“You’ve gone too far,” the first voice said. “This is not the way the game is supposed to be played.”
“You don’t make the decisions here. I do, and when I want your opinion, I’ll ask for it. Until then, do your job.”
“My job?” The first voice almost vibrated with anger. “You think you know my job? You’re a stranger here. You have no concept of the way things work in Meridien. Challenge is not an excuse to commit wholesale murder, and opportunity must be given for an equitable resolution. If Argent concludes that you represent a threat to the system, it will mean all-out war.”
Neither voice had an accent. Neither was a member of Derek Landry’s hit team; and who, I wondered, was working for whom? The second voice belonged to the messenger, the one who had threatened to ‘eliminate’ me, had tied me to a chair and punched me in the face. He seemed to hesitate. “Let me assure you that we have no intention of threatening the Guilds or the Guild system. We’ll get what we want and then we’ll be gone.”
“You want Sindara, a tropical island like many others. Why don’t you purchase one of your own?”
“Because Oliver Enterprises is growing too fast. They’re threatening my employer’s interests.”
“And who is your employer?”
“That is not your business. Most definitely not.”
“The system is designed to allow for competition but it is also designed to keep that competition within acceptable limits. I’m not going to stand by while you kill any of these men.”
For a few seconds, there was silence, then the messenger seemed to sigh. “I don’t understand. You cannot tell me that nobody dies in what you so euphemistically refer to as games.”
The first voice sounded reluctant. Good, I thought. The son of a bitch. “Death is supposed to be a last resort.”
“It will be, if it comes to that.” The messenger sighed again. “What did you think was going to happen, when you took my money? How did you think this was going to end?”
“I had my doubts. You don’t know Douglas Oliver. Furthermore, I did not take your money. You and I have each signed a contract with the Guild. That contract makes us associates, temporarily and for a specific purpose. The Guild does not work for you and neither do I. I suspect that the Guild Master did not understand all the implications of this contest when she agreed to sponsor your challenge.”
The second voice was silent for a long moment. “This argument is pointless,” he finally said. “It will all be over soon. I’m certain that Mr. Oliver will see reason.”
“Maybe so, but I do know Douglas Oliver. He’s a successful man. Successful men are focused, driven and persistent; it’s how they get to be successful, and Douglas Oliver is more persistent than most.”
“Successful men are also better than most at evaluating the odds and cutting their losses. I will take your objections under advisement. You have a point. See? I admit it. Neither of us should make any hasty decisions. I will restrain myself. Let’s see how it all plays out.”
“Fine, I’ll wait, but I won’t wait long. I want this over and I want it over soon.” The door opened. The door closed. I listened for five long minutes but there were no more sounds from the room below me. Carefully, trying to make no noise at all, I pushed the ceiling tile aside and took a deep breath. Only two men. I recognized both scents, as I had recognized both voices. One scent belonged to the messenger. The other, as I had known it would, belonged to my old friend, Leon Sebastian.
Chapter 9
I moved on. Sooner or later, they would discover that I was gone. Probably sooner. I couldn’t afford to wait for that to happen. Within a half an hour, I had explored the entire floor.
I refused to leave without my men and unfortunately, neither my men nor anybody else were in the rooms below me, which meant that they were either dead, moved to a different location or simply on a different level of the building. I had to find out. I followed the crawlspace out over a stairwell, slid the ceiling panel to the side and dropped down. The stairwell extended the entire height of the building. There was a landing above me and another below.
Somebody was on the landing below. I could smell steel and gun oil and the scent of a human male, one that I didn’t recognize.
When on guard duty, it’s instinctive to face toward the direction that a threat is most likely to come from. When guarding a stairwell, threats are most likely to come from below. With any luck at all, he would be facing down the stairs. Silently, I padded down. He was sitting on the bottom step, his gun across his chest, facing the ground.
Couldn’t be better. He never noticed when I came up behind him, closed my hand around his neck and released 1000 watts of current from the stacked electrocytes under my skin. His muscles contracted. He began to shake. After three seconds, I released my hand. He lay on the ground at my feet, twitching, while I searched him. He had a pair of handcuffs on his belt, a combat knife strapped to each lower leg, a semi-automatic pistol and a rifle. Neither the pistol nor the rifle were the sort of tranquilizer guns that they had captured us with. These were real guns, with real bullets.
I took the knives, the handcuffs and both guns. Then I pulled his shirt off, used one of the knives to tear the shirt into strips and tied his arms and legs. With his arms bare, I saw that he had a small tattoo on the inside of his left wrist: a coiled snake, its mouth opened wide, its fangs sharp and dripping venom.
He drew a shuddering breath and came to a few seconds later.
“Don’t scream,” I said. “If you try, I’ll kill you.” I had never actually killed anybody but there was no time like the present, considering the circumstances.
He cleared his throat and swallowed. His eyes were wide. He turned pale when I smiled. I didn’t blame him. I wasn’t happy and it wasn’t a happy smile.
“So,” I said, “where are the rest of my men?”
He shook his head. “I won’t tell you a thing.”
“No? Then let’s play a little game. I’ll ask you a question and you can either answer it or not. Then we’ll see what happens.” I gave him my best deranged grin. His lips thinned but he said nothing and I chuckled. “First question: are my men in this building?”
He didn’t answer but that was just fine. Every living creature emits an electromagnetic field and I can see electromagnetic fields. Not with my eyes, exactly, but like a bird navigating by the planet’s magnetic field, I possess specialized cells that contain magnetite, an iron rich mineral which reacts to magnetic fields, and also, of course, like sharks and electric eels, I have two small electroreceptive organs on either side of my body. I could see the answer in his aura; my men were somewhere in the building.
“Second question: are they on the first floor?” He looked away, feigning disinterest. I reflected for only a moment. I needed his aura to react and it wouldn’t react if the subject stayed too calm. “Your choice,” I said. I reached out, touched him with a forefinger and gave him a little shock, just to keep his interest.
He groaned, and I smiled. “Keep it down,” I said. “You do want to live, don’t you? So, again; are they on the first floor?”
No, they weren’t. I could see it. “Second floor?” He looked away, trembling. Yes, they were. I could see it very clearly. “Are they together?” Yes. “How many of you are in this building? More than twenty?” No. “More than ten?” Yes.
You could only get so much information with ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers. If I wanted to get the answers to more important questions, I needed him to talk. “So, tell me, why are the Avalon Commandos interested in what I do?”
He grimaced at that. “Who?”
He really didn’t know. That surprised me.
“So, who do you work for?”
“I can’t tell you that. Even if you kill me.” He seemed to mean it, which bewildered me. The game has its rules and nobody expects you to die defending a lost position.
“Is it a different unit of your government?” He compressed his lips into a thin line and
said nothing but his aura reflected uncertainty. “A private organization?” Again, uncertainty. “Do you even know who you work for?” No, I reflected, he really didn’t.
“I’m local,” he said. “I’m just doing a job.” He had no accent; not part of Derek Landry’s little hit squad, then.
“What Guild?” I asked.
He turned his head to the side and spat. “Fuck the stinking Guilds,” he said.
That gave me pause. Violence among the Guilds is required to be proportional to the specific situation. At the end of every challenge, the Guild Council reviews the outcome and the actions taken to achieve it. This man wasn’t Guild. The punishments for unsanctioned violence were severe.
I checked his bonds. They were tight. I ripped some more strips from his shirt, rolled them into a ball, shocked him again until he was unconscious, stuffed the ball of cloth into his mouth and secured it with the remaining strips.
Carefully, making no noise at all, I crept down the stairwell until I reached the second floor. I heard no sound from the hallway opposite the landing. I carefully pushed open the door. I was lucky. The hall was empty. I scampered inside, put my ear to the first doorway on the left, heard nothing and twisted the handle. It was unlocked and I entered. This room was much less plain than my prison cell. There were curtains on the windows, a large desk, a couch and comfortable chairs: an office. I checked the desk. The drawers were all locked. Shrugging, I stood on the desk, pushed aside the ceiling panel, pulled myself up, replaced the panel and scuttled off.
It took me no more than ten minutes to investigate the entire floor. Nobody was there except my men, locked in two small bedrooms, their ankles bolted to the floor. Curtis, his face bruised and swollen, grinned crookedly when I pushed the ceiling panel aside and looked down. Richard and Kevin were lying on bunks. “I assume the door is locked,” I said.
“Yeah,” Curtis said.
I dropped down and fried the locks on their ankle cuffs. “Come on then.” We all climbed up. I repeated the process in the other bedroom and a couple of minutes later we let ourselves down in another office near the stairwell. “I’ll keep the rifle,” I said. Curtis was normally our best shot but his eyes were still swollen and I didn’t trust his aim. “Kevin, take the pistol.”
“What are we up against?” Curtis asked.
“More than ten, less than twenty. None of them are on this floor. There’s probably a guard at the bottom of the stairs.”
“One way to find out,” Kevin said.
We all knew how to walk silently. The guard at the bottom was facing the doorway. He never saw us coming from above. I touched his neck. He twitched, jerked, shook and fell unconscious with only a small groan. My men were happy to distribute his weapons.
The grounds outside the building were brightly lit. A safe bet that they had more men patrolling the property. I smiled, put my hand on an electrical outlet and sent a surge into the wall. The circuits promptly overloaded. The lights went out.
One by one, we flitted into the dark and were gone.
Chapter 10
Two hours later, we returned with thirty men and women but by this time, the building was abandoned. A search revealed nothing. No documents, no clues. The building was registered to an investment corporation and rented to Gaddison Enterprises, which turned out to be a dummy organization that seemed otherwise not to exist.
The next night, I took the same thirty men and women and paid a little visit to my old friend, Leon Sebastian. Leon had an estate in Sandhill, an exclusive neighborhood of large, private homes, each on at least five acres. I was expecting opposition, but we met nobody at all as we drove through the gate of the stone wall that surrounded Leon’s property. Twenty of the men searched the grounds, meeting no opposition, and then set up a roving patrol.
The house was dark. It looked deserted, which proved to be almost the case. I was tempted to simply break down the door but instead, I walked up and rang the bell. I heard footsteps and a moment later, I felt a pulse from the doorway as we were scanned. The door opened.
“Evan,” I said. The Sebastian’s butler was at least seventy, slim, with thick brown hair just beginning to gray at the temples. He exuded dignity.
“Mr. Oliver.”
“Is the family home?”
“No, sir. They’ve left on what I was told would be an extended vacation.” Evan’s lips twitched. “I was told that you might be calling and was instructed that you be given free access. Would you like to come in?”
I nodded at Richard and Kevin, who followed me inside, leaving the rest of the men to guard the perimeter. I could tell the place was empty as soon as I entered. The scents were fading, all at least a day old. The family seemed to have left in something of a hurry. There were toys scattered over the floor of the den and unwashed dishes still sitting in the sink.
“A vacation, Evan?” I asked.
Evan puffed his cheeks up and frowned. “That is what they said, sir.”
“You seem uncertain.”
“Well, it was rather sudden.” He shrugged.
“Aside from giving me free access, were there any other instructions?”
“No, sir. None at all.”
“Did Mr. Sebastian say where they were going?”
“He did not.”
“Did he leave any way to get in touch?”
He nodded. “In case of emergency, I am to contact his administrative assistant, Mrs. Eloise Barnes.”
Eloise Barnes was a battleax. Her kids were grown, her husband deceased. She was completely devoted to Leon and lived for her work.
We wandered from room to room. Nothing else was out of place. Nothing seemed amiss. Certainly, no signs of violence. When we came to Leon’s home office, I said, “Thank you, Evan. Please wait for me downstairs.”
He nodded and silently walked out.
It was a large, comfortable room, with a couch and ottoman, a wall unit containing glasses and half a dozen bottles of expensive liquor, a large wooden desk and well-padded chairs for guests. A book case with a well-read collection, fiction, mostly. A picture of Jolene and the kids sat on the corner of the desk.
A lot of men had been in this room, a few sitting on the chairs, most standing in the corners, muscle, most likely. I recognized five of them. Four of the five had set fire to my warehouse. The fifth was the scent of the small man, the “messenger” who seemed to be in charge of their operation.
Sad, I thought. Really sad. What was the old saying? If you can’t screw your friends, who can you screw?
I sighed and examined the desk. All the drawers were locked but they were simple locks and not very strong. I grasped the handle on the top right drawer, gave a hard tug and felt the lock snap. The drawer, however, was empty. I did the same thing with both other drawers on the right and all three on the left. Some blank paper, a ruler, an empty date book. Certainly, nothing of interest.
I popped the lock on the middle drawer and opened it. A file folder lay neatly inside the drawer and inside the folder sat a thin sheaf of papers; a contract, signed by Leon Sebastian and Brittany Gannett, the Guild Master of Gentian. Leon Sebastian agreed that the resources of Sebastian Securities were to be placed in the service of somebody named Winston Smith, who was listed under “Affiliations” as President of Presideo Dynamics. I had never heard of Presideo Dynamics, which of course meant very little. The contract specified “all due assistance” with the “legitimate interests of the signatory and the signatory’s sponsoring organization.”
And that was all. A through search of the rest of the house revealed nothing else either suspicious or useful.
“Thank you, Evan,” I said, a few minutes later.
He gravely nodded. “Have a good night, sir,” and the door closed behind us.
“They’ve gone,” Curtis said.
I looked up from my desk. I had been going through the motions of running a business but had found it difficult to concentrate while waiting for my putative enemy’s next move. For th
ree days, we had pulled every lever we could reach, looking for a way to find them, to strike back. “Tell me,” I said.
Curtis inserted a disk into the board on my desk. “This is Holloway station, yesterday morning.” Derek Landry calmly walked along the tube platform, duffel bag slung over one shoulder, and entered the train. A few minutes later, another of the eleven followed. One by one, separated by no more than a minute, all eleven walked along the platform and boarded. A few minutes later, the doors closed. Air sucked from the tube. The train silently accelerated into the tunnel and was gone.
“Destination?” I asked.
“The first stop was Mountainside, after that, the train went on to Novaskaya, Kirkut and Nordstrom.”
All four were small nation states with which Meridien had cordial but distant relations. None of them, so far as we knew, were building up their military or engaged in threatening their neighbors. All of them, because of pristine lakes, tropical beaches or in the case of Nordstrom, an old, no longer functional but partially intact First Empire base, were popular vacation destinations. “Any idea where they got off?”
Curtis grinned faintly and put in another disk. He pressed a button and the disk advanced at high speed, then stopped. Derek Landry and two of his team emerged from the train at Mountainside. Curtis played the remainder of the disk. All of them left the train, three each at Novaskaya and Kirkut, the last two at Nordstrom. “They’re gone,” he said.
“And we are none the wiser.” I sat back in my seat and pondered all of this. “It doesn’t really matter. Whoever is behind this could have a hundred other agents in the city, and what about their boss, Winston Smith, or whoever he really is?”
The Game Players of Meridien Page 7
