The Spartacus File

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  It would have to be lawyers, Smith thought. With most people he could have bullied the manager into letting them monitor the landline phones in a matter of minutes, just as he'd bullied that oaf Quinones at Data Tracers. The cells had all been tagged already, not just Grand's but everyone in the office, but Beech might expect that-or he might just use a landline anyway. Smith needed access to the office phones, and the easiest way to get it was courtesy of someone who already had it.

  Usually that just took a flashed set of credentials or a few words of warning, but lawyers were harder to intimidate-so even while he was negotiating with Mr. Arnold of Jackson-Arnold-Perez, Smith had his men tapping into the building's central systems.

  And a good thing, too, he thought, as one of his assistants signalled to him.

  “Just a moment, Mr. Arnold,” he said. He flicked off the microphone-just covering the mouthpiece wasn't certain enough.

  “The Grand woman is on the phone right now… no, she just hung up,” the assistant said. “She's meeting Anspack, we think for lunch; we didn't get the location.”

  “Follow her,” Smith snapped. “Anspack's probably still with Beech.” Then he turned the microphone back on. “I'm sorry, Mr. Arnold-something came up here. If you insist on a court order, we'll get one. I'll get back to you. Thank you for your time, Mr. Arnold.”

  He hung up and pocketed the phone.

  A court order-ha! Arnold was stuck in the last century somewhere.

  He turned to his assistant again.

  “Make sure whoever's going after Beech knows he's dangerous-use whatever it takes to take him down. This is a national security matter. Collateral damage is acceptable.”

  “Yes, sir.” The assistant began relaying orders.

  “They'll follow her,” Casper said. “We'll have to lose them somehow.”

  Mirim blinked at him, startled.

  “You really think they're going to be that thorough?”

  “They were watching her office-I spotted two cars on stakeout, one man on the sidewalk, and a man on the rooftop across from Cecelia's window,” Casper replied. “If they're watching her, they'll follow her.”

  Mirim stared at him, and Casper thought he saw fear in her expression.

  He smiled warmly. “Don't worry,” he said, “we'll be fine. Maybe I'm just imagining it-but after what happened at my place, don't you think we'd better be extra-careful?”

  The fear faded to uncertainty-and it occurred to Casper that he'd never been able to read Mirim's face so easily before.

  Had the imprint taught him that, too?

  What sort of an imprint could that be? The fighting, the weapons, spotting traps, outthinking opponents, that all fit together-but reading faces?

  And what about that speech at the office?

  It didn't all fit with the idea of an assassin very well; he was fairly certain now that whatever he had been programmed with wasn't just assassination. Face-reading might suit a spy, someone who had to be able to tell truth from lies and know who to trust-but how did his speech fit with that?

  “How do we lose them?” Mirim asked. “If they're really there, I mean.”

  Casper shrugged-and realized that he didn't know; he wasn't just dodging the question to save time. He had no idea at all how one could escape pursuit.

  He had known a moment before, and he'd lost it.

  What the hell kind of imprint was this? How could he forget something he'd known just seconds earlier? That wasn't how it was supposed to work! Once something was imprinted it was supposed to be there whenever it was needed-Casper had read enough on the nets and spoken to enough people who had been imprinted to know that.

  Once they had Cecelia away from those bastards, the next step would be to track down just what it was that he'd had stuffed into his head-what it was for, what it did, everything. Once he knew what it was, maybe he could figure out how to deal with it.

  Maybe the knowledge would come back when he needed it-he sure hoped it would.

  “Come on,” he said.

  Mirim had told Cecelia to meet her at a restaurant and bar on Rittenhouse Square, but Casper had no intention of actually entering the place-he'd be too confined there, too easy to trap. Instead, moving easily through the lunchtime crowds, dragging Mirim behind him, he spotted Cecelia on Walnut Street and waved to her.

  She waved back, and a moment later the three of them were moving side-by-side down the sidewalk, Casper uncomfortably aware of the two men following Cecelia.

  “Casper!” Cecelia began, “I didn't know…”

  “Shh,” he told her. He looked around for a way to escape. So far the two men hadn't opened fire, presumably because of the bystanders, or perhaps because they weren't yet certain of his identity-or maybe they just weren't close enough. He was fairly sure they'd move soon.

  He would have, in their position.

  “This way,” he said suddenly, turning north on the west side of 19th.

  Startled, the two women obeyed.

  He then turned again, onto Moravian-and here he didn't have any crowds to help; Moravian wasn't much more than an alley.

  “Run!” he said, reaching out with both hands and swatting both women forward.

  Mirim ran-she'd been there at his apartment, she was already on edge.

  Cecelia, though, stopped dead and turned to face him, hands on her hips. “Casper, what the hell…”

  “ Run, damn it!” he shouted. “I'll explain in a moment!” And he ran himself, after Mirim. “Turn left!” he called.

  He glanced back. The two men had pushed right past Cecelia, leaving her standing there, looking confused and angry; one man had a pistol in his hand.

  Mirim wheeled left onto 20th Street, Casper close behind.

  Another short block brought them back onto Walnut, where at Casper's signal Mirim turned left again.

  Pedestrians turned and stared as the two of them charged through the crowd, half a block ahead of their pursuers.

  Casper was considering options as he ran. Something in his brain was working again; he was running through possible courses of action, rather than simply fleeing.

  He could call for help, but these people didn't know him yet, they wouldn't want to get involved, and the natural tendency would be to side with the pursuers rather than the fugitive.

  He could make a serious effort to lose the two men-but there might be others he hadn't spotted, lurking in the crowd as back-up. And besides, he couldn't see any way to bring Mirim and Cecelia with him safely if he were to try any serious dodging; they weren't ready, wouldn't read signals in time.

  But there was a third alternative.

  He turned north again on 19th, Mirim close on his heels, and a moment later they were back on Moravian, having circled the block. Cecelia was still there, halfway down to 20th; Mirim ran toward her, shouting, “Run, Cecelia!”

  Casper didn't; Casper stopped dead the moment he'd rounded the corner and threw himself back against the brick wall. He pulled the Browning Hi-Power from his pants.

  And as each of the two men rounded the corner, chasing Mirim, Casper snapped off two quick shots.

  “Double tap,” he said, as he fired at the first man's chest; the recoil kicked the pistol upward slightly, and Casper fired again without pulling it down. That put a bullet through the side of the man's head. Then he dragged the gun back down into line in time to do the exact same thing to the second pursuer.

  Blood and brain sprayed across the pavement and the side of an illegally-parked car. Both men dropped in mid-stride, one after the other. Cecelia screamed.

  So did another woman, on 19th Street, who had seen the two men fall.

  Casper ignored the screams; he ran, grabbed the two women by the arm in passing, one on either side, and dragged them to 20th Street, where he turned right this time.

  Mirim ran with him; Cecelia didn't resist, but didn't help much at first.

  “You want to stay with those two?” Casper whispered to her.

  Afte
r that, she ran.

  They dodged through the streets of Center City for several minutes-running at first, then trotting, then walking.

  “Catch your breath,” Casper told the women. “After the next corner we want to look natural, to blend in.”

  Mirim nodded; Cecelia didn't, but Casper didn't worry about it.

  The next corner put them on Market Street, and Casper began looking for somewhere to sit down, somewhere they could eat the lunch they had promised Cecelia.

  He was, he realized, really hungry. He'd worked up an appetite.

  “We have a problem,” Smith's assistant said.

  “Why?” Smith asked.

  “It's Dominguez and Groves.”

  “What about them?”

  “They're dead,” the assistant said. “Beech blew their brains out.”

  “Did they get Beech?”

  The assistant shook his head. “No. And their back-up lost him.”

  “ Damn! ” Smith smacked his fist against the wall. “What the hell happened?”

  The assistant relayed the back-up's report-how Dominguez and Groves had seen Beech and Anspack meet Grand, how they'd followed the three of them for a block and then Anspack and Beech had started running, how they'd all gone around the block and Beech had ambushed them.

  The back-up had seen most of it, and had tried to pick up the pursuit herself, but she'd guessed wrong somewhere about which way her quarry turned and lost them. She hadn't had a chance to get off a shot.

  “ Damn it!” Smith said. “Why didn't Dominguez or Groves just shoot Beech when they had the chance?”

  “Crowds,” the assistant said. “At least, that's what the back-up thinks.”

  “I said collateral damage was acceptable!” Smith glared. “For Christ's sake… next time, if there is one, tell whoever we send to go ahead and shoot on sight. And give ‘em something heavier-shotguns or full auto, something with real firepower. Something that'll take Beech down no matter how good he is.”

  He wondered just how good that was. Beech seemed to be absorbing the Spartacus File pretty goddamn fast.

  “Yes, sir,” the assistant said. “Uh… the city police are on the scene of the shooting; should we contact them?”

  “No, of…” Smith stopped and reconsidered. “Yes,” he said. “Give them Beech's description and basic history. Tell them we think he's a terrorist. Tell them Dominguez and Groves were FBI, tell ‘em we're FBI-let ‘em think we're going to be really pissed if anyone else gets Beech, you know, the whole ‘Untouchables’ bit. That should motivate them. These city contractors like pissing off the FBI.”

  “Yes, sir.” The assistant reached for the phone.

  Chapter Ten

  “The government's after me,” Casper told Cecelia. “Those two were feds.”

  The three of them were seated at the counter of a small coffee shop on the north side of Market Street; bright sunlight gleamed from chrome and Formica on all sides, and half a dozen screens were showing various news, weather, and sports reports.

  It was hard to imagine that ten minutes earlier they'd been fleeing for their lives; Casper's words sounded bizarre and paranoid to Cecelia.

  She put down her sandwich and stared at him. She hadn't yet taken the first bite. “Why?” she demanded.

  “I'm not sure,” he said. “Something to do with the imprinting I got, I think-someone screwed it up somehow.” He saw her expression, and continued, “I don't know why, but they're definitely after me, and they're trying to kill me, not arrest me.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because they shot first, without asking me to surrender or saying who they were.”

  Cecelia glanced at Mirim, who nodded confirmation. “They just opened fire, back at his apartment-never said a word.”

  “Those same two men?”

  “No, of course not,” Mirim said. “Casper killed them.”

  “But you were at his apartment before he… what were you doing at Casper's apartment?” Cecelia eyed her roommate suspiciously.

  “We walked off the job together this morning,” Mirim said, a bit nervously.

  “But… oh, never mind. So these two men he just shot came to his apartment?”

  “No, two others. Casper killed them, too.”

  Cecelia blinked. “He's killed four men?”

  Mirim swallowed, and nodded.

  Cecelia looked at Casper, who tried very hard to look blank; he didn't know what else to do.

  He supposed it must be a shock for her, to hear that her harmless, timid lover had committed not one, but four murders in a single morning-or four killings, anyway, as they were all self-defense.

  It couldn't be as much of a shock for her to hear that as it was for him to have lived through it, though; she at least had the option of not believing it.

  “None of them identified himself?” Cecelia asked, turning back to Casper.

  “Nope,” he said. “Shoot first, ask questions later.”

  “Then how do you know they're feds?”

  “Who the hell else could it be?” Casper said, suddenly angry. “Those bastards are always trying to run everyone's lives…” He was almost growling.

  “Casper,” Cecelia said, and he stopped. She stared at him and picked up her sandwich again. She took a bite, chewed, then said, “You never seemed to have a problem with the government telling you what to do before.”

  Casper blinked at her, and tried to think.

  Was that true?

  It seemed as if it must be, really-after all, he'd put up with everything all these years, put up with the taxes and orders and rules and security checks, whereas now the mere thought of anyone telling him that he had to do something, or mustn't do something, was enough to make him tremble with rage.

  The imprint again; it had to be.

  What the hell had NeuroTalents done to him? And why?

  “You don't know why they're trying to kill you?” Cecelia asked. “Do you think it's a case of mistaken identity?”

  Casper shook his head. “I don't think that's it,” he said. “They know I'm Casper Beech, or they wouldn't have hit the right apartment or staked out your office. As for why-I don't know, Celia, but I have a theory.”

  “Let's hear it.”

  Casper recognized her tone and grimaced; she'd slipped into lawyer mode. Hardly surprising, under the circumstances.

  “I went to NeuroTalents for that imprinting a few days ago, remember?”

  Cecelia nodded.

  “Well, I got the wrong one. I've been programmed with some kind of combat imprint-or maybe it's meant for spies or assassins, I don't know, but that's how I was able to take out four of them.”

  “I saw how you… how you killed those two,” Cecelia said. “You caught them by surprise, ambushed them.”

  “But how'd I know to do that?”

  “People can do amazing things under stress,” Cecelia said. “You see a lot of it in my line of work.”

  “And what about the others?” He shook his head. “Besides, I've been having all kinds of weird experiences-I chased off a bunch of muggers the other night, and I'm constantly finding myself watching for booby-traps or planning raids. And there was the speech at the office. No, I got the wrong imprint-and the government must have found out, and wanted to cover up.”

  “Seems to me they'd be more likely to want to recruit you than to kill you,” Cecelia remarked.

  Casper blinked in surprise.

  “I hadn't thought of that,” he said.

  “Maybe they didn't either,” Mirim replied.

  “Oh, right,” Cecelia said. “You've got someone programmed with some sort of super-soldier neural imprint that you've had made up to your own specifications, and it never occurs to you to see if you can use him for whatever you wanted the imprint for in the first place?”

  “I hadn't thought of that,” Casper repeated. “It would be the sensible thing to do, wouldn't it?”

  “Then why haven't they tried?” Mirim aske
d.

  “Maybe they know it wouldn't work,” Casper said slowly. “Maybe it's inherent in the imprint that it wouldn't work.” He thought about his speech at Data Tracers that morning, about his automatic negative reaction to mention of the government much of the time. He thought about the Party and the Consortium and he realized he hated them both, where before he'd always considered them something of a necessary evil, the unpleasant cure for the terrorist wars and economic crisis of his childhood years.

  Now he wanted to destroy them both, whatever the cost.

  Maybe, he thought, he'd been programmed to be some sort of saboteur, a dangerous and involuntary rebel. Maybe the imprint had been meant to create moles, people who would attack their own countries from within.

  That was just the sort of lousy trick that the government would pull.

  Or was the imprint making him think that?

  “So what are you going to do?” Cecelia asked, breaking his train of thought. “Could you turn yourself in, tell them you want to be recruited?”

  “No,” Casper said immediately. “They must know what's in my head better than I do-they'd assume it was a trick, that I was going to turn on them.” He smiled wolfishly. “They'd be right, too.”

  “Imprints aren't supposed to control your actions!” Mirim protested.

  “This is no ordinary imprint,” Casper said. “I'm sure of that.”

  “What the hell is it, then?”

  “I wish I knew!”

  “Okay,” Cecelia said, “You don't turn yourself in-though as an officer of the court I am required to advise you to surrender. But speaking hypothetically, let's say you don't-what do you do?”

  “Well, I can't just ignore it,” Casper said, “though that's exactly what half of me would like to do-probably the half that's not imprint. I can't ignore it, because they'll kill me if I do.”

  “They haven't managed it so far,” Cecelia pointed out.

  Casper snorted. “If they're serious about it, they will eventually.” He glanced at the coffee shop windows, suddenly uncomfortably aware that he'd been in this same place rather longer than was entirely wise, and that he was visible from the street.