Service for the Dead mda-6

by Martin Delrio

  “I try to keep my worse impulses in check,” Horn said, straight-faced. “Now how about it?”

  “Okay, but you have to make it worth my while. Tell me who your boss is.”

  “It’s no secret. Jonah Levin.”

  “Okay,” said Ashe. “That and a spot of cash, and we can do business.”

  Horn pushed a pile of currency across the desk. Ashe picked it up and whistled. “Not too careful of your expense account, are you?”

  “He’s a Paladin,” Horn said. “He’s got a budget big enough to handle it. Results is what it’s all about. Now I’d like to see some.”

  “You got it.” Ashe pushed some keys on his terminal. A moment later the printer whirred, and a sheet of flimsy drifted into the output tray. “Here you go. Four vessels, all from within ten parsecs of Northwind, since fourteen March.”

  Horn took the sheet, glanced at it, folded it, and put it into his inner pocket. Only one bingo—a ship giving its journey’s point of origin as Northwind itself. He’d look at all four of them, but that one was going to be the first on his list. He stood to go.

  “It’s been a pleasure doing business with you,” Ashe said as Horn left. “Next time your boss wants to throw away good money, let me know.”

  “I’ll do that,” said Horn, and let the door swing shut behind him.

  David Ashe waited a moment, until he was certain Horn was out of earshot. Then he turned to his communications console, picked up the handset, and punched in a code. When the line opened he said, “You wanted to know if anyone got curious about Northwind? Well, a guy was just in here…”

  Horn took a shuttle-hop to Belgorod DropPort, where the direct ship from Northwind had grounded. When he had reached the center city transit hub, he paused and took a deep breath, orienting himself to his surroundings.

  “Now, if I were Lieutenant Owain Jones, fresh from Northwind with vital information, where would I be?”

  The streets, busy with traffic and pedestrians, did not reply.

  “Think,” he told himself. “You’ve just arrived by DropShip at a city you don’t know on a planet that you’ve never visited. You have a mission. What do you do?”

  He drifted with the foot traffic toward the east, not caring where he was going. He considered a cup of coffee. That would be nice.

  A combat officer would want a cup of coffee, too, he thought. And a man newly arrived would want a place to stay. A hotel? That would be a place to start.

  Someone was drifting with him, Horn realized. A tall man, but not so tall as to be freakish, and plainly dressed just as Horn himself was plainly dressed. And moving just as unpurpose-fully as Horn himself was moving.

  Horn crossed the street and reversed his direction. By the time he had made it halfway up the next block, the man whom he suspected of following him had crossed the street and reversed direction as well.

  I didn’t ask for this, Horn thought. It was, however, all part of the job.

  Ahead on his right was a breakfast café. He walked in, and without a word walked briskly through the dining area, through the kitchen, and out the emergency door to the garbage-can-lined service alley in the back.

  He continued along the alley to its end, turned right, and right again, bringing him to the street he had just left. His shadow was still there, standing in front of a store near the café, window-shopping. Horn contemplated walking up and accosting the man on the open street to ask him who he worked for. He decided against it—there wasn’t enough privacy to make it worth his while—and turned away.

  It would be a while before the man realized that he’d been shaken. Horn could use that time.

  The pursuit had given him information as well. It showed that someone in Belgorod was taking real interest in a matter that should have been of no interest to anyone.

  Lieutenant Owain Jones had met with misfortune, of that much Horn was now sure. Time to pick up the trail.

  He found a pawnshop on a nearby street corner—the sign saidHONEST IGOR’S in five languages and three alphabets—and ducked inside. The pawnshop counter had a bulletproof plastic window in front of it. On an impulse, Horn rapped on the window.

  “Hey,” he said.

  The man behind the counter—Honest Igor, presumably—turned around to face him. “What do you want?”

  Horn slipped a twenty-stone note through the slot in the counter window. “Local knowledge,” he said. “You look like a man who has some.”

  “A little,” said Igor. “The people who come in here, they tell me things sometimes. And if I don’t know it, I can hook you up with someone who does.”

  “That’s what I figured,” Horn said. “What I want to know is, where do the taxi drivers who service the DropPort hang when they’re not working?”

  “For that, I’ll have to ask around. If it’s a particular driver that you’re after—”

  “I’m looking to talk with a driver who might have picked up a fare from Northwind sometime around the fourteenth.”

  “Gotcha,” said Igor. “I’ll ask around. Where can I reach you?”

  Horn handed over a business card with the number of a call-forwarding service. “These people can reach me.” He slid another twenty through the slot. “There’s more where that came from if I hear from you, and the same for the taxi driver when I talk to him.”

  “Gotcha, tovarich.”

  Horn nodded. “See you around.”

  He left the pawnshop and hit the street again. Maybe the pawnshop owner would come through, and maybe not. In the meantime, he needed to check the hotels.

  23

  Belgorod

  Terra

  Prefecture X

  March 3134; local winter

  Aweary afternoon’s work spent going through hotel guest registers sufficed to let Burton Horn know that Owain Jones hadn’t checked into any of the respectable establishments in Belgorod. It remained possible that the Lieutenant had chosen to stay at one of the port’s less-than-respectable establishments, but Horn considered that an unlikely choice for a military man with a vital mission.

  A military man, Horn thought. He’d look for food, for a place to sleep… and for a place to report in. Not necessarily in that order.

  But to whom would he report? To the Exarch in person? The Countess of Northwind might have assumed something like that, when she sent Jones ahead with the evidence, but the Exarch was too high in the chain of command for a mere Lieutenant to think about reporting to him directly. He’d be looking for… the Northwind Interests Section, that was it. Horn grabbed a cab and did the same.

  Once he’d reached the building that housed the local representatives of The Republic’s member governments, he employed Paladin Jonah Levin’s name without hesitation in order to gain entry. That got him as far as a bored bureaucrat in a natty suit who invited him to sit at a desk.

  “I have an inquiry from Paladin Levin,” Horn said.

  “This is most irregular,” the man replied. “The Paladin has every right to request aid from any Republic body. However, that request ought to come through official channels. Most irregular,” he repeated, steepling his fingers in front of his shirt. “What is the nature of the Paladin’s request?”

  “The Paladin would like to know if the chargé received a visitor from Northwind at any time since fourteen March of this year.”

  “I can tell you that directly,” the bureaucrat replied. “He did not. Nor is the chargé able to assist you now. With the recent arrival of an army from Northwind, he is very busy.”

  “The Paladin understands,” Horn said. “He doesn’t want the chargé disturbed, either.”

  “Then there’s nothing more I can do for you,” said the bureaucrat. “Good day, sir.”

  “Perhaps one small thing,” Horn said. “May I see the call logs for fifteen March?”

  “Out of the question,” the other man said firmly.

  “I understand… perhaps you could look at them yourself, and answer me one question. A simple yes
or no.”

  The bureaucrat hesitated. “Perhaps.”

  “Paladin Levin will be pleased,” Horn assured him. “The question is this: Did the Northwind Interests Section receive any prank calls on or just after fourteen March?”

  “Let me see.” He called up the logs on his desk screen and perused the listings without bothering to show them to Horn. “Yes,” he said at last. “There was one.”

  “When did it come in?”

  “I’m afraid that I’ve already exceeded my warrant,” the bureaucrat said. He stood and offered his hand. “May I show you out?”

  “I know the way,” Horn said, standing also.

  As he stood, he glanced casually at the desk screen. One line was highlighted in yellow. Thirty-second call, abandoned before connection. Pay phone. Number identified as a restaurant and bar. Time, twenty-two minutes before three in the afternoon. That would be about right for someone who’d just gotten in at the DropPort and was looking for lunch.

  The address of the bar, unfortunately, wasn’t on the screen. Nor was the text of the call.

  Back on the street, Horn checked in with his answering service. No messages. Belgorod was a DropPort, which meant that there were probably half a thousand licensed bars in the city. He’d need a way to narrow them down. With no guarantee that he’d come any closer to Lieutenant Owain Jones if he did.

  While Horn was turning the problem over in his mind, a car pulled up to the sidewalk next to him. The car’s back door opened and a man inside said, “Get in.”

  Horn took an automatic step away. “Thanks, I don’t need a ride.”

  “I said, get in.” The speaker had a needle-gun.

  Screw that, Horn said to himself. Aloud, he said, “Sorry, tovarich, I don’t have the time.”

  He spun, kicking the door closed fast enough to break a wrist on anyone who might have been holding it open, and sprinted into the open door of the nearest shop.

  The store sold hats. Horn tried one on, examining himself in the mirror and watching the front door at the same time. Sooner or later, someone would get tired of waiting and come in after him.

  A salesman approached. “May I help you, sir?”

  Horn removed the hat he’d been trying on and looked at it. “Yes. Do you have this style in dark brown?”

  “A moment.” The salesman vanished.

  Horn took the opportunity to check his answering service again. This time the service operator said, “Yes, there’s been a call. The man wouldn’t identify himself, said you’d know. He left a number.”

  Horn copied it.

  “Thanks.”

  “Here’s a brown hat, sir,” the salesman said. “We have several in various shades of brown, and a similar style in charcoal gray. Would you care to see it?”

  “Charcoal gray? Yes, please.”

  As soon as the salesman had gone away again, Horn called the number he’d gotten from his answering service. Honest Igor from the pawnshop answered.

  “Thought it might be you,” Igor said. “Found you a driver who picked up a fare at the DropPort. He remembers the guy.”

  “Can you put me in touch with him?”

  “I know how.”

  “Great. Have him and his cab meet me in front of”—Horn checked the name on the shop’s hatboxes—“the Abelard Hat Shop as soon as he can get here.”

  “That’ll cost you.”

  “I’ll pay it.”

  “You’re the boss.”

  The line clicked off as the salesman returned with yet more hatboxes. Horn tried on the charcoal-gray hat and several others, still watching the mirror.

  “I’ll take the dark brown one,” he said, when he had drawn out the process for as long as he could. He was about to add—since a good hat was a worthwhile investment no matter who was paying for it—“And the one in charcoal gray as well,” when three men walked in through the front door of the shop.

  “Call the police. Right now,” Horn said to the clerk.

  “Your hat?”

  “It’ll have to wait,” Horn said.

  The leader of the group of men had his hand in his pocket, and there was a suspicious lump in the cloth. That meant he was either an amateur or an incompetent—he couldn’t aim that way, and his hand and arm were tied up and useless.

  Horn grabbed the man by his coat sleeve and pulled him forward and down. The man staggered a bit. Horn pushed him into the path of the two men who were trailing after him, then tossed a hat rack through the shop window and followed it out onto the sidewalk just as a cab pulled up in front. Horn opened the cab door and slid in.

  “Where to?” asked the cabdriver.

  “Honest Igor’s.”

  “You’re the guy who called?”

  “Yeah. And now I’m in a hurry.”

  The cab driver put the vehicle into gear and took off, just as the trio from inside the store plunged out to the sidewalk. “So what’s up?” the driver asked, once they had left the hat shop several blocks behind them.

  Horn passed him a sizable roll of money. “Did you pick up a fare at the DropPort a few days ago, around the fourteenth?”

  “I pick up guys at the DropPort every day,” the cab driver said. “What was so special about this one?”

  “He was from Northwind.”

  The cab driver thought for a moment. “Yeah,” he said finally. “I had me one of those. He wanted a ride downtown, but halfway there, he wanted to stop. He handed me a wad of cash, just like you did—big bills, twenties and fifties, a whole lot more than the fare. Like the money didn’t matter to him.”

  “That’s good,” said Horn. “Take me to where you dropped him off. And if you can make sure no one is following us on the way, that’s even better.”

  The cabdriver looked at him curiously in the rearview mirror. “You’re one of the guy’s friends?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Not to me it doesn’t.”

  “Then don’t worry about it.” Horn settled back against the upholstery of the car seat and waited, watching the buildings zip past on either side.

  “Here you are,” the driver said at last. “This is the spot where he bailed.”

  “Did he say where he was going from here?”

  “No.”

  Horn passed over another large wad of cash. “Thanks. And if you can forget that you saw either him or me, your life will probably be smoother all the way around.”

  “You got it, boss.” The driver grinned. “So tell me now—are you on his side?”

  “I think maybe I am.”

  “Good. He seemed like a decent enough guy. See ya.”

  “I don’t think so,” Horn said, but he said it after the cabdriver had departed.

  Horn looked up and down the street. The neighborhood was an older one, full of small shops with apartments above them. Well, time to wear out more shoe leather. The call had come from a bar. He’d do an expanding square search around this spot, stopping at every establishment with a liquor license until he found the right one.

  The fourth place he stopped was the Pescadore Rus, where Ivan Gorky was waiting tables and tending bar. Gorky remembered the man with the short hair and the Northwind accent, who’d come in on a slow afternoon and left without paying his bill.

  “I’ll pay it for him,” Horn said. “He’s a friend.”

  Gorky’s face brightened, and he reached for an object that he had tucked away by the cash register. “Then maybe you can give this back to him, as well.”

  Sometime after that, Burton Horn sat in a branch of the Belgorod Public Library. He’d just viewed a data disc, and had seen things that no one should have seen:

  A Paladin of the Sphere, departing through a checkpoint in a Blade BattleMech.

  A log recording of that Paladin’s interaction with the outpost guards, with voice data.

  Testimony from the guards themselves, confirming the evidence recorded in the log.

  He’d have to be careful, Horn thought, on his way back to J
onah Levin. Because somebody very powerful was about to be made very, very unhappy.

  24

  Saffel Space Station Three

  Saffel System

  Prefecture II

  March 3134

  For a while, Anastasia’s return to consciousness was not so much waking as recalling a time spent floating in a gray and hazy place. She had vague memories of things going on while she was there—people crowding around her, pain in her belly, bright lights in her face, and disconnected bits of conversation that didn’t make sense: “Tried to gut and fillet her like a mountain finny… Why are you asking me, I think you’re all crazy… Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere.”

  She came back to full lucidity with a jolt.

  Her eyes snapped open, and she was aware—with a bright, hard-edged clarity—that she was Galaxy Commander Anastasia Kerensky, that she was lying on a bed in an unfamiliar sick bay, that the heavy soreness across her abdomen was a knife wound courtesy of the late Star Colonel Marks, that she was taking the Steel Wolves home to Terra. And that she had lost a dangerous amount of time.

  “Damn.” She struggled up to a sitting position in the bed. “Ahhrrgh. Damn.”

  Someone was catching her, helping her to sit upright. She saw the hand first, and the Bondsman’s cord around the wrist. It was the medic, Ian Murchison.

  She glared at him. “What are you doing here?”

  “Keeping you from killing yourself, it looks like.” At second glance, Murchison did not appear to have slept in some time. His eyes were red-rimmed and shadowed underneath, and he had forgotten to shave. “Since the gentleman with the knife did his best to spill your guts out onto the deck.”

  “Oh.” She sounded bad, even to her own ears. She could not afford the weakness, once she was in public. But there was nobody in here except herself and her Bondsman, who did not count. Relentlessly, she quashed a half-formed wish that she could rest for a little longer. “How long has it been since—”

  “Twelve days, while you were ill and the ships were recharging and refueling.”