Witchblade: Talons

by John Dechancie

  “What’s it for, Merlin?”

  “Controlling the economic world.”

  “You’re being quite forthcoming, aren’t you?” Sara said, absently kicking debris.

  “Got nothing to hide. It models the world economy, taps into data bases, and comes up with strategies for making money. Big project, but pretty simple concept.”

  “Got anything to do with computer crime?”

  “At Irons’s level, there’s no such thing. If there is, they call it arbitrage.”

  “I’d be willing to bet that an investigation would de­termine the crime angle pretty quickly,” the beach blan­ket dude said.

  “I’m just a technician,” Merlin said hastily.

  “Sure,” Sara said. “You only work here. There. Where is ‘there,’ by the way?”

  “You mean the computer.”

  “I don’t mean Hoboken.”

  “They blindfold me.”

  Sara and the blond guy exchanged looks. The guy said, “That so?”

  “Yup.”

  “So you don’t know where this computer is,” Sara said.

  Merlin looked out the window. “I might.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Depends on what chips you put on the table, vis-à-vis Yours Truly.”

  Sara looked at her partner. “Sounds like he wants a deal, Jake.”

  “Sure does,” Jake agreed.

  “Let me ask you this,” Sara said. “Did you send the e-mail about Joe Siry?”

  “Who?” Merlin said.

  “My boss.”

  Merlin did a take. “Your boss? I don’t get it.”

  “The e-mail sent to my online address, informing me he’d been kidnapped. Did you send it?”

  “No! I don’t know your e-mail address. Anyway, I didn’t send any e-mail about any kidnapping. Never. Not ever. No way, man.”

  “Jake, what do you think?”

  “I was watching his reactions. I’m willing to buy them as genuine.”

  Sara said to Merlin, “Does the name Erwin Strauss mean anything to you?”

  “Not a damned thing. Hey, I had nothing to do with it. Your boss, for God’s sake. We are talking about a policeman, here, right?”

  “Right. Strauss claimed credit. You see, there’s a contract out on my life, and Strauss took it. This a good way to get me in range, at least. The e-mail suggested a sort of exchange. He’ll release Siry if I’ll meet him on the field of honor, as he put it, for a personal duel. I want to find out where Lieutenant Siry is being held. I’ve connected Irons with you, and now, if I can connect Irons with Strauss, I can probably find my boss and free him.”

  “And you think the computer installation is a good place to look?” Merlin asked.

  “It’s a start,” Sara said. “It’s secret. That sounds promising.”

  “Yeah, I can see where you’re going,” Merlin said. “What’s in it for me? Wait, let me put it this way. What’s not in it for me?”

  “What’s not in it?” Jake said airily. “Mucho jail time for whatever we find in this room. This looks like Evidence City for the computer crime squad.”

  “Ah-hah,” Merlin said, with a profound nod. “I think I see where you’re going. Uh . . . okay.”

  “Okay what?”

  “I’ll take you to the installation.”

  “I thought you said . . .”

  “Ain’t no one can keep me from knowing where I’m going in Manhattan. By ear alone, I know exactly where the place is. And I have other ways.”

  “Yeah?” Sara said.

  “I got my mojo working, baby.”

  “That is so retro,” Jake said.

  Sara looked out the windshield. This neighborhood was beginning to look familiar.

  Driving, Jake was saying, “Merlin your real name?”

  “Middle name,” Merlin said. “Lloyd Merlin Jones. My mother always wanted a kid named Merlin, but my dad insisted on naming me after my grandfather. I’ve always preferred Merlin. Suits my nature.”

  “How long have you been into magic?”

  “Since I was a whelp.”

  “There’s been a lot of magic about lately,” Sara said. “And you seem to be behind a lot of it.”

  “Me? But you the witch lady,” Merlin said.

  Sara looked at him sharply. “What makes you say that?”

  “I didn’t know who you were up in Connecticut, but when Irons mentioned you, I put two and two together. You’re the witch chick I’ve been hearing about. Witch cop.”

  “Where have you been hearing it?”

  “On the street. You have no idea how much has been out about you. Some wild witch policewoman who kills guys, messes them up.”

  “My name’s out there?”

  “No, no. No names. They don’t know who you are. But I do, now. It’s got to be you. Man, you’re scary.”

  Sara shoved her hands deeper into her jacket pockets. “I’ve encountered some weird stuff in my career,” she said, trying to sound as noncommittal as possible.

  “Like that weird stuff up in Connecticut? Oh, by the way, I finally figured out why Yuri got fried.”

  “Why?”

  “His shots scared the thing.”

  “He saw it? I thought white dragons are invisible in snow.”

  “You can see white on white, sort of,” Merlin said. “Yuri saw something big moving toward him. He shot at it. The dragon freaked out and vomited fire. A nervous reaction, that’s all. Like I said, dragons aren’t evil in Chinese mythology.”

  “I don’t believe what I’m hearing,” Jake said. “You guys saw dragons in Connecticut?”

  “We think,” Sara said. I didn’t see anything at all. I did see the werewolf. Or someone dressed like one. You’re sure it wasn’t you, Merlin?”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “Didn’t think so,” Sara said. “Okay, it sounds good. We’ll put that one down to ‘accidental death by dragon.’ As if.”

  “As if?” Merlin said.

  “As if you can put that in an official police report,” Jake supplied.

  “I get the feeling all of this is kinda off the record and unofficial,” Merlin said. “I mean, you can’t write any of this crap in a report. And not get carted off to the nut nursery.”

  “Remember all the crap in your room, Merlin,” Jake said. “Hardly the stuff that dreams are made of. Get my drift?”

  “Got it,” Merlin said. “Never mind. Turn into this alley here.”

  “Is this the place?” Sara asked.

  “Near. You should park here. It’s walkable.”

  Merlin sprang the door and jumped out of the car. Sara and Jake were half expecting him to make a run for it. He moved off a few feet, but didn’t bolt. He wasn’t the type.

  “Hope he doesn’t get an inkling just how unofficial this is,” Jake said.

  “Maybe illegal, too. Jake, you don’t have to do this. You could get into trouble.”

  “We get Joe back quick, we don’t have a problem,” Jake said.

  “Let’s do it.”

  They got out of the car and followed Merlin. Sara realized that she was heading east into a neighborhood that she usually entered by a westerly route.

  The ramshackle machine shop that was Kool Whip’s studio took shape in the gathering fall evening darkness.

  Sara said, “You knew Kool Whip.”

  Merlin stopped in his tracks. He turned slowly. “Uh . . . Charlie Bromley? I knew him. Why?”

  “Did you tell Charlie Bromley about any of this witch woman stuff?”

  “Yeah. We were talking just recently. Look . . . I had nothing to do with his death. In fact . . . wasn’t it you who tried to arrest him?”

  “Tried to question him, about the murder of Smokey Drexel.”

  “Uh-huh,” Merlin said, his voice small. He took a deep breath. “Anyway, that’s where Whip had his studio. But that’s not where the computer installation is. It’s under that building.”

  “The one across
?”

  “Yeah. That’s how I knew this place. I suggested it to Mr. Irons. He bought the whole block. By the way, how were you planning to get in? There’s security.”

  “We have a search warrant,” Sara lied.

  “Nobody to serve it on. No guards. But there’s pretty good electronic security.”

  “Why no live guards?”

  “Security risk themselves, I guess,” Merlin said. “Irons wants as few people as possible to know this facility exists. Why he hid it here.”

  “Then there’s no way we can get in?”

  “Didn’t say that. Follow me.”

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-THREE

  Merlin led the way through a battered door and down a stairwell. At its bottom was a steel door.

  “The first layer of security. Keeps the riffraff out. This one’s easy.”

  Merlin took a small tool kit out of his back pocket, extracted a screw driver from it, went to one knee, and spent only a few seconds picking the conventional-looking lock before standing up and opening the door.

  Merlin directed his guests through to a short corridor, at the end of which stood another, more formidable door. It had a lock with a security code keyboard.

  Merlin punched a four-digit number, then grasped the door’s handle and pulled. Once through, the trio walked another corridor to an imposing vault door that rivaled the best of some big banks.

  “Now we have to use high tech,” Merlin said. He took out another screwdriver and went to work on some screws in a small panel.

  “You seem to have done this before,” Sara commented.

  “Yeah. Once I figured out the location, I came here on my own to play with the computer. It’s the biggest toy a boy ever had. And I had loads of fun defeating the security.”

  “Have your fun.”

  Merlin attached leads from computer to panel and watched patterns dance on the tiny screen. “Won’t be a sec,” he said cheerily.

  “No alarms?” Jake asked.

  “I am disarming them as we speak, Detective, sir,” Merlin said. “However, there’s a camera in the room, and it’s always on. We can knock it out, of course. But the video goes to a private security company, and you know how efficient and dedicated the average private security employee is. Armed guards could come storming through the door within ten minutes. Or they could be out to lunch.”

  “Any way of knowing if there’s anybody in there?” Sara asked.

  “Not really,” Merlin said. “Be prepared to storm in with guns drawn, or do whatever cop thing you guys do.”

  “Ready to do the cop thing?” Jake asked his partner.

  Sara drew her revolver. “Let’s do it.”

  “Uh, I didn’t mean right this minute,” Merlin said. “Sorry.”

  With a sharp hiss, the door slid to the left and disappeared into the concrete wall. The portal gave onto yet another corridor and yet another door, this one more massive than all previous.

  “What was Irons thinking, nuclear attack?” Jake asked in amazement.

  It took a good fifteen minutes for Merlin to open what proved to be the final door to the facility. It opened onto the multi-sided computer control room.

  It was deserted. The computer contentedly hummed and flashed in solitude.

  “Manny!” Merlin greeted his toy.

  “Why do you call it that?” Sara asked.

  “It has a dumb name: Macro-Economic Modeling and Simulation Array. MEMSA. That’s junk, so I call it Manny. Let me show you how it works.”

  “We don’t have time,” Sara said, who had been immensely disappointed at the sight of a deserted facility. Perhaps Strauss and Irons were not connected. That meant a dead end and no further leads.

  “We can use the computer’s remote viewing function.”

  Sara stopped her pacing and turned. So did Jake.

  “What did you say?”

  “Remote viewing. Manny is psychic. I just discovered it recently. One of the reasons I’ve been visiting on the sly.”

  “A psychic computer.”

  Merlin had taken his place at the workstation. “Yeah. It’s very cool. It’s magic, guys. Manny’s not only sentient, he’s an adept. He got hold of my magic CD, and I don’t really know what happened, but he absorbed it some way. I don’t understand how he got it. It may have been when I brought my laptop in for an upload. Must have left the CD on the drive, ’cause Manny got hold of it and copied it. When I saw it on a weird directory, I knew what had happened. This is the world’s first magic computer, dudes. You would not believe what it can do.”

  “Or what it’s been doing all along, maybe,” Sara said. “This is becoming clearer and clearer.”

  “Yeah? You mean the dragons and stuff? Maybe, maybe. I’ve been thinking about that. It’s maybe been doing some conjuring.”

  “No maybe about it,” Sara said.

  “I guess you’re right. All the weird stuff. The monsters.”

  “You summoned them, Merlin.”

  Merlin turned on his seat and searched Sara’s face for some clue that she had meant it only as a possibility. But his expression betrayed the guilt he felt.

  “Shit,” Merlin said, turning back to the screen. “I’m a murderer.”

  “I don’t really think so,” Sara said. “You said you only meant to cause bad luck.”

  “I meant for people to stop bothering me. People have always bothered me. I don’t want to get into the ‘I was beat up as a kid’ nerd story, but it’s true. I just wanted to get back at people. I didn’t mean to kill them. It just happened.”

  “What did you have against Charlie Bromley?”

  “Huh? Same thing I had against Smokey Drexel. I put them up when they got evicted, and they stole my favorite canvas, an original, and sold it to get crack money. Both of ’em. They said they’d pay me back, but of course that was bullshit. I put a curse on both of ’em. And they deserved it. But they didn’t deserve to die.”

  Jake said to Sara, “So Smokey was mugged. Did he have anything to get mugged for?”

  “Yeah, all the cash I had in the apartment,” Merlin said. “They took that, too. That I would have given them. The painting, no.”

  “When did Manny get hold of the CD?” Sara asked.

  “Couple of months ago, maybe. No telling, though. I’ve been working for Irons off and on for over a year.”

  “Okay,” Sara said. “It’s all coming together. But I have pieces that don’t even look like part of a puzzle, much less look like they fit. What was this remote viewing thing you mentioned?”

  “Manny can get TV pictures from places where’s there’s no TV camera. I’ve been doing . . . well, you can imagine the possibilities.”

  “Can Manny find my boss?”

  “You have a picture of him?”

  “Huh? No. Jeez, would I be carrying—?”

  “No problem. The NYPD computer would.”

  “You can log onto it?”

  “Sure. No prob. Manny can crack any computer, anywhere. I developed programs to deal with almost any situation.”

  Merlin typed something at lightning speed, grabbed the mouse and clicked. He then alternated between keyboard and mouse, working swiftly, expertly.

  Very soon, an image of Joe Siry appeared on the screen, along with vital statistics from his personnel file.

  “Amazing,” Sara said.

  “Now I’ll activate the remote viewing program.”

  “How’s that work?”

  “I’ve no idea how it works or why it works. It just works.”

  “I’ll bet Manny knows.”

  “Yeah. Okay, here he is.”

  The CRT showed the face of Joe Siry, and this time it was not a photo. This was a live image. Joe was tied to a chair in a bare room. There was no window in the room, and no real clue as to the room’s location.

  “Utterly amazing,” Sara said. “But not really helpful.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Merlin admitted. “But . . . well, it’s a crazy
idea, but . . .”

  “But what?” Jake prodded.

  “There’s a summoning spell.”

  “Which is . . . ?”

  “A spell to bring something from a remote location to this location. I’ve never tried it. Kind of afraid to.”

  Jake looked at Sara. “What do you think?”

  “It’s worth a try. It would certainly end the hostage crisis. Merlin?”

  “Uh, yeah?”

  “Do it.”

  “Right.” Merlin went back to typing and mousing. “I gotta put you in as the summoner, since he’s connected to you.”

  “Do anything you have to. Just get him here.”

  “I will. Just don’t be surprised by unexpected side effects.”

  “I’ll try not to be.”

  Presently, the huge black wedding cake of a computer began to glow with a faint blue aura.

  “Whoa,” Merlin said, glancing up.

  “Something wrong?” Jake asked.

  “Never seen that before. Cherenkov radiation!”

  “What the hell is that?”

  “It’s science creeping into magic. Or the other way around. Hold on.”

  The aura increased in intensity until it became a flaming aurora borealis effect, a diaphanous fabric of multicolored plasma filling the room. The intensity became enough to blind. Jake and Sara took cover behind some control consoles, but the effect filled every nook and cranny of the installation and every cubic foot of air.

  A blinding blue-white flash exploded in the room, accompanied by a loud pop and a numbing concussion.

  When the glow had dissipated and the air was clear again, Sara stumbled out from cover, trying to make her eyes focus. First she saw Jake and Merlin lying atop each other. They were knocked cold. Then she saw something astonishing.

  Joe Siry sat in his chair a few feet in front of the main stack of the computer. He was still tied. He looked around, then looked at Sara. “What in the bloody blue blazes?”

  Sara was on him immediately. She cut the ropes with a pocket knife.

  “Judas H. Priest,” Siry said. “Where did you come from?” He got up, stretched, and looked around. “Where the hell did this place come from?”

  “Hard to explain,” Sara said. “Never mind. You’re back, you’re safe. Where was Strauss?”

  “I dunno. He might have been in the other room.”