The Peyti Crisis: A Retrieval Artist Novel: Book Five of the Anniversary Day Saga (Retrieval Artist series 12) (41 page)

“You said that before,” Nyquist said.

“I’ll say it again, and much more. If you can only change my status.” Uzvaan was begging again.

Nyquist shook his head. He prided himself on being an ethical man. An honorable man. He had come here to make a deal, one that would exchange information for changing Uzvaan’s status, but he could lie and say that Uzvaan had refused. Then Nyquist could destroy the recording he made, and it would be his word against an attempted mass murderer’s.

But he couldn’t do it. As much as he wanted to, he couldn’t. Any more than he could have gone into that bubble-cell and broken all of Uzvaan’s too-thin limbs.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Nyquist said.

“You won’t regret this, Bartholomew,” Uzvaan said.

“It’s detective,” Nyquist said. “Don’t ever presume that we’re friends.”

“I do not, Detective,” Uzvaan said. “I realize what I’m asking of you.”

“Do you?” Nyquist asked. “Because I think you have absolutely no idea what this will cost me.”

And neither, deep down, did Nyquist.

FORTY-SIX

FLINT WALKED OUT of his favorite coffee shop. The latte he’d had sat uneasily on his stomach. The counselor, Llewynn, had recommended that Flint stop hovering over Talia. Instead, the man suggested that Flint encourage Talia to spend time with others, even if that meant Flint did not see her all day.

The idea sounded so easy, and it was so hard.

He had dropped her at the security office. She wanted to talk with Popova, and he thought that a good thing.

He wasn’t supposed to return for three more hours. He wasn’t certain how he could do that. He had investigating to do, but he was having trouble concentrating, particularly while he was focused on Talia.

The streets were mostly empty. They had been unusually empty since the Peyti Crisis. He wasn’t sure if that was because people were staying home out of fear or if so many businesses had closed that no one had any place to go.

Many of the nearby office buildings looked deserted. Only a handful of cars went by, some above him, others using the street itself. Usually there was congestion in this part of Armstrong. The quiet streets felt odd to him.

Of course, there were a lot of law firms in this area. He knew many of them were closed.

He had parked his car on a parking-allowed side street. He was nearly there, when Luc Deshin appeared on his links. Deshin used a hologram so perfect that if Flint hadn’t seen it form, he would have thought Deshin was standing before him.

“Is this a good place to talk?” Deshin asked.

“No,” Flint said. “I’m on a public street.”

“Well, get unpublic and contact me.”

Flint almost said that he didn’t take orders from Deshin, but before Flint could form the words, Deshin had winked out.

Flint sighed. He was glad for the short walk to the car, so that he could gather himself. He needed to regain his inner balance, or he would start making bad decisions.

He let himself into the car, then quickly swept it to make certain that no one had attached any chips, links, or listening devices. He realized in the last few days that he hadn’t been paranoid enough.

Or maybe it was just the image of Luc Deshin, reminding him that anyone could slide through his links.

Flint used the private encoded link that Deshin had set up for them. Deshin appeared before him, looking like Flint had driven the car through him.

Flint shrank the image and moved it on top of the dashboard.

Deshin looked powerful, even at one-tenth his normal size.

“So,” Flint said, “you have news?”

Deshin crossed his arms. He looked like a temperamental doll. Flint managed to repress the smile that loomed at that thought.

“I’ve gone as far as I can,” Deshin said. “And I don’t have the source of the clones.”

Flint’s urge to smile vanished. He cursed softly. “Another dead-end, then.”

“I didn’t say that.” Deshin seemed to be staring at something over Flint’s left shoulder. “I had time to think about this, because I didn’t want to contact you until I was certain my ship was clean and no one was able to listen in.”

Flint wanted to ask exactly where Deshin had ended up, but didn’t dare. Flint also knew the less information he had about Deshin’s search, the better.

“I found
a
source of Frémont clones. He appears to be the only one with clones on the market. But they’re fast-grow.”

Flint started to say that they didn’t need fast-grow, when Deshin held up a hand, forestalling him.

“They’re fast-grow because the DNA is corrupted. I’ve hit dead-end after dead-end after dead-end. The usual brokers have nothing. The truly scary brokers led me to this guy. The Black Fleet was nearby as well. Because of the attacks on Armstrong, everyone is now looking for Frémont clones.”

Flint sighed. A big event always did this.

“They won’t find any useful Frémont clones on the market,” Deshin said, “but that means the market in designer criminal clones based on mass murderers will grow, rather than decrease.”

Flint closed his eyes for a moment, thanking whatever god he could think of that he was no longer in law enforcement.

“I’ll let Noelle know,” he said, opening his eyes.

Now, Deshin’s hologram seemed to be looking directly at him. “I’d tell you to have her contact the Alliance, but I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

Flint frowned. “So you did find something.”

“The guy who is selling the fast-grow clones collected DNA from Frémont on the day Frémont died. This guy had an assistant. Her name is Jhena Andre, and she works inside the Alliance, in some classified position.”

“You think she’s involved?” Flint asked. “Can’t you contact her to buy the DNA?”

“Here’s the thing,” Deshin said. “My guy already has. He could make millions on Frémont DNA, and she’s not selling. She’s not saying she has any Frémont DNA either. In theory, she just helped my guy collect the stuff. But he explained the procedure to me, and she had plenty of time to skim.”

“And corrupt the remaining DNA?” Flint asked.

“I doubt it. I think that has to do with storage.” Deshin had clearly given this a lot of thought. “I believe that she stored hers better than he stored his.”

“And this is based on what?” Flint asked. “A theory?”

“Weirdly, yes,” Deshin said. “In my world, when there’s money to be made, people flock to that area.”

In most worlds,
Flint thought, but didn’t say.

“People have been flocking since Anniversary Day,” Deshin said. “They’ve been trying to buy these clones. They’re a proven commodity. They can follow orders. Decades of investment in their upbringing and training have paid off. I don’t know if you understand how rare this is.”

Flint hadn’t understood it. He hadn’t wanted to think about it. But it made a lot of sense.

“So,” Deshin said, “right now, whoever owns this uncorrupted DNA can make more money than I can even imagine—and I can imagine a lot.
Everyone
has been trying to find this DNA.
Everyone
. That’s why I had to wait to contact you. I’m pretty sure once my requests were known, I got followed.”

Flint shuddered, and hoped Deshin couldn’t see it on their links. To Flint—to any sane human—Anniversary Day was a horror. Deshin knew how the people behind these horrors worked, and could speak of them with complete dispassion.

Flint also knew how upset Deshin was about these attacks, and how he’d been willing to help.

But Flint couldn’t entirely understand how a man like Deshin—a man with a family—could delve into these worlds.

“This guy told me about his contact with Jhena Andre, and it wasn’t until after our meeting that I realized the significance of what he told me.” Deshin made a little bobbing movement, one that Flint finally realized was an apology. “I couldn’t contact my guy again, not without making some kind of offer. And then, he might get suspicious.”

“All right,” Flint said. “Tell me the significance.”

“When a good person is guilty of something awful,” Deshin said, “someone who has never crossed a line before, that person either confesses or tries to hide the information.”

“You think Andre told her superiors in the Alliance that she helped steal Frémont’s DNA?” Flint asked, finally beginning to understand.

“It’s possible,” Deshin said. “But her reaction to my guy’s request wasn’t the kind of reaction that someone working with the authorities would have. She didn’t lead him on and try to get him arrested or anything.”

Flint frowned, trying to follow.

“She just told him not to contact her again, and not to give anyone her name.” Deshin said this as if it were significant.

Flint thought about that for a moment. “Was she scared?”

“That’s what I don’t know,” Deshin said. “If she was, then it would explain a lot, I suppose.”

“But you think something else,” Flint said.

“She worked in the prison where Frémont had been incarcerated for two years. Then she moved on, always staying in the prison system and administration, working her way up into the Alliance. Eventually, she became an administrator, and her work—even her job description—is so classified that I’d need to hire someone to break through the classification to find out what she does.”

Like Flint could do.

“The Peyti clones also came from a mass murderer,” Deshin said, “and he was incarcerated by the Peyti, who are long-time members of the Alliance. If my information is correct, then the Peyti mass murderer’s DNA is also in the Alliance system—”

“Where this Jhena Andre presumably had access to it.” Flint leaned back, rocking the car. “And she never sold any of it?”

“That I don’t know,” Deshin said. “You get to trace the money. You have to now. Remember I told you how much it would cost to do the Frémont clones. I have no idea how much it would cost to add in the Peyti clones.”

Flint was shaking his head. He couldn’t imagine it.

“Was she co-opted?” he asked, thinking of that partner of Nyquist’s who had tried to blow up Armstrong on Anniversary Day.

“It’s possible,” Deshin said. “Then the question becomes how would someone know she had the DNA. And why in the known universe would she keep it?”

“Why do we keep any of this DNA on file?” Flint asked.

“I don’t think we do,” Deshin said, “but I don’t know.”

Flint felt cold. He glanced at the street. No one had passed him in all the time he’d been talking to Deshin. The alerts that Flint had installed on the vehicle hadn’t gone off either, so he hadn’t just missed someone going by.

No one had.

Armstrong had become a ghost town.

He wondered how much of the population had simply fled. And if they had, where they had fled to.

“Could the Alliance be making money off the DNA?” Flint asked. He knew that some governments had made money on arms-brokering in the past. But he had never figured the Alliance for something like that.

“You’d think I would have found the Frémont DNA if it were,” Deshin said, “but right now I’m not ruling anything out.”

He glanced at something off to his left.

“I’m not able to trace the money,” Deshin said after a moment. “My people are good, but not good enough to deal with the Alliance’s databases. Besides, if I do something like that, then red flags will go up in every law enforcement agency throughout the Alliance. I’ve been working very hard since my son’s birth to become a legitimate businessman. I don’t want to lose that now.”

Not even for the sake of the Moon?
Flint wanted to ask. But he didn’t. Because he knew that Deshin had already gone out on a limb with this investigation.

“You’re equipped to do this kind of work,” Deshin said. “It would be better if it came from you.”

Flint knew Deshin was right. “This investigation won’t go quick.”

“They’re hiding something big,” Deshin said. “And they’ve done so for years. That generally makes someone complacent.”

“But the attacks just happened,” Flint said. “That usually reminds people to clean up whatever messes they made.”

“Are you saying you can’t do this?” Deshin asked.

Flint looked in the car’s mirrors, thinking of the Armstrong Comfort Center and Talia. He would need something to focus on so that he didn’t just concentrate on her. It would make her angry, probably upset her counselor, and frustrate him.

“I can do this,” Flint said, hoping he was right.

“Good,” Deshin said. “Because I have a bunch of theories and I don’t like any of them.”

“You already mentioned that these clones might be soldiers in a war we don’t know we’re fighting,” Flint said. “The question is, what war?”

“That’s a spectacular question,” Deshin said. “Governments have more funds than individuals, and they can hide the tab for creating creatures like these clones in their military budgets. They can also co-opt employees of the places they’re going to attack.”