"Where'd you get the pipe?"
"Basement." He shrugged. "They've got some extra plumbing stock. Didn't figure they'd miss it."
Zev snickered as he drained his whiskey, then poured himself another one. "You figure to need a spear here?"
Yabotinsky shook his head. "Nah. Probably not. Never in my life needed a weapon, unless I needed one real bad."
Dov spoke up. "I'll lend you my pistol until morning, Corporal, if you want me to."
"Pistol? Yeah, I wouldn't mind borrowing a pistol."
At Yabotinsky's nod, Dov produced his Korriphila, and handed it to the smaller man. Yabotinsky quickly field-stripped it, then reassembled it.
"Nice," he said, setting the pistol on the table in front of him. "I'll take good care of it."
"You haven't asked whether we found him yet or not," Zev said.
"I figured you haven't, or you might have mentioned it." The corporal shrugged. "Doesn't make a whole lot of difference to me. I'm not a planner; never have been. None of us are. Don't ask us for clever plans. Clever plans are for the folks with bars, leaves, or stars on their shoulders, not stripes on their sleeves. You do the planning, show us who and tell us when, then stand the fuck out of our way."
CHAPTER NINE
DIANE EMMETT & SON
Thellonee, New Britain
New Portsmouth Port Facility
01/11/44, 0925 local time
Morning coffee in front of us, tabsticks burning in ashtrays, Zev and I were going over a map of the city, trying to sort out the day's activities when Alon walked into the living room, alone.
"Tetsuo," he said. "I want to pick your brains."
Zev scowled at that, as though we had any choice about whether or not to consult with DCSOPS Alon.
"Yes, David?" He may have ranked me, but we both wore a star on each shoulder. I gestured him to a chair and pushed my pack over to him. He nervously pulled one out and fired it up, washing down the smoke with a swig of coffee from Zev's cup—before he realized what he was doing and set it down.
"Sorry, Zev. Tetsuo, we're having a bit of a problem. And not just with the Freiheimers." He gave me a long glare at that point, and when I didn't react, he just shrugged and went on. "I'm meeting a bit of resistance from the Casa ambassador. It's the usual why-pay-premium-prices argument, but I think he may not be listening to my answer."
There's only one answer to that argument, and it's that you get what you pay for: generally speaking, mercenary outfits consist of scum soldiers, with little esprit de corps, no willingness to take heavy casualties whatever the need, and a lot less value than they appear to have, which isn't much. Further, mercenaries often have a temptation to rob the paymaster, instead of fighting for him. Metzada is different; if we start robbing any employers, future employers aren't going to be interested in us.
But if Adazzi wasn't listening to the answer, if he wasn't paying attention to what Giacometti—as well as Alon, presumably—was telling him, I didn't see what I could do.
I shrugged. "One of their party was the exec in my brother's company," I said. "You know, the Casas Shimon had put under Metzadan command. Good man. I can talk with him."
"Do that."
"I will. You've got to remember that he's working for Casalingpaesa, not us. Ari might be able to call in some personal loyalty, but nobody else. Not even Shimon, and not me. I didn't do much at all for him."
Actually, Paulo Stuarti and I had once killed a bunch of Casa Loyalty Detachment soldiers together, but they were going for their own weapons at the time. "But won't the Casas see some sort of side-discussion as an admission of . . ."
"Desperation?" He shook his head. "We're not desperate, no, not desperate, but we could easily use a good contract for an armored division, or even a reinforced RCT. Still . . . let it slide another day or so, and then give it a try. Subject to what you have to do on your own assignment. Any luck with that, yet?"
"Not yet. We'll see." I thought it over for a moment, and then nodded. "I'll talk to him, in a couple of days. Can't see any harm in it."
The rest of that day, and the next, and most of the next night, were more of the same. We met with hoodlums and pimps, dealers in drugs and weapons, and others.
I spent a sweaty few minutes in a tall office building with a short, fat man who never turned from the window while we spoke. His three stocky bodyguards kept an eye on me, the two nearest unarmed and nervous, the one halfway across the room holding a pistol that he never quite pointed in my direction.
I listened while he told me that he got either a piece of the profits from any illicit sales in New Portsmouth, or some pieces of the profiteer. I listened to him try a few variations on that theme while Dov waited in the outer office, wondering if he was going to have to come in after me. But Mr. O'Brien was sensible, and I was sensible, and his guards were sensible, and we smiled at each other over how awfully sensible we all were.
I walked out of the office with a dry mouth and damp armpits, and still with no idea of where in New Portsmouth Shimon Bar-El was.
I sent Dov on a mono tour of the city, not expecting much, except that he'd come back. He did, although without any information.
I brought up the city directory on the screen in the living room, and had the oldsters search for any anagram of Bar-El, or names like Barrel, or something, but they found nothing, Wherever Shimon was wasn't obvious. Or so it seemed.
Particularly at night, Vicar's Park wasn't my idea of a great place to meet someone. This time, I was waiting for the Street Demons, yet another one of the gangs—this one formed mainly of newbies of Irish extraction, living up near One Hundred Twenty-eighth and Twelfth in Little Dublin—but it was their idea, and it would have to do.
There were six of them, all street-tough, three of them carrying canes that they surely didn't need to help them walk, another sporting a length of chain that was wrapped around his waist as sort of a belt, the other two apparently unarmed.
Only apparently, I assumed. You can prevent factories from turning out guns and ammunition, but a foot-long bar of steel can be turned into a knife even if all you have is some concrete to rub it against. It may not be a custom-balanced Fairbairn like the knife I was carrying in my coat, but crude weapons kill perfectly well.
"Who are you?" asked one, a thin-lipped boy. He seemed to have a permanent sneer carved into his face. It wasn't the only thing carved into his face; someone had once, apparently, spent a bit of time whittling away at it.
"I'm the gun salesman," I said. "Call me Mr. Brown, like the coat. I hear you want to buy some merchandise."
"Possible," he said. "Definitely possible. Show me some samples, then we can talk price. Once we know how you're going to smuggle quantity in. Best we've heard of is a couple at a time. Good enough for the Vators, maybe, but not good enough for us."
Overhead, stars peeked through the cloud cover, winking down at us. I didn't get the joke, but stars and I don't communicate too well.
"Sorry," I said. "I don't carry a sample with me. Next time. Now, let's talk price."
They all relaxed at that, and I realized that they had decided to jump me if it turned out I was armed; they were still puzzling over whether or not to settle for a gun in the hand or try for the jackpot of a whole delivery. But it seemed they decided to let me walk if I were cautious enough not to bring a weapon to a solo rendezvous.
We spent a couple of minutes haggling over price, and over when and where I would let them try out the merchandise before buying, and then I shook hands with their leader.
Something flickered momentarily across his face, and at the moment he let go of my hand I should have known they were going to try for a safe profit, for whatever I had on me, and not worry about whether or not I could import guns and who I'd sell them to.
I should have known. I should have picked up some hints that their raggedness was more from poverty than choice—something, anything.
He was an experienced little knife-artist. His right hand di
pped down to his side, and came back up with his switchblade. The blade clicked into place with a decided snap. It moved quickly—
"Quickly: are you paying attention?" he asks.
"Yes, Adoni, always."
Slowly, he seats himself across from me on the surface-grass mat. "There is only one way to teach you to pay attention to your surroundings," old Yehuda says, as we sit opposite each other, him in his well-worn gi belted across the middle with a simple white belt, me in my new one, proudly belted with green.
I'm so proud of myself—fourteen and already a green belt. I don't know why old Yehuda has given up his black belt for the white one of a beginner, and I don't know how to ask him why.
"There is only one way," he says.
"And that is?"
I never see his hand as it snakes out and slaps me across the face.
I bring my hand up to my stinging cheek. "Why did you do that? You're supposed to warn me before we spar."
"True," he says, his face grave. "We're not sparring. We're teaching you to—"
Whack. Again he slaps me across the face. Harder, this time.
"—pay attention."
Zev Aroni, one of the boys seated across the circle, laughs, until another instructor hits him across the back of the head.
"What'd you do that for?" he whines.
"Because you weren't paying attention."
From that moment on, at any time of the day, from the moment we report to Section for our noon classes until we leave at 1900 for dinner, our teachers will jump out of anywhere, at any moment, and hit us.
For me, it doesn't stop until the day I return to my quarters, shut the door behind me, and block old Yehuda's blow as he leaps out of the closet. He has never struck me outside of class before; he will never again try to strike me other than when we spar.
Tears stream down the old one's face as he hugs me. "Tetsuki," he says, "are you paying attention?"
I am paying attention, Adoni, I thought as I stepped back and blocked—the wrist, not the knife. The weapon is an extension of the hand. Stop the hand, you stop the weapon.
My left hand swept in, up, and out in a roundhouse block, the outside of my hand striking hard against his wrist, knocking it away. The hand is an extension of the arm. Stop the arm, you stop the hand.
The arm is an extension of the mind. Stop the mind, you stop the arm. I gripped his sleeve and pulled him to me as I brought my right arm around, hitting him hard on the temple with the heel of my hand.
His knees went loose and he crumpled as the others approached, spreading out, waiting to rush me. After all, what was I, one unarmed man?
I picked up their leader by the hair and brought his head up to about the level of my belly while I reached inside my coat to pull out my Fairbairn knife. It was about a third of a meter long, tapering gently to almost a needle point, razor-sharp on both edges—more of a dagger than anything else.
"I am more brutal than you," I said, setting the point of my blade against the unconscious boy's throat, just over the carotid. "You run or you die."
It might work. They had seen brutality, they had committed brutality, they'd kicked an unconscious enemy to death, perhaps, but maybe they hadn't seen murder in cold blood before.
One of them took a step forward, so I slashed through the leader's throat and kicked him away, arterial blood fountaining, bathing my forearm in dark wetness before I could kick him away.
One of them shrieked, and another's eyes widened, yet another shouted a too-late "No, no, don't," and three of them ran, but that left two, one armed with a cane, the other with a length of chain.
It should have been easy; the chain could endanger his partner as much as it did me. But the fat one with the chain held back while the pock-faced, black-haired boy with the cane moved in, neither of them saying a word.
He held the cane in front of him like a sword, lunging tentatively. I kept my knife close in and looked for an opening.
The one with the chain rattled it to distract my attention, and when I showed that I knew that one by not reacting, he whirled it over his head for a moment, the chain doubled over. He released one end, more throwing it at me than spinning the end toward me.
As I ducked under his swing, the other one moved in, lunging in full extension with his cane, but I wasn't where he expected me to be: I was a few centimeters to the left, bringing my leg up in a roundhouse kick that sent his cane spinning away into the night and left him off-balance, staggering toward me. I took a precious half-second to slide the knife between two ribs, but he jerked spasmodically and twisted away, taking my knife with him.
It didn't matter. The fat boy was just to my right, bringing his chain back for another swing. It caught me once, hard, in the side, but then I caught it with my left hand, and yanked on it, pulling him to me, and smashed my elbow into his face once, twice, three times.
He dropped the chain and brought his hands up to the bloody pulp that was all that was left of his nose. I kicked him solidly in the knee, then twice in the head when he fell. I kicked hard, like I was trying to kick a soccer ball into the goal.
He lay still after that.
I stooped to retrieve my knife from the body of the boy with the cane, then cleaned it on his shirt. I used the other one's shirt to towel off what blood I could, but my coat was still too clearly stained. I stripped it off and rolled it up, hiding my bloody hand and my knife in it, then walked quickly away, pressing my arm against my ribs where the one with the chain had hit me. It was starting to ache, badly.
Dammit, you can get hurt doing this, I thought.
If you're not moving your lips, bravado is cheap.
When I got back to our suite, the Sergeant was waiting for me next to the lift.
"There's an assistant police prefect in the living room waiting—what is it?" he said, concerned, when he saw I was pressing at my side.
"A bit of a mess." It wasn't feeling any better. "The blood isn't mine, but I took a kick in the side. The prefect got a name?"
"Dunfey. He says he's been waiting for you to make contact with him." The Sergeant eased me down the hall and into my room, and helped me lie down on the bed before he thumbed the phone on, not bothering to pick up the receiver. The pain seemed to get worse when I lay down, and it hadn't been a joy to begin with.
"Imran," a voice answered.
"Tetsuo's hurt, probably a cracked rib. His room."
"Right away."
The Sergeant thumbed the phone off and helped me out of my coat. He had me halfway out of my gripsuit when Ephraim Imran arrived, his canvas medician's bag in one hand.
"Been a long time since I did this for real," he said. "Which one is the patient?"
"Kill the chatter," the Sergeant said. "He says the blood's not his, but check him out anyway."
"I always do, and I was just whistling in the dark, Tzvi, just whistling in the dark," he said as he quickly unrolled the bag. "I always like to keep talking; it keeps the patient's mind off the pain. Now go and do sergeant things, and leave me alone."
The Sergeant thought it over, nodded, and left.
Unrolled, the medician's kit was a canvas sheet about a meter square, with bottles and instruments inserted in cloth loops.
"We're probably not going to have to do anything intrusive, so there's no need to get fancy, at least not at first." He tore the wrapping off a paper towel and rubbed it over his already-clean hands, then my side. It was cool and wet; I flinched. "Easy there, Tetsuo. Just watch the ceiling or something. Nothing to worry about."
He selected an instrument, a smooth gunmetal box about the size of a pack of tabsticks, with a screen built into one side, then thumbed it on. The screen flickered.
He didn't ask where I'd been injured; the skin was already purple.
"This won't hurt," he said, running it across my side. "Just a few sound waves, and—there it is." He snorted. "Cracked your ninth rib, that's all I can see. All I'm going to see, for the next while, unless we get you to some
soft-tissue scanning gear. Which won't be necessary, I think." He pulled out a hypo, adjusting the dosage with a practiced spin of its barrel. "You going to be doing anything active for the next couple of days?"
"I hope so. Right now, I don't want to look like I'm hurting. Just give me some valda oil, tape my ribs and help me into the shower, and then a fresh uniform. I've just killed a few locals; I'd rather look like I've been out for a constitutional."
"I'd advise against the valda oil. It won't prevent you from moving that rib around—all it'll do is make sure you're not in pain while you're making things worse. I'd rather you feel it if anything else starts hurting."
"Just do it."
"Everybody's in such a rush these days." He sighed as he switched hypos, then adjusted the new one and pressed it briefly to my side. "Just valda oil, and a few vitamins," he said, as he set it down, then picked up a shaver. "Rather shave it off now than tear it off when I change the tape."
Nigel Dunfey, assistant prefect, New Portsmouth Constabulary, was the man they were thinking of when they invented the word "dapper." He was a compact man, half a head shorter than average, wearing a brown single-breasted kneecoat and matching trousers, a white silk brocade shirt, and an expression of infinite patience as he sat in a chair by the window.
Zev sat across from him, Moshe Stern and the Sergeant over by the wet bar. As Dunfey rose from his chair and turned his back to him, Zev mouthed, Dov is sleeping, which was the right way to do it: it was possible that Dunfey knew Hebrew.
"Prefect Dunfey?" I said, taking his proffered hand. "Tetsuo Hanavi. Please, sit down. The Sergeant has been making you comfortable, I hope?"
"Very much so, Inspector-General." He picked up his cup. Tea, probably. I hate tea. "I hope you are enjoying your stay here."
It usually takes bureaucrats quite a while to work up to what they want to say, but I didn't particularly want the Sergeant and his oldsters hanging around while he did. Particularly Moshe Stern; he tended to twitch.
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