.”

“I don’t wanna talk to you.”

“No, but you’ll talk anyway.  So, let’s
begin.  Question number one:  How did you find out about me, Amanda?”

My last conscious thought was,
No
comment. 
But I never stood a chance.

When the curtain rose again Malcolm
Conover was sitting in the armchair, staring at me like I was an alien life
form. 
Did I talk?
floated up from the groggy depths, but given the way
he was ogling me, I figured the answer was obvious.  Like a magpie.

So I settled for a hoarse, “What
happens next?”

“We wait.”

“For what?”

When he smiled slightly in reply, a
voice in the still-hazy recesses of my brain whispered a reminder that Cheshire
Cat
smiles like his almost never bode well for the recipient.  “Not
what.  Whom.  One of my people.  A specialist.  He’s flying in from Denver.”

“Specialist?”  If the Harpatinol
hadn’t already left me dry-mouthed, the prospect of Conover bringing in some
kind of expert would have done the trick.  “I thought ….”

“That I wanted to kill you myself? 
I do, and I will.  Eventually.”

Still a bit woozy, I played with the
word
eventually
.  Tossed it around and concluded my final countdown was
temporarily on hold.  I had been trying to buy time all along, and now I had
some.

So what’s the catch?

“Why not now?” 
Please tell me I
didn’t just say that.
  But I needn’t have worried.

“You have something I want.”

Don’t ask!
yelled that inner voice, but I couldn’t
help myself.  “What’s that?”

“Your eyes,” he informed me
cheerfully, then stood.  “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some arrangements to
make.”

My horrified gaze was still riveted
to the door five minutes after it closed behind him.