Empire Builders (19 page)
TWENTY-FIVE
IT TOOK ALL her strength to keep from screaming.
Kate sat in the posh dining room of the new Yamagata Hotel, where the giant video windows presented scenes of Hawaiian beaches in the setting sun, and watched Gaetano charm Kimberly out of her pants, almost literally.
“I have never seen anyone man or woman—adapt to the gravity here as easily as you have.” Rafe was smiling at her. Strong white teeth like a shark’s, Kate thought.
Kimberly, her eyes still slightly shadowed, her cheeks sunken, smiled back glowingly. “A friend of mine warned me about the gravity. She loaned me her weighted boots—see!”
And Kim held up one miniskirted leg to show the stylish lunar softboot she was wearing. To Kate, her sister’s leg looked bony, knobby.
But Gaetano said, “You mustn’t put temptation so close, little one. A man’s first instinct is to stroke a beautiful lady’s leg.”
Kim giggled. Kate fumed.
Halfway through their main course Kim suddenly excused herself.
Kate watched her hurrying to the ladies’ room, wondering if some lingering effect of her addiction were still in her blood. Was she perspiring? Were her hands shaking?
“A lovely young sister,” Gaetano murmured across the elegant table. “Keep your hands off her,” Kate hissed.
“Jealous’?”
“She’s my sister, for god’s sake. I don’t want her getting involved with the likes of you. She’s had enough problems in her life.” Gaetano’s smile turned nasty. “Yes, I know all about it. Kimberly Williams,” he recited. “Parents divorced when she was ten. While her older sister Katherine went to law school, Kimberly stayed with her mother in San Jose and became involved in the drug culture at the public school. By the time she was fifteen she was heavily addicted to narcotics. Arrested for prostitution and-” “Stop it!” Kate snapped.
Gaetano shrugged as if it did not matter to him one way or the other. He reached for his wineglass.
“What made you come up here?” Kate asked in an urgent whisper. On the same ship as Kim, she added silently.
Gaetano sipped at his wine, red and dark as blood, then put the tulip-shaped glass down on the tablecloth and brushed at his moustache. “Why, I came here to see you, Kate. I grew lonely for you. I miss the little games we used to play.”
“And you just happened to meet my sister.”
“A charming coincidence,” he lied. “She’s worked very hard to break her addiction, but I’m afraid that it would be ridiculously easy to turn her onto narcotics once again.”
“I’ll kill you!”
He laughed. “Katherine, it’s so much easier to make love instead of war.” She glared at him.
Turning serious, Gaetano hunched across the table toward her. “You have control of Astro. You thought that if you could get your sister here with you, you would be free of me.” He waved an extended index finger back and forth in front of her eyes. “Not so. You will never be rid of me. Not until I decide that I want to be rid of you. Do you understand?” Kate said nothing.
“Do you realize how easy it would be to get your sister stoned to the point where she would think it fun to come into bed with us?” Kate could feel her teeth clenching so hard she feared they would shatter.
“Don’t be angry, dear one. You have your new position as head of Astro. You can have your sister, too. All I want is for you to follow my orders. In your office and in your bedroom.”
“You’ll leave Kim alone?’
“Of course! What would I want from her, if you are obedient?” Kate lowered her eyes.
“The Russian thinks you still are working for him,” Gaetano said, switching to business. “That is good. Let him continue to believe so. As long as you do what I tell you to.”
Looking up, Kate saw that Kimberly was threading her way through the other tables toward them. She looks okay, Kate told herself. God, she actually looks happy.
“All right,” she whispered urgently to Gaetano. “I’ll follow orders like a good little slave. Just keep away from my sister.” “Of course,” Gaetano assured her. Kate did not feel assured.
For days, Nobuhiko Yamagata pondered the meaning of Jane Scanwell’s surprising statements at their luncheon together. Organized crime fastening its tentacles to the global conversion program!
Murdering a friend of hers whom she had asked to investigate the situation for her?
Unsettling thoughts. The GEC’s mad scramble to avert the greenhouse cliff was an awesome undertaking in itself; to have it undermined by the international crime syndicate if such a thing actually existed—was more than dangerous. It could be fatal for half the human race.
Nobo decided that he needed more information. He explained the problem to his chief of security, a tiny, bandy-legged, potbellied man whose little remaining hair was as gray as a rainy day. The man had been Nobo’s own bodyguard when he was a lad, personally selected by his father. He was a master of the martial arts, pot belly and all. More importantly now, he was a brilliant organizer and administrator.
The security chief listened to his master’s apprehensions, then proceeded to arrange a meeting between Nobo and the head of one of the great Yakuza families. At first Nobo thought it unseemly to sit in the same room with a crime lord, but the security chief explained that the Yakuza had their own sense of honor and the head man would try his best to be cooperative, as long as he did not feel he was risking his own interests.
“He is well known to the police,” the security chief told Nobo, “and has assisted them on investigations of certain violent crimes. In his own world he is a man of high rank and honor. It is no shame upon you or this house to meet with him.”
Still, Nobuhiko hesitated. Until the security chief added, “He was a good friend to your father.”
So the meeting was arranged, at the family home above Kyoto . Both men wore Western business suits: Nobo’s charcoal gray, the Yakuza lord’s an off-white raw silk.
His name was Toshiro Kakuta: small but very solidly built, head as bald and blunt as a bullet, eyes unreadable but alert. The older man bowed to Nobuhiko, somewhat stiffly. Nobo wondered if the stiffness was from age or the fact that this man did not often bow to others.
Returning the bow, Nobo gestured to the low lacquered table already set with a tea service. No third person would enter this room until their talk was finished. Kakuta slowly, almost painfully, sank to his knees and then sat cross-legged. Arthritis, Nobo decided. They sipped tea and spoke pleasantly for quite some time about the lovely view of the forest through the room’s big picture window. That led to a discussion of the weather, and then how warm the season had been, and finally to the matter of the greenhouse and the GEC’s global effort.
“I have been told,” Nobo said, glad to be on the subject at last, “that in other parts of the world, organized crime syndicates are stealing money and resources from this vital program.”
Kakuta bowed his head ever so slightly. “I have been informed of the same. A terrible thing to do.”
“I have not heard of any such interference with this necessary work in Japan .” Lifting his chin again, he said, “No. We recognize how crucial this work is. There is nothing to be gained by robbing one’s own chest.”
“I am pleased to hear you say it,” Nobo said, wondering how much of the man’s words were true. “If I may explain . . .”
“Please do.”
“In any large organization it is not always possible to completely control the actions of every individual member. There may well be the misguided soul, here and there, who makes some profit from your great work. I deal harshly with such foolishness when I learn of it, but I am not omniscient.”
It was Nobo’s turn to bow his head slightly. “I understand.”
“I am grateful that you have the same wisdom as your father.” A heartbeat’s pause, then Kakuta added, “And at a much younger age.”
Nobo kept himself from reacting to that. “Can you tell me,” he asked, “is there truly an international crime cartel? A syndicate of global proportions?”
Kakuta remained silent for so long that Nobo began to think he would not answer. Finally the older man said, “That is a difficult question. There have been loose alliances from one region of the Earth to another, from time to time. Some of our own groups here in Japan have formed links with families in the United States , for example.”
“But no actual organization, on a permanent basis.’?” “Not yet.”
Despite himself, Nobo felt his brows rise. “Not yet?”
“Within the past year there has been great pressure brought to bear to form such a continuing global organization, with permanent hierarchy and structure.”
“Where does this pressure come from?”
Kakuta swung his head a few centimeters from one side to the other. “That is a question that I cannot answer.”
“You mean you will not answer.” Kakuta said nothing.
“Can you tell me this much, at least,” Nobo asked. “Does this pressure involve the Mafia?”
“The Mafia is already an international organization. It includes most of Europe and all of North America .” “So I have been told.”
“But they do not operate in Japan , and as long as I am alive they will not.”
“I see. I understand and I am indebted to you for sharing your wisdom with me.” “It is a pleasure. May you have ten thousand years of happiness.”
“And you the same.”
Kakuta burst into a full-bellied laugh, startling Nobuhiko. “Ten thousand years for me? Oh no, not in my business!” He rocked back and forth with laughter and slapped his thighs.
Nobo smiled back at him and thought, I will send President Scanwell a team to guard her—without her knowing it. She may have a GEC security team, but they might easily be infiltrated. The best security is the least visible.
Augustus Greenwell tramped through the sodden woods, grateful that his Barbour coat was truly waterproof. It had rained again last night; it had rained every night for the past six, cold, driving acid rain that was killing the woods and poisoning his lake. He had complained to the Environmental Protection Agencies, state and federal, to the idiots in the Weather Service who kept nattering about unseasonable cyclonic disturbances, to both his senators and even to the President’s science adviser.
Still it rained, even on the weekends when he wanted to go hunting in his own private woods.
Slogging through the muddy underbrush, heavy laser rifle on his shoulder, he admitted to himself that the rumors about the damnable greenhouse must be right after all. The weather is changing.
This greenhouse collapse or whatever they were calling it probably is real, rather than just another attempt by still yet another government agency to tell him how to run his business.
Convert all our models to electric! Ridiculous! It’ll bankrupt us. Chrysler’s gone, Ford’s tottering on the brink and now they want me to start making plans to convert to nothing but electric cars. And keep it secret until some leech in Paris says it’s okay to announce the news! It’s a ploy by those rotten Japs, that’s what it is. They’re way ahead of us on electric cars and now they’ve got the GEC to order us to stop making gasoline-powered cars. Ordered us! Ordered me!
And the damnable banks are going along with them. No loans for gasoline cars. Not even for methane or synfuel models. All fossil fuels are out, starting with the production runs two years up the line.
Greenwell spent several minutes swearing in nearly infinite detail about the GEC, the banks, and his Japanese competitors. He had a choice vocabulary of curses, which he carefully refrained from using unless he was absolutely alone. Now he trotted out his richly profane litany from beginning to end, turning the air blue as he sloshed through puddles of acid rain.
A crow cawed from high in the bare branches of a dead spruce. It was the only bird Greenwell had seen all morning. He scowled at it. The grouse and duck and other game birds were all gone. Dead or fled.
That’s gratitude for you; after the years I spent making this a sanctuary for them, not allowing anybody else to shoot them.
Hydrogen. The thought made him angry all over again. We could modify our existing engines to bum hydrogen. The stuff gives good performance, and in some ways it’s even safer than gasoline. But those foreigners from the GEC had stared at him as if he were insane when he offered to convert to hydrogen cars rather than electrics.
“Hydrogen!” they had exclaimed. “Too dangerous?’
“The Hindenberg!”
When Greenwell had pointed out to them that Germany ’s Daimler-Benz Corporation had been running hydrogen-fueled buses for half a century without mishap, they just shook their heads.
“The decision has been made, Mr. Greenwell. You will convert to electric automobiles, just like everyone else.”
“There is only one GEC program, and everyone must adhere to it.”
But if we can make a simple conversion to hydrogen instead of having to go into electrics—Greenwell mulled the possibilities. Hydrogen isn’t a fossil fuel; when you bum it the exhaust is water. And if a hydrogen car can give performance like a gasoline car, we could run rings around the Japs and their dinky electric autos! But those motherless maggots won’t hear of it. Electric cars or nothing. Damn them all to hell a thousand times over!
The crow cawed again, as if mocking him. Taking a deep breath of relatively clean air, Greenwell put his rifle to his shoulder, aimed the laser sight at the squawking crow, and pulled the trigger. The camera built into the rifle’s former firing chamber clicked, and Green-well was satisfied that he could have killed the noisy black bird. He had never killed a living creature in all his life. Above everything else, August Greenwell prided himself on being a conservationist.
Dan sat in his windowless cell deep underground, staring blankly at the electronic chess game his captors had given him. He had asked for a cyberbook reader with some of the classic novels he had never had the time to read, or a television set so he could at least see the news and try the opera channel to see if he could learn to enjoy something deeper than West Side Story.
All they gave him was this stupid little chess set that had only eight levels of play programmed into it. Trouble was, the damned machine beat him consistently on level two and higher.
Dan’s cell was bleak. Bare concrete walls. One bunk, one toilet, one sink and one table with a single chair. The ceiling was glareless light panels that stayed on twenty-four hours a day. Monitoring cameras
watched him from behind those panels.
watched him from behind those panels.
He sat hunched over the chess game wearing a prisoner’s gray coveralls. A team from the GEC was on its way from Paris to bring him back Earthside, where he would stand trial for kidnapping, terrorism, drug dealing, grand larceny and anything else they could think of. Dan did not look forward to the interrogation he knew Malik would order. They’d want to get the names of the other renegades living around Alphonsus. Dan was determined not to tell them, but he did not know how long he could hold out against even the legal interrogation techniques—to say nothing of the kind that Malik would prefer using.
What difference does it make? he asked himself, sitting alone in his bare, chilly cell. George and Tucker ratted me out, why should I protect them?
He pushed away from the plastic table and got up slowly. The cell always felt cold to him. Must be my imagination. Certainly can’t be damp down here; the only damned water around here is the stuff they make in the factories.
Why hold out when they interrogate me? Dan knew the answer:
To screw Malik. Not to protect George or Tucker or any of those burns . They weren’t loyal to me, why should I be loyal to them? But if Malik wants their names then I won’t give them. The Russian sonofabitch can turn me inside out and I won’t tell him a double-damned word.
I hope. Dan had no doubts about his ability to withstand psychological pressure. But he also felt certain that Malik would quickly resort to more physical methods. For the good of the world’s people, of course. All the heinous tortures in history had been done for the purest of motives. Just like Torquemada working so hard to save all those souls by ripping apart all those bodies.
If only I could get loose once I’m back on Earth, Dan thought as he paced the five steps from one end of his cell to the other. I’ve got half a dozen bankrolls stashed away down there. I could offer a pretty hefty bribe for some help in breaking loose. Then I could disappear and live a decent life under an assumed identity. Maybe even some plastic surgery...
He stopped short. And do what? Spend the rest of my life sitting on my ass in Argentina or Taiwan , hoping nobody spots me? While Malik and the rest of them run the world straight into the greenhouse cliff?
He reached out his right hand and touched the concrete wall facing him. He pressed both hands against it, then leaned all his weight on them. The wall did not budge. Who are you trying to kid? he snarled silently at himself. You’re going to spend the rest of your life in a cell like this. Or worse. Malik’s not going to let you go. And nobody’s going to help you. Not Jane or Nobo or Kate Williams or anybody.
Straightening up, squaring his shoulders, Dan told himself, Okay. Let’s face reality. There’s only one possibility. Sooner or later, Malik’s going to come within my reach. The damned smiling, gloating sonofabitch is going to get close enough for me to grab him by the throat. Then I’ll kill him. It’ll have to be quick. Smash his double-damned windpipe before he realizes what’s happening. Drive the cartilage in his nose up into his brain. Snap his neck.
Quick.
Then they can put me on trial for a real murder instead of these phonied-up charges.
Dan nodded, satisfied that he was right. It was a discussion he had held with himself every day since they had tossed him into this cell. He came to the same conclusion every time.
Now, as he did after each of those self-discussions, he got down on the floor and started doing push-ups. His first day in captivity he could do only ten. Now he was up to fifty. Next he would do sit-ups to flatten his gut. Then he would jog around his cell until his legs were too shaky to carry him.
He was on his seventy-third sit-up, sweating and grunting, when he heard the beep-beep-boop of the door’s electronic lock being worked. Too early for dinner, he thought. They had taken his wristwatch from him, but he had a fair judgment for time.
The door swung open and the huge shaggy form of Big George pushed through. Behind him, like a tiny spacecraft eclipsed by a massive asteroid, was Pops Tucker.
Dan almost laughed, sitting there on the floor. “So they got you too.” “Not fooking likely,” said George, in a near-whisper.
“Get up,” Tucker said. “We’re takin’ you outta here.” Dan scrambled to his feet. “You’re what?”
“We’re springin’ you. Come on!”
Instantly suspicious, Dan growled, “What’s going on? Am I supposed to be shot while trying to escape? Is that it?”
Tucker curled a lip at him. “You don’t trust us, huh?” “Why should I?”
“Because we didn’t give you away, in the first place,” answered Tucker, looking and sounding disgusted, “and we’re risking our goddamned asses to spring you, in the second place.”
“We don’t have much time,” George said, glancing down the corridor outside the cell.
Dan noticed that he was holding a pistol in one huge hand. It looked like the same gun Dan himself had brought from his office. “Where’d you get that?” He pointed at the gun.
George grinned from inside his wildly tangled beard. “Where you left it, behind your bunk. Pops went over the shelter with a detector array that first time you and me went out to meet the trolley. Remember? Didn’t find any electronic bugs but we found this.”
“And you left it there?”
“Sure, what’d we need it for?” “We’re wastin’ time,” Tucker said.
Dan made a decision. He started for the door. Outside, he saw that the corridor was empty.
“How long will a man stay out when he’s been hit with one of these darts?” George asked as they started down the long narrow blank-walled corridor.
“Depends on his size,” Dan answered, hurrying to keep pace with the big man. “Ten, twenty minutes. Maybe half an hour.” “Then we gotta run like hell,” Tucker puffed, already jogging to stay with them.
“Here we go!” George scooped up the frail old man and bolted ahead like a football running back. Dan raced after him.
A few minutes later they were in the sublevel where Alphonsus’ life support machinery chugged away. George set Tucker down on his feet again, and the sour-faced old man slipped on a pair of dark goggles. He bent over even more than usual, seemingly studying the floor.
“EMERGENCY!” blared the overhead speakers. “EMERGENCY! A PRISONER HAS ESCAPED FROM THE DETENTION CENTER . HE HAS AT LEAST TWO ACCOMPLICES. THEY ARE ARMED. USE EXTREME CAUTION!”
“Why the look are they piping that down here?” George complained. “Nobody here but the maintenance robots.”
‘There might be a few human technicians around,” Dan suggested. “Or they’re tryin’ to scare us,” said Tucker.
Dan shook his head. “More likely they just put the announcement on the whole damned comm system. I’ll bet it even went out to the tourists up in Yamagata ’s new hotel.”
“All right,” said Tucker, returning his attention to the floor. “Now we sprayed a dye that’s only visible in the infrared—that’s where we walk. Georgie bent the camera supports enough along our path so we can sneak under ‘em and they won’t see us.”
“Had to shoot the two guys at the monitor screens in the detention center,” George said, somewhat ruefully. “One of ‘em was a girl. Cute, too.”
“Hell, you think Hogface Martha is cute,” Tucker growled. George laughed.
They walked slowly along the path that only Tucker could see. Dan wondered how long they had before a maintenance robot crossed their path or a live security team was dispatched to scour the area. I won’t be able to fool a robot he realized. I don’t have the current codes.
Then they passed a familiar alcove. The metal rungs of a ladder were set into the wall, leading up. “Hey, wait,” he called to the others.
“What?”
“Let’s go up this way,” he said.
“Are you crazy?” Tucker snarled. “That’s not the way to the outside. That goes up to-” “My office,” Dan said. “Last place they’d think of looking for us.”
“You are crazy.”
“Like a fox. Come on.” And he started up the ladder.
There are two possibilities, Dan reasoned as he climbed.
One:
George and the old man are working for Malik and I’m supposed to be shot while trying to escape. Maybe there’s a goon squad up at that shelter at the top of the vertical shaft waiting to kill me. It’d be just like Malik to have George and Pops snuffed too; clean up the whole mess and leave no witnesses.
George and the old man are working for Malik and I’m supposed to be shot while trying to escape. Maybe there’s a goon squad up at that shelter at the top of the vertical shaft waiting to kill me. It’d be just like Malik to have George and Pops snuffed too; clean up the whole mess and leave no witnesses.
Two: the pair of them are really on my side and risking their asses to free me. But there could still be a squad waiting for us at the shelter. If Kate Williams is still running the show around here she’s too smart to let me get away with the same escape route twice. He glanced down in the dimly lit shaft and saw that George was following below him. Probably Tucker’s behind him, too small to see behind Georgie’s bulk.
Sure enough, he heard the old man’s voice echoing sourly off the shaft’s wails, “This is the dumbest damn thing I’ve seen since Harry Kline decided he could breathe vacuum.”
Grinning, Dan hissed a shhh down at him.
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