“Not quite, but the people who go there don’t want to draw attention.”
“Damn, and I was going to pass myself off as a gossip columnist.”
“Don’t joke. They caught a snap in there, once—he left on a stretcher.”
For a second he went totally still. “More fool him, then.”
“Well, he tried to get secrets out of Martine. You don’t get much more foolish than that.”
He pulled an agreeable face. He had a very agreeable face, when he wanted to. Then he sobered. “What happens if I don’t get in?”
“Wait for me here. I’ll meet you as soon as I can.”
She hoped he was smart enough not to stick around. Tonight wasn’t going to get any easier.
He did Suyana the courtesy of pretending he hadn’t already come to the same conclusion, but when he spoke his voice was a little tight. “What if I do get in?”
“Then I owe you a drink.”
He looked at her, on the verge of saying something. Then he closed his mouth, shook his head. “Good luck.”
She saluted him with two fingers at her temple as she turned and headed for the alley.
It was a quick stop at the corner tabac to pick up some milk and then hobble as fast as she could to the kitchen door of Terrain, head down and looking harried, one of the dozens of brown people who worked there and were so interchangeable to the people in charge that they hadn’t bothered to replace the dead batteries in the security cameras.
She’d noticed that the first time she’d ever been here, more than two years ago. By then, she was good at looking for a quick escape.
× × × × × × ×
As soon as she was in the kitchen, someone snatched the bottle out of her hands. She kept her head down, waited for someone to blow her cover.
“Get up there with the food!” he snapped in Spanish. “Table five!”
Well, that worked, she thought, picking up the tray.
Still. She’d been here three weeks ago as a guest at the portrait afterparty. There was some small pang, thinking how hard she worked to make the UARC respectable in the IA, how many times someone had braided beads and feathers into her hair when the cameras would be on, how easy it was to become invisible as soon as some assumptions were made.
But now wasn’t the time to look a gift horse in the mouth. Her anger would hold.
She grabbed the tray and balanced it on her shoulder with her good hand. She could manage—she’d gone through three years of deportment in the posture yoke. She could balance a tray up a flight of stairs.
The music was vibrating through the soles of her boots when she was halfway up. By the time she reached the back bar, it was shaking her to the teeth. It had to be her nerves. The music hadn’t seemed this loud the last time she’d come here. She was trembling and hot with terror; her bun was searing on the back of her neck.
Terrain’s designers had tried to strike a balance between the sleek modernity that made people feel like the booze was worth the journey, and the colonial-era nostalgia that made people feel smug about having the chance to pay through the nose for it: dark wood floors, leather sofas, curtains in deep-green velvet, and sharp-angled chandeliers suspended above the dance floor out of reach. (No one swung from the chandeliers at Terrain. There were other clubs in Paris if you wanted to be tacky.)
Just past the curtains where Suyana stood was the long tortoiseshell bar that curved the length of one wall, and then the dance floor with tables studding the edge, and at the far side of the room, one step up from the crowd, the faux-antique booths and low sectionals where Faces held court when they came calling.
As soon as she set the tray down, a waiter scooped it up from the other side, handed her his empty one, and headed back out. Suyana wiped it down just to look busy, and peered across the dance floor.
Come on, Kipa, she thought, do me a favor and don’t be dancing.
Kipa was young, and quiet by nature (unfortunate for a Face, but New Zealand must have their reasons). It meant she was just as likely to be dragged reluctantly onto the dance floor as to demur. If she was dancing in a clump of Faces, this was going to be a disaster.
Suyana didn’t tend to call attention like some—when Martine or Grace took the dance floor, a circle opened up around them—but once you were declared kidnapped and your embassy cut you loose on the evening news, you probably got famous fast.
Half the reason she’d sent Daniel to the front was in the hope he’d cause a scene and draw attention. She couldn’t afford to be noticed before she found Kipa.
But there she was, slouched in a banquette in the abandoned Faces mezzanine. Relief flooded Suyana; Kipa having been disappeared would be too much to take.
Kipa was a slight, wiry figure, and even with her face obscured by her dark hair Suyana knew she was torn, trying to decide if it was worth braving the dance floor.
That was how Suyana had found her to be about most things: always on the verge but undecided. She’d recommended against Kipa when Zenaida brought her up.
(“We’re not supposed to pollute the waters,” she’d said, “but I was curious what you thought about a Passerine in the fold.”
Passerines—the order of songbirds, thousands and thousands of species. Chordata used Passerine for most of its low-level informants; they sweetly sang to their contacts whatever it was they knew, and no one ever suspected. They differentiated after that, in ways Suyana wasn’t told; she wondered which genus Kipa would be known by. What did you call a bird that wouldn’t survive the winter?
“If you’re asking me, you already know what I think,” Suyana had said, flinching away from a perfume that smelled like flowers two weeks decayed. Zenaida hmmmed and reached for a bottle of Hierophant, shaped like a throne and costing more than Suyana made in a week; it smelled like marble floors and the mint that grew in the mountains back home, and Suyana excused herself before she was tempted to buy it.
What Zenaida had really been telling her, Suyana realized now: Look out for her.)
Suyana and Kipa were friendly, as much as you could be in the IA, and Kipa was the right sort of person for diplomacy based on kindness, but Chordata was dangerous work, and they’d found her too soon.
Chordata hadn’t listened. Kipa had campaigned in New Zealand for marine preserves, and supported a bill that gave tax breaks to solar and wind power. It was a gesture of good faith as far as Chordata was concerned—if she’d campaign at home, she’d campaign in chambers—and they needed everyone they could find.
But Suyana knew what was working against someone trying to keep their head above water in the IA. Kipa’s predecessor, Alex, had campaigned for Maori reparations, to the point of starting a petition among Faces to make an amendment to the IA Declaration recognizing any indigenous population that wanted to sue their government.
Suyana hadn’t joined. Hakan had given it his blessing—some Quechua pride might up her approval numbers at home. But Suyana knew what Hakan didn’t, and she couldn’t risk being on anyone’s radar. Moles kept their heads down.
It came to nothing. As Suyana guessed, calls to action weren’t what the IA was looking to hear from its Faces, and when Alex tried to bring the motion to vote, the cameras were turned off, the session postponed, and Margot and the Committee visited New Zealand’s handler.
Alex’s mistake was the reason Kipa had been called up in the first place. She was too young by two or three years, but she was sweet, and her handler played up the idea she was preternaturally good-hearted. An editorial of her on the beach in a tutu, tee, and sneakers had sold a hundred thousand copies of Atalanta magazine last year.
Chordata didn’t understand that Kipa would be useful only so long as she kept quiet about things the IA would rather not discuss. As soon as she spoke up, her clock would be ticking.
“Hey!” a bartender hissed beside her. “What is this? You on break?”
He sounded like he was winding up for a long go at the help. She slung the tray on her good shoulder,
snapped in Spanish, “I’m going, I’m going!” and slid around the bar and out into the crowded club.
She scanned the dance floor as she walked. It was old habit to pick out Grace dancing alone where no strangers could reach her, Natalia and Satoshi parked near the bar, and Martine, holding her electronic cigarette out of the fray as she danced smack in the center of the crowd. (Ethan wasn’t here. Very respectful of him.)
They all looked occupied—not even Martine seemed bored yet. There was time to reach Kipa and warn her, if she’d listen.
At the booth, she tried to set the tray down, but her arm shook and her wounded one was too slow to catch it, and amid the clatter and bang she took out two martini glasses. Shit, shit, too much attention.
“You all right?” Kipa asked. She was already looking past Suyana, reaching across the booth for napkins to mop up the spill. She was too nice for the IA.
“Had a twinge in my arm,” Suyana said.
Kipa froze. Slowly, she turned and registered Suyana; the color drained from her cheeks.
“Get that look off your face,” said Suyana, still kneeling, trying to look busy. “And keep your voice down.”
“But—” Kipa cleared her throat, tried to look casual. “You were shot. Kidnapped, they said. They think you’re dead.” She sucked in a breath. “Magnus already burned you.”
“I heard.”
“I don’t know anything,” Kipa said. “I’m sorry.”
Suyana frowned. “Why would you know?”
“Why else would you have come?”
Fair question, given how Faces were trained to look out for themselves, but still Suyana’s heart sank. She shook her head. “Kipa, I’ve been with friends, and news is pretty bad. I came here to warn you. Until I know who shot me, you need to be careful.”
Kipa’s face fell in. “Someone’s after—your friends?”
Suyana looked Kipa in the eye. “There’s a chance whoever shot me is our friends.”
As that sank in, Kipa’s eyes got painfully wide, tears pooling at the corners. But after a few seconds she frowned and blinked and nodded, steeling herself, and looked fixedly out over the dance floor with her chin high. “Okay. Okay. All right. What about you?”
Control and compassion. It was encouraging. Kipa was young, but she’d been in the IA a year—the first year was always hardest—and Suyana hoped she’d come out the other side formidable.
“I’ll handle myself,” Suyana said. “When you go back, get one of the plainclothes for your hall. Call your handler in as often as you can, never leave your apartment alone. Give me a word.”
Kipa frowned. “What?”
One song was winding into another. They’d be back from dancing any moment.
“A password, Kipa.” She could hear how frustrated she sounded. “So whoever I send can prove they’re with me. You can’t trust anyone until this is over. Don’t use one you’ve given out already.”
Kipa stammered, “Violet.”
“All right.” The new song was grating, the drums a panicked heartbeat she was trying to ignore. She’d been here too long.
She glanced at Kipa as she piled the last of the mess on the tray. “Go home with the others. Don’t be alone. Don’t talk to anyone who doesn’t give the word. Don’t tell our friends I came to see you—they don’t know, and it might be dangerous for you. I’ll send word if I can.”
Kipa went green. “I don’t like the sound of that.”
“Imagine being me.” Suyana half smiled, knelt to ease the tray back onto her shoulder. Her bad arm was throbbing. When she got somewhere safe, she’d have to look at the wounds. There was no way the hospital stitches would hold. “Be careful. Good luck.”
As she stood, there came the tiny thunderclaps of two pairs of heels, and in her periphery, Grace and Martine flashed by in bright spots—Martine white and blue, Grace brown and silver.
Fuck. If they recognized her, she was doomed. They’d rat her out in a second to their handlers or the police, and she’d be disappeared as soon as Magnus could call up someone to finish the job.
Please, she thought, please never have looked me in the eye. Martine might not have. Martine never looked at anyone if she could help it. But Grace had seen her, she’d spoken to Grace, Grace would know who she was.
She held her breath, kept her head down and her shoulders hunched under the tray as she turned to leave. Grace was still moving through the exit path; there was a glimmer of purple that Suyana could tell was pretty pricey jewelry for an incognito night out.
(Daniel still had a necklace in his pocket worth a hundred grand. If the bouncers searched him and realized who’d borrowed it, he’d be going to jail for kidnapping.
She’d wanted him to be a distraction. She didn’t want him gone.
Her hands started to shake.)
Suyana kept her head down, slid one step while trying not to crack Grace in the skull with the tray.
Behind her, Martine’s electronic cigarette flared with a prerecorded crackle.
“Looks like you’ve been barbacking, Kipa,” Martine said, voice like glass. “You should be dancing. There’s a new taxi dancer, if you’re not too chicken. Not quite handsome, but I’d love to know where he stole his coat.”
Daniel. Suyana didn’t even have to look up.
I’ll be damned, she thought. He came in after me. She ignored the flicker of warmth at the back of her neck. This was their last stop; she couldn’t bring him any farther. She took another step, another. She was past Grace—she was free.
“We won’t make you,” Martine was saying. “Real friends don’t. I hope you didn’t let the Amazonian put you up to anything.”
Suyana froze. She had to move, she had to make a run for it, they’d raise the alarm any second—but though her heart was in her throat, dread held her fast.
She’d seen it before, when Martine got her hooks in and pulled; the panic on someone’s face when they realized their number had been called at last.
Grace turned in slow motion, her attention torn between Kipa (eyes like saucers) and Martine, but still she put out an arm to prevent Suyana from bolting.
Suyana turned her head, gazed sidelong through the veil of glassware. Martine’s face was in shadow, but her smile was sharp and ruthless in the false cinders of her smoke, and when she spoke, the little glow-light hardly moved.
“Evening, Suyana.”
12
How to get into a club so exclusive it doesn’t have a sign: walk in without looking left or right, stop in front of the bouncers, let out the sigh of the infinitely patient. Say, “My friend didn’t tell me what ID you want, since she didn’t know. You’ve never asked her for any.”
When they ask, “What’s your friend’s name?” picture Martine Hargaad walking past them for years, let the image sink in so they can see you thinking about it.
Say, “She told me you’d know better than to ask.”
When the first bouncer says, “I don’t suppose this friend could ID you from your picture,” say, “Given what I’m here for, I doubt she’d ID me to my face.”
Slide your hands in your pockets. Shrug like a guy who makes his living taxi dancing on the verge of another long night, a guy who doesn’t care what hidden camera’s taking his picture.
“You’re kidding,” one of them will say.
Show them a tangle of platinum and gems. (Think about Suyana giving it to you, about your fingertips on her warm neck.)
Say, “I’m supposed to return this to her. She’s pissed she forgot it.”
Give them just long enough to realize it’s genuine; slide it back in your pocket, out of sight of the cameras. Say, more earnestly than you mean to, “I don’t think she needs it to turn heads, but I guess other people do.”
(Remember you’re supposed to mean Martine Hargaad, not Suyana. Refocus. Prepare to talk as long as it takes.)
Watch without saying anything as the bouncers start to make up their minds.
[ID 40291, Frame 86: D
aniel Park entering Terrain, carrying no visible cargo. Access ploy unknown.]
When Daniel was twenty, he applied for an apprenticeship with the Korean International Diplomatic Press Corps.
He got the job. A few months later, Hae Soo-jin’s handler, Madam Kim Hyun Jae, noticed him in the press pit, and invited him to join the team that shot the official candids of Soo-jin’s private life.
He must have been an idiot, he thinks, when he can bring himself to think about it.
It took him two days to realize nothing about Hae Soo-jin was candid. She was never alone. Even her pajamas were selected by her stylist.
He took a thousand pictures of her having cell phone calls with no one on the other line, for use whenever news broke: smiling, frowning, tears that stood in her eyes but never fell. He took pictures of her with Murat Eren, the Turkish Face, whom she was dating on a short-term contract for some electronics-industry exchange that escaped him. They walked in and out of a movie theater arm in arm as he took pictures from behind a bush, so the blurry leaves in the foreground would make it look more spur of the moment.
He couldn’t shake the feeling that maybe nothing about Soo-jin was candid because there wasn’t much to her. She didn’t have much to say to Murat that wasn’t small talk, and being around her for any length of time was like mainlining a TV drama where no one deviates from the sheet in the writers’ office. A hologram, he thought sometimes, when he was being mean, or when he felt sorry for her.
It was numbing work, and paid almost nothing, and he spent most of his time being lied to about what she was actually doing and coming home to a studio apartment so small he could touch both walls if he lay down and stretched his arms over his head. After a year, something about the combination of bad pay and bad information started to grate.
He’d only ever gotten one really candid shot of her, ducking into a coffee shop and chatting with an older man in line. There wasn’t much to go on, but something about her (serious, suddenly, in a way she never was when she knew the lens was on her) sparked him to take the picture.
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