Tails You Lose (31 page)

Just one more fake coin sale to pull off—but it would be the most difficult of all.

* * *

Strange Eyes had been the toughest of the three buyers to track down. Night Owl had caught a glimpse of the license plate of the limo that he'd bundled her into, two nights ago, and had traced the limo to a Seattle-based rental company. Strange Eyes obviously liked to travel in comfort and style, complete with a hired chauffeur, despite the fact that this made him stick out like a chromed thumb. Night Owl had assumed he'd rent another limo, this time from a company in Vancouver, and had called the handful of limo companies to find out if anyone matching his description had jandered in to rent a car.

No one had—her guess had been wrong. But not by much. On a hunch, she'd made a second round of calls, this time to local automotive dealerships that specialized in luxury cars. A clerk at the third dealership she called remembered the man who had walked in off the street and paid one hundred and thirty thousand nuyen for a Jaguar Z Type—a man with strange, all-white eyes. The Jag had come fully equipped, with global positioning system, cyberterminal with satellite uplink, surround sound and telecom built into the dash. And yes, the clerk was happy to give Night Owl the vehicle's telecom number, especially after she identified herself as Alma Wei, second in command of PCI's security force.

Night Owl repeated the sequence of calls she'd used with Blondie, telling Strange Eyes that she'd boosted the coin from Kageyama and was ready to sell it. Just as she had done earlier this evening, she faked a bidding war, this time driving the price to eight hundred K. When the Malaysian Independent Bank called to confirm a third anonymous donation to the Cybercare for Kids account and to let her know that another four hundred thousand nuyen had been deposited in trust, Night Owl called Strange Eyes and IDed the spot where she would meet him and turn over the coin: the middle of the Lion's Gate Bridge.

She had to reassure him that yes, he'd heard that right. She explained that she'd kleen-tacked the coin to the bridge in a place where only somebody with her amazing agility and strength could reach it. She'd be waiting for him near the south tower of the Lion's Gate, on the west sidewalk, in five minutes' time. If he didn't show within fifteen minutes, the deal was off. That should set his tires squealing.

Pulling away from the darkened street corner where she'd made the call, Night Owl turned her Harley toward the northbound Stanley Park causeway—one of two long tunnels that pierced the park's biodome. She wasn't wearing a watch, but according to the cellphone's built-in clock, it was nearly 4:30 a.m. This time of night, and with a storm pounding the city and flooding its low-level roads, there was barely a car in sight.

The biodome's grow lights were dimmed; the glass-enclosed tunnel was illuminated only by normal streetlights. They strobed past overhead as the Harley roared its way along the causeway, the full-throated growl of its engines echoing off the empty tunnel's walls. As the night-dark end of the tunnel hove into sight, a curtain of rain obscuring the bridge beyond it, Night Owl smiled grimly at the metaphor. She was moving along a tunnel of light, toward darkness and death—hopefully not her own.

The rain and wind hit her the second she exited the tunnel. Most of her body stayed warm and dry, thanks to the waterproof suit that she wore under her street clothes; it covered her from her neck down to her ankles and wrists. Her night-vision goggles kept the rain out of her eyes, but rain pounded against her bare forehead, cheeks and chin like sprays of ice water. Her fingers were cold despite her fleece-lined riding gloves. The temperature seemed to have dropped dramatically in the last couple of hours—or maybe it was just the chill that came with riding headlong into the wind.

She passed the two massive concrete lions that guarded the south end of the bridge and roared onto the bridge proper, climbing its gentle slope. Above her, the wind howled around the massive suspension cables that stretched high overhead. When she drew close to the first of the bridge's two towers, Night Owl pulled the bike to a stop. She propped it up on its kick stand, next to the sidewalk, and swung down from the seat.

Now that she was off the bike, the force of the gale blew her back against the railing at the outer edge of the sidewalk. After lifting her goggles away from her eyes, she gripped the railing and leaned out over it, peering down at the wind-churned waters of Burrard Inlet, sixty meters below.

She saw what she was looking for near the base of the tower: the red and green running lights of a boat that was being tossed by the waves. She hoped it was Skimmer, with his garbage scow. He'd promised to drop anchor and wait for her there; she hoped he'd be willing to ride out the storm for just a little longer. He was an essential part of her plan—the only one who could get her safely to her bolt hole.

Lightning flashed overhead, throwing the twin towers of the bridge into sharp relief. A second or two later, thunder boomed. In the bright flash of light, Night Owl thought she saw a series of small dark shapes winging their way across the sky—and a larger, serpentine shape. Shivering, she told herself that it was just a twist of cloud. A moment later, in the flash of lightning that followed, the smaller shapes were revealed to be storm crows. They landed, one by one, hunkering down like a string of beads along the cables of the bridge. Night Owl had the distinct feeling that they were watching her with their jet-black, unblinking eyes.

A pair of headlights in the causeway tunnel caught her eye. As the vehicle drew closer, she recognized the long, lozenge-shaped car as a Jag Z-Type.

Tearing off her gloves, Night Owl flipped open her cell and hit the icon that would automatically call the two numbers she'd preset: Blondie's cellphone, and the telecom at the Triple Eight Club where she'd contacted Wu earlier. As soon as she saw that the connections had been made and that the text message she'd input earlier had begun to transmit, she kleen-tacked the cellphone to the tower. The aperture of its lens was already adjusted to wide angle; the vidcam built into the cell would capture both the ladders that connected the deck of the bridge with the suspension cable above and the spot where Strange Eyes was most likely to stand. Then she turned and braced her back against the railing, just in time to see the Jaguar glide to a stop beside her Harley.

A gull-wing door swung open, and Strange Eyes stepped out of the vehicle. He stared at her with his bulging white eyes and held out a hand. Despite the rain that was pounding down onto the bridge, soaking Night Owl's hair and trickling down the back of her neck in icy rivulets, not a drop of water collected in his cupped palm. Strange Eyes seemed encased in an invisible, protective bubble that shielded him from both wind and rain. While Night Owl's jacket and pants flapped like banners in the heavy wind, his clothing hung perfectly still.

"The coin, please," he hissed in a voice that carried clearly, despite the roar of the wind. She wondered if his telepathy was at work.

Night Owl gave him a mock bow. "Just a moment." She turned and sprang into the air, letting the howling wind slam her into the steel-cable ladder that was just overhead. Then she climbed.

As she spidered up the rain-slick ladder to the place where she'd kleen-tacked the last of the I Ching coins earlier, the wind whipped her hair into her eyes and numbed her bare fingers. She didn't care. She felt a warm glow as she mentally played back the text message that her cellphone would be transmitting to Blondie and Wu. The same memo would also be appearing on Strange Eye's telecom monitor—the one inside his car. By the time he saw the message, however. it would be too late. He would have already completed the buy.

HELLO, SUCKERS, it taunted. TONIGHT I SOLD A COIN OF LUCK TO EACH OF YOUR MASTERS: MANG, LI AND CHIAO. YOU'LL SEE THE FINAL TRANSACTION LIVE IN JUST A MOMENT. OBVIOUSLY, SINCE THERE IS ONLY ONE FU COIN TO SELL, TWO OF YOU HAVE BOUGHT FAKES. HAVE FUN FIGURING OUT WHICH ONE OF YOU BOUGHT THE REAL ONE!

Night Owl reached the halfway point of the ladder and felt around for the patch of kleen-tack she'd used to secure the last of the I Ching coins. She took her time, pretending that it was harder to locate than it actually was, in order to ensure that the cellphone below would have switched over from text-only to voice-and-visual transmission before she climbed down again. As she peeled the kleen-tack free from the ladder rung, holding the coin tightly so the wind wouldn't snatch it from her grasp, she smiled grimly, proud of herself for stealing Ryomyo's idea of pitting the dragons against one another and going him one better.

Each of the dragons, when it found out the coin it had purchased was nothing more than an ordinary coin cloaked with an illusion, would have to assume that one of the other coins was the genuine item. It couldn't afford to do otherwise and wouldn't believe the other dragons if they said their coins were also fake. The Red Lotus had already fired the opening shots in the war for the Fu Coin, by taking out Strange Eyes' limo. Night Owl could only imagine the escalated chaos her message was going to cause.

She peeled the kleen-tack off, popped the coin into her mouth, where she held it clamped between her teeth, and climbed back down the ladder. Just before she reached the bottom—and just as she'd suspected—she felt a command from Strange Eyes whisper into her brain. She didn't even try to resist it.

Show
me
the
coin
.

Night Owl parted her lips in a grin, giving Strange Eyes a good look at the coin. The man seemed far away; although his eyes were still white and blank, Night Owl knew he wasn't seeing anything on this plane anymore—he was looking into the astral. His mouth twitched into a smile, and Night Owl knew her plan had worked. He issued another mental command—without pausing to think about the circumstances.

Give
it
to
me
.

Night Owl spat the coin out of her mouth. It landed at Strange Eyes' feet, began to roll, and then was caught by a gust of wind and sent spinning toward the edge of the bridge. Strange Eyes dived after it, sprawling with his hand outstretched over the edge. Night Owl laughed, thinking he had missed it, but then he picked himself up. Between two of his long fingers was the coin.

Strange Eyes looked up at her, an expression of pure hatred on his face.

Frag. Time to get out of here.

Night Owl frantically began to climb again, the right side of her face twitching. Her bare hands were nearly numb from the rain and wind: she slipped and nearly lost her grip. Only a meter or two more, and she'd be lost in darkness and out of range of Strange Eyes' spells . . .

The command came before she made it.

Jump
.

Night Owl hurled herself from the ladder and felt the wind catch her. She fell, arms and legs flailing, tumbling like a spinning coin toward the water below. She had a brief glimpse of Strange Eyes peering over the bridge, watching her plummet to her death with a satisfied smirk as lightning flared overhead, and then he was gone. The wind roared in her ears, and the bridge spun off into the distance. From somewhere high above, she heard a chorus of cawing crows.

At the last moment, as the starboard running light of Skimmer's garbage scow flashed past, Night Owl twisted violently and forced her arms above her head. She hit the water in a dive and felt it smack into her body like a wall of cold cement, slamming into the top of her head, shoulders and chest. Then she was down in its icy depths. Although she'd flattened out her dive as much as she could as she disappeared beneath the surface, she plunged onward, downward, for what seemed like an eternity, until her brain was buzzing. Only when her descent had at last slowed could she begin the long, slow struggle to the surface. Red static was crackling across her field of view and her cyberears were roaring by the time she saw a green light dancing above her. A moment later she broke the surface and gasped in night air filled with pelting rain. Incredibly, the raindrops actually felt warm against her ice-cold face.

The rest of her body, although bruised, was still dry, protected by the drysuit she'd put on underneath her clothing. She owed her life to that drysuit—and to her incredibly augmented muscles, which had diffused the crushing blow of her sixty-meter dive.

As the choppy waves bobbed her up and down, Night Owl saw Skimmer leaning over the low railing of the scow, extending a pole-handled salvage net in her direction. She gripped the net with numbed fingers and clung to it as Skimmer hauled her up into the boat.

As she lay on the deck of the scow, gasping like a landed fish amid the bags of trash, Night Owl silently congratulated herself. Her plan had worked beautifully, down to the last detail. She'd tricked all three dragons' representatives into buying a fake coin, and by revealing that trick had ensured that the dragons themselves would be at each other's throats for some time to come. Best of all, she had "died" in a live cellphone transmission. That ought to stop them from looking for her.

Now all she had to do was wait out the coming storm. She knew just the place to do it, too: the last place any of the dragons would expect her to bolt to.

Forcing herself to sit up, she gave Skimmer his sailing orders.

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