The Man of Bronze

by James Alan Gardner

  I’d fallen for it, hook, line, and sinker . . . just like Reuben. But I was especially dim, because I’d seen Silver use the Trojan horse trick already. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  “Can I use your phone?” I asked Davida.

  I couldn’t get through to Vidonia. All I got was the Portuguese equivalent of That number is not in service. Silver must have already sabotaged the lines—he wanted the plantation isolated. I couldn’t get through to St. Bernward’s either; no one answered the phone. Bronze must be en route to Rio with his entire entourage: Father Emil, the two Japanese nuns, and any other attendants from the monastery. Everyone in the Order’s inner circle would want to be present when Bronze finally became whole.

  Wouldn’t they be surprised?

  “Davida,” I said, “I need you to call the Copacabana Palace. Ask for Ilya Kazakov. If he doesn’t answer, get the front desk to wake him. Say it’s urgent. Life or death. Tell Ilya to collect the others and meet me here.” I scribbled down instructions for finding Vidonia’s plantation. “If the hotel staff won’t help, go there yourself and bang on Ilya’s door till he answers. Tell him to come armed. Can you do that? Please?”

  “Of course, Lara. But what—”

  “I’m going to clean up my mistakes.” I paused. “Good thing I got back my pistols.”

  16

  RIO DE JANEIRO:

  THE PORTINARI PLANTATION

  It was dark by the time I returned to Vidonia’s. By daylight, the plantation had looked pleasantly spacious—all those open fields. By night, the openness grew threatening. Now it meant isolation and nobody close enough to hear you scream.

  During the drive, I’d thought about calling the police. I’d decided against it. One shouldn’t automatically believe the stereotypes about corrupt Latin American cops, but it was possible Silver had inside informants on his payroll. If not, he’d certainly have people staked out to watch for unusual police activity. The Rio authorities couldn’t assemble a response team and send it an hour’s drive into the countryside without attracting notice. Any such action would tell Silver I’d seen through his trick, and he’d put his men on high alert.

  I didn’t want that. I wanted Silver to think he’d pulled the wool over my eyes. He was the type of self-satisfied narcissist who’s prone to overconfidence; he’d let down his guard if he believed he’d outmaneuvered his enemies. As Bronze had said, Silver was sly but not smart. If Silver thought he had everything under control, he’d let his underlings relax.

  At least, I hoped so.

  I parked my rental Camry a mile from Vidonia’s property, in a small turnoff beside a stream. It was a rutted patch of bare earth, of a type that often forms beside places deemed suitable for fishing. On sunny weekends, cars would pull off the road here; and fathers, sons, maybe even the occasional daughter, would go down to the stream to catch whatever swam there: catfish, killifish, or maybe the odd eel. At night, however, the place had an air of abandonment. Unlovely bits of litter—paper cups, candy wrappers, beer bottles—lay discarded in such quantities I could see them even in the moonless dark. I watched my step as I walked back to the road; the last thing I needed was to sprain my ankle tripping over someone else’s rubbish.

  A short distance on, I smelled cigarette smoke. It didn’t take long to spot the source: a black-clad mercenary standing under a roadside palm tree. Obviously the man was a sentry, watching for unwanted visitors. Now and then, the lit end of his cigarette glowed red as he took a puff. Nice of him to make things easy for me. In three minutes, I’d circled behind him; in five seconds more, he was unconscious.

  The man hadn’t been carrying a Silver Shield—drat!—but he had more conventional toys: an Uzi, a hands-free radio headset, and a pair of night-vision goggles. The fool had shoved his goggles up onto his forehead rather than leaving them in place. It was a common gaffe. IR goggles are heavy and uncomfortable; they make your eyes water and the surrounding skin sweat if you wear them for long periods of time. The gadgets are wonderful during quick night attacks, but in lengthy stints of sentry duty, people almost always take them off once in a while to let their eyes rest. As I donned the goggles myself, I vowed not to be so careless.

  I was belly crawling through a coffee field when the radio headset spoke. It was Silver. “Our man at the airport says the target’s plane has landed. He and his servants are transferring to a helicopter. They should get here in twenty minutes.” The android didn’t hide the gloating tone in his voice . . . but that wasn’t what caught my attention. He’d said, “They should get here”—which meant Silver must be nearby.

  Not smart, I thought. If Silver had brains, he’d be thousands of miles away—someplace Bronze couldn’t find him if things went wrong. But Silver apparently couldn’t resist the chance to watch his age-old nemesis blasted to pieces. Such foolhardy arrogance. Still, what did one expect from somebody like Silver?

  I started forward again, crawling between the low coffee shrubs. At the edge of the field, I came to a dirt track that must have been used by the tractors, ploughs, fertilizer spreaders, etc. needed for tending the crop. I was about to cross when I spotted a car stopped fifty yards up the track: a car of such regal proportions, it had no business sitting in the farm-field dust. Unless my eyes deceived me, it was a Rolls-Royce Phantom limousine exactly like the one I’d seen in Silver’s garage the previous night.

  All right, I thought. Now I know where the villain is.

  It was a good place to put a command post. The plantation’s main buildings—Vidonia’s house, barns, and equipment sheds—were clustered half a mile away from Silver’s limo. Head-high weeds grew beside the track, providing enough cover that the car wouldn’t be seen from the house. Silver, however, could peek through the brush and watch everything . . . including the blast of the explosion when the fake leg detonated.

  I was about to start moving toward the house again when flashes of light near the car caught my attention. The blobby images in the night-vision goggles weren’t easy to identify . . . but as I watched, a bright figure appeared from behind the limousine. It had to be Silver—gleaming more brightly in the infrared spectrum than ordinary humans did—and he was tossing three shiny objects in the air, juggling them.

  A darker, more human, figure hurried up to the robot. I couldn’t see the man’s features through the goggles, but his body had the lumpish unmistakability of Lancaster Urdmann. Still very much alive. Sometime soon, I’d have to fix that.

  Urdmann chased after Silver and grabbed at whatever he was juggling, catching one of the objects in the air. “What do you think you’re doing?” Urdmann whispered, sharply enough that his words carried clearly. “Those things glow in the dark!”

  “No one will see them,” Silver answered . . . still juggling and not bothering to lower his voice. “Madame Portinari is too busy primping in front of her mirror. She wants to look good for her lord and master.”

  “Portinari isn’t the only one down there,” Urdmann said, snatching at another of the shiny objects. “She’s got her farmhands on watch.”

  “Peasants,” Silver said. “Mere peons. Do you think I fear them?”

  Urdmann growled, “Didn’t you learn anything from the French Revolution?”

  “Yes. The best time to make money is when blood runs in the streets.”

  Silver tried to grab one of the glowing objects back from Urdmann. In the ensuing tussle, all three objects fell to the ground. When they struck the dirt, they flared up brightly . . . at least in the part of the spectrum the night goggles showed. I finally realized what the objects were: the three missing pieces of Bronze’s leg—the thigh, the calf, and the foot.

  Silver was playing with his enemy’s severed parts. During the French Revolution, when Silver claimed he was the Marquis de Sade, I wondered if he’d juggled decapitated heads from the guillotine.

  Even Urdmann was exasperated by the android’s fecklessness. He picked up the hunks of bronze and quickly pressed them together before Silver could stop
him. Light flared again in my goggles as the three pieces fused into a single unit. “There,” Urdmann said, thrusting the reunited leg into Silver’s hands, “juggle that.”

  The android took the leg by the ankle . . . and for a moment I thought he might use it as a metallic club to crack Urdmann’s skull. Then Silver just sighed. “I wish you hadn’t done that. Do you know how much energy it will take to separate the pieces again?”

  “Don’t know, don’t care,” said Urdmann. He pulled the leg from Silver’s hands and strode back toward the limo. “I’m putting this away. You can monkey with it all you want once the bronze bastard is eliminated. Until then, use some sense.”

  Urdmann went to the rear of the Rolls. I heard the car’s boot lid open and shut. Silver remained where he was, glowering into the darkness. Finally he muttered, “I’m going for a walk.” He sounded like a sulky teenager who’d just been reprimanded by his parents. The android strode off across the coffee field, kicking at plants that got in his way.

  When Silver was out of sight, I moved forward again: crossing the dirt track and crawling through the brush on the other side. I was tempted to head toward the limo instead. If Urdmann was there alone, I could dish out some rough justice that was well overdue. Unfortunately, I doubted that Urdmann was alone. The car likely had a chauffeur; Urdmann might also keep mercenaries close at hand to serve as bodyguards. One wrong move and pandemonium would break loose . . . pandemonium that could prevent me from reaching the booby-trapped leg in time. Not good. I had to delay dealing with Urdmann until I’d addressed my highest priority: getting to the bomb before it blew up Bronze, Vidonia, Father Emil, and anyone else in the vicinity.

  I encountered no more mercenaries as I crept toward the Portinari house. Silver’s men were keeping their distance—partly to avoid being seen, partly to stay out of the explosion’s blast radius. It was only as I neared the lights of the house’s windows that I realized the next few minutes could get complicated. Night-goggled eyes were surely watching on all sides. So far, I’d stayed low and out of sight, but I’d reached the end of the fields. There was no more cover between me and the house. If I went any farther, I’d be spotted . . . whereupon Silver would know his fake-leg ruse had failed.

  What would he do in response? He might call for a preemptive strike, hoping to kill me, Vidonia, and all her hired hands before we could warn Bronze. Innocent blood would be shed . . . possibly including mine.

  So how could I get to the house without being seen? Only one strategy sparked in my brain. I needed a diversion: something to attract attention elsewhere so no one would notice me going inside. If any of my friends were here, I could get them to raise a fuss . . . but they were still en route from Rio. Most likely, they’d only arrive after everything was over.

  That left me one last option. When Bronze’s helicopter arrived, it would surely draw all eyes. I’d have a chance then to race for the house and grab the leg; but I’d have to move fast and get away before Bronze got too close. Silver had bragged about creating the special detonator that could trigger the bomb by detecting distinctive emissions radiated from an android’s body. I didn’t want to be holding the booby-trapped leg when Bronze got close enough to set off the explosion.

  It’s all in the timing, I told myself. Get in, find the leg, get out. Nothing to it.

  “I see the helicopter.” It was one of the mercenaries, speaking over the radio headsets. I turned my eyes skyward and soon picked out a flying blob of light—the helicopter’s engine, burning hot enough to blaze in my goggles’ IR vision. Sounds came a short time later: first, just the drone of the motor, then the thup-thup-thup of the whirling blades.

  A searchlight on the chopper’s belly came to life, illuminating a circle that moved as the copter came forward. The plantation didn’t have a helipad, but between the house and the barns stretched a semigraveled driveway bounded by flat green lawn. It was the obvious place for the copter to set down . . . which meant I should make my own move on the opposite side of the house. I scurried to a suitable position as the chopper flew overhead in a flurry of light and noise.

  The house had no doors on this side, but there were several open windows. Screens covered the windows to keep out insects, but I had a knife that could cut through nylon or metal mesh in no time. The only challenge was efficiency: I had to get in and out while Bronze’s arrival held everyone’s attention. If I wasted time, either the bomb would go off or Silver would notice me and call for an all-out assault.

  So where would the fake leg be? Where would Vidonia have put it? In her best room, I thought. As a member of the Order of Bronze, Vidonia would receive the android with every possible courtesy. She’d rush onto the lawn to welcome him personally, then she’d escort him into the finest room she had to offer: the living room where she’d served me coffee. I could imagine her creating a shrinelike setting for the leg: maybe laying it on velvet cushions atop the coffee table or building a crèche for it in front of a painting of some saint being impaled on a spiked wheel. One way or another, the leg would be lovingly displayed; too bad I had to ruin everything by stealing the centerpiece.

  Feel guilty later, I told myself. Time was of the essence.

  The helicopter descended with a mechanical roar. When it was a hundred feet above the house, visible in all directions, I broke from cover and sprinted to the window I’d picked as my best way in. The living room itself was on the other side of the house, but I’d chosen what I thought was the closest entry point. Two slashes of my knife cut an X across the screen and I dived through the tatters of the screen as smoothly as a rabbit entering its hole.

  I flattened to the floor on the other side and waited—listening for radio-set chatter indicating I’d been seen. Nothing. No one had noticed. The copter had covered any sounds I’d made.

  After a moment I moved, staying low to the ground. I’d landed in a small dining room, with a table, six chairs, and not much space for anything else. I crawled past the furniture and up to the open door, which led straight into the living room. From the doorway I could see that the leg had indeed been laid out in grandiose style: on a giant block of pine whose surface had been strewn with multicolored feathers from a dozen species of birds. A fragrance of jasmine filled the air, and Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony played softly on a discreetly hidden stereo.

  Vidonia had thought of everything to establish a sense of occasion. Unfortunately, she’d also thrown in something to ruin the mood: a man to guard the leg while everyone else greeted the helicopter.

  The man was huge—probably just a farmhand, not a trained fighter or professional security guard, but a great mountain of a fellow who must have acquired his muscles carrying hundred-pound sacks of coffee beans. He wore crisp white cotton pants and shirt, obviously new, with no apparent weapons except his meaty hands. Those hands were all he needed against anything short of gunfire. True, I had my pistols and the Uzi . . . but I couldn’t shoot an innocent man just because he stood between me and the leg. On the other hand, if I didn’t shoot him, I doubted that he’d let me walk off with the leg under my arm. Vidonia had trusted him to keep the leg safe. He wouldn’t let it go easily. Nor would he easily believe me if I told him what was actually happening. (“Vidonia’s great treasure is a bomb. Give it to me before it goes off.” Yes, that would be so convincing.)

  So what could I do? I couldn’t shoot him. I couldn’t beat him in a fair fight. I couldn’t tell him the truth.

  Okay. New strategy.

  I retreated a step into the dining room. Stood up. Set my guns on the dining room table. Walked unarmed into the living room.

  “Hi, luv,” I said in strong Cockney-accented Portuguese. “You all set up for the photos, yeah?”

  The big man looked at me blankly.

  “The photos!” I said. “You know, pictures? To commemorate the ultimate moment.”

  He still just looked at me.

  “Oh, sorry, luv, forgot to introduce myself. I’m the bronze fella’s publicist. Lara.�
�� I grabbed the big man’s hand and shook it. “Vidonia didn’t talk about the photo shoot? But she got you dressed up for it, yeah? I mean, those clothes you’re wearing, they’re new, yeah?”

  “Yes . . .” he said.

  “So, good, Vidonia got you dressed for the pictures.” I took him by the shoulders and moved him back a step from the leg. “Now here’s how it’ll go. Bronze wants to document the whole thing: him coming into the house, yeah? Him walking down the hall, stepping into the room, the look on his face—got it? The whole scene. For posterity, yeah? End of a journey of ten thousand years. Not a dry eye in the house.” I glanced around, then went to the nearest lamp and rearranged the angle of its shade. “We just need a few lighting adjustments. Oh, you got the camera?”

  “What?”

  “The camera. Vidonia promised us she’d provide the camera. You know where she keeps it, yeah?”

  I gazed at him encouragingly . . . hoping like mad that a well-off woman like Vidonia Portinari had some kind of camera on the premises. Also hoping that this man wasn’t overbright or suspicious; otherwise, I’d have to try to coldcock him, with all the attendant risks of noise, delay, and getting walloped myself.

  The man paused a painfully long heartbeat; then said, “I think the camera is in the kitchen.”