by O. J. Lowe
Finally, he felt he was ready. He cleared his throat, turned to see Fank Aldiss stood leaning against the wall behind him. Alone, at least. They didn’t need any other audience. Aldiss looked tired, like he’d been up for hours. Nick didn’t care. He had his own problems to worry about. Aldiss was a big boy, he’d get over it sooner rather than later. If he was going to follow Saldana around like that, he’d get used to it.
“How is she?” Aldiss asked. Nick felt a little bad thinking what he’d just thought about him. He hadn’t had to come and ask. It was good that he had. Little gestures like that went a long way amongst Unisco agents. After all, you never knew when it might be you in the hospital bed. A little went a long way.
He rejected that thought violently. It wouldn’t do to dwell on it. It was bad enough Lysa was in that bed, never mind thinking that he might end up in one himself one day. You dwell on that, it leads to bad things. You think too much about your own limitations, you inevitably fall to them.
“They don’t know yet,” he said. “It’s too early to say for sure. They’re confident she’ll pull through if she makes it through the night. All we can do is wait.”
“Waiting. The biggest bitch you’ll ever meet,” Aldiss said. Given his accent and his choice of words, Nick had to smile, just a fraction. Aldiss had an accent that women loved, he’d been told, rich and thick with a hint of emphasis to his R’s and his W’s. It made him sound like he was perennially purring. “She’ll make it. She’s tough.”
Nick nodded, let his head sag back against the glass. “Shouldn’t have happened. Shouldn’t. We screwed this thing bad.”
“Well…” He noticed Aldiss wasn’t rushing to correct him. He appreciated that in a strange sort of way. Nick didn’t have time for people who tried to bullshit their way through things, making everything out to be better than it really was. There were too many of them working for Unisco who took that approach. “Well, Avis won’t stand trial but at least there’s no chance of him getting away with it. You can at least be thankful for that.”
“He’s dead then?” Nick suspected as much, he’d placed his shots well. He’d have been more surprised if he’d been told that Avis was still alive.
“Very decidedly so,” Aldiss said. “Saldana is…” He paused, considered his words. “Shall we just say he’s less than impressed with you.”
Nick had already noticed the lack of Saldana in the hallway and he’d found it telling as to his mood. “Really?”
There must have been something in his voice for Aldiss all but took a step back, hands raised defensively in front of him. “Easy, Nick, easy. I’m just telling you how it is. Saldana made a big thing about how he was going to be the one who ensured that Avis met the full force of the law. He had a lot of face tied up in it. Avis dead, as opposed to Avis locked up isn’t what he promised.”
“I think he should just take the result,” Nick said. “One less scumbag on the streets. That used to be classed as a win.”
“But,” Aldiss said gently. “With him dead, he is truly out of the picture. He’s not coming back. All his business, all his territory, it’s suddenly up for grabs. People will want it. They’ll know the risks and they’ll do it anyway. In weeks, we could have three or four like Avis fighting for dominance.”
“Fank, I know all this. Criminal enterprise one-oh-one. Nature abhors a vacuum. When it’s there, it needs to be filled and quickly.”
“Avis rotting in jail and never to see the light of day again, that might have held them off a bit longer. It might have kept them honest for a few more months. Now, it’s gone.”
“Okay,” Nick said, unable to keep the anger out of his voice. He didn’t realise how tightly his fists had been clenched together until he felt his hands shaking. “Message received. Next time the bastard is going at my damn partner with a knife, I’ll let him finish his work before arresting him just so that Carlos fucking Saldana can get his foot in the door towards a promotion.”
Aldiss didn’t flinch, just nodded his head in agreement. “I hear you, I hear you. It sucks that he’s playing politics over the issues here but regardless, he made his choice and he’s not happy about the one you made at the same time.” He’d probably suffered through worse outbursts. Serranians were notoriously fiery tempered, he’d always thought it was something in the food they ate. “You know, he’s not as bad as you make out normally. But this, it’s not an ideal situation for anyone. Not for him, he put a lot into this thing, it’s certainly not ideal for Lysa and not for you either. He put his report in on the mission.” Aldiss shrugged uneasily, gave him an apologetic look as he paused. “Someone’s coming out here to investigate the shooting. And by the shooting, I mean you specifically.”
That didn’t surprise Nick too much. After all, whenever a trigger had to be pulled on an official Unisco mission, someone had to check into these things. Bureaucracy at its finest, he had to admit with a painful grimace. This wouldn’t be the first time he’d been through one of these things and if he carried on the way he was going, it likely wouldn’t be the last either. He didn’t know if the criminals were getting more violent or if it was just a sorry indictment of the world in which they found themselves living, but those instances of triggers being pulled were growing.
“Okay,” he said. Any anger he’d felt earlier had dissipated. No point getting angry over what you couldn’t control. It didn’t do anyone any good. “They know who it is who’s coming out to do the investigation?”
Aldiss’ face fell as he sighed. His expression said it all. “Well, I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Nick, but…”
Nick swore. “Fuck, tell me it’s not him.”
His only response was a nod of the head and Nick exhaled sharply. That anger was returning, gradually bubbling around the edges of the fibres that made up his being, but it was there. Worse, he didn’t know how long he’d be able to keep it driven down inside him.
In any work place, there is always someone who gains notoriety for being disliked by many the people around them. In the case of Unisco, that honour went to the man who’d given himself the grand title of Inquisitor. Originally, he’d intended it to solely be a moniker for himself but others doing the same job as he had soon adapted it to their role, much to his disgust. If Unisco policed the kingdoms, the inquisitors policed Unisco. He enjoyed his job, he set out to ensure that the rules and the protocols were followed with extreme officiousness. If there was any hint of wrongdoing, he would chase it down like a terrier and shake it until the truth came out. Hence, the dislike shown to him.
Most Unisco agents Nick had worked with didn’t mind oversight. It might not be a popular word, but it had become a key one. They accepted that one of their number might one day do something that made them all look bad in the public eye. They didn’t want to be tarred with the same brush. What they didn’t appreciate was the self-proclaimed Inquisitor sticking his nose into what they’d been doing with the very genuine hope that he could find a stick to beat them with.
Inquisitor Stelwyn Mallinson. Very few knew his first name, after all he preferred it that way, but his reputation had outgrown him in a way that would live long past his career. Nick always wondered if in fifty years, Unisco agents would tell tales of how the Inquisitor had constantly threatened to breathe down their necks if they put a toe out of line. Some sort of cautionary tale of a bogeyman so sinister he surely couldn’t have existed.
What made him so universally abhorred was that it never felt like he had a set office, he would appear wherever he felt the greatest blame was to be apportioned out, no matter the kingdom, no matter the city. One minute there was no sign of him, the next he was tapping you on the shoulder and demanding a word. Nick was sure that one day, a Unisco agent would shoot somebody in the desert out in the middle of Vazara and Mallinson would show up on a camel in rapid order to check that everything had been above board. If he was coming out to interview him, then that was truly unsettling. Saldana clearly wasn’t screwing around when
it came to display how annoyed he was. Throwing Mallinson at him was the surest sign one could get of that.
He could understand why Saldana was annoyed. He just didn’t appreciate it really, not when Lysa had been gravely wounded. With an injury like that, not just career threatening but life-threatening as well, it felt crass to be whining about your promotion prospects. Nick wondered if Saldana had ever lost a partner in the field. It was the sort of thing that made you think. More than that, it felt like the sort of thing that could change you. He’d devoted too many moments already to thinking what could have been, what might have been. They were eating him up inside, maggots churning up through his guts.
If sympathy for Lysa had been in short supply from Saldana, it was non-existent from Mallinson. He’d gotten a curt message for them to meet the next morning, the Inquisitor expressing the communication in words of two syllables or less. This was already feeling like it was going to be painful, Nick had to note. At least Lysa wouldn’t be subject to it yet, not even Mallinson could try to interview someone under heavy sedation. He did have a history of pouncing on conscious Unisco agents in hospital rooms though. His exact words had been something along the lines of how they couldn’t get away when that was the case, they were at his mercy. Normally, he wouldn’t have dreamed about being this protective of his partner. She’d had the same training as him, she knew just as many dirty tricks in a fight as he did if not more, she could look after herself with terminal intensity.
Yet the crux of the matter was that, right now, she was incapable of it. That changed things. It changed things a lot.
Salawia wasn’t quite a large enough city to have its own official Unisco office building, instead any operations run out of there were based out the back rooms of an antique furniture showroom. It wasn’t the most unusual place Nick had ever been interviewed in, but it was up there. He’d been in stores that sold counterfeit Burykian carpets, meat warehouses, former churches and once, what appeared to be a brothel on the surface. The illusion put in place there was outstanding, nobody questioned the security, ostensibly there are as a deterrent.
The logic was flawless, solely Unisco offices reserved for the largest cities were always targets, not a day went by when they didn’t catch someone observing them in hopes of establishing identities of agents. Hence, in the smaller cities, they’d come up with places like this. Out of the way cover establishments where nobody would think of putting under surveillance. Security was just as tight, if not tighter as it would be elsewhere.
This early in the morning, the showroom was empty but for a few bored staff milling about with little to do. One ran a duster across a cabinet that looked easily a few hundred years old, not so much distressed as terrified. Every agent who worked here full time did a stint on the sales team to establish the cover. Rumour had it they got to keep the commission on anything they sold, just to keep it realistic, their covers maintained.
He nodded at the closest, gestured towards the ceiling with his eyes. “I’m here to see the relic,” he said, managing to conceal the smirk on his face as he said it. He’d called ahead the previous night, warned them he’d be establishing his credentials with the code phrase. When you were using it to be blatantly disrespectful about someone, all this code crap was decidedly pleasurable. Normally he hated it. Secrecy was a must, didn’t mean that you couldn’t enjoy it sometimes.
“The relic?” The grin on the agent’s face was something to behold. His accent was passable but not concrete. He wasn’t a local, Nick would have put good credits on that. No surprise why he’d employed the accent, Serranians were notably insular when it came to part with a large amount of credits. Just because some of the items in here looked like their best days were behind them, didn’t mean that someone who knew more about antiques than him wouldn’t pay for them. It was deeply ironic that they didn’t care so much about selling things to foreigners. Credits were credits after all when they came into your possession. “Ah, yes, Roper. We recall your appointment. We’ve set you up in a private viewing room.”
Nick fought the urge to roll his eyes. Lucky me, he wanted to say, the disgust dripping from his voice. Instead he chose to smile. “Excellent. I’m sure we’ll be able to reach a satisfactory resolution in conducting business.”
“Somebody’ll end up satisfied, I’m sure,” the agent said. “We just hope it’s not the salesman on our end. He’s unbearable when he pulls off a major deal.”
“So, I’ve heard,” Nick said. “He’s got a bit of a reputation, hasn’t he?”
“Well deserved, for sure. He worked hard to get it. Come, I’ll show you to our room.” The agent gestured behind him, Nick shook his head and followed him. None of this covert double talk really did much for him. It sounded a lot cleverer than it was meant to be. They’d done exercises on it at the Unisco academy in Torlis, turned it into a game. Who could say what they needed to without the words. He was sure they’d had another name for it, he couldn’t remember it. The game had been bollocks anyway, he’d never won at it. His talents had lay elsewhere.
If there was one thing you could say for sure about Unisco, it was that if you had a certain talent, they never let it wilt into disuse. They had people put in place specifically to make sure that did not happen.
The basic training hadn’t been hard back in the day, it was the examinations where they tried to work out a specialty for you that had been the challenge. There were always positions to be filled. Unisco wanted the best people in the kingdoms to work for them. If you were truly outstanding at what you did, you’d be rewarded well beyond what you could earn in the private sector. The budget that the Senate gave them to ensure that the kingdoms stayed protected was huge, every year it grew and grew. The senators considered it credits well spent, especially given the knowledge that one day they might need that protection themselves.
All his apathy for code speak had meant a future in the passing of intelligence to-and-fro, running informants and safehouses, was out of the question and they’d considered Nick’s future lay in a different path. Some people really did have a talent for it, they could bullshit with the best of them. It was like a second language.
Before he’d become the Inquisitor, he wondered if Mallinson had ever flourished that talent. The man was like a ringmaster with words, he could make them dance around you until you tripped over them. Like a predator, he then would pounce with vicious enthusiasm, ripping away at your defences with glee at the ease of the kill.
They’d come away from Nick’s evaluation long ago, determining that his future lay as a combat-specialist with a second in field investigation and situational-evaluation. The sparring sessions, not just in the gym with his fellow cadets but with the spirits that he’d worked to gather and develop, those had been the best times for him. He’d put a lot of hours into unarmed combat, even more on the shooting range. He’d always considered it a case that the more he practiced, the luckier he’d inevitably get. Luck was a harsh mistress, sometimes you needed every edge you could get.
Handy skills, obviously. Not ones that he could really employ in dealing with his Mallinson problem. That would exacerbate things, not fix them, if he went at him with the full force of the violent tricks they’d imparted to him. Nick blinked as he followed the agent out the showroom, into a dank corridor in the back. It wouldn’t solve anything. They’d trained him to be an agent of violence, yet it was always a temporary fix for problems. You could never snuff out human nature completely. Remove one problem, six more spring up, just like Aldiss had said would happen now Avis was dead.
He didn’t regret killing him. He regretted the circumstances that had lead up to it. If Lysa hadn’t been so enthusiastic…
He wondered if he’d ever been like that. His first partner after he graduated the academy at Torlis wasn’t with them any longer. He’d been dead for years. Nick had been to his funeral, a suitably bleak affair. Unisco funerals never were pleasant experiences, even by normal standards. You always knew that a life
had been cut short in brutal circumstances, that you were one misstep away from it being you that was lowered into the ground with everyone crying above you and a zent saying what a good job you’d done for the kingdoms. Even in death, you were part of the agency and nothing was going to stand in the way of that.
Nick could smell Mallinson in the hallway. His cologne was something you didn’t forget, it always smelled fetid in your nostrils. It was like he’d marked his territory, warned you that he was coming for you. Rumour had it the stuff contained enough pheromones to make small animals migrate to safer climes. It was just rumour, Nick told himself. The Inquisitor didn’t really spray himself in fear pheromones just solely to intimidate the crap out of those he was investigating. That would be ridiculous.
The agent wrinkled his nose in distaste, glanced back at him and shrugged his shoulders as if asking what you could do before coming to a halt. He shifted uneasily on the spot, looked like he wanted to be anywhere else but here. Nick couldn’t blame him too much. The odour was starting to make his eyes water in his sockets, he could feel the first vestiges of tears starting to leak out. He blinked several times, fought the urge to wipe his eyes with the back of his arm. That wouldn’t look good.
Show no weakness. He’d always been told that. If you look like you’re unbreakable, people tend not to try to hurt you. They avoid confrontation. It’s a defence mechanism. It’s about attitude. You look like, therefore you are. He’d tried to pass that on to Lysa. Another pang of guilt. He wondered how much of her rushing in like that had been her trying to prove to him that she was just as unbreakable.
Culpability hurt a damn lot. He might as well have pulled the knife and stabbed her himself.
Probably best not to start saying words like culpable in the presence of someone who’d love to see you kicked out of your job for the tiniest infraction. And, Nick tried to remind himself, Lysa was a trained Unisco agent. She knew what she was doing. If she’d screwed up, it was her own damn fault for not being more careful. He hated himself for thinking that. Hated himself even more knowing that he was right. He couldn’t blame himself. He shouldn’t blame himself for it.
