“Schalk, shut up,” Adrienne said, her face thoughtful as her eyes went back and forth between Bosco and Tom.
“What’s going on?” Tom asked hoarsely.
“Well,” Adrienne said, “you did sound odd. I suspected you were being naughty. So we paid a visit to your place first. Tsk, tsk. All that research! Why did you leave it in place?”
“Too much to move quickly, and we were in a hurry,” he said. “But there are backup duplicates, and it’ll all be—”
Adrienne laughed a little, shaking her head. “Going down swinging, eh, Tom? I’d expect nothing less. But you know as well as I do nobody would believe a word of it without more proof—that’s why you’re here, to get the proof. Lucky you didn’t give me an even later false time, though, or I’m afraid Toni here would have done something really unpleasant to y’all before I arrived.”
Her leaf-green eyes turned to Perkins. “I presume the FBI agent is in it with you—this must be unofficial, or there would have been more of you. From the date on that movement survey on me, you only told her today….” Her tone altered, losing the bantering note. “I’m trying to come up with reasons not to kill anyone, Tom. I really am. So tell me the truth.”
“Yes,” he said bitterly, and spat—clearing his mouth and expressing his opinion at the same time.
Perkins spoke for the first time: “Fuck you!” she snapped with a flat murderous glare. “You’ve killed plenty, and you’ll get the needle for it.”
Adrienne inclined her head. “I don’t think so, Special Agent Perkins. Schalk, one dose of neurotone.”
The man began to complain, and she made a chopping gesture. “Schalk, for the last time, shut up and do as you’re told!”
“What is that stuff?” Tom asked.
He tried to keep the fear out of his voice as she pulled a disposable hypodermic needle out of a case the Afrikaner handed her. Perkins simply glared silently as the injector approached.
“Think of it as a chemical equivalent of electroshock, which mimics the effects of a moderately severe concussion very closely,” Adrienne said, working the plunger with her thumb until a bead of clear liquid appeared on the tip. “Developed for the GSF—the Gate Security Force—here on FirstSide; not that the developer knew who we were or what we wanted it for. Usually the subject wakes up with a splitting headache and no memory of the recent past. The past day or two.”
“Usually?”
“Sometimes the effects are… more drastic.” She looked up at him as she pulled back Perkins’s sleeve. “Good, the bruise here will hide the needle mark….”
The black woman didn’t flinch when the thin steel pierced her skin. A few seconds later she yawned uncontrollably; then her eyes rolled up and her head slumped. Adrienne waited a moment more, then peeled back an eyelid with her thumb and studied the reaction of the pupil.
“Looks good,” she said. “No adverse reaction.” At his glare, she went on: “Tom, the alternative is letting them find her body and making it look like you killed her. We can’t just disappear an FBI agent, not these days; they would keep looking until they found something. They know she’s been working with you, and the cover story we’re using with you wouldn’t wash.”
“Cover story?” he croaked. Damn, I’m turning into the straight man here!
“Well, when they search your hurriedly abandoned apartment, I’m afraid they’re going to find very convincing evidence that you and your short friend here were involved up to your necks in the endangered-species racket. Not to mention a forgotten stash of twenty thousand dollars in cash, and clues that with some work will lead them to offshore accounts with over a million. That will be extremely convincing, since we’ve also removed all trace of what you found. It’ll be assumed you got out of the country and are living in affluent retirement somewhere else.”
She smiled—a little sadly—at his fury. “It was necessary. That dodo, and you clicked faster than I thought you could… none of it will matter where you’re going, Tom.”
“Through your dimensional portal,” he said. “That’s how you dispose of the inconvenient, isn’t it?”
“We usually call it the Gate,” she replied. Her smile grew broader for an instant. “Think of the other side as bizzarro Sunnydale. Or another dimension of time and space.”
She hummed under her breath: du-du-du, du-du-du. Even then, Tully couldn’t control a strangled grunt of laughter as he recognized the theme song. It was his partner’s reaction that prompted Tom’s memory.
And Perkins was still alive, unconscious but twitching. Adrienne’s attention had turned to Anthony Bosco. With the adrenaline of rage still running through his brain, Tom was still grateful that the look wasn’t directed at him. It was an expression he’d never seen on her face before, calm and implacable and colder than the moon.
She tossed a comment over her shoulder, not taking her eyes from Bosco’s face. “This is the man responsible for the warehouse full of skins and the condor,” she said. “And the dodo.” She leaned forward slightly. “Why, Toni?”
Bosco licked his lips, but spoke calmly enough. “Money. I’ve got expensive tastes I can’t satisfy back in New Virginia. All right, you got me; now take me back to the Commonwealth and we’ll have the fucking trial.”
Commonwealth? Tom thought. Not the Commonwealth of Letters, I think. Well, it beats “Hole in the Wall.”
“Toni, don’t insult me,” Adrienne said. “I get very upset when people insult me. You can draw on the Colletta accounts FirstSide and live like a pasha without going to all this trouble and risk. That’s what put me onto this in the first place. And the dodo wasn’t just a risk; it was insane. Unless you weren’t really trying to cream off some extra FirstSide currency. If you were trying to convince some FirstSiders that the Gate was real, seeing as how you can’t actually show it to them… now, then the dodo would make sense.”
Bosco went silent, shaking his head.
“Come on, Toni. We both know that Giovanni Colletta’s behind this somehow. You’re one of his hatchet men and you’ve been carrying water for him for years. What does your Prime get out of this? And don’t say money. This is political.”
Another head shake, but Bosco’s eyes were flicking back and forth in an instinctive search for escape.
“Hold him,” she said.
Piet Botha grinned like a gorilla and seized the smaller man by the back of the neck with a shovel-sized hand.
Bosco gave a grunt of pain and glared at her. “Tell this Settler bastard to get his hands off me, Adrienne,” he said. “You know the law—he can’t touch one of the Thirty!”
Adrienne walked over and stood close to the young man, wrinkling her nose slightly at the smell of vomit from his jacket. She reached out and pulled a ring off his left thumb—Tom could see that it was like hers, gold and platinum braided together.
“I do know the law,” she said. “Since they’re Gate Security operatives, they can touch you, over here on FirstSide. In fact, if I tell them to, they can kill you. Habeas corpus doesn’t apply this side of the Gate. You know that part of the law, don’t you? And the provisions about treason?”
She flipped the ring into the air. “Now talk, Bosco. This isn’t a scam you were running on your own. Your Family Prime is involved. You needed access to Nostradamus’ classified channels to read the message I sent about there being a bust here tonight—that’s why I used Nostradamus this afternoon, instead of a courier. You couldn’t have trapped these FirstSiders otherwise. Give me the details: who, where, when, why. I don’t have time to waste.”
He snarled. “Take me back to the Commonwealth and put me on trial before the committee,” he said. “They’ll have that Gate Security commission off you so fast—Shit!”
At her nod, Botha relaxed his mechanical-grab grip enough that Bosco could take a shuddering breath. She reached into her jacket and took out a small steel rod; at a flick of her wrist it extended into a short truncheon with a knob at the end. Bosco’s eyes went wide, a
nd he began to struggle as Botha grabbed one of his hands, forced it down on the desk and then thrust a painful thumb on its back, making his fingers splay out in uncontrollable reflex.
Adrienne sighed again. “This is going to hurt you a lot more than me, but I’d really rather not have this sort of memory in my head,” she said. “So why don’t you spare us both and talk?”
He shook his head again. She flicked the truncheon up, then down again in a short whipping arc. Bosco screamed and convulsed as the knob smashed down on the little finger of his right hand; there was a distinct crack under the louder, mushier sound of steel hammering flesh against unyielding hardwood.
Jesus, Tom thought, his mouth going dry. He’d done as bad in the field: When you needed information desperately, lives were at stake and some shaheed wasn’t talking, the type who really believed in the seventy-two virgins… those were times when the officer walked around the hill so he didn’t have to officially see what went on and you did what you had to. Watching brought back memories he’d…
Rather not have in my head, just as she said, he thought unwillingly.
When Bosco had drawn himself together somewhat, shuddering, she leaned forward and pushed the knob on the steel whip against his nose.
“Now listen carefully, Bosco,” she said. “There are two hundred and sixteen bones in the human body. That was one.”
She paused for a second, then went on, her face like something carved from ivory, and her voice flat and cool, the tone neutral: “I’m going to break one bone every thirty seconds until you tell me what I want to know. After half an hour, you’ll be like a rag doll. Except that rag dolls don’t feel pain. And you will.”
The knob descended on the broken finger; Botha clamped a hand across the smaller man’s mouth to muffle the scream.
“Now, you’re a scion of the Thirty—you’re a brave man—we can take that for granted. But everybody talks in the end. So why don’t we just skip to the confession? Why take the fall for the Colletta? Twenty-nine. Twenty-eight. Twenty-seven.”
Bosco’s sweat-slick face worked, as if he were chewing something unpalatable. Tom looked away; he didn’t have to watch, at least.
That meant he saw the tall pale Afrikaner draw his pistol, moving smooth and fast. The American responded without time for thought, some distant-observer part of himself blinking in surprise at what his subconscious had decided to do.
“Look out!” he screamed, and threw himself forward.
That was hard when you were tied arms-and-ankles to a chair. The weight of heavy muscle on his shoulders made it a bit easier, by raising his center of gravity. The chair tipped forward; he caromed off the shooter’s knees and then bounced painfully to the floor. Lying there he could hear the sharp crack of the little weapon, and see the red bloom of an entry wound appear on Bosco’s chest. He could see Adrienne turning as well; he’d never seen anyone move quite as fast. Her hand dropped the metal baton and knocked it out of the way as it swept inside her jacket, up and out and level.
Not Adrienne, he thought, dazed. The guy was shooting for Bosco first. And then: Remind me never to get into a quick-draw contest with her.
Two other pistols barked then; there was a shatter of glass breaking, and a soft heavy grunt from above him. The long form of the Afrikaner gunman dropped over his body, hiding the light and dripping a disgusting salt-and-iron wetness on his face. He spat aside when it was lifted away, knowing his face must be a glistening mask of red.
“Thanks,” Adrienne said, looking down at him. “He would have got me too….” She looked up. “But why?”
Then she turned to the big dark man, who was staring down at his ex-partner with an almost childlike confusion.
“Botha, snap out of it. We need the cleanup team here now.”
INTERLUDE
March 16, 1997
Commonwealth of New Virginia
“Like the country around Stellenbosch, east of Cape Town,” Piet Botha said to the friend beside him.
Winds and shadows fell toward the west, and the mountains stretching toward the Pacific went from purple-green to a dark sawtooth against the northern horizon.
“Like it, but better,” Schalk van der Merwe said grudgingly. “It’s good land; I grant you that.”
The Cape Dutch-style farmhouse behind them was rawly new, a long single-story rectangle with a stoep in front where they sat, two short wings on the back, and a tall gable over the teak doors; it was whitewashed in the traditional style, but the roof was tile rather than black thatch. Ten acres of young orange trees to either side of the house scented the night with their perfume as the western light cast long shadows across the empty vastness to the south. The day had been sunny and mildly warm. That lingered in the stones of the wall behind them, making the veranda pleasant despite a cooling wind from the sea that picked up smells of manzanita and sage.
He’d picked a spot where the land began its climb toward the Santa Monica Mountains, although there was already a request in to the Commission to rename them the Krugerberg. His grant was part of the new home estate of the Commonwealth’s latest addition to the Thirty Families—the Versfelds, who now had their seat at what another world called Santa Monica, and which this one named Hendriksdorp. The location gave Botha’s new home a view across the land that stretched away across the foothills and down to the flat plain of the Los Angeles basin. It was green with the winter rains, flower-starred tall grass with groves of willow and oak, cottonwood and sycamore along the streamsides and about the surprisingly numerous sloughs and swamps. He’d ridden over the countryside enough to get a feel for it: the open land where the soil rose a little higher, and the lower stretches often impassable with clumps of alder, hackberry and shrubs woven together with California rose and wild grapevines, blackberries and brambles.
The big Afrikaner had been surprised at how wet this area seemed, after having seen the same places FirstSide; swamps covered a third of it even in the dry summer, not counting salt marsh along the coastline, and vast fields of wild mustard rose higher than a rider’s head, thick with game. It didn’t rain that much on the low country in either universe, but here all the runoff from the mountains seeped into the great underground reservoirs, and welled to the surface in innumerable springs and damp spots where the lay of the land forced it to the surface. Nobody had pumped the aquifers dry here, or logged off the mountains, or crammed twenty-five million thirsty human beings onto the land.
Piet Botha’s wife came out onto the stoep and set a tray with coffee and koeksisters on the table between the two men. She was a short, slight woman in contrast to her hulking husband, with curling brown hair and blue eyes.
“Dinner will be ready soon,” she said, turning and finishing over her shoulder as she walked back into the house, wiping her hands on her apron, “if I can keep that nahua girl from ruining it—she throws chilies into everything if you don’t watch her like a hawk. Lamb sosaties and rice today.”
Piet smacked his lips; that meant cubes of lamb marinated in wine and vinegar, spiced with coriander, pepper, turmeric and tamarind, strung on skewers with apricots and peppers, and grilled over a clear wood fire—chaparral scrub oak did wonders.
He and his companion sipped their coffee, ate the doughnutlike sweet pastries and watched the Botha children playing in the garden; the plantings were three years old and it was already well along, trees sprouting amid the flowers with Californian speed, some of the blue gum eucalyptus already thirty feet high. A grove of native oaks gave an illusion of age offset by the half-built buildings in a clump to the east; storage sheds, stables, barn, garage, all in a litter of beams and planks and stacks of adobe brick. A pump chugged in the background, pulling water from a reservoir fed by mountain springs for the house and the automated-drip irrigation system.
“Much better,” Botha said, after a spell of companionable silence. “Man, talk about luck! I’m glad I listened to Oom Versfeld, I’ll tell you that! They don’t call him Slim Hendrik, Clever Hendrik,
for nothing.”
Schalk van der Merwe scowled. “He should have held out for the real Cape,” he said. “Not just land here. If not for our own land, what were we fighting for?”
“We fought for South Africa,” Botha said, his slow deep voice giving an extra gravity to the guttural sounds of Afrikaans. “We lost. What do Boers do when we lose? We trek, man, we go somewhere else.”
The moaning rhythmic grunt of a lion’s roar sounded in the distance, as the first stars appeared overhead. A loose scattering of house lights stood miles apart along the foot of the mountains, and a few headlights crawled along the north-south road that ended at San Diego.
Botha chuckled. “This is about as else as you can get. Being beaten once was bad enough. I don’t want to start the same fight over again right away.”
“Hell,” Schalk said, waving his doughnut; a little syrup dropped onto his khaki shirt. “The bushmen and the blacks in South Africa—on this side of the Gate—they’re bare-arsed savages. Just like the ones our ancestors beat at Blood River; and we’d have machine guns and armor and aircraft, not ox-wagons and flintlock roers.”
“And just where would we get the armored cars, and the ammunition, and the fuel, if we were on the other side of the world from here?” Botha said.
He pointed southwest, toward Long Beach. “Kerel, eighty kilometers that way is the only oil well in the world. And the only refinery.” He pointed over his shoulder, northward toward Rolfeston and the Gate. “And up there’s the only place with access to modern weapons or anything else. We’d be back to ox-wagons and flintlocks bliddy soon, if we tried leaving for Africa! Even if the Commission would allow it—which they won’t.”
“We could set up our own factories, in time,” Schalk said stubbornly. “We’d have our own country with our own language and customs, where we wouldn’t be scattered among damned foreigners the way we are here. A Boerstaat for ons volk.”
“Oh, all three thousand of us could man the factories, while we were conquering and settling the country?” Botha said. “Or the Commission would allow a mass migration from FirstSide—and explain to the world why all the Boers were leaving, and where they were going?”
Conquistador Page 24