He cleared his throat, resentful that some analytical part of his brain never switched off, not even through this. “Julia, did you tell Kendric about the giga-conductor?”
She wiped the last tear away and crumpled the hanky. “No. All this happened a year before Grandpa told me about Ranasfari and the giga-conductor research project; Ranasfari wasn’t even close to a cryogenic giga-conductor then. Kendric didn’t have any ulterior motive for seducing me. I was just fun, a notch on his bedpost. He enjoys it, the game he plays in his mind, me and all the other dumb little girls are no different to his business deals. The lies and clever words corrupt us, then we belong to him, worship him. He gets as much satisfaction from our beguilement as he does from the sex. He’s a power junkie.”
He looked away, trying to lose the terrible image of Julia, a younger, smaller, more delicate Julia, lying below Kendric.
“You will get the proof, won’t you, Greg?” she asked urgently. “I’m so scared of him. I’ve not told anybody that before, but he frightens me.”
“I’ll provide the proof Morgan Walshaw insists on, no messing.” He kneaded his temple with thumb and forefinger. “There’s a couple of things I want you to do for me.”
She regarded him with comic seriousness. “Anything.”
“Firstly, go back into the house and have a word with Walshaw. I want your personal protection stepped up. You’re not the only one Kendric frightens; before yesterday I hadn’t realized exactly how warped that man is. He is quite capable of having you killed. Especially now he realizes that his games are over. It’s gloves-off time, I’m afraid, Julia.”
“Right.”
“Secondly: Katerina. I’m going to put a stop to that.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Snatch her from the Mirriam, and then shove her through detoxification treatment. But that’s going to cost.”
“Money doesn’t bother me.”
“Right. I suppose it’ll have to be in America or the Caribbean. I haven’t looked into it, hell, I don’t even know if you can detoxify a phyltre user. If not, then it’ll be a good research project for Event Horizon to undertake.”
Julia nodded in relief. “I promise, Greg. Whatever it takes. Event Horizon has a clinic in Austria, they can do anything there.”
Greg didn’t share her glibness about that, but at least she was genuinely intent on making amends. “Fine. I’ll snatch her back tonight.”
“Tonight?”
“Yes. I don’t want to leave her on the Mirriam a minute longer than necessary, I’d develop nightmares. I’ll bring her to Event Horizon’s finance division offices. Your people can take her from there.”
“I’ll come.”
“No, Julia.”
“Yes. The finance division is just as secure as Wilholm. And I want to see her. After all, I’m the one who put her there, and I’ve had a taste of what she’s been through.”
He nearly started to say no again, but there wasn’t a logical argument against her going. Besides, he could see Julia wasn’t going to be moved. Philip Evans wasn’t the only one she could wrap around her little finger. “All right, but you get Walshaw to make the travel arrangements, and turn up around midnight prepared for a long wait.”
“Do you want the company security hardliners to help you?”
“No. I’m not familiar with their capabilities. I do know all about the people I’m going to be using.”
“What people? Tekmercs?” she asked with frank curiosity.
“Tell you sometime.”
She gave him a timid smile. “That’s a date.”
Greg turned the jammer off, and Julia opened her door. “Julia.”
She froze with her legs out of the car.
“Don’t try so hard, girl. You’re not exactly a frump, you know.”
Her smile widened, becoming coquettish. “And Adrian isn’t just a lump of muscle, either. He’s very bright, and kind. And I like him a lot.”
“Then I’m happy for you. See you later.”
He didn’t rate a wave this time; she simply stood watching him drive off, looking small and sad. He folded the rear-view mirror’s image up and tucked it away in a corner of his mind. The last thing he needed now was any more guilt rattling round inside his skull.
CHAPTER 30
Greg drove into Peterborough under a sky which the sun had transformed into a bitter saffron hemisphere raked with the occasional static pillar of cloud. He turned up the windscreen’s opacity, muting its eye-smarting intensity. There was a taut thread of pain running through his cortex, the neurohormones’ legacy.
It wasn’t helped by wondering how he was going to square what he was doing with his promise to Eleanor. And then there was tonight’s snatch looming large. Another unforeseen. Events were ganging up on him, dictating his actions.
The conspiracy was unnerving, tenaciously eroding any sensation of control over his life. He was a squaddie back in Turkey, utterly dependent on the wisdom of hidden enigmatic generals and the throw of God’s dice. Never again, he’d sworn. Easy to say.
He blended the Duo into the arterial flux of traffic flowing through Peterborough’s outlying suburbs; a dawn to dusk convoy hauling the city’s lifeblood of goods from the industrial sectors to the port and the railway marshalling yard.
Hendaly Street was the same as all the rest in New Eastfield, a long straight gorge of white buildings with grand arched entrances, wide balconies, dark windows, and ranks of flags fluttering on high. Pagoda trees thrust up out of the pavements in the centre of brick tubs; people sat on the benches round them, pensioners soaking up the sun, youngsters with VR bands plugged into gamer decks. Eleanor would enjoy living here.
He had to stamp hard on the brake as the red light came on ahead of the Duo. Its meaning had almost been lost down the years. Working traffic lights, by God!
The frontage of the Castlewood condominium was eighty metres long, standing back from the other buildings along the street, and screened with a discreet row of tall caucasian elms.
The entrance was below ground level, served by a private loop of road with card-activated barriers at each end.
Greg parked a hundred metres further down the street and showed his card to the meter, punching in for six hours.
“Six hours?” a voice queried. “I wish I had an expense account like that.”
Greg turned, and smiled. “Victor. You’re looking good.”
Victor Tyo’s babyfaced good looks smiled back. “Riding high, thanks to you. I was promoted up to captain after our Zanthus excursion, got assigned to the command division down by the estuary. I guess Walshaw must approve of me.”
“You’re my contact today?”
“Yes. Again. I was at the office when the call came in.” He tipped a nod at the Castlewood. “We’ve had it under observation for twenty-five minutes now.”
“We?”
“The rest of my squad. They’re covering all possible exits. We wouldn’t want our man to filter out without us knowing. I’ve already checked with the concierge, Ellis is at home right now. A human concierge, by the way, this place is definitely for premier-rankers. I couldn’t afford to rent the broom cupboard in there.”
Walshaw hadn’t actually mentioned anything about a squad, but Greg could appreciate his reasoning. Ellis wasn’t the end of the line, but he was near. His confidence rose a fraction. Backup wouldn’t come amiss, not if they were as on the ball as young Victor.
Will this be a long operation?” he was asking. “Some of the observation positions are improvised, temporary.”
“It shouldn’t take more than an hour, two at the outside.”
“Fine. Did you fall down some stairs?”
Greg’s hand went to the stiff white mould over his nose. “Not exactly. A run-in with a friend of Mr Ellis.”
“I see. Do you want a weapon before we go in?”
“Are you carrying?”
“Yes. A Lucas laser pistol.”
“That ought
to be enough. You keep it.” Greg began to walk towards the Castlewood’s nearest barrier.
“Fine.” Victor showed a card to the gate beside the barrier. “Concierge’s pass,” he explained.
Greg lifted an appreciative eyebrow. And only a twenty-minute head start. Morgan Walshaw ought to start worrying for his job. “Will it open the apartment doors as well?”
Victor did his best not to appear smug. “Of course.”
The Castlewood was built in a U-shape. The two wings had a conservatory-style glass roof slung between them, curving down to form a transparent wall at the open end. The glass was tinted amber, cooling the sunlight which shone down on a bowling green, tennis courts, an Olympic-sized swimming pool, and a separate diving pool. Four tiers of balconies made a giant amphitheatre of the enclosure. Their long strips of silvered sliding doors staring down on the athletically inclined with blank impersonality.
Charles Ellis owned a penthouse apartment on the fourth storey, at the tip of the east wing. One of the most expensive in the condominium. Victor stood outside the door, glancing at Greg for permission.
He held his hand up for the young security captain to wait, and probed with his espersense. There was only one mind inside, a muddled knot of everyday worries and conflicts. Not expecting trouble.
“He’s alone,” Greg said. “To the right as we go in.” He pointed through the wall.
“Fine,” Victor acknowledged respectfully. He showed the concierge card to the lock. There was a soft click.
The apartment was five large rooms laid out in parallel, with a hall running along the back of them. Surprisingly, the decor was old-fashioned throughout. Uninspiring, sober prints and dingy Victorian furnishings, all black wood and thick legs draped in cream-coloured lace. The internal doors were heavy varnished hardwood, with brass hinges and handles, opening into rooms with dark dressers and tables. Chairs were gilt-edged, upholstered in plain shiny powder-blue fabric, marble-top tables with bronze legs.
The lounge where they found Charles Ellis had six glass-fronted teak wall cabinets exhibiting hundreds of beautifully detailed porcelain figurines. There was a profusion of styles, with animals predominating; whoever owned them was obviously a dedicated collector. Rich, too, though Greg was no real judge, but money had its own special tell-tale radiance. And it haunted those shelves. He could feel the love and craftsmanship which had been expended in the fashioning of each exquisite piece.
Ellis was a small man in his early fifties, barely over one and a quarter metres tall. His body and limbs didn’t quite seem to match, his torso was barrel-shaped, going to fat, but his legs and arms were long and thin, spindly. He had a narrow head, with tight-stretched skin, thin bloodless lips, and a prominent brow overhanging nicotine-yellow eyes. Lank oily hair brushed his collar, leaving a sprinkling of dandruff. He hadn’t shaved for a few days, his stubble patchy and grey.
His imbalanced frame was wrapped in a paisley smoking jacket with a quilted green collar. He was sitting in a high-backed Buckingham chair watching a news channel on a big Philips flatscreen, thick velvet drapes hung on either side of it, like theatre curtains. The flatscreen was showing a rooftop view of some desert city, indefinably African; its streets were awash with refugee trains, twisters of black smoke rising from shattered temple domes. A chrome-silver fighter flashed overhead, discharging a barrage of area-denial submunitions; tiny parachutes mushroomed in mid-air, lowering the shoal of AP shrapnel mines gently on to the beleaguered city.
Charles Ellis turned his head towards Greg and Victor, disturbed by the draught as they opened the lounge door. His facial muscles twitched, pulling the skin even tighter over his jaw-bone.
The flatscreen darkened as he rose from the chair, curtains swishing across it; he had to push hard with his bandy arms to lift himself. “How did you get in?” he asked.
“Door was open,” Greg said.
“You’re lying. What do you want?”
“Data.”
His expression was thunderstruck. “How did you know? Nobody knows I deal in data.”
Greg gave him a lopsided apologetic smile. “Somebody does. Cover him.”
Ellis swayed backwards as Victor produced his Lucas pistol. “No violence, no violence.” It was almost a mantra.
Greg walked across the room and looked down on the Castlewood’s dark blue diving pool. The lounge was on the corner of the building, two sides of it were glass. The balcony ran all the way round, one-third of it under the condominium’s weather-resistant covering.
“Whoever you are, you’re an idiot,” Ellis said, “You have absolutely no conception of what you’ve gone and walked into. The kind of people I associate with can tread you back into the mire that gave you birth.”
Greg smiled right back at him, baring his teeth. “I know. That’s why we came, for your top-rank friends.”
Whatever Ellis was going to say died on his tongue.
“Wolf,” Greg said. Naked alarm rocked Charles Ellis’s already fraught mind. “Medeor.” It produced the same response. “Tentimes.”
“Never heard of them.”
“Wrong. I’m psychic, you see.”
Ellis’s face hardened, forestalling the onrush of fear and suspicion kindling behind his eyes.
“In fact, you are Wolf, aren’t you?”
True, the mind before him blurted helplessly.
“Thank you,” said Greg.
Ellis looked at him with revulsion and hatred.
“Do you know what these are?” Greg asked Victor casually. He rested a hand on one of the three grey football-sized globes that were sitting on a leather-topped Edwardian writing desk. A Hitachi terminal was plugged into each of them with flat rainbow ribbons of optical cable. “They’re Cray hologram memories. You can store half of the British library in one of these.”
Greg tapped the Hitachi’s power stud. LCDs flipped to black across its pale-brown surface, forming a standard alphanumeric keyboard. The cube lit with the Crays’ data storage management menu. “You’ll note that they’re kept in isolation, not plugged into the English Telecom grid. So nobody can hack in. After all, bytes are money, especially when you know how to market them as well as Medeor here.”
“What are you going to do?” Ellis’s voice was a grizzled rasp coming from the back of his throat.
“Whatever I have to.” Greg read the menu codes and accessed the first Cray. “Sixty-two per cent capacity used up,” he observed. “That’s one fuck of a lot of data. Now I could go through a whole list of names I’m interested in and see which your mind flinches at, but that would be very time consuming. So I’m just going to ask you to tell me instead. Who paid you to organize the blitz on the Event Horizon datanet?”
Ellis shook his skeletal head, jaw clenched shut. “No.”
Greg showed his card to the Hitachi’s photon key, using his little finger to activate it. The percentage figure began to unwind at an impressive speed as Royan’s data-crash cancer exploded inside the Cray. He hadn’t been totally sure it would work on lightware. Admitting now he should’ve had more faith. The percentage numerals vanished from the cube, sucked away down some electronic black hole. The cube placidly reverted to showing the menu.
“No!” Ellis howled, an unpleasant high-pitched wheezing sound. He ignored Victor’s unwavering Lucas pistol to stumble frantically across the lounge to the antique writing desk, looking down in consternation at the cube display. “Oh my God! Do you know what you have done?” His hands came up to claw at Greg, stopping impotently in midair. His face was contorted with fury. “There were seven million personnel files in there, everybody of the remotest interest in the country. Seven million of them! Irreplaceable. God curse you, gland freak.”
“Kendric di Girolamo,” Greg said calmly.
Stark horror leapt into his mind at the name.
It was very strange; a circle of bright orange flame suddenly burst from Ellis’s head to crown him with a blazing halo. For one fleeting moment his mind inveighed ut
ter incomprehension, wild eyes beseeching Greg for an answer. Then the flickering mind was gone, extinguished in an overwhelming gale of pain. The corpse was frozen upright, steaming blood spewing fitfully out of its nose and ears. Its corona evaporated, there was no more hair to burn; the skull blackened, crisping. He heard the iron snap of bone cracking open from thermal stress.
Realization penetrated Greg’s numbed thoughts as the reedy legs began to buckle, pitching the body towards him.
“Down!” he screamed. And he was dancing with the corpse, slewing its momentum to keep it between himself and the silvered balcony door as he flung himself on to the fringed Wilton rug. They crashed on to the worn navy-blue weave together. There was a drawn-out sound of glass smashing as Victor tumbled to the floor behind him.
Greg was flat on his back, the throat-grating stench of singed hair and charred flesh filling his nostrils. A wiry hand twitched on his thigh, not his. Ellis’s dense curved weight pressed into his abdomen.
“Jesus,” Victor bawled. “Jesus, Jesus.”
‘Shut up. Keep still.”
The air heaved, alive with raucous energy; creaking and groaning as it battled to stabilize itself. A pile of paper forms took flight from the Edwardian desk, rustling eerily as they fluttered about the invisible streamers of boiling ions. The end of the discharge came with an audible crack which jumped the carpet fibres to rigid attention, dousing them in a phosphorescent wash of St Elmo’s fire.
Greg sent his espersense whirling, perceiving the star sparks of minds swilling through the concrete beehive maze of the Castlewood. Seeing the galvanized ember of victory fleeing.
“OK, they’ve gone,” he croaked through the backlash of neurohormone pain. Even that sliver of sound seemed distant.
Victor was kneeling beside him, a rictus grimace on his face, rolling Ellis’s body off. The back of the skull had cleaved open, a fried jelly offal spilling out.
Victor wrenched aside and vomited; coughing, dry retching, and sobbing for an age. When his convulsions finished he was on all fours, his hair hanging in tassels down his forehead, skin sallow and filmed with cold sweat. “Jesus, what did that to him?”
The Mandel Files Page 31
