UnBound

  “It appears that Risa and the imposter were unharmed,” Divan says, “but I doubt they’ll be doing any more interviews.”

  “Were you . . . were you involved?” Skinner asks.

  Divan actually laughs at the suggestion. “Certainly not. I hold no grudge against Risa just because she escaped. As for the imposter, he’s not worth my time—and his actions have mostly been good for business.”

  “Yes, sir, I suppose they have.”

  When “Connor Lassiter” returned to the public spotlight, it was obvious to Divan that he must be an imposter. Divan had gone down to witness the young man’s unwinding, so there could be no foul-ups. His parts were sold and shipped out. And although the Swiss banker who purchased Connor’s face claims he was duped and the face was someone else’s, Divan knew the truth. The banker must have sold it to the American Anti-Divisional Resistance. They probably got his vocal cords too. That’s all they needed to rewind themselves an imposter who looks and sounds like Connor Lassiter. As for the shark tattoo, that’s easy enough to fake. The world might be fooled, but not Divan Umarov.

  • • •

  At their next stop—a secluded airfield in Canada—the Lady Lucrezia lands in a downpour. There will be guests today. Guests that Divan must reluctantly allow on his flying fortress. Once a year he meets with his sister to discuss the family business. She complains and tries to persuade him to cut costs and increase output. He refuses, citing the fact that quality is the hallmark of his product. She leaves miffed, he flies off miffed, and that’s that until next year. Such is the lot when you cast your fortunes in with family.

  “You will treat her with the respect with which you treat me,” Divan tells his staff. “Whether she deserves it or not.” Although he addresses everyone, most of the others have heard this before. It’s mainly for the benefit of Argent, who has not experienced Divan’s family.

  Divan watches from a window in the expansive living room. Several figures approach from a large limousine, and he wonders who accompanies her today. Her spineless waif of a husband? Her lawyer? The heavy rain necessitates umbrellas and hooded raincoats. Because of this Divan doesn’t get a clear picture of all his guests as they board the plane. Had he seen, he would never have opened the hatch.

  3 • Argent

  Argent is curious, Argent is fearful, but most of all Argent is annoyed that he will now be expected to anticipate the needs of many instead of just Divan. Divan maintains a skeleton crew. The pilots, his bodyguard, a chef, and Argent. He calls Argent a valet, but what he really is, is valet, housekeeper, and waiter rolled into one. Every task that isn’t specifically assigned to someone else is left to Argent. He works long hours for little money and even less praise. And yet in spite of it, he’s come to appreciate the routine and even Divan himself. It sure beats being a supermarket cashier.

  Divan relies on him. Back home Gracie had relied on him, but that had been different. He resented having to care for his low-cortical sister. But for some reason he doesn’t resent working for Divan. He has no idea where Gracie is now. Whether she’s alive or Nelson killed her. Connor swore up and down she was alive last time he saw her, but Argent can’t know for sure. He tries not to think about her. She’s the one who abandoned him. Whatever bed she made, she made herself.

  The hatch folds open into a short set of stairs to the tarmac. The Lady Lucrezia is so large its belly comes within four feet of the ground. Servants with umbrellas hurry a group of people from a limousine to the plane. The storm has picked up. They probably won’t be able to take off until it eases. Not good for Divan’s mood. He hates being grounded.

  The first to enter is a woman. She wears no raincoat—instead she’s covered head to toe in a massive fur coat made from an animal that is probably extinct. Her coat alone may have taken out the entire species. This clearly must be Dagmara, Divan’s sister.

  “Where is he?” she demands. “Why is he not here to greet us?” She exchanges a few snappish words in Chechen with Bula, Divan’s bodyguard.

  Next to enter is a boy of about sixteen. Divan’s nephew, Malik. He’s good looking in that prom-king kind of way that would make Argent want to slash his tires if he were back home. He takes one look at Argent and says, “Who the hell are you? What’s wrong with your face?”

  Dagmara answers. “This is Skinner—don’t you remember? I told you. He sold half of his face to a parts pirate for drugs, and your softhearted uncle took him in.”

  Argent seethes but knows he can’t show it. Her version is so far from the truth he wants to scream. “Is that what he told you?”

  Dagmara shrugs. “No, but I can read between the lines.”

  He’s about to lead them up when a final figure comes in, cloaked in a rain hood. He removes it to reveal that he’s Asian, with a dark complexion. It doesn’t take a genius to guess that he’s Burmese.

  Bula the bodyguard reaches for his weapon, but Dagmara comes between them.

  “He is our guest and here by my invitation,” Dagmara says.

  “You bring Dah Zey scum on Lady Lucrezia?” Bula doesn’t let go of his weapon but doesn’t remove it from its holster either.

  “I am unarmed,” says the Burmese man. “I’m not here to cause trouble but to end it.”

  Bula considers this, then turns to Argent. “Close the hatch.” Then he grabs the Burmese man by the arm. “You have special place to wait until Mr. Umarov decides what to make of you.”

  Although Argent knows it’s just Bula’s poor English, it’s fitting. Because Divan has “made” things of the four Dah Zey assassins sent to kill him. Argent wonders if a bonsai life is in store for this man as well.

  • • •

  The champagne and trays of canapés that Argent serves seem a nicety that’s out of place in the shouting match that ensues the moment Divan finds out there’s a Dah Zey agent on board. He doesn’t need to understand Chechen to know what it’s about—and the storm inside seems amplified by the storm outside as the massive jet fights to climb above the turbulence.

  The adults are too heated to eat or drink. It’s Malik who downs the champagne and the hors d’oeuvres. “Bring more,” Malik orders. Argent gets some more finger foods from the chef but decides giving the kid more champagne won’t do anyone any good.

  Finally the tension settles, the turbulence becomes an occasional tremor, and Divan asks Argent to bring out snacks—most of which Malik has already eaten. Whatever understanding was reached, it didn’t involve ejecting the Burmese guy out of the “Sayonara Hatch,” a special airlock Divan had installed for the flushing of undesirables.

  I’ve never had occasion to use it, Divan once told Argent, but it’s a comfort to know that it’s there.

  With the Burmese interloper still locked away and guarded by Bula, Divan and his family settle in to the small talk that should have started the day. Apparently Chechen is their language of anger, because now they speak English.

  Argent mixes their drinks and fetches food from the galley, all the while listening, a proverbial fly on the wall. Dagmara’s older son is off in college. To her embarrassment he’s majoring in philosophy and has shunned the family business entirely. She and her good-for-nothing husband have separated, and he wants the family’s Swiss chalet in the divorce. Malik has been expelled from yet another prep school due to bad behavior.

  “It’s not my fault,” Malik whines. “They all suck.” Usually a kid like Malik could skate by on his good looks, so Argent figures he must be a real screwup.

  And then Dagmara asks, “What’s behind the curtain?”

  Divan smiles as if he’s been waiting for the question. “Something I acquired since your last time on board,” he tells her. “A work of art that also happens to be a musical instrument.”

  That piques everyone’s curiosity.

  “Skinner! Show them.”

  And so Argent pulls back the curtain to reveal the Orgão Orgânico. Eighty-eight faces loom above its keyboard.

  Dagmara gasps. “Is
that an organ?”

  “Of a kind,” Divan says. “A heavenly chorus awaiting a conductor.”

  Dagmara approaches it, not horrified as Risa was, but entranced. “May I?”

  “Be my guest,” Divan says.

  She sits at the keyboard and begins to play.

  In all the time that Argent has been on board, he’s never heard the Orgão Orgânico played, except for the time Risa touched one key, and a single voice sang. Dagmara launches right into a dark and powerful piece that is familiar even to Argent, whose grasp of classical music is about the same as his grasp of particle physics.

  “ ‘Toccata and Fugue in D minor’!” says Divan. “An excellent choice.”

  The Lady Lucrezia is filled with the eerie strains of the fugue voiced by the unwound chorus, mouths opening and closing to Dagmara’s touch of the keys. As it builds to a crescendo, Argent concludes that it is the most disturbing thing he has ever witnessed. Even Divan seems taken aback.

  And Malik says, “Cool!”

  “Play as much as you like,” Divan tells his sister. “It was purchased with you in mind.”

  4 • Divan

  Against his sister’s complaints, Divan holds the Dah Zey scum in a cell for most of the day. They both need to know who’s calling the shots here. This is Divan’s plane, his operation—and if he deigns to speak with the man, it will be on Divan’s terms, no one else’s.

  He chooses to release the man for dinner.

  “I will feed him, and listen to what he has to say, and then put him off the plane at our next stop,” he tells Dagmara.

  “That is not acceptable,” Dagmara says.

  “I couldn’t care less what you think is and is not acceptable.” He wonders if all siblings are like them, or if this is unique in his family. Or perhaps it’s an ailment of the wealthy: The more money a family has, the more its members despise one another. Especially when control of that money comes into play.

  When Bula arrives with the Burmese man, the man does not appear disgruntled by his treatment. In fact he appears downright jovial, which Divan finds irritating.

  Dagmara, the mastermind of this questionable summit, does the introductions. “Divan, I would like to present to you the honorable Mr. Sonthi, representative of the Burmese Dah Zey. Mr. Sonthi, my brother, Divan Umarov.”

  “A pleasure,” Mr. Sonthi says.

  Divan says nothing; he just offers his hand to shake, with a calculated shift of position at the last instant, making Sonthi’s grip awkward. It’s Divan’s way of setting an adversary off balance from the onset.

  There’s a dining table in the plane’s great room, set for five. Skinner serves with the unobtrusive formality that Divan so painstakingly taught him.

  “I have a valet back at my harvest camp,” Mr. Sonthi says, “but he’s all thumbs.” And then he laughs at a joke that only he seems to understand.

  Dagmara slips right into talk of her marital woes, and Malik finds fault in everything. Divan has no patience for any of it.

  Then, when Skinner serves the main course, Malik turns to Divan in practiced disgust. “Does he have to be here? Looking at him makes me lose my appetite.”

  “Would you prefer to serve yourself?” Divan asks.

  “I would prefer you hire someone with a face.”

  “Malik, you must learn to be more tolerant,” Dagmara chides. “This is the very type of thing that keeps getting him expelled from school. Do you want to tell your uncle why you were thrown out of Excelsior Academy?”

  Malik grabs a roll and rips off a piece with his teeth. “I unwound my math teacher’s Chihuahua.”

  Sonthi laughs.

  “Well, it was a nuisance, yapping all the time,” Malik says. “The guy had no business bringing a yappy dog on campus.”

  And then comes a voice from behind that no one is expecting to hear. “You didn’t unwind it; you killed it,” says Skinner, suddenly no longer unobtrusive but the center of everyone’s attention.

  “Excuse me?” says Dagmara seething with indignation.

  “Did you really just say that to me?” says Malik.

  Dagmara turns to Divan. “Is this how you train your valet? To talk back to your guests?”

  Divan sighs. He needs no more drama at the table. “Apologize to my nephew, Skinner.”

  Skinner just stands there, refusing to look at anyone.

  “I said apologize,” Divan says more forcefully.

  “I’m sorry,” Skinner finally says.

  And to keep this from escalating any further, Divan decides to remove Skinner from the situation. “You’re excused. Bula will serve the rest of the meal.” Bula steps out of the shadows to take over, and Skinner disappears toward his quarters at the rear of the plane.

  “There should be consequences,” Dagmara says. Divan agrees, but not with who those consequences should be for.

  The meal continues in an uneasy silence. Malik leaves after dessert without as much as a good-bye, and once he’s gone, Divan gets down to business.

  “Mr. Sonthi, toward what end have you intruded on this time with my family?”

  There’s an uncomfortable pause. It’s Dagmara who answers. “He has a proposal from the Dah Zey. I think you should hear it.”

  Divan takes his time, rimming his espresso with lemon rind. “I’m listening.”

  Sonthi leans forward. “This war between us helps no one,” he begins. “It is our hope that we can pool our resources, and make a greater profit for all of us.”

  Divan knows exactly where this is going. “You want UNIS.”

  “It’s no secret that your machine can perform an unwinding in only fifteen minutes. With this technology, we could downsize our harvest camps, while increasing our output. In return, we are prepared to offer you a generous percentage of our profits.”

  “In other words, you propose to buy me out.”

  “Think about it, Divan,” says Dagmara. “No more attacks from the Dah Zey, no need to fear for your life, and more money than we’re pulling in now.”

  Divan takes a sip of his espresso. “I will not surrender my business to an organization as bloody and barbarous as the Burmese Dah Zey. Not now, not ever.”

  Then Dagmara finally shows her hand. “You forget, dear brother, that I control your ground operations. Without my distribution network, you can’t move a single unwound part.”

  “Are you threatening me, Dagmara?”

  “I’m merely trying to get you to see reason.”

  Divan turns to Sonthi, his decision made—but in truth it was made even before they began speaking. “When we land in Kamchatka, you will be put off my plane, Mr. Sonthi. I trust you’ll be able to find your way home from there.”

  Then Divan excuses himself, not wanting to be in either of their company a moment longer.

  5 • Argent

  There’s not much room in his tiny cabin to pace, but Argent can’t keep still. Divan has entertained the likes of parts pirates and contract killers, but none have gotten under his skin the way Malik has. Perhaps because those others do what they do for money, not for pleasure. As Divan always says, it’s strictly business, and no matter how illicit the business is, the joy comes more from the profit than from the act. Surely the black market is rotten with sociopaths, but Malik feels like a special case.

  And Divan made Argent apologize!

  There’s little enough self-respect left in Argent, and that just about killed it.

  There’s a knock at his door. He suspects it’s Divan come to lecture him on his place in the scheme of things, but it’s not. It’s Malik, the beast himself, come to pay a visit.

  “Nice closet,” he says. “Can I come in?”

  Argent knows if he denies him entry, he’ll get in even more trouble. “I already apologized,” Argent says. “What else do you want from me?”

  “I want to give you the chance to make it up to me.” Malik steps in, and Argent has no choice but to let him. “Things will be changing around here. You can eith
er be part of the change, or be steamrolled by it.”

  “Nothing’s changing unless Mr. Umarov says it is,” Argent tells him.

  Malik doesn’t speak to that. Instead he says, “Show me my uncle’s harvester.”

  Argent wasn’t expecting that. “I . . . I’m not allowed.”

  “But you can get in, can’t you? I want to see UNIS. I want to see how it works.”

  “I told you, I can’t.”

  And then Malik reaches up and grips the biobandage that covers Argent’s faceless half. “I could rip this off you right now.”

  It’s a terrifying threat—because a biobandage is more than just dressing: It grows into the surrounding tissue to protect the wound. If he rips it off, the pain will be unbearable.

  Argent still remembers his martial arts moves. He could have Malik in a choke hold in an instant, cutting off his oxygen and rendering him unconscious. If he holds it long enough, Malik could be left with irreversible brain damage—which might be exactly what he needs. But who is Argent kidding? He’ll just get rewound brain bits to replace the damage. On the other hand, perhaps those brain bits will be better than the ones Malik came with.

  Argent never gets the chance to find out, because Dagmara comes to the door. “Am I interrupting?” she asks.

  Malik takes his hand from Argent’s bandage. “Just having a friendly chat,” Malik says, and saunters off, leaving his mother to talk business.

  “I have a proposal for you, Skinner,” Dagmara says. “Listen carefully, because I’m about to make you very rich. . . .”

  • • •

  The instant Dagmara leaves, Argent goes to Divan’s quarters, making sure that no one sees him. He knocks urgently, and Divan lets him in.

  “I take it that this is important, or you wouldn’t be disturbing me.”

  “Very important, sir.”

  Then Argent shows him the vial that Dagmara gave him. “She said she’d give me a million dollars to pour this into your espresso at breakfast tomorrow morning.”

  Divan doesn’t seem surprised, just disappointed. “You realize she wouldn’t have given you a dime. Most likely she’d kill you.”