Cauldron of Ghosts (31 page)

In the case of this dead drop, once the agent entered the privacy of the booth, he or she entered or retrieved the data using a one-time pad. Again, the term “pad” was of antique origin. What this dead drop actually used was the text of a popular electronic cookbook that anyone might have in their com unit. The cookbook’s menu items were selected in sequence of prime numbers working backward from one hundred. Victor figured the security was worth the risk that they’d eventually run out of prime numbers. There were twenty-five prime numbers between one hundred and one. The likelihood that the dead drop would be needed more times than that for separate and distinct information transfers was fairly low.

Victor didn’t bother decrypting the information on the spot. For one thing, there was probably wasn’t anything there. For another, it would take too long. No one spent
that
much time in a booth listening to a robot fortune-teller, no matter how gullible they were. The robot was a cheap model with only a few dozen “fortunes” to be told and none of them took more than a minute.

The third dead drop he visited that day was his favorite, although it was probably the chanciest of the three.

Like any planet with a mild climate, Mesa had oceans and the oceans were full of fish. Not “fish,” precisely, but the similarity of Mesa’s mobile marine life to Terran analogs was close enough that everyone used the term without thinking about it. Convergent evolution had produced sea-creatures which were torpedo-shaped, bilaterally symmetrical, had heads and tails—although the tails had horizontal flukes like those of Terran whales—and fins. A few more than most Terran fish, and predominantly lobe-finned rather than ray-finned.

Close enough for everyone to call them “fish,” and never mind that the internal organs were quite a bit different.

When you combined “lots of fish” with “lots of poverty” what you invariably got were fish markets.
Big
fish markets—with lots and lots of fish being displayed on lots and lots of fish-seller’s stands. Big stands, too.

The number of such stands fluctuated, but it was never less than twenty. Since the Mesan week had the same number of days as the Terran week that most humans still kept as a standard—seven days, although the names varied a lot—and Victor was partial to prime numbers, the routine was easy to remember. Place the message at whatever fish stand corresponded to the day of the week, figuring the week ran from Monday to Sunday, counting from the south and skipping the prime number of two.

The day was Thursday. That meant the eleventh stand from the south. He’d also check the seventh and fifth stands, because he couldn’t assume the agent leaving the message would have done so on the same day Victor arrived. He or she might have dropped it on Wednesday or Tuesday. If they’d dropped it earlier than that it was a moot point. Fish were a perishable product as well as an edible one. Victor figured that any message more than three days old had been discarded or eaten.

Well, not “eaten,” since the message would have been inserted in the flukes and nobody ate flukes except devotees to one of the Mesan versions of fish stew that used the entire fish, even the internal organs. But it didn’t matter, because the message would be on a chip delicate enough that it would dissolve entirely if cooked. (Nobody, not even the poorest seccy on Mesa, ate fish flukes raw.)

The trick, obviously, was in spotting the right fish. The most commonly sold fish on Mesa was called
bacau
and could be found on any fish stand. The agent dropping the fish would insert the chip into the flukes of a
bacau
resting at the rear of the display, and select the one that had the most vivid lateral stripe. It was the commonly held belief on Mesa—seccy belief; free citizens rarely ate
bacau
—that a vivid lateral stripe indicated an excess of pollutants in the flesh.

That belief was accurate, as it happened. But Victor didn’t care about that one way or another because he had no intention of eating the fish.
Bacau
had an oily flavor he didn’t care for, which was the reason free citizens usually avoided it. The reason he’d chosen the stripe method was because a
bacau
with a vivid lateral stripe at the back of the stand was the one most likely to be passed over by real customers.

There was one other feature of this dead drop that Victor liked, although it also increased the risk. (Very slightly, though.) He’d have to wait before he’d find out if there’d been any messages at the first two drops. Here, he’d know right away, since no one would insert a chip into a fish fluke unless they had something to pass on.

Victor glanced around to see if any of the vendors running the stall were watching. If they were, he’d have to buy the fish. He didn’t care about the cost, but hauling fish around would be a nuisance.

But no one was watching. It took only a few seconds to feel the flukes of the four
bacau
who had the brightest stripes. The chip was delicate, and not large, and to the naked eyes just looked like part of the fluke. But it was still detectable if a person knew what to look for.

Nothing. He moved on to the seventh stand. Again, no one was watching. There, he checked only three fish. None of the others in the back of the stand had a prominent stripe.

Also nothing. He moved on to the fifth stand.

And found a chip in the first fluke he touched.

And . . . one of the vendors was eyeing him. Not quite with suspicion, but teetering on the edge.

Nothing for it. He’d have to buy the blasted thing.

On a positive note,
bacau
weren’t a particularly large fish. This one weighed less than a kilo.

On a negative note,
bacau
were smelly—and if he didn’t get it into a refrigerator pretty soon, the fish would get downright stinky. They didn’t keep very well. But Victor figured he could find a place to get rid of it without being seen before he left the fish market.

He went up to the vendor and inquired as to the price, making sure to lay on his accent as thickly as possible.

The vendor didn’t quite sneer at the idiot offworlder as he charged him for a crappy
bacau
the same price he’d charge a knowledgeable customer for a delicacy. But he came close.

That was the reaction Victor wanted, of course. There was no way he’d ever be able to pass as a native Mesan. The next best option was to get typecast as a damn fool tourist who didn’t know up from down. One who’d buy a
bacau
with a vivid lateral stripe for as much money as he could have spent to get a shelled
perido
or half a kilo of
kint.

* * *

On the way out, Victor dumped the fish in the most logical place—onto the pile of
bacau
displayed at the stand nearest to the exit. By then, he’d extracted the cyberchip and slid it into his pocket. He’d have preferred to hide it in his mouth, so he could have swallowed it in an emergency. But the material used to make that type of chip really was quite delicate. It didn’t handle saliva any better than hot soup.

Once he was back in the cab, he gave Bertie another cheery smile. He was now in a very good mood. He hadn’t expected to find anything at any of the dead drop locations. No matter what it was—he’d have to wait a while before he could decrypt it—the message was probably good news. At least one of the seccy rebels they’d dealt with on their previous mission was still alive and functioning.

Well, probably. It was also possible that they’d all been captured, had divulged too much when interrogated, and the message in the dead drop had actually been placed there by Mesan security agents with nefarious intent and evil design.

But it was a nice sunny day and Victor wasn’t inclined to worry. Why should he? Hadn’t the day started off with an ambush turned around in a sprightly manner? Surely that was a good omen, even if Victor didn’t believe in silly superstitions.

“Where to now?” asked Bertie.

“I’m done with my errands for the day. Drop me off at the same place you picked me up.” He pulled out his com. “And give me a number where I can reach you. I’ll be needing cab service pretty often, I’m thinking.”

* * *

Hell of a nice guy, Achmed. Bertie wished all his customers were like that.

Chapter 33

“I’ll be honest with you, Mr. Huygens. As I’m sure you know, there’s something of a glut in that market at the moment—has been for a while, now—and it’s not a big market to begin with. So I have to tell you the same thing I’ve told the other vendors who’ve approached me lately. Unless you’re willing to share the risks with us, the price I can offer you for the items is pretty low.”

Lajos Irvine frowned. “What risks are you referring to, specifically?” He was tempted to ask why the market in body parts and tissues had a glut, but refrained from do so. His cover identity as “Carlos Huygens” was that of a fence working in that market. Presumably, he’d already know the answer.

Sitting in a chair across the desk from Lajos, Triêu Chuanli leaned back, raised his arms and clasped his hands behind his neck. “The usual. It’s one risk, really, with several dimensions. Human tissues and body parts—especially functional organs—degenerate quickly unless you preserve them. And doing that properly requires a lot more than just tossing them into a freezer. I’m sure I don’t have to spell that out for you, since you have the same problem at your end.”

Lajos had to scramble mentally to get out of the hole he’d just dug himself into. A fence should have known that already, also.

This was the problem with trying to penetrate a target using a preconceived scheme like the one Vickers had come up with. You were likely to stumble over your own cover because you’d had to fit the cover to the scheme instead of developing a plan based on a cover which you could establish solidly.

There was an old saw about authors that Lajos had heard once:
writers write what they know about.
The same principle applied to covert agents like himself.

“Yeah, sure. Just wanted to be sure we were on the same wavelength. How much of the risk do you propose I take on?”

He held his breath, hoping that wasn’t also something well established in the trade.

But Chuanli didn’t seem suspicious, so apparently it wasn’t. “The way the market is now, we’d want you to cover thirty percent of any expenses incurred until the product is actually sold. That’s the same deal we’ve made with our other vendors.”

Lajos decided that was something he could ask about safely enough. “How many competitors am I dealing with here?”

“Just two. And they’re not really competitors the way I think you’re using the term. Neither party are pros. They’re making what amounts to private sales. And one of them is just a possibility anyway. The agreement’s been made but they still haven’t come up with the goods.”

The gangster who was Jurgen Dusek’s top lieutenant smiled thinly. “Which means they’re waiting on someone to die but don’t want to do the work themselves. Most likely a family member. I didn’t inquire, of course.”

Lajos nodded, doing his best to give the gesture an aura of knowledge and familiarity.
Yeah, sure, I run into that all the time myself.

In point of fact, it hadn’t even occurred to him that people might be selling off the body parts and tissues of their own family members. Seccies were generally poor, compared to free citizens, but in absolute terms they weren’t
that
poor. An especially indigent family might have trouble covering funeral expenses, but that could always be handled by donating the body to a university or research institute. They wouldn’t get any money for it, but the tissues and body parts of someone dying of old age—or disease, although that was rare—weren’t worth much anyway on the black market.

The exceptions might be someone who died accidentally or committed suicide while still young and healthy. Or was murdered, although that might involve the police too much. Lajos supposed a family in dire straits might decide to sell off the body under such circumstances. But that obviously wasn’t the case here, since the suppliers involved hadn’t yet produced the goods. Why wait, unless . . .

It suddenly dawned on Lajos that there was one scenario he could envision that would explain the matter. What if someone had a family member who was dying of injuries but, for some reason, had to keep that fact quiet?

Someone like a criminal, maybe, injured in the course of committing a crime. A robbery gone badly wrong, for instance. Or . . .

A Ballroom terrorist. Or a member of one of the seccy revolutionary groups. They’d all been hammered badly in the crackdown after Green Pines. Which, now that he thought it about—belatedly, alas—was also what probably explained the glut in the market recently.

He started to get a little excited. Maybe he could turn Vickers’ idiot scheme around and actually get some results from it. What was that old expression?
Make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.

“So, are those terms acceptable to you, Mr. Huygens?”

Lajos realized he’s let his mind drift. “Uh, yes, Mr. Chuanli. Thirty percent of the costs. I can handle that.”

“How soon can I expect a delivery?”

“That depends on you, really. What’s selling most quickly right now?” Then, realizing that was another question he should probably already know the answer to, he added hurriedly: “For your customers, I mean. I don’t want to assume the general market conditions apply.”

“The fastest turnover is always with juvenile body parts. The younger, the better, is the general rule.”

“That’s what I figured. I just wanted to be sure.” Lajos rose from his chair and extended his hand across the desk. “Give me three days.”

“I’ll be expecting you, then.” Chuanli got up as well and they shook hands.

It took a while to exit the building, since Dusek conducted his operation out of the largest edifice in Neue Rostock. In fact, it was one of the largest in the entire city of Mendel. The building was not especially tall—just under three hundred stories—because of the height restrictions in seccy areas. But it had originally been designed as a combined light manufacturing and commercial complex. It was squat and broad; almost ziggurat-shaped if a ziggurat had ever risen a kilometer high and had shallowly recessed terraces and tiers. Almost four centuries had gone by since the building was erected, and over the years it had become a gigantic labyrinth. As had Neue Rostock crime lords before him, Dusek saw to it that there were no accurate plans or blueprints of the layout in existence—and at least once every five years he had new construction and demolition carried out to make obsolete whatever extensive knowledge of the interior had fallen into hostile (or official) hands. He maintained a small army of youngsters on his payroll who had three jobs and three jobs only—learn the maze, serve as guides for those who needed them, and keep the knowledge to themselves. Anyone found blabbing to others about the building’s layout—or even with written notes or sketches in their possession—would be . . .

Disappeared. There were an untold—literally, untold—number of nooks and crannies and secret chambers and passages in the enormous edifice which might serve that purpose. And then be sealed over.

Eventually, the eleven-year-old girl who’d served as his escort led Lajos out of the building onto a street. Lajos looked up at the sky. From what he could see, it’d probably start raining by late afternoon, but right now it was still a bright and sunny day. Well . . . as bright and sunny as the narrow man-made canyons between giant buildings ever got.

That matched his mood. Things were looking up. Well . . .
might
be looking up. It never paid to get ahead of yourself.

* * *

“I think he’s a phony,” said Triêu Chuanli.

The man looking at Chuanli in the com screen cocked his head. “Why?” asked Jurgen Dusek. The crime boss wasn’t asking the question in a challenging manner. He’d just watched the recording Triêu had made of the interview and had come to the same tentative conclusion himself. But Dusek was in the habit of encouraging his subordinates to explain their reasoning. It was one of the things that made him a pleasure to work for—as long as you stayed clear of angering him, of course. Then Mr. Nice Boss became something very different, very quickly.

“He’s fumbling a little,” Triêu said. “I don’t think he really knows the business that well. What kind of fence has to ask the questions he did?”

Dusek nodded. “Yeah, that was my sense of it also. Okay, so we’re agreed he’s a phony. But what kind of phony? Who is he really and what does he really want?”

“Well, he could be working for one of our rivals who’s thinking of a little encroachment, or just scouting out the territory. McLeod, maybe, or Bachue the Nose.”

Dusek shook his head. “Possible, but not likely. McLeod’s too cautious. And while the Nose is a sure-enough witch sometimes, she just doesn’t have the heft to seriously consider messing with us. Besides, why use a trafficker in this trade for the purpose? It’d make a lot more sense to go with something less flaky. You know what the body parts and tissues market is like. Up, down, up, down—sometimes I’m tempted to get out of it altogether.”

Chuanli shrugged. “Just raising the possibility. I don’t think it’s at all likely myself. But the alternative makes even less sense to me.”

Dusek knew what he was talking about. The alternative explanation was that “Mr. Huygens” was working for one or another of Mesa’s security agencies. Probably one of the government ones although there was a chance he might be employed by one of the private contractors.

Normally, Dusek would have agreed with Chuanli that that was even less likely than another gang being involved. Why would a security agency bother with such an elaborate rigmarole? The agents handling Neue Rostock for the two most important official agencies—the Tableland Auditor Board and the Interservice Verification Agency—both knew how to reach Dusek if they wanted to find out anything. The TAB agent, Phuong Wilson, even had one of his private numbers.

Jurgen made it a point to stay on reasonably good terms with Mesa’s security forces, especially the Tabbies. That meant keeping the Ballroom out of Neue Rostock altogether and keeping a lid on the seccy radicals. Once in a while—not often; Jurgen had no more love for Mesan authorities than any seccy—he’d even turn over one of them. (Although never a member of the Ballroom, which could be really dangerous.)

So why would anyone screw around with something this elaborate?

Triêu put into words the same conclusion Jurgen was coming to. Coming toward, it would be better to say. Everything was still tentative.

“My guess? One of two things—or more likely, both of them together. One of the security outfits has a new boss and he or she is doing the usual routine.”

“New broom sweeps clean. New and improved service under new management. Blah blah blah. Okay. What’s the other possibility?”

“Everything’s starting to come apart at the seams, boss. Slowly, at first—but it’ll speed up, you watch.”

Dusek made a face. “I don’t want to hear that, Triêu. Business is fine the way it is.”

His lieutenant shrugged. “I don’t like it either. But I think Manpower finally pissed off one too many crowds—and from the looks of it, this new crowd can hammer everyone else flat. The Sollies just lost, what? Four hundred superdreadnoughts?”

“Thereabouts.” The news of the destruction of Filareta’s fleet at Manticore had just reached Mesa. Just been made known to the public, at least. The powers-that-be had undoubtedly learned of it weeks earlier.

Dusek could follow the logic himself. All too easily. “And if the Manties can manage that, who’s to say they can’t decide to scrub Manpower out of existence?”

Chuanli nodded. “And if you and I can figure that out, so can lots of other people. Like security agents.”

“That still doesn’t explain this guy.”

“Not specifically, no. But I’m willing to bet we’re going to start seeing a lot of weird stuff happening. Everybody and their grandmother is going to be working the angles.”

Chuanli’s hypothesis was just that, a hypothesis. But Dusek decided he was likely right.

“Okay. Let’s string this ‘Mr. Huygens’ along some more, then. See what happens. In the meantime, I’ll give my tame Tabby a call and see if he can tell me anything.”

* * *

“You heard me,” Lajos said. “Babies, infants and toddlers. Tissues’ll do, but functioning organs are better.”

The security officer on the screen kept staring at him. Maybe she was dimwitted.

“Get over it, Officer Mendez,” Lajos said. “You’ve got to have some on stock.”

“But . . .” Mendez looked to the side, at something or someone—probably someone—Lajos couldn’t see. After a couple of seconds, she looked back. “We’re running a prison here, Agent Irvine, not a nursery.”

Definitely a dimwit. Either that, or—being fair; you never knew—she was laboring under dimwit orders. “I know that. Here’s what else I know. You maintain the second largest morgue in the city. I can’t believe you’re not getting spillover from other morgues, especially the main police morgue. Their business comes in spurts, and yours is a lot more predictable. So have somebody check. There’ll be at least some of the stuff I need.”

Abruptly, she nodded. “I’ll get back to you.”

* * *

After she cut off the contact, Officer Mendez turned to her supervisor, Lieutenant Jernigan. She’d been standing far enough away not to be visible on the screen. She’d had no particular reason to do that. It was just the ingrained habit of someone who shirked responsibility as much as possible.

“What’s the story, Lieutenant?”

“I don’t think we have any. He’d be right, normally. But things have been a little hectic lately.”

Hectic.
Leave it to Jernigan to be slack about everything, including the way she described things. It’d be better to say that the correctional center had bordered on chaos ever since Green Pines. Supervisors had been forced to improvise. One of their hastily made decisions had probably been to lighten the workload on the staff by jettisoning any cases that seemed cut-and-dried.

Such as cases involving babies and infants dying in accidents. Unless there were clear indications of foul play, just feed them into the incinerator and give the ashes to the grieving families. That was quick, easy—and best of all, required very little labor. The crematoriums were mostly automated.