The Pride of the Damned

by Peter Grant

  There was a long silence as the cab sped smoothly along at the speed of the evening traffic. Lights were coming on across the city as darkness fell.

  At last Hans-Jurgen said softly, “And you promise I shall not have to steal from my employers, or betray their trust?”

  “I promise. If I lie, you can always turn me in to the authorities. All I want is information about an outside group of people. You owe them no loyalty.”

  “That… that is true. Very well. I will try. How shall I tell you if I have anything?”

  “Take your ride home again tomorrow evening, as you did tonight. I’ll be waiting.” The stranger took out the wallet again, and counted out ten banknotes. “Here. This is earnest money – ten thousand francs. The rest will be waiting for you tomorrow night, if you come through for us.”

  The banker accepted the notes with a trembling hand. “If there is anything to be found.”

  “We think there will be. We’ve been tracking these people for a long time. We wouldn’t have approached you if we weren’t pretty sure of what you’ll find.”

  “I… I see. I hope you are right.”

  “We’ll just have to find out, won’t we?”

  Later the following evening, as an autotaxi took him and Gustav to the restaurant where he’d arranged to meet Caitlin, Henry read through the documents Hans-Jurgen had handed to him in exchange for the balance of the money. “This is it!” he exulted. “There’s enough here to get us to the next stage.”

  He glanced at Gustav. “Are you available for an exclusive contract lasting several months, perhaps as much as a year? You’ll be mounting surveillance, looking for more contacts in different companies, and generally running around on our behalf. It should be interesting and rewarding work.”

  “How rewarding?”

  “Shall we say a retainer of twenty thousand a month, plus generous performance bonuses, plus expenses?”

  “That sounds promising. What of my bonus for finding Hans-Jurgen Knappe for you?”

  Henry laughed. “All right. I’ll double your fee. If all goes well, and we get what we’re after, I’ll add a hundred thousand to your contract as a completion bonus.”

  “Now you are talking, my friend! Yes, for that much, I will do it. If you want me to follow people, of course, I will need to hire assistance.”

  “That’s covered under expenses. We’re going to have interesting times together.”

  “Well-paid times, too. I shall look forward to them.”

  10

  Default

  NEUE HELVETICA

  Hans-Jurgen felt sweat trickle down his brow as he watched the dealer flip one card at a time toward each player seated around the bed. The room was hot and stuffy. It reeked of cigar smoke and cheap liquor. It was in a run-down hotel in a sleazy part of town, not a neighborhood he’d usually visit or the sort of game he’d normally patronize. However, the casinos were closed to him, under threat of violence if he disobeyed. If he wanted to gamble, this was his only option at present.

  He’d spun a sob story to the casino, and they’d allowed him to pay only fifty thousand toward reducing his balance. The remainder of Heinrich’s money had paid his entrance fee to tonight’s game, and bought the pile of chips in front of him. He knew, with the certainty of religious faith, that he would double or triple his money tonight. How could these back-street gamblers, with their primitive facilities and lack of education, hope to compete on even terms with a man who’d played at the top casino on Neue Helvetica? If he won big a few nights in a row, he’d have enough to pay off the casino, and thumb his nose at Heinrich, too.

  The third card flipped out, face-up this time. The dealer studied the cards. “Two’s to bet.”

  Hans-Jurgen gulped. His was the lowest upward-facing card showing on the ‘table’. He lifted the corners of his two face-down cards and peeked. An ace and a ten… nothing very exciting yet, but the night was young. He pushed a chip out ahead of his stack. “Two bets a hundred.”

  Three more players bet, while the others folded at once. Additional cards were dealt, one at a time, face-up, each followed by a round of betting. Hans-Jurgen began to feel the first flush of excitement. He had a second ace now, and there were still two cards to be drawn.

  His concentration was rudely interrupted as, behind him, the door to the hotel room opened. He glanced around and froze, staring almost as if hypnotized, as two large, burly men in dark suits entered.

  The leader of the two said to the dealer. “Good thing you called. You’d have been in big trouble otherwise.”

  “I got the word you put out on him. I wouldn’t go against you.”

  “Sensible of you.”

  The second man grabbed Hans-Jurgen’s left shoulder, sinking his fingers deep into the muscle, painfully pinching his suprascapular nerve, causing him to cry out in pain. “On your feet, you!”

  “W-what are you doing?” he demanded in panic as he was hauled out of his chair.

  “You know damn well what we’re doing. You were told not to gamble. You didn’t listen.” The thug glanced at the dealer. “How much did he bring?”

  “Fifty thousand.”

  “We’ll take that, too.”

  The dealer didn’t complain, swiftly counting out the money from a carryall on the floor and handing it over. The other players sat quietly, eyes on the cards ahead of them. They had no desire to get involved in what was clearly a dangerous situation.

  The leader accepted the money, then peeled off five thousand francs from it. “You did what you were supposed to do.” He tossed the notes back across the bed.

  “Thanks,” the dealer acknowledged as he scooped it up.

  Hans-Jurgen tried to struggle, but the agonizing pain in his shoulder increased to almost paralyzing levels as the man behind him tightened his grip. He yelled for help as the two men dragged him across the room and out of the door, closing it behind them… but no-one came.

  “You’ve been naughty,” the leader said coldly. “That calls for a lesson.”

  They manhandled him to the stairs and down three flights to the basement. It was dark and cold. The leader flicked a switch, and bare bulbs lit up in ceiling fixtures, showing a dirty room with a trash-strewn concrete floor. “Remember, don’t mark his face or hands,” he warned. “He’s got to be able to work.”

  “Got it,” the other thug said. He spun the banker around and sank a fist deep into his stomach. Hans-Jurgen’s eyes bulged as he croaked in agony, folding forward, holding his midriff. He sank to his knees as he suddenly vomited up his supper.

  There was disgust in the leader’s voice. “Spewing already? We’ve only just begun.” He moved forward, reaching for his victim.

  “W-wait!” Hans-Jurgen managed to splutter and wheeze through the thick, wet, rope-like strands dangling from his mouth. “I-I got the money from Heinrich! He has a lot more! I-I can help you get it!”

  “Heinrich?” The boss thug was suddenly alert. “Who’s he?”

  “H-he paid me f-for information. He s-says he’ll g-give me more, enough to p-pay you off, if I c-cooperate.”

  “He’ll give you half a million?” The two gangsters glanced at each other. “Where is he?”

  “I-I don’t know. I-I only have his comm code – but he’ll pay, I swear it!”

  “Give me the code.” The leader took out his comm unit and held it to Hans-Jurgen’s lips as he spoke, recording the code. He glanced at his sidekick. “Watch him. I’m going to talk to the boss.”

  “Got it.”

  He headed back up the stairs, obviously looking for a strong enough signal to make a call. The other man watched Hans-Jurgen impassively as he recovered his breath, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and struggled to his feet, trembling. “You’d better be telling the truth about this Heinrich,” he warned. “If you’re not, you’re going to get it twice as hard.”

  “I-I’m not lying.”

  The leader returned, the clatter of his footsteps preceding him down
the stairs. “The boss says to bring him to the warehouse. He’s going to tell us all about his rich friend Heinrich.”

  They dragged him up the stairs to the ground floor, then out of the doors of the hotel to a vehicle parked on the street. The leader got into the front seat and reached for the control panel, while his sidekick thrust Hans-Jurgen ungently into the back seat, then slid in next to him. As he shut the door, the autopilot accelerated smoothly away into the night.

  None of the three noticed another vehicle, parked further back along the street. As they departed, it followed. It hung well back so as not to be noticed, and didn’t turn on its headlights until they reached a better-lit area, where they wouldn’t stand out.

  Henry ran his finger down the column of names in the display. “Damn, you’re good, Caitlin! How the hell did you get to be such an expert on cracking computer systems?”

  She shrugged. “I’ve been trying to protect them against hackers for years. If you want to protect them, you have to know how others will attack them, and know how to use their tools. The financial institution they use, Devisenbank, has really good security. I can’t crack it. The Brotherhood’s front company, Vaterland, though… theirs is pathetic! They’re even storing their data backups in the planetary cloud, which is obscenely stupid! I suppose they’ve only had a low-level operative here for a long time, probably because they haven’t bid on any planets yet. He or she just didn’t know, or didn’t bother, about proper security.”

  “For which let’s be grateful! All right, let’s see. The Brotherhood deposited gold on those dates… and…” He referred to another screen of information. “A courier ship, Szipnij, arrived from Mavra about a day before every deposit. That’s the same vessel that brings payments in gold to Metaxas Shipyards on New Skyros. We monitored her movements there while we were trying to delay construction and delivery of the Brotherhood’s new destroyers. She’s got to be a Brotherhood vessel, probably specially equipped to carry their gold shipments.”

  Caitlin frowned. “What sort of special equipment would be needed? Surely they just load it into the hold like any other freight?”

  “It’ll need specialized cargo handling gear and storage facilities. Gold bars are small, and very heavy. They won’t take up much space in a hold. They’ll have to be braced and secured to stop them moving under acceleration or during a hyper-jump, which might upset the ship’s stability. Also, she probably has special protective systems. She isn’t armed with missiles – we saw that at New Skyros – but she may have hidden laser cannon barbettes, and she almost certainly has electronic warfare systems – jammers, active stealth, and so on. She may even have a nuclear demolition charge, to prevent the Brotherhood’s enemies capturing its gold. The crew could activate it, then abandon ship, giving themselves time to get clear before it goes off.”

  “Or, if they’re fanatic enough, they could blow themselves up along with the gold.”

  Henry snorted. “That’d be the most expensive funeral pyre in the history of the settled galaxy!”

  Caitlin thought for a moment. “When Szipnij visited New Skyros, did she also come from Mavra?”

  “I think so. I’d have to check our records for that operation, but it rings a bell.”

  “Why? What’s at Mavra to cause a Brotherhood ship to always depart from there, when she’s carrying gold? Do they store their profits there?”

  “Good question. Hang on a moment. Let me look up Mavra in the UP database.”

  Mavra turned out to be a corporate planet, owned and operated by an asteroid mining consortium. Henry frowned as he scanned the entry. “Says here they make a lot of asteroid mining equipment and supplies, and sell it to all comers. I wonder if the Brotherhood buys from them? That would make sense. They’d have to get that stuff from somewhere.”

  “Yes, and since they’re stealing asteroids from several stars at once, they’ll go through a lot of supplies. It would also provide a great cover story. They send their courier to Mavra to buy what they need, using a little of their gold. I’m sure the supplier will take it with no questions asked. They load the supplies in the hold, perhaps even on top of the gold, and head out to wherever they’re going. They log their arrival from Mavra, saying nothing about where they’re really from, and dig out the gold for delivery.”

  “And after offloading the gold, the ship takes the supplies to wherever they’re needed.”

  “Uh-huh. Unless someone tried to trace her route from New Skyros or Neue Helvetica back to Mavra, then from there to wherever her flight plan said she’d come from…”

  “Yes. Mavra’s like a navigational fig leaf. It hides all the interesting bits.”

  Caitlin giggled. “Trust a man to think of it in those terms!”

  Her laughter was interrupted by a shrill trill from the comm unit on the table. Henry reached for it as he said, “That’s Gustav’s ring tone.” He picked it up. “Yes?”

  Gustav’s voice answered, “Big trouble. Hans-Jurgen found himself a bottom-tier poker game, and two goons grabbed him. I thought they’d just give him an educational beat-down, but he must have said something that got their attention. They’ve taken him to one of the Gesellschaft’s warehouses. If he talks about you and I, and about money…”

  “Shit! Suggestions?”

  “Abort, right away. The Gesellschaft is ruthless. If they sniff half a million francs, and perhaps more where that came from, they’ll be after us like dogs after a bitch in heat – and they’ve got more than enough people and resources to find us.”

  “Agreed. We have enough to work with for now, anyway. You want out too?”

  “Can you? Will you? I’ll feel a lot safer that way.”

  “Yes, we can. You ran risks for us, so we’ll take care of you. It goes with the territory. Anyone you want to bring with you?”

  “If I can bring three people, that would be a really big help. If they can’t find me, they’re going to ask them where I am, and they won’t ask politely. They’re good people, and loyal to me.”

  “Be at the emergency rendezvous with them in two hours. Bring nothing except one carryall apiece with essentials. No weapons, or you won’t be coming. If you have money or high-value assets, you can bring that too, as long as it fits into no more than one extra carryall each. Shut down your comm units now, and destroy them. Leave nothing the Gesellschaft can use.”

  “We’ll be there. Thanks.”

  Henry didn’t answer as he cut the call, then looked at Caitlin. “We’re out of here, right now. The Gesellschaft is looking for us, or soon will be. I’ll call the ship while you start packing. Move!”

  The morning traffic had eased by the time the executive arrived at the warehouse. He had his chauffeur drive the limousine some distance into the building, to ensure that any prying eyes would not recognize him.

  “What have you got for me?” he asked the man holding the door as he climbed out of the vehicle.

  The other fell in on his left side as they walked toward the offices built in to one end of the warehouse. “We traced the comm code Knappe gave us. It was registered three weeks ago to a company that doesn’t exist. The network traced its location every night to the Merkur Hotel. We went there and asked the night manager about any rooms rented to that company. They’d taken a suite. We had him let us in, but the birds had flown. The desk clerk said they’d headed for the garage at about twenty-two. They took everything with them, and cleaned the place out. They even sprayed the walls, carpets and furniture with DNA neutralizer. We won’t get any clues there. We tried to retrieve their computer traffic from the hotel’s database, but they used a data anonymizer and quantum encryption. The hotel couldn’t say what their traffic was all about. Their comm units went off the air last night at the time they left. No trace of them since then.”

  “Verdammt! They were professionals, then. How were they warned, do you think?”

  “We don’t know, sir, but I suppose they had someone watching Knappe. If he saw our men bringing him here,
he might have guessed what that implied, and warned them.”

  “True. How did they locate Knappe? What did they want from him, to make them so generous?”

  “He doesn’t know how they found him, sir. We’re working on tracing every comm unit that the network shows was in regular contact, or even frequent close proximity, with Knappe’s or Heinrich’s since their first contact. We’ll identify their owners and look into them. That should let us trace Heinrich’s henchmen. We’ve already identified one named Gustav Holstauff, but his comm unit went off the air last night and hasn’t come up again. Heinrich may have warned him to run. We’re looking for him.

  “Heinrich told Knappe he was an insurance investigator from New Skyros, investigating the theft of billions from an asteroid mining company. He said the thieves might try to buy a planet with the money. He paid Knappe a hundred thousand to find out about any brokerage account for any company with a name including the word ‘Fatherland’. He found one for Vaterland GmbH, which they said was the one they wanted. He doesn’t know how they knew that, or what they did with the account profile he gave them. They promised him more money – ten thousand each month – to maintain a watching brief on Vaterland’s brokerage account, and said that if all went well, and he helped them again when they needed him, they’d give him enough to settle his debt with us when it was all over.”

  “What about Vaterland?”

  “It’s a small company with an account at Devizenbank, which opened the UP brokerage account for them at their request. Until a week or two ago, there was only one contact person at Vaterland dealing with the bank. Two new arrivals have signing powers now, replacing him. We have their names – at least, the names they used with the bank, which may not be real – and their corporate address. It’s a lawyer’s office – Gottschalk, Hauptmann and Widderhorn.”

  The senior man frowned. “They won’t give us the time of day. They’re tight-lipped about their clients, and they’ve got enough influence with politicians, even Ministers of State, that we can’t touch them. You’ll have to get descriptions and comm codes for those new arrivals from the bank.”