Floating City (41 page)

A smattering of Zao’s old bravado surfaced. “If you kill me, you’ll be hunted down with those two shits outside.”

Seiko laughed. “Kill you? What purpose would that serve? No, you have broken your word and without that you are nothing—not even a man.” She took another step toward him, the object held menacingly in front of her. “I am going to inject you with a substance that will affect your prostate.”

Zao goggled at her. “My prostate? Why?”

“Remember sex, dear?” She took another step. “That’s all it will be when I’m through with you, a memory.”

“No!” Zao shouted so loudly that the lampshades shuddered. “You can’t.”

“Ready or not, here I come.”

Later, when an exhausted Zao had told her everything he knew about the Russian V. I. Pavlov, she relinquished her hold on the long, thin object and, reversing it, put the mascara applicator back in its plastic pouch inside her capacious handbag.

“I’ve lost another one.”

“No matter,” Rock said, staring down into the chamber with the hot cell made of depleted uranium-238. “There’s plenty more where he came from.”

“Jesus.” Abramanov stood before him in his lead smock and thick rubber gloves. “That makes twenty.” His eyes were bleak. “Pavlov’s miracle shield doesn’t work.”

Rock grunted. “What a surprise. You Russians haven’t been able to get anything right for years.”

Abramanov shook his head, for once trying not to be intimidated by the huge man. “You don’t understand. Element 114m is dirtier than any isotope I’ve ever worked with.”

“What do you mean? You guaranteed me the fission detonation would be absolutely clean.”

“Of course it will be. But in this state the isotope is deadly. In order to work on the project it must be handled, moved in and out of the hot cell. That’s when the leakage occurs.”

Abramanov shifted uneasily on his feet. “What are you going to do with him, the latest man with radiation poisoning?”

Rock stared at the Russian, pursed his lips, and gave a piercingly jaunty rendition of Be-Bop Deluxe’s “Sleep That Burns.” He waited long enough to enjoy Abramanov’s squirming before he said, “We’ll do what we did with all the others: string him up by his ankles and hang him in the forest along the perimeter. It’s a good object lesson for the locals. I don’t like waste.”

The Russian was shaking his head. “I’ll have to train someone new and I don’t have the time.”

“Work double shifts.” Rock’s pale eyes blazed. “We’ve got ten days to March fifteenth. Torch must be ready by then.”

“I don’t know whether that’s a realistic date. I hadn’t counted on losing so many men.”

Rock pulled Abramanov off his feet with such abrupt force the Russian’s teeth clacked together painfully. The viselike grip of Rock’s huge paws held him fast. “Doctor, I didn’t save your life, retrieve your precious cargo, get you everything you wanted, just so you could fuck with me now.”

“But I had no idea then how dirty element 114m is. I would not have—”

“Spare me your sanctimonious bullshit, Doctor, I’ve heard all the rationalizations the petty human mind can dream up, and they’re all drivel. You’d have done the same thing you’re doing right now, and d’you know why? Because you love it here in your scientific womb. I’ve given you your heart’s desire. Your former Soviet masters didn’t do that. They belittled you and held you down because you’re a Jew. If you’d made it to the States instead of crashing off the coast of Vietnam, the U.S. government would have spent a year picking apart your brain, and even then they never would have fully trusted you. You know you’re best off here. Me, I don’t give a shit what you are. You’re a fucking genius and that’s all that matters to me.”

“But I have nightmares. This project has terrible ramifications—”

Rock abruptly turned away. “Get it done any way you see fit. Just get it done. Otherwise, all this—your dream playland—will disappear. Is that what you want?”

“I—” Abramanov hung his head. “No.”

People are so pathetic, and so easily manipulated,
Rock thought with satisfaction. “Torch will be detonated ten days from now,” he said. “I’ve never yet reneged on a promised delivery date, and I don’t plan to start.”

Rock left Abramanov to work on the final stage of Torch. He went out of the hot-cell observatory, down two flights of stairs, and across the compound. Various outbuildings, barracks, storehouses, guard posts, and the like fanned out from this nexus point, all enclosed by twenty-foot-high walls of interlocking cut trees of massive girth, anchored in six feet of cement footings. The tremendous number of heavily armed men gave the impression of being inside a military installation.

Rock paused beside the cage. It was six feet high, four feet by four feet, painstakingly constructed from Viet Cong design. He had made it of fire-hardened bamboo lashed together with nylon cord reinforced with an almost unbreakable monofilament. It was currently occupied by a man who was slowly wasting away from lack of water and food. He had been caught trying to smuggle a kilo of half-refined opium out of Floating City, having reported it ruined by an excess of sulfuric acid.

Rock watched him slumped on the hard-packed earth, no longer strong enough even to stand on his feet. The foul stench coming from him had turned him feral, and there was a look of madness in his eyes that Rock could appreciate. He had been taught the nature of torture by Do Duc. They had shared many things, rituals, murder, intimate knowledge that few men could understand. But Do Duc was dead, killed by Nicholas Linnear. Do Duc had been as dear to him as a wife or a best friend, though neither had been able to acknowledge their relationship; they had merely accepted it as fact. When Rock thought of Nicholas Linnear, ideas, irrational and profane, forested his mind. These ideas lay in the peculiar penumbra between life and death that, together, he and Do Duc had for years explored, plumbed, and finally, mastered. He knew how dangerous Nicholas was, but this made these ideas all the more stimulating to him.

Squatting down by the side of the cage, Rock pushed one arm through the bamboo bars, took the emaciated man by the throat so he could drink in the growing madness, confront its ragged edge, and so feel close again to Do Duc.

At length, he rose and continued across the compound, entering a building that faced the laboratory. He went into his office and sank into his leather swivel chair. It was a relief to be out of the air-conditioning. Almost two decades in the jungle had thinned his blood. He turned on the stereo. The Pink Floyd flooded the room with psychedelic rock. “Arnold Layne.” The early stuff, Rock thought, was always the best. He sang happily along.

“You’re having trouble with him,” the familiar voice said from a corner of his office.

“Who?”

“Abramanov.”

Rock swiveled in his leather chair. Years ago, a four-star general had sat in this chair and had given orders that made no sense in an insane war. Now it was Rock’s chair; he figured he was making better use of it than the four-star ever had.

“Abramanov will get it done,” he said.

“On time?”

“Yes.”

“We have clients I don’t want to disappoint.”

“I needn’t remind you we have one particular client we can’t afford to disappoint,” Rock told him. “Don’t worry. We won’t disappoint any of them.”

There was silence for a long time. In the brief space between album tracks a wild bird called from the forest beyond the vast citylike compound. Tropical sunlight filtered through the wide bamboo awnings over each window, striping the interior of the office like a tiger’s back. The room smelled of oil and sweat.

“I think you’re getting soft,” the man said from the shadows.

Rock peered into the corner at the figure who, over the years, had become more familiar to him than any of the girls he slept with. He smiled. “You’re full of shit.”

“Think so? You let Niigata go.”

“I didn’t let him go; he got himself out of here. But by that time he was mad. He was dying of radiation poisoning. Why should I have wasted my time going after him? He couldn’t have gotten far. His bones have long ago been picked clean out there in the jungle.”

The figure shifted. “You shouldn’t have meddled in the rendezvous at the Cu Chi tunnels.”

“That bitch. D’you know what
Bay
means? Seven. She was the seventh child, the unlucky one. She was fucking that bastard Vincent Tinh. She deserved to die.”

The figure clicked his fingers. “Her death hooked Linnear, he took it personally, as I warned you he would. Then, to compound your error, you used Delacroix—a
client
—to try to put Linnear away.”

Rock turned up the volume on the Floyd. “A client was the perfect choice. Like a cutout, only better, because he’s freelance, he doesn’t work for us so he can’t be traced back to us. What are you getting at, you signed off on the hit.”

“It was a mistake.”

Rock shot forward, a sudden rush of blood making his scars go white beneath his tan. “Bullshit! Now it’s a mistake because it failed. Don’t try your revisionist crap with me, it won’t wash.”

“The locals take to it well enough.”

“They’re uninformed and uneducated,” Rock said contemptuously. “Bugs Bunny could brainwash them.”

“In any case, deconstructing the past is not brainwashing. It’s merely the freedom to express an opinion.”

“History is not opinion, my friend,” Rock said flatly. “It’s memory and fact.”

“Really? I wonder whether the recollections of the general in whose chair you’re now sitting would jibe with yours when it comes to the war in Nam.”

Rock waved a hand. “I’m not going to debate this with you. It’s giving credence to something that is without merit.” He stood up. “We’re going to string up another one.”

“Another? My, I guess I’d better get out my lead-lined pajamas.”

Rock glowered darkly into the shadows where the figure lounged. “That’s right, make a joke of it.”

“I don’t like the idea of Timothy Delacroix hanging around Saigon.”

“Don’t worry, he’s not going to be talking to anyone.”

“What did you do, sew his lips together? That would be your style.”

Rock took up a coil of rope and his ever-present LAW, then paused. “You know, I hardly recognize you anymore. When I first met you, I was sure you’d gone completely native, but I see now I was wrong. It’s those fucking French philosophers, those crypto-Nazis you read all the time. They’ve got your head screwed on the wrong way.” He shrugged. “What the hell. I guess we’ve both changed since those long-ago days in the Laotian bush.”

“Not you. You know what your problem is?” The figure reached over to turn off the stereo. “You’re stuck in a time-warp. Still the Wild Boy, living in the seventies. Wake up, buddy boy, it’s the nineties now. It’s a whole new ball game out there.”

At the doorway, Rock turned back, grinned over his shoulder. He began to whistle the first few bars of the Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter.” Then, in a surprisingly well-modulated voice, he took up the lyrics, “War, children, it’s just a shot away, shot away...”

Eaton Square was as still as a tomb this hour of the night. The sleet clattered against the sidewalk, drummed on the top of the unmarked car on loan from Major as Croaker pulled up on the King’s Road. His headlights had been off for a block and a half.

Croaker’s concern over Vesper had now reached full tide. If she was managing Morgana, Inc., she must be deeply involved with the Godaishu. This was yet another confirmation that Dedalus was the Godaishu’s mainstay in America, since Vesper was so closely tied with him.

He turned the corner onto Eaton Square and, hurrying through the evil weather, came to the five-story white town house with its formal quoined facade. He hesitated only a moment, then went up the stairs beneath the protection of the columned portico and rang the brass bell.

Major had used his computer to search for the owner, who turned out to be an elderly woman who had moved to the country to ease her emphysema. The place was on the market, but according to the Realtor whom Major had roused on his pager, it was currently vacant. There seemed no point in disabusing him of that notion.

After what seemed a long time, the door opened a wedge. A young woman with bright eyes and short hair peered out at him quizzically.

“May I help you?” Behind her he could make out a slice of a marble-floored vestibule and the crystal facets of a chandelier.

“Ah, I believe I’m lost,” he said in a rush. “I’m looking for”—he pulled out a map of London—“uh, Eaton Terrace.”

“You’ve been given duff directions, I’m afraid. This is Eaton Square.”

“Oh, damn.” He glanced anxiously at his watch. “Is it far from here? I’m terribly late for an appointment.”

“No. D’you have transport?”

“A car, you mean? No. A taxi dropped me off.” He looked out at the sleet. “I wonder if I could ask you to phone for another taxi?”

Those bright eyes regarded him for some time as if he needed to pass some test. “Wait here,” the woman said, and affixing a short chain to the door sash, left him.

As he heard the click-click of her heels over the marble flooring, he quickly pulled out a roll of electrician’s tape Major had given him and, stripping off a piece, ran it over the latch on the edge of the front door, so that it could not lock.

She returned a moment later. “Your taxi will be here shortly.”

“Thanks so much, Ms.—” But the door had already been shut in his face.

He went back down the steps, hunched his shoulders, and waited for the taxi. He did not know whether the woman with the bright eyes was watching him now, but he could not take the risk that she was. When the cab came, he climbed in and told the driver to take him to Eaton Terrace. But within a block, he had paid his fare and was hurrying through the clattering sleet up the street. When he reached the head of Eaton Square, he kept to the shadows, slipping under the portico of the white house.

Holding his breath, he turned the knob on the front door. As he slipped silently inside, he stripped the tape off the latch.

He moved through the vestibule, listening for anyone, including the woman with the bright eyes. The place was not at all what he had imagined from the outside. No overstuffed furniture, Victorian sconces, or ornate fireplaces here. Instead, the entire interior was cold and modern, painted in black, white, and an icy shade of gray. Everything had clean lines, precise angles. Everything was geometric and symmetrical. Two of everything, wherever it was possible. Identical mirror images. It made you want to rearrange or steal something just to restore the natural random order of nature.