Not For Glory (8 page)

CHAPTER SEVEN

Guilty Pleasures

Thellonee, New Britain

New Portsmouth Port Facility

01/10/44, 1923 local time

We gathered in the living room of the penthouse complex in the northwestern arm of the New Portsmouth Hyatt.

It was only surrounded by New Portsmouth, not in it; the hotel was safely within the TW Preserve, protected by the powerfence and the towers at the preserve's perimeter. These days, that protection was more a matter of simple security than anything else; but there had been riots, back when New Britain was a penal colony.

Alon, his six officers and I were in mess dress, preparing to go down to the manager's reception and play negotiator. The Sergeant and his five oldsters were in mufti, all of them gathered around the dinner table over by the picture window.

I walked to the window and looked out into the night, past the weak spatter of raindrops against the glass.

Beyond the occasional flashes of the powerfence, the hulk of a dying city waited, maybe for some savior to breathe life back in it, more likely for some bulldozers to finish it off. Local brick might last two hundred years, but the four-, five- and six-story buildings at the edge of the city seemed ready to crumble at a look.

There had been a time when some of the most desirable property was near the port, but as the city had grown up around it, and clogged it, the heart of New Portsmouth had deteriorated. I've seen it before. More often, it happens around hospitals, although on a smaller scale. The buildings intended to heal the sick slowly turn into a barely safe zone in an expanse of filth and crime, like a single clean spot on a grease-spattered floor.

Off in the distance, I could see street lights trying to pierce the gloom, but they weren't trying very hard, and I didn't blame them.

"You should try some of this," the Sergeant said, speaking around a mouthful. "Best ham I've had in five years."

"It's the
first
ham you've had in five years," round-faced Ephraim Imran said.

"So, it has to be the best, no?" the Sergeant answered, rewarded by the thin but deep chuckles evoked by an old joke, taken out to be passed around and shared for a moment.

The Law is strictly enforced in Metzada, but it is understood that when we are off of Metzada, the rules don't apply.

Which is why Tzvi Hanavi and four of his oldsters were gathered around the table, gorging themselves on forbidden delicacies ordered from room service. Tzvi had finished with his bacon cheeseburger, and was helping Yehudah Nakamura with his huge order of ham and eggs. White-haired Yehoshua Bernstein was using a hunk of bread to mop up the milk gravy from his platter of veal chops; Ephraim Imran and Moshe Stern, both having finished their blood-rare steaks, sat back and drank cup after cup of cafe au lait. Imran belched while Stern drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair, puffing nervously on his tabstick in between sips.

The only one not eating was thin, balding Menachem Yabotinsky, who sat nervously in his chair, stubby fingers steepled in front of him, eyes missing nothing. He turned to put out a barely-lit tabstick, and immediately fired up another.

Two of the others had tabsticks burning in ashtrays. Damn silly habit, really, but one you can easily catch, off Metzada.

"So, you going to have some?" the Sergeant asked again.

"Maybe later," I said. "After the manager's reception. I don't want to muss the finery."

I don't eat a lot of tref; I have my own guilty pleasures to indulge outside of Metzada.

Mess dress doesn't have any pockets on the shirt or jacket; stooping, I pulled up the cuff of one trouser leg to pull my own pack from my sock, extracted one, thumbed it to life, then stuck it in the corner of my mouth while I replaced the pack. I straightened, and took a longer draw on the tabstick. The smoke was rich and satisfying; they grow good tobacco on Thellonee.

Still a damn silly habit.

Captain Aaron Gevat, Alon's logistics aide, walked up to me. "Check me over?"

"Sure."

In Metzada, we really don't go in for stylish uniforms
per se
;
Metzadan khakis vary in thickness—and color; not all uniforms we call khakis are khaki—depending on the climatic, not social, conditions they're designed to be worn in, from the ten-weight desert khakis with mesh undershirt and short sleeves, to the multi-layered, sandwich-armored, chameleon-colored type C's that will keep you miserably cold but alive at minus forty.

On the other hand, for purposes other than fighting and training, sometimes you need more decorative uniforms. At least, that's what David Bar-El, nee Warcinsky, had been taught before he walked away from the Long Gray Line.

Other armies have a whole range of dress wear, ranging from the four or five levels of formal and sort-of-formal uniforms that the Thousand Worlds peacemakers wear, all the way to the twenty different subtleties of formal dress that the Casas sport. Some of them look like characters in an Italian opera. It's silly, mind, but don't hold that against them. A few assholes to the contrary—and what army would be complete without a few assholes?—the Casas are good folks.

We do things differently. We have one kind of formal uniform, called mess dress.

I pitched my tabstick at the oubliette and gestured at Gevat to turn around. I had to admit that he looked resplendent in mess dress. A short jacket, his in the blue of Infantry, mine in the gleaming white of the IG, was worn over a white vest, that over an almost gleaming white shirt with a winged collar. His sleeves were decorated with loops of golden cord—three, indicating that he was a captain—marked with flecks of black, showing that he held a senior warrant.

I may be above most of the nonsense, but I do have to admit that I like looking down at the arms of my mess dress and seeing seven elegant loops of gold braid on each sleeve, a single star at the wrist.

We are silly, we humans, caring about a loop of gold or a little metal star, or a few pieces of ribbon. Sometimes I wonder about us. About me.

The left breast of Gevat's tunic was covered with three rows of silken campaign ribbons, under which were his medals—not the miniatures that most armies prescribe for wear with formal uniforms. Metzada doesn't aware medals—except for the Two Swords, which is only awarded to offworlders serving under Metzadan officers—but we're not prohibited from accepting those of others.

My brother has quite a few; it's one of the perks that comes from being a line officer. The Casas gave him the Order of St. Augustine, which they pass out almost as rarely as we hand out the Two Swords. Gevat had a Legion of Merit, a Tae Guk, and a George's Cross.

"Got a loose thread on the shoulder here," I said. Thumbing a fresh tabstick to life, I took a long pull and considered the ash for a moment before I touched it to the thread. It shriveled like a snake in the wash of a flamethrower.

I threw my cape back over my shoulders—I hate the damn thing—and straightened myself for Gevat's final inspection before belting my sash more tightly around my hips, and sticking my daisho into its folds, both swords with their cutting edges facing rearward and up, as tradition demands. I don't believe in wearing weapons just for decoration, and the antiquity of my pair can sometimes be a handy technicality when trying to get through TW Customs onto low-tech worlds.

Gevat hitched at his swordbelt, then gave a quick polish to the silver guard of his saber. I'm not sure when the tradition of wearing swords on formal occasions returned, but it does tend to keep people polite. "You look fine, Tetsuo."

I caught Alon's eye, and held up a single finger. He nodded fractionally. "Be right back," I said.

I stepped out into the hall and went to Zev's rooms. I knocked twice. "It's me," I said.

The door opened. Zev and Dov were already dressed, in baggy gripsuits of different styles, different shades of dull gray, Dov's mainly covered by a taupe trailcoat that fell to his knees. They looked more than a little ragged around the edges.

"You two ready?" They both nodded.

"Almost," Zev amended. "I took some more Motrin, but I've still got a bit of the runs." He disappeared into the toilet and closed the door behind him.

"I am ready, sir." Dov had an old Korriphila Ten Thousand in a breakaway holster under his left armpit. He pulled the weapon from the leather and pumped a round into the chamber before removing the clip, adding an extra round to it, and putting that back in the weapon with a solid
chick.

I was going to say something about how it was against standing orders to smuggle weapons off Metzada, and go into some detail about how the importation of firearms to Thellonee was strictly controlled, but if Dov was heeled, it was on Shimon's orders. There was no sense in wasting my breath.

I started to say something like
be careful,
but it would have been talking for the sake of hearing myself talk.

"Go easy on the violence. We don't want trouble. We just want to find out where Shimon is and what he's doing."

"Understood, sir," he said.

"How
did
you smuggle it in?" I asked.

He shrugged. "I didn't. Last time I was on Thellonee, I took it and two spare clips off of a mugger, then cached them. Weapons controls weren't so tight, then. It was still taped to the top of a pipe under a suspended ceiling over in the Trade towers."

I couldn't think of anything else important to say, and I've never made small talk with Dov, so we just stood quietly for a few minutes until, preceded by the sound of running water, Zev came out of the toilet, drying his hands on a fluffy towel.

"All ready?"

He tossed the towel aside. "Ready."

"Fine. Be careful. We need information, not body counts."

Zev nodded. He never minded being told the obvious. "Just don't be late at the rendezvous, just in case."

"Understood." I'm only sometimes the senior partner; it was Zev's recon, and that put him in tactical charge. Maybe nothing would happen other than they'd go out in the city and see both what they could find out and what kind of armament they could buy.

And in any case, it was pointless to give orders that would be obeyed or ignored as the situation warranted.

I'd have to slip away from the reception, early, but that would likely not be a problem.

"Later, then. Be careful."

Zev's "Yes, sir," was scornful.

I walked them to the lift.

Alon had finished the inspection of the half-dozen officers on his side of the room, and walked over to me.

Some men were made to wear mess dress; some aren't. Even careful tailoring couldn't hide the fact that Alon was a few years past his prime, a few pounds overweight.

He hitched at his sword belt as he addressed the officers.

"To begin," he said. "The port manager's reception for the Casas and Freiheimers is a different kind of battlefield than most of you are used to. I don't want to arrive
en masse,
looking like an assault team, so we're going to go down at ten-minute intervals. You find the host, introduce yourself, then introduce yourself to the Casas and the Freiheimers, then mingle." He cracked a smile. "It's a good idea to start off the negotiations with a little theater. We're going to do that by building up to my arrival, with Gevat and Galil at each side, playing bodyguard."

He sighed. "It's all bullshit, of course, but the image is important. Now, orders: I want you all to remember that you are to talk as much as you must, and say as little as you need to. Basically, all we're doing is showing the flag. The real negotiating will happen between me and Giacometti on the Casa side, and me and Holtenbrenner on the Freiheim side.

"So just enjoy yourselves, stay out of fights, drink less than you eat, keep your ears open. You want to add anything to that, Inspector-General?"

I shook my head. I could have added something about how operations officers always tend to overplan everything, even after they've become generals, but that didn't seem politic. "Nothing much. There will likely be some representatives of private mercenary companies there. They should know enough to keep their distance, but if not, the peacemakers will keep things calm and orderly. Don't go looking for trouble."

I have this theory about foreign cultures, involving beautiful women and public places. It goes like this: the number of beautiful women in public places is in inverse relation to both the inherent desirability of the women involved and the gradient of wealth to poverty in that society.

Put more simply, beautiful women have something they can trade for not having to go out and be jostled by the dirty, poor, and ugly.

The richer the rich are, compared with the poor, the more impetus the poor have to trade it in.

The sharper the difference between the wealthy and the poor in any society, the more motivation lower-class girls have for finding a man of a higher class to take them away from it all, no matter what he wants in return; the sharper the motivation for middle-class women to do anything rather than fall to the bottom.

A quick eyeball estimate suggested that, of the thousand or so people at the manager's reception, fully ten percent were lovely women. Yet another point for my theory.

Clinging to the arm of a fat man in an elegant purple knee-coat and silken breeches, a long-haired redhead smiled an invitation at me. She wore a clinging silver sequined dress that must have cost her mackereau plenty. It was gathered at the neck, and slit in the front to an impressive cleavage, and slit up almost to her left hip on the side. She gave a half-turn away, letting me see that her dress left her back bare from the neck almost to the base of the spine.

I returned the smile for just a moment, until she turned back to her companion and gave a deep-throated, totally sympathetic laugh at whatever he'd just said.

I know what the laugh of a whore sounds like. I left the laugh behind.

The first step was to find the host.

I found Port Manager Bercuson at the far end of the room, an overweight, over-jeweled dowager, presumably his wife, at his side. They were engaged in conversation with a dozen men and women in TW Commerce Department formal finery: high-collared black suits, brass buttons down the front, black trousers with gold stripes on the men, knee-length pleated black skirts on the women, rank insignia on collars and sleeves, medals and ribbons on the left breast.