The Far Shores (The Central Series) (17 page)

“Yeah, them,” Rebecca
said sarcastically. “Did you kill all of them?”

“What? No. Of course
not.”

“Ah. Nicely done.”

“I just broke some
antiques, messed up the family altar, and threatened to shoot a bunch of small
children,” Alice said, covering her face with her hands. “That seemed to do the
trick. But, like I said, they didn’t really know much of anything.”

“Well, I’d still say
that’s pretty good. For you.”

“Thanks. Hey,” Alice
said, sitting up and looking Rebecca in the eyes, abruptly animated. “Do I
smoke?”

“What? No. Of course
not.”

“I mean, did I? Before.
You know. Ever.”

Rebecca was thrown off
by the abrupt change in the direction of the conversation, and again thought
about intervening in Alice’s emotional state, setting her on an even keel long
enough to figure out was going on. She decided to hold off, because she was
worried about Alice’s concern regarding the past. Alice, despite her handicap, generally
wasn’t the kind to indulge in retrospection.

“No,” Rebecca said
firmly. “Not once. At least, not that I ever saw. Why?”

Alice flopped back down
on the bed, deflated.

“Had a weird experience
at the Far Shores. I don’t know. Felt like I almost remembered something.”

Time for a change in
conversation, Rebecca thought, to get her mind off it.

“They are a weird bunch,
aren’t they? The Far Shores crowd. Personally, I was relieved when they left
Central. Do you think the kids will be all right down there?”

“I don’t know. Probably.
I’m sure I won’t be leaving them alone. If I have to deploy all the active
Auditors to the field again, then I’m shipping ’em back to Central.”

“Wait. Does that mean
that you’d consider Xia as a potential babysitter?”

That finally got a grin
out of Alice, which was something of a relief.

“Why not? He’s great
with kids. Really opens up.”

“Uh-huh,” Rebecca said,
reminding herself to do a checkup on Xia’s mental state in the next few months.
Just to be certain. “How’s Mitsuru? I haven’t seen her in a while…”

“I’ve got her working
this thing in Georgia. I hope the little bitch appreciates it,” Alice said
forlornly. “It’s the kind of thing I’d love to be doing right now.”

***

Green text scrolled across her vision,
data provided by the downloaded ballistics protocol informing Mitsuru of what
she already knew – all four of the men were armed, the outlines of semiautomatic
handguns helpfully tagged beneath the poorly concealed bulges in their suits,
hypertext boxes offering educated guesses as to make and model based on
dimensions. Of course, she could have determined that just as easily by their
habitual adjustment of their coats, or the nervous way that the man near the
door would occasionally hand-check something beneath his jacket, a ritual gesture
of reassurance. It was to be expected. They all had their roles to play.

“I am surprised that you
brought such a large number of men for a simple transaction.”

Mitsuru’s role, at the
moment, was the representative of a buyer of small arms, mainly for resale to
criminal groups in Britain and Republican Separatists in Northern Ireland,
where assault rifles sold at a premium. She had spent much of her time over the
past several weeks in Tbilisi arranging for the deal, with the help of a
downloaded language protocol and a supporting cast provided by the Lionidze
Cartel, who had done much of the groundwork for this operation. For a group of
people who made a living primarily through the procurement and export of women
to the international sex trade, they had proved to be remarkably friendly and
helpful.

“And I, in turn, am
surprised that you came alone,” Gotsha responded, his smile revealing two gold
teeth of dubious quality. “This is not a safe neighborhood.”

“Or a safe business,”
she responded, with a smile of her own.

The men she was meeting
with were legitimate members of a Caucasian Mafia that specialized in the sale
of Russian military equipment to various despotic Middle Eastern countries
that, for one reason or another, could not procure such things on the open
market. Their role, however, was feigning interest in the deal she had been
carefully arranging for a number of anti-tank weapons and sundry explosives,
when they actually intended to rob and murder her. But appearances were
important to all parties concerned, so they were still playing nice.

“Very true,” Gotsha
said, amused by her words and her apparent ignorance. The Inquisition Protocol
she was running concurrently with the ballistics protocol revealed a great deal
about what was actually on his mind, and Mitsuru thought that she would
particularly enjoy killing him. “I assume that you brought the agreed-upon
final payment?”

The first third had been
made by bank transfer, using a Turkish Cypriot bank that was still amiable to
such transactions, but the remainder was to be made in cash, upon receipt of
the various arms. They had overplayed their hand in their eagerness, however,
making it obvious that they did not intend to complete the transaction by never
inquiring how she intended to move the materials out of the country. Normally,
they would have sought a sizable fee to arrange transit via one of the mafia-controlled
border checkpoints – another useful piece of information her human-smuggler
hosts had provided.

“And I, in turn, assume
that you have brought the goods.”

This time they all
laughed, and Mitsuru smiled in return, impatient to murder the lot of them and
be done with it. Two weeks in the underworld of Tbilisi had left her feeling
the need for a hot shower and a handful of benzodiazepines.

It was the fruit of
Gaul’s methodical nature that had brought her here. While Central currently
lacked a telepath capable of interrogating the necrotic memories of a corpse,
for reasons Mitsuru preferred not to consider, there was no shortage of forensic
expertise and technology, all of which the Director had ordered deployed on the
bodies of the pawns the Anathema had left behind in their hasty flight from
Central. She wasn’t privy to everything that Analytics had prized from the
dead, but she knew that her current mission had been devised by tracing the
origins of the rifles that a number had carried during the attack.

The Anathema had relied
on the cartels that had turned traitor to provide the bulk of the foot soldiers
used in the raid, rather than exposing their own forces, which prevented them
from incurring any meaningful losses. The strategy was not without drawbacks,
however, among which was the relative lack of combat-grade weaponry that the
minor cartels possessed. The Hegemony and the Black Sun retained control of
their various subsidiary cartels partially by controlling access to armaments.
The smaller cartels had sidearms and light weapons, but not the kind of gear
needed to outfit a small army for an attack on Central – meaning that the Anathema
had needed to provide it. Apparently the Anathema didn’t have sufficient stock
on hand to do so directly, and had therefore contracted a number of criminal
groups specializing in such things – in particular, the branch of the Georgian
Mafia that Mitsuru had been negotiating with over the past weeks. Many of the
AK-47 rifles used in the assault had been traced back to a single Russian
armory, and from there, it hadn’t been difficult for Analytics to determine who
diverted the guns into Anathema hands.

Normally, this wouldn’t
have been of much interest – after all, Central acquired much of its equipment
via similar channels, and putting arms smugglers out of business was hardly
among the Auditors’ concerns. This particular branch of the Mafia, however, was
long rumored to be under the control of a coven of Witches, and the connection
between the Witches and the Anathema was one of the many subjects that the
Director was eager to learn more about. Mitsuru had therefore been dispatched
to Tbilisi to conduct a transaction similar to the one the Anathema had made,
in a successful attempt to draw the same smugglers out from whatever rock they
normally hid beneath.

She wasn’t sure why they
didn’t plan on completing the deal. It was possible that they never had, seeing
greater short-term profits in simple robbery, or that she had made some small
mistake that had raised their suspicions. It made no difference to her, however.
Mitsuru had never had any intention of keeping her end of the bargain. All she
truly wanted was information, particularly the location of the coven of Witches
behind the mafia, so that appropriate questions could be asked.

The only problem with
the situation that Mitsuru saw was that she needed one of the men alive, so
telepaths could strip-mine his brain for useful data.

“Loaded in a truck,”
Gotsha lied, gesturing meaninglessly at the street behind the warehouse walls. “Waiting
outside. Do you have the specified payment?”

They were clumsy,
playing everything too aggressive. The tension in their stances, in Gotsha’s
voice, gave the game away. She would have needed to be twice the fool that they
thought in order to believe the deal was still on. The fifth man, the one
waiting outside, wasn’t even quiet when he locked the door from the outside.

“Oh, yes,” Mitsuru said,
putting her briefcase on the table in front of her, releasing the latches with
a satisfying click. “It’s all right here. Exactly what you deserve.”

***

“Something is wrong.”

“What? No. Not at all.”

Eerie frowned.

“Alex is stupid. Don’t
lie.”

He sighed and looked up
at the gently swaying tree branches, the light pleasantly filtered by the green
leaves, the grass beneath him still slightly damp from last night’s rain. Eerie
sat nearby, pointedly out of reach, and shifted away whenever he tried to get
close to her.

“I have a headache,” he
admitted. “I’ve had one since yesterday. Usually, they go away after I sleep,
but...well, I had weird dreams all night. When I woke up this morning, instead
of feeling better, I felt a little worse.”

Eerie put a warm hand on
his forehead, though given the difference between their natural temperatures,
he doubted she could tell anything. The Changeling seemed to have an internal
radiator, which made her indifferent to cold weather.

“Are you sick?”

Alex shook his head.

“No. I get these
headaches all the time.”

Eerie pursed her lips
and looked concerned.

“All the time?”

“A lot. Not really sure
when they started. Since the thing with the Anathema, I guess. And...well, that
isn’t all.”

Eerie just waited
impassively, her eyes so profoundly dilated in the muted light that he could
see his face reflected in them. She had been this way all afternoon – taciturn
and distant – and nothing he said or did seemed to make an impact. Alex could
tell something was wrong, but he couldn’t figure out what was bothering her. He
was tempted to ask, but worried that whatever reasons Eerie had for avoiding
him last weekend would turn out to be ongoing.

He chose his words
carefully, which was a chore, because Alex didn’t really understand the things
he was trying to explain to her.

“They’re like dreams, I
guess, but different. Almost like memories of things that never happened. You
ever wake up feeling sad or nostalgic or happy because of something that
happened in a dream, but you can’t remember what the dream was about?”

Eerie shook her head.

“I don’t have dreams.”

Alex shrugged. He
couldn’t think of a better way to describe it.

“I don’t know how else
to explain it. I don’t have the words. But it hurts.”

Eerie put a hand on his
chest and kissed his cheek.

“There aren’t words for
some things, Alex. Just because you can’t find a name for something doesn’t
make it unreal.”

Alex was flooded with
gratitude to Eerie. He should have known, he thought, should have guessed that
she would be the one to understand the things that he couldn’t articulate. Of
course she would. The girl who couldn’t explain anything about herself at all,
not with the limited vocabulary of human language.

“Poor Alex.”

Eerie rested her hand on
the back of his neck, and he felt his headache slowly recede, like ice melting,
like fog along the coast burning away as the sun rose toward mid-afternoon.

***

The air was heavy with smoke,
volatilized lead, and cordite. Her ears rang, made partially deaf by the chaos
of a shootout that had lasted only seconds. The gun in her right hand was
empty, and she dropped and replaced the clip without paying it much attention,
the movements a practiced routine, a vital and lethal dance. There were three
shells left in the magazine of the gun in her left hand, which she used to
sweep across the bleeding bodies of four men – three dead, and one still very
much alive. Bleeding profusely from perforated kneecaps, sheet-white and hyperventilating
from shock, but alive.