The Industry (12 page)

Marron shot to his feet and crossed to the door. He threw it open.

‘You need to leave immediately, Desmond!' he said, his expression very serious.

Desmond made no effort to move.

‘Marron, settle down,' he said weakly. ‘It's alright, really.'

Marron's eyes looked as though they were about to pop out of his head. ‘No,' he said. ‘“Alright” is the opposite of what this is. You brought Kirra Hayward,
Kirra Hayward
, into my office. That — is — NOT — alright!'

‘No one followed us. I made sure.'

‘Desmond! You have no idea how
serious
this is. They could be coming right now. All of them!'

Kirra sat still, listening closely to the exchange. Who could be coming?

‘Just close the door, Marron,' Desmond insisted quietly. ‘I promise we won't be staying long.'

Marron gave Kirra an anxious glance, then heaved a great, defeated sigh. He slowly shut the door, and resumed his seat, eyeing Kirra as though she might contaminate him with a fatal disease.

‘We'd better tell the Cautlifs you have her,' he said, moving to pick up the phone.

‘NO!'

Desmond's hand shot out to stop Marron's wrist in what looked like an extremely painful grip. The two men stared at each other for a long moment.

‘Are you serious, Desmond?' Marron whispered, his eyes wide once more. ‘You want me to keep
this
from
them
?'

Desmond let go of Marron and gave a curt nod, his expression suddenly bitter.

‘Look, I don't give a crap about the issues you have with them,' Marron said. ‘We have to tell them about Kirra Hayward — we have to!'

‘Tell them what exactly?' Desmond asked.

‘Well …' Marron shrugged. ‘That she's been found. That we know where she is.'

‘No, I don't think so,' Desmond said. ‘They'll take her away.'

‘Probably,' Marron conceded. He didn't seem too bothered by the idea. In fact, it seemed like the very solution to all his problems. He reached again for the phone. ‘I'll tell them that we'll hold her here 'til they arrive.'

Desmond's hand shot out again and this time Marron grunted in pain.

‘They're not having her!' Desmond snarled. ‘You're not telling them anything.'

Marron winced, looking panic-stricken.

‘Deceive the Cautlifs?' he said. ‘Go the same way as Sam Haffey and Pearl Whittaker? I don't think so!'

Desmond said nothing to that.

‘I'm not willing to risk my job over this,' Marron added.

‘You'll have to be,' Desmond threatened. ‘Or keeping this job will be the least of your problems.'

Marron glared at him. He seemed to understand Desmond's meaning though because he gave a long, low sigh and slumped back in his chair. Kirra, who was tremendously confused, kept glancing between the two men.

‘Des …' Marron began, hunching slightly as though the situation was a literal weight on his bowed shoulders, ‘why are you with Kirra Hayward at all? How is it you're not dead yet?'

‘Believe me, I'm as shocked as you are,' Desmond said, all traces of hostility gone from his voice. ‘We had a problem about an hour ago and I need some information.'

Marron eyed him closely, looking interested despite himself.

‘We were ambushed by three Contractors. I don't think they work for Latham, though I can't be sure. I managed to get Kirra away … but we lost Mai Luong.'

‘She's dead?' Marron asked.

Desmond gave an unsteady shrug. ‘I don't know,' he admitted. ‘Honestly, I don't. That's why I'm here.'

‘Wait,' said Marron, his eyebrows knitting together. ‘Tell me this wasn't the ridiculous incident we just picked up at that bar? What's its name? Ruiz?'

Desmond looked sheepish.

‘You went to a bar with Kirra Hayward?' Marron said. ‘Do you have a death wish? What were you thinking?'

‘Not an awful lot, evidently,' Desmond replied lightly. ‘We needed to meet a contact and we couldn't leave her unsupervised. We thought it would be fine because we didn't think anyone knew where she was. We were wrong, clearly. Anyway, can you give me anything at all on Mai?'

Marron scratched his cheek absently for a moment.

‘Alright,' he said, picking up his phone and dialling an extension. ‘Who's on the Ruiz thing?' he barked into the receiver. He listened for a moment, observing the buzzing office through the glass panel in his door, then slapped the phone back on the hook without so much as a parting comment.

‘I'll send you to Viera Favero,' he told Desmond. ‘She's collecting on this one.'

Desmond rose and headed for the door. He opened it and indicated for Kirra to follow. Standing up, she glanced back at Marron.

‘So … you don't have any information about me at all?' she said, seizing what seemed like her final chance to ask.

Marron looked as though he'd rather Kirra didn't address him directly, but after a moment he gave her a compassionate sort of grimace.

‘Information is what we do here,' he told her, neatening the contents of a folder on his desk and dropping it onto a stack by his feet. ‘We know more about you than you probably do: right now you're the subject of a file the
approximate size of a phone book. But let me promise you this: absolutely none of it will make you feel any better.'

Kirra gritted her teeth, not even bothering to mask her disappointment. ‘I just thought … because you're Australian, you might …'

‘Australian?' He laughed. ‘Hardly. I haven't lived there for nearly twenty years,' he said, quashing whatever hope she'd had of him feeling some kind of patriotic bond. ‘And just because someone shares your accent doesn't, by any stretch of the imagination, mean they're your friend.'

He turned to address Desmond. ‘You have a lot of work to do on her, Des.'

Desmond gave him a rueful smile. ‘Not a word to the Cautlifs,' he warned. ‘Remember?'

Marron swallowed nervously, but nodded all the same. Desmond tugged Kirra back out into the frenzied bullpen.

‘Well, what about Milo Franklyn then?' she called back to Marron. ‘Do you have anything on him?'

Marron considered her for several moments. ‘Milo Franklyn,' he said. ‘The name rings a bell …'

Kirra was going to tell him why, but Desmond dragged her away before she got a chance.

‘I thought you wanted Milo to be kept a secret,' he hissed, shutting the door to Marron's office.

‘I do!' she said furiously.

‘So keep your mouth shut! This office is not loyal to you. Telling them something valuable like that is as dangerous as telling an enemy. Besides, we're in a hurry here,' he said, shoving through a cluster of bespectacled
men, all of whom looked put out by his fierce lack of decorum. ‘This really isn't the time for nostalgia or reading up on your friend.'

Kirra glared at him. ‘But —'

‘No questions.'

With the conversation apparently closed, he led her in a zigzag through the office, coming to a stop at an atrociously untidy cubicle.

‘Viera?' Desmond called.

Towers of multicoloured files and folders seemed to be growing up between the dividing walls, as though the cubicle was an out-of-control greenhouse. Any bit of partition that wasn't buried behind a mountain of documents was plastered with lists and bits of paper with phone numbers scrawled on them. Atop a steel filing cabinet sat a tiny screen that flashed glimpses of different news programs from all over the world. In the few seconds Kirra studied it she saw at least eight different news reporters and heard just as many different languages. Six telephones, each a different colour, hung from hooks in a row, their little holding lights flashing silently.

As Kirra gazed at the mess, a mass of blonde curls erupted from behind one of the piles and scared her half to death. With hair like that, she'd almost expected to see Olivia.

‘Is that you, Des?' a shrill voice asked.

A small, stout woman in a salmon-coloured suit strode out of the cubicle, her golden ringlets bouncing around her shoulders as if they were independently alive.

‘You haven't visited for some time,' she added stiffly, glaring at Desmond through tiny round glasses. ‘Please
remind Flo when you see her that she still has my file on Brigitte Wipplinger. I want it returned for my archives.'

‘Ah yes … well … she's most likely lost it somewhere in her room, Viera,' Desmond said. ‘But I'll tell her anyway,' he promised hastily, catching the incensed look on her face.

Viera Favero gave a defeated sigh. ‘I suppose you're right, but that's the last time she borrows from this office. Now, you want some stuff on the bar thing, yes?'

She rubbed her forehead, and eyed Kirra with interest.

‘And who's this?' she said.

Desmond cleared his throat.

‘Kirra,' he said, purposely not mentioning her last name, something Kirra was tremendously grateful for. ‘This is Kirra.'

Viera stuck out her hand. ‘
Buenas noches
,' she said. ‘¿
Cómo está?
'

‘English, Viera,' Desmond told her. ‘She speaks English.'

‘Oh, thank god! I've had it with Spanish today! We've picked up a flurry of activity … I swear, something is going on in Madrid and I've got too many things happening to be worrying about tripping over a foreign language.'

‘It's not technically foreign,' Desmond corrected her, looking as though he was enjoying himself. ‘We're in Spain.'

Viera inspected him, her hazel eyes sharp. ‘Do you want information or not?' she said venomously.

Desmond gave her an apologetic smile. ‘Mai Luong was involved in the bar incident. I need whatever you have on her.'

Viera opened one of the topmost files on her desk and searched through it, her lips moving silently. Kirra looked around the cubicle, saw an open file nearby and began reading the pages as covertly as possible. Someone called H A McCoy was apparently a figure of interest, his name circled in thick black marker, a large question mark hovering beside it. There was another folder labelled ‘Rae and Wesley Arlo', complete with security footage stills and a family tree. Heather Hertzog's name appeared several times in one file, each mention of her linked to the next with a thin red line; she seemed to be a missing Contractor of some sort.

‘Mai Luong …' Viera murmured, dropping the file and taking up another. ‘Mai Luong … Mai — oh! Here we are.'

Kirra heard Desmond take a small, sharp breath as Viera scanned the page, her tiny eyes zipping back and forth. She kept them in suspense for far too long before …

‘Alright! Mai Luong was taken in an ambulance to the San Ignatius Hospital just after ten thirty. She was alive at the scene, but apparently sustained significant blood loss, enough for her to be pronounced critical. I haven't received further information on her status as yet. Perhaps in the next half an hour — does that suit you?'

Desmond ignored the question. ‘So … she was alive?' he clarified.

Viera gave him a surprised look. ‘Well, yes,' she said, nodding so that her curls practically ricocheted off her head. ‘Do you require her for something?'

‘Just about everything right now,' Desmond told her, eyeing the path back to reception and barely containing a grin.

‘Desmond,' Viera said in a warning tone, ‘San Ignatius is
not
an Industry-friendly hospital. She'll be under guard. They think she's a suspect.'

‘I'll bet they do,' he agreed, taking another backward step.

‘You can't just go in and snatch her from her sick bed!' she exclaimed, looking at him as though he was likely to do just that.

‘No, no, I won't,' he said unconvincingly. ‘I just needed to know if she was alive, otherwise Fadil will kill me.'

‘Oh yes,' Viera said thoughtfully. ‘He could become a problem.' She glanced back down at the file for a moment, tapping her tongue against her teeth.

‘Any idea who attacked you?'

‘Not really,' Desmond replied.

‘Well,' she said, ‘it might interest you to know that a break and enter occurred in the same area fifteen minutes before the gunfire at Ruiz.'

Desmond stopped inching backward. ‘Really?'

‘Really,' said Viera, perusing her file again. ‘If you ask me, it's got “Decoy” written all over it. The perpetrator was gone before the police arrived; left a few personalised threats written on the kitchen table and took all the utensils, a pair of roller skates and most of the computer cables. Random enough to have kept the cops busy.'

Desmond didn't seem worried by this news, merely interested.

‘Any idea of the Decoy's name?'

‘None at all, but if you want to find him I'd start with Gaspara Pueyo, if I were you.'

‘Gaspara Pueyo?'

‘She keeps track of all the Madrilenian Decoys. Here …' Viera scribbled an address on a small card and flicked it at him. ‘It might be nothing, but it's well worth a look if you're interested.'

Viera's phone rang. She scooped it up with a terse ‘¿
Sí?
' and listened intently for a moment before her expression melted into one of unrestrained horror. She dropped the phone back onto its hook, hardly noticing when she missed and it bounced onto the floor, lost between the columns of files.

‘That was Marron,' she told Desmond in a whisper, her face deathly white. ‘He says your time is up. You've had K-Kirra Hayward here for ten minutes and he said that's ten minutes too many.'

Desmond gave a groan as Viera edged away from Kirra, nearly toppling over a box of papers beside her desk.

‘We'd better go,' he muttered. ‘Thanks again, Viera.'

He and Kirra made their way back through the surging workers, climbed the stairs and retreated to the reception area. Lettie glanced up at them. She had been ticking names off a list.