The agent eyed it hungrily. “Do I eat it with my hands, guys?” Taylor asked.
The hard cases enjoyed a laugh and Arlen produced a steak knife with a serrated edge but a well-rounded end. “You aren’t getting away from us,” his kidnaper said.
They waited for him to get fully involved with his steak, there was just enough play in the wrist restraints for him to eat if he bowed his head to meet the fork, before they went outside one by one to return with their own platters. The table chatter was focused on the upcoming hockey championship. Taylor followed the sports pages enough to make a few comments on the chances the Accomack Fliers would have against the Wicomico White Lightnings.
The book said it was a good idea to help your kidnappers see you were a human being like them. Arlen might be saying he didn’t intend Taylor any harm, but the agent hadn’t heard that from the rest.
Besides, in a situation like this, things were always subject to change.
The steaks were hardly done when the girls arrived. What little they wore didn’t stay on after a dip in the pool or the hot tub. The kidnappers enjoyed their very available feminine gifts. Taylor had to work hard to keep his pants on, not that that kept each of the girls from trying her hand at getting him into the fun.
“You know you want me,” each of them would purr, taking him firmly in hand.
“Thank you, but I think I’ll pass,” Taylor said, time after time. No doubt they would produce a film of him fully involved in the orgy, but he wanted to be able to face his wife and say, “That is a fake. I didn’t do anything of the sort.”
He also wanted to pass a Bureau of Investigation polygraph test.
While he was trying not to gawk at the live porn action around him, he studied what he could see out the window. There were hills in his view. His best guess was that he was in a house deep in the foothills to the west of Wardhaven. He doubted they were all the way to the mountains.
With any luck, the recording of this, with him no doubt naked and flagrante, would also have some of the scenery. His agents would be able to locate the house from that.
Assuming he survived long enough for them to attempt black mail, or whatever Alex Longknife intended to do to cover up this bit of kidnaping.
Through the carrying on, Taylor kept his eye out for an escape, but while a lot came up, an escape wasn’t one of them. All through it, one of the guards was seated a meter or so from him. Well out of reach for a lunge, something that would be worthless, anyway, in his shackled condition. His guards never got close enough for him to make a grab for their gun.
“Isn’t it the pits when the bad guys hire people good at what they do,” Arlen said with a smirk when it was his turn to keep watch.
“Yeah, the boys like to play, and I make sure they get a good chance at it, but no, none of them is going to slack on the job. We know what needs doing, and we do it. For example, note your computer and burner phone,” he said with a wave of his hand to the counter where the contents of Taylor’s pockets lay spread out.
“We took the battery out of your computer and the chip and battery out of your phone. Did it as soon as you were out cold in the car. No locator is going to find you.”
Arlen walked over to the counter and picked up the batteries. “We won’t be needing these, will we?” he said, and dropped them into a glass of water.
Correction, glass of acid. The contents of the glass bubbled and the batteries dissolved. Then the kidnapper added the phone chip. “There, you can quit looking at your gear. Even if you managed to hop your way over here, there’s be nothing you could do to make any of this junk work. You’re screwed, even if you won’t enjoy the entertainment we’re offering you.”
“I will escape,” Taylor said, doing his best to make it sound ominous, thought he still had no idea how he might pull it off.
“In your dreams, boyo. In your dreams,” Arlen said, his back to Taylor as his hands wondered through the agent’s pocket contents.
“My, now what is this?” the kidnaper said, raising a sphere to eye level.
“That’s a marble my father gave me. I keep it as a kind of good luck piece,” Taylor said, lying through his teeth. It was the sphere Trouble’s Tech mage had given him. What it did, he still had no idea, but he wasn’t about to tell this bunch of criminals that.
“You, a hard headed type, believe in magic. I think not.”
“My father died two years ago,” Taylor said, finding no problem telling this painful truth. “It reminds me of him. I roll it around in my hand when I have a tough call to make and ask myself, ‘What would dad do?’”
“What do you know? Someone who cares about his old man. Me, I would have spat on his grave, but his fourth wife cremated him and kept the ashes on her mantelpiece. She’s got a collection there, now. Four husbands. She would have hired me some girls for this, if I’d made her an offer.”
Taylor wondered how this bit of self-revelation would end up. Not the rambling talk, but the fate of the sphere. Arlen held it up to the light. “It’s got all kinds of colors in it,” he muttered, then he put it in his own pocket.
“Ask me for it nice when we let you go and I may give it back to you.”
“You really want to add theft to kidnaping?” Taylor asked.
That got him a nasty face, but the head honcho pulled the sphere from his pocket and, carefully approaching Taylor from behind, slipped it into his left pants pocket. “There, you happy?”
“Thank you,” Taylor said.
“You’re welcome.”
The sun was well down before the girls were sent packing. They made a final attempt on Taylor but he managed to keep as much of his virtue intact as conditions allowed. Arlen sent them on their way with a large bonus and then had his four henchmen see that Taylor was put to bed and shackled to it most securely.
One man was ordered to the comfortable chair Taylor had awoken in. “We’ll trade off every two hours. Don’t worry, Boyo, you won’t get lonesome.”
With not much to do, and little chance to do it, Taylor decided to let himself sleep. They might kill him, but trussed up like he was, he wouldn’t be able to stop them. He’d learned as a soldier to get his sleep when he could. No use being tired when the chance came.
To Taylor’s surprise, he fell asleep rather quickly.
Chapter 12
He came awake to someone gently shoving his foot back and forth.
“Wakie wakie, boss,” came in Leslie’s delightful voice.
“Aren’t you up past your bedtime?” Taylor said, fully awake and alert to not only his subordinate laughing at his question, but a large number of uniformed, armored and armed men and women moving about the room. One produced a pair of cutters and soon Taylor was free to sit up in bed.
“We’re hunting for the key to the cuffs and shackles,” Leslie said.
“What took you so long?” he grumbled, unable to think of anything better to fill the silent void.
“Well, we took a wrong turn twice, but other than that, I think we did rather well.”
“What’s it been, twelve hours since they snatched me?”
“You’re wife called me when you didn’t make it home to help the kids with their homework. Boss, do you really think someone as old as you can keep up with the kids today?”
“No, but I like to think I can. And then what happened?”
“Your boss declared you missing when I explained what we’d been up to.”
“I would have thought she’d say good riddance.”
“You wrong her greatly, boss, and be careful. She’s in the next room. Anyway, it was easier than we expected. You know when you asked me to put a trace on those Merchant Marine skippers?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I put a trace on you, too. Then double checked it when you pulled that acid briefcase joke on me. Good thing I did. We knew your computer, and I did a check on your burn phone, but we found a third trace on you. Quiet little thing, something that showed up but we couldn’t do
an ID on. Still, where you went, it went, so we tagged it into our tracker. You have any idea what it was? Because the other two went dead after you left the fishing pier. That one just kept on whispering ‘Here I am. Come get me!’”
“I’ll tell you about it later,” Taylor said, managing to wiggle himself out of bed while his hands were still cuffed and his feet still shackled. Not having them chained together was almost wonderful.
“Here’s the key,” Rick Sanchez said, coming in the room. “Boss, did you really get your ass into an orgy?”
“No,” Taylor said firmly, and maybe a bit primly.
“You know he didn’t Rick, we had him under surveillance before the entertainment arrived,” Leslie said, just as primly.
“Well, there’s a video running out there that shows him dipping his wick with the best of these thugs,” Rick said. “I’m thinking of keeping a copy to keep me warm in my long bachelorhood.
“Destroy it.” Taylor said.
“Can’t,” Rick shot back. “The big boss says it’s evidence. We’ll match our video against theirs and call it conspiracy to blackmail.”
Taylor shrugged. “The bigger book we can throw at them, the better. How soon can I get Arlen in an interrogation room?”
“Ah, boss,” Leslie said, “you’re up to your neck in this case. You can’t do the investigation.”
“This is not a case. It will never see a judge,” Taylor said. “It’s too hot to go that route. It will be handled otherwise, for better or worse. Now, let’s get down town and see how well Mr. Arlen Cob can sing.”
Chapter 13
The surroundings were familiar and drab. A table. Some chairs. A prisoner in cuffs. This prisoner was cool. Arlen had been cool from the moment Taylor first saw him in the doorway of the Lost Dutchmen.
How do I break that ice?
Taylor nodded to his boss and subordinates, took the formal paper that his boss handed him, and went to beard the cool Mr. Cob.
In the interrogation room, Taylor crossed to the table and sat down facing Cob.
“We’ll make this short and sweet,” Cob said calmly. “I want my lawyer. He’ll be here in ten minutes, then we’ll begin a lawsuit that will have the bureau giving me its budget for the next five years. Other than this, I ain’t saying a word.”
“Terrorist don’t get lawyers,” Taylor said just as calmly.
“You can accuse me of kidnaping you. Nothing else. And that will never go to court.”
Was there a hint of worry there?
Taylor pressed on. “We’ll ignore the other charges against you for now. I don’t hold a grudge. But you, me boyo,” Taylor had to admit he liked the slight involuntary flinch he got from Cob at turning that familiarity around, “are charged with aiding and abetting a terrorist. Under the law, terrorists and their allies don’t get lawyers.”
“There’s no such law!” came in an explosion from Cob.
“Oh, but my bureau lawyers tell me there is. An old, one might even call it ancient law, folded into the Society of Humanity’s judicial code from long ago, and, as it seems, left in our legal code from our days in that by gone society. Yep, boyo, you’re a terrorist and will be tried under those codes.”
Cob was at a lost for words. His lips moved, but nothing came out. Finally he took a deep breath. “I am no terrorist. I’m not aiding and abetting any terrorist. I don’t know where you dreamed that up, but you’ve got nothing like that on me. Sooner or later, you’ll have to answer my employer, and then,” his confident smirk came back, “I’ll own your ass.”
“On the contrary. You and your employer are involved in aiding and abetting terrorists. To whit, delivering equipment and technology under the proscribed articles list for foreign sale to alien terrorists bent on the destruction of all humanity,” Taylor kept his voice as matter of fact as twenty years of work at the law allowed him. He tasted the sound of his voice and found it good.
Cob had the smarts to blink several times after the charge was given him. Then he shook his head.
“I don’t know nothing about no shipment of anything to aliens, or anybody else,” came out calm, but the “I swear to God,” showed he was taking the heat to heart.
“You were told to hold me for two, maybe three weeks. Strange that. Over the next two weeks, a large shipment of technical information, a library to keep it in and examples of quite a lot of restricted gear and machinery was due to be shipped up to the Nuu Yards. In two weeks’ time, a pair of huge ships fitting out there were also due to be completed. Coincidence? I doubt it.”
Taylor paused to let that sink into Cob’s thick skull.
“Those ships during construction were specifically modified from what you’d expect for conventional trade among human planets to specific conditions suitable only for going out to make contact with the space aliens Kris Longknife encountered in her circumnavigation of the galaxy. With the cargo arranged for them and the technological information in them, those huge alien mother ships could beat a quick trail to our door. You’ve seen the pictures of what those monster ships look like, haven’t you?”
“Yeah, I saw it. Couldn’t miss if for the couple of days it was on the news.” Cob was actually showing signs of being thoughtful. “Ugly things. I remember when it was just six battleships threatening to blow Wardhaven back to the Stone Age.”
The kidnapper’s eyes wandered off to the left wall of the interrogation room. “People were pretty pissed about that. That Kris Longknife was the toast of the town for a whole week.”
“It did wonders for her dad’s re-election, didn’t it?”
“Yeah. Bunch of sheep,” Cob snapped. Then seemed to think better of it. “But this is still a political matter. It’s gonna be settled by the Longknifes, not by sending me to jail.”
“You sure of that? Even if we take it that you were just an uninformed pawn, you’re still up for kidnaping an agent of the Bureau of Investigations in furtherance of a conspiracy to provide critical secrets to the most God awful terrorists we’ve ever seen. Remember those pictures of the mother ship? Huge. Imagine the mob of soldiers they’ve got.”
The prisoner gulped. Hard.
“But you didn’t know. Still, you won’t be seeing a conventional court. You’ll be sentenced, probably for life. You hear any stories about our prison on HellFrozeOver? I understand they use the prisoners for genetic experiments. Stuff too deadly or dangerous to risk anywhere closer to Wardhaven.”
Cob’s mouth opened, but nothing came out.
Taylor gauged the emotions running riot on his prisoner’s face. Denial didn’t get much play time. No, most of it was raging terror, descending in a vicious cycle from bad to worse.
It had been a long time since there had been any problem with terrorists. Still, every couple of years there would be a spat of movies on the topic. Each generation seemed to make the deeds of the terrorists more despicable . . . and the response of society more brutal and horrendous.
Taylor wondered which movies were playing in Cob’s mind.
“What can I tell you?” came out as little more than a whisper as the man’s stare fixed on the table.
Cob was broken.
“I want to know about ship captains. Merchant ship officers. Have you been involved in tracking any of them? Do you know anyone who has?” Taylor shot his words hard and fast, machine gun fashion.
Cob seemed to reel back in his seat. He took two deep breaths before saying a word.
“Me, no, I got you,” came out more as spit than words.
“Who got the merchant marine officers?” Taylor knew he was fishing in thin air, still he cast his hook, sure there was a bigger fish out there somewhere.
“Kittikon. He got asked to check out some merchant skippers for the old man. He thought it was scut work. Nothing to it, except for one. ‘Crazy shit coming out of the top floors,’ he told me over a beer, two, no, three weeks ago. They had him chasing down a skipper for the Star Line that had never sailed a mile in a freighter. He tho
ught maybe the old man was going senile. The gal was a commander in the Navy. A real hot rodder in her destroyer. That mean anything to you?” was more a plea than a question.
“And where might I find this Kittikon?” Taylor asked.
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen him much around the shop lately. But then, you were keeping me kind of busy. You got a lot of friends in high places.”
“And you reported all my comings and goings.”
“Yep, every one of them. Well, all but that dame you met at the Galleria. Who was she?”
“As you’re aware, I ask the questions, you answer them,” Taylor said, hardly willing to tell this man that he knew no more about this technical whizz than he did. “I believe you may have been of some help, Mr. Cob. I’ll see that something to eat is brought into you.”
“A steak with all the trimmings?” he said, slipping back into the something of the wise ass he’d been earlier.
“Not on the bureau’s budget.”
“Thanks for nothing.”
“It will be better than jail fare, I assure you,” Taylor said, and headed next door to consult with his boss and Leslie.
The young agent was already using her wrist unit to call up Mr. Kittikon.
“Employed by Nuu Security for the last ten years. He seems to have gone up the organization with more than the usual speed. No criminal involvement. Not so much as a traffic ticket in our database,” Leslie reported.
“Can we track him?” the boss asked.
“No ma’am,” Leslie replied. “I tried as soon as Cob here spit out his name. Nuu agents usually stay on the grid, but this guy has been off it for, oh, the last three weeks.”
“So this problem has been developing for the last three weeks,” Taylor said. “Since before Kris Longknife paid her visit to us. She was right, this project has been underway for at least a month. Likely from the time they changed the design of those two ships in the Nuu Yard,” Taylor said.
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