An InfoRequest sheet showed up.
“Who filed that?”
Rex’s chest made a mild clang when he tapped himself with his thumb. “Me. I faked a very believable and official-looking inquiry pertaining to the SoCal Coroner’s Office files on the deceased. That’s where the test results on the DNA scan are supposed to be, plus a sample of the material used.”
A fresh document came onto the screen.
“‘No such file exists,’” read Dan. “What’s that mean? They’ve got to have the Devlin file.”
“It’s possible that the stuff on Devlin got misfiled somehow,” acknowledged the robot. “But, Daniel, I sort of doubt that.”
“Then somebody deliberately—”
“Dan, your condo told me you’d be here.” Molly Fine came hurrying into the big Background & ID room.
“What is it?”
“My Uncle Jerry—you know, the attorney from the shady side of the family tree—just phoned me at home.”
“You look very upset.” He took hold of her hand.
Taking a deep breath and putting her other hand on his arm, she said, “He still has contacts with some of the sleazy people he met while doing sneaky jobs for Gunsmiths, Ltd. And—well, he heard something about your father.”
“Dad? Is he in trouble?”
“That flight to Spain,” said Molly, talking rapidly. “Uncle Jerry doesn’t have many details, but he heard they plan to try to do something to the skyliner.”
“Jesus, blow it up?”
“I don’t know. What you’ve got to do is get in touch with him right now in flight and—”
“I’ll take care of that,” volunteered Rex, trotting over to the nearest vidphone. “I got pals in the International Controllers Guild and they can patch us through faster than anybody.” He activated the phone. “Give me the details of his flight, Daniel.”
Dan did that as he hurried to the robot’s side. “Who’s trying to get at my Dad, Molly?”
“We don’t know for sure. But my uncle is guessing it’s Teklords.”
“Damn it, hurry up, Rex.”
The robot turned away from the phone. “No luck,” he said forlornly. “They lost all contact with the skyliner over ten minutes ago.”
19
THE MAN KNOWN as Gardner Munsey was walking along a quirky lane just off Pennsylvania Avenue with his shoulders hunched and his hands clasped behind his back. There was, as he made his way through the chill, overcast DC night, a thin, satisfied smile on his tanned face.
He continued to smile as he double-timed up the stone steps of the narrow brownstone house that was his destination.
The red realwood door opened before he reached it.
A large silverplated robot in a glossy black tuxsuit was standing in the carpeted hallway waiting for him. “Not a very pleasant evening, sir,” he observed.
“On the contrary, Ramus, it’s a splendid night.” He turned and allowed the bot to help him out of his misted grey overcoat. “Is Mrs. Spangler about tonight?”
“Unfortunately, sir, she had to escort two of the young ladies to a client’s in Chevy Chase.”
“Sorry to have missed the lady.”
“However, sir, Miss Marie is in her usual room and awaiting you.”
“Excellent, old man.” He gave the robot an appreciative pat on the arm and headed up the carpeted stairway to the second floor.
At the third door on the right he tapped three times.
“Come in,” invited a youthful female voice.
“It’s a pleasure to encounter you again, my dear.” Munsey entered the softlit, peach-colored room and shut the door quietly behind him.
The girl reclining on the antique four-poster bed was wearing only some frilly lingerie. She was lean, blonde and no more than seventeen. “How are you tonight, Mr. Munsey?”
“Just fine, dear.” He smiled at her as he walked around the bed. He pressed his hand flat against a painting of a naked young woman sitting on a rock.
A section of the bedroom wall made a very slight creaking before swinging open.
Munsey said, “Nice seeing you again, Marie,” and stepped through the opening.
After the wall had swung behind him, he crossed to the single chair, an antique nineteenth-century bentwood rocker. Stopping behind the chair, he rested his right hand on its twisted back. “Can we get going, old man? I’ve a rather full schedule this evening.”
The circular holostage a few feet in front of the chair made some low clicking sounds.
The man who materialized was about forty, short and redhaired. He was grimacing and the left sleeve of his striped shirt was rolled up to nearly the shoulder. His right hand was metal and he was touching the forefinger to his bare upper arm. “Trying out another new hand, got an injection gun built in.”
The dark metal hand popped twice. The redhaired man jerked twice, gritting his teeth, in his straight metal chair.
“Very impressive, Sam.” Munsey settled into the bentwood chair, causing it to rock gently a few times. “Suffering for the cause. If it were up to me, old man, I’d award you a medal.”
“Screw you, Munsey,” said Sam Trinity, scowling. “If I don’t shoot myself full of painkiller all the time, I can’t really function at all.” He picked up a white glove and began working it back over the metal fingers. “I wasn’t in such lousy shape, hurting all the damn time, until I had my run-in with Jake Cardigan.”
“Relax and enjoy it,” advised the other agent. “It gives you a lovely excuse to dope yourself up.”
Trinity said, “Are you taking care of Cardigan?”
“Even as we speak.”
“I don’t see why we can’t just kill the bastard.”
“The directive I’m forced to follow states he and that whimsical sidekick of his are to be incapacitated only. My assumption is that somebody higher up the line doesn’t want to risk killing a couple of Cosmos ops.” Munsey smiled. “Of course, old man, we’re not prevented from putting Cardigan seriously out of action. My people have some leeway there.”
“Bastard.”
“Me?”
“Cardigan, I mean.” Trinity leaned suddenly forward, grinding his teeth. Yanking the glove free, he administered another shot of narcotics. “It’s bad tonight.”
“Maybe you ought to use it to predict the weather,” Munsey suggested. “I had an uncle with a cyborg leg who could tell when it was going to—”
“Fill me in on the Cardigan deal. I’m still, keep in mind, your superior.”
“For now.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Not a thing, Sam, merely idle chitchat.” Munsey smiled. “Still, with an organization as volatile as our particular branch of the OCO—Well, one never can tell.”
“Have you heard something, damn it?” Trinity was pulling the glove back onto his metal hand.
“No, not at all,” Munsey answered. “Quit fretting and concentrate on Cardigan. Any moment now his skyliner is going to be making an unscheduled landing. We’ll take care of him then.”
“We ought to dump the whole damn plane in the frigging ocean.”
“That’s inhumane, Sam, and against agency policy,” reminded the agent. “You can always hope, however, that my people become too zealous and kill him, quite by accident.”
“If I was running this operation, there wouldn’t have to be any hoping about it.” Trinity stood up. “Report to my office soon as you hear how it turns out.”
Munsey left the rocker. “Of course, old man.”
“Do you ever spend any time with Marie?”
“No more than I have to.”
“She’s not bad in the sack. You ought to take the time to try her.”
“Thanks for the recommendation, old man, but I think I’ll pass.”
“Your mistake.” Trinity vanished from the platform.
20
GOMEZ HAD BEEN up in the galley of the skyliner as it sped through the increasingly dark sky high above the Atlantic. “B
ut I’m sincere, chiquita,” he was telling the pretty blonde android attendant who was in charge of the nearcaf machine.
“You really do think so?”
“Absolutely. You’re completely believable,” he assured her.
She wrinkled her slightly upturned nose. “Oh, I just don’t think so,” she said. “I’m cute and all, but anybody can tell I’m an andy, just a dumb old machine.”
“Not at all,” the detective assured her. “You had me completely fooled. I mentioned to my associate earlier in the journey that it was interesting to note that the Quixote Air Service was using human attendants instead of—”
“He’s very attractive.”
“Why are you talking about me in the third person, cara?”
“Not you, Mr. Gomez, although you’re sort of okay looking in an odd sort of way. I mean your handsome friend, Mr. Cardigan.” She filled another plazcup with nearcaf. “He’s my idea of a really impressive man. He’s obviously led a rough life, but he’s still—”
“Hey, that’s just a reaction they built into you, Suzi,” cut in Gomez. “If you ever want to be taken for a real human being, you’ve got to go beyond these traditional judgments. When you can honestly appreciate an offbeat charm such as mine, then you’ll be a real person inside.”
“Have you known Mr. Cardigan long?”
“Since before you were built, but we’re straying from the topic.”
“Oh, don’t be offended. It’s …”
He waited, eyeing her. “It’s what?”
Suzi stiffened, arms dropping to her side. Her eyes went wide before they both clicked shut.
Gomez shook her by both arms. “Snap out of it.”
But the pretty android had ceased to function and already her very believable flesh had started to cool.
Shaking his head, frowning, he hurried across the small gallery and into the passway that led to the cabins.
A few feet ahead a male attendant was standing rigidly against a wall, eyes closed.
“Muy malo.” Gomez started to run.
Jake came out of their cabin before Gomez reached it, having slid the door open with his hands. “Something’s wrong, Sid,” he said. “Just about everything except the aircirc system has shut down in there.”
“At least two of the flight andies are defunct, too.” He gestured at the frozen attendant.
Someone started banging on the door of the cabin across the corridor. “My lights have gone out and my door’s stuck,” cried an elderly woman.
Jake crossed, prying her door open. “Some kind of emergency, ma’am.”
“We’re going to crash?” she exclaimed. “You can feel this plane losing altitude.”
“Now that she mentions it, amigo, we are dropping.”
Jane started moving toward the front of the sky-liner. “Better talk to the pilot.”
More passengers were shouting and crying out. Some of them managed to force their doors open and were spilling into the long grey corridor.
“Mostly ocean down below, if I recall my geography,” remarked Gomez as he followed Jake.
“We ought to be over the Azore Islands about now.”
“Not much chance of hitting one of those dinky islands when you’re plummeting toward the deep blue sea.”
“We’re not exactly plummeting. This feels more like a descent.”
“Descent or plummet, I expect to be mighty soggy any minute.”
Jake knocked on the door to the pilot cabin.
There was no response.
He tugged the door aside with both hands.
The greyhaired woman in the pilot seat was absorbed with the control panel, tapping keys, twisting knobs, even whacking a dial with her clenched fist now and then. “No time for conversation, folks,” she said without turning around.
“What the hell is going on?” Jake stepped into the small cabin.
“Feel like something’s taken over the control of the ship,” the pilot told him. “But that’s not possible. All of Quixote’s systems are tamper-proof. So this can’t be a parasite box or—”
“According to this course screen,” said Jake, tapping the oval panel, “we’re scheduled to land on one of the Azore Islands.”
“I know, but I had nothing to do with that,” she assured him. “I can’t, though, get the ship to respond at all. Somebody else is flying it.”
“Looks like we’ll set down in less than six minutes.”
“Amigo, you’ve often heard me lecture on the scarcity of coincidences in the universe.”
“I agree, Sid. This has to have something to do with us.”
“Sí, meaning we can expect some sort of unpleasant reception down there.”
“Yeah,” said Jake. “And we’ve got about five minutes to get ready for that.”
Dan said, “That’s not possible, is it?
Rex/GK-30 spread his metal hands wide. “Kids, I’ve checked with everybody I can think of, including a bosom buddy up in the International Flight Monitoring satellite,” said the robot. “Nobody can find a trace of the Quixote skyliner carrying your pop and his partner.”
“But it has to show up on the satellite scans.”
“Not necessarily,” said Molly, who was holding Dan’s hand. “If the people who are behind this are sufficiently clever, there are several electronic tricks they can rig—all of them illegal and expensive. But neither of those things is a block to the Teklords.”
Dan said, “We’ve got to talk with your uncle, Molly. See if he knows anything else about this.”
“That’s not going to be especially easy.” She made a perturbed face. “He phoned me from Mexico and didn’t bother to give me his number or mention where exactly he was.”
“I can track him down,” offered the robot.
“You better do that.” Dan let go of Molly and hurried over to another vidphone. “I’m going to talk to Bascom if I can.”
The agency head was still in his office. “I already heard, Dan,” he said before the young man had finished speaking.
“So what do you know about Dad? Did they crash or—”
“We’re not sure.” Bascom was sitting behind his desk, leaning forward. “My guess, however, is that the crate was hijacked in some pretty sophisticated way. If it had simply crashed in the ocean, we’d know about it by now.”
“The Teklords are involved in this,” said Dan, explaining about what Molly’s shady uncle had told her.
“They’re involved in much of what befalls your father,” said Bascom. “There may also be a government angle, which I’m pursuing with some of my intelligence contacts.”
“You mean maybe the Office of Clandestine Operations is in on this, too? They’ve never liked Dad or—”
“Too soon to tell. Keep in mind that Jake and Gomez are damned good at taking care of themselves.”
“Sure, but—”
“I’ll call you soon as I find out anything.” The screen blanked.
Rex announced, “Hot dog, I’ve located Jerrold Fine in the Borderland area.”
Molly brightened. “Let me call him, then,” she said.
21
THEY STOOD AT the edge of the clearing, watching the Quixote skyliner being brought down through the warm night. Rising up behind the three figures was the immense plastiglass dome that covered the Fayal Fruit Company’s #3 banana plantation.
The small field’s landing lights splashed streaks of yellow across the darkclad watchers, two men and a woman.
The tallest of the trio, a lanky black man in his middle thirties, was arguing with the woman.
She was small, a shade over five feet, and wore her dark hair long. “I’m not going to do that, Charlie, no.”
“I’m afraid, Almita, you’re going to have to,” said Charlie Lunden, holding out his hand to her. “No lazguns allowed on this mission, so give it to me.”
“No lazguns for you OCO buttwipes,” she said, shaking her head, angry, and backing away from the agent. “But I don’t have a
damn thing to do with your agency or your halfass government.”
“Carlos Zabicas guaranteed your good behavior, which is the only reason you were allowed along,” reminded Lunden. “Now, quick, the ship is setting down. We’ve got to get aboard right now and take Cardigan and Gomez.”
“They’re both rough bastards,” insisted Almita Santos. “I’m not giving up my gun.”
“Almita, dear,” said the other OCO agent, a tall, husky blond man, “this is a stungun you feel in your pretty little back. Take out your lazgun, drop it. That will be more than enough crap for tonight.”
“Listen, Helton, Carlos won’t like you—”
“It would be a shame,” said Bayard Helton, jabbing the gun barrel into her spine, “if you were seriously incapacitated—perhaps permanently—during this operation. We can blame it on Cardigan and—”
“Okay, cabrón.” She tossed the lazgun toward the brush and the night swallowed it up.
“Cardigan and his partner are in Cabin 14,” said Lunden. “But they’ll be expecting trouble. Come on, let’s go.”
“Try to keep in mind, dear,” said Lunden, prodding her with the gun, “that we’re a team.”
Jerrold Fine told everybody he was forty seven, but shaving that six years off his age hadn’t improved his appearance any. He had a sallow, deeply wrinkled face and his eyes were dull and deeply sunk. Very carefully, he ducked into the phone booth in the lobby of the Hotel Borderland. “This is Jerrold Fine,” he said, almost in a whisper. “There’s a personal call for me from GLA.”
“What’s that, señor?” A ball-headed gunmetal robot had shown up on the screen. “I can’t hear you at all clearly.”
“First—are you absolutely certain this damned vidphone is tap-proof?”
“Of course, señor.”
“Some of these backward Borderland setups claim they’re absolutely bugfree and then it turns out—”
“I assure you, señor, that no one can eavesdrop on your conversation. Not even myself.”
“I’m Jerrold Fine,” he repeated his name in a louder voice. “There’s a call from Greater Los Angeles waiting for me.”
“Sí, from Molly Fine. Un momento.”
Molly showed up on the screen, replacing the bot. “Uncle Jerry, you’ve got to help us find—”
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