by Simon Hawke
Savino was staring straight ahead, his eyes slightly unfocused, as he recalled the past. His face and voice were touched with melancholy. It was the first real emotion Andre had seen in him.
“The thing was,” Savino went on, “Carnehan didn’t really play by the rules, either. He didn’t exactly break them, but he sure bent a lot of them all to hell. The same as you commandos do. You call it ‘throwing away the book.’ Improvising in the field. Well, hell, that’s all we ever did. We threw away the book and improvised.”
“You did a lot more than that,” said Andre. “You crossed over the line.” She glanced at Drakov and saw him listening with an amused expression on his face.
“Crossed over the line,” Savino repeated, mockingly. “Where is the line? And who decides where it should be drawn? You? Me? Forrester? Some legislator who’s never been on the minus side and hasn’t got the faintest idea of what we’re up against? Don’t you understand? It’s all arbitrary.”
“Well, if you believe that, then I guess anything you do becomes justifiable,” said Andre. “And obviously, you’ve worked very hard at believing it. You really sold yourself a bill of goods, Savino. I just hope it didn’t cost you too much.”
They made a right on West Eleventh Street and pulled up in front of the black double doors of Il Paradiso. Savino draped his jacket over Andre’s shoulders, covering the handcuffs, then helped her out of the car. As he took her arm and drew her close, she felt the sharp point of a stiletto digging into her side.
“A nightclub?” said Andre. “What’s this, another Network front?”
“No, actually, this club is operated by the Mafia,” Drakov said.
“The Mafia?” Andre said, with disbelief.
“Sort of a sideline for the local capo,” Drakov explained. “It allows him to rub elbows with the artsy set and feel sophisticated.” He held the door for them. “Oh, by the way, most of the employees of this establishment are perfectly ordinary citizens with little or no knowledge of the proprietor’s criminal activities. Attempting to give alarm or otherwise involve any of them would only endanger them needlessly. And you wouldn’t want to do that, would you, Miss Cross?”
Savino pricked her slightly with the knife and she winced.
“All right, you’ve made your point.”
They went inside.
The club wasn’t open yet, but the young employees were all bustling about, getting everything ready. There were several bartenders behind the garish, guitar-shaped bar, peeling lemons, slicing limes, setting bottles into the wells and turning on their beer taps. Waitresses were setting up tables and a crew of roadies were up on the elevated stage, stacking amplifiers, assembling a giant drum kit and making sound checks with the mikes. A gorgeous young woman in a black lycra skirt, high heels, a T-shirt with the club’s name and logo on it, and moussed and silver-streaked blond hair approached them.
“Excuse me, sir, we won’t be open for another... oh, it’s you Mr. Savino.”
“Is the boss in?” Savino said.
“Yes, sir, Mr. Manelli’s upstairs.”
They went up a carpeted flight of steps, past a massive bouncer whose biceps strained the seams of his pink silk tiger print shirt. The bouncer greeted Savino politely, calling him sir. It was clear that while Drakov wasn’t known here, Savino was definitely part of the hierarchy.
Upstairs at Il Paradiso was where the “in group” congregated. A second bar catered to the celebrities and the beautiful people, who descended to the dance floor now and then to give a thrill to the rabble down below. The private upstairs lounge extended over the tables down below, ending in a railed balcony that overlooked the dance floor and provided an unrestricted view of the stage. Manelli was seated at a table in the corner, surrounded by his entourage, heatedly discussing something with two men sitting across from him. He looked up as they approached and excused himself, striding quickly across the room to meet them.
“What the hell is going on, Savino?” he said. “I had a meeting and I couldn’t even get into my own office, for Christ’s sake! There’s some kinda weird lock on the door—”
“I told you we’d be using the office for a few days,” Savino said, calmly. “
“You didn’t tell me you were going to change the lock! Hell, you changed the whole goddamn door! I try to take a meeting in my own damn office and can’t even get the door open! It made me look like a goddamn Idiot.”
“I told you we were going to use your office until further notice,” said Savino.
“Yeah, but you weren’t here and what am I supposed to say to people when I can’t conduct business in my own damn office? How do you think: that makes me look?”
“I don’t give a damn how it makes you look,” Savino said. “You tell them the office is being repainted or something. I don’t care what the hell you ten them, Domenic, but I don’t want to hear you questioning my instructions again, is that understood?”
They spoke in low voices and to anyone watching them, it would have appeared as if” Savino were a subordinate being dressed down by Manelli, instead of the other way around.
“You’re pushing me, Savino,” said Manelli, tensely. “You’re pushing me real hard. I don’t like being pushed. And I don’t like not knowing what my club is being used for.” He gave Drakov a long, appraising look. “I go to great pains to keep my other business separate from the club, Drakov. There’s a reason for that. I like to keep a low profile and we’re very visible here. Now my people tell me you’ve had several sealed crates delivered to my office and stored there. I want to know what’s in them.”
“Lilliputians,” Drakov said.
“What?”
“Lilliputians. They’re miniature people, about six inches. tall. I’m using the crates as troop transports.”
Manelli stared at him long and hard, the muscles in his jaw twitching. “All right, if that’s the way you want to play it, have it your way.”
He glanced from Savino to Drakov and pointed his index finger at them. “The club’s about to open and I don’t want any difficulties tonight, but I want you and whatever’s in those crates out of here first thing in the morning, you understand? And I want that cockamamie hi-tech lock off my goddamn door. You got till noon. And that’s more slack than you deserve. At one second after twelve, I’m going to have my boys bust down that door and crack open those crates. And if what’s in there is what I think is in there, the Network’s going to find out that the cost of doing business just went up. Way up. Kapish?”
He turned and went back to his table without waiting for a reply. Savino took a deep breath.
“He thinks we’re dealing arms,” he said. “Manelli always was a pain in the ass to keep under control. He’s going to be trouble. And trouble is something I don’t need right now.”
“Relax,” said Drakov, walking up to Manelli’s office door and pressing his palm against the flat metal plate. The lock clicked open. “After tonight, it will be finished. And what you do about Manelli will be entirely up to you.”
He entered the office and Savino shoved Andre in after him. The two large wooden crates stood open on the floor. They were empty. Manelli’s desk and chairs had been moved back against the wall and in the center of the floor, glowing faintly, was an activated chronoplate.
Chapter 11
Lucas huddled in the trunk of the Cadillac limo, feeling nauseous and trying to ignore the pounding pain in his temples. The trunk was roomy. so he wasn’t painfully cramped, but the motion of the car over the potholed streets didn’t do much for his disposition. Several times, the car stopped for traffic lights, but this last time. he felt the car pull over to the curb and after a moment heard the doors slam. He hesitated. and then he felt the engine start up once again and the car started to pull away. He tached.
Someone leaned on a car horn and Lucas quickly rolled underneath a parked truck as the yellow cab sped by, missing him by inches. Fighting the dizziness and the painful pressure in his temples and chest, he quickly scanned the
sidewalks from his shelter beneath the van and spotted Drakov and Savino shepherding Andre into the nightclub. His head was throbbing and he felt as if he were going to throw up. It was worse than the worst hangover he’d ever experienced, much worse. All he wanted to do was simply lie there on the filthy street and wait for it to go away.
His worst fear was that what had happened to Darkness would somehow happen to him. Although the process that each of them had undergone was different, the principles were essentially the same. Darkness had, inadvertently, permanently tachyonized himself with the result that his atomic structure was unstable. The particle-level telempathic chronocircuitry that had become a part of Lucas was designed to prevent tachyon translation from upsetting his atomic stability, at least that was what Darkness claimed, but there was no denying the side effects he was experiencing. And they seemed to be getting worse. What would he do if he eventually became permanently tachyonized, like Darkness? Would he be able to retain his sanity, knowing that he could discorporate at any moment? What the hell, thought Lucas, by rights I should have died back in the 19th Century. Any way you look at it, I’m on borrowed time.
He heard heavy footsteps above him in the truck, then the sound of something heavy being moved across the truckbed. Ignoring the stabbing pain in his head, he tried to focus on the booted feet that stepped down to the street from the rear of the truck.
“Easy… easy… okay, that’s got it. Go ahead, jump down, I’ll hold it. “
A moment later, another pair of feet, shod in running shoes. jumped down from the truck bed and Lucas watched as two leather-jacketed roadies manhandled a PA column speaker into the club. He listened for a moment, heard nothing more above him, then slid out from beneath the truck. He looked into the back and saw that the truck was just about completely unloaded. Nothing remained .except some tool boxes, several coils of cable hung up on the walls, and some spare mike stands. Lucas jumped up into the truck and grabbed several coils of insulated cable.
“Hey! What the hell are you doin’ in there?”
A spikey haired young man in a red leather jacket and black jeans stood at the back of the truck, a cigarette drooping from the corner of his mouth.
“Get the fuck out there!”
“Hey, back off!” said Lucas, angrily. “I’m the club electrician, awright? There’s a problem with the fuckin’ wiring and they sent me out to get some more cable. Is this garbage the best you guys got?”
“What’s wrong with it?” the roadie said, defensively.
“What’s wrong with it?” Lucas echoed him, sarcastically. “It’s the wrong gauge, the damn insulation’s frayed, no wonder we’re shorting out in there. Ah, to hell with it, I’ll patch something up.” He jumped down from the truck. “You guys oughta be more careful about this stuff. Someone could get a nasty shock. It ain’t even code. Got a spare smoke?”
The roadie reached into the pocket of his jacket and took out a pack of Marlboros. He shook one out and offered. Lucas took it and the roadie lit it for him with a cheap, disposable lighter.
“Well, is it gonna be all right?” the roadie said.
“Yeah, if I get to it sometime tonight,” said Lucas. “Thanks for the smoke.”
He went into the club, carrying the coils of cable.
“You sure you know where you’re going?” Hunter asked Delaney.
“If darkness says Andre was taken to a place called Il Paradiso on West 11th Street, then that’s where she is,” Delaney said.
“Right, I understand that,” Hunter said. “What I don’t understand is how he knew that. “
“Well, it’s a long—”
“Don’t say it.” Hunter shook his head with exasperation.
“Hell, forget I even asked. I’m just along for the ride, right?” He took the Browning Hi-Power out of his waistband and racked the slide, chambering a round. “Wish I had something with a bit more firepower, though. Don’t suppose you’d have a spare laser or an autopulser in that bag of yours?”
The cabbie glanced nervously up at the rearview mirror. Why? Why did these things have to happen to him? There he was, sitting at a light and minding his own business, anxious to get the cab back to the garage and go home for the night, have a few beers and go to bed, when this big red-haired guy walks right up to the cab and sticks some kind of weird looking cannon right through the driver’s window. The cabbie glanced up into the rearview mirror when he heard the sound of the slide being racked. He saw the gun and the taxi swerved, almost hitting a bus.
“Never mind what’s in my bag,” Delaney said. “And you…” he glanced at the name on the hack license, “... Emilio, just keep your eyes on the road and everything will work out fine. Got it?”
“S-sure thing, mister! Anything you say!”
“Shut up and drive.”
“Y-yes, sir!”
For this I left Miami, the cabbie thought. Drunks throwing up in the back seat, muggings, punks spraying graffiti on the inside of the cab, irate truckers smashing his windshield with tire irons because they thought he cut them off, and now gunmen hijacking him to the West Village. To hell with it, he thought, this was the last straw. If he managed to live through this night, he was quitting and going back to bussing dishes in Florida. New York was crazy!
Steiger stood in the hospital corridor with Forrester, surveying the damage. It was extensive. The walls were pinholed by laser fire and scorched by plasma. The ceiling was coming down in places, there were gaping holes in the floor and the hospital personnel were still removing bodies. But that wasn’t what concerned them most. A cordon of armed men stood around an open briefcase lying on the floor, by the lift tubes. Inside it, assembled and glowing faintly, was an activated chronoplate.
“Did any of them get back through?” said Steiger.
“Yes, sir,” said the corporal in charge of the men standing guard around the plate. “A bunch of them that got caught in a crossfire down here broke through and escaped through the field. I thought it best to secure the chronoplate and not disturb it, sir.”
“Well done, Corporal,” Steiger said. He crouched down over the plate. “The screen’s been damaged,” he told Forrester. “On purpose, it looks like. Whoever assembled this was pretty clever. They rigged it so you couldn’t read the transition co-ordinates off the screen and they modified the border circuits so the plate could be assembled inside the case, instead of taking it out like you’re supposed to. Cute. That means there’s no way we can find out where they came from. And it also means the temporal field has to be smaller than normal. But the question is, how much smaller?”
Forrester gave Steiger a sharp look. “If you’re thinking of going through there, Creed, you can forget about it,” he said. “It’s much too dangerous. It could be a trap. Besides, as you just pointed out, we don’t even know if the altered field will be large enough to transport a full-grown man. “
“Yeah, you’re probably right,” said Steiger. “It would be much too risky.”
He straightened up, turned, then quickly snatched the corporal’s autopulser rifle and, holding it close against his body, hopped into the open case.
“Steiger!” Forrester shouted, but it was too late. The border circuits of the chronoplate flashed and Steiger was briefly bathed in the eerie, bright green glow before he disappeared from sight.
“A chronoplate?’ said Andre, glancing down at the softly glowing border circuits assembled on the floor. She looked up at Drakov. “Don’t tell me the Network couldn’t spare you any warp discs, Nicky. I thought you were on such good terms with them.”
Drakov gave her an acid look. “I detest that name,” he said. “And if you are seeking to provoke me, Miss Cross, it won’t work, no matter how irritating you become.”
He jerked his head toward the desk and chairs on the far side of the room. Savino pushed her over to one of the chairs and roughly shoved her down into it.
Drakov pulled back his sleeve and glanced at the warp disc on his wrist. In relatively modern
industrial time periods, it was simplest to disguise a warp disc as a pocket watch or a multifunction wrist chronograph, which it most resembled. More primitive time zones demanded that a warp disc be disguised as some piece of ornamental jewelry, such as a pendant or a bracelet, with its face and control studs concealed.
“It’s almost time,” said Drakov.
“We going somewhere?” Andre said.
“Eventually, Miss Cross, eventually. And for your information, you may be interested to know that I still have a plentiful supply of warp discs of various size classifications left over from that shipment I hijacked from Amalgamated Techtronics.” He smiled at the expression on her face. “You thought you recovered most of them, didn’t you? Shall we bet that according to the invoices you were given by the factory, most of the missing warp discs were accounted for?”
“How could you know that?”
“You would be surprised, Miss Cross, at how often there are so-called ‘accidental overruns’ on Temporal Army contracts. Very inconvenient for the management. It upsets the accountants no end and creates a problem of cost efficiency, especially since the Army will only pay for what it ordered and no more. Fortunately, there are ‘independent contractors’ who are quite willing to assist in liquidating accidental overruns.”
Andre stared at him with astonishment. “Are you telling me they sell restricted ordnance under the table, on the black market?”
“Yes, rather amusing, isn’t it? I discovered that quite by accident. Imagine, I went to all the trouble and risk of hijacking warp discs when all I had to do was buy them direct from the manufacturer.” He chuckled and consulted his disc once again. “In any case, a chronoplate was precisely what I needed in this particular instance. I required a temporal transit field linked through two terminals. each of which would be destroyed as it fulfilled its function. And that sequence is due to be initiated any moment now …”
The border circuits of the chronoplate began to flicker brightly, then they flashed with an emerald glow and tiny soldiers wearing miniature floater paks started to materialize just above the border circuits. They rose up into the air, still within the transit field, and as more flying lilliputians appeared below them, the ones rising up toward the ceiling peeled off and flew in a counterclockwise circle around the room. Drakov watched them, smiling to himself, then his smile abruptly faded as the last Lilliputian peeled off from the formation.