Cybernation nf-6

by Tom Clancy

  There were some things you still had to do. Serious VR players, really serious ones, could hook up IVs and catheters so they could stay jacked in for days, not having to eat or pee. Keller had done that a few times, been in VR for forty, fifty hours, even sleeping on-line, being fed dreams by programs that knew how to input them. Usually, however, he had to interface with the real world often enough so he couldn’t do that. Just like now, he had to go pee. It was a bother, but there was no help for it without a Foley running through your dick into your bladder.

  He went to the toilet, which on this old-style car was a pretty big place — five stalls, five urinals, a tile floor, mirrors, sinks, the whole enchilada. Normally, they closed the toilets when the train was in the station, because when you flushed the toilet, a hole opened in the bottom and it fell right out onto the tracks. There were laws against that now in a lot of places, but people who ran private trains didn’t pay attention to them. Who was going to follow a train across the country looking to see if it was dropping turds and piss onto the tracks out in the middle of nowhere?

  He stood in front of the urinal for what seemed like a long time, emptying his bladder, zipped up, and started to wash his hands.

  “Hello, Jackson” came a voice from behind him.

  Keller froze, as if he had seen Medusa and turned to stone.

  Smiling behind him, reflected in the mirror, was Roberto Santos.

  Keller forgot how to breathe. He managed to manufacture a grin that felt like a rictus. “Roberto. Wh-what are you doing here? Something wr-wrong?”

  Santos moved to the door. Locked it.

  Keller’s heart turned to a block of dry ice. His mouth went dry.

  “Nothing wrong, Jackson. Just balancing things out.”

  “Wh-Wh-Whuh—?”

  “You touched my woman. You knew she was mine, and you went with her. Missy is fine, she is hot. I know it was her idea, making the two-backed beast, I know how she is. Woman’s got tricks that would make a plaster saint hard. I know turning her down is not easy. But she was mine. She still is, until I say otherwise.”

  “Listen, Santos, it was a mistake, a mistake, I’m sorry, I really am, I’m sorry, what can I do to make it up to you?”

  Santos smiled. “Don’t worry so much, Jackson. I’m not gonna kill you. It won’t even show. But you got a debt; it has to be paid.”

  “Santos, don’t! You don’t want to do this! Jasmine will fire you!”

  “No, she won’t. Because you won’t tell her.”

  “I will! I will!”

  “No,” he said, “you won’t. And you know why? Because if she fires me, I will come back and kill you. But only after a long, long time of you wishing you were dead. You understand?”

  Keller’s fear gripped him so hard he started to shake.

  Santos moved — so fast! and hit him, just under his sternum.

  He… couldn’t… get… any… air—!

  Santos smiled. A man enjoying himself.

  As Keller tried to get his wind back, Santos hit him again.

  It hurt so bad—!

  * * *

  The rental car was cold when Santos started it, and it took the heater a while to warm things up. He hated the cold. Even in a jacket, with gloves and a hat, he felt the chill trying to get to him. Yes, they had winter at home, but it was the kind of winter where you could walk around in a T-shirt and shorts. In June, when it was the coldest, it dropped to maybe sixty, sixty-five most nights. Mean temperature year round was seventy-something. It got hot sometimes — now, in the summer, you could work up a sweat; it actually got cold sometimes, but rarely. Those were not the normal things. In Rio, the temperature was almost always perfect. It was God’s country, and men who lived there were fortunate above other men.

  Here and now, there was ice in the ponds and lakes, and patches of snow in the shadows, with more to come. How could people live in such places?

  Well. They were Germans, weren’t they? And all Germans were at least slightly mad.

  The plane he was going to catch was at a private airport about thirty miles away. From there, he would fly to a big airport in Berlin, and from there, back to the U.S. He was supposedly making sure that preparations for the big attack were in order, and in a way, he was. He had already talked to people he needed to talk to, and he would see others. Missy wasn’t expecting him back for a couple of days.

  Putting fear into Keller was part of the preparations as far as he was concerned.

  He smiled at the memory of Keller, lying curled like a newborn on the floor in the train’s washroom, a pool of yellow vomit next to him. He hadn’t really hurt the man, nothing permanent. Never hit him in the face. He would be sore tomorrow, belly, ribs, back, thighs, and he would bruise some, but nothing that would show when he was dressed. He was a flower-picker, Jackson was, his ping-pongs the size of BBs, more girl than man. It hadn’t been particularly satisfying to beat him, like slapping a child. He had offered no resistance, but it had to be that way. There were things that a man had to do if he was going to remain a man and not turn into an old woman.

  He hadn’t decided yet how he was going to punish Missy, but he was smart enough to know he needed to wait until the attack was finished. There would be a bonus for successful completion, a big bonus, enough so he could walk away if he really wanted to do that. At the very least, he had to wait until that money was converted into gold and on its way home. It would not be quite as much as he wanted, but it would do. A man like him could always find more work if he had to find it.

  The heater had finally begun to unfog the windows and offer enough warmth so he didn’t have to tense against the cold. Better. Not good, but better.

  Keller would say nothing to Missy. If he knew anything, Santos knew when a man would stand and fight, and Keller was not such a man. Missy was more dangerous. She could put a knife between your ribs if you pissed her off bad enough and closed your eyes at the wrong time. That was part of what he liked about her. She was soft where it counted, she could wring a man dry of his essential juices, but she was also hard in her mind. He would punish her, he had to, but it must be in such a way that she could not revenge herself upon him.

  He might even have to kill her. A shame, but sometimes, that’s what you had to do. People died every day. That was how life was: You came into the world, you lived your time, you left. All that mattered in between the coming and the going was how you spent your time. And for Santos, that and O-Jôgo—The Game.

  All else was no more than a shrug.

  28

  Washington, D.C.

  The lobbyist’s name was Corinna Skye. She was a drop-dead gorgeous natural blonde who looked five years younger than her thirty-five years. She was tall, slim, busty, and was a six-handicap golfer. She wore a charcoal-gray power suit, the skirt cut just short enough to show she had great legs without being titillating, a white silk blouse, and a dark red scarf. Her shoes were dark gray handmade Italian leather, one-inch heels, five hundred dollars a pair. She was smart, funny, and while many in political circles considered all lobbyists high-priced whores, she had never slept with a senator or congressman, though many of them had tried to make that happen. She had graduated first in her class at Columbia in political science, and was considered the best lobbyist on Internet issues in the country.

  Chance sat across the table from Skye in the booth at Umberto’s. The salad had been perfect, and the handmade fresh pasta was outstanding — Chance had gotten the bay shrimp in heavy cream and would have to pay for it on the stairclimber later, but it had been worth it.

  “With Wayne DeWitt’s unfortunate accident — a terrible tragedy — things’ll be easier on the senatorial side,” Skye said. She didn’t know that DeWitt’s injuries had been on Chance’s orders; she wasn’t in that loop.

  She continued: “We’ve gone to a full-press in the House. Congressman Kinsey Walker — he’saDfrom California — will offer his bill on Monday. We have the votes to get it out of committee, thoug
h we’re still eight shy for passage in the House — but we’ll get those.”

  “Assuming it passes in the House and Senate,” Chance said, “what are the chances of a presidential veto?”

  “Ordinarily, I’d say it would be nailed, at the very least pocketed. But the administration has a couple of pet projects on the table, the National Parks bill and the new medicare thing, and they’d sell their wives and mothers to a Turkish dope dealer to get either of those passed. We have some votes to trade. More than enough.”

  “Good.”

  The waiter came by. Would the ladies care for dessert and coffee?

  Just coffee, they both said.

  “You do realize that this bill is not what we’d hoped for,” Skye said. “It’s about half-strength.”

  Chance nodded. “Yes. But it’s a start. Once this is established, then it’s like new taxes, it won’t go away, and we can strengthen it next session. The first part of making an omelet is to collect some eggs.”

  Both of them smiled, women of the world.

  As they sipped their coffee, Chance reflected that in another life, she might have been friends with Skye. She preferred the company of men most of the time, men were so much easier to manipulate, but there were occasions when sitting somewhere and talking to a bright woman was more relaxing. True, there was always a certain amount of competition, even with women, but as long as there were no men around to control, girl talk could be a breath of fresh air. Testosterone did get overwhelming at times.

  Take ’Berto, for instance. He was a man’s man, willing to buy a drink and slap a back in fellowship, or, at the drop of a hat, kick in his drinking buddy’s teeth. No complexity about him, no convoluted layers to his thoughts, he had simple wants and needs. For him, life was one giant game of king-of-the-hill. As one of her yoga teachers would have said, ’Berto lived in his lower chakras, the belly and the phallus, and had yet to realize his higher potentials. The yoga teacher would have earnestly believed that ’Berto had higher potentials. Chance knew better. ’Berto had three things driving him: fighting, sex, and good food, that was it—

  “I’ve seen the latest TV spots,” Skye said, interrupting her internal musings.

  “What did you think?”

  Skye chuckled. “The people who make Kleenex must love you. Even Kodak hasn’t got anything so soppy.”

  “Subscriptions are up twelve percent since we started running the new series.”

  Skye wiped a bit of lipstick from her coffee cup with a napkin. “Doesn’t surprise me. I’d expect them to be effective. Subtle doesn’t work for television viewers. Lowest common denominator and all. Speaking of which, I know a woman who slept with one of those basketball players.”

  Chance raised an eyebrow.

  “Hung to here,” she said, slapping the inside of her left knee. “And she says they must make Viagra out of his blood.”

  They both laughed.

  Chance nodded. Yes, a smart woman was a great break from mule-headed men. She glanced at her watch. “Well. I need to run along. It’s been great visiting with you, Cory.”

  “As always. I’ll call you with updates.”

  “I appreciate it.”

  Chance waved the waiter over and paid the bill, and Skye merely nodded her thanks. Another thing a man would quibble over. Skye cleared half a million a year, easy, and she wasn’t going to make noise over a little hundred-dollar lunch tab, one way or the other.

  As she left the restaurant, Chance looked around. Washington was a dreary city in the winter. It was beautiful in the spring, all the flowering fruit trees, but when the gray and cold settled in, all the marble and wide streets couldn’t offset the gloom. She had a couple of other errands to run, including a visit to a key senator. While Cory Skye was scrupulous in her personal life, Chance would use any weapon she had to win a contest. If that meant screwing a middle-aged married senator stupid — which was no great chore, given the starting point of his IQ — she had no problem with that. Whatever worked.

  * * *

  Toni was excited. It had been some time since she had been in the field, back when she and Alex had had their troubles on that trip to England. She smiled at the memory, which was bittersweet. Such heartache they’d gone through, for what was basically a stupid mistake, on both their parts. More his than hers, but, she had to admit, she had jumped to a conclusion she shouldn’t have.

  She had packed for warm weather, one bag she could fit into the overhead bin on the jet. She was only going for a couple of days, and she had had enough bad experiences with checked baggage to last a lifetime. Once, on a flight to Hawaii, her suitcase had vacationed in Japan.

  Documents had provided her with a new ID — driver’s license, credit cards, even a library card, no passport needed — that showed she was Mary Johnson, a divorced secretary from Falls Church, Virginia. She was on holiday, going to play the slot machines and soak up the sunshine in the warm Caribbean. She had her flight booked, along with a single cabin on the Bon Chance. It was enough cover to check out the ship, she’d be in and out, and nobody would be the wiser.

  “You still packing, girl?” Guru said. She came into the bedroom, Little Alex slung over her right hip.

  “Guru, I don’t know how you expect him to practice walking if you never put him down.”

  Guru smiled and bounced the baby on her hip a couple of times. He laughed.

  “Don’t you worry about him learning to walk. Pretty soon, I start teaching him djurus. Time you get back, he’ll be a fighter.”

  “I’m only going to be gone three days.”

  “Plenty of time, eh, best boy?”

  Little Alex laughed again.

  “You sure this is all right?”

  Guru shook her head. “Child, I raised a houseful of babies. This little one is an angel compared to a couple of my boys. We’ll be fine. And we’ll watch out for big Alex, too.”

  Toni nodded. Guru had recovered from her stroke all right, but she was in her eighties. Then again, her mind was still sharp, and the years of silat practice had given her a balance most people didn’t have in their thirties. Little Alex couldn’t be safer, and anybody who thought the old lady pushing the baby stroller was a victim would learn a hard lesson otherwise. It was just so strange to be catching a jet and flying off on her own. It felt… weird, somehow. That kind of thing belonged to her life before Alex and the baby.

  “Go, I think I heard the cab honking,” Guru said.

  Toni took Alex and hugged him. “You be good for Guru,” she said. She kissed him, and felt a pang of something like loss when she handed him back to the old woman, and hugged her in the transfer.

  Once she was in the cab, Toni found she had to force herself to breathe slower. Her belly roiled with nervousness. An adventure. She was going on an adventure.

  On the CyberNation Train Outside Berlin, Germany

  Keller ached all over. He had taken half a dozen ibuprofen tablets, and they had taken the edge off, but every move, every breath, hurt. He had never felt like this. Once, when he was fourteen, his mother had run a stop sign and their car had been broadsided by another driver. He had wrenched his shoulder and elbow, banged his head against the glass, and had a sore spot on his hip, and he’d thought that was bad, but that was nothing compared to this. Yet, when he looked into the mirror, there was almost no sign of the beating Santos had given him — he had some bruises on his chest, his belly, his legs and back, but they didn’t look nearly as bad as they felt. They were just light brown splotches, a little purple in a couple of them. How could it hurt so bad and not look worse than it did?

  Santos was a devil, a monster, a psychotic thug! He should get a gun and shoot him!

  But even as he dressed, trying to avoid moving as much as he could — he had to sit down to put his trousers on — Keller knew he would not do that. Even with a gun, he was afraid of Santos. If he missed, if the man didn’t die immediately, he would come for Keller, and that would be that. The man would kill him, slo
wly and painfully. And pain was not something that Keller wanted any more of, ever.

  I-5, South of Sacramento, California August

  Jay wound the RT/10 Viper up into fifth gear and blew past the guy in the Shelby GT at ninety-five. In a few seconds, he was doing a hundred and fifteen, eating up the highway, speed still climbing. This stretch of road was straight as an arrow and in the middle of the desert, nothing to see, and even at this clip, he wasn’t gonna get through it any time soon.

  He shifted into sixth, and the little car had enough to surge when he did. Who’s your daddy, baby? Huh?

  The guy in the Mustang must have stepped on it, Jay could see him in the rearview, starting to gain. Jay laughed. The Shelby was fast, maybe even faster than he was on the top end, but he had a mile and some on the guy by now, and by the time the Mustang wound it up and pegged the speedometer, Jay would be at the exit to the olive place and the race would be over.

  The olive place was where he was meeting his contact in this scenario, and he was being nothing if not careful this time. He came in with an anonymous persona, a female one at that, under a phony name and addy, and anybody looking for Jay Gridley wasn’t gonna see that guy in this car. It would be almost impossible to figure out who he really was, and even if he went places where traps had been set for Jay — which he didn’t plan on doing, thank you very much — he was going to make it look like he — or she, in this case — had wandered in there by accident.

  There was the exit. The Shelby GT was coming up fast, but not fast enough. Jay put on his blinker and was off the interstate and down to sixty before the Mustang roared past. He heard the man in the car yell at him, and shook his head. Why, none of it — he’d never had that kind of relationship with his mother. The very idea!