Santiago: A Myth of the Far Future (13 page)

“She’s very pretty,” replied
Virtue, setting the cube back down.

“Thank you,” said Sokol. “I’ll
tell her you said so.” He touched a concealed control behind a picture, and
instantly a section of the carpet disappeared and a small but well-stocked bar
rose from the floor. “Can I fix you a drink?”

“Why not?” she replied.

“What will you have?”

“What do you recommend?”

He reached for a strangely shaped
bottle. “Cygnian cognac. A gift from a friend who recently returned from
Altair.”

“I thought you said it was
Cygnian,” remarked Virtue, filing the reference to Altair away for future
reference.

“I did. But Cygnian cognac is in
demand all across the galaxy.” He paused, then smiled. “If you’d ever tasted
the stuff they brew on Altair, you’d know why he brought me this instead.”

He poured two glasses and handed
one to her.

“Very good,” she replied, taking a
sip.

“Won’t you have a seat?” he said,
escorting her to a chair, then sitting down across from her. He pulled out a
large cigar. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

“Not at all.”

“It’s from old Earth itself,” he
said proudly, lighting up. “They’re very hard to come by these days.”

“I can imagine.”

“Still,” he said, exhaling a
streak of smoke, “they’re worth the effort.” He paused. “By the way, where’s
your camera crew?”

“I don’t have one,” she replied,
opening her well-worn satchel and pulling out a small, metallic, many windowed
device, which she placed on a table between them. “This has a pair of
wide-angle three-dimensional lenses that can follow you anywhere in the room,
and there’s a built-in speaker that will pick up everything you say.” She
pressed a small activator button. “It’s not studio quality, but one doesn’t
always know what conditions will be like in the field, and it’s a pretty handy
little gadget.”

“Amazing!” he said, staring at it
in fascination. “It covers a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree area without
moving?”

She nodded. “That’s right—which
means I’ll be in all the pictures, too. When I get it to the lab, they’ll edit
it to follow a standard question-and-answer format, cutting to each of us as we
speak. No one except you and me and the lab technicians will know that there
wasn’t an entire crew on hand.”

“And this will be aired on Deluros
Eight?” he asked, his expression mirroring his interest.

“As well as half a dozen other
systems.”

“Can I get a copy of the final cut
for myself?”

“I don’t see why not,” said
Virtue. “Of course, you’ll need professional equipment to play it back.”

“I own some, and have access to
still more.”

“Fine. Shall we begin?”

“Whenever you’re ready,” said
Sokol.

She proceeded to conduct a
thorough and professional interview for the next thirty minutes, on the off
chance that she might someday be able to sell it, if not to Leander Smythe’s
network, then to some other Pegasus news agency, or perhaps to Lodin XI if
Sokol actually got himself assigned there.

“Well,” she announced at last,
shutting off the recording device, “I think that’s it.”

“It was my pleasure,” replied
Sokol. “You will let me know when it’s ready, won’t you?”

“Certainly,” replied Virtue. “Of
course, it all depends on how you answer the next question.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I have another question.”

“Don’t you want to turn the
machine back on?” he asked.

She shook her head. “This one is
off the record.”

“Okay,” he said, leaning back
comfortably. “Ask away.”

“I want you to consider it very
carefully before answering.”

“I think I’m pretty used to loaded
questions.” he replied confidently.

“I’m glad to hear that,” said
Virtue, staring at him. “Where can I find Santiago?”

For just a moment he looked
surprised. Then his professional politician’s smile spread across his handsome
face. “It’s my opinion that this Santiago is just a Frontier myth. If he ever
did exist, he must be dead by now.”

“He’s alive.”

“I very much doubt it.”

“If you want someone who doesn’t
exist, Mr. Sokol,” she said, “try Sidney Peru.”

Suddenly the smile vanished.
“Who’s Sidney Peru?”

“He’s a smuggler who was murdered
six years ago.”

“I never heard of him.”

“How about Heinrich Klausmeier?”
she asked.

“The name’s totally unfamiliar to
me.”

“They both worked for you,” she
said. “And they were both murdered.”

“What’s this—some last-minute
smear campaign?” he said coldly. “Because if it is, you’ve come to the wrong
place. Anyone who wants to can go over my record. I have nothing to hide.”

“I think you have a great deal to
hide, Mr. Sokol,” said Virtue. “Such as a smuggling ring on Binder Ten.”

“I haven’t been to Binder in five
years,” he replied. “Besides, the press tried to pin that on me the first time
I ran for office. You won’t get any further with it than your colleagues did,
for the simple reason that I am not a criminal.”

“My predecessors didn’t know what
I
know.”

“What do you think you know?” he
asked, unperturbed.

“I know that if you don’t point me
in Santiago’s direction, there’s going to be a very interesting piece of
investigatory reporting on your videoscreen before the week is out.”

He looked long and hard at her,
then smiled confidently. “Do your worst. I never heard of anyone called Peru or
Klausmeier.”

She stared at him. There was no
question in her mind that he knew exactly what she was talking about; the only
question was how well insulated he thought he was. She decided to take one more
shot at it.

“That’s not what Salvatore Acosta
told me before he died,” she said.

He snorted derisively. “
Another
mystery man. Who the hell is Salvatore Acosta?”

“He used to work for you, a long
time ago.”

“Nobody named Acosta has ever
worked for me.”

“I have a tape of him in which he
implicates you in the murders of Peru and Klausmeier.”

“I very much doubt that.”

“Can you afford to take the
chance?” she said. “Maybe it won’t hold up in court, and maybe it will—but it
will sure as hell cost you a post on Lodin Eleven.”

“You don’t have any such tape—and
if you do, then the man’s a liar.”

She shrugged and walked to the
door. “You’re welcome to your opinion.” She turned to him. “Our editing lab
can’t go to work on your interview until we have a signed release; I’ll send
over a blank form tomorrow morning.”

Sokol stared at her.

“You know, you could have made
this much more pleasant for yourself if you’d simply been open and
straightforward with me,” he said at last.

She laughed. “How much more
straightforward can I be?”

“If you had just said, ‘Mr. Sokol,
I think you’re wrong about Santiago’s being dead, and I’d like any information
you might have that could help lead me to him,’ I’d have been happy to talk to
you. But I don’t like being bullied and blackmailed, especially when all you’ve
got are lies and slander.”

She stared at him for a moment,
then spoke:

“Mr. Sokol, I think you’re wrong
about Santiago’s being dead, and I’d like any information you might have that
could help lead me to him.”

He smiled at her. “That being the
case, I’ll be more than happy to help you in any way that I can. The man you
want to see is a bandit out on the Frontier.”

“What’s his name?”

“I have no idea what his real name
is—but he calls himself the Jolly Swagman.”

“Where do I find him?”

“He makes his headquarters on a
planet called Goldenrod, out in the Jolain system.”

“What’s his connection to
Santiago?”

“He used to work for him.”

“So did a lot of people,” Virtue
pointed out. “What makes him unique?”

“He knows Santiago personally.”

“You’d better be telling the
truth,” she said ominously.

“Do what you want with your tape,”
he said casually. “The truth can’t harm me, and lies can’t help you.” He walked
to the doorway, waved his hand before a hidden sensor, and the door slid into
the wall. “I’ll be looking forward to seeing the interview after it’s been edited.”

“That’s the very least I’ll be
showing you,” she replied, walking through the reception foyer to the elevator.

Sokol stood staring at the spot
where she had been standing, lit another cigar, and walked back to his supply
of liquor, where he poured himself another cognac.

“Did you hear all that?” he said
in conversational tones.

“Yes,” replied a disembodied
voice.

“I want her followed.”

“
Just
followed?” asked the voice.

“Until we find out where she’s got
the tape, or decide that she was bluffing. And I don’t want her leaving the
planet until I know one way or the other. In the meantime, I want a complete
dossier on her. Not the crap they dished out at the network this morning, but
the real stuff.” He paused. “You’ve got four hours.”

“It might take a little longer.”

“Four hours,” repeated Sokol.

In point of fact, it took only
three hours and ten minutes, during which time Sokol gave out another
interview, this one to a local reporter, and began preparing a speech he was to
give at a political fund-raiser the next evening. Finally a blond man of
indeterminate age entered the room, a small notebook in his hand.

“Have a seat,” said Sokol. It was
not a request.

“I’ve put all this in the
computer,” replied the man. “But I thought you’d want to go over it in person,
just in case you had any questions.”

“What have you got on her?”

“Her name is either Virtue
Patience MacKenzie or Virtue Patia MacKenzie,” said the man. “The records are a
little unclear. It’s my own feeling that she changed her middle name from
Patience to Patia when she came of age. She’s thirty-six years old. She was
born on Belore, grew up on Sirius Five, got her degree at Aristotle—”

“That’s the university planet they
created a few years ago?” interrupted Sokol.

“Right. Her grades were mediocre,
but Aristotle’s a pretty classy place, and she was able to hire on with a news
network right after that.”

“How long has she worked out of
Deluros?” asked the politician.

“She’s never been to Deluros in
her life. She worked on salary for about ten years, mostly in the Alphard
sector, then went free-lance.”

“Personality profile?”

“She’s always been very bright,
even precocious. She drinks more than she should, and has been known to
gamble—badly, I might add. She appears to have a problem forming relationships;
at any rate, she’s entered into six serious liaisons, none of which have lasted
for as much as a year.”

“That hardly sounds serious to
me,” commented Sokol.

“That’s as serious as she gets
about anything except her career.”

“Then you’d better tell me a
little about her career.”

“She resents authority; in fact,
she’s been fired twice for insubordination. Her work has been pretty good, well
above average, but she hasn’t come within hailing distance of the kind of
breakthrough story that could make her reputation. She’s very success-oriented;
she’s afraid time is running out on her, and she’s getting very impatient.
About a year ago she managed to fast-talk a couple of backers into tossing
almost two million credits into this Santiago project. I still don’t know how;
it’s possible she slept with them, and more likely that she blackmailed them.
She’s been working on the project for about eleven months, and she’s run
through two-thirds of the money.” He paused. “I’ve got a feeling that this is a
make-it-or-break-it situation for her. If she comes up empty, she’s through.”

“Why didn’t she just take the
money and disappear?”

“She’d rather be rich and famous
than just rich.”

“I know that feeling,” muttered
Sokol wryly. He looked at the blond man. “Anything else?”

“Yes. She found Whittaker Drum
about three weeks ago, and may even have killed him.”

“What kind of half-assed statement
is that?” demanded Sokol. “Either she killed him or she didn’t.”

“It’s not that simple. While she
was on Declan Four, she teamed up with a bounty hunter called Cain, who’s after
Santiago for the reward. From what I can tell, he’s pretty good at his job.
Both of them were in Drum’s apartment at the same time; it’s anyone’s guess as
to who actually killed him.” He glanced at his notebook. “There’s another
person involved: a gambler called Terwilliger. Cain took him on at Port
étrange, and they’ve been traveling together ever since. I don’t know if he’s
part of their partnership or not. My own guess is that he put Cain onto Drum,
or someone who could identify Drum, in exchange for some favor or another.”

“What kind of favor?”

“I don’t know—but gamblers tend to
make enemies. A bounty hunter is probably a pretty handy person to have nearby,
especially on the Frontier.”

“All right,” said Sokol, lighting up
a cigar and staring at the glowing tip for a moment. “Let’s get back to
MacKenzie. How did she get to me? Drum didn’t even know I exist.”

The blond man shrugged. “I don’t
know.”

“Then I’ll tell you how,”
continued Sokol thoughtfully. “Somebody told her—either Acosta or someone else.
Who has she seen since she’s been on Pegasus?”

“Just Leander Smythe.”

Sokol smiled. “There’s the answer.
That little bastard hand-fed her all the stuff he’s been trying to pin on me
all these years.”

“Perhaps,” agreed the blond man.
“But I think we’d better be sure before we move.”

“That shouldn’t be too hard. Who
was this Acosta, anyway?”

“A smuggler. He probably did
handle a little stuff for Santiago from time to time.”