Market Forces (22 page)

M
ONDAY WAS SOFT
summer rain and a nagging pain behind the eyes. He drove in with a vague sense of exposure all the way, and when he parked and alarmed the car, tiny twitches of the same discomfort sent him scanning the corners of the car deck for watchers.

This early, there was nobody about.

There were phone messages on the datadown—Liz Linshaw, drawling ironic and inviting, Joaquin Lopez from the NAME. He shelved Liz and told the datadown to dial up Lopez’s cell. The Americas agent had called four times in the last two hours and sounded close to panic. He grabbed the phone at the third ring, voice tight and shaky.

“Si, digame.”

“It’s Faulkner. Jesus, Joaquin, what the fuck’s the matter with you?”

“Escuchame.”
There was the sound of movement. Chris got the impression Lopez was in a hotel room, getting up from the bed, moving. The agent’s voice firmed up as he crossed into English. “Listen, Chris, I think I’m in trouble. I got down here last night, been making some inquiries about Diaz, and now I got a clutch of Echevarria’s political police all over me like
putas
on payday. They’re in the bar across the street, downstairs in the lounge. I think a couple of them have taken a room on this floor, I don’t—”

“Joaquin, calm down. I understand the situation.”

“No, you don’t fucking understand my situation, man. This is the NAME. These guys will cut my fucking
cojones
off if they get the chance. They bundle me into a car, and that’s it, I’m fucking history, man—”

“Joaquin, will you just shut up and listen!”
Chris went directly from the command snap to enabled conciliatory without allowing the other man a response. Textbook stuff. “I know you’re scared. I understand why. Now let’s do something about it. What do these guys look like?”

“Look like?” A panicky snort. “They look like fucking political police, what do you want me to say? Ray-Bans, bellies, and fucking mustaches. Get the picture?”

Chris did get the picture. He’d seen these cut-rate bad guys in operation on his own trip to the Monitored Economy with Hammett McColl. He knew the gut-sliding sense of menace they could generate simply by appearing on the scene.

“No, Joaquin, I meant. Did you get pictures? Have you got your shades set down there?”

“Yeah, I brought them.” A pause. “I didn’t use them yet.”

“Right.”

“I freaked. I’m sorry, Chris, I fucked up. I didn’t think.”

“Well think
now,
Joaquin. Get a grip. You can fuck up on your own time, right now you’re on the Shorn clock. I’m not paying you to get your ass killed.” Chris glanced at his watch. “What time is it there? One
A
.
M
.?”

“A little after.”

“Right. How many of these mustaches are there?”

“I don’t know, two down in the lobby.” The panic started to seep back into Lopez’s voice. “Maybe another two or three more across the road.”

“Can you get me pictures?”

“I’m not fucking going outside, man.”

“All right, all right.” Chris paced, thinking. Trying to put himself in the hotel room with Lopez. The Nikon sunglasses and the data transmission gear had been a Christmas gift from Shorn—they were very high spec. “Look, can you see the ones in the bar from your window? Go and check.”

More movement. Lopez came back calmer.

“Yeah, I can see their table. I think I can get a decent shot from here.”

“All right, that’s good. Do that.” Chris cranked his voice down, as soothing as possible. “Then I want you to go down to the lobby and get full frontals of the other two. They shouldn’t try anything there. Are you armed?”

“Are you kidding? I came through U.S. security at the airport, just like everybody else.”

“Fine, doesn’t matter. Just get the pictures and mail them through to me as quickly as you can. I’ll be waiting. And, Joaquin. Remember what I said. You don’t get killed on the Shorn clock. We’ll pull you out of there. Got it?”

“Got it.”

A brief pause in which he could hear Lopez breathing down the line.

“Chris. Thanks, man.”

“
De nada.
Stay cool.”

Chris waited until he heard the disconnect. Then he slammed a foot against the desk leg, knotted a fist.

“Fuck.” Another kick.
“Fuck.”

Back to the datadown. He estimated Lopez’s performance time, placed forward calls. Then he went to the window and stared out at the London skyline until the phone chimed.

The images came through, two clear face-and-trunk shots that must have been taken from less than five meters. Lopez had gotten close. The two parapoliticals were grinning unpleasantly into the Nikon’s hidden lens. Their teeth showed spotted brown with decay. The café photo was less to rejoice about, but there was a pavement table centered in the shot, three clear figures around it, faces turned in the camera’s direction.

The first of the forward calls went through. Even with the forewarning, the other end took a while to pick up, and the first sound to come through was a noisy yawn. Chris smiled for the first time that day.

“Burgess Imaging.” The screen caught up, filled with a dark unshaven face in its late teens. “Oh, hello, Chris. What can I? Uh, those satellite blowups okay?”

“Yeah, fine, it’s not that. Listen, can you do me step-ups of a street shot, right now? Faces good enough for machine ID?”

Jamie Burgess yawned again and scratched at something in the corner of one eye. “Costya.”

“I guessed. Look, I’m wiring it through on inset. Just take a look.”

Burgess waited, blinked at the screen a couple of times, and nodded.

“Nikon shot, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Give me two minutes. Leave the line open.”

“Thanks, Jamie.”

Another yawn. “Pleasure.”

Burgess was as good as his word. The datadown spat back perfect head-and-shoulder shots ninety seconds later. Chris punched them up next to the two he already had from the lobby and nodded.

“Okay, motherfuckers. Let’s hope you’ve been to church recently.”

The second forward call picked up on the first ring. A grizzled virtual head above crisp army khaki fatigues. The accent was American, the real-life version of Mike Bryant’s Simeon Sands burlesque.

“Langley Contracting.”

“This is Chris Faulkner, Shorn Associates, London. Do you have operational units in the Medellín area?”

There was a pause, presumably while Chris’s scrambler code and authorization cleared at the other end. Then the virtual customer service agent nodded.

“Yes, we can work in that area.”

“Good, I need five extreme prejudice deletions with immediate effect. Exact locational data and visual ID attached.”

“Very good. Please indicate the level of precision required.”

“Uh.” This was a new refinement. “Sorry?”

“Please indicate level of precision required from the following five options: surgical, accurate, scattershot, blanket, atrocity.”

“Jesus, uh.” Chris gestured helplessly. “Surgical.”

“Please note the surgical option may incur a substantial time delay. Char—”

“
No.
That’s no good. This is with immediate effect.”

“Do you wish to supersede precision levels with an urgency marker?”

“Yes. I want this done now.”

“Charge card or account?”

“Account.”

“Your contract is enabled. Thank you for choosing Langley Contracting. Have a nice day.”

Chris looked once more at the five faces floating on his screen. He nodded again and pressed a thumb down on each one to make it go away.

“Adios, muchachos.”

When the last face had wiped, he wired the datadown line to his mobile and went out to get coffee from Louie Louie’s.

L
OPEZ CALLED HIM
about an hour later. Voice rampant down the line, whooping shrill with delight. Sirens in the backdrop.

“Chris, you’re beautiful, man! You did it.
Hijos de puta,
they’re all over the street, man! They’re all over the
fucking
street!”

“What?” Chris said faintly.

“Drive-by, man. Fucking exemplary. They must have used one of those shoulder launchers. Whole fucking café’s on fire. I’m telling you, there’s nothing left but pieces.”

He sat down heavily behind the desk. He saw it, lit in tones of night and flame. Pastiche newsreel footage, memories of a hundred such scenes. Bodies and bits thereof, streak-scorched black and red. Screams and blundering panic from the sidelines.

“The hotel.” It was almost a whisper, like words he couldn’t be bothered to push out of his mouth. “The people in the hotel.”

“Yeah, they got them, too. I heard the shots. Spray guns.” Lopez made a stuttering machine-gun noise. He was drunk on his own narrow escape. “Just been down to check, right now. See, I was still looking out the window at the fire when—”

“No, Joaquin. Stop. The
other
people in the hotel. You know, staff. Other customers. Did they hit anybody else?”

“Oh.” Lopez stopped. “I don’t think so, I didn’t see any other bodies. Man, who’d you call?”

“Never mind.” It was like tasting ashes. He could smell the blast, smell the scorched flesh on the scented night air. Over the phone, the sirens sobbed out, and he heard screaming in the space it left. “You’d best get out of there. Better yet, get back to Panama City. You’re blown down there for now. You’ll have to work through someone else.”

“Yeah. What I thought.” Lopez’s voice shifted. “Listen, Chris. I lost it for a while back there, but I know my work. I didn’t make one wrong move in the last twenty-four hours. Those
hijos de puta,
they knew I was coming.”

Chris nodded drearily, for all it was an audio link.

“Right, Joaquin.”

“Give me another two days. We can still make this run. I know the right people. You don’t have to worry.”

He squeezed his eyes shut. “Right.”

“Count on it, man. I’ll hook you up, I swear.”

Behind Lopez, someone started using an ampbox to yell down the noise of the crowd. Chris reached out and cut the link.

B
RYANT AND
M
AKIN
got in about the same time. Chris went down to the car deck to meet them. Mike grinned when he saw him.

“Hey, Chris! Jesus, what time did you get in?”

He ignored the greeting and went straight for Makin. Right fist in under the rib cage with the full force of the last stride behind it. Makin doubled up and vomited a spray of breakfast. Chris stepped back and hooked into his face from the side. The glasses flew. Makin hit the deck and rolled, retching. Chris got in a single kick and then Mike had him pinioned from behind and was dragging him out of range.

“That’s it, Chris. Time out.”

“Fucking piece of
shit.
Sell out my agents, you
fuck.
”

“I don’t,” Makin got to one knee, holding his face. “Know. What the fuck. Youah talking about.”

Chris renewed his efforts to break Mike’s hold. Makin straightened, wiped his mouth, and looked up. He raised his free arm.

“I’ll see you on the fucking woad for that, Faulknah.”

“Hey!”
Mike loosened his hold on Chris’s shoulders. “That’s enough of that shit, Nick. Nobody sees anybody on the road in this team. No
body.
You save that shit for the tenders. Chris, I’m going to let you go now, okay. Now you behave. No brawling on the car decks, it’s undignified. This isn’t the zones.”

He let go of Chris and stepped away, carefully poised between the two men, arms spread slightly upward from the waist, ready. Makin prowled sideways and spat. Chris felt the reaction twitch through him from the fist back to the shoulder.

Mike Bryant drew a deep breath. “Okay, guys. What the fuck is going on?”

“This piece of shit”—Chris was still adrenaline-fired, thrumming with the need to do violence—”wired through our detail on Diaz to Echevarria.”

“Yeah,
so
?”

Bryant blinked. “You did that, Nick?”

“Jesus,
yes.
You said to light a firah under Echevaia’s ass.”

Chris felt the fury drop out of him to make room for disbelief. He saw the same in Bryant’s stare.

The big man shook his head. “But—”

“Christ, Mike.
I want the ax over his head by Monday,
that’s what you said. What was I supposed to do?”

Chris flared. “That’s fucking bullshit. You weren’t in here on the weekend.”

“How the fuck do you know where I was? What are you, my fucking mother?”

“I didn’t see you Saturday,” Bryant said quietly.

“I took the stuff home, Mike. Look, Echevaia was holding wallies for the faithful all weekend. It seemed like a good time to wattle him. The uplincon is tomorrow, what was I going to do? Wait and then twy to paste it all together today? I’ve got Cambodian logistics to think about, a palace wevolution in Yemen. The Kashmiw thing. Guatemala’s coming apart again. I don’t have
time
for this shit.”

Chris surged forward a step. Fetched up with Mike Bryant’s arm across his chest.

“I sent Joaquin Lopez down to the ME,
fuckhead,
asking after Diaz. He nearly fucking
died
today.”