Baltic Gambit

by E. E. Knight

  “You’re getting the shampoo free with the bar of soap,” the desk clerk said.

  “Or the bar of soap free with the shampoo, if you want to look at it that way.” The manager laughed, though the humor in his statement was a little hard to detect.

  They asked for extra blankets and paid a “laundry fee” for them. For such a classy-looking hotel, the Canucks sure bled you with a thousand fees.

  But, it was warm, and it was quiet once night fell and the buzzing of the air traffic lessened to a single night landing after nine. She awoke, feeling very refreshed, to the sound of Valentine in the shower.

  “He is getting his towel money back in hot water, I think,” Ahn-Kha said. He was in a foul mood; the way the toilet was set next to the bathroom wall made it hard for him to properly use the facilities.

  She wasn’t looking forward to another long day in the bouncing, cold plane. And in all likelihood she’d get stuck next to Pistols again.

  Time to straighten matters out with Postle once and for all. After her morning ablutions she spent a few minutes in the washroom sharpening her cat claws.

  She and Ahn-Kha waited while Valentine drank coffee with Sime at the other end of the lobby.

  Ahn-Kha was a living anthill, crawling with kids from a fecund family of travellers. They were using his long forearm and back hair to pull themselves up onto his shoulders, where the view was higher than anywhere else in the terminal.

  “I told Sime about the possible penetration of the conference,” Valentine said.

  She felt her cheeks flush with anger. “You what?” It was a stupid thing to say; the reason she’d become infuriated was that she’d heard him properly, after all, but it was practically one of those reflexive responses that came out the way your leg jumps when the doctor taps your knee with a hammer. He ignored the steam and let her cool off, like a picture she’d seen of Hawaiian lava running into the ocean. Behind him, Ahn-Kha bore the pulls and pinches of the kids with a toothless smile and a wince.

  “Simmer down. I trust Sime. He’s always been straight with me, brutally so, sometimes. He said he’d keep it from his team, for now. He’s worked with Postle and Alexander before, but this is his first trip with Stamp.”

  “Who is she, anyway?”

  “Some friend of the president’s. She’s a money person. A financial backer. Sime said this conference was really supposed to be a sightseeing jaunt, at least for the Southern Command delegation.”

  Touring. Well, nice work if you can get it. “Did he seem concerned?”

  “He said he’d be surprised if the Kurians didn’t manage to sneak a spy or two in. He’s not that concerned, for two reasons. One is that there’s a lot of security, and the location of the conference isn’t even going to be announced until thirty-six hours before it is supposed to start, and second, he’s there to make sure the UFR and Southern Command commit to zilch.”

  “I thought it was supposed to be, you know, unification for victory grand strategy session or something.”

  “That’s the impression the invitation gives,” Valentine said.

  “I wonder why so many freeholds bother going at all,” she said. She took out the Canadian currency. “A trip like this can’t be easy, or cheap.”

  “I’m wondering that myself. Appearances, I suppose. Solidarity, maybe. Can’t be that fun of a long trip—nobody’s getting there by luxury liner,” Valentine said. “Sime said something about votes on strategy, and different freeholds agreeing to pressure the Kurians in certain areas. I know Southern Command’s gone into a defensive crouch ever since the victories in Texas. My guess is that Sime is going because he’s well known outside Arkansas and Texas, and when he says Southern Command won’t do any joint operations for the foreseeable future, they’ll believe him.”

  Not for the first time, Duvalier wondered why Lambert had insisted that she make this trip. Ahn-Kha she understood—Valentine without his faithful shaggy friend was a bit of a sourpuss. He was like a big, savage dog who loved you and you alone; you slept better at night knowing he was ready to rip out a few throats in your defense. But what did she bring to the table, other than a joint history? She liked to complain to him on an op; it was nice to have a real set of ears listening and talking back rather than having imaginary conversations with yourself that made you wonder if you were cracking up far from help and safety.

  Valentine was always harping about her needing a rest. Maybe he knew this was going to be a big political circle jerk and just saw it as a way to get her out of the bluegrass and the mosquitoes for a nice break with clean bedding. If so, she should just roll with it. Life was handing her a tiny taste of what those Old Worlders enjoyed without much appreciation.

  Well, she might as well relax and have a good time, at least until they reached the still-secret destination in the Baltic. Cocktails and hot towels all around, steward.

  “So, what are we supposed to do?” she asked.

  Valentine shrugged, but his eyes remained distant and thoughtful. “We don’t have to follow Sime’s orders; we’re representing Kentucky. I’d still like to find that infiltrator. We can’t count on whoever it is to just be there to take notes. I imagine there are a lot of people there the Kurians would like to see captured or eliminated.”

  “Maybe we should double-check the garbage trucks,” she said. She’d seen those dreadful Grog-grown Reapers that had attacked Fort Seng one wild night. What if the Kurians somehow introduced a hundred of them to the conference?

  “We should keep that in mind,” Valentine said. “I’m sure they wouldn’t mind the whole conference being wiped out. I don’t know that anyone could do anything about a ballistic missile, but I hope they’ve planned for anything and everything. I’ve had some experience with cold-water amphibian Grogs. They could come up out of the Baltic about anywhere.”

  “They’ll be sorry to lose Ahn-Kha here,” she said. “He seems like a hit as a tourist attraction.”

  “I don’t think there are any Grogs in Eastern Canada. There are some out west, I believe. That lost tribe of Golden Ones,” Valentine said.

  “Well, they must not get around much.”

  “I’ll go rescue him,” Valentine said.

  They returned to the airport to find that one of the engines on the plane was being worked on. It would mean an extra three or four hours on the ground, the pilot predicted.

  Sime didn’t want them wandering the airport, so he confined them to either the hangar or the hotel they’d already checked out of.

  “Not going back there,” Valentine said. “They’ll charge us for breathing the lobby air.”

  The soldiers, showing the renowned politeness of the region, were willing to hand over the little hangar office and withdraw to attend to some minor maintenance duties for the hangar’s portable work lighting. The office had a little radio tuned to cheerful music coming in across Lake Ontario from the Ordnance. There were but two chairs; neither could be called comfortable, but the space heater made up for the lack of seating with its cozy glow. She and Val and Pistols made themselves as comfortable as possible. The Canadians had a big aluminum thermos of something, but none of them felt like pressing the hospitality that much.

  Sime paced the hangar with Alexander, and Stamp went off to the washroom to do her laundry in a sink. Ahn-Kha, who was always interested in something new, made himself useful around the engine as it was being worked on by Montee and the Canadian Provincial Defense air mechanic.

  Valentine lost himself in a book for a few minutes, then announced that he’d have to sit too much in the plane. He left to go join Ahn-Kha at the engine, leaving her alone with the bodyguard.

  Postle considered not-in-air time as off-duty time, and drank. He wasn’t a heavy drinker as most people would call it, more of a steady one, consuming two beers an hour over a span of increasingly frequent bathroom breaks. He seemed the type to relax into a nap before becoming loudly drunk.

  The drinking also released a certain amount of libido, sh
e discovered. As they passed each other just outside the office, she leaving for and he returning from the toilet facility, he interposed an arm, blocking her way.

  “Do you know what it’s like to be with a real man?” he said, the alcohol on his breath setting every nerve in her body on fire with a fight-or-flight reaction. “Someone who can show you what it means to be a real woman?”

  “I know at least three women better at making me feel like a woman than any man,” she said. It wasn’t strictly accurate to throw down the lesbian card, but men like Postle tended to be as sticky as a filled condom if you didn’t handle them just right.

  “Maybe you haven’t met the right man yet. Could be me,” he said, tipping his forehead so far forward it almost touched hers.

  “I’m sure the right man for me doesn’t have breath like an iguana,” she said. She had no idea what an iguana’s breath was like, in truth, but her imagination was stuck on lizards for some reason.

  She slipped her hands into her pockets and into her cat claws in their loose sheaths of chamois that kept them from puncturing or getting caught on the fabric.

  “I love a woman who knows how to play the game,” Postle said.

  “Game? Let’s set the rules, then,” she said, pulling out her claw-fitted hands. She reached around him with them and hooked him by the buttocks, the sharpened points piercing his denim with ease. A brief, excited ahhhh! turned into a gasp of alarm as he realized that she wasn’t using her hands.

  She dug the flesh-ripping hooked blades into each cheek near the crack.

  “Now, you can either promise to leave my body alone—talk whatever shit you want whenever you want, just don’t touch—or I can open you up and let the asshole out, so to speak. If you want to spend the rest of your life with a double-cut gasket and be on a first-name basis with adult diaper washers, just keep rubbing my breast like you think a genie is going to pop out.”

  “You’re drawing blood!” he said.

  “I’ll bandage you up personally, using plenty of iodine. Do we have an understanding on the hands-off policy?”

  “Understood,” he said, crinkling his eyes in pain.

  She extracted her claws. He didn’t seem the type to pull a gun in rage, but she watched him carefully nevertheless.

  He stepped back, exploring his pants with a hand. He pulled out a blood-smeared finger.

  “You owe me a pair of pants.”

  “You owe me an ungroped breast,” she said. “How about we call it a push?”

  Covering the damage with his tactical vest, he headed off to the men’s room.

  The Canadians announced that they were going to the terminal for lunch, and offered to make purchases for the delayed travellers. She decided to try to bury the hatchet with Pistols and buy him a largish Canadian beer to make amends, and a hot pretzel to go with it. She handed over what she had left of Alexander’s distributed currency meant for “food, drink, and necessities” to get them through the night. When they returned, she gave the beer and pretzel to Pistols and sat down with Valentine and Ahn-Kha to eat her own stew.

  The meat was tough and a little gamey and seasoned with something that was trying to be oregano. She wondered if she was eating moose or caribou or some other denizen of the Northwoods.

  “I thought you didn’t like Postle,” Valentine said, seeing Pistols lift his bottle to her from across the hangar with a friendly smile.

  “I like Postle just fine,” she said. “It’s his penis I can’t seem to get along with. It does too much of his thinking.”

  With Pistols tamed and everyone else occupied and the office warm, she stretched out on the floor and napped until Valentine woke her (she didn’t know it, but after Pistols told of his impromptu blood-draw, everyone was careful not to startle her).

  The pilot waved to them from the door. He looked freshly shaven and had a new chart under his arm.

  “Last leg. In the air, anyway,” Valentine said.

  She spent much of the flight looking at Postle, who was shifting uncomfortably in his seat. She honestly hoped the claw pricks weren’t becoming infected. She’d probably gone a little overboard in proving her point, but she’d managed to get back on board without so much as a glance from him. Maybe he’d have an entertaining story for the Swedish girls, or the girls wherever they were heading in the Baltic.

  She was growing used to the rattling old plane now that their trip in it was just about over. She wished it were flying them all the way overseas; it seemed capable of a transatlantic hop if it could refuel in, say, Iceland, but it seemed there were stealthier arrangements for the other legs of the journey. Well, she wasn’t organizing it.

  For some reason or other, Valentine liked the man. Probably because he was about as emotional as a reptile. Valentine had a hard time dealing with the messiness that went with any kind of emotional display. Besides, he and Sime had a past, mostly bad. They were like two drunks who’d beaten the snot out of each other in a bar fight and ended up drinking buddies. The combination of their air of cool appraisal and the inability to read their expressions put her on edge. She could never relax around such men.

  Pistols, on the other hand, was more her type. Deadly—well, she hoped, for their sake—and direct. Now that his grabby habits were straightened out, that is.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Halifax, April: Part fishing village, part seaport, part land’s-end outpost, the city is as tough and crusty as a barnacle. For much the same reason. The cold North Atlantic besieges the port, seemingly trying to force a retreat toward more hospitable ground. But this outer corner of Nova Scotia isn’t ready to surrender yet. Centuries of tradition have inured the residents to the weather, and they are rightfully proud of their important role in the struggle against the Kurians. Their port is the main seagoing gateway across the Atlantic that is free of Kurian control—or even occasional disruption. For once, the long, cold winters worked in the city’s favor. The Kurians, while they have the technology to survive in any climate, prefer warm ones for safety’s sake. They never know when they might be forced from their holes and have to dive into the nearest waterway or drift in high winds to a new refuge. They generally leave the administration of cold climates to their allies.

  From Halifax, shipping and passengers break up into smaller contingents that can be transported by lighter smuggling craft into the Great Lakes or down the eastern seaboard of the United States. Some trade, mostly furs and precious metals or rare earths scraped from the tundra and cold shores of northern Canada, heads east to Europe as well, mostly in the hands of experienced smugglers.

  There’s still the fish, as well. The cod fleets are busy, save for the wild winter months, when even their tough boats and legendary seamanship are not equal to the challenge. Some larger ships, mini oceangoing factories, process the cod into frozen strips that serve as cheap, nutritious protein brought by rail and the seasonal roads to the eastern half of Free Canada that runs from the midway point between Toronto and Montreal all the way northeast to the ocean.

  One could be forgiven for assuming that the isolation would make for a lifeless city where the residents scuttle from breakfast table to work, work to washing basin at home, and washing basin to curtained bed before beginning the cycle again. Nothing could be further from the truth. The little town is filled with everything from theaters to taverns to, remarkably, a pair of fine-dining restaurants, one complete with potted palms and a black-and-white checkerboard marble floor polished to a brilliant sheen and white-jacketed waiters. The people of Halifax, most of the year trapped beneath iron-gray skies, have found in this wind-and-spray whipped point of the New World cultural resources that a twentieth-century resident wouldn’t have imagined.

  The cold was dreadful. The wet gave it a penetrative staying power; even after you stepped inside, it took a few minutes to warm up. She hoped the whole trip wouldn’t be like this.

  They had arrived with six days until their transatlantic ship departed for the Baltic, and had already s
pent three of them working out the kinks from the long, segment-by-segment flight.

  “Easy from here on out,” Sime announced upon their bouncy landing into the wind at the Halifax airstrip, with a smile that for once didn’t look practiced and professional. Sime was probably sick of riding in a walk-in cooler that was being tossed around like the last tablet in a pillbox on a courier’s galloping horse.

  Valentine was fond of Sime, and being Valentine, wanted her to like him, too. He was always defending Sime as being “good at his job.” She could put up with him for the trip to the conference, but it didn’t mean she had to like him. He always evoked memories of the Kansas “quality” of her youth. Their faces and hair were always as polished as their vehicles’ dashboards, and to her, just as plasticine. They were all good at their jobs, too.

  They were met at the airport by a bearded man in a furry hat that made Duvalier think of Russians. She had no idea what kind of hats Russians wore, honestly, but this one was tallish, with flaps at the sides, and neatly trimmed in gray fur. She’d seen something like it somewhere or other, maybe on a vodka bottle. It looked warm. Indeed, it must have been, because he wore only a goose-down vest over a wool shirt as protection against the North Atlantic wind.

  “Welcome to Nova Scotia,” he said, with an even thicker accent than they’d heard in Ontario. “Name’s Preffer. I’m with the Refugee Network. I’m arranging your departure for Europe. I have a car waiting to take you to your hotel. We weren’t sure about your arrival, so you have a couple days in balmy Halifax before starting your crossing.” He cracked his knuckles before shaking their hands.

  He bundled them into a delivery van that smelled like kerosene. There were little fold-down seats in the back. It made Duvalier think of the collection vans from the Kurian Zones, save that this one wasn’t armored. And there were handles on all the cargo-area doors.