Aces Abroad wc-4

by George R. R. Martin

"Let her in," Neumann said. "She's brought Herr Jones's tape for us."

  Sara was wearing a white trench coat with a hand-wide belt red as a bloody bandage. Tach shook his head. Like all fashion statements she made, this one jarred.

  She came to him. They shared a brief, dry embrace. She turned away, unslinging her heavy handbag.

  Tachyon wondered. Had that been a touch of metal in her watercolor eyes, or only tears?

  "Did. you hear that?" the redhead called Anneke warbled. "One of the pigs we got today was a Jew."

  Early afternoon. The radio simmered with reports and conjectures about the kidnapping. The terrorists were exalted, strutting and puffing for each other's benefit.

  "One more drop of blood to avenge our brothers in Palestine," said Wolf sonorously.

  "What about the nigger ace?" demanded the one who looked like a lifeguard and answered to Ulrich. "Has he died yet?"

  "He's not going to anytime soon," Anneke said. "According to the news, he walked out of the hospital within an hour of being admitted."

  "That's bullshit! I hit him with half a magazine. I saw that van fall on him."

  Anneke sidled over from the radio and ran her fingers along the line of Ulrich's jaw. "Don't you think if he can lift a van all by himself, he might be a little hard to hurt, sweetheart?" She stood up on the toes of her sneakers and kissed him just behind the lobe of his ear. "Besides, we killed two-"

  "Three," said Comrade Wilfried, who was still monitoring the airwaves. "The other, uh, policeman just died." He swallowed.

  Anneke clapped her hands in delight. "You see?"

  "I killed somebody too," said the boy's voice from behind Hartmann. Just the sound of it filled Puppetman with energy. Easy, easy, Hartmann cautioned his other half, wondering, do I have this one? Is it possible to create a puppet without knowing it? Or is he constantly emoting at such a pitch that I can feel it without having the link?

  The power didn't answer.

  The leather boy shuffled forward. Hartmann saw he was hunchbacked. A joker?

  "Comrade Dieter," the teenager said. "I offed himbrrr-like that!" He held his hands up in front of him and suddenly they were vibrating like a powersaw blade, a blur of lethality.

  An ace! Hartmann's own breath hit him in the chest. The vibration stopped. The boy showed yellow teeth around at the others. They were very quiet.

  Through the pounding in his ears Hartmann heard a scrape of tubular metal on wood as the man in the coat got up from his chair. "You killed someone, Mackie?" he asked mildly. His German was a touch too perfect to be natural. "Why?"

  Mackie tucked his head down. "He was an informer, Comrade," he said sidelong. His eyes jittered between Wolf and the other. "Comrade Wolf ordered me to take him into custody. But he-he tried to kill me! That was it. He pulled a gun on me and I buzzed him off." He brandished a vibrating hand again.

  The man came slowly forward where Hartmann could see him. He was medium height, dressed well but not too well, hair neat and blond. A man just on the handsome side of nondescriptness. Except for his hands, which were encased in what appeared to be thick rubber gloves. Hartmann watched them in sudden fascination.

  "Why wasn't I told of this, Wolf?" The voice stayed level, but Puppetman could hear an unspoken shout of anger. There was sadness too-the power was pulling it in, no question now. And a hell of a lot of fear.

  Wolf rolled heavy shoulders. "There was a lot going on this morning, Comrade Molniya. I learned that Dieter planned to betray us, I sent Mackie after him, things got out of hand. But everything's all right now, everything's going fine."

  Facts dropped into place like tumblers in a lock. Molniya-lightning. Suddenly Hartmann knew what had happened to him in the -limousine. The gloved man was an ace, who'd used some kind of electric power to shock him under.

  Hartmann's teeth almost splintered from the effort it took to bite back the terror. An unknown ace! He'll know me, find me out…

  His other self was ice. He doesn't know anything. But how can you know? We don't know his powers. He's a puppet.

  It was a fight to keep his face from matching his emotion. How the hell can that be?

  I got him when he shocked me. Didn't even have to do anything; his own power fused our nervous systems for a moment. That's all it took.

  Mackie squirmed like a puppy caught peeing on the rug. "Did I do right, Comrade Molniya?"

  Molniya's lips whitened, but he nodded with visible effort. "Yes

  … under the circumstances."

  Mackie preened and strutted. "Well, there it is. I executed an enemy of the Revolution. You're not the only ones." Anneke clucked and brushed fingertips across Mackie's cheek. "Preoccupied with the search for individual glory, Comrade? You're going to have to learn to watch those bourgeois tendencies if you want to be part of the Red Army Fraction."

  Mackie licked his lips and slunk away, flushing. Puppetman felt what was going on inside him, like the roil beneath the surface of the sun.

  What about him? Hartmann asked.

  Him too. And the blond jock as well. They both handled us after the Russian shocked you. That jolt made me hypersensitive.

  Hartmann let his head drop forward to cover a frown. How could all this happen without my knowledge?

  I'm your subconscious, remember? Always on the job.

  Comrade Molniya sighed and returned to his seat. He felt hairs rise on the back of his hands and neck as his hyperactive neurons fired off. There was nothing he could do about low-level discharges such as this; they happened of their own accord under stress. It was why he wore glovesand why some of the more lurid tales they told around the Aquarium about his wedding night had damned near come to pass.

  He had to smile. What's there to be tense about? Even if he were identified for what he was, after the fact, there would be no international repercussions; that was how the game was played, by us and by them. So his superiors assured him.

  Right.

  Good God, what did I do to deserve being caught up in this lunatic scheme? He wasn't sure who was crazier, this collection of poor twisted men and bloodthirsty political naifs or his own bosses.

  It was the opportunity of the decade, they'd told him. Al-Muezzin was in the vest pocket of the Big K. If we spring him, he'll fall into our hands out of gratitude. Work for us instead. He might even bring the Light of Allah along.

  Was it worth the risk? he'd demanded. Was it worth blowing the underground contacts they'd been building in the Federal Republic for ten years? Was it worth risking the Big War, the war neither side was going to win no matter what their fancy paper war plans said? Reagan was president; he was a cowboy, a madman.

  But there was only so far you could push, even if you were an ace and a hero, the first man into the Bala Hissar in Kabul on Christmas Day of '79. The gates had closed in his face. He had his orders. He needed no more.

  It wasn't that he disagreed with the goals. Their archrivals, the Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti-the State Security Committee-were arrogant, overpraised, and undercompetent. No good GRU man could ever object to taking those assholes down a peg. As a patriot he knew that Military Intelligence could make far better use of an asset as valuable as Daoud Hassani than their better-known counterparts the

  KGB.

  But the method…

  It wasn't for himself he worried. It was for his wife and daughter. And for the rest of the world too; the risk was enormous, should anything go wrong.

  He reached into a pocket for cigarettes and a lighter. "A filthy habit," Ulrich said in that lumbering way of his. Molniya just looked at him.

  After a moment Wolf produced a laugh that almost didn't sound forced. "The kids these days, they have different standards. In the old days-ah, Rikibaby, Comrade Meinhof, she was a smoker. Always had a cigarette going."

  Molniya said nothing, just kept staring at Ulrich. His eyes bore a trace of epicanthic fold, legacy of the Mongol Yoke. After a moment the blond youth found somewhere else to look.

&nb
sp; The Russian lit up, ashamed of his cheap victory. But he had to keep these murderous young animals under control. What an irony it was that he, who had resigned from the Spetsnaz commandos and transferred to the Chief Intelligence Directorate of the Soviet General Staff because he could no longer stomach violence, should find himself compelled to work with these creatures for whom the shedding of blood had become addiction.

  Oh, Milya, Mashes, will I ever see you again?

  "Herr Doktor."

  Tach scratched the side of his nose. He was getting restive. He'd been cooped up here two hours, unsure of what he might be contributing. Outside… well, there was nothing to be done. But he might be with his people on the tour, comforting them, reassuring them.

  "Herr Neumann," he acknowledged.

  The man from the Federal Criminal Office sat down next to him. He had a cigarette in his fingers, unlit despite the layer of tobacco that hung like a fogbank in the thick air. He kept turning it over and over.

  "I wanted to ask your opinion."

  Tachyon raised a magenta eyebrow. He had long since realized the Germans wanted him here solely because he was the tour's leader in Hartmann's absence. Otherwise they would hardly have cared to have a medical doctor, and a foreigner at that, underfoot. As it was, most of the civil and police officials circulating through the crisis center treated him with the deference due his position of authority and otherwise ignored him.

  "Ask away," Tachyon said with a hand wave that was only faintly sardonic. Neumann seemed honestly interested, and he had shown signs of at least nascent intelligence, which in Tach's compass was rare for the breed.

  "Were you aware that for the past hour and a half several members of your tour have been trying to raise a sum of money to offer Senator Hartmann's kidnappers as ransom?"

  "No."

  Neumann nodded, slowly, as if thinking something through. His yellow eyes were hooded. "They are experiencing considerable difficulty. It is the position of your government-"

  "Not my government."

  Neumann inclined his head. "-of the United States government, that there will be no negotiation with the terrorists. Needless to say, American currency restrictions did not permit the members of the tour to take anywhere near a sufficient amount of money from the country, and now the American government has frozen the assets of all tour participants to preclude their concluding a separate deal."

  Tachyon felt his cheeks turn hot. "That's damned high-handed."

  Neumann shrugged. "I was curious as to what you thought of the plan."

  "Why me?"

  "You're an acknowledged authority on joker affairs-that's the reason you honor our country with your presence, of course." He tapped the cigarette on the table next to a curling corner of a map of Berlin. "Also, you come of a culture in which kidnapping is a not uncommon occurrence, if I do not misapprehend."

  Tach looked at him. Though he was a celebrity, most Earthers knew little of his background beyond the fact that he was an alien. "I can't speak of the RAF, of course-"

  "The Rote Armee Fraktion in its current incarnation consists primarily of middle-class youths-much like its previous incarnations, and for that matter most First World revolutionary groups. Money means little to them; as children of our so-called Economic Miracle, they've been raised always to assume a sufficiency of it."

  "That's certainly not something you can say for the JJS," Sara Morgenstern said, coming over to join the conversation. An aide moved to intercept her, reaching a hand to shepherd her away from the important masculine conversation. She shied away from him as if a spark had jumped between them and glared.

  Neumann said something brisk that not even Tachyon caught. The aide retreated.

  "Frau Morgenstern. I am also much interested in what you have to say."

  "Members of the jokers for a just Society are authentically poor. I can vouch for that at least."

  "Would money tempt them, then?"

  "That's hard to say. They are committed, in a way I suspect the RAF members aren't. Still-" a butterfly flip of the hand-"they haven't lost any Mideastern aces. On the other hand, when they demand money to benefit jokers, I believe them. Whereas that might mean less to the Red Army people."

  Tach frowned. The demand to knock down Jetboy's Tomb and build a joker hospice rankled him. Like most New Yorkers, he wouldn't miss the memorial-an eyesore erected to honor failure, and one he'd personally prefer to forget. But the demand for a hospice was a slap in his face: When has a joker been turned away from my clinic? When?

  Neumann was studying him. "You disagree, Herr Doktor?" he asked softly.

  "No, no. She's right. But Gimli-" he snapped his fingers and extended a forefinger. "Tom Miller cares deeply for jokers. But he has also an eye for what Americans call the main chance. You might well be able to tempt him."

  Sara nodded. "But why do you ask, Herr Neumann? After all, President Reagan refuses to negotiate for the senator's return." Her voice rang with bitterness. Still, Tach was puzzled. As high-strung as she was, he'd thought that surely worry for Gregg would have broken her down by now. Instead she seemed to be growing steadier by the hour. Neumann looked at her for a moment, and Tach wondered if he was in on the ill-kept secret of her affair with the missing senator. He had the impression those yellow eyesred-rimmed now from the smoke-missed little.

  "Your President has made his decision," he said softly. "But it's my responsibility to advise my government on what course to take. This is a German problem too, you know."

  At two-thirty Hiram Worchester came on the air reading a statement in English. Tachyon translated it into German during the pauses.

  "Comrade Wolf-Gimli, if you're there," Hiram said, voice fluting with emotion, "we want the senator back. We're willing to negotiate as private citizens."

  "Please, for the love of God-and for jokers and aces and all the rest of us-please call us."

  Molniya stared at the door. White enamel was coming away in flakes. Striae of green and pink and brown showed beneath the white, around gouges that looked as if someone had used the door for knife-throwing practice. He was all but oblivious to the others in the room. Even the mad boy's incessant humming; he'd long since learned to tune that out for sanity's sake.

  I should never have let them go.

  It took him aback when both Gimli and Wolf wanted to make the meet with the tour delegation. It was about the first thing they'd agreed on since this whole comic-opera affair had gotten underway.

  He'd wanted to forbid them. He didn't like the smell of this rendezvous… but that was foolish. Reagan had closed the door on overt negotiation, but didn't the current Irangate hearings with which the Americans were currently amusing themselves prove he was not averse to using private channels to deal with terrorists against whom he'd taken a hard public line?

  Besides, he thought, I've long since learned better than to issue orders I doubt will be obeyed.

  It had been so different in Spetsnaz. The men he'd commanded were professionals and more, the elite of the Soviet armed forces, full of esprit and skilled as surgeons.

  Such a contrast to this muddle of bitter amateurs and murderous dilettantes.

  If only he'd at least had someone trained back home, or in a camp in some Soviet client state, Korea or Iraq or Peru. Someone except Gimli, that is-he had the impression years had passed since anything but plastique would open the dwarf's mind enough to accept input from anyone else, nats in particular.

  He wished at least he might have gone on the meet. But his place was here, guarding the captive. Without Hartmann they had nothing-except a worldful of trouble.

  Does the KGB have this much trouble with its puppets? Rationally he guessed they did. They'd fluffed a few big ones over the years-the mention of Mexico could still make veterans wince and GRU had evidence of plenty of missteps the Big K thought they'd covered up.

  But the Komitet's publicists had done their job well, on both sides of the quaintly named "Iron Curtain." Down behind his foreb
rain not even Molniya could shake the image of the KGB as the omniscient puppet master, with its strings wrapping the world like a spider's web.

  He tried to envision himself as a master spider. It made him smile.

  No. I'm not a spider. Just a small, frightened man whom somebody once called hero.

  He thought of Ludmilya, his daughter. He shuddered. There are strings attached to me, right enough. But I'm not the one who pulls them.

  I want him.

  Hartmann looked around the squalid little room. Ulrich was pacing, face fixed and sullen at having been left behind. Stocky Wilfried sat cleaning an assault rifle with compulsive care. He always seemed to be doing something with his hands. The two remaining jokers sat by themselves saying nothing. The Russian sat and smoked and stared at the wall.

  He studiously didn't look at the boy in the scuffed leather jacket.

  Mackie Messer hummed the old song about the shark and its teeth and the man with his jackknife and fancy gloves. Hartmann remembered a mealymouthed version popular when he was a teenager, sung by Bobby Darin or some such teen-idol crooner. He also recalled a different version, one he'd heard for the first time in a dim dope-fogged room on Yale's Old Campus when antiwar activist Hartmann returned to his alma mater to lecture in '68. Dark and sinister, a straighter translation of the original, sung in the whisky baritone of a man who, like old Bertolt Brecht himself, delighted in playing Baal: Thomas Marion Douglas, Destiny's doomed lead singer. Remembering the way the words went down his spine on that distant night, he shuddered.

  I want him.

  No! his mind shouted. He's insane. He's dangerous. He could be useful, once I get us out of here.

  Hartmann's body clenched in rictus terror. No! Don't do anything! The terrorists are negotiating right now. We'll get out of this.

  He felt Puppetman's disdain. Seldom had his alter ego seemed more discrete, more other. Fools. What has Hiram Worchester ever been involved in that amounted to anything? It'll fall through.

  Then we just wait. Sooner or later something will be worked out. It's how these things go. He felt slimy vines of sweat twining his body inside his blood-spattered shirt and vest.