by Eric Brown
She beamed. ‘Great. See you then.’ She slipped from the room with a wave, and Halliday stood in the middle of the office and stared at the door.
He moved around the desk and lowered himself into the swivel chair, testing it. It was just too comfortable. He saw the coffee percolator, his old one - thank Christ they hadn’t thrown it out and bought him some French state-of-the-art replacement.
He brewed himself a mug of Colombian roast and was thinking about going up to El Barrio and collecting the oak when his com chimed.
The small screen flared and a white-faced woman with jet-black hair peered out at him.
‘Jesus, Halliday. Where the hell are you?’
‘Kat, good to see you, too. How can I help?’
‘I just called the hospital. They said you got out today. I need to see you.’
He gave her his new address. ‘What’s happening, Kat?’
‘It’s about the guy who called himself Tallak. But I can’t talk now. I’ll be around in five minutes.’
Halliday cut the connection and sipped his coffee.
He’d planned to take it easy today, go rescue his oak, not even think about the case. Allow himself a day of rest before he began work again from square one.
He opened the drawers of his new desk until he found his cheque book, then wrote out a cheque for fifty thousand dollars. He’d give it to Kat before she complained that he hadn’t paid his dues.
Five minutes later someone rapped on the door, then opened it and stepped through before he had time to reply.
Kat hurried across the room as if someone was tailing her, all twitchy-nervous, eyes darting. Halliday guessed she was high on spin.
She paced back and forth before the desk, staring around the room. ‘Jesus Christ, Halliday, you’ve gone up in the world.’
He gestured. ‘Only the best for the best.’
‘Don’t bullshit me, pal. You’re like a fish outta water. What happened? You sold out and pitched in with Cyber-Tech?’
He winced inwardly at her accuracy. ‘You’ve no faith in my ability as a private detective, Kat. I don’t need to sell out. Coffee?’
‘I didn’t come here for afternoon tea, Halliday.’
‘So ... What about Tallak?’
She was still pacing, arms folded tight across her chest, hunched and peering at him.
‘Kat, will you slow down. I just got discharged from hospital and you’re making me exhausted.’
She ignored him, pulled a folded page of a plastic mag from the back pocket of her black jeans, and dropped it on the desk before him. He smoothed it flat. The page showed the pix of a young man, his face vaguely familiar.
‘So?’
‘Read the words, Halliday, or are you illiterate?’
He pulled the page towards him and read the caption beneath the pix. ‘Benedict Stevens. Shot dead in a shootout with Private Detective Halford Halliday.’
He looked up at Kat, who had ceased her pacing and was watching him. ‘So that’s who he was,’ he said, ‘underneath his chu—’ He looked at the pix again, and then he had it. He knew where he’d seen the face before.
The young guy in the blue suit in the dead forest above Nyack.
Two down and one to go. The black guy in the forest was dead, along with blue-suit in the alley ... and now only Charles remained.
‘What is it, Kat?’
She unfolded her arms long enough to point at the pix. ‘Why did he want you dead, Halliday?’ She folded her arms again, shivering with the effects of a spin overdose.
‘Because I was onto him and his colleagues. They killed Kim, a woman called Anastasia Dah, and the Charlesworth kid I was looking for. They nearly burned me in the site you got me into the other day.’
She was pacing again. ‘Jesus fucking Christ,’ she said.
‘Kat? What the hell’s going on?’
She turned to him. ‘This guy,’ she stabbed a finger down on the plastic page, crumpling his face, ‘I knew him as Temple.’
‘You knew him?’ Halliday said, incredulous. ‘You knew Stevens?’
‘Sort of knew him,’ she said. ‘See, he was my controller in the Virex Organisation.’
‘Your controller?’ he echoed. He held his head in his hands, elbows propped on the desk, and tried to work out how this latest piece of information fitted into the broader picture.
So far as he could see, it didn’t.
‘Let’s get this straight. This Temple guy, or Stevens or Tallak or whatever the hell he called himself ... He was involved in the Methuselah Project, and the Mercury Project, working with people who’re up in state-of-the-art VR technology ... and you’re telling me he was your controller at Virex, the people who’re trying to bring about the downfall of VR?’
‘That’s what I’m telling you, Halliday.’
He shook his head. ‘Sorry. It doesn’t make sense.’
Kat paced to the end of the room and leaned against the wall. She wasn’t still for very long. She held the pose for about three seconds, then set off again.
‘Except,’ she said as she neared the desk, ‘it does. It makes a kinda sense.’
‘Well, do me a favour and fill me in.’
‘This guy I know, someone I was close to once ... I worked with him in Virex a year or so ago. He told me we were being infiltrated. He didn’t know why or who by. A few things had gotten kinda screwy, like decisions made on high had been reversed, plans scrapped, that kinda thing. We’d a plan of terrorism set up a while back. We were gonna bomb a few VR HQs, but the plug was pulled on that right at the last moment ... Temple was obviously one of the infiltrators.’
‘But why would Temple, someone involved in his own VR site, get involved with Virex?’
‘Hold fire, Halliday. I’m getting to that.’
She paced, thinking. She returned to the desk and stanchioned her arms, hanging her head, staring at him. Her pupils, he saw, were as large as dimes.
‘For the past six months, say, I’d noticed that things were going in a different direction. About a year ago, we were trying to hit the big three and a few other smaller VR operatives with bugs, viruses, trying to get the bastards where it hurt, at their cores. We reckoned if we could down their cores, we would’ve scored a major propaganda coup. We were nearly there; we’d failed a few times, but the techs working for us were confident that we’d hit pay dirt sooner or later.’
She paused, shaking her head. ‘Only, the policy changed. No more virus strikes on the cores. We were ordered to target certain sites within the big three and gather information, work out what they were doing and how. It turned into a game of espionage - and you know something, Halliday? Even back then I couldn’t work out for the life of me who all this information was helping, ‘cos it sure as fuck wasn’t doing a thing for Virex.’
Halliday raised his cup to his lips and took a mouthful of coffee, knowing better than to interrupt her flow.
‘A while ago I got curious about where I was uploading all this information to, so I put a trace on it. I tried to find where the Virex core was located, but it seems the core was well protected with anti-tracers. All I got was a few faint traces, paths through cyberspace where the info was routed before it reached its destination.’
‘So ... a dead end.’
Kat nodded. ‘Then you come along and I get you into a nasty site that won’t let you out and nearly burned you bad, and a few days later you shot Temple in self-defence. From what you told me about the threats made to you in the site, I put two and two together. I go back and worked through the coordinates I used to get you into the restricted site, and guess what, Halliday?’
‘Go on.’
‘All the information about the technology of the big three I’ve been uploading for months . . .’ Kat stared at him, eyes wide. ‘It’s been heading right into the core of the restricted site, Halliday. Me and however many other Virex operatives, we’ve been playing right into the hands of a big VR concern without even realising it! Talk about bein
g duped good!’
She pushed away from the desk and paced to the end of the room.
‘So what now, Kat? Where does that leave you?’
She slid down the far wall and sat on her haunches, staring across at him.
‘Out on my own, is where, Halliday. You think I’m ever going to trust another fucker after this? Virex is rotten to the core, pal. Every fucking thing I’ve worked for over the past eighteen months...’ She hung her head, then looked up suddenly, and the expression of despair on her face was alarming.
‘So I’m on my own, now. I moved out of my old place last night, took all the equipment with me. I’ve gone to ground and the fuckers won’t find me.’ She stopped there, gathering her breath. ‘I’ve learned a lot in eighteen months, Halliday. I have a lot of very valuable equipment, and I no longer have to abide by the rules made by people higher up. I’m my own free agent, and the first thing I’m gonna do is find out what the fuck the Methuselah Project is, and where it’s based, and who’s behind it - and when I do find out I’m gonna go in there and burn the bastards.’
She jumped up and moved to the desk, leaned over and stared at him. ‘What I want to know, Halliday, is are you with me in this?’
He reached across the table and took her hand. ‘Bet your life, Kat.’
‘My man!’ she said.
‘Don’t know how I’ll be able to help, but I’ll sure as hell do all I can.’
She moved to the door. ‘That’s what I want to hear, Halliday. I’ll be in touch.’
‘Hey, before you go ...’ He stood and moved around the desk. ‘You forgot this.’
She stepped back into the office and stared at the cheque he held out to her. ‘Christ, Halliday,’ she said, taking it. ‘Forgot all about the fifty grand . . .’
‘Spend it wisely, Kat.’
She waved it in the air. ‘It goes straight into the fighting fund, Halliday. Catch you later.’
He returned to the recliner, deciding that he might get accustomed to its comfort, after all. He brewed himself another coffee. He’d gone - what? - over a week without a caffeine hit, and his body was craving.
He thought about Kat and what she’d told him. It made sense; why wouldn’t the Methuselah Project try to glean as much technological information from its competitors as was possible? Thing was, the big question still remained: what the hell was the Methuselah Project?
He found his car keys in the top drawer of the desk and locked the office behind him. As he drove north ten blocks, he considered Kat Kosinski. There was no doubting that she was as crazy as hell, and addled with spin much of the time, but she knew her stuff when it came to VR, and she was committed.
He was glad she was on his side.
He pulled up outside the Chinese laundry and sat behind the wheel for a while, just staring out at the old, familiar street. It was midday and sultry with that soaking, tropical heat that visited the city every summer. Perhaps a hundred food stalls lined the gutters, filling the air with the aroma of cooking meat. Families sat out on the steps of the tenement buildings, and crowds passed back and forth, a mixture of blacks, Hispanics, Chinese and the occasional Caucasian. Just another busy day in El Barrio.
A car was parked across the street, an electric blue Chrysler coupé. Halliday made out two people inside, a man and a woman eating spare ribs. For a brief, paranoid second he wondered if they constituted a threat. He dismissed the thought. He was getting jumpy, thanks to the shooting incident. He decided to treat himself to a take-out.
He lined up at his favourite stall and when his turn arrived he ordered chicken rolls and beef satay, along with coffee. The ancient Chinese woman jabbered at him in Mandarin, either welcoming him back or commenting on the heat. Halliday just smiled, handed over a fifty-dollar bill, and left without taking his change.
He climbed the stairs past the laundry and unlocked the office door. His possessions had been moved out, and the room looked bare, neglected. A couple of prints, which Kim had put up over a year ago, had been taken down, leaving pale patches in the paintwork. The dead flowers that had stood by the door were no longer there. He crossed to the desk, bare now of his com-system. There was no sign of his miniature oak.
He checked in the desk drawers, one by one, without coming across the tree. He experienced a sense of loss bordering on physical sickness. He’d treasured the damned thing, read texts on how to look after it, delighted like a proud parent when customers commented on its tiny, exquisite perfection.
He moved to the bedroom on the off chance that it’d placed in there. His jellytank stood in one corner, his bed in the other, but there was no sign of the tree.
He stepped from the bedroom, and then saw it.
It stood in its terracotta trough on the window-sill behind the chesterfield. It seemed, in its minuscule, spread-boughed isolation, aloof and disdainful. He laughed with relief, retrieved it from the sill and sat in his swivel chair, just staring at the tree. It had become a powerful symbol in his life over the past year; its appearance of frailty was at odds with the fact of its hardy self-sufficiency. It could go weeks without water, and still flourished; it gained sustenance from stony soil. He wondered if part of his delight in the tree was admiration and respect.
He placed the oak on his desk, lodged his feet beside it, and started on his take-out.
Just as soon as this case was over, he promised himself, he’d move back here. The office off Lexington was all very well, but it wasn’t him. He’d feel a fraud, operating out of such a swank establishment.
He was a creature of habit and the familiar room was a reassuring safe haven. He belonged here, and anyway the down-at-heel office held so many memories. Every stain on the carpet, every cigar burn on the chesterfield, reminded him of past incidents, of people now gone. For eight years he’d worked here with Barney, and to just up and leave would be an insult to his partner’s memory. Barney was so much a part of the place that Halliday sometimes felt as though he was still here, watching him, often ruefully, as he went about his business. He felt a quick stab of guilt, then. Hell, he’d hardly done a week’s work over the past six months. He’d slacked, felt sorry for himself, allowed the money from the Artois case to stand in lieu of regular, paid commissions. He’d escaped into the easy dreams of virtual reality and told himself that it was because life had been hard on him of late.
He knew what Barney would have said to that. ‘Bull -’ he could almost see his buddy forming the epithet ‘-shit. Halliday, you’re a slacker.’
Barney had worked hard for nearly fifty years without complaint; his idea of a vacation was a week at Coney Island, and he’d still managed to feel guilty about that.
When he’d worked on a case he’d been dogged in pursuit of the goal. He’d never been the greatest detective brain in the city, but he was thorough and methodical and relentless.
And ... what was it that Casey had said to him in the virtual Serengeti? That what mattered most of all was trust? Well, to know Barney Kluger for more than a day was to trust him implicitly.
Not that the guy didn’t have his faults. He’d sink into black moods, especially after the death of his wife six years ago, and be surly and uncommunicative for a day or two, and Halliday would know better than to try to jolly him out of it. He’d just bide his time until Barney came round, returned to his dour old mock-cynical self.
And then the old bastard had gone and got himself shot dead one winter’s night in a deserted back alley off Christopher Street...
Halliday took a deep swig of coffee and tried to banish the image of Barney, propped up against the trash cans, his chest a bloody mess of bullet wounds.
He felt a tightness in his throat and cursed himself for a weak fool. More coffee, that’s what he needed, or maybe a wheat beer for old time’s sake at Olga’s bar on the corner.
He poured himself another coffee and was finishing his take-out - he’d have a beer when he went out with Casey tonight - when someone tapped on the door. He looked up, pulse qu
ickening. The outline of a woman rippled through the pebbled glass.
‘Yeah, what is it?’
The woman knocked again.
‘Come on in,’ he called.
The woman just stood there. Halliday cursed, hauled his legs from the desk and crossed the office. He pulled open the door. The dark-haired, pretty girl from the car across the street. She was smiling, saying, ‘Sorry to bother you. I was just wondering ...’
A figure emerged from the shadows beside her, and before Halliday had time to react, before he had time even to register alarm, the guy had raised something and was spraying it into his face.
Halliday cried out, felt himself falling backwards into the office. A part of him was aware that he was about to strike his head painfully on the floor, but he was unconscious before the impact came.
