"The murders?"
"Well, of course, the first one nobody would even notice. The second we’d park right on your doorstep. Wasn’t that convenient? Part of the reason we selected you, of course. If we’d had an Annie Chapman closer to another of your friends, we’d have roped them in somehow. We had contingencies."
I don’t doubt it, Geraint thought.
As if reading his mind, the man leaned forward slightly to emphasize a point. "It cost us a fair bit, you know. We actually had to pay Elizabeth Stride to change her name by deed poll a year ago, just to fit in with the series. She was humble Jane Dews before. But perhaps you know that already. "
That’s one thing I didn’t check, Geraint reflected. Name changes. Clazz, I should have had the sense to find that one out.
"After the second murder, we knew you’d be hooked. We paid Ms. Young to make the Fuchi runs, and our experimental construct worked pretty well."
Geraint interrupted him. "But I thought Fuchi was a good customer of yours."
"Well, they are, but so are all manner of people. That’s business." He shrugged almost innocently. "Anyway, the Transys London system is very lax because they’ve been concentrating all their resources on the Scottish HQ. It was so easy to get our little Jack-in-the-Matrix into that subsystem. Actually, our purpose was merely for Young to see the IC complex, not necessarily to be harmed by it. Annie Chapman’s murder would have been enough. She was involved then, just like the elf was after seeing Kuranita. With her history, she’d have to be. Got her psychiatric reports after that San Francisco business, you know.
"So, with the mage in, and the decker in, you had-to be. You were all old friends, and our file says you and Ms. Young haven’t exactly been cool toward each other in the past." He smirked unpleasantly.
"But how could you know about Catherine Eddowes? How could you know that I—"
"Ah, well now, you’ll learn a little more about that later. That one helped to drag you in a bit further, didn’t it? We didn’t actually expect you to arrive there, you know, not so fast. Our security was a bit on the light side for that one. That’s when we realized you were better than we’d thought.
"So, we shipped Mary Kelly out of sight for a while. Here’s something you’ll love: she was the main decker who worked on the Ripper construct for us. Isn’t that lovely? Of course, she didn’t know it was a Ripper. Whacked her full of hypnoconditioning and neuroactives and she just did it by automatic configurings right out of her nightmares. Totally amnesic afterward. She was putty in our hands. Dozy bitch."
Geraint leaned back, wearily. He’d never dreamed any of this might have been going on. He was tired, depressed, defeated. Still the explanations kept coming.
"The fact that there were lots of Mary Kellys you could check was both a good thing and a bad thing for us. Good because you’d be occupied tracking them down for the whole damn week, bad because it made it harder for us to point you at the right bloody one. We took a while to figure that one out, I can tell you. Meanwhile, we simply suppressed all the data regarding our little Typhoid Mary, got her out of sight, let you waste a week—or most of it—with the others and then, presto! Up she pops. And when she did, you knew for sure it had to be the right one, because the others were hopeless, let’s face it."
"But she wasn’t out of sight. Rani said—"
"Ah yes. Saw her in that disgusting baldrick foodhole. Unfortunate that. Our man shouldn’t have let her out. She was drugged to the eyeballs and kept under surveillance up to the last minute. Mohinder staged that very well."
"Mohinder?" Another defeat. Another snake. Another thing he simply hadn’t seen.
"Great fellow, huh? Quite a moralist too. Refused point-blank to box any of you after the run. Won’t kill anyone who’s paid him money in good faith, how about that? So we didn’t compromise his morals. Actually, you know, I think he wanted to jump that smelly little Indian girly’s bones. Rather him than me, I must say.
"He had quite a key role; he knew where the security was in Kelly’s hidey-hole and he had the vidlink to make sure you got the evidence. Needless to say, I’m afraid Mr. Mohinder is somewhere at the bottom of the Thames by now. We really couldn’t risk letting him live. He won’t be missed, I’m sure. He didn’t know exactly who he was working for, obviously, but we really couldn’t take any chances."
"You could have killed us all with the meat and muscle you had in that final battle," Geraint said.
"No, not really. Mohinder knew what the opposition might be. You were well up to the job. Anyway, to let you in on a little secret, we did wire some very nice glitches into the weapons our folks carried. Buggered up their aiming completely within a hundred yards or so of your car. Very simple little telemetry toy. Practice with the gun out of range, works as sweet as anything. Put it next to your Saab, you couldn’t shoot your granny off a commode ten yards away. So our people looked fierce, but they were pussycats. Really. The mage with the elemental actually got a bullet in the back of the head from a cover sniper of ours. We wanted the scene for show, not to turn you into noble toastie." He sniggered.
"Most of the rest is incidental detail. We had the police under our thumb, obviously. We had certain contacts make sure Swanson got panicky messages from Annie Chapman’s nobleman clients. I think you overlooked that one. The killing wasn’t publicized, so how did those people get in touch with the police so fast? But, then, poor old PC Plod’s daughter has been a very naughty girl herself. We have the photographs to prove it. Poor old sod would fall apart if it got out. So he was only too happy to keep it quiet and on the back burner. "
"But, the media. You couldn’t have known that we wouldn’t go to the media." The two men exchanged glances behind their shades.
"Yes, I must give you that one, my lord. That was the one calculated risk we took. We decided you almost certainly would not do so initially, because you had escalating levels of personal involvement and your own curiosity would make you want to investigate on your own. Once you’d gone to the media, you’d have lost that chance. That’s one of the reasons we tossed Kuranita into the pot, as I’ve said. It gave the mage very personal reasons to be involved. Same with Ms. Young and her dead friend, not to mention the Ripper construct in the Matrix. That also served to make you confused; there was so much that didn’t seem connected, right?"
Geraint had to nod in agreement.
"And you, you’re conservative by nature. So you’d want time to try to piece it all together. Our top shrink said you wouldn’t blow the whistle until you’d gotten a high level of personal satisfaction from your own involvement, all of you, and he was right. Guess we should slip him a bonus for that. When you did finally go to the media, it couldn’t have suited us better.
"Thank you, Lord Llanfrechfa."
Signed, sealed, delivered. The logic of it was inexorable. There was almost nothing left to say, apart from a couple of final queries.
"But why a Ripper? Why the hell would anyone believe that Transys would want to clone him, rather than their own executives, for example?"
"Because they’re a megacorporation, and our glorious British public knows that megacorporations are bastards. And research scientists are mad boffins, right? Oh, there are theoretical reasons, too. Such as, it is important to know that it is possible to successfully clone even an old and degraded sample of DNA. Working that out is easiest if you try to clone someone with known and extreme behavioral patterns, right? You can test the validity of your experiment best when you can more easily appraise the outcome. Then again, the Brazilian scientist was obsessive; he had a personal thing about serial killers. Sick, sad man. It’s just what he wanted to do, and then Transys took the experiment over, as it were. We’ve established all that in the data we had leaked to the press."
"The Duke of Clarence? He was really the original Ripper?"
The suits burst into peals of amused laughter.
"Good God, almost certainly not! No one has any idea who the original Ripper was, well, n
ot really. We cloned him because we wanted a Royal involvement. You’ll find out more about that later, too. He was the one Royal possible in the frame. The clone was conditioned to become a Ripper, sir. A whole year of dream conditioning, psychodrama, subliminals, neuroactives, sadistic surrogates, you name it, we pumped him full of it. We patterned his innate psychosis, or rather, our insiders at Cambridge did. Stuffed him full of the original scenes, stories, and rumors. Boy, did he have a downer on whores when we were through with him." The men shook their heads and sighed quietly.
"Well, we’re going to take you home now. Very soon, there’ll be a huge gaggle of reptiles from the media outside your front door. Wouldn’t be surprised if they started bribing your security and getting up to all sorts of shameful mischief to get a story. Tomorrow, you’ll have to give them the full monty on how you caught the Ripper.
"Incidentally, I’m sure I hardly need point out that you don’t have a thing on us. We spent seventeen million nuyen and almost three years on this, and you won’t find anything. You’re smart enough to have tracked the purchasing of Transys shares to us, but that could just be insider knowledge. It would only prove we have someone inside Transys, that’s all. The Cambridge lab was stripped out in midweek. There is nothing left to show that the project ever existed. Trust me on this."
His face was grim and Geraint knew it was true. People who could go to such lengths really wouldn’t have left anything to chance.
"And, sir, you wouldn’t want to hurt your friends. Mr. Shamandar thinks he has avenged his parents, doesn’t he? It would be tragic for him to learn, as he certainly would, that the datafile you got at was, ah, slightly modified. It would pain him deeply to know that he has just delivered Transys to the company that really paid for his parents’ death.
"As I say, Fuchi is a good client of ours. When Kuranita was unable to continue working as a samurai, we were happy to pass him along. Most people thought he was a freelancer. We knew better." He smiled warmly. "Oh, neural implants can buy such loyalty. You never betray a company that can turn your brain to soggy mush in five seconds flat. Those mycotoxins are lovely agents, don’t you think?" The second man grinned his agreement.
"Then again, Ms. Young feels she has avenged her friend Annie Chapman. Wouldn’t it cut her to the quick to learn that she has done nothing of the kind? That she’s just handed a billion-nuyen company over to the people who really killed Annie Chapman? From what I read in her psychiatric files, well, she just might suffer some kind of permanent breakdown if she learned that. I don’t think that’s something you’d want to risk with your ex-lover, I really don’t.
"I admit our files on the gopi are a bit thin, but she’d feel the same about her family, no doubt about that. Rather like the elf. Isn’t it convenient, all these dead families lying around the place? People are so sentimental about their kin. Such a terrible weakness. And I believe honor is very important to the baldricks down there. Consider how she’d feel if she learned the truth. Only eighteen, too, I gather."
Bastards, Geraint agonized. That’s the real killer. I can’t do this to the others. I can’t tell them the truth, I can’t. I’ll have to live with this all my life. He looked at the two of them, with their self-satisfied smiles. "Why the hell are you telling me all this?" he said.
"Why?" The mouthpiece seemed slightly startled. "I’d have thought that was obvious. Now you know what lines not to cross, what rocks should not be turned over. You can’t hide behind ignorance, sir. You now know too much."
"Doesn’t that make me a threat?"
"Of a sort, but your own complicity guarantees your silence. That, and the complicity of your friends. Speak about it, and not only will you be implicated in what’s occurred, but your friends will too."
Geraint took this in, but when he got out of the car, he shook the man’s hand. Somehow, he felt that he had to accept his defeat that way.
"By the way, might I know who I have been speaking to?"
To his surprise, it was the man who’d remained quiet for almost all of the journey who leaned forward and shook his hand. The mouthpiece had done all the talking, but the other man was the real puppeteer.
"Paul Bernal the Third, my Lord. Be seeing you."
The limo swept off into the distance. Paul Bernal III, Geraint thought. The new Deputy Chairman of Hildebrandt-Kleinfort-Bemal, the most ruthless financial corporation in the City of London. The shadow lurking in the sea of little fish. The great predator.
King of Swords.
* * *
Geraint had only just been smuggled back into his flat by a posse of twitchy Cheyne Walk security men when his doorbell rang. He ignored it for a while, but it just kept on ringing, so he slouched to the door to shout at the intruder to rakk off. A reptile already. He just couldn’t face the media tonight.
But it wasn’t the media, nor was it a visitor he could ever have expected.
"Must speak with you, old fellow. Political crisis. Very important indeed." The flatulent Earl of Manchester ignored Geraint’s pleas to be left alone and bustled in, parking his gross frame in an armchair. Wearily, Geraint closed the door behind him and poured two large brandies.
"Please, sir, make this quick. I’m not feeling very well tonight," Geraint said as he handed him a glass. The Earl looked at him most appraisingly.
"Well, old feller, this Ripper business of yours has been causing a bit of a stir, I must say. Duke of Clarence, you know, he’s related to the Gordon-Windsor side of the Royal Family."
Related to the pretender to the throne. After the Royal Schism of 2025, it had been a long-running internecine war between the Windsor-Hanoverians of George VIII’s circle and the rival Gordon-Windsor bloodline. The appearance of the Ripper would drive a stake through the heart of the rivals to the throne. Or, at least, set them back a long way. Utterly idiotic and illogical, but a smear was a smear. Geraint took a large swig of brandy, but did not taste it.
"Well, that’s all well and good for the King in one way. Rival fellow a cad and a bounder, hands steeped in gore, all that kind of thing. But, old chap, it does make people wonder about royalty generally, you see. Anything that weakens the family weakens the King."
Now Geraint saw it in all its glory.
He knew Hildebrandt-Kleinfort-Bemal was one of the corporations behind King George VIII. The Ripper gave them a perfect double strike. On the one hand, the scandal struck a possibly decisive blow against the rival to their man. On the other, it weakened the King himself, even if only slightly, and made him more dependent than ever on his political and corporate backers. What a payoff HKB had bought for their seventeen million.
"Now’s the time for all good men to rally to King and country, old boy. I can tell you, there’ll be something in this for you. And there’s a little personal thank you, too."
Geraint experienced a fleeting moment of something close to depersonalization. He knew he was going to have to listen to words he would later dread having heard, but right now he felt almost completely uninvolved in what was happening.
"I want to thank you for keeping young Lawrence’s name out of all this with that Eddowes woman. I know what you did there, old boy. Damn decent of you.
"I can't tell you how glad I am you’re keeping quiet about this. "
It was a thunderbolt, the slow emphasis of the final sentence. What it meant was so simple: keep your mouth shut.
He remembered the words of the man in the back of the limo: You’ll learn a little more about that later. For a second, Geraint wondered whether Lawrence had possibly been sent to the woman, and even arranged for him to come there deliberately. It would be part of the plan, increasing the chances of Geraint becoming involved in the Ripper killings when he knew one of the victims. That would mean the Earl would have been in on it. He made a mental note to check Manchester’s stock holdings in HKB.
"Well, my boy, I have to say that the Prime Minister will be making some minor modifications to the Cabinet tomorrow afternoon. Consensus of opinio
n is that Farquahar isn’t too sound at the Foreign Office. I’m delighted to say that you can expect to be named Junior Minister of State at the Foreign Office at five tomorrow afternoon. How does that suit you, eh? We need a man we can trust there to keep an eye on the Foreign Secretary, my dear boy. We need one of our own. That is, unless you’d prefer something a little less onerous at the Treasury?"
Geraint hardly knew what it was he mumbled, but the Earl took it as acceptance of the Foreign Office offer and saw himself out. Staring blankly across the room, Geraint saw the vellum and red ribbon sitting on his table. Wearily he pulled himself up and went to investigate, already knowing exactly what he would find. Reading the header, he discovered that he had been owner of ten thousand HKB shares for three months. He had little doubt that his own financial transactions would have been retroactively altered to show when, and how, he’d bought them.
How did it go again?
We need one of our own.
* * *
The telecom messages kept piling up until well after midnight. There were journalists, tridstars, media agencies offering their brokering services, image consultants, a couple of psychics, wackos, even some faces he would have known, if he had looked at them.
Francesca called twice from Oxford to say she was recuperating and wanting to arrange dinner for the next day.
Serrin called twice from Cambridge, saying he had found what he’d gone there to find, and wishing Geraint success and happy dreams. He’d see him Tuesday.
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