Drakon (15 page)

He could approve of that commonplace aspect, if nothing else: putting up a huge monolith with some equivalent of
Secret Intelligence Headquarters
on a big sign out front had been a bad habit of some of the old Alliance for Democracy's security agencies. Everything else might change across the centuries, but it remained a constant that this line of work attracted both paranoids and the boyish type who liked to show off their affiliation with powerful clandestine networks. Whatever this organization was, it was keeping the latter under control at least.

"Look—what's your name, anyway?"

"John," the young man said. "John Andrews. This is Clete Debrowski."

"Look, Mr. Andrews, I thought I gave you some pretty convincing data."

Andrews leaned back in his swivel chair. It creaked. John Andrews didn't look heavy, but his frame was packed with solid dense muscle.

"Yup, you did, Mr. Lafarge. You know things you definitely shouldn't; about what went on in New York back in '95, and things from extremely classified databanks."

He leaned forward again, the friendly smile dying away from his face. It had never quite reached his eyes. "So why don't you cut this spaceman shit," he spat. "
Who
are you working for, and
what
is going on?"

"Who do you think?" Lafarge said.
They don't believe me,
he realized.
They
seriously
don't
believe me!

"We don't know. We don't know who was dealing with those posse hopheads in the warehouse, or how your deal went wrong, or why you were using them—smuggling biohazards, whatever the hell you were doing. Hell, maybe you're working for the Russians; they may not be communists anymore, but they're not all that friendly. We
do
know it was dirty, and we
do
know you're going to tell us all about it."

He laughed. "Unless you beam up really quick."

Ken braced his palms against the arms of his chair. "Mr. Andrews," he said quietly. "If I don't convince you, events will . . . but by then it will be very late, very late indeed. You're gambling with the future of the entire human race."

"And you're not in the offices of the
National Enquirer,
" Andrews barked. "
Sit
down. This administration takes matters of national security seriously, whatever the previous occupants thought."

Debrowski put two heavy hands on Lafarge's shoulders and pushed, using his considerable weight.

The thin leather cushion smacked under his buttocks, and the high arms cramped him.

"Mr. Andrews," he said quietly. "I appreciate your position, and I realize you think you're doing your duty. In a sense I'm an American too—"

"Not according to our files," Andrews said. "Your ID is good paper but there's nobody of that age, name or Social Security number. I suggest you stop lying."

"—but the stakes are too high. I can't let you detain me.
It
might well find out."

And if it did while he was immobilized and separated from his equipment, he was a dead man. The planet with him.

Debrowski spoke for the first time. "Let?" he said. "
Let
us detain you?"

Andrews loosened his tie. "You're on the third floor of a high-security building," he said. "You're
already
detained. I also suggest you start exercising a little realism."

Good advice,
Lafarge thought regretfully.

His hands darted up behind his head and closed on Debrowski's ears.
Crack.
The older man's nose smacked into the crown of the Samothracian's head. He bellowed with pain, recoiling backward; then struck down with both hands, a double chop that would have severed his opponent's collarbones like green branches . . . if the situation had been what he assumed.

Time slowed as the net laid along his nerves activated.

First level,
he commanded: the biological price was too high for anything more. His bladed palms chopped up and out, thudding into Debrowski's forearms with a meaty, rubbery sensation. He used the momentum to drive himself upward, aiding the powerful spring of his legs and capturing the other man's arms under his own for a second.

Crack. Crack.
He punched the rear of his head into the others face again, slightly harder this time.

Despite the reinforced bone, that was still a little painful for him, but much more so for Debrowski. The bulky figure toppled away behind him. Andrews was coming erect, his lips moving slowly and the gun coming out from under his arm. Lafarge's time-sensor clocked the movement; remarkable reflexes. The automatic system brought his softsuit flowing out from cuffs and collar to complete its coverage of his body.

Cool neutrality insulated his skin, like dipping into dry water; it pressed his short-cropped hair against his scalp.

Transparent,
he commanded—no use giving away more than he had to. The locals would see only a slight shimmer over his skin, if they saw anything at all in the heat of the moment. He turned and leaped through the glass door, one foot driving down on the seat of the chair. Glass exploded away from his outstretched fists as his hundred and ninety pounds dove forward. He landed on his hands and front-rolled.

The outer office was empty; and now he knew why Andrews had insisted on an evening meeting. Fewer witnesses, when they took his sedated body away to someplace secluded.

Smart boy,
he thought. Smart in the day-to-day sense, at least. Pity he didn't have much imagination. Lafarge skidded slightly as he cornered to drive down a corridor between rows of cubicles separated by movable partitions. The disguising shoes gave poor traction; no amount of strength or speed could increase the gripping surface on the soles of his feet. And—

WHACK The 9mm bullet struck the base of his skull. Red-tinged blackness surged in, and the floor came up to strike him. The iron and copper taste of blood filled his mouth as teeth gashed lips or tongue. A diminished
pinnnnnng
caught at the edge of his attention as the ricochet whined off to lose itself in a computer or potted plant or water cooler. He twitched, fingers scrabbling at the synthetic carpet. The softsuit could sense the bullet coming and turn instantly harder than diamond and more frictionless than liquid mercury on dry ice. It couldn't repeal the law of conservation of momentum. A substantial fraction of the bullet's energy moved his head forward, and his brain surged backward in its bath of fluid as inertia prevented it from moving quite in synch.

Time for concussion later.
The combat web dumped chemicals into his carotids and stimulus into the motor centers of his brain. He rose to his knees.

Bang-ptannng.
Again and again; the next three shots hit him between the shoulders, ripping the disguising clothes and torquing his body around just enough to see the pistol coming out the shattered office door with Andrews's face snarling behind it. Partitions collapsed as he lurched against them. He scuttled forward like a mechanical crab on hands and knees, the fabric of his trousers ripping with his haste. More shots, none hitting this time; Andrews wavered sideways as Debrowski's body struck him at the waist.

"
Stop that, you stupid fuck!
" Andrews screamed. He snapshot again as Lafarge pistoned up from the floor, running like an Olympic hurdler and leaping desks with a raking stride. "
I've got him, I've
—"

Another shot struck Lafarge in the back of the knee. The softsuit saved the joint from the sideways leverage, but it cost him momentum toward the windows. The rectangle of the gasgun slapped into his palm, thrown forward by the holster. He shot; the windows burst away in a cloud of needles as the slug of ultracompressed air hammered them out of his way like an invisible piledriver. He followed in a soaring leap.

***

"
Fuck
your nose," Andrews shouted.

The wounded man tumbled sideways, knocking over the wastebasket. The younger agent wrenched the door open—both panels of frosted glass were gone in a pile of shards that shifted treacherously underfoot. He went through in a skittering crouch, gun in a two-handed grip, down the aisle to the windows overlooking the parking lot. The bastard's body would
have
to be there. He wasn't necessarily dead; Andrews was fairly sure he'd hit him with at least one round, and a three-story fall onto pavement had to break bones, but doing wet-work you learned how tough the human body could be. He wouldn't be going anywhere, though. Not fast.

"Nothing," he said, with more obscenity in the word than ten minutes' scatology. Then, quietly and with conviction: "Shit."

He holstered his weapon. Alarms were ringing downstairs, and the stairwell doors burst open as a couple of the guards came through. Andrews spread his hands.

"It's Andrews," he said, repeating it in a loud, clear voice.

You couldn't tell what men would do when they came charging into a room expecting a firefight; except that it wouldn't necessarily be what hindsight thought best. When the gunmen straightened up from their crouch he went on:

"Get a medic. Fast. Then get on the horn to the local police, put an APB out on Kenneth Lafarge, the picture's on my desk, armed and dangerous, wanted for assault and attempted murder." His calm broke.

"
Move! Now!
"

God alone knew who this fruitloop was really working for. God alone knew what he'd be doing now.

Andrews shuddered slightly. In reaction, and for what might be. The Firm had dozens of scenarios on bio-terrorism, none of them pretty. Whoever had been using the Jamaicans as a conduit knew more about genetic engineering than anyone should; that arm from whatever-the-fuck-it-was proved that.

Genetics was low-cost science, much easier to do in a private lab than nuclear weapons, even with plutonium coming out of Russia like piss out of a horse.

He swallowed the sour throat-scraping taste of failure.
Ebola,
he thought. The Ebola virus had nearly gotten out of Africa twice; it was contagious as hell, and had a fatality rate of better than 90 percent.

Someone with this group's skills could engineer something like that as they pleased. Give it a year-long incubation period with the victim contagious all the time. Ebola turned your connective tissue into mush . . . .

He ejected the magazine of his Glock, snapped in a fresh one and bolstered it, all automatic reflex before he got a cupful of water and went over to kneel by George. The heavy-set man was holding a wad of tissues to his nose and dripping red down a sodden shirt.

"Dink we'll be hearing de randsub deband zoon?"

"Time will tell. At least we've got a clear make on one of them."

And when the ransom demand came, they might have to pay up.

***

Kenneth Lafarge sat back in the rickety office chair and nodded. The little room was cramped and musty, piled with papers and ledgers; the desk held what this world considered a very up-to-date computer system, and a square of heavy paper with a spill of jewels across it.

"Gem quality, and not listed on the system as prohibited merchandise."

The dealer had a thick accent and wore a skullcap. That seemed to be usual on 47th Street, in this weird analog of New York. The skin between his shoulder blades crawled slightly as he smiled. This wasn't the city that had died in thermonuclear fire in 1999, but his mind's eye still saw those images. Samothrace had passed them down from generation to generation after the Exodus, a heritage of loss and revenge.

"Of course, you understand, without documentation, the price . . ." A delicate shrug from the diamond dealer.

He nodded.
Plenty more where those came from.
In fact, as long as he had carbon for raw material, any number of them. The suitcase contained a very compact little molecular assembler, well up to such simple tasks.

"Why don't you tell me what you think is reasonable, Mr. Feldman?" he said. It wouldn't do to arouse suspicion by not bargaining.

***

Granted, he couldn't give them enough details to show that he was anything but a crank. Yet . . .

these people didn't seem to have any healthy paranoia at all!

Futile,
he thought. Still, one had to make the effort. These businessmen didn't know what they were getting into.

The sign outside the building read
Smith Computer Services;
the cover was convenient, and it was pathetically easy to fox the IRS machines. Most of the big rooms were full of improvised rigs, cobbled together from local components. The rear of the building held a single spartan bedroom, and a gallery big enough for him to exercise and practice in. The main problem was people trying to buy computer services from him.

He sighed again and turned to a terminal.
Progress?
he asked.

The voice—melded from his implant and the much more capable machine in the suitcase—replied:
very little, the enemy's transducer includes all standard domination counterinfiltration
infosets and is being used to protect the local machinery, i will need a direct landlink to
penetrate.

Hmmm.
The police?

as directed, the fbi have received the communication routed from the Canadian
authorities,
the dispassionate voice in his brain continued.
an agent in receipt of the information has
travelled to new york. the other intelligence agencies will be denied access. data relating to your
encounter with the two agents will be protected.

Ken ground his teeth at the memory of the fiasco in Washington. The local police and government were worse than useless.
I have to assume the snake is watching.
It wouldn't be any great problem to put flagging markers in the local infosystems; and there was no way he could keep the natives from using them if he revealed himself. If
it
found out he was here, things could get very bad.