by Dan Moren
Here, at least, providence smiled upon him. The top of the arch was wide enough to walk across, as long as he didn’t topple over in one direction or the other. Placing heel to toe, he held his arms outstretched and slowly made his way across.
He’d made it to about the halfway point when the sharp voice of a woman rang out from below him.
“Oi!”
Kovalic froze, his heart pounding. As far as places to get caught went, he was hard pressed to think of a single one that could be worse. Explaining what he was doing tiptoeing his way across rooftops at this hour, in this particular part of town, was not likely to be met with a jovial laugh and a slap on the back. He tensed, poising himself to sprint the rest of the way across.
“What’re ye doin’ here, Duffy?” came a second voice. It wasn’t a loud voice, but thanks to the acoustics of the buildings it echoed up to Kovalic just fine. Kovalic risked a look down, then wished he hadn’t as his vision spun into a merry carousel. Looking up, he fixed his eyes on a stable point—the end of the bridge. Despite the ill-advised look, it had been enough to establish that the second voice probably belonged to the sentry whose cigarette he’d seen.
“Some nutter’s hammered out of his mind. He’s trawling up and down the waterfront, lookin’ for a punch-up. Shouting something about being the toughest bloke this side of Jericho Station.”
Kovalic stifled a chuckle, which, fortunately enough, probably would have been masked by the sentry’s own laugh.
“Is he now? Well, give ’im one for me, would ye?”
“What, you don’t want to come and try it yourself?”
“And have De Valera sic his pitbull Brody on me for abandoning my post? Ye’d have to be a sight more cracked than that feller out there to want those blood-soaked bastards on your case.”
Kovalic blinked at the mention of the names. There were such interesting things to be learned when people didn’t know you were listening. He shifted his position slightly to get a better vantage on the conversation, but his foot slid over a patch of crumbling masonry; a chunk about the size of his fist arced off the bridge and plummeted toward the ground below, nearly taking Kovalic with it. Instead he followed his instinct and dropped flat, clinging onto the arch for dear life.
The stone hit the ground not far from where the two gang members stood talking, and Kovalic heard a startled exclamation. He hugged the bridge, trying to remain as still as possible.
“Bloody hell,” the woman was saying. “Where’d that come from?”
“All these old buildings are falling apart.”
Kovalic risked peeking over the edge, where he could see the two of them squinting up toward him. Fortunately, the darkness seemed to shroud him from their gaze.
“Probably just a rat or a stray cat,” said the woman. “There’s plenty of them about at night.”
“Rats,” said the other, with a decided note of distaste. “All this science and technology and whatnot, ye’d think we’d have gotten rid of rats by now.”
“Ah,” said the woman, “but then what would the cats chase?” There was the sound of a friendly shoulder clap. “Well, I’m back at it, but you go on keepin’ the night safe from those little critters.”
“Fuck off,” said the sentry, in a cheerful enough tone. “I’ll hold ye to a drink at the Pig later.”
“Count on it.”
Footsteps marked the woman’s departure, and Kovalic let out a sigh of relief. After a moment to be sure that the sentry wasn’t still looking in his direction, he bellycrawled his way across the rest of the bridge. He’d never been so happy to set foot on a stable surface, even if it was a rooftop. Fortunately, this building did have a fire escape that he clambered down as quietly as he could, dropping the last half story to the alley below. Crossing back downwind of the sentry, he ended up on the main drag again.
The light coming from the Pig and Thistle was visible from a block away, along with the low hum of activity that surrounded the place. Kovalic could see a handful of folks outside, most of them laughing and talking, but there were a pair of gentlemen standing guard outside the pub. These guys were bigger than the sentry Tapper had taken down—they looked more like professional muscle. Was the gang outsourcing its security? That seemed odd.
The small knot of people outside didn’t look alarmed by his being here; having gotten this far, it seemed he was considered harmless until proven otherwise. Not particularly smart, but these were gang members, not soldiers. At least the two men standing guard had the decency to eye Kovalic suspiciously as he walked toward the bar’s entrance—then again, it was probably the same look they were paid to give everyone.
They never got a chance to follow through on that suspicion, however, as the door to the Pig and Thistle slammed open and two similarly large gentlemen—one, Kovalic’s trained eye noticed, with a large scar down the side of his face—manhandled a smaller fellow out the door. Without fanfare, they pitched the man out into the street where he reeled forward and toppled into Kovalic.
Instinctively, Kovalic caught the man, a split-second later regretting the move, since it left him without a free hand. Looking down, he found himself, to some surprise, meeting the eyes of a dazed and somewhat bruised Eli Brody.
Brody, unfortunately, didn’t have the benefit of Kovalic’s long history in covert operations, nor was he helped by his current disoriented state. Kovalic watched as the other man’s eyes widened and his mouth opened. “Fiel—” he started to say.
“Roll with the punches” was the cardinal rule of any good operative, and not just in combat situations. You never knew exactly what curveballs life was going to throw your way, so all you could do was trust and hone your instincts. With no other options at hand, Kovalic took the advice at its most literal.
“Fucking hell,” he growled. “Watch where the fuck you’re going.”
He saw Brody’s expression turn from bewilderment to confusion, though it didn’t have long to live on the man’s face as the curse was followed up with a punch that was close cousin to the one Tapper had given the Tartan sentry. Brody, softened by whatever abuse he’d endured earlier, crumpled, giving Kovalic just enough time to bend over and whisper in his ear.
“Stay down,” he hissed, then shoved Brody backward as realistically as he could manage without putting his full strength into it. Brody stumbled and hit the ground, unmoving, though whether from Kovalic’s instructions or just the natural effects of being punched it was impossible to say.
“Looks like your friend can’t hold his liquor,” Kovalic jeered, wiping his hands. “Get him sobered up before you send him out into the streets, why don’t you?”
With a laugh Kovalic continued on his way around the corner. The moment he was out of sight he already had his comm out of his pocket and was calling Page.
“That was quite a show,” the lieutenant answered without any preamble.
“Gave ’em the best tickets in the house. Make sure our friend gets home safely, all right? Two ought to have cleared things out a bit for you. I’m heading back.”
“On my way.” Page clicked off.
Kovalic stowed the comm. He’d have to take the long way round back to the rendezvous to swing wide of any festivities Tapper might be having, so he and Page would probably pass like ships in the night. Not that Kovalic was particularly worried about the lieutenant; if he could run the gauntlet himself, there was no reason to think that Page wouldn’t slip through it like sand through a sieve.
It took him about twenty minutes to get back to the rendezvous point and he was more than a little surprised to find Tapper already there, leaning against a wall. The sergeant’s clothes were a bit torn around the seams and his face had acquired a coating of grime, peppered with a few fresh scrapes, but otherwise he didn’t look much the worse for wear.
“Soooo,” said Kovalic, raising an eyebrow, “how’d it go?”
“Oh, you know,” said Tapper. “It was all just one big misunderstanding.” He brushed at a spot on hi
s jacket. “They send their regards. Did you find Brody?”
“Yeah, Three is seeing to him. Actually, I’d say he looks considerably worse than you do.”
Tapper shrugged. “We aren’t all blessed with my natural good looks.”
With a sigh, Kovalic leaned against the wall, next to Tapper. He’d have cracked a beer if they’d brought one. “That whole thing was a little too close for my comfort. So far tonight I’ve been accosted by a gang, almost fallen off a building, and nearly had my cover blown by an amateur.”
“Well, look on the bright side.”
“Remind me, please: which one’s the bright side?”
“Despite Brody’s best efforts, he’s not dead.”
“Yeah,” said Kovalic. “Something tells me he’ll have another shot at it.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Eli was pretty certain he didn’t deserve the massive hangover he’d ended up saddled with. For one thing, he’d had all of two drinks, albeit one of them dosed with some sort of particularly powerful sedative. So, yes, logically he could explain why his head felt as though someone were very sloooowly running it over with a truck. But he still didn’t think he deserved it.
They’d let him sleep for a few hours before he’d been rudely awakened by Fielding pulling back the drapes and letting Caledonia’s bright, early morning sun douse the room in liquid gold—which sounded a lot more pleasant than it had actually been. Eli, for his part, had never thought of sunlight as particularly malicious, but maybe he’d just never gotten on its bad side before.
If nothing else, the debriefing that had followed his rousting was considerably more pleasant than the one he’d endured at the hands of his brother’s “colleagues” the night before. Fielding had raised his eyebrows at the news that he’d found Eamon, exchanging a glance with the rest of his team, and had asked calmly but persistently for any details on where Eli had been taken. Eli, naturally, had pointed out that he had been drugged on the way in and blindfolded on the way out, neither of which made for quality intelligence-gathering.
“Look,” he said finally. “I got him to agree to your damn meeting. Isn’t that what you wanted?”
Fielding seemed somewhat less ecstatic at his accomplishment than Eli had hoped. The other two men maintained a steady, careful neutral expression, but that told Eli as much as he needed to know.
“That’s not it, is it?” he sighed. Damn it. I would have enjoyed throwing that in Eamon’s face.
“It’s an important part,” said Fielding. “But no, it’s not everything.” He eyed the shorter and older of the two men, who had been introduced as “Two,” and who Eli had recognized belatedly as the same “veteran” who had passed him Fielding’s message the previous afternoon. Of the two, he had the worse poker face by far, and right now he wasn’t holding anything better than a high card.
“I dunno, boss,” he said, shifting his weight from foot to foot. “Seems a little too … easy.”
“Easy?” snapped Eli. “Sorry, I didn’t see you in there, blindfolded and strapped to a chair.”
The man gave a deep, ripping snort. “Quit being such a baby.”
Fielding gave him a warning glance, but it seemed to more or less rebound off Two, who simply jammed his hands back in his pockets and shrugged. The operative turned his attention back to Eli.
“Given your experience, your brother seems somewhat more … well connected than we’d thought.”
The Black Watch. “Yeah, that was news to me, too.” Though perhaps not really surprising, given his trajectory when I last saw him.
“The Illyricans have this Black Watch group earmarked as terrorists. And given the hired muscle we saw outside the Pig and Thistle, they’re not just your friendly neighborhood radicals.” Fielding’s eyes narrowed. “What exactly is your brother’s role in the group?”
Good question. “Search me. He got mixed up with the Tartans when we were kids, but it’s not like we’ve been exchanging letters the last few years.”
Fielding sighed, then seemed to abandon the line of questioning. “All right, then. Where and when’s the meet?”
And there it was, plain and simple. Eli had been thinking it over in the spare time that he’d had between being tossed out of the Pig and Thistle and being questioned by Fielding, and he’d come to one inescapable conclusion: He was short on leverage.
Now or never.
“About that,” he began.
“Oh, lord,” said Two, his eyes rolling up. “There’s always something.”
Eli ignored him. “I need something in exchange.”
Fielding raised his eyebrows. “You want to renegotiate our deal? Now?” His head tilted to one side. “I don’t think you understand how this works.”
“I’m not renegotiating. I just want what I was promised in the first place—part of it, anyway. I want to go see my sister.” Sorry, Eamon. She’s my blood, too. You don’t get the only say in this.
The sigh that issued from Fielding could only be described as long-suffering, and the man pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. “After the meet.”
Eli shook his head. “No. Eamon said he doesn’t want me there. As far as he’s concerned—hell, as far as I’m concerned—our deal is done. Let’s call it a fair trade: an address for an address.” Besides, Eamon being busy with Fielding meant it was the one safe time for Eli to see Meghann. And then maybe the two of them could get off-world before their brother was any the wiser.
“Listen, you little prick,” Two started, but Fielding waved his hand, cutting him short.
“You’re putting me in a bind here, Brody. This meeting doesn’t pan out, then I don’t have much left in the way of intelligence.”
Eli shrugged. “I’m not sure what else I’m supposed to tell you. I did the job you guys dragged me here to do.”
Five o’clock stubble rasped against Fielding’s nails like an emery board. “How about that warehouse? The one where they took you.”
“The one where I woke up drugged and blindfolded? Oh, sure, let me just get you the address out of my contacts here.” He held Fielding’s gaze.
“Anything you can give us would be helpful.”
“The best I can offer is that it’s somewhere within a few minutes of the Pig and Thistle. Probably connected by a tunnel, from what I can tell.”
“There are two dozen warehouses that could fit that description,” the tall, thin man called Three said, his eyes rapidly flicking back and forth in the process of mental calculations.
“Come on, Brody,” said Fielding. “You’re an observant guy. I’ve seen it firsthand. There must be something else you noticed.”
“Oh, sure: I noticed there were four industrial-strength lighting rigs pointed in my face.”
“What about the people?” Fielding persisted. “You said there were others.”
With a sigh, Eli cast his memory back. “Four or five. Plus Eamon. At least two women among them, but I think the rest were men. The only one I ever got a clear look at was the girl from the bar—Gwen.”
“A redhead named Gwen,” muttered Two. “Well, that narrows it down. Might as well say ‘find somebody on this goddamned planet that enjoys the taste of alcohol.’”
Fielding ignored his comrade, still staring at Eli. “Let’s try a little exercise,” he suggested. “Close your eyes.”
Eli fixed him with a suspicious look. “I’d rather not.”
“Brody.”
“Okay, okay!” With a last skeptical look, Eli exhaled and let his eyes slide closed. It wasn’t quite black when he did so, he noticed; the bright sunlight from the room, not yet obscured by the afternoon haze, still leaked in through the edges.
Fielding’s voice slid in and wrapped around him, reminding him uncomfortably of the way his captors had questioned him. Deprivation of sensory cues could be an effective tactic in interrogation, he recalled from some class he’d taken at the academy; it helped throw the target off balance.
“I want
you to picture your experience last night. Remember what it felt like, what it sounded like, even what it smelled like. Put yourself back there, and then talk us through it … slowly.”
“Really? We’re playing imagin—”
“Just do it, Brody.” There was a pause as Fielding cut himself off, the sound of an indrawn breath. “Trust me.”
“Okay, fine.” And with a breath of his own, he launched into a description of last night’s activities, starting with his awakening tied to a chair with a towel around his head. He ran through as much of the conversation as he could remember, which was less specifics than the general gist of what Gwen and her friends had wanted to know: who he was, why he was there, why he was looking for Eamon Brody. The more he talked, the more he found himself remembering by sheer association, whether it be Gwen’s scent or the feeling of sweat trickling down his brow. Once he’d picked up steam, Fielding remained quiet during the recitation until Eamon’s appearance.
“And then?” he interrupted gently.
“Eamon had them untie me, and we went up to an office overlooking the warehouse floor. I couldn’t see the rest of the floor,” he said quickly, anticipating Fielding’s question. “My eyes weren’t adjusted to the darkness.”
“What did you see in the office?”
“It was kind of a mess, like a real office. There was a coffee machine—foul stuff, that—and stacks of papers everywhere.” Somehow he felt Fielding tensing; the air had changed in the room. This was what they were looking for.
“Could you make out anything on the papers? A name? An address?”
Eli shut his eyes tighter, trying to make out something, but his memory was blurry. There had been invoices and pay orders on the table opposite him, but they had been upside down and he was having trouble deciphering what he was seeing. But there was something above that, too: something on the wall?
“A calendar,” he said suddenly, as it resolved in his memory. “There was a calendar on the wall, with a bunch of dates circled in red; every couple weeks or so. And … there was a name on it. Mc … Mac? One of those.”