“There is another side to this affair,” Shadow said. “Arm Hancock rightfully blames you for what happened to her while she was in captivity. She desires a public apology from you over what happened. I believe that after said apology, you and the Arms and whoever else you wish involved would be able to sit down and negotiate an end to this conflict that satisfies all sides.”
“As to that: no comment,” Tonya said. “As a precondition to negotiations this will not work. Beyond that? Use your imagination.”
“Your stubbornness has picked the wrong target, then, alas,” Shadow said. “Arm Hancock should not be your enemy. She is the Commander. You will lose.”
That old myth? “Surely not. I’m not sure I even believe in such nonsense.” She had thought that when Crow Sky referred to Hancock as ‘The Commander’, he had done so as one of his many supposedly humorous veiled insults.
“Our mutual Montreal friend does,” Shadow said. “Isn’t that enough?” Tonya didn’t respond. Of all the things she expected to hear in a conversation with a Crow, anything about ‘the Commander’ or the Madonna of Montreal were not on the list. “I will let you think about this conundrum, then. I pray you make the right decision. The lives of your friends and companions may depend on your wisdom.”
Shadow hung up the phone. Tonya did as well. She closed her eyes and thought. No, Shadow was wrong. The only way to conclude this conflict without disaster was if she forced Hancock and Keaton to acknowledge the error of their ways.
Tonya was sure she could provide the educational moments necessary. She estimated she needed only six more weeks to complete her work.
---
“Mrs. Richards,” the man said.
Tonya, disguised and using every charisma trick she knew to reinforce the disguise, nodded. “Have a seat,” she said.
The Allentown Hilton was perfect for Tonya’s aims. For one thing, no Focuses lived in Allentown, nor were there any Transform Clinics. This meant no Crows, which meant Tonya’s precautions involving juice patterns, disguises, multiple vehicles and Delia as ‘Fake Tonya’, visiting Focus Caruthers, should keep this meeting out of Shadow’s view or the view of any other Crows.
In the ten days since Shadow’s phone call Tonya had been arranging many things, all outside the view of Crows. She had even purchased some distressed property in Allentown, under an alias only she knew, a place large enough to hold her entire household if she needed an emergency move. The commutes would be horrible, as would the gasoline bills, but both would be possible in an emergency.
“What do you have for me today?” she said. They sat in a remote corner of the not particularly lushly appointed lobby and Tonya attempted to tune out the sound of the syrupy Muzak playing over the speakers.
The man, whose name she didn’t know or care to know, represented the Michaels Detective Agency of New York City, an expensive firm willing and able to work across all of North America. Tonya was paying them in kind, doing detective work for them in Philly (which also gave her a good excuse to scatter any fool Crow trying to live within the supposedly secret five mile metasense range of her, damn them).
“We managed to find and break into Dr. Frank Madison’s personal safe, copying on film all we found inside.”
Tonya allowed herself to smile. “Great news,” she said. Madison was Zielinski, and he appeared to be running a clandestine research facility in Houston, under Arm control.
“Don’t get your hopes too high,” the man said. “I’ve seen the overview report as part of my supervisory requirements, and the information wasn’t as voluminous as you’d expected. Nor was it even close to understandable, and much of what we obtained was written in code.”
“Let me take a look at this report,” she said. She used her Transform advantages to the full when dealing with hard and shady types like private detectives, of course. They couldn’t betray her to her face, nor could they threaten her in any way. The man handed over a thick stack of photographs of Zielinski’s documents.
There was no code, merely Zielinski’s hurried handwriting, which she had learned to decipher years ago. He could write legibly enough when he needed to, but when hurried he skipped letters and words, and half the alphabet came out looking identical. The rest was technical, as she expected.
She had hoped to get years of Zielinski’s personal journal and his many photographs, but instead she got only about six weeks of journal and no photographs at all. Just by quickly skimming through the report she identified several obvious wedge targets: Zielinski was unhappy about the fact Hancock was keeping a top recruit secret from Keaton. That was one. She suspected she would find many others.
Now it was her turn. “I interviewed the three bank employees, as you requested.” She handed over a box with five reels of audio tape inside. “Target number three is the one you want, in my opinion.” More than her opinion; she had forced the man to admit to embezzling over two million dollars. This time she made sure to work with the good guys; the Michaels Detective Agency was high profile, their primary targets white collar criminals, and they kept their operation highly polished because they often had to hand over what they collected to the police and the Feds, to aid in prosecution.
“Very well,” the man said. “It’s so nice to do business with you, Mrs. Richards.” He stood and left.
Tonya let a large smile cross her face after the man left. Zielinski’s records were exactly what she needed to end this mess quickly and successfully, and bring Hancock to heel.
Everything from here on out was just implementation.
Carol Hancock: September 24, 1968
On the 24th of September of 1968, after a month of my efforts, Tom Delacort knelt at my feet, surrounded by my men. He swore fealty to me, the ceremony cribbed straight out of an old medieval history book. A knight swearing loyalty to his lord, and he meant every word. He formally committed himself to me, and took my tag. The juice moved. As with Zielinski, Tom was mine down to the uttermost depths of his soul. I took his oath and as I stared down at him, just as with Zielinski, I realized I loved him.
Finally, though it seemed like years, we came to my house and I brought him to my bedroom in this night I owned.
---
“Malnutrition, exhaustion, and some minor bruising and lacerations, but nothing major,” Zielinski said to me. Tom sat on the examining table in his underwear, and he was happy, beautiful, and still a little bit fragile. Zielinski turned to Tom.
“I want you to eat well and put on some weight. Get plenty of rest, and some light exercise. I’m going to recommend a specific vitamin compound I want you to take every day. I want you to come in a week from now and I’ll check you again. Give me a call if any of those injuries become infected or are slow to heal. They shouldn’t be a problem, but your body isn’t as capable of dealing with those injuries right now as normal, and if one of these injuries doesn’t heal properly, it could cause all sorts of problems.”
Tom nodded, but he wasn’t especially concerned. His body had always been strong. I agreed with Tom; his was a good body. The long, lean, muscular lines were attractive in a masculine way, and even as thin as he was, he was still beautiful, his body reduced to essentials.
Zielinski frowned. He didn’t think Tom took him sufficiently seriously. Tom’s eyes wandered the room, taking in every picture and instrument. He caught my eye and smiled.
“Look here,” Zielinski said, angry. “You can make a perfectly good recovery if you take care of yourself, but I’m not interested in cutting off a gangrenous leg because you let some infection get out of control.”
Zielinski turned to me and surprised a stupid little grin on my face. “Ma’am,” he said, but interrupted his comment when he saw the smile. He turned from me to Tom and winced.
“Oh, hell,” he said.
---
“So how soon can I get started, ma’am?” Tom said, as we walked back to the car. The hot Houston summer had finally broken, replaced by a first brush of the cool and wet.
Off to the north, heavy rain fell, but the drenching hadn’t gotten here yet. The rain would flood the streets when it arrived. Again. A few large drops hit my face as we crossed the parking lot.
I considered Tom’s question. He was in crap shape. I would like to see him take it easy for several weeks, but he needed the work.
“I’d like you to recover your health before you start anything serious,” I said. “But there isn’t any reason that you can’t start on a few things. No more than four hours a day until you recover your health. I’m going to put Darryl and Francesco under your orders. They’re both reasonably easy to work with and shouldn’t give you any trouble. Work with them, talk to them, find out what you need to know.”
Tom frowned at me. On other occasions, there might be a touch of desire in his gaze, but the male disguise threw him off. “You don’t need to give me the easy ones, ma’am.”
“You’ll get the harder ones later. While you’re injured, we’ll keep it to the easy folks.”
“Ma’am, my body is injured, not my mind.”
Argument. I had gone for a strong one, and I expected him to push back. His pushing back bothered me less than pushing did from most people. I tapped him on the forehead.
“Your mind is injured, too. We wait.”
Tom thought about my words, still struggling to fit me into his understanding. Torturer, confessor, superior, lover. All mutually contradictory. He would take a while to sort through things. Eventually, he shrugged.
“You’re the boss,” he said.
Part 3
Revenge by Other Means
Let your plans be dark and as impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.
Sun Tsu
Chapter 7
No Crows enjoy the bitch side of Focuses.
“The Life of Crows”
Carol Hancock: October 1, 1968 – October 5, 1968
Keaton sat in her white chair and flipped through my documentation, tense and unwilling to bend. The afternoon sun tried unsuccessfully to make the room seem cheery. My October meeting wasn’t going well, and I didn’t know why. The problem wasn’t Haggerty, who had been steadily improving her competence as an Arm. In fact, Keaton had even granted her a hunting territory of her own, Los Angeles, where she was out hunting now. Keaton wasn’t low on juice, either. Newton, although he still refused to meet Keaton in person, had been having a good run locating prey, so many that according to Keaton she had actually hauled one bit of prey, a decent woman Transform, over to a Transform Clinic, where she awaited a Focus. Such events should have put a smile on her face, not her psycho-Keaton glower.
“No Chimera sightings?”
“No, none at all, ma’am, and I’ve been staying away from the Hunter territories, as you ordered.” I sat on the ottoman, and given Keaton’s temper was glad I hadn’t given in to my momentary impulse to take the couch.
Flip. Flip. “Anything on the top end recruit front?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, proud. “I’ve found and finished recruiting my number two. His name’s Tom Delacort. When he’s more experienced, I’d be happy to introduce you to him, ma’am.” I went on to give a full report on Tom, which took an hour. Now that I had finished turning him, I wanted Keaton to know about him, so she could factor him into how she used me and my organization. I suspected he would be as big a boost to my organization’s prowess as Zielinski.
Keaton tapped her fingers, tense, unhappy. The entire time. For no discernible reason.
“When I tagged you, I asked for a complete write-up of your recruitment abilities and tricks,” Keaton said, moving on to the next subject. “Where is it?”
“Ma’am. I haven’t had time.”
“Make time,” she said, grabbing my chin and pushing her face up to mine. Her breath smelled as if she had been into the raw hamburger again. Given Haggerty’s disastrous excuse for cooking, I didn’t blame her. “I want it next month.” Meaning my November 1st meeting.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, with no hesitation. I wanted to finish the project and get the damned thing off my to-do list. With her other orders, I had moved it far down the priority list.
She flipped through my other recruitment documents, picking at the details, and giving me orders. She amended her earlier orders in two ways: she wanted fewer suborned thugs, the earlier thousand reduced to six hundred, and more closely held recruits, bumping that up to seventy five. I had no problems with either.
We went on from there to Zielinski and the researchers. No problems there. Next, the Crows, which I reported on as well. I felt more tension when I got into the Crow details, for no logical reason. I suspected she and the local boss Crow, Chevalier, had been snarling at each other again. She didn’t say. After my Crow report, she picked at the details far more than I expected. I answered without hiding anything, but the tension rose even higher, almost as if she suspected me of lying to her. I had nothing to hide, and I bared my heart and mind to her. She still picked.
“Anything else?” Almost as if she was waiting to wade into me on something I had missed, forgotten, or wanted to hide from her. None of that this month, thankfully.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. I reached into my fat legal briefcase, my portable document store I carried with me when I visited because I never knew where Keaton would be going any given month. I handed a report to her. “This is from Gilgamesh. He had a suspicion that the Clinic Focus kidnapping in early August was a Hunter special, so after consulting with me, he went to check it out. Turns out he was right.”
She leafed through the report and shook her head. “They have two Focuses?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. My information didn’t match what she knew. She suspected my report was a fabrication. “Ma’am, this is Gilgamesh, not one of us. His observations have never proven wrong before, but I can’t guarantee that…”
“Shut up,” Keaton said, radiating a feeling of barely repressed Keatonic rage. She read the report again and slapped it closed. “When was the last time you were in Chicago?”
“I retrieved several of my people from Chicago on July 23rd and 24th. I haven’t been in or near Chicago since.”
“Have you sent any of your people, or anyone else except Gilgamesh, to the Chicago area since the end of July?”
“No, ma’am,” I said. This was crazy.
“Have you had any contact with any Chimeras of any variety in this time period?”
“No, ma’am,” I said. Again. “I’d hoped to set up a meeting with the Boston Nobles either late last month or early next month, but my earlier mentioned difficulties with Focus Rizzari have delayed the meeting indefinitely.”
“Fuck. Hancock…” She glared at me, angry, unsure of where she wanted to go next. “Biggioni? Tell me what’s been going on with the bitch.”
“Ma’am, nothing. She hasn’t twitched in my direction since I left the defused bomb on her desk on the morning of the 18th of August.” Which had been in my September 1st report to Keaton. “Well, at least that I know of. You know of my only other activity regarding Focus Biggioni.” Gilgamesh’s aborted spy mission. I had given her a full rundown on that in my earlier Crow report. “I’m afraid we may have a standoff, where neither of us can do anything to the other without causing worse problems. Do you have any orders on this, ma’am?”
Keaton glared at me. I wondered if she remained angry from my pushing of the salt mine mystery last month. I didn’t know, and I had been keeping my nose out of the entire Midwest to make sure I didn’t interfere with whatever my boss Arm had going. “Tonya isn’t done with you or me on this,” she said, after nearly a minute of hostile glare. “She isn’t one to give up. Keep your eyes open for any openings that may present themselves, and act accordingly.” Hotter glare. “Dismissed.”
I got.
Something was going on, something bad, something she wouldn’t share with me. Keaton hadn’t even bothered to exercise me or spar with me this time. I had never before had a monthly session with K
eaton that truly sucked; this was as bad as before she had me tagged. I needed to make sure my coming month was productive. Or else.
---
“So what do you think?” I said. We were about thirty miles from Houston, in a warm rain, and Tom had my people practicing bank robbery techniques on an abandoned farmhouse out in the piney woods. We watched from under an old hackberry tree that only partly kept the rain off.
“It’s a start,” he said. “Can I make some requests?”
“Request away,” I said. Off a hundred feet away at the house, the men came storming out and made for the waiting car. Their work looked good to me, but Tom winced and shook his head.
“We’ve got a skills problem,” he said. “Most of the men make fine grunts, but except for Francesco and his second story shit, most of these guys can’t do more than wave a gun and act tough.”
“I thought you were training them.”
“I’m teaching them what I know, and they’re a hell of a lot better with guns and I’m getting them into shape. However, the Army doesn’t teach the kind of skills we need. Or at least not my part of the Army.” Tom wore a black bomber jacket and khaki pants, and his air of fragility was gone. He looked almost like he must have been back in the Army. Tough and smart and hard as nails. I smiled. He still turned me on.
“What do you need?”
“The big one is security. We need someone good with security systems. Also research. We need to know what we’re walking into. We could probably train someone on security systems if we had a teacher, but there’s nobody here that’s gonna be able to handle research decently. Except maybe you, if you wanted to, but that’s a full time job, and you don’t have time. We’ve got to get someone sharp, a thinker, who can handle the research.”
I nodded, a little bit startled to find myself analyzed along with my men. “I might be able to do something about that. Anything else?” I would be able to find someone to teach security systems, but the research guy would be yet another recruitment project.
In this Night We Own (The Commander Book 6) Page 16
