F Paul Wilson - Sims 04 (6 page)

 
          
The
possibilities made Patrick more than a little queasy. “There’s a thought to
take to bed with you.”

 
          
Just
then Ponytail stirred, groaned, and lifted his head.

 
          
Zero
glanced his way and said, “A font of information on these very subjects is
about to become available to us. I hope.”

 
          
“I
don’t think you have to hope,” Patrick said. “I’d swear he recognized
Kek
when he jumped him. He even tried to say something. It
sounded like, ‘
Kree
—’ but he never got to finish it.”

 
          
Ponytail’s
eyes were glazed and it was obvious to Patrick he had no idea where he was or
why he was tied up or what was going on. Tell him he’s at an S & M
beerfest
in
Sydney
and he’d buy it. After ten seconds or so
his chin dropped back onto his chest.

 
          
“We’ll
have to ask him about that,” Zero said. “He should be ready to talk soon.” He
turned to
Kek
. “Take your position upstairs at the
window now.”

 
          
Kek
turned and scrambled up a metal ladder affixed to the
rear wall.

 
          
“The
garage comes with a loft,” Zero said. “The window up there affords an excellent
view of the street. It also serves as
Kek’s
home.”

 
          
“So
it was him I saw peeking down on us that day,” Patrick said.

 
          
Zero
nodded. “
Kek
has a curious nature.” He turned to
Romy
. “Where did we put that
inoculator
kit?”

 
          
“Right
here,”
Romy
said, and handed it to him.

 
          
“The
moment of truth, as it were,” Zero said, opening the kit as he approached the
captive. “Now we find out if Luca
Portero
is as
involved as we think he is.”

 
          
“How
safe is that stuff?” said Patrick, eyeing the amber fluid in the inoculator’s
chamber.

 
          
“I’ve
never used it,” Zero said. “But they were willing to dose you up with it.
Any objections to returning the favor?”

 
          
“None
at all,” Patrick said.

 
          
“I
didn’t think so.” He handed the
inoculator
to
Romy
. “Would you do the honors?”

 
          
“My
pleasure,” she said.

 
          
She
tilted Ponytail’s head to the side, exposing his neck.

 
          
“You
know what you’re doing?” Patrick said.

 
          
She
nodded.
“Used to work research.
Injected a lot of
animals before I decided I’d rather work the other side of the street.”

 
          
She
placed the business end of the
inoculator
gun against
the side of Ponytail’s neck. She look as if she were about to execute him.

 
          
“What
about the dose?” Patrick said.
“How do you know how much to
give?”

 
          
“Haven’t
the faintest. But this is the dose he was planning to put into us, so that’s
what goes into him.”

 
          
“And
if it’s too much?”

 
          
She
shrugged. “That’ll be his problem, won’t
it.
”

 
          
Patrick
realized he was seeing another side of
Romy
, a new
persona, cold, efficient, almost ruthless in simmering fury. Was this the
“someone else” she’d mentioned before? Not that he could blame her: This man
had invaded her home, bound her, watched as his partner had mistreated her, and
had been about to invade the very core of her privacy—her mind. Add to all that
the possibility that he might have had a hand in the deaths of dozens of
sims
and the guy was lucky she
wasn’t jabbing the
inoculator
into his eye.

 
          
Patrick
felt his shoulders bunch as the
Romy
pressed the
trigger and injected the liquid through the skin of Ponytail’s neck with a soft
pop .

 
          
The
man flinched, his eyes fluttered open. He raised his head and looked around,
dazed. Patrick saw the purpling welts on his throat, mementos of
Kek’s
fingers. He blinked. Patrick watched a look of utter
horror flow through his features when he saw the
inoculator
in
Romy’s
hand.

 
          
“No!”
he
rasped,
his voice barely audible through his
bruised larynx. “You didn’t! Please tell me you didn’t!”

 
          
Romy
bounced the
inoculator
in
her hand. “Shoot you up with your own junk? You bet we did.”

 
          
“Not
Totuus
!”

 
          
“If
that’s
what’s in your vial, then, yes,
Totuus
.”

 
          
And
then Ponytail did something that took Patrick completely by surprise: His face
screwed up and he began to sob.
Romy
took a step back
and regarded him with mute shock.

 
          
“You
didn’t have to do that!” he squeaked in his laryngitis voice. “I would have
told you! I would have told you anything you wanted to know!”

 
          
“Sure,
you would have,”
Romy
said. “And we would have been
able to take every word to the bank, right?”

 
          
“What’s
wrong with him?” Patrick said, turning to Zero. The man’s genuine terror was
getting to him. “What don’t we know about this drug?”

 
          
Zero’s
expression was unreadable behind his ski mask, but his tone was puzzled. “I
researched it after hearing that it had been found in the globulin farmers’
bodies. Its main side effect is a headache for about a day afterwards.”

 
          
Romy
seemed unfazed by the man’s abject terror. She pressed
the red RECORD button on
his own
recorder and held it
before his face.

 
          
“What’s
your name?” she said.

 
          
Ponytail
squeezed his eyes shut and gritted his teeth, fighting the drug and the
question.

 
          
“Come
on,”
Romy
cooed. “This is a simple one. Your
name…what is your name?”

 
          
The
man’s face reddened with effort, then the words broke free in a hoarse rush:
“David Daniel Palmer!”

 
          
“Excellent.
Now, Mr. David Daniel Palmer, who sent you?”

 
          
He
began to blubber again. “Please don’t ask me that! Please!”

 
          
“And
if I’d begged you not to shoot me up with this stuff an hour ago, you would
have spared me, right?”

 
          
“Please!”

 
          
Romy’s
voice hardened. “Stop stalling! Tell me now: Who do
you work for?”

 
          
Parker
screwed up his face, chewed on his lips, then blurted through a sob, “SIRG—”

 
          
But
as soon as the word escaped him, his eyes rolled back in his head. He
stiffened, bared his teeth, and began to shake, violently enough to start his
chair walking across the floor.

 
          
“
Ohmigod
!”
Romy
cried. “What’s happening?”

 
          
Zero
leaped forward. “He’s having some sort of seizure! If he swallows his tongue
he’ll choke to death!”

 
          
Patrick
watched in horror as Zero’s gloved hands worked past Palmer’s foam-flecked
lips, trying to pry open his jaws.

 
          
And
then as suddenly as the attack had started, it stopped. Palmer drooped in his
chair, breathing raggedly, his eyes glazed.

 
          
“Daniel
Palmer,” Zero said, leaning close, all but shouting. “Are you all right?”

 
          
Palmer
mumbled something.

 
          
Zero
shook his shoulder. “I said, are you all right?”

 
          
Palmer
stared at him as if he were speaking a foreign language, then said, “Crash want
rag lay hedge knock two.”

 
          
“What?”
Zero said.

 
          
“Numb
bag five sense peel drawer another stop see.”

 
          
“He’s
lost his mind!”
Romy
said,
her hand over her mouth. The cold bitch goddess with the
inoculator
and the tape recorder was gone, and she was back to the
Romy
Patrick knew…or thought he did. “Did I do this? Is this my fault?”

 
          
“I
don’t know,” Zero said. “I’ve never seen or heard of anything like it.” He
glanced at
Romy
and Patrick. “There’s also the
possibility he’s faking.”

 
          
“He
gets an Oscar if he is,” Patrick said.

 
          
Zero
leaned close again: “What’s your name?”

 
          
“Realize
game attached.”

 
          
“Oh, God!”
Romy
whispered.

 
          
Zero
pulled out a phone. “I think we need help.”

 
          
“Who
are you calling?” Patrick asked.

 
          
“A doctor.”

 
          
SUSSEX COUNTY
,
NJ

 
          
DECEMBER
16

 
          
“Duke
Jackson is dead,” said Lister’s voice through the receiver.

 
          
Luca
Portero
tightened his grip on the encrypted phone and
kept kicking at the leaves. He’d been out in the woods surrounding his cabin,
taking some fresh morning air, taking precautions…the way things were going,
precautions might come in handy. The news didn’t surprise him.

 
          
“How?”

 
          
“Broken neck.
His body was found around 5:00A .M. A red flag
went up at our end when NYPD tried to run his prints this morning. They’ve got
him listed as a John Doe and he’ll remain that way.”

 
          
“What
about Palmer?”

 
          
“Not
a peep. And that worries me more. I’d almost prefer to have his corpse
surface.”

 
          
Luca
knew what Lister meant. An experienced operative caught in the act while
carrying a supply of
Totuus
was a recipe for
disaster. But Luca had taken precautions for just this eventuality.

 
          
“We’re
protected,” Luca said. “I had him and Jackson down a dose of MTW before they
went out.”

 
          
“Thank
God for that. How did you ever convince them to take it?”

 
          
“I
told them they had no choice, that it was a direct order from the Old Man
himself.”

 
          
“Lucky
they believed you. Still…MTW is still pretty new. Not much field experience
with it. Better pray it worked. Because if it didn’t…”

 
          
Lister
didn’t finish the sentence.
Didn’t have to.
If the MTW
had failed, Palmer would have spilled everything by now.

 
          
The
MTW did work, Luca thought. It had to.

 
          
“But
even if it works perfectly,” Lister went on, “you’re not off the hook for
muffing another operation. And neither am I.”

 
          
“We
didn’t muff a
thing !”
Luca said as a cold lump formed
in his belly. “The
Idaho
hotshots blew it.”

 
          
“The
people upstairs don’t see it that way. They’re out four skilled operatives in
two months with nothing to show for it. And they keep asking me, ‘Where’s the
pregnant
sim
? All our resources at your disposal, a
five-million-dollar reward for information leading to her, and what have you
come up with?’ Do you hear what they’re saying, Luca? It used to be, ‘When’s
Portero
coming up with something?’ Now it’s, ‘When are you
coming up with something?’ Me.
Like we’re Siamese twins.”

 
          
Luca
thought he heard a tremor in Lister’s voice. He’d never known Darryl Lister to
be scared. When they’d been pinned down by Taliban mortars outside
Gardez
, he’d been the picture of cool.
But
now…

 
          
“Shit.
I’m sorry, man.”

 
          
“Hey,
we’re not dead yet. We’ve gotten out of tighter places. But they want results
by the end of the year.”

 
          
The
end of the year—two weeks!

 
          
Luca
said, “What about the plate number Snyder spotted on that van last night?”

 
          
“Nothing.
He must have got it wrong. The number’s not in
use. Tell Snyder he needs glasses.”

 
          
Luca
didn’t think so. More likely the plates were
phony,
and Palmer and
Jackson
had been in that van along with Cadman, Sullivan, and who knew who
else.

 
          
“All
right then,” Luca said. “What’s the status of Cadman and Sullivan now? Do we
keep after them?”

 
          
“The
decision’s been made to back off for the time being. They’ll be on guard now
and—”

 
          
“Obviously
they were already on guard.”

 
          
“Yes,
well, be that as it may, they’ll be on full alert now, and we can’t risk losing
any more men. The legal people can put the stall on any discovery motions
Sullivan files; we’ll find out who’s behind them later. Right now concentrate
on finding that
sim
.”

 
          
“It’s
possible she’s dead,” Luca said, hoping it was true. “That cold snap after she
escaped was pretty mean. She could have crawled into a pipe somewhere and froze
to death.”

 
          
“Then
find her body. Since that fool Eckert started blathering about her being
pregnant and the baby’s father being human,
SimGen
stock price has slid six points. Most people think he’s crazy, but he’s making
a lot of investors nervous. And that makes everyone upstairs nervous. You know
what
SimGen
stock means.”

 
          
Luca
nodded. It meant independence for SIRG. No strings, no brakes.

 
          
“We’ve
got to find her, Luca. I don’t have to tell you what will happen if Eckert or
Cadman and Sullivan get to her first.”

 
          
Luca
closed his eyes. That would finish
SimGen
, finish
SIRG, and leave him running for his life.

 
          
“They
won’t.”

 
          
And
to make sure they wouldn’t, he had to nail Ellis Sinclair as their informant
and serve up his head on a silver platter.