Security came back on line from their room in the Hilton. "Transit was authorised at partner level," the voice said, smug with belated relief.
"Louise Hewitt. She said she was surprised you weren"t around to cover it."
"Ah, s.h.i.t."
"Was there anything else? Sir?"
Chris made a noise in his throat and killed the connection. The Saabbarrelled down the approach road to the first underpa.s.s.
He was on the raised section that ran across the northern zones when he suddenly remembered where Mike Bryant and Hernan Echevarria were that morning.
He floored it again.
The damage was done.
260He knew. Jolting the Saab into a s.p.a.ce as ch)se to the lifts as he could get, he knew and wondered why he was still bothering. Riding up alone with the chatty elevator voice for colnpany, he knew and nearly screa)ned aloud at the waiting. Shouldering past a brace of startled admin a.s.sistants on the fifty-second floor, he knew beyond doubt.
Staring at the coded entry door to the covert viewing chamber, the nightmarish confirmation of its carelessly ajar angle, he knew. Still, through all the knowing, as he threw the door all the way open and saw Barranco standing there, it hit him like sludge in his guts.
Beyond the gla.s.s, Nick Makin and Mike Bryant sat with Hernan Echevarria and another uniform, apparently discussing interrogation training. Their voices strained through into the chamber. A brittle burst of laughter rang so sharp it was almost static.
"Vicente .. ."
Barranco turned the face of a corpse towards him. He was pale beneath his tan, mouth drawn down tight. A vein beat at one temple. "Hijos de pzta," he whispered.
"You--"
In the conference room, Echevarria was nodding sagely.
"Vicente, listen to me--"
He flinched back, went halfway to a karate guard as he saw Barranco"s eyes. The Colombian was trembling. He wondered fleetingly what combat skills honed in genuine combat would look like up against his corporate Shotokan training.
Barranco looked at him with sick wonder and then turned away. He stood staring down at the desk where someone had left a bound copy of the Echevarria schedule.
"I did not believe," he said quietly. "When the a.s.sistant told me. Asked me if I was with Hernan Echevarria. If I had got lost, and brought me here, smiling, f.u.c.king .mziling. Let me in here to watch you--"
"Vicente, this isn"t what it looks like--"
"It is exactly zvhat it looks likd" The yell rang in the confines of the chamber. It seemed impossible those beyond the gla.s.s wall could not hear. Barranco lashed out with one foot. The desk skidded, spilled schedule, a.s.sociated discs and papers. A chair fell, caught Mike"s baseball bat and sent it rolling.
"Vicente." In his own ears, Chris could hear the pleading in his voice.
"You must have known Echevarria was still at the table. But he"s out now. You"re in. Can"t you see that?"
The Colombian turned back to face him, crook-handed."In," he hissed. "Out. What is this, a f.u.c.king game to you? What do you have in your veins, Chris Faulkner? What the f.u.c.k kind of human being are you?"
Chris licked his lips. Tm on your side, Vicente--"
"Side? On my side?" Barranco spat on the floor. His voice scaled up 261again. "You grinning, f.u.c.king wh.o.r.e, don"t talk to me about sides.
There are no sides for men like you. A friend to murderers," he gestured at the gla.s.s, eyes glistening. "To torturers, if it pays. You are a f.u.c.king zvaste, a soulless gringo puto, a stench."
Something ripped open behind Chris"s left eye. He felt himself flinch physically with the impact. Red-veined wings billowed upward in his head. The HM file opened for him like a brightly-coloured trap door.
He saw helicopters hanging from a tattered-cloud rain-forest sky, whine and clatter of gatlings, whoosh-thump of rockets. Villages in flames, cremated trees, charred bundles scattered across the scorched earth. He heard discordant jail-cell screams spiking a tropical night. A visitation he hadn"t had since the death of Edward Quain was there beside him, shouting hoa.r.s.e in his inner ear.
The bat.
It was in his hand.
The door code. Five tiny queeping touches across the keypad. The gla.s.s door hinged back and he erupted into the conference.
"Faulkner, what thef.u.c.k are you doing?"
Makin, voice almost girlish in shock.
Mike, turning from a side table where he was building drinks.
Echevarria, eyes fixed past Chris on Barranco. His swollen, old man"s face mottled and worked as he struggled to his feet. Voice reedy with outrage.
"This is--"
Chris. .h.i.t him. Side on, both hands, full swing with the baseball bat and all he had behind it. Into the dictator"s ribs. He heard the bones go, felt the brittle crunch through the bat. Echevarria made a noise like a man choking and slumped against the edge of the table. Backswing, in again. Same spot. The old man shrilled. Mike Bryant waded in. Chris stabbed him handily in the solar plexus with the bat end. Bryant staggered and sat down against the wall, whooping for breath. The other uniform bellowed and tried to get round the table to his boss. He tangled in his own chair and went over backwards. Chris swung again.
Echevarria raised an arm. The bat broke it with an audible snap. The old man screamed. Back up, and swing again. He got the face this time.
The dictator"s nose broke, the bone over one eye caved in. Blood ripped out, spraying warm and wet on his own face and hands. Echevarria went down and lay on the floor, curled foetally and still screaming. Chris spread his stance low and wide, and chopped down as if he was splitting logs. Head and body, an indiscriminate frenzy of blows. He heard hoa.r.s.e yelling, and it was his own. Blood everywhere, running off the bat, in his eyes. The white glint of exposed bone in the mess at his feet.Choking, bubbling sounds from Echevarria.
262The other uniform came flailing round the table at last. Chris, down now to adrenalin-cold clarity, swung about and let him have the bat sideways across the throat with full swing. The man jerked back as if tugged on an invisible string. He hit the floor like an upturned beetle, strangling noisily.
Everything stopped. On the floor, Echevarria made a bubbling sigh and fell silent. A metre and a half off, Nick Makin had finally made it to his feet.
"Faulkner!"
Chris hefted the bat. His face twitched. His voice seemed to come from the bottom of a well, rasping tones unrecognisable in his own ears.
"Back off, Nick. I"ll do you, too."
He heard Mike crawling to his feet. He looked back to the door he"d come in, where Vicente Barranco stood staring at the carnage. Chris wiped some of the blood off his face and grinned dizzily at him. The trembling was starting to set in. He tossed the bat to the floor, next to Echevarria"s crumpled form.
"Okay, Vicente," he said shakily. "You tell me. Whose f.u.c.king side am I on?"
"You know, that wasn"t the smartest thing I"ve ever seen you do."
Mike Bryant handed him the whisky gla.s.s and went back to sit behind his desk. Chris huddled on the sofa in the blanket the paramedics had lent him, still shivering. In front of him on the table, the chess board pieces faced off against each other in the silence. The onyx gleamed.
"Sorry I hit you."
Mike rubbed at his chest. "Yeah, with nay own f.u.c.king bat. Could have done without that as well."
Chris sipped at the whisky, both hands cupped around the gla.s.s as if it was hot coffee. The spirit went down, warming. He shook his head.
"I just lost it, Mike."
"Yeah, no s.h.i.t." Bryant glared at him. "Think I spotted that one too.
Chris, what the f.u.c.k was Barranco doing at Shorn unsupervised? You knew we had Echevarria in for budget review today. Why didn"t you take Vicente out for a drive or something? Or at least keep him in the Hilton until you could check with me."
Chris shook his head again. The words limped out of his mouth. "I was running late. He went out without me.""That doesn"t explain how he got in here. Who cleared, him for the tower?"
"That"s what I tried to tell you earlier. Hewitt authorised a limo to bring him here."
Mike"s eyes narrowed. "Hewitt?"
263"Yeah. Louise f.u.c.king Hewitt. I"m telling you, she"s been gunning for me since the day I walked in here. She wants--"
"Oh, bulls.h.i.t!" Bryant came to his feet, hands braced on the desk. He shouted for the first time since the aftermath in the conference chamber. "For Christ"s sake I Now is not the f.u.c.king time for your bulls.h.i.t paranoia and hurt feelings. This is serious."
The anger evaporated as fast as it had arrived. He sighed and sat down again. Swivelled the chair away and stared out of the window.
One hand opened in Chris"s direction. "Well, I"m open to suggestions.
What do you think we should tell Notley?"
"Does it matter what we tell him?"
"f.u.c.k, yes." Mike jerked back round to look at him. What"s the matter, you want to lose your job or something?"
Chris blinked. "What?"
"I said. Do you want to lose your job?"
"I. But." Chris gestured helplessly and nearly dropped his whisky.
"Mike, the job"s already lost. Isn"t it? I mean, you can"t just go round clubbing the clients to death, can you."
"Oh, I"m glad you realise that now."
"I"m. Mike, of course I don"t want to lose this job. I like what I do."
Chris made the curious, p.r.i.c.kling discovery that he was telling the truth. "We"re just getting somewhere important at last. I"m telling you, Barranco"s the one. He can turn the whole NAME around, if we get behind him. He can make it work. He can make us the. What?"
Mike Bryant was watching him narrowly.
"Go on."
"Mike, I"m good at this. The people stuff. You know that. And after this, I"ve got Barranco for keeps. We"re close now. Really close. This one matters."
"And Cambodia doesn"t?"
"That"s not what I mean. There"s nothing new in Cambodia. They"ve been down this road at least four times before. Same old song, just a different decade. All we have to do is ride the wave, and make sure the enterprise zones don"t catch any damage. The NAME"s different.
You"re looking at a radical restructuring of a regime that"s been inplace almost since the beginning of the century. How often do you get to do work like that any more?"
Mike said nothing for a while. He seemed to be thinking. Then he nodded and got up from the desk.
"Alright, good. We"ll go with that. Radical restructuring. Tone down the stuff about Cambodia, though. All our accounts are important, and whatever Sary eventually does or doesn"t achieve, we stand to make a lot of money over there. Remember that."
264Raised voices from outside Mike"s office. The unmistakable tones of Louise Hewitt arguing with security. Mike made a wry lace.
"Here we go," he said. "Block and cover. Start talking. And get rid of that f.u.c.king blanket, you look like an evicted criminal."
"What?"
"Something about the NAME, Chris. Relevant detail. Come on, quick. Try to sound intelligent."
"Uh," Chris groped. "The, uh, the urban situation"s no better. Sure you"ve got a pretty contented overcla.s.s but that"s only--"
"The blanket."
He shrugged it off. Got up and started to pace. Voice strengthening as he picked up the thread again. Improvising. "The thing is, Mike, that business with the students was crucial. Some of those kids werefr0m the overcla.s.s, okay not many, but with an extended family system like the one you"ve got in the NAME, pretty much everybody knows someone who--"
Louise Hewitt burst into the office.
"V/hat the f.u.c.k have you done, Faulkner?"
He turned to look at her and what struck him like a physical blow was how drop dead gorgeous she looked angry.
He"d always been aware that Hewitt was attractive in a hard, dark fashion, but it wasn"t the kind of look that drew him. Too severe, too b.u.t.toned up and in the end,/et"s be honest here, Chris, blonde was really what did it for him. Louise Hewitt was manifestly a dark-haired woman in utter control of her own destiny. It didn"t help matters that he hated her guts.
Now, with colour burning in her cheeks, her hair in light disarray and her jacket settled with less than perfect attention on her shoulders, he suddenly saw through to the woman beneath. She stood with legs braced slightly apart, as if the fifty-second floor was the deck of a yacht in suddenly choppy waters, hands floating just off her hips like those of a movie gunfighter. The stance was unconsciously sensual, stretching the fabric of her narrow knee-length skirt and highlighting the lines of her hips.
One tiny part of Chris"s mind stayed rational enough to register the bizarre perversity of his s.e.xual programming. The rest of him was s.h.i.t scared of what was going to happen next."Louise," . said Mike Bryant cheerfully. "There you are. I imagine you"ve heard, then."
"Heard? Heard?" She advanced into the room, still half-focused on Chris. "I"ve just come frown the f.u.c.king sickbay, Mike. They"ve got Echevarria on a ventilator. What thefitck is going on?"
"Is he likely to die?"
265ttewitt pointed her finger. "I asked you a question, Mike. Spare me the executive deflection techniques."
"Sorry." Mike shrugged. "Force of habit. The Echevarria end of things is played out. He was making the situation unmanageable."
"So you beat him to death?"
"It"s unfortunate, but--"
"Unfortnate? Are you--"