Xenopath (18 page)

"What is
it?"

"A chu.
Watch."

She pulled the
device from its case and laid it on the desk, then tapped a code into
the control box.

Instantly, the
silver filaments changed colour. Vaughan made out flesh tones, a hank
of what looked like fair hair.

Kapinsky held it
up. It was as she were lofting a severed head for his inspection, or
an empty face mask, its hollow cheeks and open mouth giving the face
a ghoulish expression.

She slipped the
mask over her head and adjusted the controls. The face changed,
became that of a young woman in her twenties with long fair hair.

"What do
you think, Vaughan?"

He resisted the
urge to tell her it was a big improvement. "Impressive. Never
even heard of these things before."

"No
wonder," the blonde beauty said, "they're the latest
hi-tech disguise out of Rio. Been available, at exorbitant prices,
for about a year."

Vaughan nodded.
"So... you think the killer has one of these things?"

"It makes
sense. It'd explain how he looked like a Thai in the plastics factory
when he posed as Pham's uncle, but had the body language of a
Westerner." She pulled off the chu, its features distorting
horribly.

She sat down
facing Vaughan and said, "I've been thinking about what
Shelenkov told us, and what you learned from Kormier's widow."

"And?"

"And one
angle we have to consider is this: what if Scheering-Lassiter are
behind the assassinations?"

He nodded.
"Certainly Mulraney thought they were hiding something. And the
fact that every last one of their employees is shielded..."

"Perhaps we
should try looking a bit further into Scheering-Lassiter?"

"Easier
said than done," Vaughan grunted. "Any ideas?"

"Two ways
we could go about this, Vaughan. One of us goes to Mallory, does some
rooting around there."

"And the
other way?" he asked. He didn't much care for the idea of
leaving Sukara, taking a void-ship to a company-run planet.

"We read a
Scheering-Lassiter high up, try to find out what's going on."

"Like I
said, they're all shielded."

"I know
they are. I've been doing a bit of my own nosing around the S-L
empire. And they don't use just portable shields."

"Sub-cutes?"

She nodded.
"They're implanted as part of the signing on deal when you
become a S-L employee. They have fingers in a lot of pies—they
don't want competitors reading their best personnel. It's established
practice now among the big multicolonials."

"So how do
we go about reading a Scheering-Lassiter executive if they're all
shielded?"

"How else,
Vaughan? We unshield the bastard."

Vaughan nodded.
"You make it sound like stealing candy from a baby."

She regarded
him. She had a sharp way of piercing him with her steel grey eyes,
making him feel as if he'd said something stupid.

"Harder
than that," Kapinsky allowed, "but not impossible."

"You've
obviously been giving it a lot of thought."

"Been doing
nothing but for most of yesterday. First consideration is, who to
target?"

"Some exec
in the Mallorv department," Vaughan said. "I talked to a
woman called Gita Singh."

Kapinsky nodded.
"She's the Co-Director of the Mallory division." She
paused, thinking about it. "Or we could go right to the top and
get Scheering himself. He lives on the Station. He's a big celebrity,
thick with all the politicians, greasing paims. Trouble is, he has
more security guards around him than flies on a turd."

"So who,
then?"

"The
Director of the Mallory division is a guy called Anton Denning. He
spends hall his time on Mallory. At the moment he's on Earth.
Specifically, on the Station."

"You think
this is the guy we should target?" She was. he realised, serious
about this.

"That's the
guy, Vaughan. If anyone knows something about what Scheering's
.hiding on Mallory, and why he hired an assassin to take out Kormier
and Travers, Denning's the guy."

"Okay,
fine, so Denning it is. He's also the guy wearing a subcutaneous
mind-shield."

Kapinsky
sneered. "No probs, Vaughan. They're implanted here—"
she tapped her chest just above her right breast. "A quick slice
with a scalpel, a squeeze, and they slip out as easy as pie."

Vaughan massaged
his eyes. "Can 1 ask a few questions, Kapinsky? Things you might
have overlooked in you sudden enthusiasm to cut up a Station
citizen?"

"I've gone
over every angle. Fire away."

"First off,
have you noticed that just about every square metre of the Station is
covered by surveillance cams these days? So even if we did lure this
Denning character to a blind spot, what're the chances we'd have
avoided cams tracking us to wherever the blind spot is?"

Kapinsky was
smiling, as if the word "smug" were her private property.

"What?"
Vaughan asked.

"Like I
said, I've got every angle covered. Denning goes into the S-L
building around ten every morning. He employs a firm who supply
chauffeur-driven air-cars. They pick him up at nine-forty-five on the
dot."

Vaughan thought
he saw what she was driving at. "And?"

"We hire a
swish flier. I drive, get there two minutes earlier, and we have our
man."

Vaughan
restrained his smile. "So, there we are, we've got our man in
the back of the flier. What then?"

"Then I
simply turn around before we set off and spray Denning with a face
full of atomised sedative. I pick you up, you slice the guy and
remove his shield—they're effective a metre away from the
subject, so we stow it in the dash—then we read Denning's head
and all the secrets he keeps there."

Vaughan spread
his hands. "Then how do we explain what we've done to the cops
when Denning files a kidnap and assault suit on us?"

"He
doesn't. You see, he doesn't find out that his shield was removed. He
doesn't even dream we read his head. When we've done, we substitute
his shield with something the same size, just in case we need to read
him in future. Then seal the wound with synthi-flesh and take his
wallet to make the assault look like robbery."

"And how do
we get away?"

"Simple. We
ditch the flier, and Denning with it, in a blind spot and leave the
area on foot—"

"Allowing
all the surveillance cams in the vicinity to get a good long look at
us."

Kapinsky smiled.
"We'll be wearing chus, Vaughan. We'll lose ourselves in the
crowds, run around a level or two, remove the chus and come up
smelling of roses."

Vaughan nodded.
"And if Denning knows anything about what Scheering is hiding on
Mallory, we'll have it all in here." He tapped his head.

"That's
about the size of it, Jeff." Kapinsky looked at him. "So...
what do you think?"

He held up a
hand. "Just give me time to think this through, okay? I mean, it
isn't every day I'm asked to kidnap a company exec like this, slice
him open, and read his mind."

Kapinsky said,
"The end justifies the means, buddy. Now and again you gotta
break the law to solve a crime."

He nodded. Two
years ago he'd attacked the then head of the Law Enforcement agency
and cut his shield from his chest. The circumstances had been
different, then—he'd known the guy was corrupt. This time, he
and Kapinsky merely suspected that Denning knew something.

"Well?"
Kapinsky prompted.

"It might
work, as a last resort."

"A last
resort?" she sneered. "You got any brighter ideas?"

"How about
we spend a couple more days tracking this assassin? If we find him,
then we find out what all this is about."

"Always
assuming we can trace the bastard," she said.

"Two days,"
Vaughan said. "After that, we seriously think about ambushing
Denning. What do you say?"

Her reply was
interrupted by her handset. "Kapinsky here."

Vaughan heard
the tinny voice of her caller. Kapinsky stared at the screen of her
handset. "No kidding? You sure about that?"

Her caller
replied.

"Okay.
We're on our way." She cut the connection and looked across at
Vaughan. "That was Sergeant Kulpa. They've found the guy who
killed Kormier and Travers. Officially the case is closed."

Vaughan stared
at her. "Who is he?"

"Kulpa
didn't say. But he did say the guy's dead."

Vaughan took
this in. "Okay, but if he was a hired assassin, then his death
doesn't close the case. We need to know who hired him." She
nodded. "Let's go take a look, Vaughan."

NECROPATH

They left the
office and took an air-taxi east.

There were a lot
of very expensive apartments on the sunrise side of the Station, as
far down as Level Five. The outer pads on Level Two were usually
rented by politicians and business tycoons, not assassins.

The
unimaginatively named Sunrise Villas projected from the side of the
Station in a series of steps, so that each four-bedroom apartment had
long windows giving onto a garden area situated on top of the
apartment below.

The flier came
down over the lip of the Station and banked out over the ocean. A
Scene of Crime team was at work on the patio of the uppermost villa.
The flier eased to a gentle landing with a whine of turbos, and
Vaughan climbed out.

The garden was
the size of a skyball court, with a brilliant blue swimming pool, an
ornamental garden, and half a dozen sun-loungers set out on a patio.

The SoC team was
concentrating on a body on one of the loungers.

Kulpa indicated
the corpse. The dead man was perhaps in his late thirties and
European. "Sven Nordquist," Kulpa said. "A European
national. He'd been on the Station a little over a year."

A neat
hole—Vaughan was unable to tell whether it had been made by a
bullet or a laser—marked the man's right temple. He lay in the
lounger, arms dangling, mouth slightly open. But for the entry point,
Nordquist might have been sleeping.

Then Vaughan saw
the automatic pistol on the tiles, inches below the guy's dangling
hand.

"Suicide?"
Kapinsky said.

Kulpa nodded.
"Around seven this morning. The shot was heard by the owner of
the villa two below this one. She called the villas' private security
team, who called us in."

"You're
certain it was suicide?"

"The
apartment door's locked from the inside. The apartment below this one
is locked, so no one could have got in through there."

Kapinsky
indicated the lip of the station, high above. "What about over
there?"

"I've had a
man check the security cams—not a thing. Forensic's certain the
wound was self-inflicted."

Vaughan said,
"What makes you think this is the guy we were looking for?"

Kulpa nodded.
"Come this way," he said, indicating the sliding glass
panel of the viewscreen.

They stepped
inside. The room was vast and minimally furnished, a white
mock-leather suite lost amid an expanse of cream floor tiles. There
was no sign that Nordquist had stamped his personality on the
place—either that, or his personality had been as bland as the
decor.

Kapinsky said,
"So who was Nordquist?"

"A
small-time businessman, import-export from Europe to the Station. We
have reason to believe that his business wasn't doing so well."

He led them over
to a desk in the corner of the room. Its surface was scattered with
printouts and a photograph showing three figures sitting at a
restaurant table, smiling at the camera. One of the men was
Nordquist.

Vaughan
recognised the other two: Kormier and Travers.

"It was
taken a month ago, on the occasion of their last meeting." Kulpa
indicated a personal com-diary on the desk. "We've been through
this. Kormier and Travers were lending Nordquist money to bale him
out of a series of bad business deals he'd made a while back."

"How much?"
Kapinsky asked.

"They each
loaned him a quarter of a. million."

"Baht?"

"Dollars."

Kapinsky
whistled. "Some loan. And you think Nordquist killed the guys
who were bailing him out?"

"An entry
in the diary," Kulpa said, "about two weeks ago. Kormier
and Travers were asking Nordquist when they might see their loan
repaid. Nordquist was stalling them."

Vaughan said,
"So he planned the ultimate stall, and killed them both?"

Kulpa opened the
top drawer of the desk, revealing a small laser pistol. "A
Kulatov MkII blaser. The same type which killed Kormier and Travers."

Kapinsky said,
"I want a copy of the diary, and the SoC report."

Kulpa smiled.
thought you might." He passed her a pin. "This is a
download of the diary. I'll get you the SoC report as soon as they've
made it." He hesitated, then said, "1 was talking to my
superior. This was your case, and you were on your usual rate of
commission if you cracked it."

"Looks like
Nordquist did us out of it," Kapinsky said.

Kulpa shook his
head. "My boss thinks you did enough to earn the commission. He
suspects Nordquist knew you were after him. It might've been one of
the things that pushed him over the edge."

A member of the
SoC team looked in through the viewscreen and called Kulpa.

"Excuse
me," the cop said, leaving Vaughan and Kapinsky in the lounge.

"Well, what
do you know," Kapinsky said, "we get the twenty thousand
without getting our hands dirty."

Vaughan stared
at her. "You don't believe a word of this, do you?"

She looked at
him. "Come again, Vaughan?"

"This?"
He indicated the desk. "The diary entry. The supposed loan. The
pix. It's too neat. You know what I think?"