High Stakes: A Wild Cards Novel

by George R. R. Martin

  The seven-foot-tall Muppet with the wolf snout and bull horns grabbed the last of the interlopers who was still on his feet and plucked his gun away from him with one hand while holding him up high with the other. He kicked uselessly like a boy throwing a temper tantrum.

  “QUIET,” the beast roared. Everyone took his advice.

  Billy Ray held his foe by a tight grip on his tie and glared him into utter complacency. He looked around the room where most were still shakily settling down. Some glared up at the ceiling, weapons out and waiting, but neither thugs nor money fell from the ceiling to join them.

  “You look like crap.”

  “Thanks,” Michelle said, opening the door wider. Mrs. Klein from across the hall stepped into the apartment.

  “How’s the kiddo?”

  “Not good,” Michelle replied softly. She went into the kitchen and poured a cup of coffee for Mrs. Klein. Cream, no sugar.

  “Thanks for coming over,” Michelle said, handing the cup to Mrs. Klein. “She had a bad night and I have Committee stuff to catch up on. I’d rather not leave her, but I think she’s going to be okay for now.” She rubbed her gritty eyes. “When we got back from the PPA, the psychologists warned me that she might have a delayed reaction from all the stuff that happened there. I guess it finally caught up with her. I made an appointment to take her to see the doctor tomorrow.” She glanced over her shoulder. Adesina was still wrapped up in her pale blue blanket and curled into a ball on the sofa. She was asleep at last.

  “I’ll make sure she’s okay. And you know I never mind looking after her. She’s a sweet girl.” Mrs. Klein took a sip of her coffee. “And you still make lousy coffee, Michelle.” She put her cup on the dining-room table.

  “Oh, hell,” Michelle said. “I just remembered I forgot to call Joey back after Adesina’s bad dream.”

  “You’ll never keep a girlfriend that way,” Mrs. Klein said, giving Michelle a smile.

  “She’s not my girlfriend,” Michelle replied. She could feel her cheeks getting warm. “We’ve already talked about this.”

  Mrs. Klein shrugged her shoulders. “Well, I like her. And I think you like her plenty, too. But what do I know. I’m just the old lady who lives across the hall…”

  Mrs. Klein was giving Michelle her usual hard time, though more kindly than usual. Michelle thought seriously about hugging her, but decided that would be awkward. Mrs. Klein was many things. But a hugger wasn’t one of them.

  “What the hell is going on?” Ray asked.

  He and the Angel were in Mendelberg’s office, which was as good a place to be as any in the precinct. Lonnegan was actually sitting at Mendelberg’s desk, her feet up on it, looking pensive. The Angel was in one of the overstuffed chairs before it. Both were watching Ray pace around the room. “Norwood,” he said. “Dead.”

  His body had been removed, Stevens detailed to take care of it.

  “I’ve been afraid that might have happened,” the Angel admitted.

  “The thought of dying is always somewhere deep within us,” Ray said. “You can’t let it out. Can’t dwell on it. But Norwood—”

  “Do you think this Tesseract was somehow responsible?”

  The Angel shook her head. “She’s more sneak thief than murderer. But how did it end up at Mendelberg’s door? Did she put it there?”

  Lonnegan shrugged. “Got me.”

  “Where’s this Francis Black?” Ray asked suddenly.

  Lonnegan shrugged again. “Got me. What’s he got to do with this?”

  “Fits with what Stevens told us last night,” the Angel said.

  Ray took over the story. “Stevens said Black and Norwood had peeled back some of the layers of this rotten onion. They knew that the Russian mob was yanking jokers off the street and using this teleporter to bring them to some foreign casino where the owner, an ex-KGB agent with the lovely Russian name of Baba Yaga, made them fight like gladiators. And this shitbag Michael Berman made and sold videos of the fights.”

  “Berman…” Lonnegan said thoughtfully, then snapped her fingers. “He was brought in the other day. Made bail, though. And that Mollie kid—she was a production assistant for his skuzzy production company.”

  Ray nodded. “Which matches the info we picked out off Norwood’s computer.” He looked at Lonnegan. “What happened after the jokers started arriving?”

  “There was complete chaos,” Lonnegan said. “Some babbled crazy stories—which might not have been crazy after all. Father Squid dead—”

  Ray and the Angel exchanged glances.

  “Father Squid—” His expression suddenly went slack.

  “The soul of Jokertown,” the Angel whispered.

  Lonnegan nodded. “Nobody believed it, but the rumor swept the precinct. And now…”

  “And now,” Ray said, “it feels true, in my gut.”

  “I know, right?” Lonnegan said. “He was just … always been here. Always quiet, gentle, but a rock of strength the whole community could shelter against. Nothing could stop him. Nothing could bring him down. He helped hundreds—hell, thousands—of jokers.” She paused, briefly. “Hell, you didn’t have to be a joker.” The Angel was astonished to see tears form in the cop’s eyes.

  “What else did they say?” the Angel asked quickly.

  Lonnegan took a deep breath. “Death matches took place in some club or something—obviously this casino. That kid who calls himself the Infamous Black Tongue was one of the captives. Mendelberg,” Lonnegan said in a flat, affectless voice, “immediately clamped down on it. Shut them all up and marched them all off into protective custody in the old holding cells. She slapped a guard on them, wouldn’t let anyone near.”

  “I’m not a lawyer,” the Angel said, “but she can’t do that.”

  “She did.”

  The Angel could see the tautness in Ray’s body suddenly disappear, just like that. “Mendelberg ran the investigation—or rather noninvestigation—on those joker kidnapping cases and as far as I can see, she did more to discourage investigation than encourage it.”

  “Are you saying she covered it up?” Lonnegan asked. “That’s some serious shit.”

  “Thing is,” Ray said, “we just don’t know. Apparently the only one in the precinct who felt strongly enough about it to buck her was Detective Black. We had our suspicions”—he glanced at the Angel—“but we knew that Black had to get solid dope on her if we had a hope in hell in making anything stick—”

  “And then he blew it all up in our faces,” Lonnegan said. “That snot-nosed, jumped-up patrolman who got his detective badge way too early.”

  “Favors?” Ray asked.

  Lonnegan shrugged. “No one knows for sure. He’s not particularly popular around the station. He never really talks about it, but his dad was once the captain here—”

  “John Francis X. Black,” Ray exclaimed. “Found dead in his office under mysterious circumstances on Wild Card Day 1986, wasn’t it?”

  “Right.”

  Ray whistled lowly. “Chri—ah, cripes. Talk about the good old days. I was here for that shit. Aces murdered. The Great And Powerful Turtle sunk in the East River. Aces High demolished. Armageddon threatened. Old dude found stuck halfway through a brick wall.” He shook his head. “No wonder the death of a police captain almost went unnoticed.”

  “Water under the bridge,” Lonnegan said. “We’ve got our own problems to worry about. Our own missing captain to find.”

  “Well,” Ray said, “all the signs point in the same direction, no?”

  The others sighed, shook their heads with weariness, or rubbed tired eyes. It was Lonnegan who said it aloud.

  “The Russian Mafia.”

  Ray smiled, almost happily.

  “So what more do we know about Talas, Ink?” she asked her aide.

  Ink, wearing her usual short-sleeved blouse and Dockers, shook her head and ran her fingers through spikes of black hair. Ink was Korean, though she’d been raised as an adopted child in the State
s, and as usual, her skin was liberally covered with the tattoos that had given the woman her sobriquet. The wild card had given her the ability to control the appearance of those tattoos with exceptional detail and versatility. Today, the tattoos were echoing the reports she was handling, with text slowly scrolling down her arms like a fleshy marquee.

  Ink had been with the Committee for only a few months now, and Barbara already wondered how she’d managed before. Ink had also become a semi-confidante for Barbara; there was something about the young woman: a carefully concealed vulnerability that drew Barbara to her.

  “I can’t tell you, Mizz B.” Barbara had quickly given up any hope of convincing Ink to call her “ma’am” or “Ms. Baden,” as did most of the staff. Ink’s competence as Barbara’s chief of staff more than made up for her casual attitude. “I’ve called the people who sent in the last three reports, and I’m sure they all believe they’re telling me the truth, but they’re also all telling me different and contradictory things: food riots, some kind of student uprising, an attempted military coup. I don’t think anyone knows what’s actually going on. But it’s clear enough that there’s something awry in Kazakhstan, and specifically around Talas. Whatever the trouble is, it is growing. Fast.”

  “I want you to call the U.S. Embassy in Bishkek,” Barbara told the woman. “Tell them we’ve gotten troubling reports out of Talas and we need to know what the problem is there ASAP. They have to have good contacts on the ground there. Keep forwarding any new reports to my phone, especially when you can verify the truth of them.”

  “I’ll do that. But I’m worried. Things are getting worse there, not better, and the contradictions in the reports…” Ink pressed her lips together. “Somehow, those worry me even more than what I’m hearing.”

  “I agree. I think we need people on the ground ourselves to tell us. I’m going to see Klaus now and try to convince him that we need to get boots on the ground there.”

  Ink nodded once to Barbara, ran fingers through her hair once more, and left the office, the tattoos on her arm losing the appearance of text and shifting to abstract, Escher-like patterns. Barbara gathered up the papers in front of her, put them in a folder, and went down the hall to Klaus’s office. She nodded to his secretary, who waved her on.

  “Hold his calls,” Barbara said as she passed. Then, as she entered the office: “Klaus…”

  He looked up from something he was reading; it looked to be one of the reports she was holding as well. Behind him, through the office windows, she could see the skyscrapers of Manhattan. “That the stuff about Talas?” she asked.

  “Ya.” His German accent, even after years in the States, was still strong. “Jayewardene sent this to me. Said it was something to watch.” Sumting to vawtch. “I’d agree with him. Your Ink has sent you the same material?”

  “She has, and I believe it’s more than just something to watch,” she told him. “We’re not getting good intel from anyone there, and we’re not going to get it until we can see what’s happening for ourselves. I think we need to go in now. Today, if possible. Half of Talas is no longer in communication with the world, and all these reports of bloodshed and violence…”

  “Ah.” He leaned back in the chair. “You know how much I value your counsel, my dear.” He said it languidly, shaking his head so that his blond hair moved around his cheeks and brushed his eye patch. A hesitant smile lurked on his lips; she knew that expression—she’d seen it often enough over the years. Go ahead and tell me whatever it is you want, but I’ve already made up my mind and you’re wasting your time. That’s what that face meant.

  Normally, it didn’t bother her. No couple had a perfect relationship, and certainly not them. She had her own quirks that she was certain bothered Klaus, though he rarely complained. She knew she could be too diplomatic at times, that she sometimes spoke too formally, that people often came away from her thinking her distant, aloof, and cold … and that sometimes that perception was probably correct. It didn’t bother her that Klaus’s opinion had more weight than hers with the others of the Committee and those in the UN, that it was the image of Lohengrin that came to mind whenever someone mentioned the Committee. He was the leader, the head, the face of the Committee.

  But lately … She worried about Klaus, about the discomfiture she felt in him. He was only energized when he was out in the field doing something. When he was here, he was just mostly burned out and tired, and his decisions …

  You know how much I value your counsel …

  “But?” she interrupted, and the edge on the word vanquished Klaus’s smile. “You don’t think this important enough? Klaus, I’m worried that if we wait on this one that it’s going to escalate out of control.”

  His sigh was audible. “Right now, it’s a local problem only. Not something for the Committee to become involved with. Ya, we need to stay on top of Talas and be ready to move if it continues to escalate or if it threatens stability in the region, but there is actual ongoing rioting in East Timor. That’s where I feel we should be going, as quickly as we can.”

  Because there he could just lose himself in action. Barbara sighed. “Love, in Talas, half a city is in chaos and no one knows why, and it is spreading, by all accounts. I’d say that stability there has already been affected.”

  “Babs…” She hated that nickname, but had never been able to get Klaus to stop using it. Klaus gave another sigh. “Are you angry with me? What have I done?”

  The change in subject annoyed her, all the more because it felt as if he were deliberately poking a finger into a new wound. “I’m not angry with you, Klaus. Not at all. This isn’t about us, Klaus. I really feel it’s a mistake to ignore Talas. Let the Secretary-General deal with East Timor,” she answered.

  He stared at her, and she held his gaze. Finally, he looked down at the report in front of him and shook his head. “I understand why you’re worried and I appreciate your concerns, but I don’t see a reason yet to go to Jayewardene and request that he allow the Committee to become involved.”

  “Half a city’s already out of communication, Klaus. And the problem has grown over the last few days. What more of an excuse do we need?”

  “I know. I understand. But it’s still a local issue for the moment. The entire country of East Timor is in jeopardy with the riots there. The government could fall.”

  “Everything I’ve seen and everything Ink’s given me says the locals aren’t capable of dealing with Talas, and that they don’t have a grasp on what’s really happening there.”

  “Then when that becomes more apparent, we discuss it again. For now, I say we should plan on going to East Timor. At the very least, let’s send a team there.”

  And I’ll be leading them. She knew that would be the case without his adding the phrase. She also heard the finality in his voice. “All right,” she said. “I’ll have Ink copy you with her reports and comments. But I think waiting on Talas is the wrong strategy.”

  Klaus nodded. “I hear you,” he said. “And I’ll take the responsibility.” Barbara nodded at that and turned to go. “Babs,” he said behind her, and she stopped with a sigh. “We should talk. Tonight. Not about Talas. About us.”

  “We will,” she told him. She smiled at him. “I’m not angry with you, Klaus, I love you—that’s never changed. But I am worried about you. We’ll talk.”

  “You look like crap,” Ink said as Michelle got off the elevator on the Committee floor. She said it with a little too much pleasure.

  “So I’ve been told,” Michelle replied with a sigh. “Adesina had a bad night and I didn’t get any sleep.”

  Juliet immediately stopped looking pleased about Michelle’s crappy appearance. “What’s wrong?” she asked. Bright red tattoos started swirling on Ink’s face. Even though Michelle had screwed things up with Juliet—by sleeping with Joey, which had not been her finest moment—Juliet was still part of Michelle’s life.

  After Michelle had adopted Adesina, Juliet had become a de fa
cto aunt. Recently, Michelle had convinced Babel to take Juliet on as her assistant. Not only because she knew Juliet would be great at it—hell, Ink had put up with Billy Ray at SCARE for three years—but because she and Adesina could see Ink more often if she was living in New York.

  “I think everything she went through in the PPA is finally catching up,” Michelle said. There was a tremor in her voice. Do not cry, she thought. This is no place for that. “It may be PTSD. I’m not sure. All she said was, ‘They’re coming,’ which has to be about the soldiers. Or maybe about the doctors at the camp.”

  “Good grief, then why are you here?” Ink gave Michelle an impressive glare, and her voice rose. “Who the hell did you leave her with? Why did you leave her?”

  Michelle put up her hands. “Hey,” she said sharply. “Mrs. Klein is with her, and I made an appointment for her to see someone tomorrow.” She really didn’t like explaining herself. She wasn’t a shitty mother. At least she hoped she wasn’t. “I’m going to tell Lohengrin I need to take some time off. Which will thrill him to no end. But please, give me more of a hard time. You know how much I enjoy that.”

  A soft voice floated to them. “Girls.” It was Margaret. “I think you can take this somewhere else or down a notch.”

  Michelle looked around the austere lobby—everyone was staring at them: secretaries, the mail boy, and what looked like a couple of visitors. Awkward. So much for a professional demeanor, she thought. Then Michelle saw Aero and Earth Witch standing with a couple of people she didn’t know. One was a joker about her age. His face was a jigsaw pattern of flesh. Brown skin abutted ruddy white and all the subtle tints in between were present in patches on his face, neck, and hands. Michelle assumed his entire body was the same. She didn’t remember getting a brief on him.

  She learned later his name was Tiago Gonçalves—code name Recycler—and that he was from Rio de Janeiro. His power allowed him to assemble trash into a protective barrier.