The Complete SF Collection

by Morgan, Richard

  ‘Does Chris buy off the jamming?’ Her mother looked interested. ‘I didn’t think you could do that effectively.’

  ‘No, he’s exempted. Under licence. For his job.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’ There was a studied politeness in Kirsti’s voice that didn’t quite shroud her distaste. Carla flushed again, deeper this time. She said nothing more until the wheels of the Volvo crunched across the gravel parking lot beside the monitoring station. Then, sitting still in the passenger seat as Kirsti killed the engine, she muttered, ‘I’m not sure this is such a good idea.’

  ‘It was a good idea when we had it on Friday night,’ said her mother emphatically. ‘It’s still a good idea now. One of my best. Now, come on.’

  Kirsti’s Tromsö University ID got them in the front door, and a quick search of the building’s locational database at reception told them Truls Vasvik was up on the top floor. They took the stairs, Kirsti leading by a couple of steps on every flight. Good for the buttocks, she flung over her shoulder in response to her daughter’s puffed protests to slow down. Only five levels. Come on.

  They found Vasvik in the staff café. He was, Carla thought, a classic Kirsti type - gaunt and long-limbed, radiating self-sufficiency like the effects of some drug recently injected. He wore a crew-neck sweater, canvas work trousers, walking boots and an uncared-for heavy black coat that he somehow hadn’t got around to removing. The clothes hung off him, incidental drapings on his lean frame, and his silver-threaded black hair was long and untidy. He looked to be in his early forties. As they approached, he got up and offered a bony hand.

  ‘Hello Kirsti.’

  ‘Hello Truls. This is my daughter, Carla. Carla, Truls Vasvik. It’s good to see you again.’

  Vasvik grunted.

  ‘Have you seen Gjerlow yet?’

  ‘About an hour ago.’

  ‘Oh, sorry. I didn’t realise—’

  ‘Shall we all sit down. There’s machine coffee over there, if you want it.’

  ‘Can I get you one?’

  Vasvik indicated the cup in front of him and shook his head. Kirsti went off to the bank of self-service machines across the café and left Carla stranded. She offered Vasvik an awkward smile and seated herself at the table.

  ‘So, you’ve known my mother for a while.’

  He stared back at her. ‘Long enough.’

  ‘I, uh, I appreciate you taking the time to see us.’

  ‘I had to be here anyway. It wasn’t a problem.’

  ‘Yes, uh. How’s it going? I mean, can you talk about it?’

  A shrug. ‘It isn’t, strictly speaking, confidential, at this end anyway. I need some data to back up a case we’re putting together. Gjerlow has it, he says.’

  ‘Is it a British thing?’

  ‘This time around, no. French.’ A marginal curiosity surfaced on his face. ‘You live there, then?’

  ‘Where, Britain? Yes. Yes, I do.’

  ‘Doesn’t it bother you?’

  She bit her lip. Kirsti arrived with coffee cups and saved them both from the rapidly foundering conversation.

  ‘So,’ she said brightly. ‘Where are we up to?’

  ‘We haven’t started yet,’ said Vasvik.

  Kirsti frowned. ‘Are you okay, Truls?’

  ‘Not really.’ He met her gaze. ‘Jannicke died.’

  ‘Jannicke Onarheim? Oh, shit. I’m sorry, Truls.’ Kirsti reached out and put her hand on Vasvik’s arm. ‘What happened?’

  He smiled bleakly. ‘How do ombudsmen die, Kirsti? She was murdered. I only got the call this morning.’

  ‘Was she working?’

  Vasvik nodded, staring into the plastic-topped table. ‘Some American shoe manufactury up near Hanoi. The usual stuff, reported human rights abuse, no local police cooperation.’ He drew a deep breath. ‘They found her car run off the road an hour out of town, nowhere near where she should have been. Looks like someone took her for a ride. Raped. Shot. Single cap, back of the head.’

  He glanced up at Carla, who had flinched on the word raped.

  ‘Yeah. It’s probably good you hear this. Jannicke is the third this year. The Canadians have lost twice that number. UN ombudsmen earn their money, and often enough we don’t get to spend it. From what Kirsti says, your man might not suit the work.’

  The implied slight to Chris, as always, fired her up.

  ‘Well, I doubt you’d last long in Conflict Investment.’

  The other two looked at her with chilly Norwegian disapproval.

  ‘Perhaps not,’ said Vasvik finally. ‘It was not my intention to insult you or your man. But you should know what you are trying to get him into. Less than fifty years ago, this was still a comfortable, localised, office-based little profession. That’s changed. Now, at this level, it can get you killed. There is no recognition of the work we do - at best we are seen as fussy bureaucrats, at worst as the enemies of capitalism and the bedfellows of terrorists. Our UN mandate is a bad joke. Only a handful of governments will act on our findings. The rest cave in to corporate pressure. Some, like the United States and so, of course, Britain, simply refuse point blank to support the process. They are not even signatories to the agreement. They block us at every turn. They query our budgets, they demand a transparency that exposes our field agents, they offer legal and financial asylum to those offenders we do manage to indict. We shelve two out of every three cases for lack of viability and,’ he jerked his chin, perhaps out to wherever Jannicke Onarheim’s body now lay, ‘we bury our dead to the jeers of the popular media.’

  More silence. Across the café, someone worked the coffee machine.

  ‘Do you hate your job?’ asked Carla quietly.

  A thin smile. ‘Not as much as I hate the people I chase.’

  ‘Chris, my husband, hates his job. So much that it’s killing him.’

  ‘Then why doesn’t he just quit?’ There was scant sympathy in the ombudsman’s voice.

  ‘That’s so fucking easy for you to say.’

  Kirsti shot her a warning glance. ‘Truls, Chris was born and brought up in the London cordoned zones. You’ve seen that, you know what it’s like. And you know what happens to the ones who manage to claw their way out. First-generation syndrome. If quitting means going back to the zones, he probably would rather die. He’d certainly rather kill. And in the end, we know how closely those two can be intertwined.’

  Another smile, somewhat less thin. ‘Yes. First-generation syndrome. I remember that particular lecture quite well, for some reason.’

  Kirsti joined him in the smile. She flexed her body beneath her sweater in a fashion that made her daughter blush.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I hadn’t realised it was that memorable.’

  It was as if something heavy had dropped from Vasvik’s shoulders. He sat up a little in the moulded plastic chair, turned back to Carla.

  ‘Alright,’ he said. ‘I don’t deny it. Someone like your husband could be useful to us. The information he has alone would probably be enough to build a couple of dozen cases. And, yes, a background in Conflict Investment would go a long way to making a good ombudsman. But I can’t promise you, him, a job. For one thing, we’d need an extraction team to get him away from Shorn. But, yes, if he really wants out, I can ask around. I can set some wheels in motion.’

  It was what she wanted to hear, but somehow it didn’t fill her with the feeling she’d expected. Something about Vasvik’s clamped anger, the news of sudden death or maybe the bleak landscape outside, something was not right.

  And later, when they got up to go and Kirsti and Truls embraced with genuine affection, she turned away so that she would not have to watch.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Monday was soft summer rain and a nagging pain behind the eyes. He drove in with a vague sense of exposure all the way, and when he parked and alarmed the car, tiny twitches of the same discomfort sent him scanning the corners of the car deck for watchers.

  This early, there was nobody abo
ut.

  There were phone messages on the datadown - Liz Linshaw, drawling, ironic and inviting, Joaquin Lopez from the NAME. He shelved Liz and told the datadown to dial up Lopez’s mobile. The Americas agent had called four times in the last two hours and he sounded close to panic. He grabbed the phone at the third ring, voice tight and shaky.

  ‘Si, digame.’

  ‘It’s Faulkner. Jesus, Joaquin, what the fuck’s the matter with you?’

  ‘Escuchame.’ There was the sound of movement. Chris got the impression Lopez was in a hotel room, getting up from the bed, moving. The agent’s voice firmed up as he crossed into English. ‘Listen, Chris, I think I’m in trouble. I got down here last night, been making some enquiries about Diaz and now I got a clutch of Echevarria’s political police all over me like putas on payday. They’re in the bar across the street, downstairs in the lounge. I think a couple of them have taken a room on this floor, I don’t—’

  ‘Joaquin, calm down. I understand the situation.’

  ‘No, you don’t fucking understand my situation, man. This is the NAME. These guys will cut my fucking cojones off if they get the chance. They bundle me into a car, and that’s it, I’m fucking history, man—’

  ‘Joaquin, will you just shut up and listen!’ Chris went direct from the command snap to enabled conciliatory without allowing the other man a response. Textbook stuff. ‘I know you’re scared. I understand why. Now, let’s do something about it. What do these guys look like?’

  ‘Look like?’ A panicky snort. ‘They look like fucking political police, what do you want me to say? Ray Bans, bellies and fucking moustaches. Get the picture?’

  Chris did get the picture. He’d seen these cut-rate bad guys in operation on his own trip to the Monitored Economy with Hammett McColl. He knew the gut-sliding sense of menace they could generate simply by appearing on the scene.

  ‘No, Joaquin, I meant. Did you get pictures? Have you got your shades set down there?’

  ‘Yeah, I brought them.’ A pause. ‘I didn’t use them yet.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘I freaked. I’m sorry, Chris, I fucked up. I didn’t think.’

  ‘Well, think now, Joaquin. Get a grip. You can fuck up on your own time, right now you’re on the Shorn clock. I’m not paying you to get your arse killed.’ Chris glanced at his watch. ‘What time is it there? One a.m.?’

  ‘A little after.’

  ‘Right. How many of these moustaches are there?’

  ‘I don’t know, two down in the lobby.’ The panic started to seep back into Lopez’s voice. ‘Maybe another two or three more across the road.’

  ‘Can you get me pictures?’

  ‘I’m not fucking going outside, man.’

  ‘Alright, alright.’ Chris paced, thinking. Trying to put himself in the hotel room with Lopez. The Nikon sunglasses and the data transmission gear had been an end-of-quarter gift from Shorn - they were very high spec. ‘Look, can you see the ones in the bar from your window? Go and check.’

  More movement. Lopez came back calmer.

  ‘Yeah, I can see their table. I think I can get a decent shot from here.’

  ‘Alright, that’s good. Do that.’ Chris cranked his voice down, as soothing as possible. ‘Then I want you to go down to the lobby and get full frontals of the other two. They shouldn’t try anything there. Are you armed?’

  ‘Are you kidding? I came through US security at the airport, just like everybody else.’

  ‘Fine, doesn’t matter. Just get the pictures and mail them through to me as quickly as you can. I’ll be waiting. And, Joaquin. Remember what I said. You don’t get killed on the Shorn clock. We’ll pull you out of there. Got it?’

  ‘Got it.’ A brief pause in which he could hear Lopez breathing down the line.

  ‘Chris. Thanks, man.’

  ‘De nada. Stay cool.’

  Chris waited until he heard the disconnect. Then he slammed a foot against the desk leg, knotted a fist.

  ‘Fuck.’ Another kick. ‘Fuck.’

  Back to the datadown. He estimated Lopez’s performance time, placed forward calls. Then he went to the window and stared out at the London skyline until the phone chimed.

  The images came through, two clear face-and-trunk shots that must have been taken from less than five metres. Lopez had got close. The two parapoliticals were grinning unpleasantly into the Nikon’s hidden lens. Their teeth showed, spotted brown with decay. The café snap was less to rejoice about, but there was a pavement table centred in the shot, three clear figures around it, faces turned in the camera’s direction.

  The first of the forward calls went through. Even with the forewarning, the other end took a while to pick up, and the first sound to come through was a noisy yawn. Chris smiled for the first time that day.

  ‘Burgess Imaging.’ The screen caught up, filled with a dark unshaven face in its late teens. ‘Oh, hello, Chris. What can I? Uh, those satellite blow-ups okay?’

  ‘Yeah, fine, it’s not that. Listen, can you do me step-ups of a street shot, right now? Faces good enough for machine ID?’

  Jamie Burgess yawned again and scratched at something in the corner of one eye.

  ‘Cost ya.’

  ‘I guessed. Look, I’m wiring it through on inset. Just take a look.’

  Burgess waited, blinked at the screen a couple of times and nodded.

  ‘Nikon shot, yeah?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Give me two minutes. Leave the line open.’

  ‘Thanks, Jamie.’

  Another yawn. ‘Pleasure.’

  Burgess was as good as his word. The datadown spat back perfect head-and-shoulder shots ninety seconds later. Chris punched them up next to the two he already had from the lobby and nodded.

  ‘Okay, motherfuckers. Let’s hope you’ve been to church recently.’

  The second forward call picked up on the first ring. A grizzled virtual head above crisp army khaki fatigues. The accent was American, the real-life version of Mike Bryant’s Simeon Sands burlesque.

  ‘Langley Contracting.’

  ‘This is Chris Faulkner, Shorn Associates, London. Do you have operational units in the Medellín area?’

  There was a pause, presumably while Chris’s scrambler code and authorisation cleared at the other end. Then the virtual customer service agent nodded.

  ‘Yes, we can work in that area.’

  ‘Good, I need five extreme prejudice deletions with immediate effect. Exact locational data and visual ID attached.’

  ‘Very good. Please indicate the level of precision required.’

  ‘Uh.’ This was a new refinement. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Please indicate level of precision required from the following five options; surgical, accurate, scattershot, blanket, atrocity.’

  ‘Jesus, uh.’ Chris gestured helplessly. ‘Surgical.’

  ‘Please note the surgical option may incur a substantial time delay. Char—’

  ‘No. That’s no good. This is with immediate effect.’

  ‘Do you wish to supersede precision levels with an urgency marker?’

  ‘Yes. I want this done now.’

  ‘Charge card or account?’

  ‘Account.’

  ‘Your contract is enabled. Thank you for choosing Langley Contracting. Have a nice day.’

  Chris looked once more at the five faces floating on his screen. He nodded again and pressed a thumb down on each one to make it go away.

  ‘Adios, muchachos.’

  When the last face had wiped, he wired the datadown line to his mobile and went out to get coffee from Louie Louie’s.

  Lopez called him about an hour later. Voice rampant down the line, whooping shrill with delight. Sirens in the backdrop.

  ‘Chris, you’re beautiful man!!!! You did it. Hijos de puta, they’re all over the street, man! They’re all over the fucking street!’

  ‘What?’ said Chris faintly.

  ‘Drive-by, man. Fucking exemplary. They must h
ave used one of those shoulder-launchers. Whole fucking café’s on fire. I’m telling you, there’s nothing left but pieces.’

  Chris sat down heavily behind the desk. He saw it, lit in tones of night and flame. Pastiche newsreel footage, memories of a hundred such scenes. Bodies and bits thereof, streak-scorched black and red. Screams and blundering panic from the sidelines.

  ‘The hotel.’ It was almost a whisper, like words he couldn’t be bothered to push out of his mouth. ‘The people in the hotel.’

  ‘Yeah, they got them too. I heard the shots. Spray guns.’ Lopez made a stuttering machine gun noise. He was drunk on his own narrow escape. ‘Just been down to check, right now. See, I was still looking out the window at the fire when—’

  ‘No, Joaquin. Stop. The other people in the hotel. You know, staff. Other customers. Did they hit anybody else?’

  ‘Oh.’ Lopez stopped. ‘I don’t think so, I didn’t see any other bodies. Man, who’d you call?’

  ‘Never mind.’ It was like tasting ashes. He could smell the blast, smell the scorched flesh on the scented night air. Over the phone, the sirens sobbed out and he heard screaming in the space it left. ‘You best get out of there. Better yet, get back to Panama City. You’re blown down there for now. You’ll have to work through someone else.’

  ‘Yeah. What I thought.’ Lopez’s voice shifted. ‘Listen, Chris. I lost it for a while back there, but I know my work. I didn’t make one wrong move in the last twenty-four hours. Those hijos de puta, they knew I was coming.’

  Chris nodded drearily, for all it was an audio link.

  ‘Right, Joaquin.’

  ‘Give me another two days. We can still make this run. I know the right people. You don’t have to worry.’

  He squeezed his eyes shut. ‘Right.’

  ‘Count on it, man. I’ll hook you up, I swear.’

  Behind Lopez, someone started using an ampbox to yell down the noise of the crowd. Chris reached out and cut the link.

  Bryant and Makin got in about the same time. Chris went down to the car deck to meet them. Mike grinned when he saw him.

  ‘Hey, Chris! Jesus, what time did you get in?’

  He ignored the greeting and went straight for Makin. Right fist in under the rib cage with the full force of the last stride behind it. Makin doubled up and vomited a spray of breakfast. Chris stepped back and hooked into his face from the side. The glasses flew. Makin hit the deck and rolled, retching. Chris got a single kick in, and then Mike had him pinioned from behind and was dragging him out of range.