Perfiditas (13 page)

Another one with gambling debts. Was there a type emerging, I wondered? What we really wanted was his dealings with Caeco. He looked pale, but determined. This was not going to be easy, or pleasant.

‘Now, Pisentius, your friends have been very cooperative. You’re not going to spoil the pattern, are you?’ I asked reasonably. He told me to go and do something very rude, and anatomically impossible, so I stamped hard on his upper instep with the heel of my boot.

He shrieked.

‘That was the wrong answer, Pisentius. You lose ten points.’ Tears streamed from his eyes. He flinched as I placed my heel on his other instep.

‘Now, let’s start with an easy one – tell me when you last saw Caeco.’

‘Last week,’ he mumbled.

‘And you talked about…?’

‘Things.’

‘Oh dear, you are trying to give yourself a hard time, Pisentius.’ I sighed.

I walked away as Justus brought his right arm up to start the lesson in behaviour. Although I heard, I couldn’t watch.

A little while later, I intervened. Justus was enjoying himself too much.

‘Now, Pisentius, let’s see if you’re in a mood to be a bit more chatty. Caeco came and saw you. Tell me what happened.’

‘He saw off that bastard trying to put pressure on me for some money I owed. We should’ve finished him off.’ He took a deep breath and spat out a tooth and gob of blood. ‘Martinus said we had better things to do. Shame.’

‘Then?’

‘He had a list of senators who supported our cause – he’d picked them out himself. He knew they were right thinking.’

‘So where is this little boys’ fan club meeting?’ I sneered.

Justus shot me a warning glance and stepped in. ‘Never mind her, she gets a bit over-excited. Just tell me, between us men.’ Justus smirked at me.

He was irritating, especially when he was right.

Justus tapped Pisentius on the knee as a reminder.

‘They’re meeting in three days’ time at the Senate, before the formal quarter day. He’s going to do it as a charity petition.’

‘So which senators are we talking about?’

‘I don’t know – Caeco never said.’

‘Oh, please! Do you really want that injection? No bother to us which way we go,’ I said in my coldest voice.

‘No! Really, I really don’t know. Please.’ His voice thinned and he gulped.

‘You do know that Caeco is only after power, don’t you? He doesn’t care a minim about your cause.’

‘That’s not true. He embodies the cause.’

‘Oh really? None of you means anything to him.’

‘You’re just saying that, you lying bitch.’

Justus slapped him hard.

‘If you talk to my sister like that again, I will put your eye out.’ He pressed lightly through the blindfold on Pisentius’s eyelid and spoke in an over-gentle voice. Pisentius shrank back.

‘Sorry to disappoint you, Pisentius, but why do you think Caeco and his boy, Trosius, met with the Head of Security at the PGSF. Not exchanging flower arranging tips, I think.’

Silence.

Justus handed me the photos and we stood behind Pisentius’s chair. I curled the lower edge of his blindfold up so he could see.

‘Manipulated,’ he mumbled.

‘Gods, you are ignorant. Look again. See the pixels, how the pattern’s not disturbed? Didn’t you learn anything at school?’

‘No. Not possible.’ I could hear the desperate hope in his voice that it wasn’t true.

Justus’s troops took him back to his cell. All four would stay locked up for the duration. For operational security, I calculated Petronax would have forbidden Caeco to contact any of them before the Senate meeting. A risk for us, but an acceptable one.

Back at the house, Justus poured me a large brandy. ‘Here, get this down your neck.’

‘Thanks,’ I muttered.

‘You don’t like this side of it, do you?’ Behind the curiosity in his eyes, I saw unexpected sympathy. ‘I remember from before, you preferred to trick them.’

‘I’m realistic enough to know we don’t have time now,’ I conceded. ‘But no, I don’t.’

I’d given up counting how many laws I’d violated.

XVIII

Next morning, I woke feeling optimistic. We had identified the conspiracy’s principal targets, neutralised several key plotters, and accessed their comms. We would move on Caeco at the pre-Senate meeting and Petronax was entering into my sights. But we had one serious vulnerability, or rather I did.

I was peering over Albinus’s shoulder at the screen displaying the richness of the comms info we’d gained from Trosius.

‘You know, this guy was very meticulous,’ he said. ‘His organisation and filing are immaculate. It’s also his weakness.’

‘He’s a librarian!’ I snorted.

‘Somebody has to be – my father was one.’

The heat spread up my neck. ‘I apologise. I didn’t know. I shouldn’t have been so judgemental.’

He swivelled around on his chair. ‘Gods! Don’t go all formal on me, Pulcheria – you shouldn’t be so sensitive.’

‘Now who’s being judgemental?’ But I gave him a smile.

He turned to the screens again. ‘I’ll send you a list of the main correspondents when I’ve teased them out. You’ll want them before the Senate meeting, I suppose?’ He moved his head up and down by a few millimetres at a time as his eyes followed the scrolling data down the screens.

‘Please,’ and gave him an encouraging pat on the shoulder.

Apollo materialised behind me and scanned the screens for a few minutes. He bent down, his mouth brushing my ear and whispered, ‘He’s not quite the sorcerer that one of my former employees was. How is the delightful Fausta? Still using her nimble fingers to delve around in forbidden places?’

I kept my eyes on the screens. ‘She’s settled in very well.’

‘I was more than a little annoyed when you poached her. But, on reflection, I have to acknowledge she had finished her most important project for me, so it wasn’t such a loss.’

Technically, I hadn’t poached her. The
custodes
had pulled her in on suspicion of hacking a bank, a private project of her own. When her name came up on the watch report as a Pulcheria Foundation employee, it generated an alert in my mail. I knew how talented she was, so I gave her the choice: a crushing length of imprisonment as a cyber criminal or a career as a cyber cop with access to the most powerful security systems in the country.

She gasped once then almost immediately reassumed a nonchalant pose. But I’d seen the fire in her eyes in response to my offer. She flipped from a truculent teenager into a keen recruit faster than I could have spun a
solidus
coin. She’d worked hard to prove that the best defenders were former pirates. And to my surprise, and I think hers, she was an excellent soldier.

I shrugged and followed him into his study.

‘These are the schedules for the maximum security wing at the Transulium,’ he said, handing me several sheets. I glanced up, but his face was impassive. I studied the pattern of shift changeovers and personnel, and found one or two possibilities where the coverage was a little weaker.

‘The main problem is the confirmation call from the governor,’ Apollodorus commented. ‘I understand it doesn’t go to the new legate but to his deputy, the unlovely Petronax.’

Shit.

‘I don’t know Governor Sentoria,’ I said, ‘but she’s supposed to be a careful individual, a bit of a cold fish, She keeps out of inter-service bickering by not cultivating anybody in any branch. Fence sitter.’

‘Well, we can’t all be action heroes with attitude problems,’ he teased.

‘So, we’re not going to have any leeway there, are we?’

‘No, even though she’s likely to lose her job under the Petronax regime,’ he speculated. ‘I think she’ll go by the book, especially with such a high-profile prisoner. Even Justus has nothing on her.’

‘So, we need to divert the call she’ll make to Petronax to somebody willing to impersonate him without that somebody being killed.’ I fetched myself a glass of water and waited until I’d drunk it all before continuing. ‘There’s one obvious candidate in place: he’s one of Conradus’s oldest friends and comrades. We’ll have to bring Albinus in on this.’ I looked straight at Apollo. ‘You’ll have to forgive the question, but can you reassure me that Albinus can be trusted one hundred per cent?’ I winced internally as I asked this.

I saw a flare of light in his black eyes as they narrowed. His index finger touched his forehead creased in concentration as his mouth tightened in a straight line. He paused for a second or two.

‘How can I put this?,’ he said. ‘People in my organisation would think long and deep before contemplating a foolish step such as talking to inappropriate outsiders. The consequences would be unpleasant. And permanent.’

‘I knew you’d be annoyed.’

I glanced at the luminous display on at my watch. Eight thirty. Our target trudged into view. That was weird. A strong, self-confident man, he usually strode along, clearing everything and everybody before him. He reached the door of a tasteful, but fairly modest, apartment block, slid his card into the reader and slipped inside. He must have some kind of additional security clearance under the current curfew. Justus reported earlier that evening that the authorities had “reluctantly ordered that citizens should act responsibly and stay off the streets at night”. The official line was that criminal elements were rampant. Well, that was right, but from whose angle? I’d noticed there were far more
custodes
around – we’d dodged several patrols on our way here.

By now, our mark should have gotten to the apartment on the top floor. I’d give him another five minutes to settle down in a comfortable armchair with a glass of beer and start chatting to his hostess. They’d known each other for several years and were established lovers.

Oh, well, I thought, as we hacked the entry code and followed his route up the stairs, time to interrupt their friendly pre-sex banter and ruin their evening. I knocked on the door.

‘Evening, Adjutant,’ I whined in my nasal Pulcheria voice. ‘Mind if we come in?’ I pushed in past him before he could object, followed by Albinus and two bodyguards.

Shock and anger passed across Lucius’s face. For a second, he stood there, speechless, immobile. Then he recovered and took half a step towards me, but one of my bodyguards had a muzzle in his chest before he could reach me. The other one grabbed Lucius’s belt and side arm from the hall table and slung it over his own shoulder in case the adjutant felt tempted.

‘What in Hades do you want? Who the fuck are you?’ He moved instinctively to screen his companion from view.

‘Tsk, tsk, language!’ I pulled my side arm out, motioned him through the hall, away from the others into another room. I closed the door. It looked liked the bedroom. Lovely cut-work sheets, I thought. I kept my weapon trained on him and waited.

‘Who are you?’

‘Look more closely, Lucius,’ I said in my normal voice.

Several seconds passed. He frowned but, as suspicion gave way to disbelief, his eyes opened wide.

‘Gods! Mitela? Is it really you?’ I gave him a cheeky smile like I normally would. I was incredibly pleased to see him. He was a direct connection to Conrad.

‘Jupiter’s balls! Where the hell have you been since you deserted? Give me a fucking good reason not to arrest you here and now!’

I moved my weapon up a centimetre. ‘Look, Lucius, I’ll explain, but it’s crucial you don’t mention my name in front of the others. Or that I have any involvement with the PGSF.’

‘That won’t be hard, once internal security has finished with you.’ He stared at me, still looking like a sullen volcano, but past the point of erupting. ‘Gods, Carina, you’ve had us frightened stupid. Conradus hid it well, but I know he was worried shitless. Mind you, he’s got more problems right now than a renegade junior officer.’

‘Stop bitching, Lucius. That’s why we’re here – to get him out.’

He looked me up and down. ‘Well, you and your monkeys out there don’t exactly look like a rescue team; more like the mob.’

‘Nice,’ I retorted, but appreciated how near Lucius had guessed. ‘I had no option once I was proscribed.’

He said nothing.

‘And how have you been doing in your efforts to spring him?’ He couldn’t fail to hear the hard edge in my voice.

He flinched. ‘Point taken,’ he said. ‘But I’ve been desperately trying to stop Petronax destroying us.’

I looked closer. The shadows around his eyes were deep, an unhealthy brown. Although he thrust his chin forward, his skin was taut, showing the strain he was under.

‘What happened? What did he do?’

‘When Conradus was taken away, Petronax pulled the national security card to summon the entire unit on parade in the courtyard. To update us, he said. Of course, all our personal weapons were in the safe boxes.’ He looked away.

‘His private army was waiting outside. He segregated the men and made them stand separately from the women. He gave the men the option to join him in his “glorious enterprise”, as he called it.’ Lucius snorted. ‘Of course, nobody stepped forward. Petronax sneered at us, calling us ball-less. He ordered all the women to be locked up in the cells or the secure interview rooms, and the men back to their desks. His associates would be guarding us. They had enough weapons to start an arms fair. All outside comms had been cut. He told me I was answerable for any disobedience. For any breach, he’d decimate the unit, starting with the female officers and NCOs. And then, as an example, he said, he walked up to Galla, put his pistol to her head and shot her point-blank.’

His voice had almost vanished. He croaked the last bit out, sat down heavily on the bed, and dropped his head in his hands.

‘Thank Mars, Daniel Stern had taken off with his group to the palace.’ He let a breath out slowly. ‘Galla should have gone with them. She’d still be alive if she had. But fucking Petronax would have chosen somebody else.’

I turned away, grasping hold of a chair back. Sour fumes rose up my throat and I ran for the bathroom.

I rinsed my mouth and wiped my face. I gripped the edges of the fluted porcelain basin and stared into the mirror. Blood oozed from where I’d bitten my lip. I swore into the glass I would kill Petronax, if nobody else got there before me.

Back in the bedroom, Lucius handed me back the pistol I had dropped.

‘Fine terrorist you make.’

My hand shook as I took it from him and stowed it in the holster. I dabbed at my lip. ‘Lucius, I have to ask you something personal.’

With all his problems and the sickening brutality he was trying to contain, it might not have touched his radar.

‘Do you know where my grandmother and the children are?’ After Galla, I braced myself for the worst.

‘Yes, I do. They’re at home, under house arrest, but they’re safe.’

My legs gave way. I dropped down onto the bed.

He laid his hand on my shoulder and smiled. ‘Nothing to do with me, I’m afraid. Paulina knows a friend of Helena Mitela’s through the teacher mafia. She and Helena were supposed to meet, but the curfew torpedoed it. This friend couldn’t get anything but a voice message, so she went round to your house, but it was bristling with
custodes
. They said no contact was permitted with any of the Mitela women and children inside.’

Back in the hallway, Lucius’s friend, Paulina, was frozen out of her wits at the immobile, but obviously menacing, Albinus and guards. The two bodyguards, now porting arms, watched everything without emotion or reaction. Not many teachers come across such disturbing figures in their professional lives. A few rambunctious teenagers annoying the rest of the class didn’t count in comparison.

I went forward, holding out my hand in greeting and smiling. ‘Paulina Carca, I am so very sorry to burst into your home and interrupt your evening. If it were not for the extremely serious circumstances, I would not have dreamed of doing so.’

She was taken aback by my top-drawer manners, completely at variance with my raffish appearance. Her middle-rank social conditioning led her to deny it was any trouble, and she asked us whether we would like any refreshment. Lucius pulled her into the bedroom, shut the door, curtly nodding his head to the rest of us to go to the main room.

He emerged after a couple of minutes, a scowl on his face. A faint sound of quiet sobbing in the background stopped the instant he shut the door.

‘I should flog you, Ca— What the hell am I to call you?’ he asked, glaring at me.

‘Nothing.’

‘Sit down somewhere, but don’t make a mess.’

The two bodyguards stationed themselves behind me, weapons ready, but Albinus sat with me.

‘Well?’

I’d forgotten how formidable he could be. I took a breath and started.

‘We have a plan to extract the legate from the Transulium, but we need a little help from you.’

‘How are you—?’

‘You don’t want to know.’

‘Very well.’

‘What do you know about what Petronax and his friends are up to?’

Lucius looked around at us all. ‘I can’t tell you that.’

‘I don’t want to be a bore, Adjutant, but we probably know a great deal more than you do,’ I said. ‘I just want to know how much I need to fill you in about the situation.’

‘You go first.’

I waded straight in. ‘You know there’s a conspiracy by patriarchalists to overthrow the imperatrix, kill her female children, and put Darius on the throne with a Council of Regency made up of traitor senators?’

His eyes goggled. ‘No,’ he croaked. His face had gone white. I thought for a moment he’d stopped breathing. I was fascinated. I’d never seen Lucius so obviously upset. It made his reaction to Aburia look like a lover’s kiss.

‘Once they have the imperatrix, their intention is to execute her. The legate, as the boy’s father, would naturally protect him if his mother were dead as well as be a focus for opposition, so he’s high on their hit list. They need to remove him early to pre-empt any action he might take. We’re fighting time here.’

I took a deep breath. I was nearly reverting to Carina. Time to swap back.

‘That bastard Petronax finessed all your lot,’ Pulcheria’s voice gloated. ‘I mean, you have to admire him for his tactics.’

Lucius was coming to the boil again, but he contained it.