"Yes. I used to carry a twenty-five Beretta, small enough to conceal in a bathing suit. I used to have a partner, too." It was a long story and I didn't like to tell it.
"Look," I said. "I have a deal with the Mafia. They don't do divorce work and I don't drop bodies into the East River. Understand?" I put the gun back into the drawer and slammed it shut.
"I don't blame you for being afraid—"
"Afraid? Ms. Four Ghentlee, I'm not afraid. I'm terrified! How old do you think I am?"
"Call me Belle. You're thirty-five, maybe forty. Why?"
"You're kind—and I'm rich. Rich enough to buy youth: I've been in this business almost forty years. I take lots of vitamins and try not to fuck with the Mafia."
She smiled and then was suddenly somber. Like a baby. "Try to understand me. You've lived sixty years?"
I nodded. "Next year."
"Well, I've been alive barely sixty days. After four years in a tank, growing and learning.
"Learning isn't being, though. Everything is new to me. When I walk down a street, the sights and sounds and smells . . . it's, it's like a great flower opening to the sun. Just to sit alone in the dark—" Her voice broke.
"You can't even know how much I want to live—and that's not condescending: it's a statement of fact. Yet I want you to kill me."
I could only shake my head.
"If you can't hide me, you have to kill me." She was crying now and wiped the tears savagely from her cheeks. "Kill me and make sure every cell in my body is destroyed."
She started walking around the desk. Along the way, she did something with a clasp and her dress slithered to the floor. The sudden naked beauty was like an electric shock. "If you save me, you can have me. Friend, lover, wife . . . slave. Forever." She held a posture of supplication for a moment, then eased toward me. Watching the muscles of her body work made my mouth go dry. She reached down and started unbuttoning my shirt.
I cleared my throat. "I didn't know clones had navels."
"Only special ones. I have other special qualities."
Idiot, something reminded me, every woman you've ever loved has sucked you dry and left you for dead. I clasped her hips with my big hands and drew her warmth to me. Close up, the naval wasn't very convincing; nobody's perfect.
I'd done dry cleaning jobs before, but never so cautiously or thoroughly. That she was a clone made the business a little more delicate than usual, since clones' lives are more rigidly supervised by the Government than ours are. But the fact that her identity was false to begin with made it easier; I could second-guess the people who had originally dry-cleaned her.
I hated to meddle with her beauty, and that beauty made plastic surgery out of the question. Any legitimate doctor would be suspicious, and going to an underworld doctor would be suicidal. So we dyed her hair black and bobbed it. She stopped wearing make-up and bought some truly froppy clothes. She kept a length of tape stuck across her buttocks to give her a virgin-schoolgirl kind of walk. For everyone but me.
The Mafia had given her a small fortune—birdseed to them—both to ensure her loyalty and to accustom her to having money, for impersonating Kraus. We used about half of it for the dry-cleaning.
A month or so later, there was a terrible accident on a city bus. Most of the bodies were burned beyond recognition: I did some routine bribery and two of them were identified as the clone Maribelle Four Ghentlee and John Michael Loomis, private eye. When we learned the supposed clone's body had disappeared from the morgue, we packed up our money—long since converted into currency—and a couple of toothbrushes and pulled out.
I had a funny twinge when I closed the door on that console. There couldn't be more than a half-dozen people in the world who were my equals at using that instrument to fish information out of the system. But I had to either give it up or send Belle off on her own.
We flew to the West Indies and looked around. Decided to settle on the island of St. Thomas. I'd been sailing all my life, so we bought a 50-foot boat and set up a charter service for tourists. Some days we took parties out to skindive or fish. Other days we anchored in a quiet cove and made love like happy animals.
After about a year, we read in the little St. Thomas paper that Werner Kraus had died. It mentioned Maxine but didn't print a picture of her. Neither did the San Juan paper. We watched all the news programs for a couple of days (had to check into a hotel to get access to a video cube) and collected magazines for a month. No pictures, to our relief, and the news stories remarked that Frdulein Kraus went to great pains to stay out of the public eye.
Sooner or later, we figured some paparazzi would find her and there would be pictures. But by then, it shouldn't make any difference. Belle had let her hair grow out to its natural chestnut, but we kept it cropped boyishly short. The sun and wind had darkened her skin and roughed it, and a year of fighting the big boat's rigging had put visible muscle under her sleekness.
The marina office was about two broom closets wide. It was a beautiful spring morning and I’d come in to put my name on the list of boats available for charter. I was reading the weather printout when Belle sidled through the door and squeezed in next to me at the counter. I patted her on the fanny. "With you in a second, honey."
A vise grabbed my shoulder and spun me around.
He was over two meters tall and so wide at the shoulders that he literally couldn't get through the door without turning sideways. Long white hair and pale-blue eyes. White sports coat with a familiar cut: tailored to de-emphasize the bulge of a shoulder holster.
"You don't do that, friend," he said with a German accent.
I looked at the woman, who was regarding me with aristocratic amusement. I felt the blood drain from my face and damned near said her name out loud.
She frowned. "Helmuth," she said to the guard, "Sie Sind ihm erschrocken. I'm sorry," she said to me, "but my friend has quite a temper." She had a perfect North Atlantic accent and her voice sent a shiver of recognition down my neck.
"I am sorry," he said heavily. Sorry he hadn't had a chance to throw me into the water, he was.
"I must look like someone you know," she said. "Someone you know rather well."
"My wife. The similarity is . . . quite remarkable."
"Really? I should like to meet her." She turned to the woman behind the counter. "We'd like to charter a sailing boat for the day."
The clerk pointed at me. "He has a nice fifty-foot one." "That's fine! Will your wife be aboard?"
"Yes . . . yes, she helps me. But you'll have to pay the full rate," I said rapidly. "The boat normally takes six passengers."
"No matter. Besides, we have two others."
"And you'll have to help with the rigging."
"I should hope so. We love to sail." That was pretty obvious. We had been wrong about the wind and sun, thinking that Maxine would have led a sheltered life; she was almost as weathered as Belle. Her hair was probably long, but she had it rolled up in a bun and tied back with a handkerchief.
We exchanged false names: Jack Jackson and Lisa von Hollerin. The bodyguard's name was Helmuth Zwei Kastor. A clone; there was at least one other chunk of overmuscled Bratwurst around. Lisa paid the clerk and called her friends at the marina hotel, telling them to meet her at the Abora, slip 39.
I didn't have any chance to warn Belle. She came up from the galley as we were swinging aboard. She stared openmouthed and staggered, almost fainting. I took her by the arm and made introductions, everybody staring.
After a few moments of strange silence, Helmuth Two whispered, "Du bist ein Klone."
"She can't be a clone, silly man," Lisa said. "When did you ever see a clone with a navel?" Belle was wearing shorts and a halter. "But we could be twin sisters. That is remarkable."
Helmuth Two shook his head solemnly. Belle had told me that a clone can always recognize a fellow clone, by the eyes. Never be fooled by a man-made navel.
The other two came aboard. Helmuth One was, of course, a Xerox copy of
Helmuth Two. Lisa introduced Maria Salamanca as her lover: a small olive-skinned Basque woman, no stunning beauty, but having an attractive air of friendly mystery about her.
Before we cast off, Lisa came to me and apologized. "We are a passing strange group of people. You deserve something extra for putting up with us." She pressed a gold Krugerrand into my palm—worth at least triple the charter fee—and I tried to act suitably impressed. We had over 1000 of them in the keel, for ballast.
The Ahora didn't have an engine: getting it in and out of the crowded marina was something of an accomplishment. Belle and Lisa handled the sails expertly, while I manned the wheel. They kept looking at each other, then touching. When we were in the harbor, they sat together at the prow, holding hands. Maria went into a sulk, but the two clones jollied her out of it.
I couldn't be jealous of Lisa. An angel can't sin. But I did wonder what you would call what they were doing. Was it a weird kind of incest? Transcendental masturbation? I only hoped Belle would keep her mouth shut, at least figuratively.
After about an hour, Lisa came up and sat beside me at the wheel. Her hair was long and full, and flowed like dark liquid in the wind, and she was naked. I tentatively rested my hand on her thigh. She had been crying.
"She told me. She had to tell me." Lisa shook her head in wonder. "Maxine One Kraus. She had to stay below for a while. Said she couldn't trust her legs." She squeezed my hand and moved it back to the wheel.
"Later, maybe. And don't worry; your secret is safe with us." She went forward and put an arm around Maria, speaking rapid German to her and the two Helmuths. One of the guards laughed and they took off their incongruous jackets, then carefully wrapped up their weapons and holsters. The sight of a .48 magnum recoilless didn't arouse any nostalgia in me. Maria slipped out of her clothes and stretched happily. The guards did the same. They didn't have navels but were otherwise adequately punctuated.
Belle came up then, clothed and flushed, and sat quietly next to me. She stroked my biceps and I ruffled her hair. Then I heard Lisa's throaty laugh and suddenly turned cold.
"Hold on a second," I whispered. "We haven't been using our heads."
"Speak for yourself." She giggled.
"Oh, be serious. This stinks of coincidence. That she should turn up here, that she would wander into the office just as
"Don't worry about it."
"Listen. She's no more Maxine Kraus than you are. They've found us. She's another clone, one that's going to
"She's Maxine. If she were a clone, I could tell immediately."
"Spare me the mystical claptrap and take the wheel. I'm going below." In the otherwise empty aftercompartment, I'd stored an interesting assortment of weapons and ammunition.
She grabbed my arm and pulled me back down to the seat. "You spare me the private-eye claptrap and listen—you're right, it's no coincidence. Remember that old foreigner who came by last week?"
"No."
"You were up on the stern, folding sail. He was just at the slip for a second, to ask directions. He seemed flustered—" "I remember. Frenchman."
"I thought so, too. He was Swiss, though."
"And that was no coincidence, either."
"No, it wasn't. He's on the board of directors of one of the banks we used to liquefy our credit. When the annual audit came up, they'd managed to put together all our separate transactions—"
"Bullshit. That's impossible."
She shook her head and laughed. "You're good, but they're good, too. They were curious about what we were trying to hide, using their money, and traced us here. Found we'd started a business with only one percent of our capital.
"Nothing wrong with that, but they were curious. This director was headed for a Caribbean vacation, anyhow; he said he'd come by and poke around."
It sounded too fucking complicated for a Mafia hit. They know it's the cute ones who get caught. If they wanted us, they'd just follow us out to the middle of nowhere and blow us away.
"He'd been a lifelong friend of Werner Kraus. That's why he was so rattled. One look at me and he had to rush to the phone."
"And you want me to believe," I said, "that the wealthiest woman in the world would come down herself, to see what sort of innocent game we were playing. With only two bodyguards."
"Five bodyguards and the Swiss Foreign Legion; so what? Look at them. If they're armed, they've got little tiny weapons stashed away where the sun don't shine. I could—"
"That proves my point."
"In a pig's ass. It doesn't mesh. She's spent all her life locked away from her own shadow—"
"That's just it. She's tired of it. She turned twenty-five last month and came into full control of the fortune. Now she wants to take control of her own life."
"If that's true, it's damned stupid. What would you do, in her position? You'd send the giants down alone. Not just walk into enemy territory with your flanks exposed."
She had to smile at that. "I probably would." She looked thoughtful. "Maxine and I are the same woman, in some ways, but you and the Mafia taught me caution. Maxine has been in a cage all her life and just wants out. Wants to see what the world looks like when it's not locked in a cube show. Wants to sail someplace besides her own lake."
I almost had to believe it. We'd been in open water for over an hour before the Helmuths wrapped up their guns and starting tanning their privates. We would've long been shark chum if that's what they'd wanted. Getting sloppy in your old age, Loomis.
"It was still a crazy chance to take. Damned crazy." "So she's a little crazy. Romantic, too, in case you haven't noticed."
"Really? When I peeked in, you were playing checkers. Jumping each other."
"Bastard." She knew the one place I was ticklish. Trying to get away, I jerked the wheel and nearly tipped us all into the drink.
We anchored in a small cove where I knew there was a good reef. Helmuth One stayed aboard to guard while the rest of us went diving.
The fish and coral were as beautiful as ever, but I could only watch Maxine and Belle. They swam slowly hand in hand, kicking with unconscious synchrony, totally absorbed. Although the breathers kept their hair wrapped up identically, it was easy to tell them apart, since Maxine had an allover tan. Still, it was an eerie kind of ballet like a mirror that didn't quite work. Maria and Helmuth Two were also hypnotized by the sight.
I went aboard early, to start lunch. I'd just finished slicing ham when I heard the drone of a boat, rather far away. Large siphon jet, by the rushing sound of it.
The guard shouted, "Zwei—komn' herauf!"
Hoisted myself up out of the galley. The boat was about two kilometers away and coming roughly in our direction, fast.
"Trouble coming?" I asked him.
"Cannot tell yet, sir. I suggest you remain below." He had a gun in each hand, behind his back.
Below, good idea. I slid the hatch off the aftercompartment and tipped over the cases of beer that hid the weaponry. Fished out two heavy plastic bags, left the others in place for the time being. It was all up-to-date American Coast Guard issue and had cost more than the boat.
I'd rehearsed this a thousand times in my mind but hadn't planned on the bags' being slippery with oil and condensation, impossible to grip and tear. I stood up to get a knife from the galley, and it was almost the last thing I ever did.
I looked back at the loud noise and saw a line of holes zipping toward me from the bow, letting in blue light and lead. I dropped and heard bullets hissing over my head, tried not to flinch at the sting of splinters driving into my arm and face. Heard the regular cough-cough-cough of Helmuth One's return fire, while at the stern there was a strangled cry of pain and then a splash; they must have gotten the older guard while he was coming up the ladder.
For a second, I thought I was bleeding, but it was only urine; that wasn't in the rehearsals, either. Neither was the sudden clatter of the bilge pump; they'd hit us below the water line.
I controlled the trembling well enough
to cut open the bag that held the small-caliber spitter, and it took only three times to lock the cassette of ammunition into the receiver. Jerked back the arming lever and hurried up to the galley hatch.
The spitter was made for sinking boats, quickly. It fired tiny flechettes, small as old-fashioned stereo needles, 50 rounds per second. Each carried a small explosive charge and moved faster than sound. In ten seconds, they could make a boat look as if a man had been working over it all afternoon with a chain saw.
I resisted the urge to squeeze off a blast and duck back under cover (not that the hull gave much protection against whatever they were using). We had clamped traversing mounts for the gun onto three sides of the galley hatch, to hold it steady. The spitter's most effective if you can hold the point of aim right on the water line.
They were concentrating their fire on the bow— lucky for me, unlucky for Helmuth—most of it going high. He must have been shooting from a prone position, difficult target. I slid the spitter onto its mount and cranked the scope up to maximum power.
When I looked through its scope, a lifetime of target-shooting reflexes took hold: deep breath, let half out, do the Zen thing. Their boat surged toward the center of the scope's field, and I waited. It was a Whaler Unsinkable. One man crouched at the bow, firing what looked like a 20mm recoilless, clamped onto the rail above an apron of steel plate. There were several splashes of silver on the metal shield; Helmuth had been doing some fancy shooting.
The Whaler slewed in a sharp starboard turn, evidently to give the gunner a better angle on our bow. Good boatman-ship, good tactics but bad luck. Their prow touched the junction of my cross hairs right at the water line and I didn't even have to track. I just pressed the trigger and watched a cloud of black smoke and steam whip from prow to stern. Not even an Unsinkable can stay upright with its keel chewed off. It nosed down suddenly—crushing the gunner behind a 50-knot wall of water—and then flipped up into the air, scattering people. It landed upright with a great splash and turned turtle. Didn't sink, though.
I snapped a fresh cassette into place and tried to remember where the hydrogen tank was on that model. Second blast found it and the boat dutifully exploded. Vaporized. The force of the blast, even at our distance, was enough to ram the scope's eyepiece back into my eye, and it set the Abora to rocking. None of them could have lived through it, but I checked with the scope. No one swimming.
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