by David Drake
Larrinaga gathered the credit chips in his hand and offered them back to the Frisian. Vierziger didn’t move.
Larrinaga put the money on the table at which he’d been sitting. “Thank you for the offer,” he said. “I don’t choose to leave Cantilucca while . . . what remains of my wife is here. But I’m not going to buy our house back by sitting here and cadging drinks, am I?”
He stepped around Vierziger because the Frisian wouldn’t shift to let him by. Larrinaga nodded to Moden and to Margulies. “Thank you for your hospitality, Georg,” he called to Hathaway. “I won’t return until I’m able to pay down my bill, though.”
He pulled open the front door and was gone. The mark of Vierziger’s hand on his sallow cheek blazed like a flag.
“Oh my goodness,” mumbled Georg Hathaway. He set upright the chair that had fallen over. “Oh my goodness!”
Moden sat down beside Bob Barbour. When things were serious, the big man seemed more like a force of nature than a human being.
Margulies let out a deep sigh of relief. She looked at Vierziger and shook her head ruefully. “You know,” she said, “I gotta hand it to you, Johann. You may just have saved that silly bastard.”
Vierziger looked at her. She remembered what she’d thought about the things he’d seen. “Nobody can save another person,” he said, so quietly that Margulies thought perhaps she’d imagined the words.
Vierziger walked to the staircase. “Niko!” he called. “Come down here, please, with your kit. We have work to do.”
Sten Moden glanced at the security lieutenant. He raised an eyebrow. Margulies shrugged.
Daun appeared at the top of the stairs, trying to buckle his equipment belt one-handed. The other hand held his larger equipment case and the sling of his sub-machine gun.
“What’s up?” he asked, jouncing down the steps.
“We’re going to check out security for our new employers,” Vierziger said. He opened the coat closet beside the front door and took out the attaché case he’d put there. The case was made of—at least covered with—reptile hide of some sort, black and shiny and as exquisite as every other part of Vierziger’s ensemble.
The only weapon he carried was the pistol over his right hip.
“Driving or walking?” the sensor tech asked. He stopped in the lobby and fastened the belt properly.
“You’re driving us,” Vierziger answered. “I’ll give you directions.”
He nodded goodbye to the others as he closed the door behind him.
“Doesn’t handle himself much like a sergeant, does he?” Sten Moden said to nobody in particular after the door closed.
“Yeah, I noticed that too,” Margulies said dryly. “Sten, did you know Joachim Steuben? Colonel Hammer’s hit man?”
Moden shrugged. “Saw him once, a long way away. I’d heard he was dead.”
“He is dead,” Margulies said. “I saw the incident report. Took a 2-cm bolt slap between the shoulder-blades. No trouble with the identification—head and limbs weren’t touched. But there’s no curst doubt he was dead—”
The two officers looked at the armored door without speaking further.
“Bingo!” said Barbour. He’d gone on with his search while everyone else was focused on Johann Vierziger. “I’ve got what the major’s looking for!”
“Well, call it in to him,” Sten Moden said. “Sounded like he meant it when he said ASAP.”
Barbour touched the channel one button on the console.
Mary Margulies leaned over the intelligence officer’s shoulder to see the highlighted name. “Cargo Supervisor Terence Ortega,” she read aloud. She frowned. “The name’s familiar for some reason.”
“Now,” said Johann Vierziger as the door to the underground garage quivered. Daun ran the jitney forward five meters, across the head of the ramp.
Suterbilt’s armored four-wheeled van pulled halfway through the doorway. The driver slammed on his brakes in a panic when he realized the lighter vehicle was halted across his passage.
Vierziger stepped off the back of the jitney with the attaché case in his left hand and a bright smile on his face. The van’s headlights fell across him. “Master Suterbilt!” he called in a cheerful voice. “Just the man we’re looking for! We’ve identified a security problem.”
The van’s driver opened the door and stepped out onto his running board. He pointed a bell-mouthed mob gun through the crack at the Frisian. Vierziger walked over and extended his right hand to the driver. The local man aimed the mob gun skyward and shook hands, looking confused.
“Who are you?” Suterbilt called from inside the vehicle. After a moment, he got out and walked a step up the ramp.
“Johann Vierziger of the Frisian Defense Forces,” Vierziger answered enthusiastically. “We’ve run a security check on L’Escorial—and yourself, of course, since you’re really the most important—”
“I’m not a member of any local organization!” Suterbilt interrupted hastily. “I work for Trans-Star Trading.”
“Of course you do,” Vierziger agreed with a patently oily smile. “Of course. But—you can see how significant you are to us, to the FDF, surely?”
He waved his hand toward the street traffic. “That other lot, they’re boobs with guns. They don’t matter to professionals like ourselves, whatever color they happen to be wearing when we go to work. But you, Master Suterbilt . . . Anything that could affect our payment is a matter of serious concern.”
The TST offices were on the second floor of the building Suterbilt was leaving on his way home. He glanced up at the block of lighted windows.
“We have a security system as well as guards,” he said in dawning nervousness. “Do you think . . .?”
“It’s not here that we foresee a problem,” Vierziger explained. “After all, an attack on TST doesn’t affect you personally. We’re more concerned that the work of art you have in an outlying dwelling would be targeted. You have a Suzette, do you not? A psychic ambiance that’s probably worth close to the value of the warehouse which Astra has already destroyed.”
Except for the pistol on his hip, Vierziger looked like an unusually well-dressed businessman from a highly developed world. The reptile-skin case caught the light of passing vehicles as he gestured with it. The shimmer drew attention away from his right hand—gun hand—which moved scarcely at all.
“What could they possibly gain by damaging the ambiance?” the factor asked in amazement. “Anyway, I’ve thought of that. There’s six guards in the house at all times. As thick as the walls are, they could hold out for days if there was trouble.”
Suterbilt’s driver settled back into his seat. He shifted his gaze between his principal, standing beside the van, and Niko Daun, seated in the saddle of the jitney with a vaguely positive expression.
“Precisely!” Vierziger said, leaving Suterbilt even more puzzled. “And what would you give to prevent the destruction of that valuable work of art, Master Suterbilt? Would you cancel the FDF’s contract?”
“Well, I wouldn’t—” the factor began.
“And more to the point,” Vierziger said, steamrollering the reply, “does Astra think you might do that? They’ve struck unexpectedly once, you remember. That success will encourage them to choose the next weak point.”
“There’s nothing weak about it!” Suterbilt insisted. “I have guards and—”
“And an alarm system, just as the L’Escorial warehouse had!” Vierziger snapped. “If you don’t mind, sir, why don’t we finish this discussion in place—at the threatened location. I can point out the problems to you as well as the steps we’ll take to solve them.”
“I wasn’t planning—”
Vierziger turned and gestured imperiously with the attaché case. “Specialist Daun!” he ordered. “Back up your cyclo, please. When the car pulls out of the drive you’ll be able to park in the garage and get in with us. I want you along.”
He looked at Suterbilt again. “That is all right, isn’t it
?” he said. “I’m concerned that Astra sympathizers or even mere vandals will deface the vehicle if it’s not protected. Specialist Daun’s expertise is quite important for our assessment.”
Suterbilt swallowed. “Well, I—” he said. “Yes, of course, park your car in space twelve. I’ll drop you off here again when we’re done.”
He frowned. “This isn’t going to take very long, is it?”
“Tsk!” Vierziger said. “Ten minutes, fifteen at most. But if it’s not done, the damage could be irreparable.”
He slipped past Suterbilt and into the back of the van as though he’d been formally invited to do so. After a moment, Suterbilt sighed and got in beside the Frisian.
It would be simpler to carry out the inspection than to continue the discussion. Besides, Suterbilt got an uncomfortable feeling when he argued with the dapper stranger. It was as though he was eye to eye with a cobra, or perhaps a shark.
“Roger,” Coke said, looking over the counter at Pilar Ortega as he spoke into the pickup of his commo helmet. “One out.”
The artificial intelligence in the helmet disconnected the circuit at the word “out.”
Pilar glanced up with a smile that faded when she saw the set of Matthew Coke’s face. They’d spent long enough together during the time the Frisian had been on Cantilucca that she was beginning to read even expressions meant to be noncommittal.
“Bad news?” she asked. Her voice quivered on the second word. No one else was present in the passenger services building; Pilar had been in the process of shutting up for the evening.
Coke looked around, more to provide a moment to think than because he expected there would be anything to see. A freighter well across the field lifted in a rainbow of ionized atoms. Pilar had processed the two passengers, traveling salesmen in irrigation and cultivating machinery, through the boarding checks an hour before.
“Expected news,” Coke said. He met the woman’s eyes. “Bad news, yeah.”
He took a deep breath. “Pilar,” he said, “you’ve got to get off Cantilucca immediately. Pack a bag with enough clothes to wear, take any—”
She was staring at him in horror. Her right hand clasped the crucifix.
“—knickknacks that you absolutely have to have,” Coke continued, plowing forward even though the woman looked as if he’d started to disrobe in the middle of the office. “You can go anywhere, except not Delos, and you’ve got to—”
“Matthew! Stop this!” Pilar said.
“—go now,” Coke blurted. “Pilar, please, I don’t want to say this—”
“Stop, Matthew!” she cried.
The rainbow curtain of light lifted rapidly. It raced across the terrazzo floor as the freighter climbed vertically from the port.
The deep thrum of the starship’s engines made the prefabricated building shudder with familiar vibrations.
Coke leaned across the counter. He hugged Pilar tightly to him so that he couldn’t look at her face.
“Pilar,” he said quickly, crisply. “Terry, your husband Terry, has screwed up really badly. He’s done something that’ll cost the Delos cartel millions of pesos, maybe tens of millions. When they investigate they’ll spot him, just as my people did. They’ll kill him and everybody close to him as slowly as they can make it happen. You’ve got to get out of the way now, before it happens.”
He thought that Pilar would push him away, though they’d held each other past evenings in the privacy of her suite. Instead she pressed her hands against his shoulder blades. “Matthew,” she said, “why are you saying this?”
“I’ll give you money, money’s not a problem,” he said. “Time is a problem. If you’re still around when the cartel comes looking, I don’t know what, what your chances’ll be no matter how I try.”
“Please,” Pilar said in a subdued tone. She straightened against his pull. He let her go.
“Matthew,” she said. “Even if what you say is true, I can’t abandon Terry. You know—”
“Pilar, he’s abandoned you!” Coke shouted. “He hasn’t been home to sleep for a week! Three days ago he picked up some of his clothes while you were—”
“Matthew! How did you know that?”
“While you were at work, curse it, and I know it because I’m having him watched, that’s how I bloody know it!”
She turned her back. Her shoulders hunched over her sobs. “You don’t understand,” she cried. “What Terry does is between him and the Lord. I won’t abandon him.”
Coke threw open the gate in the counter and stepped inside. Pilar flinched away, but he grabbed her by the upper arms. “All right, Pilar,” he said. “You won’t go without your husband, so let’s get him.”
She didn’t resist as the Frisian walked her toward the side door where the van was parked. The door opened ahead of them. A Marvelan, one of the clerks from the office next door, stuck his head in. “Hey, Pilar,” he said. “Tomorrow will you cover for—”
He finally noticed Coke and Ortega in an apparent embrace. “Oh,” he concluded.
Coke cleared the Marvelan out of their way by pointing a finger like a lance tip. “Go do your own job for a change!” the Frisian shouted. “Pretend you’re good for something!”
He handed Pilar into the van and stepped around to the driver’s side. The key was already in his pocket. He’d driven the pair of them ever since the first night he escorted Pilar home.
The freighter had vanished into orbit, preparatory to entering Transit space. The two moons were chips on the eastern horizon.
“Where are we going, Matthew?” the woman asked softly.
“I told you,” he said. The diesel spun thirty seconds before it caught. He’d meant to have Sten’s mechanic friend work the cursed thing over, but he didn’t suppose it mattered any longer. “We’re going to get your husband and I’ll put both of you on the next ship out of here.”
He revved the engine to keep it well above its lumpy idle while he dropped the transmission into gear. The van lurched forward. Only when they were twenty meters along the driveway did Coke add the load of the headlight to his demands on the stumbling engine.
“I hope the two of you will find a happy life in your new home,” he added bitterly.
Suterbilt got out of the van in front of a one-story freestanding structure on the northern outskirts of Potosi. The walls were sheer and windowless, and the door would have done for a bank vault.
“You see?” the factor said with a sweep of his arm. “No common walls or floors to break in through. This is probably the safest place in the whole town. A fortress!”
“If it were a fortress,” Johann Vierziger said as he followed Suterbilt from the vehicle, “it would have firing ports. That’s the obvious first problem here.”
He sauntered toward the door. Behind him, Suterbilt wore a look of dawning concern.
“Larrinaga must really have been in the money to afford this,” Niko Daun observed as he brought up the rear. “You wouldn’t guess that to see him now, would you?”
“What?” said Suterbilt. “Well, yes, I suppose he was doing rather well. It was Larrinaga’s competition that drove that old fool Roberson to tie in with Astra, to tell the truth.”
The factor laughed with cruel humor. “Out of the frying pan and into the fire, that was,” he added. “If I’m feeling kindly after we’ve cleaned out the Astras, I’ll let Roberson go off-planet alive.”
He pressed the call button beside the door. A melodious chime sounded, blurred by the thickness of the walls. Nothing else happened for a moment
“And,” Vierziger noted aloud, “none of the so-called guards are keeping a watch on the exterior display.”
He nodded upward toward the miniature lens array above the door. The camera fed a surveillance display inside.
Suterbilt pursed his lips.
Locks within the panel chuckled liquidly as the mechanism drew them back. A man inside grunted and pushed the heavy door open. He wore a red headband and tried to stand
at attention when he’d accomplished his task. Three other men stumbled into the entryway behind him, tucking in their clothes and checking weapons that they’d obviously just grabbed.
“Ah, g’day, sir,” the guard with the headband said. “I, ah, we weren’t expecting you tonight.”
The last two guards appeared from the living area beyond. One of them was holding the other upright. The front of the latter man’s tunic was stiff with dried vomit. His eyes were open, but they didn’t focus.
“You normally call ahead, I gather,” Vierziger said to the factor. A sneer was implicit in his dry tone.
“These gentlemen are security specialists,” Suterbilt said harshly. “They’re here to view the premises.”
Vierziger walked into the house. “And to look at the ambiance itself,” he said coolly.
He raised his attaché case, holding it between himself and the guard. The gesture was similar to that of a woman whisking her long skirt away as she passes dog droppings on the sidewalk. When he was clear, he set the case down beside the wall.
The interior of the house was pretty much of a pig sty. Liquor bottles and hundreds, perhaps thousands, of empty stim cones littered the floors. The building had a sophisticated environmental system to exchange outside air, but the filters had been unable to control the stench of human wastes, vomit, and unwashed bodies.
There was no sign of women, though. Apparently Suterbilt’s orders that no outsiders should be admitted had been obeyed to the letter.
The factor rapped his knuckles on a wall to direct attention away from the state of housekeeping which he’d permitted. “See these?” he said. “The whole place is a ceramic monocasting, twenty centimeters thick on the outside. You could shoot straight into a wall and not so much as scar it!”
Vierziger sniffed. “Ceramics are all very well so long as you don’t exceed their strength moduli,” he said. He walked down the hall, deliberately shuffling his feet sideways to sweep litter out of his path. “One additional straw beyond that and you’ve got sand, not armor.”