High Stakes: A Wild Cards Novel

by George R. R. Martin

  “Right,” Lonnegan said. “Well, Mr. Grekor, we’re looking for someone whom you may have seen recently. Captain Chavvah Mendelberg.”

  “Mendelberg,” he said, thoughtfully.

  “Yes. Of the Jokertown precinct.”

  “Oh!” Grekor said. “Yes! With the red eyes and fishy ears. Yes, of course. What makes you think I have seen her recently?”

  “Because she’s been working for you,” the Angel said.

  “Many people work for me, dear lady.”

  “How many of them are police captains?”

  The mob boss spread his hands. “You might be surprised. Ha-ha.” He looked thoughtful. Except for his eyes. “But, as it happened, we did have a consultation earlier this evening.”

  Lonnegan and the Angel exchanged quick glances.

  “And?” Lonnegan asked.

  “I told her that I could not help her, as much as I wanted to. I suggested a trip may be in order. She has, you know, dual citizenship with the United States and Israel.” He checked the understatedly elegant gold watch on his left wrist. “I believe you have just enough time to intercept the evening flight out of Newark. If you hurry. Ha-ha.”

  “We’d like to take her quietly,” Lonnegan said, “like, at her apartment. But she seems to have moved out.”

  “Oh? Don’t you know?” Grekor said innocently. “She moved some time ago. It seems that she came into money. Someway. Somehow. Ha-ha.”

  The Angel’s eyes narrowed as she and Joan exchanged glances, then looked back at Grekor.

  “And you know this new address?” the Angel asked in as light a tone as possible.

  “Of course,” the crime lord answered, and told them.

  “Why are you telling us this?” the Angel asked.

  Grekor flipped a languid hand. “Because I like you, I do you a favor. Maybe someday you do me a favor, nyet?”

  The Angel stood. “It’d be my pleasure to appear as a character witness at your upcoming trial.”

  “First, you have to catch me.”

  “That will be my pleasure,” Lonnegan said. She stood and both turned to go.

  “Dear ladies,” Grekor said. They stopped and looked back. “Be careful. You are not the only ones on the captain’s trail this night.”

  The two women looked at each other, turned, and walked rapidly away, both reaching for their cell phones.

  “I think he liked you,” Lonnegan said.

  The Angel shivered. “I feel like I need a shower.”

  “‘The very beautiful ones are always taken, nyet?’” Lonnegan mimicked. “He deserved a shot to the nuts for that one alone.”

  The Angel laughed, for the first time in days. Lonnegan joined in.

  “No, but, seriously.” She paused, snickered again. “Seriously. Why’d he cough up that information so easily?”

  Lonnegan took a turn sharp enough to squeal the Corolla’s tires. They were in a hurry. “Well, first, he didn’t really tell us very much, but I guess he did at least confirm our suspicions. Second, I believe he wants us to take out his garbage.”

  “And that cryptic warning at the end?”

  “I do believe that he has two bags of garbage to dump.”

  “That could be.”

  They drove on in a silence broken only when Lonnegan’s cell phone beeped a dramatic ringtone. It took the Angel a moment to realize that it was the theme from Dragnet, which she fondly remembered watching in reruns as a child. It had followed Emergency in the afternoon, another show she’d loved. She’d had something of a crush on Randolph Mantooth.

  Lonnegan fished the phone out of her shirt pocket and flipped it over to the Angel, who almost bungled the catch.

  “Answer it,” Lonnegan told her. “I better keep both hands on the steering wheel or we’re going to make some citizen very unhappy by sideswiping their vehicle.”

  “Hello,” the Angel said.

  “Joan?” It took the Angel a moment to recognize the voice. It was Michael Stevens. Joan had checked in with him and Billy when they’d left the crime lord’s ostentatious mansion for a quick report. He’d reported that Mendelberg was still missing and when Joan had told him that she might be fleeing to Israel, he’d offered to check with the airlines.

  “Stevens,” she said crisply. “It’s Bathsheeba.” There was a moment of silence. “The Midnight Angel.”

  “Oh. Bathsheeba. Hi.”

  “Did you call the airport?” she prompted.

  “Yes. No Mendelberg ticketed on the El Al flight. A couple of last-minute passengers, though, two of ’em female.”

  “She was probably ready to run,” the Angel said. “Probably on a fake passport.”

  “Right. We’re having the gate staked out by plainclothesmen from Jersey in case she manages to slip away from us.”

  “Excellent,” the Angel said, relaying the news to Lonnegan, who was making impatient gestures.

  “Excellent,” she concurred. “What’s going on at HQ?”

  “What’s happening at the precinct?” the Angel asked.

  “My God!” Stevens proclaimed. The Angel let it pass. “You should have seen it! Ray blew into the building like a freaking tornado. I think he shook dust off the ceiling and walls that’d been there since the thirties. Everyone just stood there, dumbfounded. We thought Ray and Maseryk were going to go at each other, but the captain started to listen when he realized that Mendelberg might have been involved in a cover-up. The jokers being held for illegal entry were being questioned and for the first time their stories got spread around and Maseryk was so mad he, well, nobody had ever seen him like that. Everyone else was pissed off, too. Maseryk has a dozen and a half cops taking detailed statements from the jokers right now, and he’s rounded up a carload to head right off to Mendelberg’s apartment. Me—I left a while ago. I’m almost there now—”

  “She’s moved. She has a new apartment, but kept the old one for a dummy address,” the Angel told him.

  “Crap!” Stevens said. “Where—” The Angel repeated the address that Grekor had given them. “That’s not too bad—I’ll have to reroute the others.”

  “Be careful,” the agent warned. “If you get there first just keep watch as best you can. Make sure she doesn’t get away. Grekor may have sent a hitter after her. Wait for us to get there before you go in.”

  “Will do.”

  “Well?” Lonnegan kept saying. The Angel held her off with an out-thrust palm, then finally gave Lonnegan the abridged version after Stevens signed off. “They freed the jokers. The only question is who gets to Mendelberg’s first—Stevens, us, or a car full of angry cops from the precinct.”

  Lonnegan looked grimly out the window.

  “It’s going to be us.”

  She slammed the car into a higher gear.

  “Don’t look at them,” Marcus said. “Don’t make eye contact. Just look up at the mountain.”

  They were still in the city, moving fast, as they had been for what seemed like hours. Olena answered him in Ukrainian. She’d been doing that more often recently, slipping into her native tongue and holding frantic conversations with herself. She wanted to shoot at everything, her eyes large and frantic in a way that took all of her beauty and twisted it. Marcus knew she was on the verge of losing it, of going batshit crazy like the rest of the city. He might’ve, too, if the need to save Olena hadn’t been there to hold on to.

  He squeezed her hand. “Listen to me! Just look up at the mountain. Are you looking at it?”

  “It’s not there anymore,” Olena said. “There’s too much fog to see it. Marcus, they’re hunting us.”

  Marcus didn’t look up to confirm or deny her claim about the mountain. And, yes, fuck, they were being hunted, shadowed from behind and off to both sides by a pack of canine shapes that moved behind blurring ripples of the miasma. Contrary to what he was telling her, he didn’t take his eyes too far away from the creatures. Their elongated shapes loped like no dogs he’d ever seen before. Their dimensions were al
l wrong, sizes hard to judge. There were things not right with them that he couldn’t quite make out in the murky light. They communicated with each other in a barking chatter akin to language. They got louder and more urgent all the time. And they were getting closer. Bolder. Hungrier.

  He didn’t know how much time had passed since he’d killed Vaporlock, but it felt like hours and hours, like that fight was some distant memory pushed far away by the horrors of a deranged city filled with monsters, human and otherwise. Bursts of gunfire. Shouts. Explosions. Whole swaths of the city in flames. Madness everywhere he looked. Hiding in the shadows of an alley, they’d watched a mob pass just in front of them, men and women carrying saws, butcher’s knives, axes, walking with severed heads gripped by the hair and dripping blood. They’d found something writhing toward a dead body in a roundabout. It looked, at first, like an enormous grub, something dug out of the rich mulch of a garden. Pale. Soft-bodied. Squirming. It had no face at all, but it did have circular rows of teeth that gnawed the hands from the body. Only the hands. When it was done, it rose unsteadily. It stood upright and became a teetering grub-like cone that waddled away in a grotesque semblance of the human being it had once been. After that, they’d stumbled across a group of children with their faces buried in a dead woman’s opened belly, eating like animals. The children looked up at Marcus and Olena. Their faces were wrong, not just because they were splattered in blood, wronger than that, their features warped as if their flesh was hot wax melting away from their skulls. Olena put bullets through them that blew the backs of their heads off. She shot and shot until the gun only clicked when she pulled the trigger.

  So here they were, out of ammo, hunted by dog-things and still in this godforsaken city.

  “We’re almost out of this,” Marcus said. “Look at me, Olena. We’re going to be okay. Just a little farther. We’ll reach the soldiers and we’ll be safe then. Okay? We’ll get the fuck away and let the army deal with this shit.”

  Olena’s eyes caught on something. “No,” she said. “No, no…”

  One of the dog-things stepped into view, closer than ever before, moving on its overlong legs. Where a canine face should’ve been was a decidedly human visage. A man’s eyes and nose and mouth. Lips drew back from human teeth as the creature snarled. Its cheeks quivered, and its nose scented the air.

  Olena said, “Its face … Its face is…” Instead of finishing the sentence, she screamed.

  Marcus whirled at a sound behind them. Another of the creatures, this one with a woman’s face, chattered behind them. He grabbed the Glock from Olena and waved it. The person inside the beast must’ve recognized the danger of the weapon. It paced, looking frustrated. Eager. Others of its kind emerged, each of them just as horrible.

  Marcus scanned the scene. Cluttered street, storefronts with shattered windows, a car with a fractured window … That would have to do. He pulled Olena toward the car. He yanked the old-style handle of the backseat several times before it opened. He stuffed Olena inside and slammed the door. She looked at him, confused, scared. Her hands banged against the glass. And then she stopped. Her eyes widened as she took in something behind him.

  He turned just as the first of the dog-men leapt at him. He punched it, clocking it good on the chin. He spun with the motion, his long serpentine length squirming with him. All the dog-men converged, snarling, rabid, their faces bestial, teeth bared and snapping. From then it was a full brawl. Marcus punched with both fists, his torso tilting and swerving and dodging from atop the coiled muscle of his tail. He swiped one dog out at the legs. Grabbed another by the neck and pounded its face with his other fist. He slapped his palm to the forehead of one that tried to bite him. He tagged it with his venom-soaked tongue. One down. He tried to count the rest, but everything was a blur. His veins pumped with murderous fury. If he let them, they’d eat him. They’d eat Olena. He wouldn’t allow that, so he fought like he’d never fought before. Fists flying. Torso twisting. Tail a thick whip. His tongue shot out again and again, wet with venom.

  But he needed to hit bare skin for it to work, and that was limited to their faces. A small target, with a ravening mouth as part of it. The dog-men tore at him with their paws. They raked his scales and carved trenches in his flesh. As much as he spun, there was always one he couldn’t see, biting his back. Arm. Clamping down on his shoulder. One of them bit down on his wrist and savaged the skin there as it yanked its head from side to side. He couldn’t shake it off. Another one got a grip on his shoulder. Others pressed down on him, gradually overpowering him.

  Going down under the weight of them, his eyes found Olena. Her face pressed against the glass, anguished, distorted. He couldn’t let her watch him die. He couldn’t leave her in this nightmare. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t.

  He grabbed the furred head of the creature chewing on his arm. Clenched in his fist, he held it steady. His tongue snapped out and hit it on the bridge of the nose, splashing venom into both eyes. It released his arm and Marcus shoved it into the several others. He carried the motion into a squirming roll. He rose up on his tail, lifting the dog-man that chewed on his shoulder and dug into his back. The others clawed at him, barking, yapping, spitting foam. He rose as high as he could, and then arched. He threw himself forward and dropped so fast that the creature on his back flipped over. He slammed it down on the hood of the car and heard its spine break. It yelped in pain. It released his shoulder. Marcus grabbed it and hurled it at the others. They darted out of the way, regrouped, and converged on him.

  He didn’t know what else he had in him. He slithered back to the car, ready to fight them all as best he could. If it was the last thing he did, he’d die here, with Olena behind him, fighting for her. For a moment that seemed exactly like what was about to happen. The dog-men came toward him, human heads low, growling, smelling his weakness. There were too many. He didn’t have the venom for all them. He tried to pick one to hit. He focused on one and was about to tag it, when it turned. Others did, too. One by one, they all rounded on the spine-broke dog-man. Their growls faded, and in its place the spine-broke creature’s suffering grew. It was whining, mewling, chattering in some almost human language. The upper part of its body scrabbled to rise, but the lower portion was as limp as a corpse. The pack gathered round it. Curious. Sniffing it. Fascinated, seemingly, by its suffering. They inhaled it, breathing deep, mouths dripping saliva.

  And then they attacked.

  Klaus, Jayewardene, and Barbara watched the raw live feed from Al Jazeera that the Secretary-General had secured for them. The camera work was jerky and wild as the cameraman and Darren Cole, Al Jazeera’s journalist, made their way toward the waiting Kazakh general. “How about shooting the interview from over there?” they heard Cole say to the cameraman. He pointed toward where a jeep was parked. “That’ll put the barricades right in the background and the bodies right behind us.” The camera feed steadied as the operator stopped, then zoomed in tight on General Ospanov’s grim face. Behind the man, they could see the rolls of razor wire that formed a barricade across the main road out from Talas. Behind, the outskirts of the city were in flame, and bodies lay in grotesque poses across the pavement between, around, and inside the cars scattered crazily there, bullet holes prominent in the windshields and along the sides. Several of the cars were merely burnt-out hulks.

  “Okay, Shahid,” Cole said, and the camera zoomed back to show Cole with a foam-wrapped microphone tilted toward General Ospanov. “General Ospanov, we appreciate you taking the time to speak to Al Jazeera about the dire situation here in Talas, where it seems that the chaos continues to spread uncontroll—”

  “No,” the general interrupted loudly. “It is not spreading,” he said in thickly accented English. “We have contained the problems here, and have taken firm control. There is still difficulties in Talas, yes, but spreading? No. That we will not allow. Nothing passes here.”

  Barbara heard Klaus’s audible scoff at that statement. “So ’ne Scheisse!” Babel sh
ook her head at the vulgarity, glancing over at Jayewardene, who continued to calmly watch the video.

  In the camera, Cole’s attention had shifted past the general, continuing to talk about how things were under control, to the road beyond the barrier. The camera operator noticed, and the picture went briefly out of focus as the lens swiveled and zoomed in again. Blurry figures resolved into uniformed, armed men moving among the bodies. They were stooping down as they moved among the bodies.

  “What are those soldiers doing?” Barbara asked aloud, a moment before the camera zoomed in yet closer and they all realized the answer. At the same moment, Cole’s shocked voice overrode the general’s commentary. “My God, General, your men … Are they … are they eating those bodies?”

  The camera pulled back again, displaying the naked shock on Cole’s face and the smile that pulled at General Ospanov’s lips as he unholstered the pistol on his belt, pointed it directly in Cole’s face, and pulled the trigger.

  The report of the gun was accompanied by a spray of blood, brain matter, and bits of skull from the back of Cole’s head. The reporter seemed to stand for a breath, then collapsed. They saw the general look toward the camera, and the video spun crazily as the operator evidently began running. There was another sharp report, then another, followed by a sickening thud and darkness. The camera feed went abruptly to static.

  The three sat for a moment in stunned silence. Then Klaus stood, his face flushed red and angry. “I don’t care what anyone says. We are going there. We are going there now.”

  “The Kazakh government hasn’t—” Jayewardene began, and Klaus cut off his objection with a wave of his hand. His single eye glared at both of them.

  “Barbara was right all along.” Klaus nodded to her, and she managed a thin smile in return. “This is where we are needed, and after seeing this, I don’t give a fucking damn about waiting for permission from the government. We are going.”

  Jayewardene was shaking his head, but said nothing. “Babs,” Klaus continued, “you make sure the Concorde’s fueled and loaded with the satellite phones, provisions, and other equipment we’re going to need. I want it ready to leave in an hour. We’ll also need Earth Witch and Michelle, if we can get her; I’ll call them. Maybe Tinker and Brave Hawk, too, and anyone else you think would be useful; have Ink get hold of them. In the meantime, I’ll go to the apartment and pack our things.”