Mappa Mundi (20 page)

“The last NP check is ninety-four percent saturation. Ready to go,” she said, breaking in when they reached a pause.

Her father nodded after a microdelay. “Thanks.” He added, as an afterthought, “Your last paper in
Neurotechnology Journal
was better than before. But I think you should have given more graphics for the online version. An illustration in real time would have made your argument more conclusive.”

Natalie raised an eyebrow. High praise indeed, and, as Calum sat down and began fussing self-consciously with already completed routines on the program, she thought she detected a smidgeon of guilt at his neglect of her over the months—no calls, no letters, and the excuse, as always, “a secret project demands absolute security.”

Bill gave her the double banana of both eyebrows in quick succession and she smiled vaguely at him. He looked undeniably cheerful, instead of stressing out. His confidence was a credit, considering the numbers of Ministry roving about the place. Every corner she'd turned today had seen clutches of grey-suited officials milling in the lanes, loitering, and muttering into the microphones of their cuffs and lapels; glassy-eyed, they watched her pass, listening in to the neat earpieces that trailed a single wire into the trim lines of their collars. Outside they turned into black-uniformed police and some kind of soldier she didn't know the name of that carried small but effective-looking guns. The cordon was tight. She could almost feel it around her neck.

“I'll check the room prep,” she said, although neither of them were paying her any attention now. It was the next task that had chimed up on her Pad. Her father looked up at her as she passed the camera.

“Mrs. Reed says somebody's made a mess of the kitchen up at the house. I take it that was you?”

God, that woman worked fast, Natalie thought, not too fondly. “It was hardly a mess. I knocked a candle over. I didn't have time to fix it this morning.”

Fortunately he didn't have the imagination to wonder why she'd used candles instead of the lights. He grunted, “Okay. Now, let's get the patient cued up. It's nearly five to eleven.”

Natalie wasn't required for this duty. She took the time to go to the staffroom and get a drink. She was thinking over Calum's unusually positive response to her work, wondering what it meant, or whether it was a soft-soap for a later attack, when her sleeve was tugged violently. She realized Dan was at her shoulder,

“Nat!” he whispered. “Where's the scanner thing?”

“It's in the Therapy Room, where do you think?”

“Can you get it back?”

“Why?” She scowled at him, hesitating with her hand on the door. What lunacy was he thinking of now?

“I want to borrow it.”

“What?” Her scowl became a glare. “Don't be silly. Not now. Anyway, what for?”

“Nothing.” He shifted from foot to foot. “Never mind. Coffee?”

“Dan!” She grabbed his arm and stopped him as he was halfway into the room. “What's going on?”

“It's okay. Nothing. I wanted to … look, you're right. Not now, eh?” He pulled away from her with expert grace and made a beeline for the drinks machine.

She stared after him, stupefied, and then shook her head. Whatever it was he was bothered about it would have to wait until this was over. She hoped it wasn't something to do with that dodgy mate of his, Ray. And speaking of Ray—she stepped up quickly to Dan's side.

“You haven't got anything in your locker, have you?”

“Espresso, hon?” He handed her a cup and met her gaze with a firm “no” glare. “I certainly won't have. Are they doing a search?”

“Oh, Dan, for Christ's sake!” Natalie kept her voice to a whisper, smiling over his shoulder at Charlton, who was giving her a grin. “You said you'd given it up. You can't use at work. We had a deal. Now go get rid of it before some officious prat from London sniffs it out and we all get dragged over the coals. It's my bloody job as well as yours!”

“Hold that.” He gave her his cup and marched out at a fast clip. She could tell from the way he didn't meet her eyes that he was feeling guilty. Well, he could bloody feel guilty, he
should
feel it.

The mug started burning her fingers. She put it down and was immediately cornered by the nervous aftercare technician who wanted to know what they were going to talk to Bobby's family about on the viewing deck, once the show was in progress. Natalie kept looking to the door for when Dan would get back, wanting to follow him and make sure he wasn't caught. But there was to be no escape and he didn't return for what seemed a very long time.

Dan took a nonchalant stroll down to the cloakrooms and went in, glancing at his watch. He checked the locker area thoroughly—nobody about. Inside his locker he did have an old ounce of the good stuff tucked away, for moments when fortification was required. He hadn't used it for at least … well, at least a week. The practice of fishing it out and slipping it into his pocket, using a half-pack of biscuits as a cover was well worn in. He managed it without a hitch, locked up again, and made for the exit. His Pad rang when he was halfway there.

He answered it before thinking to check the line and with a sickening jolt saw Shelagh Carter's face looking out at him from the screen. “Er, hi,” he muttered. “I'm at work just now, I can't—”

“That's fine, Dan,” she interrupted firmly. “This will only take a moment. I understand that you're a good friend of Doctor Natalie Armstrong.”

Dan's mouth, already a bit blanched from a morning of severe dehydration, went desert dry. He worked his throat for a useless second and croaked, “Well, yes, I suppose so.”

“Not to worry.” Shelagh smiled obligingly. “But we've had a report that somebody might have tried to latch onto her in the last week or so. An expert enemy agent, snooping for information on the work at the Clinic, particularly today's experiment. I thought you'd be the person to ask. I wouldn't usually, because it's hard to discuss a friend, I know, but it's for her own benefit. She's one of our best. We don't want anything to cause her trouble, or danger.”

“No, no, quite,” Dan mumbled, trying to think much faster than his mouth was moving. Maybe he should have told Shelagh earlier about the American. Was he American? What had Natalie told him? There was no way of knowing.

“Are you sure?” God, that was so weak. She'd know he was stalling.

“We're ninety percent sure. As you can imagine, the subject, the experiment, the whole field is red-hot at the moment. Anything unusual, Dan. Anybody. You don't have to name names if you don't know them, just any clue.”

Dan dithered. Suddenly he wasn't sure about Jude. Natalie was sharp, but even she could be taken in by the right face, the right line. He knew
he
could be. What if it was as Shelagh said and maybe Natalie was in danger? But then, he had a reason not to entirely believe everything Shelagh said, either … He wanted to run back to the lounge and discuss it all, but Shelagh was looking at him from the screen and he dare not for fear she'd interpret any delay as tacit guilt.

“There
was
someone,” he began. Then he quickly hedged it around with, “But maybe he was genuine. I mean, I don't know, do I?”

Shelagh nodded.

Dan decided not to tell the truth. “He was this Asian guy. An engineer from one of the big companies that make our computer system. I think they had dinner. Nothing else.”

“Are you sure?” She fiddled with the controls on her Pad, momentarily blotting herself from view with her fingertips.

A heavy wave of blankness swept Dan's mind. It was like a pressure, it flattened his intentions down. He should tell her the truth. It was safer. It was better. He'd feel good again, if only he did.

“Maybe he was American,” Dan said without any conscious desire to say it. It was as though the words had taken on lives of their own and were tripping off his tongue, pixielike, whether he willed them to or not. “Yes, he was. His name …” Dan fought back, trying to think of something inappropriate—think of any vegetable except a carrot! “J—” … any name, then, Jasper, John, Julius, Justin, Jack, Jonathan, Jason …

“J-u—d-e.” It was drawn out of him, as though she had caught the hook of the J and wound it up around her finger. “Westhorpe” followed easily, a second later. His head was fishy, swimmy. He might be sick again.

“Good work, Dan,” Shelagh said cheerfully and he thought for a disoriented second that she was a sturdy WAAF girl in a wartime film, chivvying the boys along when the formation had finally landed, Jerry bombed to bits and only one man missing. It was the voice that was brisk, starchy, English to the core … except … except …

She must have cut the call from her end. He found himself sitting on the tile floor, the biscuits crushed under his hand. When he tried to remember what had just happened, it drifted out of his reach effortlessly and away into never. He had a vague feeling that he had done something very, very bad.

The ounce, that was it. He had come to get rid of the ounce.

With only a small amount of subterfuge he managed to sneak his way into the incinerator room where specialist medical waste, not allowed to leave site, was destroyed and popped the offending packet in. A few thousand degrees wouldn't leave enough residue for Scotland Yard to trace.

As an afterthought he put the biscuits in, too. They'd been open for months.

Back at the coffee lounge he pushed past one of the junior technicians and gave Natalie the wink. “Done it.”

She stared at him, “What's the matter with you? You look awful. And what did you want that scanner for?”

“Scanner?” He didn't remember. “I don't know. I'm sure it'll come back to me if it's important.”

She shook her head, “Get it together, will you? Honestly. Today of all days.”

Jude got home and opened the door, immediately looking for his sister.

“Vohpe'hame'h,” he called out, using her Cheyenne name instead of the English version, thinking it might please her better.

There was no reply. Her bag was gone, he realized, as he checked all the rooms, in fact, there was no trace of her at all.

No, that wasn't quite right, she'd left some hairs behind—short, broken-off ones—in the bathroom and on the pillows of her bed, but that didn't tell him for how long she'd been here after he'd left. He'd been away two days, three nights.

“Shit,” he said softly into the mushy quiet that the triple-glazed windows offered. For a second he was at a loss. He turned around, looked through to the kitchen table or the pinboard for a note, but there was nothing.

He checked the message backlog:

“Hi, Jude, this is Mary …”

“Mr. Westhorpe, this is MasterCredit Customer Accounts calling. We'd like to …”

“Jude, Steve. Yannick's dropped out of the squash league and I was wondering …”

“Jude, Perez here. Check in when you get back from Seattle. I want to see you and Mary about the Florida case …”

“Would you like to know how to make a million …”

“Jude, this is Mom here. I know you're supposed to be here but
your boss keeps calling the house for you and I'm not answering or returning her calls. You know, I think she's pretty uptight about whatever it is and although I know you're doing something …”

He listened to all thirty-eight of them, one at a time. There was no message from White Horse.

Jude got himself a glass of water and sat down at the table in the kitchen for a moment with his head between his knees, thinking.

Where the hell would she go? Was it to lose the machine, or did she have it with her, desperate to keep it because she believed he was going to betray her to the other side? With the house at Deer Ridge gone there were any number of friends all over the country she could choose to visit, most of them members of the American Indian Movement. Too obvious. If she was smart, she wouldn't take trouble there. Then where?

Just on the off chance he called her personal Pad number again.

A woman answered it, but it wasn't White Horse, he saw that in an instant, and he'd keyed the call off before he'd even registered the fact. Shock coursed through him like a strong shot of whiskey, numbing his feet and hands.

With clumsy fingers he recalled the image to the screen again and stared at it, searching for any telling detail. He asked his Fed Datapilot service to trace the location, if they could, but he didn't hold out much hope. White Horse's Pad was two years old and he doubted it transmitted so much information.

He didn't know the other person. She seemed to be in a vehicle. Maybe the Pad was stolen … but his guts didn't think so. He took a drink of the cold water and then sank even further into the conviction that White Horse was in trouble and had moved quickly out of his reach. Only the fact that his apartment seemed untouched made him think she'd at least walked out of it of her own free will.

He set his personal Datapilot,
Nostromo
, to analyse the screenshot of the face and to try to fix the location by zooming in on the scraps of detail that he might miss. As he waited for a response he called Mary.

“Hey there!” she sang out as she answered. “How was the Bay? Not enough sun for you? Or was the wind not catching the sails? You're back soon.”

“Hey,” he said, trying to make it sound double as peppy as he felt. “You know me. Can't stay out of a case for long. After you called I thought I should get back as soon as I could.”

“I'm afraid it doesn't look like we were able to pin down anyone. They cleaned up too well. But there might be another piece to the puzzle coming in next week. We've been invited up to Utah to assess a new biodefense initiative. Sound familiar?”

To Jude's mind at that second, it didn't. “Okay,” he said. “Listen, I'll see you tomorrow back in the office.”

“Sure.”

He hung up and sat in the silence that followed, trying to pin together a new defence initiative with Ivanov's baby-fixing business and not succeeding. At the moment, however, the pursuit of Ivanov from government-funded hidey-hole to black-market racket couldn't capture his interest. He had, in the file, Ivanov linked with Guskov and Guskov was linked with White Horse's black machine, with Natalie's programming, with so many things he couldn't make them form a picture at all.