The Mandel Files

by Peter F. Hamilton

  Greg grunted and wiped some of the sweat off his forehead.

  “Good. If I know who he’s been seeing, I might be able to get a clearer idea of exactly what he’s planning.”

  “You figuring on doing an extra-parliamentary number against him?”

  “Insufficient data.”

  She bent back and dragged a koolcan of orange from the heap at her feet. “I’d like in if it happens.” She twisted the tab ninety degrees.

  Greg watched frost forming over the can with something akin to lust. “No promises. As I said, this is big league. Black-hat spooks with viral wasps and funny midnight accidents.”

  Suzi pulled the tab and gulped down the icy stream of babbling orange, burping loudly. “Figures.”

  “So what happens in the afternoon?”

  “She-Hermione, right?-goes shopping, maybe does lunch with a load of airhead cows just like her. Evening, they party; sometimes on one of the other yachts, mostly on theirs, ‘bout twenty-five came to it last night. Then after midnight they take off for the Blue Ball. That’s a casino in New Eastfield. Hottest spot in town, people say. We tailed them for you, but no fucking way could we get past the bouncers. They pack up around three or four and come straight back. Spoke to a couple of the casino’s waitresses, though. They reckoned Kendric and Hermione usually pick up a girl at the Blue Ball, bring her back to Mirriam to provide themselves with some fun. These waitresses, a friend of theirs let herself get talked into going along with them once. Bad scene, Greg, no sadism, but she was really put through her paces. Kendric and Hermione screwed her brains out. Then she got kicked off the next morning. Apparently, they all do. One nighters; fuck and forget.”

  “What about the crew?”

  Suzi grinned knowingly. “Just in case you’re thinking of visiting, right? There’s nine real crew, sailor types, including the captain. On top of that you’ve got seven assorted staff, cooks, maids, and such. Then there’s six bodyguards, mean-looking bastards. Oh, here,” she leaned over him, tiny pointed breasts squashing against his cheek, damp and salty. He detected a glint of amusement in her mind. She scrabbled amongst the gear modules and came back with a memox crystal. “This has got all the visitors’ faces and times they turned up. We managed to get names for a few of them.”

  One of the flatscreens switched to the Mirriam’s blueprints. “There are always at least four people left on board,” Suzi said, pointing at it. “We think we’ve got their cabins assigned, but you can never be sure.”

  Names had been superimposed over the various cabins.

  “Great. Where did you get the specs from?” Greg asked.

  “Son snatched them. Mirriam’s hull was built in Finland, but she was fitted out up in Tyneside. Apparently the English are still unbeatable when it comes to quality handicrafts.”

  Greg squirted the memox crystal data into his cybofax, and began skipping through the faces. The images were good, high definition, most seemed to be staring straight into the lens. Morgan Walshaw should be able to assemble profiles on them.

  “Oh yeah,” Suzy muttered. “They’ve got themselves a permanent doxy on board, too. She don’t do much; too flicking stoned the whole time by the look of her. That Kendric, ménage a quatre every night, some stud, huh?”

  Greg flipped through the index until he came to the girl; she’d been given a number, but no name. Her face appeared on the cybofax’s little screen.

  “That’s some looker,” Suzi said, craning over his shoulder. “Wouldn’t mind her for myself.”

  “Has she been on board the whole time?”

  “Yeah, since we’ve been watching, anyway. Why, you know her?”

  “Yes. Her name is Katerina Cawthorp.”

  SO WHY I***FYRNST… +! IS JULIA’SSSS FRIEND

  SHCKED UUUUP WITH KENDRIC DE GIROLAMO?”??

  “I don’t know the specifics,” Greg said, his voice raised, strained.

  Royan was jittering about in his dentist’s chair, shoulders jerking in an erratic pumping rhythm. Royan was having one of his bad days, and when Greg considered just how shitty even Royan’s good days must be…

  CONNNNECTED?

  “There is no such thing as coincidence.”

  WAS I HE%%%%LPING YOU WITH 1OTIIIIMES››?

  The catheter bag which dangled below the chair on a chrome coathook was filling with an oily bilious liquid.

  “Big help. He was a blackmail victim, not a proper hotrod. Someone has been feeding him sophisticated viruses to use on burns.”

  THINK HE WAS ODDDDDD. T0000 QUICK TO G0000 SOLO. NOT EN***)£’’ SHITTTT END END END. NOT ENOUGH CIRCIT SKORES TO HISSS HANDEL.

  HURTSSS GREEG. REALLLY HURTS MEEEEE.

  And how could he answer that? He smiled broadly, feeling a prize turd. “Hey, you made a friend in Eleanor. She’s planning on coming back.”

  BEAUTY AN››››## BEAAST. HORRRIBLENASTY FILTH!!!£ MEMEMEMEME. YOU SCREW BABIESBABIES MAKKK’’’“ MAKE BABIES T000GETHER…lllllllll WANNT WANT SHITFILLTH.

  £%::))G0000000 AWWWAY GGRE &

  Greg couldn’t move. Revolted and horrified. He wanted to get out, out and never come back. Break free. The Trinities, the Constables, Blackshirts, this tower, this room, Royan; they were all facets of his ingrained guilt, soul-devouring.

  DON’TTTTTT CRY.

  He rubbed knuckles into his eyes, vision blurring.

  QUUIK‹‹‹‹ WHYCOME???

  Qoi appeared in the kitchen door, concern marring her fragile, sensitive features. She flashed Greg a look he couldn’t begin to interpret.

  WHY

  “I needed you to run a finance backtrack for me. I think it’s the missing link, the one that’ll tie Kendric to the hotrods.”

  The screens exploded into an incoherent image-mash; channel shows, himself seen through Royan’s eye camera, sticky tears smearing his cheeks, mad computer graphics. starchy-neat data tables dissolving into tight vortices of green and blue alphanumerics. One of the little trash robots trundled across the floor, gears grinding harshly, and bumped into a plant trough. It backed off, and hit the trough again, and again. Bewitched with a mindless insect sentience.

  Qoi was at Royan’s side, pinching his nose with one hand, trying to push a feed bottle’s nipple into his mouth. He flung his head from side to side, a desperate thrumming sound raise in his throat.

  DATA DATA DAT____________________LEAVE IT IT IT’“

  A multitude of red and green LEDs lit up on one of Royan’s cranky gear consoles. Greg retrieved the memory O’Donal had given him from his cybofax, and showed it to the console. Squirting.

  The screens were showing a giant still picture of Trafalgar Square. Greg recognized it instantly. A euphoric classic. The day the PSP fell; beamed out live by every channel in the world. The crowd singing God Save the King, orange flames rising from a hundred PSP banners, ten thousand Union Jacks waving in joyful celebration, a residue of smoke from Downing Street boiling through the air. The scene was swelling, individual pixels becoming golf-ball sized, a nonsense mosaic.

  Royan sounded as though he was choking. Qoi had got the nipple into his mouth, he was sucking frantically; treacly globs of mashed apple running down his chin, dribbling on to an already badly stained T-shirt.

  Behind Greg the robot suddenly stopped its mad battering. There must’ve been something in the apple. Royan was visibly wilting.

  “You go now, please,” Qoi said, bowing from the waist.

  The lunatic kaleidoscope shrank as the screens began to wink out one by one.

  Qoi’s small expressive eyes were filled with a sorrow that had no right inhabiting someone her age. “Nothing more you can do.”

  CHAPTER 26

  A flock of black storks were flapping lazily overhead as Greg walked up the Mirriam’s gangplank. The bodyguard teleported out of nowhere to block his path, a hand holding both railings. He was wearing a red and green striped rugby shirt and coffee-coloured shorts. “You looking far something?” he asked in strongly accented Eng
lish.

  “Yes, Mr di Girolamo.”

  “He’s not expecting you.”

  Greg couldn’t see the bodyguard’s eyes, they were hidden behind wrapround Ferranti sunglasses. His neck was thickly muscled, displaying a vast network of protruding veins. Whatever steroids he was taking, they were playing hell with his blood pressure.

  “Just tell him Greg Mandel is here to see him.” He held up the Event Horizon card.

  The bodyguard thought it over then called over his shoulder. Another bodyguard appeared at the top of the gangplank; a black bear of a man, over two metres tall, shoulders in proportion, sweat glinting on his broad forehead. The two of them exchanged a brief murmur, then the first stabbed a meaty forefinger at Greg. “You. Don’t move.” He disappeared below deck, leaving his replacement to fold his arms and look Greg up and down contemptuously.

  Greg ignored the attempted intimidation. If Kendric was relying on people like this to protect him from a professional snatch posse then he was in deep trouble. They looked tough, and probably knew their combat routine, but put them up against a tekmerc hardliner team and they wouldn’t last the opening second.

  Muddy water lapped quietly against the yacht’s hull.

  Greg had deliberately waited until midday to give Kendric a chance to recover from his partying at the Blue Ball.

  “You’ve cracked,” Suzi had barked when he told her he was going on board.

  “Tell you, I have to get near Kendric,” he said.

  “Why, for Christ’s sake?”

  “Ask him questions, see how he reacts.”

  “Crazy.” She crossed herself, eyes rolling. But she helped organize the back-up, positioning the Trinities around the marina. Greg couldn’t find any fault in her method, Suzi had been one who listened.

  Knowing the squad was providing covering fire gave him a degree of confidence walking into the lion’s den. The orders Suzi had were simple enough: on no account was he to be taken into the yacht itself.

  “OK, you can come up,” the first bodyguard had returned. The set of his jaw radiated severe disapproval.

  Mirriam was sixty-five metres of sheer beauty. Whatever his other faults, Kendric certainly knew the difference between refined style and pretentious glitz. Mirriam was conceived as a shrine to the former. Her polished wooden decks gleamed with a rosy sheen under the desert-bright sun. Every immaculate brass fixture was mirror bright. The low-friction white paint was painful on the eyes.

  Greg was led round to the afterdeck. It had integral couches with puffy leather upholstery forming an island in the centre, several recliners dotted about. There was a clutch of chrome gym equipment on the starboard side, just outside the lounge-cabin doors.

  Katerina was lying prone on the bench press, using its leg lift, a big LCD counter notching up each pull. She was dressed in tight black neoprene sprinter shorts, green stretch-leggings, and the top of a loose mauve T-shirt that’d been slashed in half, its ragged hem barely covering her large breasts. Her mane of blonde hair was held back with a broad white elastic towelling band. She was perspiring heavily, drawing breath through her nostrils, an expression of grim concentration on her perfect chiselled features.

  “I do know you,” she said through clenched teeth. The weight she was lifting was almost as much as he used in his own regimen. “You were at Julie’s house.”

  “That’s me,” Greg said. “Nice party, wasn’t it?”

  “You can go now, Mark. Kendric will be out in a minute.”

  The bodyguard looked like he wanted to protest, but didn’t quite know how. Greg flashed him a sunny smile, receiving a dark scowl for his trouble.

  Despite the Ferranti glasses, Greg could tell the man’s eyes were on Katerina as he shuffled off forward. It was understandable, given the circumstances. His own gaze kept switching between her fantastic legs and her abdomen, hypnotized by the hard cords of muscle flexing below her smooth tanned skin. Ever hopeful her little scrap of T-shirt would ride up just that fraction higher.

  “Ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety-nine, finish,” she gasped.

  “Is it worth it?”

  Her head dropped back to rest on the bench’s thin padding. “Kendric likes me to be fit,” she said, her voice was high, childlike and remote. “He says that anyone blessed with a body as good as mine has a duty to keep it in tip-top shape. He wouldn’t enjoy me so much otherwise.”

  “And what Kendric says and enjoys is important, is it?”

  Her eyes closed. “Yes. Very. They do things to me, you see, such wonderful things. If I can’t please them in turn, they might stop. I couldn’t stand that.”

  The passive sing-song lilt she used to recite her doctrine gave him a chill. He folded his espersense around her.

  Katerina’s mind was strange; unruffled, as though she’d been popping tranquillizers. There was little mental activity, she was taking only the minimum notice of her surroundings; it was almost a hibernatory state. But there was no sign of any post-trauma withdrawal, nor any of the jagged rents of chemical-induced damage he had been expecting. Greg went deeper.

  Beneath the sluggish currents of her surface thoughts there was a treasured core of memory, a glowing centre of delicious anticipation and joy. But for all its bright glory, it was a contaminant, tainting every thought.

  “What wonderful things?” he asked softly.

  Katerina’s face became dreamy. “They love me,” she said.

  “How do they love you?”

  “Sometimes gently. Sometimes so fiercely they make me cry. It doesn’t matter which. It always ends wonderfully.”

  Greg felt his skin going slick with cold sweat. “How long has this been going on, Katerina?”

  “Ever since I came here. Time doesn’t really bother me now, I’m too happy. Adrian tried, of course, tried so hard, but it never came with him, not properly. I’m so lucky they took me away from him, I might never have known otherwise.”

  “When did they take you away?”

  She looked out vacantly across the marina, her mind nearly losing the thread of thought. “At the party, Uncle Horace’s party, Bil Yi was there, that’s what Julie promised. So I went. Only they were there too. He was funny and kind, it was exciting.” She turned back to look at Greg. An angel’s face vandalized by tears. “He’s so strong. And I’m afraid.”

  Kendric di Girolamo slid open the cabin-lounge door and stepped on to the aft-deck. Hermione followed a pace behind.

  “Mr Mandel,” he took Greg’s hand in a limp grip. “So nice of you to call. I trust Katerina has been entertaining you satisfactorily.” He was wearing a navy-blue blazer with bright brass buttons and a spotted silk handkerchief peeping out of his breast pocket, a dark green cravat filling the top of his open white shirt. White flannel trousers and dark blue sneakers completed the nautical image.

  Hermione bestowed a gracious smile. A musky breath of orchid perfume stole around Greg, caressing, starting off that certain tingle. The weeks hadn’t dimmed the memory of her beauty. Skin deep, he warned himself, camouflage. She was dressed in a cerise off-the-shoulder gypsy top and blue knee-length skirt. He was reminded of a bird of prey waiting to pounce, mesmerically deadly.

  Katerina rose from the padded bench, bare feet slapping on the wooden deck as she came to stand close beside Kendric. “I’ve done my routine,” she said, looking up adoringly at his face. “All of it, everything you said.”

  Greg turned away from her desperate search for Kendric’s approval. Studying the New Eastfield skyline.

  Kendric gently wiped her tears with his forefinger, an act which resulted in an almost electric jolt firing through Katerina’s mind. His touch was awakening her. An incredibly warped version of Sleeping Beauty and Prince Charming.

  “Well done, my dear. I shall attend you in a little while. I have to have a few words with this gentleman first.”

  The desolation on her face was heartwrenching.

  “Come along, darling,” Hermione said. “It’s just silly ma
n’s talk. We’ll go and get you ready. You’re all smelly after that exercise. A nice shower is just what you need.” She took Katerina’s hand and led her back into the cabin.

  Katerina looked back at Kendric, eyes round, imploring. “Hurry.”

  Kendric blew her a kiss.

  The door closed. Through the blackened glass Greg could just make out Katerina pulling off her mauve T-shirt. Hermione’s arm slipped possessively round the girl’s narrow waist, leading her deeper into the Mirriam.

  “Such an exquisite young girl,” Kendric said, watching Greg’s face with narrowed eyes. “I have always admired your English roses. After one has broken through that cool reserve, their adventurousness knows no bounds.” There was a fragment of disappointment registering in his mind at Greg’s refusal to show the slightest execration.

  “I’m afraid I can’t stop long, Mr di Girolamo,” Greg said. “My friends would worry about what’d happened to me.”

  “No,” Kendric said, his thoughts were steely.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “No. You’re not staying at all, Mandel. Katerina let you on board. My mistake; you should not have been allowed within a million kilometres of the Mirriam.”

  “But I was wondering if you could help me.”

  “I enquired about you after our first encounter. I know what you are. A gland psychic. A Mindstar veteran. You were not going to ask me anything, you were going to uncover. Event Horizon’s truthfinder general, sent to pry by your whore daughter mistress.”

  Greg held his dismay in check. “Any answers you give would be entirely voluntary. I can’t read people’s thoughts.”

  “So you claim, and other people fervently hope. It is a particular human weakness you pry on, Mandel; we want, need, to believe we are secure against you. But I have a vast repository of confidential commercial information in my brain. I choose not to believe the word of a repulsive grotesquery, a failed laboratory experiment.”