The Mandel Files

by Peter F. Hamilton

  CHAPTER 24

  Julia closed the heavy panelled door behind her, stepping into the understated elegance of the Princess of Wales suite. The room made her uncomfortably aware of just how uncouth her own bedroom was. Here, she was surrounded by temperate shades and smooth curves, the brocade-covered furniture seemed to flow into the walls. Several antique pieces were dotted around, and instead of clashing with the modern setting they complemented it to perfection. Part of their appeal was in their placing, she’d decided. She was continually afraid she’d bump into one of the little Pope chairs and ruin the whole effect. She’d never be able to put it back in the exact spot.

  Several huge bouquets of fresh flowers filled the air with their perfume. She breathed down the scent and headed for the bathroom. The evening had been an utter delight so far, she was determined not to lose the theme now.

  “See you in a couple of months,” was her grandfather’s parting shot as she’d left Wilholm. He was paring down the sarcasm now, but couldn’t resist one last dig.

  She’d brought eight suitcases with her to the Marlston Hotel for the book launch. Actually, it was the gala relaunch of the Alaka publishing company. They’d decided to promote their new catalogue in grand style, no expense spared. A three-day junket for celebrities, financiers, aristocrats, and the media, even some of their authors were there. Three days, and more importantly, three nights.

  Julia hadn’t been quite sure what level the event was going to be pitched at, so she’d made some meticulous preparations. The first night dinner-dance had turned out to be a formal occasion; so, after much deliberation, and consulting Adela, she’d chosen a twelve-thousand-pound Salito gown. It was midnight black, because it was hard to look bad in black; scarlet and gold moire patterns skipped across the fabric at every movement; the back was low, and the skintight front uplifting. For once she’d abandoned her St Christopher and worn a single diamond choker. Her hair had taken Adela and the hotel’s in-house crimper three-quarters of an hour to arrange; they’d made it seem slightly ruffled, as though it wasn’t styled at all. The most difficult thing to do with hair the length of hers.

  And it’d worked a dream. A miracle. Walking slowly down the stairs to the reception with Adrian on her arm she’d felt like a queen on her way to her coronation. Every head in the hall had turned to watch her progress, seven channel cameras had focused on her.

  Serene, the nodes had yelled into her mind; grinning or giving a thumbs-up like some crass ingenue would’ve wrecked everything. But she’d kept her composure, and Adrian had walked tall beside her.

  Alaka’s chairman had hurried to the bottom of the stair to receive his guest of honour. The band had struck up, and she’d been offered champagne by a liveried waiter. All on camera.

  She grinned oafishly at her reflection in the bathroom mirror, dignity gone, clapping her hands in celebration. The Salito split down its invisible seam and she wriggled out of it, kicking off her shoes. Choker and panties joined them on the mossy purple carpet.

  Two minutes. The time since Adrian had said goodnight. A soft kiss that had lasted far longer than politeness dictated. His room was two doors down the corridor.

  He’d stayed with her all evening, turning down offers to dance with anyone else. And there’d been a lot of good-looking girls who’d asked him. Most of them were the daughters of the rich and famous that Alaka had invited. Julia had enjoyed their company, girls her own age who weren’t so self-conscious and hung up about money as most people. There had even been a couple of them she wouldn’t mind meeting again, potential friends.

  Yes, it had been the best evening for quite some time.

  Three minutes. Naked, she looked at herself in the full-length mirror. Not totally displeased. Her figure was lanky, but elfin rather than skinny. Her breasts were nicely rounded, even if she didn’t have Kats’ milk-beast size, and they didn’t sag at all. Reasonably broad feminine-looking hips, too. And an all-over tan that’d taken two days on her balcony to perfect.

  An uncomfortable sensation of emptiness was plaguing her stomach. What had Adrian seen when he looked at her? Her figure or her money and name? She couldn’t forget that Bil Yi Somanzer hadn’t even noticed her before Uncle Horace told him who she was.

  Four minutes. Her bedtime lingerie was laid out ready. Adeka hadn’t been consulted in that department, not at all. Julia had bullied herself into making the decision. Kats wouldn’t have had any second thoughts.

  She drew a deep breath and pulled on the French knickers; they were sheer silk, a pale peach colour, inset with lace. Her robe was white silk, ankle length. The combination was simple, sensual.

  Impact was the most important thing. Overwhelm him, get him off balance and push. She studied the mirror critically, then retied the belt. It still wasn’t right. Five more goes and the front of the robe was open to her navel, showing a long V of deeply tanned skin, and a more than generous slice of breast.

  Seven minutes. Julia went back out into the bedroom, dimming the biolums to a faint rose-tinted glow.

  Rachel was on duty outside. When they’d arrived, Julia had told her that Adrian was to be allowed in At Any Time. Rachel’s face had never flickered, the woman must be a cyborg.

  How long to wait? That was the real twister. Give him say twenty minutes-no, fifteen ought to be enough. All he had to do was take off his dinner jacket.

  Nine minutes. She stood by the bed. An antique four-poster. So romantic.

  If he wasn’t here after fifteen minutes then she’d damn well go to his room. If she could find the nerve. What if his door was locked? What if he said no? What if one of those link vixens from the party was with him?

  God, don’t even think about it.

  Ten minutes.

  There was a light rap on the door.

  “Come in,” she said, furious at the sudden quaver afflicting her voice. She almost let out a whimper of relief when she saw it was Adrian. He was wrapped in his burgundy towelling robe. Bare feet, no pyjamas.

  She blipped the lock. Sealing him in.

  “Julia!” There was a note of surprised admiration in his voice; and desire lighting his eyes as he drank down the sight of her.

  She couldn’t stand it anymore, and ran at him. Swept up in strong warm arms. Spinning round and round. Both of them laughing jubilantly.

  CHAPTER 25

  On Saturday morning Greg parked the Duo in a side street just outside New Eastfield, and handed over a fiver to the local teeny-bopper extortionists before walking out into the plush precinct’s tranquil boulevards. He’d used the Event Horizon card to splash out on new light-grey slacks, blue canvas sneakers, and a jade-green pure wool Stewart sweater. His usual jeans and T-shirt would’ve aggrieved the private police squad which New Eastfield’s residents employed.

  One major contributory factor to Peterborough’s post-Warming prosperity had been its burgeoning maritime links. The Nene allowed cargo ships to sail right into the heart of the city. They docked at a new port and warehouse complex which had sprung up in the place of the old shopping precinct and Queensgate mall.

  In addition to the commercial shipping, an armada of nearly seven thousand small boats had set out from the Norfolk Broads as the Antarctic ice melted, converging on the city. They’d anchored around the island suburb of Stanground; their moorings evolving into a hugely complicated maze of jetties built out of timber scavenged from the roofs and floors of deluged buildings out in the Fens. The boats at the centre were trapped there now, ten years’ worth of rubbish clogging the water around them, embedding them in an artificial bog. He’d heard that around ten thousand people lived in the sprawling boat-town. The actual figure was uncertain, Stanground’s inherent chaos made council hall governance nigh on impossible. An aspect which the residents took full advantage of. The narrow twisting channels were Peterborough’s main haven for smugglers, pumping hard currency Eurofrancs into the city’s economy.

  Finally, there was an impressive squadron of pleasure craft. The pot
ential of the city’s industrial vigour, coupled with the kind of seedy spice endemic to monstrous overcrowding, proved a powerful attraction to Europe’s shipborne rich. People who ran their mini-empires of financial trusts and venture projects from floating gin palaces. They were a flock in eternal migration, never in one port long enough to qualify for the taxman’s attention.

  They had their own marina in New Eastfield, north of the Nene’s main course. The quays were concrete, substantial, immaculately clean. Every requirement was catered for, from stores supplying five-star food and maritime gear to a not-so-small dry dock capable of providing complete refits.

  Greg hit the marina itself around eleven; a whole community of clubs, sports complexes, shops, restaurants, and pubs along the waterfront, open to permit holders only. Royan had loaded his ID into the membership computer. The promenade was a kilometre long, built from huge granite cubes. Five quays stabbed out into the deep harbour that’d been dredged for the yachts of the mega-rich.

  A gauzy layer of cumulus cloud diffused the sun into sourceless light overhead. The humidity this close to the Fen basin approached steam-bath levels.

  He found Angelica’s, a single-storey flat-roofed emporium opposite the centre quay where the Mirriam was berthed. It was a food hall selling wholesale quantities of nouveau delicacies he didn’t even know how to pronounce.

  Greg walked down the cul-de-sac side alley and found the delivery bay’s metal roller-door at the rear. Beside it, embedded in the bricks, was a series of metal rungs. He started to climb.

  The uniformity of the solar-collector roof was broken by two satellite-dish weather domes and three big conditional stacks, their fans spinning silently. Dead centre was a box structure of slatted wooden panels which housed Angelica’s water tanks. Greg crouched down and scuttled over to it. One of the slat panels was hanging loose. He pulled it aside and slipped in.

  The panel opened into a narrow gap between two big water tanks, one and a half metres wide, three long. There wasn’t enough headroom to stand up, and he had to hunch down with his hands brushing the floor. What space there was had nearly been used up.

  At the far end, various photon-amp lenses were poking through the slats, their cables feeding a jumble of compact gear modules. Weird little halos of coloured light cloaked five miniature flatscreens which flickered with the image of the good ship Mirriam, half covered with red digital read-outs.

  Right in front of the entrance panel was a pile of drink cans and food wrappers. Greg nearly put his foot in an adult-sized potty that had been connected in to Angelica’s plumbing by a ribbed flexible pipe. There was only one smell: ripe human.

  Between the rubbish and the gear was a thin yellow sponge mattress. Suzi was lying on it, wearing blue shorts, soaked a shade darker by sweat. Her mauve spikes had drooped in the torrid heat.

  She peered at him out of the gloom. “Christ, ‘bout time you showed. See what we’ve been suffering for you.”

  “All in a good cause.” He stepped over the potty and squirmed on to the mattress beside her. One of the gear modules poked sharply into his back.

  “Cosy.” Suzi smirked spryly. “You wanna do it? There’s enough room if you ain’t into anything too kinky.”

  Greg was suddenly very aware of her tough little body pressing against him. “We’d die of heat exhaustion.”

  “Yeah, tits the size that new girl of yours was stacked with, can’t say I blame you.”

  Greg nearly started to protest, but thought better of it. “I hope you’re not handling the observation all by yourself. This heat is bad for you. Seriously.”

  A growl rumbled up from the back of her throat. “Shit no. It’s four-hour shifts only up here. The rest of the squad is spotted round the marina, some of them signed on with the company that’s got the franchise to keep the promenade clean. And there are another two in hire cars for tailing Kendric’s Jag when he goes runabout. We’ve been drawing up a habits and behaviour profile. Just like you taught us, right? Know the man, get to understand him. No hassle in that, talk’s pretty loose around here. One of us made barman at a pub the crews use, nothing they like better than slagging off their owners.”

  “Sounds good so far. What have you got for me?”

  Suzi wriggled a hand free and pointed at the screens. “This Kendric, he’s a fucking Martian. Not of this earth, y’know? The lives these yacht people lead. Un-be-lievable! Tell you something, though, no way is he a card carrier. I mean, the PSP’s local chairpricks, they had it all, right? Eternal junket time. But they haven’t got nothing compared to this geezer. The money he’s got. He wouldn’t last five minutes if they ever got back in power.”

  “Ah.” He’d wondered about the peak of vexation in her mind. “No, Kendric’s not Party. But my guess is that he’s involved in a spoiler against Event Horizon. And with the economy all shaky with inflation right now, Event Horizon taking a tumble would be serious bad news. The only people who’ll benefit are the PSP relics in legitimate opposition. That good enough for you?”

  “What’s the spoiler?”

  “Ministry of Defence. Ultra-hush.”

  “Figures,” she agreed without much enthusiasm. “Son told us Kendric was plugged into big-league corporate operations.”

  Greg studied the various images on the five screens. Mirriam was the biggest yacht in the marina. Sixty-five metres long, gleaming silver-white, with jet-black ports. Crewmen stripped to the waist were visible, washing down the wide afterdeck. “Is Kendric on board right now?”

  “Yeah, as always. Believe me, nothing at all happens in this marina before noon. They’re all too busy sleeping off last night’s orgies. Right now, it’s business time for Kendric. He holds a couple of conference sessions in the mid-deck lounge each day. There’s a whole bunch of squarearse lawyer types who turn up each morning to see him. Don’t know what they rap about in the cabin, Mirriam’s ports are screened, but anything they say out on the deck we’ve got on a memox cartridge for you.” Her eyebrows puckered up. “Isn’t that Julia Evans girl in charge of Event Horizon now?”

  “Yeah. She owns it.”

  “No shit? Heard Kendric on about her…” Suzi began typing on a keyboard. “Remember the file code,” she muttered, and consulted a cybofax. “Here we go.”

  One of the small screens changed to a scene on the Mirriam’s broad afterdeck. Greg squinted down at it. Kendric was sitting on one of the plastic recliners, dressed in an open-neck shirt and tailored shorts, drinking from a tall cut-crystal glass. The man with him was in a suit, his collar undone, tie hanging loose. He looked to be in his late forties, a flat bulldog face with red skin.

  “Here,” said Suzi. She handed Greg an earpiece.

  “…missing out badly,” the man in the suit was saying, in a faint Scottish brogue. “Our Party is damn near down, Kendric, it cannot last long. Terrible thing, food’s short, there’s no gear, no methane for the farms. People are going to the spivs like never before. There’s a hell of a turnover in silver right now. If you could just have a wee word with young Julia Evans, come to an arrangement wi’ her till the Party goes down. I can ship it out by the tonne.”

  “Impossible,” Kendric said flatly. His face was dangerously hard. “That frigid bitch and I have severed all our business contacts. There will be no resumption.”

  “Tis a lot o’ money, Kendric.”

  “Ride it out. I’m closing some deals that will make the black currency market utterly trivial. And I certainly shall not forget your forbearance.”

  The man in the suit shook his head sadly, and took a drink from his glass.

  The image froze. “Didn’t mean much at the time,” said Suzi. She pecked at the keyboard again.

  This time it was evening. A gauzy layer of cumulus cloud glowed copper above the Mirriam. There was a crowd of about fifteen people drinking on the afterdeck, the women in low-cut cocktail dresses; men in suits or blazers. Laughter, clamorous conversation, and the chink of glasses filled the earpiece.


  Kendric was standing at the stern with two other men. One tall and slim with thinning blond hair, the second a handsome African in brightly coloured northern tribal robes.

  “You have got to provide the house with alternative investments, Kendric,” said the blond-haired man. “And fast.”

  “I’ve acquired some options in a Pacific Rim portfolio,” the African said earnestly. “They’ll give you a sixteen to seventeen per cent return, guaranteed minimum.”

  “No,” Kendric said.

  “You won’t find anything better. Not short term.”

  “I’m sorry. I know how hard you worked to put them together. But no.”

  “You should’ve hung on, Kendric,” said the blond man, “We could’ve squared it with the family over Siebruk.”

  Kendric’s handsome features darkened. “That deranged little shit, Evans. Buying a fucking bank! I’ve never heard of anything so…so-” He clutched at the polished brass tiff-rail. “God damn that bitch!”

  The blond man turned to look out over the marina.

  “Look,” said the African. “The family is going to insist on an equivalent viability from the money released by pulling out of the Event Horizon backing consortium.”

  Kendric didn’t respond.

  “The family-” began the blond man.

  “Put them off,” Kendric snapped. He caught himself, and rested a companionable hand on the blond man’s shoulder. “Six months, Clancy. If I haven’t come through by then, I’ll step down from the family board anyway. OK?”

  Greg considered the faces on the screen. The two financiers’ obvious concern. Kendric’s driving anger. And intuition was totally spurious. A cornered animal had no choice in the way; it reacted. “Have you got a record of all the visitors?” he asked,

  Suzi tapped the sensor array with possessive pride. “No sweat. Day or night, anyone on or off gets tagged. We’ve got infrared and low level, for night work. Not that we need them, that baby is lit up like a football pitch after dark. And we’ve got an antenna rigged to intercept Mirriam’s local calls. But there’s nothing we can do about her satellite uplinks. Trouble is, the local calls have all been the big zero so far, social gabbing and ordering booze, that kind of crap.”