Necropolis (27 page)

A pause. “Donner, it… hurt me. What happened.”

“Which part? Lying to me or letting me walk into a trap?”

Her composure went out of her like she’d been sucker-punched. “That’s not fair.”

“Is that what you deserve? Fair?”
 

“You said you weren’t mad.”

“I’m not mad. It doesn’t change what happened.”

“What do you want? An apology?”

“I want answers, Mag.”

“I thought Armitage—”

“About you.”

“Oh.” She chewed the edge of her lip. “It’s complicated.”

“Give me the CliffsNotes version.”
 

She shook her hair. The dark curls flipped back. She ran her fingertips up her pale neck nervously, as if needing the reassurance of her solidity. She could feel his eyes on her legs, and she wondered why she had manifested in such a tight skirt. She dropped into the wooden chair opposite him. Crossed her legs. Re-crossed them.

“When you first revived, the Cadre assigned me to be your shadow.”

“Why?”

“Possible recruitment, same as any reborn. My job as a counselor puts me in a unique position. The reborns that fit our profile became possible recruits.”

“The misfits, you mean.”

She frowned. “The ones who weren’t sheep.”

“Are there many smarties in the Cadre?”

“I’m the only one.”

He found that interesting.
 

“Each cell is unaware of the others,” she continued. “In case we’re caught.”

“So, basically, I was disposable.”

He was going hard on her. He’d been played and needed to know where the lies ended. Where he could now put his trust.
 

“You want to know the truth? With the drinking, the self-pity, I was ready to write you off at first.”

“What changed your mind?”

“Miss Nicole happened. Her little visit.”

“Ah.” Donner smiled. “Armitage must’ve done a back flip.”

“We didn’t know what she wanted. But we were looking for Crandall, too. So we—”

“Let me do my thing, oblivious that I was being manipulated from both sides.”

Her sigh came out as a hiss between her teeth. “I could give you a million excuses, Donner. But keeping you in the dark was the best way to keep you productive.”

“There’s that smarty efficiency,” he said. Donner stabbed the oatmeal with his spoon. It stuck straight up. “Needs more milk.”

“Milk’s hard to come by right now.”

He pushed the bowl aside. “Why’d Armitage expose himself by snatching me?”

“It wouldn’t have been in character for
me
to help you into the lab. That left him.”

“But you showed up at the lab anyway.”

“Yeah.” Another sigh. “I wasn’t supposed to do that.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Worried that I’d get caught? Give you up?”

She winced to let him know his barbs were drawing blood. “That you’d get hurt, Paul.”

In the stark basement light, she couldn’t tell if he was smiling or grimacing. “So you’re on the lam, now, huh? Cover’s blown?”

Her eyes looked sad. “You know, I miss the job. I thought it’d be a relief—no more double life. But I did a lot of good.”

“For the sheep, you mean.”

“Not everyone can be special.”

“Maggie the revolutionary. What happened to all that talk about letting go of things?”

“You let go of what you can’t control. You change what you can.”

“So why am I here, Maggie?”

She looked at the tips of her shoes. Why’d she wear heels? She hated heels. “You’re a valuable asset,” she said softly. Heels made her legs look better in a tight skirt, that’s why.
 

“I’m a liability. Why did Armitage go to all the trouble of bringing me back?”

She wanted to dissolve, become someone else, anyone but this stupid, obvious female. She saw his lips twitch as he understood. He leaned back, pressing his palms onto the table.

“
You
did it,” he said. “Without permission.”

Heat crept into her cheeks. “Yeah, well, you were such a snappy dresser, you know, the way you pulled that hat down over one eye—”

“Maggie.”

She was a rube. For all her smarty detachment, she was a tongue-tied teenager. “Don’t you love how life throws you those little curves?” she said.
 

He didn’t say anything.

“Wouldn’t have worked anyway. A computer program and a dead guy…” The heat was behind her eyes now, and she was shocked to discover that she was on the verge of tears.

“Look, I—” he said.

“Just don’t, okay? Just don’t.”

They sat like that. Somewhere, a water pipe rattled. Donner looked at her miserable face, her furrowed brow. And did the last thing she expected. He snorted a laugh.

“What?” she barked.

“Sorry.”

He tried to stop, but his face wouldn’t quite straighten.
 

“Oh great,” she said.
 

“Sorry.”

“Make fun of the infatuated smarty.”

Another snort.

“You louse!”

“But you’re—”
 

“If you say I’m cute, I’ll kill you,” she said.
 

He held it in for a moment, silent.

“Computer program and a dead guy?” he said, and this time Maggie brayed a short laugh in spite of herself.

34

DONNER

L
ight spilled down the steps from above. I motioned for Maggie to compose herself. Armitage thumped partially down and paused grumpily. “Alright, cut the comedy.”

Behind him, Pastor Jonathan wore burgundy vestments. Pulling up the rear were Max and Tippit, stoic in gabardine and gray flannel. The gaggle trouped down and stood there, letting their eyes adjust to the dim light.

“Nice suits,” I said, meaning it.

Max adjusted his tie defensively. “Thanks.” It sounded like it hurt him to say it.

Armitage pulled his hat off and batted the brim. “Pouring out there,” he said. “I swear, the Umbrella Lobby’s paying off the damned Blister techs.” He shrugged out of his slick trench coat and laid it on a crate. “Ready to continue our conversation?”

I waved at the wooden chairs stacked in the corner. Armitage snapped one open. Jonathan sank cross-legged onto a crate and the Bookend Brothers settled back on their heels. Armitage showed me his palms.

“Let’s hear it,” he said.

I’d done the math. It might’ve bruised my ego to get used, but in their shoes I might’ve done the same thing. As Bart used to say, the stakes call the play. And the stakes here were off the chart. “What’s the phrase?” I said. “Necessity makes strange bedfellows?”

Armitage didn’t look receptive, but he didn’t look hostile either, so I continued. “Let’s review,” I said. “Crandall’s team was working with Shift DNA to develop a drug.”

“Two drugs,” he said.
 

“
Two
drugs?”

“Controlled precipitors of the Shift’s major effects. Retrozine-A reverses the aging process in normal humans. Retrozine-B revives the dead.”

“Guess I’m proof the Retrozine-B works.”

“Living proof,” said Max. Tippit tried not to giggle.

“Nicole will turn the city upside down,” I said. “A monopoly on those drugs is their leverage. They’re no good to Surazal if everybody has them.”

“Leverage for what?” asked Jonathan, still wiping the moisture from his shaved head.

“These drugs give Surazal control over life and death,” said Armitage. “Exclusive control.”

The room was suddenly very silent.
 

Jonathan shivered. “Who do we think we are?”
 

“The same creatures we’ve always been,” I spat. “Brainy chimps with too much curiosity and not enough humility.”

“We’re not animals,” Jonathan protested. “We’re people.”

“People,” I said. “People who give each other poison-laced Kool-Aid to drink. People who blow each other up or gas each other or shoot their classmates at school. People who eat caviar while their neighbors starve to death three blocks away.”

Everybody’s eyes were a little too wide, so I shut my clam.

“Imagine you’re a banker, a judge, a senator,” said Armitage. “A
president
. How often will you cross the only person in the universe who can make you twenty again, forever?”
 

“How much do they want? They already run New York,” said Maggie.
 

“With her type, there’s always more,” I said. “Once they’ve got all the pieces of the pie, they want the bakery.”

“Enough sociology,” said Armitage. “Someone besides us is working against her. Killing her research team.”

“
You
killed Crandall,” said Max to me.

“I aimed at Nicole. Lady moves fast for a skirt.”

“Hey,” said Maggie, bristling. A couple laughs. She realized I’d baited her and shot me a dirty look.

“So who’s her enemy?”
 

“Nicole didn’t share.”
 

Armitage pulled his pipe from his coat. The bowl was elaborately carved. It seemed too showy for the man, somehow. He sniffed it. “This adversary of hers could be an ally.”

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend?” I said. “Maybe. He’s a pro, though. Each murder had a different M.O., and none had witnesses.”
 

“What about the merc, McDermott? Could he be back?”

“Nicole said he died in Bolivia. But that doesn’t mean it’s true.”

“Wait a minute. You said there were no witnesses?” said Maggie. “What about the bottom?”

“Huh?” said Max.

“The submissive, at the hanky-spanky club,” I explained. “She was tied up facing the dungeon.” To Armitage: “I’d like to talk to her. I don’t believe in locked room mysteries.”

For some reason, Maggie was plucking nervously at her sleeves.
 

Armitage clamped the pipe stem between his teeth. “Next order of business. What’s this I hear about some connection between you and Nicole Struldbrug from your first life?”

 
I wasn’t sure I was ready to think about this, let alone talk about it. It felt like my first time on the high board at the YMCA as a kid, looking down past my toes at all that empty space between me and the hard water below, the next guy already impatient on the ladder behind me, cutting off any escape. Only one way off.
 

Sometimes no choice is the best choice.

“There’s a small subdivision in the Department of Health and Human Services called the Office of Research Integrity. Used to be, anyway. My wife worked there.”

“What does it do?”

“Government oversight of scientific research.”
 

“You mean like that stink over cloning and stem cell research in the early 21st?” said Max. “Much ado about nothing,” he sniffed, the expert.

I couldn’t help it. I was starting to like the guy. “It’s about ethical treatment of test subjects and employing proper scientific methodology. My wife was a an attorney. She’d investigate violations, get injunctions, that kind of thing.”

“I thought the FDA did that,” said Tippit.

“The FDA’s mandate is food and drug safety. The ORI deals with safety and ethics during scientific research and development.”

“The process, not the product,” said Armitage.

“Exactly.”
 

Armitage pushed a pack of real Marlboros across the table. Roy Rogers grinned at me from its side. I shook one out. “Elise told me that she was investigating a biotech company committing gross research violations. Said the scandal was big enough to lead the nightly news.”

Everyone hid a smile. It pissed me off. “What?”

“There hasn’t been a ‘nightly news’ in thirty years,” said Jonathan gently.

I lit a cigarette and inhaled, clinging to the smoke like a lifeline. “Okay, here’s the crazy part. I have a memory of Nicole, a memory from the day Elise told me about the scandal. I passed Nicole in the hall.
She
was the company rep, going to see my wife. Which means the company was Surazal.”

That earned me a robust chorus of disbelief.

“How old was she?” Max asked.

“Early thirties.”

“That’d make her over seventy years old now,” Jonathan said.

“Look, Nicole confirmed it. She told me that Elise gave her three days to go public on her own and lessen the charges. That’s when Nicole had us killed.”

“You’re saying Nicole Struldbrug, sister of the man who runs the twelfth largest economy in the world, murdered you and your wife forty years ago to cover up illegal scientific research. That since then, she hasn’t aged a day. And that after you revived, she hired
you
to find her missing scientist,” said Armitage.