by Carl Sargent
"Or, like the saying goes now, anyone who ain't paranoid ain't paying enough attention," the Englishman said drily. "But this isn't paranoia. There's a charred corpse in Cape Town which definitely proves that. But all we've come to now is a dead end, literally. For the time being.
"We've got to search the databases for everything we can on Mr. Shakala, our Zulu mage, and anyone else we can turn up," he said, getting to his feet. "It's going to be a long night. Excuse me for a while. I need to get some rest. See you in half an hour." Michael retired to his bedroom, where he dropped into a well-upholstered armchair, closed his eyes and sank into the calm of meditation.
Kristen somehow dragged her bloodied and bruised body to Indra's back door. It was a miracle the police didn't pick her up on the way, what with all the blood on her clothes, but she kept to the dark back-alleys and secluded ways as she stumbled across town. She was badly shaken, and thought maybe a rib or two might be broken, but the blood was mostly from deep grazing than anything truly serious.
When the bouncer saw her, wild-eyed and bloody, he was about to throw her bodily back into the garbage-strewn alley until she screamed at him to fetch Indra, that this was family business, life and death. The ork hesitated and snarled a message into the intercom, keeping her at bay with some choice insults until the elegant Indian woman appeared in person. At that point he fell into sullen silence.
"Tsotsis killed Manoj," Kristen managed to say and then almost collapsed against the ork bouncer. He recoiled in disgust, but at a sharp word from Indra he dragged her into the back room.
While gulping down some harsh brandy, Kristen gave Indra the best description she could of the killers. She was aware that she was describing the Xhosa killers of an Indian to another Indian, and that she herself was half-Xhosa. It gave matters an edge she didn't like at all, but it was the same one she'd lived with for all her days. She just never got used to it. Kristen didn't know whether Indra would be grateful, since Manoj was one of her infinitude of cousins, or whether she'd beat the drek out of her.
"You can stay here. I'll get someone to see to you," Indra said emotionlessly. "Take her upstairs, Netzer. Put her in one of the girls' rooms."
"They're all busy," the ork said huffily.
"Then tell one of the customers his twenty minutes is up and kick him out," Indra said sharply. "I'll call Sunil," she told Kristen. "Go get cleaned up."
"Thank you," the girl said gratefully, forgetting that she actually had enough money to get a room where she could sleep safely tonight.
An hour later she had to be awakened when the soft-voiced old man arrived. She knew Sunil, though she could rarely afford his treatments. His gentle hands checked her over thoroughly, then he turned to Indra, standing impassively in the doorway of the garish whore's bedroom.
"The ribs are bruised but not broken," he said, adopting the traditional doctor's manner of talking about a patient as if she were somehow deaf or an imbecile. Even street docs still did that. "Everything else can be cleaned up with a little antiseptic. I think she might need a stitch or two in that torn earlobe."
Kristen hadn't even been particularly aware that her earring was missing until he mentioned it. Her hand went up automatically to feel it, but she managed to stop it before her fingers actually touched the open wound.
"I can pay," she said weakly. He nodded and looked at her expectantly. She reached into her bag and took out some dollars, but by the time he looked satisfied, her treasure had been reduced by more than half. The luck truly was beginning to turn sour. But the price was fair, and she knew, as he asked for hot water and took his own antiseptic from a tattered old bag, that she could count on being patched up and clean by the time he was finished. But all of a sudden she was angry about her torn earlobe; her ears were small, delicate, and perhaps the prettiest feature she had.
Then again, maybe things couldn't be all bad if she could afford to worry about her looks at a time like this. As she watched Sunil hook some gut into his needle, Kristen clenched her teeth and waited for the pain.
11
Kristen slept long, almost until ten, her body craving sleep to recoup from the exhaustion of her injuries and the strain of all that had happened the night before. Waking up stiff and groggy, she raised an arm to rub her eyes, then groaned at the pain in her ribs now that the effects of the sedative had worn off. She blinked and looked around, at first not remembering where she was. Then it all came back to her. This was Indra's place, though Kristen was surprised the Indian woman hadn't turfed her out by now. She fumbled her way out of the unfamiliar surroundings of the bedroom and tottered downstairs.
The club was not yet open for its midday business, and Kristen found Indra and her girls breakfasting. The girls looked haggard, even in their gaudy robes and wrappers, and an eerie red light permeated the dingy interior of the club, which reeked of last night's smoke and sweaty dancing. It was the kind of place where anyone without a hangover would wonder why on earth he didn't have one.
"Come and eat," Indra commanded. Kristen wouldn't have been able to face the rich food on Indra's plate, but there were also poached and scrambled eggs and toast and pitchers of orange juice and pots of soykaf on the table. She didn't need a second invitation.
"We found them," Indra told her, with grim satisfaction. "The boy in yellow Netzer knew him. And we've evened the score. I am pleased that you came to me."
Kristen hardly remembered blurting out her description of the gap-toothed kid who'd chased her up the stairs of Manoj's shop. That yellow jacket had probably been the one thing of style or worth the kid could call his own after he'd blown his money on booze and dagga and street
girls. His only possession of value had been his death warrant, and not in the usual way of Cape Town's streets. Indra would have been able to call on a hundred family members to deal with the tsotsis. It was the reason no one ever tried to rob the club.
"Eat all you want. When you're healed up, I could take you on," Indra offered.
Not wanting to offend this powerful woman, Kristen chose her words carefully. "Thank you, Indra. I'll keep that in mind," she said. "But maybe you can help me in another way. Do you know someone who might be able to do me a favor? I can pay." It was the necessary underlining to any request for help.
Indra's black-lined eyes narrowed a little. She knew it was the girl's clever way of asking her for help, and she was wary.
"What is it you want, girl?"
"I just need to make a call. To someone with a fax machine. I want to leave a message for him to phone me, and I need a number where he can call me back."
"Who is it?" Indra asked suspiciously.
When Kristen answered, "An American," the Indian woman looked even more suspicious. Kristen couldn't think of any clever way of justifying the request, except for the one ace she had to play.
"I called him from Manoj's last night. Manoj said it was all right to use his number for the return call. Now I can't do that anymore. I need another number."
Indra looked uncertain. If it had been chill with Manoj, maybe it wasn't so great a risk. Then, suddenly, she smiled.
"All right, girl. Netzer, he's got one of those hand phones. Picked it up from some drunk causing trouble, beating up on one of the girls." Which meant the ork had in turn beaten the slag senseless and taken everything he had, including the phone. "I'm sure he wouldn't mind your borrowing it for a while."
Indra was obviously amused at the prospect of ruffling the ork. Maybe Netzer had got on her bad side for some reason. Kristen didn't care as long as they gave her what
she wanted. That Indra also allowed her to use her fax was just a bonus.
Serrin was awakened by the bleeper in the middle of the night. He'd reprogrammed the unit to alert him whenever an incoming fax was received, and quickly got out of bed to lock the unit into Michael's fax units. The message chuntered out. This time there was a number to call and a name. It hadn't come exactly twenty-four hours later, but then he hadn't expected to he
ar anything at all. Manoj Gavakar was dead, after all.
He tapped in the telecom code, but when he connected, got only a girl's voice, not her image. Excited and breathless, she spoke with an African intonation that made her dark-skinned in his imagination. He had to ask her to calm down and speak slower.
"You're in danger. Someone is trying to kill you," Kristen said more quietly.
"Kill me?" he said, thinking she must have misunderstood something. It was a snatch, not a hit, that he feared. But maybe she'd heard or seen something more. And that list she'd mentioned, he wanted to find out what was on it.
"The names," he went on. "Can you read them to me?"
There was a pause. "Just a moment," she said uncertainly, somebody else will have to read them to you. After a short delay another woman's voice came over the line. She reeled off half a dozen names, which Serrin frantically scribbled down. It was the fifth one that sent ice down his spine. Shakala, the Zulu mage.
"Kristen, this is important. Do you hear me?" he said urgently when she was back on the line. "Tell me what you saw."
She gave him the story of the kidnapping and he realized that she'd gotten confused. She'd thought the man who'd been shot was the target. The crucial thing to Serrin was the man who'd been snatched. She remembered his name from the news, and it was one of those on the list. Serrin underlined it.
"Can you come here?" she said simply. Serrin paused; he hadn't even contemplated that possibility.
"Kristen, why are you doing this?" he asked, suddenly suspicious again.
"I saw your picture in the paper," she said. That was no explanation. Not, at least, one with any logic behind it. Michael would certainly have sniffed at it.
"I don't know if I can," he said slowly. "I have friends trying to help me find out what's going on. They have a lot of searching to do. I don't know where we're going next."
"Oh," she said, conveying a world of disappointment in that one small syllable.
"Can I call you again at this number?" he asked. "1 don't think so. It's a friend's phone. I don't have one," the voice came back. "It's not easy."
"Is there somewhere I can find you if we do come over?" Serrin asked. She gave him the name and address of Indra's club and told him to ask for her there.
"Look, I'm grateful for this," he said. "Really grateful. I'd like to reward you in some '
"I don't want your money," she said angrily. "That's not why I called. I want to see you." Then the line went dead.
Serrin cupped his fingers around his nose and breathed hard into his hands. He didn't know what to make of this. Michael had joined him by now, looking ready for work once more. Serrin told him about the call, and gave him the list of names.
"She got this from some kind of pocket computer?" Michael asked.
"Sounds a bit dubious, doesn't it?" Serrin said. "People get careless. One of the kidnappers could have dropped it in the struggle. These things happen. I could probably find out a lot if I could get hold of the list. Why didn't you ask her about it?" Michael complained.
"I didn't think. Frag it, it's the middle of the night and this came out of the blue. Gimme a break," the elf grumbled.
Michael pored over the list once again, then began to thumb through the printouts from his many trawlings of the world's electronic databases. He yelped with delight when he found the first match.
"Hey! Got one. Two, with Shakala. This one's from Banska Bystrica."
"Where the frag "
"Slovakia. Don't even ask me to pronounce his name, because I can't. We'll start digging with him. She's got something. She must have seen the people who tried to get you. Did you ask her about Scarface?"
The elf looked guilty.
"Oh, term, you are one dozy dweeb," Michael growled. "Call her back."
"I can't," Serrin explained.
"Great," Michael said. "You don't find out anything that really matters and we can't get back to our mystery girl. Just brilliant."
"I got the names," Serrin countered.
Michael rubbed his face. It wasn't quite early enough for a shave, but late enough to feel just a little uncomfortable without one. "Okay. Sorry. It's just that if I
"I know. But we can't all be bloody perfect," Serrin said, annoyed with the man. "Especially two minutes after waking up."
Michael's expression changed. "I'm sorry, Serrin. You're absolutely right. My humble apologies. Do we have any way of contacting her?"
"An address," Serrin offered.
"Then either we send someone or we go there ourselves," Michael said. "You've been to Azania before, haven't you? So Geraint's bio said."
"I spent three months in Joburg when I was nine years old because my parents were working there," Serrin told him. "I can't remember much about it except that it was as thoroughly unpleasant as any big UCAS city."
"And nothing like Cape Town. Or Umfolozi, for that matter. Oh well. But what about Tom? Would he go?" Michael's tone of voice changed a little. Serrin didn't think the Englishman regarded the troll as anything but an accessory.
"We can only ask," Serrin replied. "Let's sleep on it and decide in the morning."
"After I've done some more homework," Michael grinned. "Lots of lovely databases to rifle." He prepared
to jack in, rubbing his hands at the prospect. "Come to me, my little data packets, I'm not going to hurt you."
"Just don't get brain fried," Serrin said lightly, though it was no jest.
"Zero sweat. If I get into anything unpleasant, I'll call," Michael assured him. As the Englishman tuned into the chatter and imagery of the matrix, Serrin returned to his dreamless sleep. In the corner, Tom snored on.
While Serrin was dropping into sleep again on one side of the Atlantic, another elf gazed out at the gray eastern waters of the same ocean on a beautiful morning. The long grass, the slate rocks and hard stone, the trees struggling to survive the whipping winds, glowed with life under the brilliant sun on such a day. He lay back to luxuriate in it.
He could not risk putting any watcher spirits close to the mage even though he wanted to know if Serrin had been actively pursuing the people who'd tried to kidnap him. He had other priorities. The mage's flight to New York, and the company he was keeping, said that he intended to do something. Niall guessed that he'd found the right pawn after all. Having Mathanas leave the message had been crude, but perhaps effective.
What he did learn from his watchers was that Luther was not pursuing his quarry any further. He'd done the same thing in Azania. Once things got botched, he simply disposed of his own pawns. Niall didn't know exactly how Luther was selecting his victims, but he could make an educated guess. Protecting the next in line wasn't something he could concern himself with, painful though it was to think of what would happen to them. Luther's hunger had grown to extreme levels, and that was simply unknown for one of his kind. It meant he was almost burning up with the intensity of what he was doing.
It was the thought of what Luther was doing that suddenly made Niall shiver even on such a warm and magnificent morning as this that, and the fact that if he revealed his interest by making any overt moves he'd be destroyed out of hand by his own flesh and blood. Almost all his magical energies, and those of his allies, were directed at keeping him hidden. To turn against the will of the Danaan-mor, the real power in the land of Tir na n6g, was heresy, treason, a betrayal of infinite and eternal proportions. It just happened to be the only right thing to do.
12
The sound of a troll lumbering around the bathroom woke Serrin just after eight. Tom wasn't the quietest being on the planet. His gargling could easily have been taken for a major plumbing disaster.
Michael was knee-deep in paper by the time Serrin had finished the coffee-making ritual. The Englishman was almost oblivious to his presence until he sniffed liquid breakfast. Seeming almost to snap back into the real world, he looked around him with some distaste.
"That's the problem with three males in an apartment," he observed. "
Men get so damn untidy."
Serrin decided to ignore that in favor of more important matters. "How's it going?" he asked. Tom had joined them now, bearing the remains of the fridge's contents in various assortments on plates. The waffles looked unappetizing despite the last of the preserves the troll had heaped on them. He munched cheerfully on several as Michael ran down what his long night's work had yielded.
"Well, the girl's list has names that I didn't have, and not just the bugger who got snatched in Cape Town. That's not so surprising because obviously I can't search the entire damned globe. What is crucial are the three names that I did find. Two of them were kidnappings, in Slovakia and Greece. Both elven mages, no corporate ties. No data on the kidnappers, no witnesses of any value, both vanished without trace. The third is Shakala, and he's still alive. Reason one for going to Azania: he's the best first-hand witness we're going to get.
"Now it gets more difficult," the Englishman sighed. Leaning back a little, he fiddled with his blue silk tie. "Of
the names I didn't have, I learned that one was an elf mage from Finland and the other two human mages, one from Vienna and one from Munich. So if these people are linked, they're not linked by being elves. The link, so far, seems to be that they're all mages. Right?"
Serrin and Tom nodded. So far, so good.
"But the other two; they're a problem. Both German. One from Dresden, one from Koblenz."
"Our kidnapper likes Germany, it seems," Serrin observed drily.
"Yes, but neither of them has been kidnapped."
"Maybe the kidnappers haven't got around to them yet," Tom suggested.
"Right. Absolutely," Michael said, really getting warmed up now. "That's the first thing that occurred to me. But there's one simple problem with that."
"Which is?" Serrin asked.
"Neither of them is a mage. One is a very ordinary medical technician working for BuMoNa, the state medical system in Germany, and the other is a blue-collar worker for IFM. That's Internationale Fahrzeug Und Machinenbau Union Ag, to you and me."
