Wild Cards: Aces Abroad

by George R. R. Martin

  Peregrine came and touched Mordecai on the shoulder. “It must have been awful. I’m surprised they let you out of the hospital.”

  “They didn’t,” Downs said, splitting open the deck in his left hand to catch a peek inside. “He released himself. Smashed right through the wall. The public health people are kind of pissed about it.”

  Jones looked down at the floor. “Don’t like doctors,” he muttered.

  Peregrine looked around. “Where’s Sara? The poor thing. This must be hell for her.”

  “They let her go over to the crisis control center in City Hall. No other reporter from the tour. Just her.” Downs made a face and went back to his solitaire game.

  “Sara took over a statement from Mr. Jones about what he saw and heard during the abduction,” Lady Black said. “He didn’t give one before he left the hospital.” After the accident that triggered his wild card virus, Jones had been held by the Oklahoma Department of Public Health as a lab specimen, a virtual prisoner. The experience had given him an almost pathological fear of medical science and all its appurtenances.

  “Funny damn thing,” Jones said, shaking his head. “I was lying there trying to breathe with this fu—with this van on my chest, and I keep hearing all these people yelling at each other. Like little kids fightin’ on a playground.”

  Hiram turned from the window. The rings that had been sinking in around his eyes since the tour began were even more pronounced. “I understand,” he said, bringing his hands up cupped before his chest. They were dainty hands, and fit oddly with his bulk. “I understand what’s happening here. This has been a blow to all of us. Senator Hartmann isn’t just the last best hope for jokers to get a fair shake—and maybe aces too, with this crazy Barnett fellow on the loose—he’s our friend. We’re trying to soften the blow by talking around the subject. But it won’t do. We have to do something.”

  “That’s what I say.” Billy Ray slammed a fist into his palm. “Let’s kick butts and take names!”

  “Whose butt?” Lady Black asked tiredly. “Whose name?”

  “That sawed-off little bastard Gimli for starters. We should have grabbed him when he was dicking around New York last summer—”

  “Where are you going to find him?”

  He flung out his arm. “Hell, that’s why we ought to be looking for him, instead of sitting here on our duffs wringing our hands and saying how sorry we are the fucking senator’s gone.”

  “There are ten thousand cops out there combing the streets,” Lady Black said. “You think we’ll find him quicker?”

  “But what can we do, Hiram?” Peregrine asked. Her face was pale, and the skin stretched tight over her cheekbones. “I feel so helpless.” Her wings opened slightly, then folded again.

  Hiram’s little pink tongue dabbed his lips. “Peri, I wish I knew. Surely there must be something—”

  “They mentioned ransom,” Digger Downs said.

  Hiram punched his palm twice in unconscious imitation of Carnifex. “That’s it. That’s it! Maybe we can raise enough money to buy him back.”

  “Ten million’s a lot of bread,” Mordecai said.

  “That’s just a bargaining position,” Hiram said, sweeping aside objections with his small hands. “Surely we can work them down.”

  “What about their demands this terrorist dude be released? We can’t do nothing about that.”

  “Money talks,” Downs said. “Nobody walks.”

  “Inelegantly put,” Hiram said, beginning to drift here and there like an ungainly cloud, “but correct. Surely if we can scrape together sufficient funds, they’ll leap at our offer.”

  “Now, wait a minute—” Carnifex began.

  “I’m a man of not inconsiderable means,” Hiram said, scooping up a handful of mints from a silver salver in passing. “I can contribute a fair amount—”

  “I have money,” Peregrine said excitedly. “I’ll help.”

  Mordecai frowned. “I’m not crazy about politicians, but shoot, I feel I lost the man and shit. Count me in, for what it’s worth.”

  “Hold on, dammit!” Billy Ray said. “President Reagan has already announced there will be no negotiating with these terrorists.”

  “Maybe he’ll go for it if we throw in a Bible and a mess of rocket launchers,” Mordecai said.

  Hiram elevated his chin. “We’re private citizens, Mr. Ray. We can do as we please.”

  “We’ll by God see—”

  The door opened. Xavier Desmond walked in. “I couldn’t bear to sit alone any longer,” he said. “I’m so worried—my God, Mordecai, what are you doing here?”

  “Never mind that, Des,” Hiram said. “We’ve got a plan.”

  The man from the Federal Criminal Office tapped his pack of cigarettes on the edge of the desk in the crisis center in City Hall, shook out a cigarette, and put it between his lips. “What on earth were you thinking of, permitting that to go over the air without consulting me!” He made no move to light the cigarette. He had a young man’s face with an old man’s wrinkles, and lynx yellow eyes. His ears stuck out.

  “Herr Neumann,” the mayor’s representative said, trapping the phone receiver between his shoulder and a couple of chins and getting it quite sweaty, “here in Berlin our reflex is to shy away from censorship. We had enough of that in the bad old days, na ja?”

  “I don’t mean that. How are we to control this situation if we’re not even informed when steps like this are taken?” He leaned back and stroked a finger down one of the furrows that bracketed his mouth. “This could turn into Munich all over again.”

  Tachyon studied the digital clock built into the high heel of one of the pair of boots he’d bought on the Ku’damn the day before. Aside from the clocks he was in full seventeenth-century regalia. This tour was a political stunt, he thought. But still, we might have accomplished some good. Is this how it’s going to end?

  “Who is this al-Muezzin?” he asked.

  “Daoud Hassani is his name. He’s an ace who can destroy things with his voice, rather like your own late ace Howler,” Neumann said. If he noticed Tachyon’s wince he gave no sign. “He’s from Palestine. He’s one of Nur al-Allah’s people, works out of Syria. He claimed responsibility for the downing of that El Al jetliner at Orly last June.”

  “I’m afraid we’ve heard far from the last of the Light of Allah,” Tachyon said. Neumann nodded grimly. Since the tour had left Syria, there had been three dozen bombings worldwide in retribution for its “treacherous attack” on the ace prophet.

  If only that wretched woman had finished the job, Tach thought. He was careful not to speak it aloud. These Earthers could be sensitive about such things.

  Sweat ran down the side of his neck and into the lace collar of his blouse. The radiator hummed and groaned with heat. I wish they were less sensitive to cold. Why do these Germans insist on making their hot planet so much hotter?

  The door opened. Clamor spilled in from the international press corps crammed into the corridor outside. A political aide slipped inside and whispered to the mayor’s man. The mayor’s man petulantly slammed down his phone.

  “Ms. Morgenstern has come from the Kempinski,” he announced.

  “Bring her in at once,” Tachyon said.

  The mayor’s man jutted his underlip, which gleamed wet in the fluorescents. “Impossible. She’s a member of the press, and we have excluded the press from this room for the duration.”

  Tachyon looked at the man down the length of his fine, straight nose. “I demand that Ms. Morgenstern be admitted at once,” he said in that tone of voice reserved on Takis for grooms who tread on freshly polished boots and serving maids who spill soup on heads of allied Psi Lord houses who are guesting in the manor.

  “Let her in,” Neumann said. “She’s brought Herr Jones’s tape for us.”

  Sara was wearing a white trench coat with a hand-wide belt red as a bloody bandage. Tach shook his head. Like all fashion state­ments she made, this one jarred.

>   She came to him. They shared a brief, dry embrace. She turned away, unslinging her heavy handbag.

  Tachyon wondered. Had that been a touch of metal in her watercolor eyes, or only tears?

  “Did you hear that?” the redhead called Anneke warbled. “One of the pigs we got today was a Jew.”

  Early afternoon. The radio simmered with reports and conjectures about the kidnapping. The terrorists were exalted, strutting and puffing for each other’s benefit.

  “One more drop of blood to avenge our brothers in Palestine,” said Wolf sonorously.

  “What about the nigger ace?” demanded the one who looked like a lifeguard and answered to Ulrich. “Has he died yet?”

  “He’s not going to anytime soon,” Anneke said. “According to the news, he walked out of the hospital within an hour of being admitted.”

  “That’s bullshit! I hit him with half a magazine. I saw that van fall on him.”

  Anneke sidled over from the radio and ran her fingers along the line of Ulrich’s jaw. “Don’t you think if he can lift a van all by himself, he might be a little hard to hurt, sweetheart?”

  She stood up on the toes of her sneakers and kissed him just behind the lobe of his ear. “Besides, we killed two—”

  “Three,” said Comrade Wilfried, who was still monitoring the airwaves. “The other, uh, policeman just died.” He swallowed.

  Anneke clapped her hands in delight. “You see?”

  “I killed somebody too,” said the boy’s voice from behind Hartmann. Just the sound of it filled Puppetman with energy. Easy, easy, Hartmann cautioned his other half, wondering, do I have this one? Is it possible to create a puppet without knowing it? Or is he constantly emoting at such a pitch that I can feel it without having the link?

  The power didn’t answer.

  The leather boy shuffled forward. Hartmann saw he was hunchbacked. A joker?

  “Comrade Dieter,” the teenager said. “I offed him—brrr—like that!” He held his hands up in front of him and suddenly they were vibrating like a powersaw blade, a blur of lethality.

  An ace! Hartmann’s own breath hit him in the chest.

  The vibration stopped. The boy showed yellow teeth around at the others. They were very quiet.

  Through the pounding in his ears Hartmann heard a scrape of tubular metal on wood as the man in the coat got up from his chair. “You killed someone, Mackie?” he asked mildly. His German was a touch too perfect to be natural. “Why?”

  Mackie tucked his head down. “He was an informer, Comrade,” he said sidelong. His eyes jittered between Wolf and the other. “Comrade Wolf ordered me to take him into custody. But he—he tried to kill me! That was it. He pulled a gun on me and I buzzed him off.” He brandished a vibrating hand again.

  The man came slowly forward where Hartmann could see him. He was medium height, dressed well but not too well, hair neat and blond. A man just on the handsome side of nondescriptness. Except for his hands, which were encased in what appeared to be thick rubber gloves. Hartmann watched them in sudden fascination.

  “Why wasn’t I told of this, Wolf?” The voice stayed level, but Puppetman could hear an unspoken shout of anger. There was sadness too—the power was pulling it in, no question now. And a hell of a lot of fear.

  Wolf rolled heavy shoulders. “There was a lot going on this morning, Comrade Mólniya. I learned that Dieter planned to betray us, I sent Mackie after him, things got out of hand. But everything’s all right now, everything’s going fine.”

  Facts dropped into place like tumblers in a lock. Mólniya—lightning. Suddenly Hartmann knew what had happened to him in the limousine. The gloved man was an ace, who’d used some kind of electric power to shock him under.

  Hartmann’s teeth almost splintered from the effort it took to bite back the terror. An unknown ace! He’ll know me, find me out. . . .

  His other self was ice. He doesn’t know anything.

  But how can you know? We don’t know his powers.

  He’s a puppet.

  It was a fight to keep his face from matching his emotion. How the hell can that be?

  I got him when he shocked me. Didn’t even have to do anything; his own power fused our nervous systems for a moment. That’s all it took.

  Mackie squirmed like a puppy caught peeing on the rug. “Did I do right, Comrade Mólniya?”

  Mólniya’s lips whitened, but he nodded with visible effort. “Yes . . . under the circumstances.”

  Mackie preened and strutted. “Well, there it is. I executed an enemy of the Revolution. You’re not the only ones.”

  Anneke clucked and brushed fingertips across Mackie’s cheek. “Preoccupied with the search for individual glory, Comrade? You’re going to have to learn to watch those bourgeois tendencies if you want to be part of the Red Army Fraction.”

  Mackie licked his lips and slunk away, flushing. Puppetman felt what was going on inside him, like the roil beneath the surface of the sun.

  What about him? Hartmann asked.

  Him too. And the blond jock as well. They both handled us after the Russian shocked you. That jolt made me hypersensitive.

  Hartmann let his head drop forward to cover a frown. How could all this happen without my knowledge?

  I’m your subconscious, remember? Always on the job.

  Comrade Mólniya sighed and returned to his seat. He felt hairs rise on the back of his hands and neck as his hyperactive neurons fired off. There was nothing he could do about low-level discharges such as this; they happened of their own accord under stress. It was why he wore gloves—and why some of the more lurid tales they told around the Aquarium about his wedding night had damned near come to pass.

  He had to smile. What’s there to be tense about? Even if he were identified for what he was, after the fact, there would be no international repercussions; that was how the game was played, by us and by them. So his superiors assured him.

  Right.

  Good God, what did I do to deserve being caught up in this lunatic scheme? He wasn’t sure who was crazier, this collection of poor twisted men and bloodthirsty political naïfs or his own bosses.

  It was the opportunity of the decade, they’d told him. Al-Muezzin was in the vest pocket of the Big K. If we spring him, he’ll fall into our hands out of gratitude. Work for us instead. He might even bring the Light of Allah along.

  Was it worth the risk? he’d demanded. Was it worth blowing the underground contacts they’d been building in the Federal Republic for ten years? Was it worth risking the Big War, the war neither side was going to win no matter what their fancy paper war plans said? Reagan was president; he was a cowboy, a madman.

  But there was only so far you could push, even if you were an ace and a hero, the first man into the Bala Hissar in Kabul on Christmas Day of ’79. The gates had closed in his face. He had his orders. He needed no more.

  It wasn’t that he disagreed with the goals. Their archrivals, the Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti—the State Security Committee—were arrogant, overpraised, and undercompetent. No good GRU man could ever object to taking those assholes down a peg. As a patriot he knew that Military Intelligence could make far better use of an asset as valuable as Daoud Hassani than their better-known counterparts the KGB.

  But the method . . .

  It wasn’t for himself he worried. It was for his wife and daughter. And for the rest of the world too; the risk was enormous, should anything go wrong.

  He reached into a pocket for cigarettes and a lighter.

  “A filthy habit,” Ulrich said in that lumbering way of his.

  Mólniya just looked at him.

  After a moment Wolf produced a laugh that almost didn’t sound forced. “The kids these days, they have different standards. In the old days—ah, Rikibaby, Comrade Meinhof, she was a smoker. Always had a cigarette going.”

  Mólniya said nothing, just kept staring at Ulrich. His eyes bore a trace of epicanthic fold, legacy of the Mongol Yoke. After a moment the blon
d youth found somewhere else to look.

  The Russian lit up, ashamed of his cheap victory. But he had to keep these murderous young animals under control. What an irony it was that he, who had resigned from the Spetsnaz commandos and transferred to the Chief Intelligence Directorate of the Soviet General Staff because he could no longer stomach violence, should find himself compelled to work with these creatures for whom the shedding of blood had become addiction.

  Oh, Milya, Masha, will I ever see you again?

  “Herr Doktor.”

  Tach scratched the side of his nose. He was getting restive. He’d been cooped up here two hours, unsure of what he might be contributing. Outside . . . well, there was nothing to be done. But he might be with his people on the tour, comforting them, reassuring them.

  “Herr Neumann,” he acknowledged.

  The man from the Federal Criminal Office sat down next to him. He had a cigarette in his fingers, unlit despite the layer of tobacco that hung like a fogbank in the thick air. He kept turning it over and over.

  “I wanted to ask your opinion.”

  Tachyon raised a magenta eyebrow. He had long since realized the Germans wanted him here solely because he was the tour’s leader in Hartmann’s absence. Otherwise they would hardly have cared to have a medical doctor, and a foreigner at that, underfoot. As it was, most of the civil and police officials circulating through the crisis center treated him with the deference due his position of authority and otherwise ignored him.

  “Ask away,” Tachyon said with a hand wave that was only faintly sardonic. Neumann seemed honestly interested, and he had shown signs of at least nascent intelligence, which in Tach’s compass was rare for the breed.

  “Were you aware that for the past hour and a half several members of your tour have been trying to raise a sum of money to offer Senator Hartmann’s kidnappers as ransom?”

  “No.”

  Neumann nodded, slowly, as if thinking something through. His yellow eyes were hooded. “They are experiencing considerable difficulty. It is the position of your government—”