Successio

by Alison Morton

  He blenched, gripped the edges of his desk so tightly I thought it was going to cut off the blood supply to his fingers. Sweat broke out on his forehead, his lips took on a blue tinge. I leapt around the desk and gripped his arms. Gods! He was having a heart attack.

  ‘Conrad.’ No reaction. ‘Conrad.’ I eased him back down into his chair. I reached immediately for the desk commset to call the medics, but although speechless, he waved me away with an abrupt gesture. After a few breaths, he threw such a savage glare at me that I dropped my hands as if I’d been shocked by a thousand volts.

  His colour was gradually coming back. I roused myself and poured him a glass of water which he grabbed and drank. Over the rim, he glared at me.

  ‘You keep your damned nose out of it. Leave it to the scarabs. They can waste their time on it.’

  ‘Conrad, I know you’re upset but don’t you think we should maybe have at least a preliminary look? Stella is the imperial heir, as well as your daughter.’

  ‘I’m perfectly aware of that. I don’t need lectures from my juniors.’

  His eyes sunken in their sockets darted around the room. They glinted like he had a fever. He was unaware or he didn’t care that he was letting his fingers drum on the desk. He was more than sore at me – he was coming unglued.

  The muscles on his face drooped and he looked exhausted. I wanted nothing more than to protect him from all this horrifying business. Sure, Nicola was the trigger, but the demons chasing him since his brutalised childhood with Caius needed flushing out and defeating; he needed rest and safety more than anything in the world. I loved him. I would never stop, but he was making my working life a misery and, much worse, destroying our marriage.

  He emerged from his stasis after a few minutes. His face settled back into neutral as if an exterior shell had re-formed over it. I could still see some inner tension from the hard lines sloping from his mouth to his nose.

  He turned to me and said in a bone-cold voice, ‘I’ve given you a direct order. This is a formal warning. If I find out you’ve been investigating, I’ll have your hide.’

  *

  I was calm as I walked back to my office, numb even. His order was completely against logic and reason. Or was it me being unreasonable? Nobody else had mentioned anything to me about his behaviour. But would they have? For all the openness I practised and encouraged in my team, I doubted any of the more traditional members of the PGSF would have dreamed of reporting such a thing about a superior.

  Disobeying a direct order carried a severe penalty though – several years in the central military prison. I broke out in a sweat when I thought about it. I took several deep breaths. I‘d risk my chances in a court martial.

  I hustled paper, schedules, asset packages. I typed, chewed my pen, approved, signed and stamped until my eyes blurred. I was scheduled to carry out performance and appraisal reviews on the senior staff, but I delegated most to newly promoted Major Petrus Sergius and switched Lucy in as his exec. By seven that evening, I’d freed up significant slices of time in my week, but I didn’t mark it up on the internal calendar. Satisfied at my victory over time, but depressed about the subterfuge, I packed a few clothes into a small duffle, collected some equipment from the field room and set off into the city.

  *

  I munched some sour olives and nuts with the over-tart dry white I was nursing at the bar in Via Cloelia. Weak lights hung above the length of the black counter, making it appear more intimate and sophisticated than it really was. A crowd of noisy office workers in one corner were halfway to the stupid level. The more dubious patrons eyed them with a knowing and cynical air, half-resentful, but half working out how much they could rip them off for with offers of gambling or some other action. In amongst them was a mix of ages, more men than women.

  I’d fended off one proposition, a total slimeball, a tourist who’d mistaken me for a working girl. Okay, the short black leather skirt revealed a lot of leg, but my dark top and black jacket weren’t typical sex worker uniform. I was flirting with a much cuter guy, self-assured and keen to imply he knew where the action was. I was about to pursue this subject when his smile turned into a line of pain, his eyes bulged and he fell out of my sightline.

  A tall, burly figure with a humourless smile on his round face had stretched his hand around my companion’s neck, pulled him off his bar stool and thrust him back into the crowd. Another one slid in behind me. I was trapped.

  ‘What took you so long?’ I asked.

  He laughed. ‘Might have known it was you.’ His eyes slid over me. ‘I didn’t think a new tart would have the temerity to wriggle her arse in here without asking. What do you want?’

  ‘To talk to you, Philippus.’

  He nodded, turned his back, and headed for a door at the rear. His companion grabbed my arm like I was a piece of meat to be bagged and weighed and pushed me in front of him. I nearly laughed when I saw the office I was herded into; it was a crude imitation of the one I’d run Goldlights from.

  I shook the heavy’s hand off and sat down in the chair on the opposite side of the table to Philippus, crossed one booted leg over the other and waited. Philippus dismissed his companion with a flick of his fingers.

  ‘So what are you doing here?’

  His round eyes narrowed and the permanent smile looked a little under duress. Both hands lay peacefully on the arms of his chair, but the pinkie on his left hand tapped the plastic, driven by a motor independent from the rest of the system. I could understand it; the last time we’d met, we’d both been on the point of having our heads blown off. In the end we’d only been spattered with the bad guy’s warm blood and brains when a PGSF marksman had taken him out.

  ‘Not running an operation against you,’ I said.

  The pinkie stopped.

  ‘What then?’

  ‘Information first and perhaps your help.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I’m looking for a new dealer, a young woman, blonde, tall. A foreigner. She’s been spotted once, but by chance. She’s as wily as all Hades, so I don’t think it’ll be easy.’

  ‘You never did easy, did you?’ He grinned, a proper relaxed all-teeth, laughing-eyes Philippus grin.

  ‘No point.’ I chuckled back at him.

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘She’s ex-special forces, a surveillance and reconnaissance specialist.’

  ‘Oh, good.’

  He lifted his hand, inserted the nail of his thumb under the nail of his once over-active pinkie. His sleeve fell back and I saw he still wore the silver wrist torc with chased myrtle leaves I’d given him seven years ago. He followed my gaze and quickly dropped his hand.

  ‘Philippus, can I ask you something personal?’

  He didn’t answer, but his expression tightened.

  ‘I was surprised to discover you here. Why aren’t you still working at the Foundation?’

  He shrugged. ‘It went so clean I was out of a job. Hermina’s running it now, very corporate and respectable. She wears suits and talks goal-orientation, cost balancing and strategic planning.’ He snorted. ‘I didn’t want to end up as her glorified security guard.’

  I’d noticed my shares in the Foundation accumulating considerable value, especially in the last two years, but hadn’t looked at the detail. When I’d set up the Pulcheria Foundation nearly fourteen years ago, it had been as part of a cover for what became Operation Goldlights, the biggest drugs sting ever. I’d managed to save it and throughout the years it had turned from a tightly private organisation with criminal origins into an efficient, and legitimate, services company. I didn’t know Hermina, one of the other original associates, had the entrepreneur gene in her. Efficient, sure, but she’d been pretty deferential at the time.

  ‘I hadn’t spent much of my pay-off from you, so I used it to buy this place. It turns a good profit, especially with tourists who want to flirt with what they think is the dark side.’

  I ignored the challenge in his eyes; no way did
I want to know how his profit was turned.

  ‘Glad to see Apollodorus’s training wasn’t entirely wasted.’

  His fingers curled around the chair arms, then relaxed. He chuckled. ‘Don’t try and needle me, Pulcheria. I know your–’

  He’d said it. The name hung between us.

  ‘Why did you come back dressed in those clothes?’

  My turn to shrug. A retreat into my second skin? A desperate search for the memory of my undercover criminal persona as Pulcheria? Who knew?

  All we could hear for a few minutes were snatches of music, clinking of glass and muffled footsteps the other side of the door. He needed to get the soundproofing improved, I thought idly.

  ‘Philippus.’ I stretched out my arm across the table and flexed the fingertips of my open hand in invitation. ‘I need your help.’

  ‘You’ve got it, you know that. But why? You’ve got the whole PGSF at your beck and call.’

  ‘It’s a little complicated,’ I said.

  He smirked. ‘They haven’t thrown you out, have they?’

  ‘Of course not! What a thing to say.’

  ‘So what are you doing? Freelancing?’

  I kept my gaze steady, but didn’t say anything.

  A few minutes went past. Philippus rolled his eyes.

  ‘No wonder Apollodorus called you stubborn. I give up.’

  ‘Thank you, Philippus.’

  ‘Huh. Don’t make me live to regret it.’

  *

  He delivered. Within three days, I had a good lead. Nevertheless, I took additional precautions and borrowed one of Philippus’s people to help the stakeout. We’d set up two hours before the supposed meet in an empty apartment in the Septarium. Perfectly named; little runnels of indeterminate humanity oozed furtively around, filling up the fissures between the shabby buildings. Our apartment was a plain box, musty with damp patches at the top of the walls near the metal framed windows. Now it smelled of instant coffee and salami.

  Right on schedule, a shadow figure shuffled along the side of the building in front of us and detached itself, coming into the early evening half-light. I reckoned male, between eighteen and mid twenties. He looked slowly up and down the street that crossed his. Satisfied, he retreated down the street to just behind the corner out of the freezing wind and started playing with a cell phone. We remained statue still. Even a tiny movement could betray a watcher’s presence. And we were trying to catch an expert.

  A second figure approached. Gods! My hand almost leapt up to my mouth by instinct. She walked exactly like Conrad – a big-cat lope. Surely she would have disguised it. Basic field craft. Was she that confident? I swallowed hard, my eyes busy working through the telescopic lenses. At least she was alone. She wore a hooded sweater, but I could see wisps of dark blonde hair. I could only see part of her face, but the hazel eyes were unmistakeable.

  She made a quarter turn, a discreet hand gesture and a slim, brown-haired figure joined her.

  Shit.

  The shorter girl took an envelope out of her light duffle and handed it over to the first figure and received a square package in return which she stuffed into the bag. She cast an anxious look up to the older girl, who nodded curtly and gestured her back. The man took off back up the street he’d come from and vanished behind the next block. The taller woman grabbed the arm of the younger one and they hurried off down the opposite street, avoiding retracing their steps. Better, Nicola. Much better.

  I remained immobile, not just from good practice, but from shock and anger. That bitch had made Stella effect the trade. Clever. If they were being watched by law officers, Nicola couldn’t be charged. Damn her to Tartarus.

  ‘Shall I stop recording?’

  The voice broke into my consciousness.

  ‘Yes…yes. Thanks.’

  I stepped back into the room and took my telescopic eyeglasses off, blinking and pinching my nose.

  Philippus’ man tapped at the keyboard and downloaded the sequence to my cell phone. I shoved it into my jeans pocket.

  ‘I’ve deleted it from the camera as instructed.’ He shot me a speculative look as he held the tiny camcorder up for me to check the memory display showed empty. We waited another half hour, drinking lukewarm coffee and exchanging inanities before moving off, he ten minutes before me.

  I had proof now. Not as solid as I’d liked but enough to start a formal investigation, whatever Conrad said. Then I’d nail her ass.

  XV

  ‘Where in Hades have you been?’

  I was so wrapped up in planning my next step that I ran straight into Conrad. His hands caught me and held me firmly away from him. His eyes bored into mine. I shook my head to clear it.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You should be. I thought I’d drop in on the appraisal interviews this afternoon and you were missing. Major Sergius was handling it well, but you should have been there.’

  How dared he attack me like this? I was a senior autonomous rank, head of my department, a department that had turned in the highest results index three weeks running.

  ‘Are you telling me how to do my job? How to delegate to my staff?’

  I very nearly told him what dirty work his two oldest daughters had been up to, but I canned it. I’d learnt the bitter lesson. He could wait until I reported it through the proper channels he so loved.

  ‘Where have you been? And what are you doing in civvies?’

  ‘Strangely enough, I do have a few other things to do in my life. For which I have a dispensation, as you well know.’

  ‘You need to make up your mind where your duty lies.’

  I glanced up and down the empty cream corridor.

  ‘If you think I need lessons in duty, you can go screw yourself,’ I hissed at him. Before he could say anything else, I turned my back on him and stomped off to my office.

  I knew my nerves were raw and I was sick about the whole Nicola business, but I should have kept my temper on its leash. Bad though things were between us personally, he was my commanding officer. I chewed my lip, bent a paperclip into impossible shapes and scribbled stupid patterns on my deskpad as I calmed myself down. As I glanced at my screen to check my mails, my commset buzzed: report to the senior legate, stat.

  I reached Conrad’s outer office just as the inner door opened and Sepunia, the head of intelligence, came out, chuckling at something. I heard Conrad’s rich, full laugh from inside before the door closed. My heart lifted. I exchanged smiles with Sepunia before she hurried off.

  Conrad’s assistant, Rusonia, sat impassively at her desk. She gave me a long look and for a moment, I thought she was going to say something. She glanced away, opened her mouth, but closed it like she’d decided not to release any words. I waited but all she did was nod at me to go in. Conrad was pretending to look at his screen. The fingers on his left hand were tapping the leather surface of his desk, causing his gold signet ring to cast shiny dancing reflections against the side display cabinet. He didn’t invite me to sit down.

  ‘I wish to apologise for my rudeness earlier, sir,’ I said stiffly.

  He frowned at me.

  ‘I know what you were doing this afternoon.’

  Crap! How? No, he was on a fishing trip.

  ‘You’re wondering how, aren’t you?’

  No way was I going to give him the satisfaction. I said nothing.

  ‘You were running a surveillance operation, specifically against my orders.’

  It hovered there between us like an unmentionable disease.

  ‘You’re not an easy mark, so I used the only person possibly capable of following you undetected. He saw everything you did, but couldn’t see who you were watching. You’re not Operations anymore, so this will be treated as a full disciplinary. I want a complete report on my desk tomorrow morning, but you will turn over your recording to me now.’

  He stretched his arm out, the fingers on his hand beckoned imperiously.

  I was paralysed. I was going to throw up. Th
e unfairness of it hit me like a wrecking ball demolishing a building.

  ‘Don’t pretend you didn’t make a recording. Come along, hand it over. Unless you want the indignity of a full body search.’

  His eyes were cold and hard in a face of tense muscles. He looked completely stressed out. What kind of strain was he under to switch from laughing a little too heartily with Sepunia one minute to freezing me out the next?

  I battled through the numbness and misery to reach into my pocket and placed my phone on his desk, bypassing his hand. He played the sequence. Not the hint of a reaction.

  ‘You’re on suspension. Immediate.’ He pointed at his desktop. ‘Badge.’

  I didn’t move.

  ‘Now.’

  I unclipped the badge from my waistband and plunked it on the edge of the desktop. I could hardly drag my eyes from the crowned gold eagle raised away from the shield. I’d worn it for fifteen years. It symbolised my adult life’s work.

  I hovered there in front of his desk. I didn’t know what to do next. He looked down at a folder on his desk like he was studying it. He even turned a page, completely ignoring me. I didn’t move.

  When he looked up with an eyebrow raised, rage boiled up in me. The paralysis that had gripped my mind dissolved.

  ‘Keep it. I resign.’

  I bent over the desk so my face was millimetres from his.

  ‘And you can go to Hades with that junkie tart of a daughter. If I see either of you again, I’ll kick both your butts back there.’

  *

  ‘You’re drunk.’

  ‘Yeah. And?’

  Two Helenas swam in front of me and the atrium seemed unsteady. Did we have earthquakes? I couldn’t remember. Everything was a little fuzzy, but fine now. Why had I been so mad? Oh, yeah, I’d told Conrad to screw himself and his job. I giggled. Now the Helenas were frowning at me.

  ‘Come on, Carina.’ They yanked me up, I thought rudely, and pulled me along the swaying passageways into my apartment. I fell on to the bed and they started pulling clothes off me. I giggled. Two Junias appeared. Why was that cup steaming? Was it on fire? I must have a strict word with her about the dangers of fire. More pulling into the bathroom. That’s right. Must brush teeth before bed. Why was I sitting in the shower?