‘What exactly is it you require?’ Baronski asked stiffly. ‘I’m sure you must be aware that I’ve never sought to infringe upon any of Event Horizon’s activities. My girls have very clear instructions on this matter.’
Greg clicked his fingers at the girl. ‘Best if you disappear.’
She glanced at Baronski.
‘Go along, Iol. I’ll call you when we’re finished.’
She curtsied, and walked silently across the lounge to the hallway door.
Suzi watched her go. ‘Give her a lot of artistic tuition, do you?’
The door closed.
‘Miss …?’
‘Suzi.’
Baronski appeared to chew something distasteful. ‘Indeed.’
‘I expect you know the routine,’ Greg said.
‘Remind me,’ the old man said vaguely.
‘Hard or soft. We don’t leave without the data we came for. And I do have a gland, so we’ll know if it is the right data. Clear enough?’
‘My word, am I really that important? A gland, you say. You obviously cannot read my mind directly.’
‘I’m an empath; you lie, and I know about it instantly.’
‘I see. And suppose I were to say nothing?’
‘Word association. I reel off a list of topics, and see which name your mind jumps at. But it’s an effort, and it annoys me.’
‘So what would you do should you become annoyed, beat it out of me? I imagine I would feel a lot of pain at my age. The old bones aren’t very strong now.’
‘No, I wouldn’t lay a finger on you. That’s what she’s here for.’
There was a sharp pulse of indignation from Suzi’s mind, but she held her outward composure.
Baronski studied her impassive face for any sign of weakness, then sighed and sat carefully in the settee. ‘I suppose this day was inevitable, I just pushed it away to the back of my mind, always secretly hoping that I would be proved wrong. But I can honestly say that I never intended to upset Julia Evans. In a way she is an admirable woman, so many would have squandered what she has. Yes, admirable. You can see that I’m telling the truth, can’t you?’
‘I knew that before I came,’ Greg said.
‘Yes. Well, what do you wish to know?’
‘Charlotte Diane Fielder.’
‘Ah yes, a beautiful girl, very smart. I was proud of Charlotte. One of my triumphs. What has she done?’
‘Where is she?’
‘I genuinely don’t know.’
Greg frowned, concentrating. There was a strong trace of disappointment in Baronski’s mind. ‘Do you know who she left the Newfields ball with?’
‘It was supposed to be Jason Whitehurst. My problem is that I can’t find out if she actually did or not. I haven’t been able to contact her or Jason since.’
‘This Jason Whitehurst, is he about fourteen, fifteen?’
Baronski gave him a surprised look, and picked up one of the beer glasses from the table. ‘Good Lord no, Jason is in my age bracket. He has got a son, though, Fabian. Fabian is fifteen, perhaps you mean him.’
‘Could be.’ Greg pulled out his cybofax, and summoned up the memory of Charlotte and the boy leaving the El Harhari.
‘Yes,’ Baronski said, studying the wafer’s screen. ‘That is Fabian Whitehurst.’
‘And this?’ Greg showed him the chauffeur.
‘No. I don’t know that man at all.’
‘OK, what does Jason Whitehurst do?’
‘He’s a trader, shifting cargo around the world. A lot of it is barter, buying products or raw material from countries that have no hard cash reserves, then swapping it for another commodity, and so on down the line until he’s left with something he can dispose of for cash. There’s quite an art to it, but Jason is a successful man.’
‘Said it’d be some rich bastard,’ Suzi said. ‘Money lifted her over the border, no need for a tekmerc deal.’
‘Yeah,’ Greg agreed. ‘Where does Jason Whitehurst live?’
Baronski took a sip from the glass. ‘On board his airyacht, the Colonel Maitland.’
‘What the fuck’s an airyacht?’ Suzi asked.
‘A converted airship. Jason tends to the eccentric, you see. He bought it ten years ago, spends his whole time flying over all of us. I visited once, it has a certain elegant charm, but it’s hardly the life for me.’
Greg sat heavily in one of the chairs. Wringing information out of the old man was depressing him. It was psychological bullying. Dmitri Baronski was a man who took confidentiality seriously. He’d built his life on it. ‘Do you know where Whitehurst was flying to after Monaco?’
‘Yes. That’s why all the heartache. The Colonel Maitland was supposed to be flying straight to Odessa, so Jason told me. But there’s been no trace of them, no answer to any of my calls. I tell myself it cannot be an accident. Airships are the safest way to travel; a punctured gasbag, or a broken spar, the worst that can happen is a gradual deflation. The Colonel Maitland would simply float to the ground. But it hasn’t happened. Such an event would be on every channel newscast, rescue services all around the Mediterranean would be alerted by emergency beacons. Jason Whitehurst and his airyacht have simply vanished from the Earth. I don’t like that. I always keep an eye on my girls, Mr Mandel, I’m very stringent about the patrons I introduce them to. There are certain members of my charmed circle who develop, shall we say, unpleasant tastes and requirements. I won’t have that, not for my girls.’
‘Very commendable. Did you try phoning Whitehurst’s office?’
‘He has several agents dotted about the globe, and yes I called some of them. It was the same answer each time. Jason Whitehurst is currently incommunicado.’
Greg looked at Suzi, who shrugged indifferently.
‘Julia and Victor won’t have any trouble locating something that size,’ she said. ‘There can’t be that many airships left flying.’
‘Yeah,’ Greg acknowledged. There was something faintly unsettling about the way the world lay exposed to Event Horizon. A single phone call and someone’s credit record was instantly available; a request to the company operating the Civil Euroflight Agency’s traffic control franchise, and Europe’s complete air movement records would be squirted over to Peterborough for examination. If an Interpol investigator had requested the data, it would take hours or even days for the appropriate legal procedures to be enacted and release it. Companies and kombinates were developing into an extralegal force more potent than governments, but only in defence of their own interests. It was a creep back towards medievalism, he thought, when people had to petition their local baron for real action, when the king’s justice was just a distant figurehead.
One law for the rich, another for the poor. Nothing ever really changed, not even in the data currency age. And why was he getting so cynical all of a sudden?
Baronski was sitting listlessly in the settee, face morbid. ‘Please tell me, what has Charlotte done?’
‘She hasn’t done anything herself,’ Greg said. ‘It looks like she just got caught up in something a lot bigger. We’re not angry with her, OK? But we do need to talk to her. Urgently.’
‘Yes. I’ll tell her if she gets in touch. Thank you, Mr Mandel.’
Greg stood up. There was a sharp twang from his intuition, an intimation that he was being sold short. He glanced sharply at Baronski, a shrunken figure lost in his own anxiety. The curse of intuition was its lack of clarity, he was never quite certain.
‘Anything you want to ask?’ he asked Suzi.
‘Nah.’
‘OK. If Charlotte does get in touch with you, ask her to call us, please. It will save everyone an awful lot of trouble.’
‘I shall,’ Baronski said. He put his glass down, and picked up a gold cybofax. Greg squirted his number over.
‘Well?’ Suzi asked as they left the apartment.
‘Dunno. I get the impression he’s cheating us somehow.’
‘So why didn’t you ask him about it?’
r />
‘Ask him what? Sorry, Dmitri, but what haven’t you told us? Fat lot of use that would be. You know my empathy is only good for specifics.’
‘Yeah. Skinny little fart, wasn’t he?’
‘It’s not a crime.’ Greg saw Malcolm Ramkartra was still waiting by the open door of the lift. His espersense stretched out again. There were four observers in the well now, and that was just the ones within range. ‘I think it’s about time we found out a bit more about the opposition.’
‘Suits me.’
Greg walked out into the centre of the corridor, and beckoned Malcolm Ramkartra.
‘What did the liaison officer say?’ he asked when the hardliner reached them.
‘He didn’t know the surveillance team were here. There’s no police operation on this floor.’
‘No shit?’ Suzi said.
‘OK. Malcolm, I want to talk to one of the observers. We’re going back to the well; I’ll physically identify one and we’ll work a pincer on him. You go round the balcony clockwise, Suzi and I will take anticlockwise. If he backs off down a corridor, so much the better, he’ll be isolated for a while. If you reach him first, then immobilize him, but make sure he’s still conscious. Don’t worry about visibility, tell you, this deal is important, OK?’
‘Yes, sir, Mr Tyo explained that to us.’
‘Right, and the name’s Greg.’
Malcolm Ramkartra gave a quick smile, his thoughts tightening up. There wasn’t any worry present, a true pro. Greg realized how little he knew about him, apart from the fact that he’d be the best. This deal was so bloody rushed.
‘Let’s go.’ They began to walk towards the well. ‘Two of them are sitting at a table in front of the window. The third is almost in the same place as the one Malcolm spotted earlier. The fourth is a woman, on the balcony above ours, hovering ten metres from the corridor on our left. So we’ll take number three.’
‘How long do you need with him?’ Malcolm Ramkartra asked.
‘About a minute.’
‘Oh.’ This time there was a flutter of consternation in his thought currents.
‘And no, I can’t read your mind directly.’
Suzi gave a wicked chuckle.
Two men stepped into the corridor from the well. The one in front had a pale face, wounded amber eyes, his ebony hair swept back and clinging to his skull. His suit was dark-grey, baggy trousers and a black belt with a silver lion-head buckle. Everything about him shouted hardliner.
The other was an oriental, his hair in braids ending in tiny ringlets. He possessed a surly confidence bordering on egomania.
Suzi stopped dead.
The first man gave a start, and put his hand on the arm of his partner.
His mind was the perfect twin of Suzi’s, Greg saw. The two of them flush with loathing and alarm, ricocheting back and forth, building.
‘Suzi,’ said the man in the suit. ‘The oddest places. Yes?’
‘Leol Reiger, still trailing way behind as per fucking usual.’
‘Depends what I’m after.’
‘Baronski,’ Suzi said firmly, and turned to Greg. ‘Was he?’
The initial confusion in Leol Reiger’s mind had twisted to sharp alarm at the mention of Baronski’s name.
‘Yeah, he knows Baronski.’
Leol Reiger’s eyes never left Suzi. ‘Who’s your friend, Suzi?’ he asked softly.
‘Never seen him before in my life.’
‘Chad,’ Leol Reiger said.
The younger oriental man grinned at Greg. ‘Hey, voodoo man, you do this?’
Greg was caught by surprise at the speed with which Chad’s psi arose. Ordinary misty thought currents suddenly gleamed like chrome, rich with arrogant power. Chad’s espersense unfurled, black daemon wings taking Greg into their implacable embrace.
The sensation was like a hot wet tongue slipping right through his temple, licking round his brain. Gone before he could harden his mind against it.
And he’d never even bothered to take the most elementary precaution. Jumped like a total novice. Chad must be loaded with sacs; themed neurohormones stored at critical sections through the brain, lifting the psi faculty from dormant to active like throwing a switch.
‘Mr Greg Mandel is a gland psychic,’ Chad said, his grin widening to mock.
‘Really?’ said Leol Reiger.
Greg could sense Suzi’s annoyance, twined with a small thread of exasperation that she should be let down like this. He increased his gland’s secretion, shame damping down as a cool anger surfaced in his thoughts; remembering the games the Brigade used to play in barracks. Squaddies’ games, the kind played after days in combat, when life and dignity had been reduced to zero. The ones the Mindstar project directors had frowned upon, too dangerous for their valuable personnel to indulge in.
‘And a Mindstar Brigade veteran as well,’ Chad went on. ‘A real top gun in his day. Like, a century ago.’
‘So what is this?’ Leol Reiger asked. ‘You running a pensioner’s outing, Suzi?’
‘I’d hate to think you were treading on my turf, Leol. That’d piss me off real bad,’ Suzi growled back.
Greg tried to keep track of the observers’ reactions. They were alert and interested by the confrontation. Nothing to do with Leol Reiger, then.
‘Back off, bitch,’ said Leol Reiger. ‘And you,’ he flicked a finger at Malcolm Ramkartra, ‘keep your hand away from that shoulder holster. I’ll chop you into fucking dogmeat, else. Got it?’
‘That’s enough,’ Greg said. ‘You two aren’t going to see Baronski, he belongs to us now. Fuck off, the pair of you.’
‘Jesus, a geriatric control-freak,’ Leol Reiger sneered. ‘Chad, deal with him.’
Greg thought of a knife, bright steel shimmering, needle tip pricking the skin on the bridge of Chad’s nose.
Chad began to laugh, his thoughts flaring as the sacs discharged again and the neurohormone dose hit his bloodstream. ‘Gonna crack your mind open like an eggshell, war hero.’
Greg tensed his mind behind the imaginary blade, and—
—reality flickered—
—and pushed. Chad’s thoughts were too hard, too closely packed. The knife slithered across their congealed surface, denied an opening.
‘Best you can do?’ Chad asked.
‘Yeah.’
‘Too bad.’
‘That’s why I always bring my little friend along,’ Greg said, nodding at a point behind Chad.
Screams broke out in the well. People were pushing and shoving as they raced past the end of the corridor, terror in their faces. Display stands went crashing to the ground. One of the barrows was overturned, oranges and nectarines tumbling about across the tiled floor.
The beast was about the size of a lion, jet black, covered in an ice-smooth exoskeleton. Talons made skittering noises against the tiles as it padded round the corner into the corridor. Its head was a streamlined nightmare, eyes buried in deep recesses, razor fins on its crown, tapering reptilian muzzle.
Chad gaped at it, frozen in disbelief.
‘Shit almighty,’ Suzi squawked in panic.
Leol Reiger stumbled a step backwards, his pale face shocked. The beast screeched, a metallic keen that threatened to shatter glass. Chad threw his hands over his ears, yelling in fright. The sound cut off.
‘Kill,’ Greg said.
‘No!’ Chad wailed. He turned to run.
The beast leapt, forelimbs catching Chad’s left shoulder, extended talons slashing. Blood squirted. Chad was flung into the walkway’s handrail. He screamed at the pain as his mangled arm took the full weight of the impact. Tears squeezed out of his eyes. He doubled over, clamping his right hand over his left shoulder, blood bubbled through his fingers, staining his sleeve.
‘Jesus Christ, call the fucker off.’
Leol Reiger went for his weapon, hand fumbling inside his suit jacket. Malcolm Ramkartra’s arm moved with a smooth fast piston motion, as if his body was working in accelerated ti
me; his Tokarev pistol pressed against Leol Reiger’s neck. ‘Don’t,’ he whispered happily.
The beast turned, head swinging round to focus on Chad. Its long muzzle snapped shut with a crack like a rifle.
Chad whimpered, cowering, staggering backwards. ‘Please God, don’t let it’
He was bowled over by the beast, his head smacking on to the tiles. The beast’s powerful muzzle opened centimetres from his face, and it let out a long undulating howl. A narrow gap in the exoskeleton between its hindlegs split open, grotesque genitalia arose.
Chad’s mouth shrieked soundlessly, and—
—reality flickered—
—and he puked.
There was no beast, no blood, no shredded arm. Chad was curled up on the floor, hands wrapped round his head, sobbing quietly. The stench of vomit and piss curled the air.
Leol Reiger was staring down at him in amazement. ‘What the fuck—’ Amber eyes jerked up to fix Greg, betraying the wild flames of consternation that were burning in the mind.
‘No expense spared, eh, Leol?’ Suzi said. ‘You always have the best on your squad.’
‘Take him away,’ Greg told Leol Reiger in a dead voice. ‘And don’t come back.’
‘Shit on you,’ Leol Reiger spat. He kicked Chad. ‘Up, you useless bastard. Get up.’
Chad dropped his hands from his face, blinking tears from his eyes. He looked round in lost confusion. Saw Greg and flinched.
‘Get up.’
Chad grasped the walkway rail, breathing heavily, and hauled himself to his feet.
Greg could feel the first twinges of the neurohormone hangover scratching away behind his temple. With the effusion level he’d used they would soon accelerate into stabs of white-hot lightning crackling round the inside of his skull. ‘Bugger, but I hate eidolonics,’ he muttered.
Leol Reiger and Chad turned the corner out into the well, Chad reeling like a drunk. Several shoppers watched their progress.