by Allen Steele
‘Yes sir,’ Akers said, completely deadpan. He turned and opened the hatch adjacent to Module Two, stepping back to hold it open for his commanding officer. L’Enfant allowed Nash to enter first, then walked in just behind him, with Akers bringing up the rear.
The command module was cramped, dark and sullenly illuminated, filled with chittering instruments and green-backlit LCD screens; to Nash, it had an unnerving resemblance to the bridge of a submarine. A tall woman with curly dark hair was seated in front of the communications station. She looked up nervously at the three men as they entered; her eyes were shadowed, her shoulders slouched forward. One glimpse of her face, and Nash was reminded of the look a caged wild rabbit gives to its captors at petting time.
‘Do you have the latest nowcast from Marsat-2, Tamara?’ L’Enfant asked.
Tamara Isralilova silently pointed at a printer next to her console. L’Enfant ripped off the top sheet of the scroll and studied it; Nash realized that it was an update of the weather information which Boggs had received yesterday aboard the Akron. L’Enfant absently nibbled at the nail of his right forefinger as his eyes darted over the printout. ‘All right, Tamara, you can go now,’ he murmured without looking up. ‘Lunch is being served next door.’
Isralilova stood up and, apparently making a deliberate effort not to look at Nash, obediently strode out of the command center; Akers shut the hatch behind her, then stood next to it, again assuming the parade-rest posture. L’Enfant ignored both of them as he studied the printout for another minute, then he dropped it on the console and took the seat which Isralilova had just vacated. He folded his hands in his lap and crossed his legs, gazing up at Nash with languid eyes.
‘Looks as if we have a bad dust storm coming in,’ he said. ‘Doesn’t it, Mr Nash?’
It didn’t come as either an accusation or a denouncement, but simply as a confident declaration of fact. Stated as such, it was pointless for him to deny his identity. Strangely, Nash didn’t feel surprise or shock—merely disappointment that his cover had been blown so quickly.
‘How long have you known?’ he asked.
L’Enfant smiled a little. ‘Thank you for not wasting my time. I expected you to continue the charade until we pushed the evidence in your face.’
He stretched back in his chair. ‘August Nash, formerly under my command on the Boston—no, sir, I didn’t forget you—now working as a field operative for Security Associates, retained by Skycorp to investigate what’s been going on here during the past few months. A spy, in essence.’
‘If you want to use that term.’
‘“A rose by any other name…”’ L’Enfant shrugged indifferently. ‘I suspected someone might come here eventually. The only real question was who and when, and that was answered by…well, some loose lips at Arsia Station, shall we say?’
Nash had to consider the hint for only a moment. ‘Leahy,’ he replied at once. ‘The general manager.’
‘Smart guess.’ L’Enfant closed his eyes and slowly nodded his head. ‘Yes, but not directly from him. All he had to do was get drunk and run off at the mouth in front of the right people. We have a couple of friends at Arsia who are…um, shall we say, sympathetic to our goals here…so all they had to do was relay the information to me.’ He opened his eyes and sighed with disgust. ‘A very sloppy deception on your part.’
Sloppy, indeed…although not on Nash’s part. Leahy must have been really soused to babble about a secret which had been entrusted to him. However, given the only occasion on which Nash had seen Sam while at Arsia Station—passed out at the bar of the Mars Hotel—that didn’t seem unlikely. L’Enfant’s confederates must have bought a lot of beer and whiskey for the witless alkie that night. Bad intelligence given by Skycorp to SA had resulted in too much crucial information being passed on to precisely the wrong person. Larger operations had been compromised for just the same reason…
Too late now though, to blame Leahy, Skycorp, or even his own company. The fact that L’Enfant knew Nash’s true identity was obvious from everything he had just said. The full extent of L’Enfant’s knowledge, though, was still unknown, as was the damage it might have caused. Either way, the ball was now squarely in the opposition’s court.
‘I’ll try to do better next time,’ Nash said drily. ‘The question is, Commander, what do you intend to do about it?’
L’Enfant said nothing immediately; instead he unclipped a phone from his belt, unfolded it and tapped a couple of digits into the keypad. ‘Alphonse, your report please?’ he asked.
He listened for a minute. ‘And you’ve escorted Boggs to the wardroom?’ He listened again, then said, ‘Very good. Destroy the ones you’ve found, then report here.’
He snapped the phone shut. ‘While we’ve been speaking, Sergeant Marks has taken Mr Boggs to the wardroom. Don’t worry, your friends are safe and under Lieutenant Swigart’s supervision. Since then, Marks has been electronically sweeping the base for the bugs you planted on your way in here. Lieutenant Akers saw you put one under that rover, and my guess is that you took the opportunity once you were inside the habitat to bury a few more. Marks says he found the one you placed in my quarters, plus the few that were still on Dr. Sasaki’s person.’
Nash took a deep breath, trying to settle his nerves. ‘I’m surprised you let me get that far.’
L’Enfant smiled cannily. ‘I only wished to see what you intended to do once you finally arrived here. This is also why you were allowed to spend some time alone with Dr. Kawakami in the Akron…I wanted you to feel more comfortable, to give you the illusion that your deception was actually succeeding. Shin-ichi couldn’t have told you anything you wouldn’t have found out eventually, you couldn’t have caused any significant damage without blowing your cover, and it was necessary to make you believe that I was not aware of your little game.’
He paused. ‘You can save yourself some trouble by giving me the rest of the bugs,’ he added. ‘They won’t do you much good now.’
Nash winced. ‘No, I suppose they won’t,’ he admitted as he dug into his breast pocket and pulled out the rest of the electret mikes. L’Enfant held out his hand and Nash dropped them into his palm; as an afterthought, he produced the microrecorder and gave that to L’Enfant as well.
‘Thank you.’ L’Enfant cocked his head toward Nash’s jumpsuit sleeve. ‘And your watch, if you will? Hidden cameras have been around since my mother was a teeny-bopper, but for all I know it may contain a dartgun or something similarly lethal. Please remove it for me.’
Nash unbuckled the watch from his wrist and handed it to L’Enfant. ‘You cover all the bases, don’t you?’
‘Unlike yourself, we’re very much the professionals here, Mr Nash.’ L’Enfant glanced at the watch, then tossed it on the counter. ‘Seiko. How cheap. I would have thought they might have issued you with something more classy.’
‘Bad luck.’
‘Indeed.’ L’Enfant juggled the bugs from hand to hand, apparently waiting for Marks’ arrival. When the big Marine knocked twice on the hatch and Akers let him inside, L’Enfant pointed toward Nash.
‘Sergeant, please aim your weapon at Mr Nash’s back,’ he said softly. ‘Fire at will if he makes a wrong move.’
Nash heard the unmistakable sound of an assault rifle being cocked into firing position; he didn’t need to look behind him to know that Marks’ Steyr was now poised and aimed at a spot directly between his shoulder blades. Nash kept both of his hands in plain sight next to his sides, not daring to so much as twitch a muscle.
‘Mr Nash,’ L’Enfant said, ‘you are probably armed yourself, but I sincerely doubt that you can get to your gun before Mr Marks puts a bullet through your heart. You will now…very carefully…disarm yourself and give your weapon to me. Butt first, please.’
‘And don’t fuck with me, man,’ he heard Marks murmur from behind him. ‘I’ve got a bad twitch in my trigger finger.’
Moving as slowly as possible, Nash knelt, propped up his right
leg and, using only his left hand, pulled up the cuff to expose the calf-holster. He gently pulled out the SIG/Sauer, making sure that he used only his thumb and index finger and that his fingers never strayed close to the trigger guard. Tilting the barrel toward himself, he extended the gun upside-down toward L’Enfant. ‘There’s a spare clip in my duffel bag,’ he said.
‘Shit,’ Marks sneered. ‘My grandmother carries more firepower than that when she goes to play Bingo.’
‘Be nice, Alphonse. Mr Nash has been cooperative with us so far.’ L’Enfant reached out and took the gun from Nash’s hand. He glanced over it, made a disdainful sound with his lips, and ejected the clip from the handle. ‘Why did you bring this?’ he asked in the most conversational tone. ‘Were you intending to kill me?’
That was indeed, Nash reflected, a good question…‘No,’ he said, still kneeling in front of L’Enfant. ‘Our intelligence was that you and your men were armed, and I was given the option of protecting myself.’ He shrugged. ‘That’s all. Nothing personal, captain.’
As he spoke, he prayed that L’Enfant’s knowledge of his assignment didn’t extend to its exact parameters. Nash didn’t know how much Leahy had been told about his assignment, nor how much he had drunkenly blabbed to L’Enfant’s contacts at Arsia Station. This was the crucial test of how much L’Enfant really knew; so far, the commander had flaunted his knowledge of Nash’s identity and mission. If L’Enfant didn’t believe the bluff, there was still the assault rifle aimed at his back.
Yet there was still hope. Aside from her assistance in helping him plant the bugs, L’Enfant had yet to mention Miho Sasaki. He might be carrying on a poker bluff himself, but Nash didn’t think so. L’Enfant was enjoying himself, basking in his superiority; he would have enjoyed humiliating Sasaki as well—perhaps even more so, given the fact that she was Japanese—had he tumbled to her secret affiliation with JETRO as well. If Marks’ bug-sweeper had found her keycard-decoder, he would have undoubtedly brought it to L’Enfant as another trophy.
Nash felt some small relief in that revelation. Sasaki wasn’t much of an ace, but she was all that he had left up his sleeve. Now if he could only keep himself alive…
‘“Nothing personal, captain,”’ L’Enfant mimicked. He gazed at Nash for a few moments with his languid, dead eyes, idly snapping the clip in and out of the gun like a business executive playing with a desk toy. For several seconds, that was the only sound in the compartment.
‘No,’ he said at last. ‘I don’t think you wanted to kill me. I think you’re just a third-rate detective.’ He pocketed the gun. ‘That’s everything, isn’t it? I could have Charlie work you over, you know.’
‘That’s all there is,’ Nash replied. ‘You’ve got the works.’
L’Enfant silently appraised him again, then nodded once toward Marks. Nash heard the Steyr’s safety click into position. He stood up and let out his breath, but he didn’t look away from the commander.
‘So what’s next?’ he asked. ‘A short walk to the airlock?’
L’Enfant blinked several times in rapid succession, then let out a peal of maniacally cheerful laughter. Marks honked his own mirthless guffaw; Akers made a sound which resembled an asthmatic sneeze. L’Enfant stood up from his chair. ‘Mr Nash,’ he wheezed, wiping tears from his eyes, ‘do you think this is some low-budget spy movie? I don’t intend to kill you. Skycorp sent you to discover what I’m doing here, and that information is exactly what I intend to provide you with.’
His laughter gradually died off as he mopped the rest of his face. ‘First, though,’ he said, ‘I have to ask you…have you ever heard of the seventh protocol?’
Nash suddenly remembered the last important thing which Control had told him in the E-mail briefing aboard the Lowell. Yes, he had heard of it, but he had not understood the allusion. An obscure United Nations statute—that was all he knew.
‘No,’ he casually replied in what was only a half-lie. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
L’Enfant’s face abruptly changed into a cold mask; he took a step closer, until they were almost nose to nose, and his eyes bored into Nash’s like frost-covered icepicks.
‘Liar,’ he whispered almost inaudibly.
He made a slight motion with his right hand. Nash’s arms were suddenly grabbed from behind and savagely wrenched backward. A heavy fist slammed into the small of his back. Nash gasped in pain, then the breath was punched from his lungs as L’Enfant himself slugged him directly in the solar plexus.
As Nash doubled over, still held half-erect by Akers and Marks, L’Enfant stepped around him. ‘You’re a disappointment to me, seaman,’ he said in a terse voice. ‘For a few minutes there, I thought I was dealing with a gentleman.’
L’Enfant opened the module hatch. ‘When Alphonse and Charlie are through giving you remedial lessons in social etiquette, we’ll continue this discussion.’ He held the hatch open while the two men dragged Nash toward the access tunnel. ‘Do your business in the storeroom. Have fun, but make certain that you don’t render any permanent harm. No broken bones, please.’
Nash caught a final glimpse of L’Enfant’s face as he was hauled into the corridor; his smile was lunatic. ‘I made a promise, after all,’ he said, looking directly at him. ‘And I have better plans for Mr Nash.’
Part Three
In a Handful of Dust
August 29–31, 2032
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
The Waste Land (1922)
T. S. Eliot
16. The Seventh Protocol
ALPHONSE MARKS and Charlie Akers hauled Nash into Module Three, the storage compartment across the corridor from the command center, and there they beat the shit out of him.
They were methodical and professional about it; they knew what they were doing, and he was completely helpless. After they locked the hatch and tied his hands behind his back with a bungee cord Akers found in the skinsuit spare-parts bin, they frisked him to make certain he wasn’t carrying any other weapons or surveillance items. Then, once they had taped their knuckles with a ripped-up T-shirt, Big Al held Nash up while Charlie pummeled his stomach and face.
After about fifteen minutes, they let Nash slump to the floor, barely conscious and bleeding from the mouth. He thought it was over, but the two soldiers were merely giving him time to rest; torturers know that a person can’t endure extreme agony indefinitely before numbness sets in, so they waited patiently until Nash had stopped groaning before they wrestled him to his feet again. Then Marks took his turn in the boxing ring while Akers held Nash in a full-nelson.
And so on for a good hour or more. After awhile, Nash lost track of time completely; he went limp, concentrated on a spot of floor between the feet of his current assailant, and tried to think of something else. His fogged mind remembered a random bit of flotsam from the past—the plastic model of an aircraft carrier he had built when he was thirteen years old—and pretty soon he almost forgot about the pain. For their part, Marks and Akers obeyed L’Enfant’s orders; they were careful not to break anything or do any permanent damage, except for the molar in his left lower jaw which Akers punched clean out of his mouth. Nor, surprisingly, did they say very much during the ordeal. For all of its brutality, it was a softening-up session, not an interrogation.
It went on like this for an eternity, until a final hammerblow to his solar plexus knocked the last of Nash’s breath from his lungs and he was cast into a bottomless black pit. After they checked his pulse to make certain that he was still alive, Marks and Akers dragged him out of the storeroom and up the corridor to Module Nine, the laboratory which also functioned as the base infirmary.
Tamara Isralilova had already been summoned, in her formal capacity as Cydonia Base’s physician. She carefully lifted Nash onto the examining table and scissored off his blood-soaked jumpsuit and underwear, and after she had x-rayed him to make certain that no bones had been broken and that he hadn’t been concussed, she did her best
to heal his wounds. His midriff was a mass of purpled bruises and his face was a horror, but she administered local anesthetics, stitched the welt in his right cheek, and checked his teeth for further damage. After she dressed the bruises and injected short-life nanosurgeons into his bloodstream to repair the internal damage to his blood vessels, she administered codeine to knock him out for several hours and give the nanosurgeons time to work. She then covered him with sheets and a blanket, switched off the lights and left the infirmary, allowing him to sleep off the worst of the pain.
That should have been the end of the nightmare. Instead, it was only the prelude.
When Nash finally awoke, many hours later, the darkness in the module was no longer total. At first, all he saw were the illuminated digits of a chronometer somewhere near the bed: 2337. Close to midnight, local Mars time, although he didn’t immediately comprehend the fact. There was a dull ache throughout his body, and for the first few moments he thought he was still in the storeroom, waiting for Marks and Akers to begin the next round of their one-sided prizefight. Yet, as he realized that he was not in the storeroom, he also became aware that he was not alone either.
Someone shifted in a chair across the compartment. There was a small pool of light cast by a gooseneck halogen lamp, like the aura of a distant nebula. He looked toward it and, through his hazed eyes, he saw a hand reach for a plastic squeeze-bottle on the desk beneath the light. The chair softly scooted backward on the tile floor as his visitor rose to his or her feet; he heard footsteps drawing closer, then a large body opaqued the lamp. He felt a hand gently tucking the plastic straw of the squeeze-bottle between his puffed lips.
‘Here, sailor,’ Terrance L’Enfant said. ‘Sip this. Just a little…’
