Streets of Blood

by Marc Gascoigne

  He was staring gloomily down the hallway, dawdling over the remains of a creme brulee that had resolutely failed to ignite his appetite, when he saw the hint of a face vanish into the elevator. His heart missed a beat, damn nearly missed a second, and he had to swallow hard to keep from throwing up right there in the middle of the restaurant.

  Mustering as much nonchalance as he could in his shaken state, Serrin strolled to the reception desk. Having dressed for lunch, and looking more respectable than usual, he thought he just might get away with it. Besides, he was booked for the whole weekend, so he really was the part, whether he looked it or not.

  "Excuse me. The gentleman who just arrived," he breezed to the receptionist, "he’s an old friend of mine. Which is his suite?" He took a chance that Kuranita wouldn’t have taken an ordinary room. The receptionist might be fooled by that little touch, and thus give it away.

  She was cooler than that, and she didn’t. "I’m sorry, sir. We cannot provide room numbers of guests without their express permission."

  "Of course, I understand. I’ll catch up with him later." He smiled politely, but he’d seen all he needed to. The ID was still flickering on the vidscreen. James Kuruyama, Communication Management Associates, Chiltem Suite. So it was a false ID, although the company seemed to be plausible enough. Serrin dimly recalled CMA as a subsidiary of the great megacorporation that actually employed Kuranita these days.

  But what the hell was Paul Kuranita, Deputy Head of Active Security for Fuchi Switzerland, doing here under this alias?

  Back in his room, Serrin had a lot to think about as he took his fetishes and focuses from their silk wraps. Next he unfolded the outer casing of his attaché case, drew out the components of the Ingram, and began to assemble them, screwing and clipping the gun together. When he had finished, he hefted its weight in his left hand for a few moments before slamming a clip of ammunition home with a pleasing click.

  In all the years since his parents had been murdered, the missile striking down the Renraku chopper with unerring accuracy, Serrin had never been able to get more than a lead on a single name.

  Paul Kuranita.

  The man had been untouchable, a brilliant freelance samurai whose movements were untraceable, until the troll in Jo’burg had left him so badly burned that all the reconstructive surgery and spare parts his millions could buy had not been able to put him back together. For six years, Kuranita had worked his way up the ladder of the Fuchi organization. Deputy Head of Active Security for Switzerland sounded like a joke, unless one knew that the Head was hopelessly senile and no more than a figurehead. The joke was even less amusing because of how powerful the Swiss division was in coordinating all of Fuchi’s European activities.

  Serrin had never been a hundred percent sure of Kuranita’s complicity in his parents’ deaths. The evidence was only circumstantial, but then it could never be more than that with someone like Kuranita. Now, however, fortune had brought the assassin to Serrin, and he wasn’t going to pass up his chance.

  He began to plan carefully. Immediate magical surveillance would be a mistake, of course, but perhaps some nuyen thrown to the garage attendant for information on Kuranita’s limo would be good for starters.

  By the time the mage had made his plans, the world beyond his room had fallen dark. Passing through the lobby and down the emergency stairs to the garage, he did not see the nobleman gawking almost stupidly at him from the reception desk.

  Geraint had no time to chase after the elf, as he was immediately stopped in his tracks by a relieved Earl of Smethwick. The earl was delighted to see him again and would really love to introduce Geraint to some distinctly tipsy young woman from OzNet who was digging up bits for a trid feature on the seminar. The pressure of Smethwick’s hand gripping his forearm unerringly conveyed the message, "Get this gopping bimbo off my tail and I’ll owe you a massive favor, friend," with pressing urgency.

  With just the hint of a sigh, Geraint decided to do Smethwick a good turn and turned to the woman, a blowsy type who clearly favored applying her make-up with a trowel. Geraint’s first few applications of insincere Celtic charm seemed to be received with an almost devotional eagerness by the tridjock. She’d probably been given the cold shoulder by almost everyone else here that evening, and there was something almost touching about her relief at finding someone willing to talk to her. Hell, maybe her job was on the line; she was obviously only a junior. At least I can buy her dinner, Geraint thought, and make sure I don’t let anything slip.

  He took her arm in his and headed for the flambée.

  * * *

  "It is not really predictable. I don’t think this is such a well-planned step."

  "Look, he can’t get close to the man. There’s no chance of anything serious happening here. The important thing is to put that name into his head. He’s spent days doing sweet FA, and now he’s got something to sink his teeth into. He won’t get to Kuranita, but he’ll start investigating. He’ll meet the Welshman and the two of them will begin asking some questions. It will be some time before they can find out what was going down all those years ago, but when they get to the answer the timing will be more or less right. After all, that’s a step we can control.

  "Sure, there’s a whiff of the wild card about it, but you know Calcraft’s Cumulated Inexactness Theorem. A sufficient number of wild cards come down to a highly probable hand of cards at the end of the day."

  The thin man scratched at his yellowed teeth, picking the last remains of shrimp from between his incisors. He looked, for several moments, as if he were weighing the delicate balance of the matter with every gram of intellect he could bring to bear. Finally, he sat back and tapped a cigarette on the mahogany arm of his chair.

  "Charles, that’s utter bollocks!" They both burst out laughing, then broke into contented grins. "Okay, let’s check the conditioning. I think he’s pretty much done by now. Let’s arrange the logistics."

  * * *

  Wheels turn.

  Annie Chapman has less than three days to live.

  So it continues.

  7

  Serrin sneaked up quietly behind a peaceful Geraint, who sat reading his Financial Times in the breakfast room at the unspeakably early hour of seven-thirty in the morning. The seminars were to start at nine, but still no sign of most of the hotel’s honorable sirs and ladies so early in the day.

  The Welshman was too engrossed in the headlines to notice Serrin’s soft footfall.

  "One day, Geraint, you’re going to catch some rather unpleasant social disease. Mind if I sit with you?" Serrin didn’t await the reply, but instead took the chair opposite and began to help himself to grapefruit slices from the silver bowl.

  "I didn’t think you’d noticed me, old man," Geraint said, looking up from another fiercely worded editorial railing against the state of the British economy. "You seemed in rather a hurry as I was arriving. Welcome to the dreaming spires of Cambridge." He proffered a lordly hand in greeting.

  Serrin waved away the formality. "I had people to bribe. I saw you when I got back from out of town. Just before midnight in the coffee shop with a most disreputable-looking young woman. Like I said, chummer, mind you don’t catch something."

  "I’ve been inoculated against most of what’s out there, and anyway she was very drunk. It wouldn’t have been right, don’t you know; true gentlemen don’t behave like that. Anyway, you old reprobate, what have you been doing these last seven years—and what brings you to England?"

  They settled down to reminiscences of time apart as the room began to fill around them. Serrin spoke of years in hotel rooms, orbitals, and shuttles, the skeletal details of one or two of his many runs. Geraint noted the lack of any personal revelations. The elf always did hide behind lists: numbers, cities, dates, and places. Serrin didn’t speak of L.A. or the Bay area. But that had been so long ago, and they had been so young and a lot less knowing of the ways of the world.

  Serrin had grown thinner, Geraint observed as
he studied the other’s face. He noticed, too, that the elf’s hands shook just a little now. Though Serrin had been shot up seriously not long before he and Geraint first met, the elf had possessed an energy in those days that now seemed to have turned in on him. Behind the effort to appear glad and pleased to see his friend again, Geraint felt a little saddened.

  "So that’s about it. Amsterdam, Paris, Seattle, and now the delights of the bally old Smoke for this year. But hey! What about you? I read a profile of you in one of the UCAS business datanets sometime last spring. They tipped you as one of the fifty brightest comers in European speculative finances. If you’d been a racehorse, I’d have backed you to win the Derby!"

  Geraint broke into a bright smile as he opened a new pack for the first cigarette of the day. Serrin reached across and helped himself, dismissing the silver lighter as he struck an old-fashioned match and lit both their cigarettes. Feigning a voice from an ancient American detective movie and pulling an imaginary raincoat closer to his neck to keep out non-existent rain, he whispered, "I wuz pleased to see my humble match lit as brightly as the dude’s flashy Zippo."

  Geraint leaned back and locked Serrin in a close gaze. "You always could raise a smile, old friend. I looked for you after it was all over, you know. I hoped that someone in Tir Tairngire might have been able to give me a lead, but you’d gone to ground and your people were very silent. Very polite, but very silent. I didn’t forget you." Their fingers reached out, and they held their hands clasped strongly for a few seconds across the table.

  "I know." The elfs voice was soft and his expression downcast. "Geraint, it was all too much for me. I was older than you, but I guess I felt I could never hold on to anyone I cared for. Not after the killings there. I don’t think I’ve ever been able to, not since my parents died. I guess I just keep running. If I keep moving, and I keep doing things, then I’m always going to be alive. If I stop, I see that my hands are shaking and my leg pains me. That’s what I get if . . ."

  His voice trailed away, and he took a deep drag on the cigarette, coughing slightly as he began to stub out half its length in the cut-glass ashtray. Then his expression changed, and he leaned forward across the table.

  "Geraint, there’s something going on here that I don’t understand. Paul Kuranita’s here under a false name. Registered as James Kuruyama." Geraint looked startled, uncertain what to say. "You know what that means to me."

  "For God’s sake, are you sure?" the Welshman hissed. "Positive. I spent two years building up his profile from the records of all his operations. Cost me half a million to trace everything, but there isn’t any doubt. What the hell is he doing here?"

  "Look, don’t be too hasty. The seminars and lectures go on until seven o’clock tomorrow night. Don’t do anything foolish; let’s both try to find out something about it. Know where he’s staying?"

  "Hotel ID had him in the Chiltem Suite." Serrin looked grim.

  "Give me a couple of hours. I’m down fora real stinker at ten, a three-hour marathon on drug markets and viral degeneration syndromes. Basically it comes down to how many billions of nuyen the drug companies can make out of the crumblies before they hit their ninetieth birthdays. I have people to see there, and I need to be seen nodding enthusiastically during their speeches, if I can force down enough coffee to stay awake, that is. I’ll inquire very discreetly about—Kuruyama?"

  Geraint began leafing through his massive collection of brochures. "I have a feeling he’s down as a teleconferencer: not attending seminars, just watching from his hotel room. It’s what the paranoids do if they don’t want a legion of trolls with automatic weapons around them every second of the day. But think it’s just possible that at some stage he might want a face-to-face with someone over a few drinks. Let me check this out and get back to you. Give me—no, not a couple of hours. Meet me here for lunch."

  Geraint leaned forward and fixed the American with his steely gaze. "Don’t do anything crazy in the interim. If it is Kuranita, you won’t be able to get to him unless you’ve got a grenade launcher with you. And even that might not be enough. He may be booked into the Chiltem, but he’s probably staked out on the other side of the building."

  Serrin nodded his acquiescence. "Yeah, I guessed that. Every other room in the place has a barrier up, too. I tried just a tad of snooping last night, and had a pair of security mages show up within five minutes to gently warn me against further attempts. I think I’ll just get my pants pressed by valet service or something."

  "Trousers, boy, trousers! You’re not back home now. Speak bloody English." They laughed as Geraint got up from the bony remains of his kippers, then pulled down the jacket sleeves to regulation half-past his shirt cuffs. Serrin smiled at the gesture, unself-conscious as it was. The nobleman always was that cool and elegant, except just that one time all those years ago.

  "Hear from Francesca at all?" Serrin asked, trying to make the question sound like a throwaway. Geraint had been waiting for it all along.

  "She moved to London eighteen months ago. Flies out to Jersey a lot, likes the beaches there. One of the few places left where you can walk along without tripping over other people every step of the way. She’s doing fine. I had dinner with her a few days ago. Look her up, she’d like that."

  Whipping out a gleaming pen from an inside pocket, Geraint scribbled her telecom code onto a paper napkin. He preferred to defer the query that way, not wanting to suggest that the three of them meet back in London. That might be just a little too awkward.

  Serrin returned to his room and started filing his report on the laptop. He checked through his diary and noted every time and place he’d been, letting his employers know they’d got overtime and value for money. He knew he still needed to run checks on the Optical Neotech guys at some point, but that could wait. For now.

  * * *

  If Rutger had spiked the Johnson’s drink, the man was showing no appreciable effect of it. He was a New Yorker, a hard guy from the Rotten Apple, and he had briefed her quickly and concisely, with an answer prepared for every query Francesca could muster. But there was just one possible slip in the fifty-minute workout that had intrigued her.

  "I must emphasize that my client’s interest in this matter is confined to the seeding of the target’s system with the corrosive. It is entirely possible that you may encounter an unfriendly operative once in the system. Under such circumstances your contract permits you to withdraw from hostilities if you are endangered, and we add the proviso that under no circumstances are you to enter any other system."

  She pondered that one over breakfast the next morning, which was Saturday. The job would pay well, as befitted the task. Being a freelance security consultant was a discreet cover for her. To those in the know, it said, I bust systems open as well as test them.

  This one was a bust. Someone wanted a nasty corrosive virus dumped into the computer system of a Fuchi subsidiary. The virus came in its own autodegrading chip; any attempt to do anything other than download it into its predestined target would melt the cyberdeck into which the chip was loaded. She hadn’t paid all that money for a Cyber-6 to have a melting chip rakk it up, and she wasn’t going to take too close a look at the thing. Thirty-five thousand nuyen were also a slamming good reason not to fool around.

  Get this one right, Francesca, and the employer could become a gravy train. This could be holidays in Sri Lanka until the gray hairs started sprouting.

  "I wonder why he said that, though, Annie." As usual Francesca had asked her friend to be nearby in case the IC got nasty and she needed someone to take care of her after getting dumped, or worse. It had happened before, just once, when she’d foolishly strayed into the black IC of that Edinburgh system. On that occasion Annie had been able to give her the kiss of life in time.

  "Who knows? Just do the job, honey." Annie sprawled her six-foot length over the leather sofa, stretching her legs—and she did have fabulous legs, long and lean and muscular. If all went well now they might celebrat
e by going out on the town tonight, Francesca the blonde in black, Annie the brunette encasing herself in something white, tight, and very, very inadequate to the purpose. They didn’t ask too much about each other’s lives, speaking of their relationships with the flippancy more common to men talking about women, but it worked at that level. They didn’t talk much about their work, either. Francesca needed to keep quiet about what she did, while Annie proclaimed herself a model. Francesca knew what that meant, though. If Annie’s hard edge didn’t give her away, the high rents she had to pay on her flat around the corner did. But they shared a certain wary mutual respect and unspoken trust. Each knew the other was someone she wouldn’t regret having as a companion while getting far too drunk. That counted for a lot.

  Francesca’s thoughts turned back to the run. The priorities for this job were different from her last. No subtleties needed here; it was bod mode all the way and the most vicious attack program she could muster. She wasn’t as happy with the attack stuff as she could have been. She’d gotten it with area-effect rather than high-penetration, thinking the shotgun approach was best when she couldn’t be sure what the Fuchi boys would have built in. Still, the Filipino armor program she’d hawked from Paris looked as if it was good enough to buy her the extra time and defense she’d need when up against the heavy IC. She also had a reliable medic program to keep the MPCP rolling when the guano hit the fan; that venerable utility had done yeoman work for at least the last couple of years.

  The key to it all was programming the smartframe. She was going to use it as a decoy, she decided, rather than to cover her butt as a defense back-up. That meant she’d have to program it with instructions to confuse, detour, delay, and generally frag with anything she might encounter while dumping the virus into the Fuchi system. She’d contemplated exploring the system in sensor mode, trying to learn what she could in order to better instruct the frame, but then thought better of it. One mistake could place the system on alert, and she wasn’t about to hand out any advance warnings.