Robert Charrette - Arthur 03 - A Knight Among Knaves (5 page)

He listened again to the voices on the other side of the door. Chartain was unsure. Gilmore clattered at a keyboard while he argued. The clattering stopped and Gilmore announced that the scenario was set. Chartain remained unsure about Holger's readiness. Well, Holger would show him. This test was his ticket out of hospital and back to active duty. He would show Chartain. Holger Kun was ready for duty again, and nothing, certainly not Major Chartain's doubts, was going to stop him from proving it.

The test he faced was a trial to ensure that he was ready for service again. It would start here, but would move outside to the real world—a real world he was anxious to see again. Being out in the real world added a complexity that just couldn't be duplicated inside a virtual theater. Besides, a virtual theater couldn't test a man's physical limits. Still, the Department's sponsors didn't sanction "live" testing, although Holger suspected that they knew of its existence and, for their own reasons, looked the other way. Live tests had been a part of the European Community Secret Service from the early, bad old days when there wasn't enough budget to train in controlled environments. It was tradition now, a rite of passage. Holger had been through it when he'd completed his basic training, and again after he'd taken the Department's special training course.

This test was just another hurdle for him. The scenario was simple. He was to retrieve some information from the facility's computer, simulating a data theft, and remove the data from the facility. Agents from Department M, and possibly other ECSS operatives, would be set on his trail. Some
would
be the hunters, others acting as obstacles, all trying to prevent him from delivering his package. Those agents were bein
g
tested, too, but not as stringently as Holger. According to the scenario, the hunters would have no special informa
tion
about his destination, but Holger knew better than to expect that. There would be someone waiting for him at the de
livery
point. There would be at least one confrontation.

A thrill of anticipation ran through him. He was ready! So why wait? The real world was out there. He palmed open the door. Monitor screens on the workstations lining the room went blank as he entered. They would have been keyed to go to standby on the door's activation, as a security measure. He didn't mind. He had made a sufficient gain: by not announcing himself, he hadn't given his two testers a chance to get away from the console they were using, thus making it easier for him to select the correct one.

"Ah, good evening, Agent Kun."

Gilmore smiled the idiotic smile that made his bald head
look
like an overgrown infant's. His juglike ears bobbing above the collar of his white lab coat added to the caricatured scientist r fleet. Just from looking at Gilmore, one would never suspect that the man was near the top of his field—not with that idiot grin—but Holger knew better than to accept appearances.

Take Major Chartain's appearance, for example. Though Chartain wore the uniform of the French Legion Etrangere, complete with the European Coordinated Military Forces rank tabs on his collar and the ECMF wreathed eagle shoulder patch, the major was no soldier. Holger knew that Chartain had been military once, but not with the Legion. Now, like Holger, he was an agent of the Secret Services. Chartain's tight smile and economical nod were all the acknowledgment the major gave to Holger's arrival.

"You're a bit early," Gilmore said. "We weren't expecting you for a few more minutes."

"1 didn't want to be late. Can we get started?"

"Nervous?" Gilmore asked.

Holger didn't bother to answer.

Gilmore's smile faded. "Yes, well, I don't see why we can't get started. The first part requires that you retrieve a preselected datafile. You remember the file's identity code?"

Pointless question. Holger never forgot the details of a briefing. "Westwind," he said.

"Good." Gilmore beamed again. "Shall we proceed?"

Holger shouldered his way past the testers to the console and stood, staring down at it, hands in the pockets of his greatcoat. This was not a simple workstation; there were two keyboard, and a host of specialized input devices. He took his left hand out of his pocket and ran it across the keyboard and the other controls. So easy to tell which Gilmore had manipulated last. Too easy. Gilmore should have used a virtual control surface instead of allowing the trace heat of the psych's hands to identify his workstation. Holger dispensed with the tedious task of entering the protected file zones and simply keyed in a standard recall sequence, bringing the workstation back to life. Several subscreens appeared on the monitor. None carried the data he sought, but he hadn't expected that they would. He patched to the facility's server, called up the search program he'd prepared, and set it loose using Gilmore's access authority.

"Excellent," Gilmore commented. "I'll be collecting from Dagastino. He bet me that you wouldn't rely on thermal imaging to select the console."

Holger didn't care about Gilmore's bet. Anyone with the psych's credentials should know that heat was something you felt rather than saw. If Dagastino didn't know better than to bet against the psych, he was as stupid as Sp—

What was he thinking about? He had no time for idle speculation. He needed to concentrate on the job at hand. Yes. Do it and be done with it. Get free of the facility and back into the real world. That's what he needed to be thinking about.

"Data acquired," the console announced.

His program had done its job and collected the Westwind file, his ticket out. He dumped the file to chip and pocketed it.

"Good time on retrieval," Chartain said.

He didn't need to be told that.

Holger turned in place. As he did, he took his right hand from the pocket of his greatcoat. Gilmore and Chartain stared at the H&K Viper™ that he held in that hand. The weapon wasn't really a Viper, but it looked like one. Felt like one too, almost. The weight was the same but the balance was a little off. But to all appearances it was a standard-issue weapon. Were they wondering if he had replaced the test's surrogate with the real thing? Chartain's hand was sliding toward his hip and the holstered pistol there. The major would have seen that the safety on Holger's weapon was off. "Entertaining doubts, Major?" Holger asked him. Holger shot them both. A bullet in each neck. Chartain first. They looked surprised. They shouldn't be, especially Gilmore. They should have known that he would be playing to win this little game. Was he supposed to let them raise the alarm before he'd gotten out of the facility?

The anesthetic in the bullets was fast, but not fast enough. Holger had made the neck shot to minimize the delay in reaction to the drug. Chartain fought it. Holger had to step close and take Chartain's pistol away from him. Chartain didn't struggle long. Holger laid him on the floor beside Gilmore.

Once he'd instructed the door to seal after he left, and the workstations to simulate activity, Holger plucked Chartain's badge from his pocket and clipped it to the front of his own greatcoat. He took the major's hat from the rack by the door as well. The fit was satisfactory; he hadn't been sure that it would lie. He was pleased. The security officers were considerably less vigilant about checking persons leaving the facility than they were about those coming in. Just as well for him—if anyone looked closely at the photo, he would not pass for Chartain. But no one would be looking closely at him. The hat, the military-cut greatcoat, and the mere presence of the badge would be enough to disguise him as long as no alert was on, and he had just arranged that the alert would be late.

The next step was to walk out of the Philips Sanitorium as if he had every right in the world to do so. And didn't he? The world outside was waiting.

CHAPTER

3

In weeks of looking, John hadn't found where Spillway Sue slumped. With no money to spread among the streeters, he'd gotten no talk from them. He was still new enough that the locals wouldn't open up to him out of kindness or in hopes of earning his goodwill. Yet, for some reason he didn't really understand, he felt that he needed to try again to find her before he left with Bennett.

He was sure Sue knew he was looking.
She
was well established on the street. Surely some of those John had asked were her friends or owed her favors, if not loyalty. They would have talked to her. So why hadn't she come out of hiding? She could have found him anytime; she knew where he slumped. Why hadn't
she
contacted
himl

John didn't want to believe that Sue was hiding from him, but that seemed the inevitable conclusion. They had only begun to discover each other—he didn't want it to end without a word. He was afraid it already had.

He drifted through the neighborhood south of 195 near the river. Without knowing where Spillway Sue might be, all he could do was check places where she had been seen and hope that he would run across her. His path was nearly as aimless as the errant leaves that rattled and rasped along the pavement driven by the chill autumn wind. The leaves didn't know where they were going, any more than did John. John's thoughts were as tumbled as the leaves.

Sue—about whom he knew so little—had spent years on the street, maybe her entire life, while he had been raised in safe corporate turf. They had grown up in different worlds. What did they have in common? They had shared a harrowing time, confined by the dwarves who had taken Bear. Isolated from contact with anyone other than the dwarves, John and Sue had grown into a strange sort of closeness, two frightened kids as scared of what was happening around them as they were of their attraction to each other. Though he didn't understand the attraction, John couldn't deny it.

He also couldn't escape the feelings of guilt he felt whenever he stopped to think about it.

How could he be so attracted to Sue? What about Faye? John was living with Faye, if you could call sharing a slump with an incorporeal presence "living together." Faye was his confidante and friend, as she had been since he was a kid. But John wasn't a kid anymore, and only recently he had learned that Faye had never been one. She was one of the Faery folk, an ethereal being from the otherworld. Ever since he first saw her in the—was flesh the right word?—on his first trip to the otherworld, his feelings toward her had changed. She had become real in a way he had never anticipated. Since then, he'd been all too aware of the sexual attraction between them, an attraction simultaneously frustrated and enhanced by her intangibility.

In some ways, Faye was as much a mystery to him as Spillway Sue.

Faye hadn't understood why John didn't leave at once with Bennett, the guy who had once tried to kill her. She had been full of good reasons for John to go. In Faery, John could learn about his heritage. In Faery, John could be what lie was born to be. In Faery, John would come into his own. Hut she had missed one of the best. In Faery, Faye would be tangible. Beautiful, loving Faye would be touchable.

But, in Faery, there would be no Sue.

Despite the marked differences between the two women, John found each of them strikingly attractive. Different, but desirable. Equally desirable? John wasn't sure. At best, in

the right light, Sue was pretty, in an earthy sort of way; she was a real world woman, and she had been on the streets a long time. Faye was, without a doubt and by any standard; beautiful. Admittedly, John had only seen her by the fey an deceptive light of the otherworld, but he was sure her beaut was no glamour. Had the issue been looks alone, the choice would have been easy, but John's longing for Sue had a fierce heat that was missing from his slow burning desire fo Faye. Lately he had been telling himself that he needed to see Sue again, that talking with her would settle his confusion.

He wondered if Faye knew how he had been spending his time away from the slump.
He
certainly hadn't told her. He still hadn't told Faye about what happened between him and Sue, that they had made love in the slump upon their return J from captivity. Things had gotten dangerous shortly thereafter and there hadn't been time to talk. Later—well, later the time never seemed right. Faye had never mentioned the incident, and John had let it lie, lacking the courage to bring it up. Talking to Faye about the longings that he felt for Sue just seemed wrong.

And there was no one else to talk to about it. Even if he were still around, Bear wouldn't understand the problem. Talking to Dr. Spae was out of the question. Maybe if John's mother were still around. But no, even had he been able to find her, he would have found no solace there; no matter what she said Marianne Reddy still thought of John as her little boy, and little boys didn't have these kinds of problems. There was no one he could talk this out with but Sue. Only he hadn't been able to find her to talk to her.

Bennett had given him twenty-four hours to take care of his business. Even without Bennett's deadline, John had a sense that time was slipping away. The more he walked, the more he felt sure that unless he succeeded in finding Sue tonight, the opportunity to straighten things out between them would slip away. The seasons of the year were poised on the cusp of change, and the wind seemed to carry whis-

pers that all would be different soon. Somehow he felt that the wind had the truth of it.

Most of the night was gone and John was tired. The wind start
ed
to pick up, so he took the first offer of shelter, the entryway of a building. He leaned against the wall, grateful to be free of most of the wind. He could hide from the wind, but he couldn't hide from his problems.