Persona (24 page)

Suyana looked at him, blinked slowly.

You'd think she was still in shock, if you didn't know what to look for, if you didn't see her eyes drop for half a second to some national credentials he was wearing that pleased her.

She shook her head. “He would have killed me,” she said, sounding unbearably sad.

That was real. That voice Daniel remembered, when she'd looked down at the man she'd killed.

He wished he'd stayed long enough to tell her not to be sorry. It wouldn't have worked, but still, it wasn't as if he would get another chance to tell her.

The camera panned down to her bloody hands. Before it could snap back to her face for a reaction shot, her voice came over the video: “I just want to go home.”

“Voice-over,” cut in Dev. “They looped that later. Cheating.”

“Nope,” said Kate, her head tilted like she was playing it back internally and watching for the seam. “Background noises match up. Real audio, poor camerawork.”

Dev shook his head. “No way. Face or not, no one gives a quote like that standing over a corpse!”

“You should meet her sometime,” said Bo.

The video froze after the pan from her bloody hands to her anguished face (how could you top that?), and shrank to the screen behind two breathless anchors.

“Delegate Sapaki is currently resting comfortably at her Paris quarters after receiving medical attention,” said the first anchor, “and is reportedly recovering from her injuries.”

“A lucky break for her,” said the second anchor.

Daniel ran his tongue over his teeth.

The first anchor nodded solemnly. “The reasons for Sapaki's assassination attempt and abduction have not been confirmed, though there are reports it was at least partially in retaliation for her secret relationship with American delegate Ethan Chambers.”

Everyone in the room pointedly didn't look at Daniel. He didn't know why. He'd known that before he'd started taking pictures.

The second anchor was taking up the cause. “According to the United Amazonian Rainforest Confederation handler, Magnus Samuelsson, Sapaki is scheduled to make a public statement about the incident tomorrow morning in the General Assembly. You'll be able to watch it live at eight, right here—”

Li Zhao hit a button, and the screen went blessedly black.

“If I had the full footage of this fight,” she said, “we'd all be millionaires.”

Daniel's heart seized.

Kate's face went very still. “Why don't we have it?”

“Because Bo arrived only moments before the first IA press got there. And Daniel's camera seems to have malfunctioned due to impact, so there's no alternate footage to fall back on.”

Daniel forced himself not to look around—Li Zhao would be looking for signs of guilt—but in his periphery, Bo and Dev exchanged quick glances.

So, footage could be kept off the servers. Footage could be erased if someone in the basement was on your side. That little shit Bo never told me, he thought, and bit back a smile, fought the urge to take a big, free breath.

“However,” Li Zhao went on, her eyes lighting on each one of them in turn, “we do still have that few seconds of this filleted gentleman dropping into the alley and Suyana Sapaki making sure he knew who killed him before he shuffled off this mortal coil. There are currently seven magazines and three governments bidding on the footage, and more offers coming in, though some of them seem to be under the impression that we run a charity, so we'll be concentrating on offers that aren't insultingly low.”

“Are any of them the UARC?” Daniel didn't know why he'd asked. Li Zhao looked at him. Then she stood.

“Daniel, in my office, please. The rest of you, good night.”

Inside, she sat behind the desk without any indication what he was meant to do. Daniel wasn't sure if this was a test or just office procedure, so there was a ten-second delay before he took his seat.

She rested her laced hands on the edge of the desk.

“I don't want you to walk out of this room thinking you got away with anything,” she said.

Her voice was calm and cold, and Daniel held his breath.

“The specifics have, in fact, been wiped off the servers, thanks to what I'm sure is a software malfunction that will never happen again. However, diagnostics confirmed that even after you hurled yourself in front of a bullet to save Suyana—I'm just guessing—your camera was recording.”

“How strange,” said Daniel, after all other excuses had escaped him.

“Indeed.” She sat a little forward in her chair, her desk lamp casting shadows over her hands as she clicked through something on the computer. Daniel saw quick flashes across the glare in her glasses—some photos he probably didn't want to look at.

“And after serious thought, in order to forestall any further malfunctions, you've been reassigned. Bo made a recommendation given your demonstrated capabilities in the field, and I agreed because I suspect your new assignment will actually keep you where I ask.” She sat back, crossed her arms over her chest.

Daniel didn't like the sound of that. He narrowed his eyes. “Aren't you afraid I'll pull a runner just to test your conclusions?”

It came out sharper than he meant, and she blinked once before her mouth curved into a thin, dangerous smile.

“Oh, please,” she said. “Try me.”

His breath caught in his throat. After a second, he forced a grin. “Tell me the assignment, then, and I'll tell you if it's good enough to keep me.”

Li Zhao looked him in the eye, and Daniel suddenly felt slightly dizzy, without knowing why, for the heartbeat before she said, “Suyana Sapaki.”

×  ×  ×  ×  ×  ×  ×

When he came onto the landing outside the flat, Kate was waiting for him, leaning against the banister with a look that worried him.

“Weird glitch on your camera,” she said.

“It was a crazy few minutes.”

“I'll take your word for it.”

He half smiled, headed for the stairs.

“Not a lot of blackouts on my feed,” Kate said.

He stopped, looked at her. In this light, the tips of her hair looked like the spark point at the base of something burning.

Quietly, he said, “What is this about?”

“This system isn't one I like gaming,” Kate said. “We have a bad enough reputation without playing card tricks on one another.”

He felt like Kate was also the kind to spy on the subway footage for all it was worth.

“Bo was the one who came late to the scene,” he said. “Take it up with him.”

Kate's eyes narrowed. She shifted her weight, flexed her fingers around her cane; the leg braces glinted. “Did Bo tell you what he did before he became one of us?”

He forced a shrug. “Nope.”

(He didn't know how Suyana lived under this kind of dread; the dread of waiting for someone to say something you already feared.)

“Hired gun,” Kate said. “Maybe you want to think about how likely it is that he'd miss any of that.”

The dread settled.

Daniel remembered what Bo had told him about staying honest, just before they gave up on Margot and crossed the bridge after the stranger. He thought about Bo biding his time around the corner in the alley, listening to a hired gun being killed, and waiting for the moment it was safe to record. Daniel wondered what Bo had done, just before he came to Fine Tailoring, that needed a permanent camera making him accountable in order to make amends. Not that Daniel had a lot to say about that, today.

(Daniel stopped wondering why Li Zhao had assigned Bo to follow Margot. He knew what Margot was capable of. Bo was the most likely to survive it.)

“And what did you do before you landed this fantastic gig?”

“Nothing. I was with Li Zhao so early I helped her change her name.”

He did some math about how old Kate was, knowing Li Zhao had been in the IA once, and wondered which high school class Li Zhao had managed to pull Kate out of, and what exactly Li Zhao had done wrong in the IA, that she slid into this industry like a knife.

“Of course,” he said, and it sounded so flat she smiled a little more kindly, just for a second.

“I try not to have enemies here. I like us to be better than the people we follow. But there aren't a lot of tech glitches on my watch.”

Daniel slid his fists into his pockets.

“Noted,” he said.

(He missed Suyana, just for a moment, like he'd pulled at an old wound.)

When Kate tilted her head and smiled, her silver earrings caught the moonlight. “Have a great night, Daniel.”

Outside on the street, he fought the urge to look behind him. No one would be following him.

They didn't need to. He spied on himself.

[
ID 40291, Frame 146: Suyana Sapaki standing outside the front court of Hotel Sinople. She stands over the corpse of an unidentified male, who has a knife wound. The hilt of the knife remains lodged in the sternum. Sapaki's hands are bloody. She looks into middle space.

Preceding circumstances unknown—see also note on frames 108–145.
]

[
ID 40291, Frames 108–145: Blackout.
]

Daniel had waited on the broad avenue for a long time.

He watched the first flush of IA photographers come barreling down the avenue and turn just before they reached him, their hands already on their cameras.

(Bo must have made the tip-off call to the officials by then. Smart move. The footage Bo had already taken would be worth eight times as much if the story broke wide open and people were clamoring for the dirt.)

Still, Daniel couldn't bring himself to go back the way he had come and film Suyana standing over the body of the man who had almost killed her.

The IA press gave way to the local news, and finally to an armored van and a trio of chauffeured cars with the two-dove crest of the IA. Peacekeepers poured out of the van on their way to secure the scene; the men and women in dark suits didn't deign to get out of their sedans.

Except one. Magnus leaped out of his car before it had even fully stopped, moving so fast he nearly overtook the Peacekeepers on his way down to the alley.

Good, Daniel thought.

A few moments later, Bo was back on the avenue.

“Peacekeepers spoil the party?”

“We did what we could,” Bo said. “You can't always catch everything.” (Daniel didn't know what Bo was telling him—not then.)

“Thanks,” Daniel said, cleared his throat, and wondered how he could possibly go on.

Bo shook his head. “Let's get back,” he said. “Li Zhao will want to dissect the news and start packaging the footage.”

A crowd of gawkers was already gathering behind the Peacekeeper tape, and police lights flickered off the buildings down the street. It was easy to disappear into the thick of it, walk at no great speed until you were well away from prying eyes.

When they were halfway to Bonnaire Atelier and Fine Tailoring, Bo looked down at him.

“What made you see her as a mark?”

There were easy answers. She'd been in a PSA on American TV after the terrorist thing; she'd been in a charity fashion spread in French
Vogue
last year—a group shot, in the back line. They were good indicators that a Face's barometer was slowly rising. If you'd been following it long enough, you could put money on those. (Some did; there was a decent trade in off track Face futures.)

“I saw a portrait of her in some magazine a couple of years ago. In an awful dress, Magnus next to her. And she was smiling, but her fingers were digging into the bottom of the desk like it was about to fall apart. I didn't think much about it for a long time, but I remembered it.”

Bo hadn't answered; they walked in silence for a long time, as Bo looked like he was trying to make up his mind about something.

At the threshold of Fine Tailoring, he said, “That's good to know.”

But that was all he said, and then it was time to go inside, where Kate and Dev were cataloging their photos and Li Zhao was looking them over, and then everyone would gather to watch the evening news.

×  ×  ×  ×  ×  ×  ×

The public gallery of the IA's General Assembly Français was a mezzanine crescent above the round chamber, behind a plate of bulletproof glass.

Daniel had learned, among other things, that headset rentals were ten euros, and guaranteed pickup only for the mikes at the head stage; if you happened to catch the murmurs of the floor, it was serendipity.

He'd also learned that whatever his camera was made of didn't trip metal detectors or tech wands, though he couldn't help thinking someone could have spared him that moment of panic.

The crowd was most dense near the center, where you could see the featured speaker head-on, but Daniel had watched more of these proceedings than most, and knew the place to get prime photos was in the wings.

As stagehands and techies scrambled back and forth doing sound tests, Daniel took up a place as far left as he could get, so he had a clear vantage stage right. That seemed to be where the channel of action was.

Delegates and their handlers filed in from the three doors that surrounded the lower level. Daniel recognized Grace and Martine at the first row of tables, closest to the cameras, where the Big Nine sat.

Coming in close behind them was Ethan Chambers, who at least had the decency to look concerned and romantic as he took his seat.

(One of the other snaps had come back to Fine Tailoring with news that he'd seen signed papers being transported from the American office.

“I wanted you to know,” Kate told him from behind her monitor. Her eyes slid to his; she'd meant it as a kindness. Not that it felt that way, but it was the thought that counted.)

He wondered if anyone had been glad to see Suyana come back to the fold. Maybe some of them were her friends. Daniel hoped so. Suyana should have someone she could trust.