The Elgin Deceptions (Sunken City Capers Book 2)

by Jeffrey A. Ballard

  Liáng answers, “It doesn’t hurt to ask.”

  Puo and I share a concerned look behind Liáng’s back.

  * * *

  Puo and I are eating breakfast at The Red Swan the following morning while Liáng is set to meet with his contact in thirty minutes to discuss the situation with the Muppies.

  The hotel-attached restaurant is half-empty on a Tuesday midmorning—the business travelers staying at the hotel have long since eaten and dashed, and tourist season is over. Puo and I are occupying an aged brown-leather booth in the corner that’s pushed up against the ten-foot windows running down the wall facing the street.

  All the windows and natural light are nice, but the ceiling is what really sets the place off. It’s an antique. The ceiling is engraved and painted red with looping scrollwork in white, while the symmetric swans grouped in fours are painted in gold. Blue metal chandeliers with curved upward lights dot the space. It’s one of the reasons I love Europe; they know how to do ceilings right—which, I’m starting to realize, I kinda have a thing for.

  We needed to get out the house to discuss things privately—Liáng’s seeming belief that his organization could penetrate the Muppies set off all kinds of alarm bells. If that’s true, his organization isn’t the Chang’ans as advertised. As powerful as the Chang’ans are, nation/state-level espionage like that in a short time frame is out of their reach.

  Our server, a dark-haired French woman in her early twenties with wide hips, swings out from behind the bar carrying a tray with our food. She steps quickly over to us, her black flats scuffing lightly on the thick, slightly uneven wooden planks that make up the floor.

  I slide out of my warm navy-blue winter trench coat and set it beside me in the booth before she gets here. I’ve learned my lesson from the other night and am properly dressed for the cold weather this time in warm ivory corduroy pants and snug dark-brown boots with no heel and a purple long-sleeved sweater.

  “Zee full English Breakfast.” She sets a large plate down in front of Puo which looks like a pile of bland fried food.

  I try to keep the distaste off my face—it’s Puo’s food. But there’s no color to it. Brown beans, brown toast, brown fried hash browns, pink ham patties with brown fried marks, brownish bacon, and a nasty looking black circular patty. It’s like a color spectrum in brown. The only things on there daring to be different are the white and yellow eggs, which kinda matches Puo’s honey-colored insulated down coat draped over the back of his chair.

  “Zee muesli.” She sets down a bowl in front of me and then continues to set down little cups of brown sugar, honey, fresh raspberries and blueberries and a miniature carafe of milk.

  “Can I get you anything else?” she asks.

  We politely decline.

  After she leaves, Puo rolls up the sleeves on his gray buttoned shirt and says, “What are we going to do about Liáng?” Puo goes for his hash browns first—no need for a fork, a perk of fried food.

  I pour a dash of milk in my muesli mixture to soften it up and then add some berries. “Well,” I say, “we took the job. We’re committed now.”

  If Liáng doesn’t work for the Chang’ans, then he either works for a bigger illegal organization, in which case we’re still on the hook for the capital we’ve been burning through. Or he works for a foreign government entity engaged in illegal activity, in which case we may not be on the hook, but that brings its own unique set of challenges—mainly how not to get arrested or end up indentured to them. Either way, we still have to scrounge up the rest of the next payment to the Citizen Maker.

  “But if they acted in bad faith misrepresenting themselves,” Puo says.

  True. That may provide a way out, but … “There’s no Boss over here to police things.” We’re purposefully staying under the local crime lord’s notice. We couldn’t risk offending their national sensibilities of stealing from the British Museum and having them alert the authorities to their advantage. The Brits can be strangely nationalistic, which is ironic given how much they’ve looted and stolen from other nations and refused to give back.

  “We are also,” I say, “starting to rack up quite a debt. So whoever is funding this has deep pockets.” And committing us even further. But I leave that unsaid. Either we come out of this debt free (finally) or … better to leave that unthought.

  “Mmm,” Puo says. “So we need to know who’s actually funding us.” Puo picks up a stiff piece of bacon. “Which brings me back to, what are we going to do about Liáng?”

  I eat a spoonful of my muesli, which has an interesting texture. It’s smooth from the oatmeal in it, but has a number of crunchy, lightly salted seeds and nuts mixed in. The raspberry I scooped up with it crumbles into a tart, tasty emulsion.

  While I’m savoring and swallowing, I start to take out my pocket tablet from my tan canvas messenger bag with my other hand when movement catches the corner of my eye near the entrance of the restaurant. Winn.

  My breath catches in my throat. My heart pounds in my chest.

  I almost throw up. I can’t see properly. Is it really him?

  I set my shaking spoon down quickly to keep it from clinking like an alarm clock. I blink several times to try and get a good look at the person. Why can’t I focus properly?

  This isn’t happening.

  Puo is blissfully unaware, consumed in preparing his breakfast beans with salt, pepper, and now ketchup.

  The apparition’s tall form steps out from behind a wooden support.

  It’s not Winn. I can breathe again.

  Sweat breaks out all over me.

  My brain auto-filled the tall, white-complexioned, muscled form with Winn.

  Relief floods in.

  What the hell was that reaction? And why is a part of me disappointed? And why is a part of me feeling guilty?

  I exhale heavily and continue to retrieve the tablet. I set it on the table queuing up a map of the area while keeping an eye on Winn’s doppelganger, triple checking it’s not him.

  “You mean,” I say perfectly normally, “Liáng who is off meeting with his contact in about twenty minutes?” What would Winn be doing here anyway? Does he know we’re here? Did he—? Would he even follow me?

  Puo nods, chewing on some more bacon he just picked up.

  “You mean, Liáng,” I say, trying to shove Winn out of my mind, “who is off meeting with his contact unknowingly wearing a tracking bug with audio enabled?”

  Puo grins conspiratorially at me, still unaware of the turmoil roiling inside me.

  “You mean, Liáng,” I say, glancing down at the tablet between us putting on a show for Puo, “who currently just left the house on foot and is headed east?”

  Puo silently toasts me with his half-full glass of apple juice.

  * * *

  The man in The Red Swan is definitely not Winn. I got a good long look as we left after finishing up breakfast to get a visual of who Liáng is meeting with.

  Liáng is moving east from the house into Hampstead Heath, one of England’s oldest, most idyllic parks, full of rambling hills, ponds and woodlands. Although the park is a shadow of what it used to be.

  After the mega-quake hit, large parts of the Heath were reclaimed to settle the survivors. Which, in typical British “chin-up” fashion, pissed off a lot of people who didn’t need to be resettled.

  Even now, as Puo and I walk into the Heath from the North past the stone fence, there are flyers decrying the encroachment of civilization on the natural wildlife and calling for a town meeting. Yeesh. It’s been eighty-six years—let it go.

  I have more important things to consider then the silly selfish people prioritizing animals over people, like: even if Winn did know I was here, why would he come? Do I want him to come?

  The morning is brisk, but not unpleasantly so. The sun is shining through sparse but fast-moving clouds above. The glare makes it difficult to see the tablet screen and where Liáng is. It smells fresh here, distinctly of autumn with decaying leave
s heavy on the wind.

  Birds chirp off in the birch trees in the woodlands to our right. The loose gravel crunches under our feet as we walk. A runner trots by on our left.

  Puo waits until the runner passes to ask, “Where does it look they are?”

  I squint at the screen. “Parliament Hill.”

  “I don’t suppose you brought—”

  “Auto-binoculars?” I reach into my tan messenger bag and bring out a pair. “Yeah.”

  “Anything you didn’t think of?” Puo asks in good humor.

  Everything about Winn comes to mind as an answer to Puo’s question. Like what would I say, or act like, if we ran into each other? Instead, to Puo’s question I say, “What we’re going to do about those ploppers if this idea doesn’t pan out.”

  “Spoil sport,” Puo says, but without any heat.

  We walk through the peaceful woods; the pedestrian traffic is minimal this time of day, midweek. It only takes a few minutes to reach the edge of Parliament Hill.

  The hill is so-called because it used to offer views of downtown London (and the parliament buildings in the long, long ago); now it looks out on the Sea of London and the tombstones of those buildings left that jut up above the waves. The north skylane passes by almost directly overhead while the south skylane is visible in the distance and, of course, a steady stream of delivery drones zoom over it all.

  The top of the hill is an open brown-green grass expanse. Puo and I stay ten to fifteen feet inside the tree line halfway down the hill, the leaves around us a mixture of gold, red and fading green. I retrieve the auto-binoculars and scan ahead of us.

  A narrow, paved walking path crests over the hill, with no cars on it this morning. Benches are scattered on the other side of the path from us—only a few of which are occupied.

  “Got ‘em,” I tell Puo. I can make out Liáng’s head and broad shoulders, but not who he’s meeting with. His contact looks to be a diminutive person with short dark hair similar to Liáng’s. “Shit,” I say.

  “What?”

  “We’re staring at the back of their heads,” I explain.

  “And you miss seeing Liáng’s face?” Puo asks dryly.

  “What? No.” I feel a flutter at Puo’s needling. Followed immediately by a sense of guilt. “The auto-binoculars can’t read their lips and translate for us. And I can’t see who he’s with.”

  Puo looks at me quizzically. “I thought you said he has a tracking bug with audio enabled?”

  Oh, right. Whoops. Stupid Winn occupying all my brain space. “Heh.” I turn on the audio on my pocket tablet. While I do that, Puo takes the auto-binoculars and scans out to find Liáng.

  Puo says, “It’s nem. It’s Shǐ Guìyīng.”

  “How can you tell?”

  Before he can answer, the audio pipes in. It’s a woman’s voice speaking in rapid Chinese. If there were a desk around, I’d bang my head on it. Damn it!

  I express my extreme frustration in sighs and growls.

  Puo again looks at me strangely. “What’s with you? You still have the translation program you uploaded to your helmet?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Gimme.” Puo holds his hand out for my tablet. I hand the tablet over and he starts tapping on it. “You’re acting funny. Something happen?”

  Fortunately, Puo is focused on the tablet and doesn’t see me relive an echo of what happened back at The Red Swan when I thought I saw Winn. A pang rips through my hollow stomach all over again, and my heartbeat thumps through my neck. A light, cool wind brushes over my hot face.

  I have to swallow before I can answer him. I think about lying, but we’ve had a bit of clearing the air after the night at The Bridge Between. Things have been better. But … it’s just worse to talk about it.

  I fidget for a few seconds before saying, “I thought I saw Winn.” I try to sound nonchalant and fail miserably.

  Puo stops what he’s doing and looks up at me.

  “It wasn’t him, obviously,” I say.

  Puo regards me heavily for another few seconds and then finally asks, “Want to talk about it?”

  I shake my head no while avoiding eye contact.

  “Okay.” Puo goes back to typing on the tablet. “Promise you’ll come talk to me when you’re ready?”

  “Yeah,” I say a little shakily. “Look at us,” I say once I’m calmer, “having an adult conversation. I don’t like it,” I add conclusively.

  “It does feel a little weird,” Puo says. “There.” Puo shifts the tablet so we can both see it. The chatter of Chinese continues, but now a less than perfect English translation is writing itself across the bottom.

  >> I do not forget.

  “Do not forget what?” I ask. “Which one said that?”

  “Shh,” Puo says, trying to ignore me.

  ## We can provide building layouts and access badge. In addition, you must create your own opportunities.

  Okay, the text marked with “##” is Guìyīng. Well, it might be nir voice, but it’s kinda hard to tell. They’re speaking a foreign language, and I only met nem once. But it’s definitely Liáng’s contact.

  Puo and I share a silent look. Providing the layout of a government building isn’t trivial, but it isn’t earth-shattering either. It’s the blasé mention of the access badge that’s raising our eyebrows.

  But if that’s the contact, then what doesn’t Liáng forget?

  >> They might prefer it that way.

  ## We need a copy of their code.

  Puo growls at the attempt to copy his code (really the Cleaners’ code). “Not going to happen,” Puo finally says. To which, I heartily agree.

  >> I have told you before. I cannot copy their code on their systems.

  Puo’s low growl turns into a string of benign pejoratives.

  A grim feeling swirls in my stomach. This isn’t entirely unexpected. It’s why Puo has been going through the encryption lengths he has. But … life would’ve been much nicer if Liáng hadn’t been trying to steal from us. Freaking thieves.

  ## This will help.

  Shit. I yank up the auto-binoculars, but I can’t see anything change hands. “No visual.” I alternate between looking at the tablet and through the auto-binoculars.

  “We have to know what they just passed,” Puo states the obvious. “If they’re a bigger player than the Chang’ans, then whatever that was may be able to break in.”

  ## Anything else?

  There’s a pause in Liáng’s and the contact’s conversation. I can feel the tension between the two from several hundred feet away.

  >> Have you thought about my earlier request?

  Another awkward pause.

  ## I gave it a lot of thought and a decision has not been made.

  All these damn pauses and Chinese accents make it difficult to figure out who is saying what. It sounds like they’re in high school and one of them is trying to ask the other one out. But is Liáng asking the contact out, or is the contact propositioning Liáng, or … what?

  I suddenly find myself intensely more interested in this contact. What kind of person is Liáng interested in? And what was with that “I do not forget” line? The tension at the start of the conversation was much different than this tension.

  The contact stands up but continues to face away from us as they say their goodbyes.

  The contact walks away from us down the hill so we can’t see them.

  I make a split second decision and shove the auto-binoculars and tablet in my messenger bag.

  “Isssaa?” Puo looking at me with an alarmed questioning look.

  “I’m going to tail the contact.” I start moving off.

  “What about Liáng?” Puo asks. He leaves the question of the very dangerous software program that Liáng was likely just handed unvoiced.

  “Get back to the house,” I say over my shoulder, “don’t leave him and the system alone until we can figure something out.”

  Puo stands there dumbly watching me disappear. F
inally he calls out, “Be careful.” But not in his usual way of commenting on the weather. He says it in an unsettling, quiet, I’m-actually-worried-as-shit-about-you way.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  BE CAREFUL.

  When am I not careful? What the hell was that? Puo’s never said it that way to me before. Not like he really means it.

  It’s like saying tie your shoes. Duh.

  I keep inside the tree line working my way around, practically running since I have to take a circuitous route. The fallen leaves rustle under my steps, but even in my haste, and out of pure habit, I avoid any sticks or twigs that might snap.

  The smell of the dead leaves and fresh earth is pleasant, the cold air against my face chilly. It’s nice. Is this what everyone in the North always raves about?

  I grew up in the South. It can get cold there (but rarely enough to snow). And we don’t have the changing of the seasons the Northerners are always blathering on about.

  The crisp November weather puts me in the mood for warm apple pie. Or maybe pumpkin.

  And then like a middle-school bully, the thought of Promontory Pies back home in the Seattle Isles hits me from behind like a smack to the back of the head. Winn, Puo and I found the place together right before all that crap went down and Winn left.

  Be careful. Puo’s warning floats to mind.

  Is that what Puo’s worried about? That I thought I saw Winn?

  This isn’t reckless. I’m not going supergirl here. We need to confirm that the contact is Shǐ and then, more importantly, figure out who is bankrolling this job and trying to steal our code base—two key pieces of information we need to know so we can get paid and continue to be able to work.

  I connect to a path leading south in the direction the contact went.

  But where is the contact going? All I have is a general direction and, because I had to circle around, I’m pretty far behind. There are only really three types of transportation out of here: on foot, hovercar or train.

  It’s unlikely the contact is staying in Hampstead while we’re here. So that rules out on foot. Hovercars can’t take off and land in the immediate vicinity that the contact left in (ruins the view for the park goers). So the best probability is the trains.