The Caledonian Gambit: A Novel

by Dan Moren

  “Next day, we hear Padaria’s dead. The blade hit an artery and he bled out on the way to surgery. Won’t say I shed a tear, but like I said, his old man’s a muckety-muck back on Illyrica, so they’re looking for someone to put up in front of a wall. Only trouble is, nobody’s taking credit for stabbing the blighter, and the boys aren’t about to talk to the crims, ’specially with me and Jim still in lockup.

  “So they charge us with inciting a riot. Lucky Jim, unfortunately, ain’t the fastest car in the garage. Turns out he’s been tied to half a dozen jobs, including ones with ‘known terrorist involvement.’ That hits the press and it goes from bar brawl to political incident. Me, though, I fade away next to Lucky, because nobody’s breathed a word of my beef with Padaria, so everything’s pinned on Jim. I don’t feel good about that, ’course, but it is what it is.”

  Eamon scratched his head and Eli thought he caught a note of uneasiness. It may have been years since he’d last seen his brother, but some expressions never changed—Eamon was embarrassed about that.

  “By that time, though, I’d met some good lads in lockup—folks with ties to the higher rungs of the Black Watch’s ladder. They’d sussed out the full story somehow, talking with people on the outside, and they were … well, they were impressed. They told me to stay quiet and, sure enough, a week into the thing, I get sprung on account of insufficient evidence.

  “Lucky Jim? Turns out he wasn’t so lucky. Death penalty’s off the table since they can’t prove he put the point to Padaria, but he’s still got terrorist written all over him, so they ship him off to the Belt for hard labor—life sentence. Died there not long after.” Eamon shook his head. “My bloody fault.”

  Silence fell on the room and Eli noticed that the light outside had moved firmly into the late morning.

  “Anyway, I went underground when I got out, but I had to see Meghann first. She’d had a hard time of it, coming off the hop. It’s a nasty thing when it’s got its claws in you, and shortly thereafter there was the accident, so it was just … me and her. I helped as much as I could, but I had to keep my head down by that point—keep out of sight of the Illyricans—just in case they decided to dredge up my record. I started doing more jobs for the Black Watch, and they looked out for me and for Meghann. The old man, De Valera, he was good to me, made sure we wanted for nothing—said he’d been keeping an eye on me. I thought maybe we were out of the woods.”

  He stared at the floor, face in his hands. “Then we found out Meghann was pregnant.”

  Eli’s breath caught. Pregnant? “Padaria?”

  “Padaria. Of course, he was stone cold by that point and Meghann still wasn’t herself. But, after talking with the doctors, we went ahead and told her anyway; I guess we thought it might give her something to live for.

  “A week later, she relapsed. Dosed herself with enough hop to take down a horse.”

  Eamon kneaded his palms into the tops of his thighs. His gaze was still fixed somewhere in the middle distance, not looking at Eli or his surroundings. “She lost the baby. We were lucky it didn’t kill her. But she wasn’t the same after that. The doctors, they tried meds, they tried therapy, but she didn’t respond. Something about the combination of mental trauma with the residual effects of the drugs, it—it fried her.

  “I looked around for a place, and old Mrs. Kimball recommended this one. Meghann’s been here five years now. Sui does a good job looking after her and Meghann’s … well, she’s happy. Reasonably so, anyway. And De Valera, he insisted that the Black Watch pay for it all.

  “There you go,” said Eamon, finally meeting Eli’s gaze. The green of his eyes shone emerald hard. “That’s what happened to our sister. That’s why she stopped writing. That’s why I joined the Black Watch. And that’s why I’m having a slight bit of trouble accepting that my own flesh and blood wore the same uniform as the man who ruined her life.”

  He paused. “But, my flesh and blood you are. And that still means something.”

  Eli’s hand was frozen over his mouth, his eyes still wide from taking in the entire story. He opened his mouth to say something from between his fingers, but the words died on his lips more surely than in a vacuum. An urge swelled in him, to do something, anything—sob, punch the wall, scream—but it was sucked out of him just as quickly by the realization that it would be like railing at absent gods. It was years too late to make a difference, even if he had any means to do so.

  Means. That was what he’d come here to do, right? Take care of Meghann.

  “I can help.” He looked up at the dubious expression on his brother’s face. “I told you, the Commonwealth said they’d help me take care of Meghann.”

  “And what, take her away from her home? From me?”

  “This isn’t about you or me. It’s about her. Look, come with me and meet this Fielding guy. All they want to do is talk to you, get some information. That can’t be too much to ask. We can get Meghann the best treatment in the galaxy.” His breath caught, but he barreled through the next part anyway. “You could come too—we could be a family again.”

  Eamon eyed him for a moment, then slowly shook his head. “I’m sorry, Lije, no.”

  “I can help her,” He leaned forward and met his brother’s eyes. “Please.”

  There might have been a waver of doubt on Eamon’s face, or it might have just been a trick of the light. “Wheels are in motion, Lije. There’re bigger things afoot here.”

  “Great,” said Eli, throwing up his hands. “So I’m supposed to just go back to Fielding and shrug my shoulders when he tells me you didn’t show up at the meet?”

  “Actually, you’re not going back to your new friends. I’ve got too much at stake here; I can’t have your Commonwealth pals trudging through the rose garden. So until this is all over, you’re staying somewhere nice and safe.” He shifted to one side and his jacket fell open on the black butt of a pistol. “I insist.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  A bus deposited Kovalic and Tapper into the hot, dusty Caledonian afternoon, but in a world decidedly unlike the one where they’d spent most of their trip to date.

  Strolling down High Street, they passed ornate brownstone buildings with their just-so trees and carefully groomed greenery—perhaps the most ostentatious way to display one’s wealth on this dusty rock of a world. The lampposts in this district had been bedecked with crimson and gold, and celebratory Illyrican flags and banners had been hung from many a window.

  Although it had its share of residences, the area was primarily a high-end shopping district, and there were plenty of fashionably dressed women and men toting bags up and down the street, stopping every once in a while to peer into windows. Their workman-like dress made Tapper and Kovalic stand out, but not enough to garner the attention of those that passed—unless it was an upturned nose or a stifled titter.

  They found the Cafe Écossian easily enough and arrived early—fifteen minutes before the scheduled meeting. They stopped at a nearby shop window, as if having a discussion about the merits of one of the baubles it displayed.

  “What’s the plan?” asked Tapper in a low voice.

  “Wide search,” said Kovalic. “If there’s anybody there, they’ll be in place by now, and they’ll make us easily in a close pattern. I want to be outside their bubble if possible.” He frowned as he eyed the café: Their dress was going to stand out even more on the approach. Wardrobe was all a matter of context—they’d dressed to be inconspicuous in most environments, but in a setting as rarefied as this one their very inconspicuousness made them stand out: horses in a paddock of zebras. He wished Page was here; blending into pretty much any crowd was the man’s gift, and even Tapper would grudgingly concede that the younger man was his superior in matters of surveillance if nothing else.

  A distraction might have worked, but he didn’t want to draw any more attention than he had to. No, subtlety was the order of the day.

  He turned around to face the street, arms crossed, and looked for ins
piration. There was a man walking a dog, but there were some lines Kovalic wouldn’t cross, even for work, and pet theft was near the top of the list. A well-dressed young woman was traipsing down the street, twirling her finger in her hair while chatting away on her comm, but her other arm was linked with a young man who was craning his neck at a display showing last night’s ballgame while lugging a pair of pink shopping bags. He smirked at that and turned to see a middle-aged woman, kneeling and tying the shoes of a toddler. From there, his glance jumped to an older woman, probably in her sixties or seventies, exiting a store, her arms laden down with bags full of purchases. And then on to a tweed-garbed older man with a pipe protruding from under a bushy white mustache.

  His eyes jumped suddenly back to the old woman.

  “Take the wide arc.” Kovalic pressed his comm’s earbud into one ear. “I’ve got an idea.”

  Without waiting to hear Tapper’s assent, Kovalic hustled across the street toward the older woman, who was struggling to manage both her parcels and the shop door. Sliding in next to her, Kovalic took the other side of the door and held it wide.

  “Allow me, ma’am,” he said, lowering his voice to its lowest register—he’d always thought that people, especially women, trusted deep, strong voices more—and straightening to his full height. He gave her his best boy-scout smile.

  The woman peered over her packages at him, and Kovalic saw the lines crinkle around her eyes. “Why, thank you, young man.”

  Kovalic inclined his head. “My pleasure.” He hesitated—just enough to make it look like he was acting on the spur of the moment. “Those look heavy. Could I offer you a hand with them?”

  Pleasant surprise flooded her face, but Kovalic could see the automatic rejection coming. He needed a sweetener. “I couldn’t possibly—” she began.

  “It’s no bother at all,” he said, keeping the smile in place. “I’m just waiting for my wife and,” he dropped his voice to a mock conspiratorial tone, “if I know her, she’ll be in there for a while. I was just going to head over to the café for a drink.” He nodded in the direction of the Écossian. “But my mother always told me never to abandon a lady in need.”

  He kept his tone light and cheery and his face open and friendly throughout. He’d thrown in “wife” and “mother” as safe words—after all, what older woman wouldn’t trust a polite, married man who still took his mother’s advice to heart?

  The rejection had been wiped clean, as if with an eraser. “Well, I suppose it wouldn’t hurt. My driver’s on the way, but I am a bit nippish, now that you come to mention it.”

  “Say no more.” He began to gently relieve her of her burden which, he noted with surprise, was quite a bit heavier than he’d thought she’d be capable of handling. The pile of packages removed, he got a clearer picture of her for the first time. She’d been a looker in her youth, he could tell, but even with all the advancements in science and medicine nobody had yet managed to crack the secret of not growing old. Still, some did it more gracefully than others: the curls around her head had gone snow white, untempered by any of the more common coloring techniques. She’d embraced her age rather than trying to conceal it.

  “At least allow me to buy your drink, Mister … ?”

  “Malory,” he said, the fake name rolling off his tongue. “Tom Malory.”

  “Mr. Malory,” she said, taking his arm. “Thank you very much for your gallantry.”

  “Not a problem, ma’am. Just happy to be of help.”

  “Please, you must call me Elsie—everybody does.”

  From there to the café, Kovalic made a great show of paying attention to all of Elsie’s conversation, from laughing at the antics of her grandchildren to murmuring appreciatively at her comments on the political situation. In return, he told her he was a mid-level executive at the Thane Corporation, in charge of real estate development in Raleigh City’s less prosperous districts, a cover that was both boring enough not to have her delve into the details but sympathetic enough that it let her exclaim over the poor plight of the working class and discuss her own charitable activities.

  Behind that, though, Kovalic was carefully scanning the faces of everybody they passed, looking for any sign that someone was out of place or taking an unusual interest in the café. Nobody they encountered on the way rang even the slightest alarm bells—he felt pretty confident that had there been any eyeballs on the Écossian, he would have spotted them.

  They had no trouble getting a table for two at the café, where Kovalic ordered a coffee and the old woman went wild and ordered a scone with jam, confiding with a smile that her personal trainer would have her hung out to dry if he ever found out. Kovalic chuckled at the joke and took in the café.

  Nothing. He spared a glance for an ornate clock with wrought iron hands hanging over the counter. Right on time for the meet with Eamon Brody, but no sign of him. The back of his neck had begun to tingle and, despite the reassuring smell of coffee, his stomach was on high alert. Beneath the table, he slipped his comm out of his pocket and thumbed the button that would connect him with Tapper.

  “Hey, boss,” said the sergeant’s voice in his earbud, even as Kovalic smiled at Elsie and took a sip of his coffee. “No sign of Eamon Brody or, for that matter, any of his crew.”

  Had something happened to Eamon on the way? Kovalic’s mind cataloged the possibilities: traffic, car accident, sudden illness—there were plenty of rational reasons why the man might not have shown up.

  But his gut was telling him that they were all rubbish. Eamon Brody might not have been a pro, but given the way he’d handled his brother he clearly had some connections and perhaps even some formal training. When you had a meet, you planned for contingencies. You left early to scout the place ahead of time, you drove carefully because you were hyper-aware of your surroundings, and well, you didn’t get sick. To Kovalic’s mind that left just two possibilities: either someone had stopped Eamon Brody from coming or he had decided not to.

  He was so deep in his own thoughts—the rest of his brain regulating the nodding and smiling at appropriate moments—that it wasn’t until about ten seconds after Elsie’s comment that it actually reached the part of his mind responsible for processing speech. He ran it back in his head, parsing the various components and identifying why he’d flagged it in the first place—something in there was significant.

  “What was that?”

  “Oh, I was just saying that Richard and I might try to get out of town tomorrow—it’s going to be such a circus.”

  Her expression turned quizzical at the sight of his blank stare. “The Emperor’s Birthday? It’ll be a madhouse, what with all the celebrations and security. The locals, you know, they don’t much care for it,” she said in a tone somewhere between sympathy and eye-rolling.

  “Of course, of course,” Kovalic said. “I get so wrapped up with work, you know—sometimes I forget what day of the week it is.” He laughed at his own expense even as his brain wormhole-jumped across the galaxy. Tomorrow, the same date that had been in their admittedly sparse intelligence, was also the Emperor’s Birthday, the biggest holiday in the Illyrican Empire. He’d seen all the decorations around town but had barely given them a second thought. But it signified something: a piece of the puzzle they’d been sent here to assemble.

  “Poor dear,” Elsie clucked, patting his hand. “That wife of yours—Natalie, was it?—she must have her hands full with you.”

  “She makes do,” said Kovalic, then glanced toward the front of the establishment. “Well, look at the time. Speaking of the missus, she’ll be looking for me, to be sure, and if she finds out I’ve been carrying another woman’s packages, well, let’s just say I’ll be the one with my hands full.” He winked at her, and started reaching inside of his jacket.

  “No, no, I insist!” Elsie protested, setting her purse on the table. “It’s on me.”

  “Very gracious, ma’am. Thank you.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Malory. I do so like to see
that chivalry isn’t dead.”

  “Not dead, ma’am, just on sabbatical. Thanks again—for everything.” He leaned down and gave her a peck on the cheek, then strolled out of the café and back toward the shops. There’d been no sign of Eamon Brody, that was true, but he hadn’t exactly walked out empty-handed.

  He found Tapper loitering near a shop that sold high-end men’s clothes, looking generally puzzled. “I just don’t understand fashion,” he muttered, eyes sweeping up and down an audacious taupe suit with flared collars. “Hideous.”

  “Hideous and expensive,” Kovalic confirmed with a glance at the tag. Certainly out of his price range—even with hazard pay.

  “So, no sign of our friend then?”

  Kovalic gave a short, sharp shake of his head. “Not a whisper.” Acid ate at the lining of his stomach and he pulled his comm from his pocket.

  “That as bad as I think it is?”

  “It’s not good.” Kovalic punched in Page’s number and waited as it rang.

  The lieutenant answered on the second ring. “Yep?”

  “You have eyes on Eli Brody?”

  “Not presently. He’s gone into—”

  “Get there. Now.”

  “Sir.” There was a sound of rustling from the other end of the line as Page moved into action.

  Kovalic shifted the comm away from his mouth. “Something’s not adding up,” he said to Tapper. “We’re missing something. Wallace’s disappearance. Eamon Brody and the Black Watch. This fairy tale, or whatever it is, about an Illyrican superweapon. It’s all connected somehow.”

  “What do you want to do about it?”

  A shout, more surprised than alarmed, came from the other end of the line, and distantly Kovalic could hear Page’s voice, placating but firm. Further movement, and then a quiet, controlled huffing of breath, as of someone taking a flight of stairs.

  “You got him?” said Kovalic into the comm.