Xenopath (21 page)

Seconds later
she came to a 'chute station.

The cage was
open. Pham was about to launch herself into it when Khar said,
No!
He will expect you to take the 'chute. There's an air-taxi rank
across the road. Take a taxi south.

Pham looked
around madly. Sure enough, a dozen shiny fliers lined the far side of
the street.

Pham ran across
to the first one and hauled open the door. She climbed into the back
seat just as the Westerner emerged from the car park and sprinted
towards the closing gate of the downchute cage.

"Central
Station," Pham said.

The Westerner
collided with the gate, gripped it, and stared down at the descending
cage.

The flier lifted
with a roar, turning on its axis and presenting Pham with a
grandstand view of her pursuer, who was shouting crazily now and
kicking the gate.

Pham found
herself almost crying with relief as the flier banked and screamed
south towards safety.

I'm sorry,
Pham,
Khar said.

This time it was
Pham's turn to give
him
the silent treatment, even though she
knew that Khar would be able to read the anger in her mind, as well
as the irrepressible surge of excitement.

DENNING

Vaughan hired a
beat-up Benz air-car and for the next three mornings parked it on a
tree-lined street in the select Mizrabad district of Level One. All
the residences along the street were set in extravagant acreages of
garden and lawn, and boasted a variety of architectural styles, from
ultra modern dome-dwellings as low-slung as watch glasses to retro
Twentieth Century ranches. Denning's residence was relatively modest,
a split-level Mediterranean villa set at the back of a sloping lawn.

His air-taxi
arrived at 9:44am. The vehicle swooped down to the street, parked at
the kerb and sounded its horn, once. Seconds later Denning hurried
out, a tall figure in a high-collared business suit, carrying a
softscreen scroll and a slim briefcase. Vaughan took an instant
dislike to the man, something cloned and corporate in his immaculate
appearance. He watched the air-taxi power up and climb, heading north
towards the Scheering-Lassiter headquarters. The thought of abducting
Denning sent his pulse racing.

On the second
day, the air-taxi arrived at 9:43. This time Denning emerged
accompanied by a short, blonde European woman that Vaughan knew, from
Kapinsky's records, was his wife. They slipped into the back of the
vehicle and set off.

On the third
morning, Denning emerged from the villa alone and set off to work.

At nine the
following morning Vaughan was in Kapinsky's office, going over the
details of the abduction. "So you're happy driving?" she
asked him.

Last night
Kapinsky had hired a Tata limousine, identical to the taxi that
picked Denning up every day. She'd given false ID to the company and
had worn a chu.

"I'm fine,"
Vaughan said. "I'll get there at three minutes before quarter to
ten."

"I've
arranged for his regular limo to be delayed for a while." She
smiled at his enquiring glance. "A contact of mine—he'll
stage a small crash before take-off."

"And you'll
be waiting on the landing pad of the Mitsubishi building?"

"Ready and
waiting with my scalpel and synthi-flesh. Denning won't suspect a
thing. We'll take his wallet and softscreen and he'll assume he's
been rolled."

She indicated
the chu case on the desk. "Its default program is a European
male in his early thirties. This is the spray." She tossed him
the canister. "A two second blast straight into his face'll be
enough to keep him under for at least thirty minutes. You'll need
these, too." She passed him a pair of surgical gloves.

"Anything
else?"

Kapinsky was
staring at him, shaking her head. "You do realise we've been
paid, and paid well, for this case already? We're effectively working
for nothing here—absolutely no reward—and running the
risk of landing ourselves in big trouble?"

"Two
things. Kapinsky. We'll get to the bottom of what Scheering's
covering up on Mallory, and it's my guess that it isn't anything
nice. And if we find out the identity of the assassin and stop him,
we'll be saving a few lives into the bargain."

Kapinsky
grunted. "Get real. Some other assassin'll be more than willing
to take on the workload."

"Okay, so
we'll be saving one life in particular."

The Australian
squinted. "And who's that?"

"The kid,
yeah? Pham, the girl who saw the killing in the amusement park. The
assassin wants her dead, and the sooner we can nail the assassin..."

She was smiling.
"You're a regular white knight, Vaughan. She's a street-kid. The
assassin would be doing her a favour."

"Christ,
you're a heartless bastard, Kapinsky."

She shrugged.
"You still think the killer wants her dead for something he read
in her head?" She said this with what he chose to interpret as a
patronising smile.

"Well, I
don't think Pham saw him that night. So yeah, I think he wants her
dead for some other reason."

When he thought
of Pham, the danger she was in, he realised how powerless he was to
find her and save her from the assassin. She was one tiny street-kid
among millions on the Station. The only heartening factor was that
the assassin would find her difficult to trace, too.

"Okay,
Vaughan," Kapinsky said. "You ready for this?"

"See you in
thirty minutes." He quit the office and rode the upchute to the
parking lot on Level One.

The Tata
limousine stood alone, its silver carapace resplendent in the
tropical sun. Vaughan slipped into the driver's seat and wedged the
canister of anaesthetic between his thighs. He slipped on the
surgical gloves and opened the chu case.

He turned on the
chu and held it before him. A hollowed face, as if the skull had been
sucked from it, stared back at him with dark holes where the eves
should have been.

Carefully he
pulled the chu over his head and arranged its features, taking time
to align the eyes and lips to ins own.

Then he checked
himself in the rear-view mirror, and the transformation was little
short of miraculous. A stranger stared back at him, fair where he was
dark, pale-skinned compared to his swarthi-ness and permanent five
o'clock shadow. He smiled, and the expression on the face was nothing
like his own, even though the holographic capillaries of the chu
covered his own musculature. Feeling confident in the disguise, he
checked his handset. It was approaching 9:30—time he was
setting off.

He powered up
the air-car and hauled it into the air. It was a quiet time of day,
and the air traffic above the Station was minimal. He inserted the
vehicle into a eastward air-lane, a great curving swathe of pale blue
light beamed from aerial beacons. the thrust of the turbos pressing
him back into the padded seat. He slowed and peeled the vehicle into
a southbound air-lane, heading for Mizrabad.

The odd thing
was, he felt less apprehensive than he "had yesterday, watching
Denning and looking ahead to today. If he kept his nerve and thought
through each situation as it came up, nothing could go wrong. He'd
gone through the scheme again and again with Kapinsky, and he was
backed by the best devices money could buy. It was only a matter of
time before Denning was in the back of the car, his mind laid bare to
their probes.

At 9:40 he
overflew the spacious gardens and seemingly toy houses of the
Mizrabad district and came in to land at the end of Denning's street.
He waited two and a half minutes, counting off the seconds on his
handset, then gunned the turbos and crawled along the kerb until he
was sitting outside the villa.

At precisely
9:43 he sounded the horn once, and waited, fingering the canister of
anaesthetic and looking through the side window towards the side
entrance of the villa.

A minute elapsed
without any sign of Denning. Another minute ticked by, and Vaughan
considered what he might do if Kapinsky's man failed to delay the
bona fide limousine much longer. He glanced in the rear-view mirror:
if he saw an air-taxi approaching, he would power up and get out or
here, pick up Kapinsky and begin planning again from scratch.

He sounded the
horn again, for longer this time.

Seconds later
the side door of the villa opened, ana Vaughan let out a breath.

Then he saw who
was approaching the car down the drive, and he cursed out loud.

It was Denning's
wife. He could always start up and head off, but some instinct
counselled him to go through with the charade.

The woman pulled
open the passenger door and ducked to stare in at him. "My
husband's working at home today—he did call to cancel the car."

Vaughan smiled.
"Word never got back to me. No worries—"

"But I'm
heading north. If you'd give me a minute...?"

"No
problem," Vaughan said, cursing his luck.

As she hurried
into the villa, he sat back and went through ail the options. When
she emerged again, carrying a bag, he knew exactly what he was going
to do.

"Where to?"
he asked as she slipped into the back seat.

"New
Mumbai. The Hindustan roof-park will be fine."

He nodded and
powered up, easing the car into the air and slipping into a blue
northbound lane. The Hindustan building was only a kilometre from
where he'd arranged to meet Kapinsky He'd drop the woman off then
make the short hop to the Mitsubishi building and tell Kapinsky what
he'd planned.

Three minutes
later he eased the limo onto the landing deck of the Hindustan
building and cut the turbos.

The woman said,
"Great. What do 1 owe?"

"This one's
on the company, okay?"

"Say,
thanks." She dazzled a smile, slipped from the car and ran
across the apron.

Vaughan lifted
the Benz into the air and headed across the Station, towards the
imposing monolith of the Mitsubishi pile. He wondered how Kapinsky
might react when he turned up without the golden goose.

He saw her as he
banked sharply and came in to land on the marked rank, a small figure
in a white suit.

She yanked open
the passenger door, her face a picture of dismay. "Where the
fuck is he, Vaughan?"

"Change of
plan, Kapinsky." He told her what had happened.

"So what
now? We delay a day, go through with it tomorrow?"

"I've got a
better idea," he said as he took off again, heading south
through a canyon of sun-reflecting skyscrapers.

"Go on."

"We go to
Denning's place. I get out; you take the limo to the end of the
street and wait. I ring his bell, wait till he answers, then hit him
with this." He lifted the canister. "After that I just drag
him inside and cut the shield."

"I'm not
sure..."

"What?"
Vaughan glanced at her. "Look, if anything, it'll work better
than our original plan. I'll get inside his pad, take a look around—"

"I wanted
to read him too, Vaughan."

He shrugged.
"Tell you what, when I'm through and you pick me up, you can
read what I read, yeah?"

"After what
I read in there yesterday?" she asked.

She stared at
him. "You sure this'll work?"

"For
Chrissake, what can go wrong?"

She nodded.
"Okay, let's do it."

He smiled,
adrenalin pumping through him as he eased the flier down towards
Mizrabad.

He landed in the
street. "I'll be ten, maybe fifteen minutes, okay?"

"Any
trouble and you call me, got that?"

He took the
carry-case containing the scalpel, the synthi-flesh spray, and a
deactivated mind-shield and climbed from the flier. As Kapinsky
shuffled into the driver's seat and powered up, he turned and looked
towards the house, set atop a long, sloping lawn. He took a breath
and walked up the drive.

He slipped the
case under his arm and the canister of anaesthetic into his jacket
pocket.

He stopped
before the side door, found the bell and rang.

The seconds
ticked by, demarcated by the thump of his heart. His face sweated,
but the chu allowed the perspiration to bead naturally on its
surface. He mopped the sweat and rang the bell again.

What if Denning
was so immersed in his work that he decided to ignore the bell?

He was looking
for a way to break into the house when he heard a sound beyond the
door and it opened quickly, as if Denning was intent on showing his
annoyance at being disturbed.

"Yes?"
the exec snapped, staring at Vaughan.

He acted,
pulling the canister from his pocket and letting Denning have a blast
in the face at close range.

The exec didn't
even have time to register surprise before he crumpled. Vaughan
stepped over Denning and hauled him into the villa.

He left him
slumped in the hall, did a quick reconnaissance of the place, then
dragged the unconscious body into the kitchen. The room was
marble-floored, and any spilled blood would be easy to clean up.

He laid the
carry-case beside the body, opened the lid, and took out the scalpel.
Next he carefully unfastened the executive's shirt. The mind-shield
was located just below his left clavicle, raised like an
old-fashioned pacemaker. He took a wad of tissues from the carry-case
and held them below Denning's implant as he made a quick, lateral
slice through the skin and squeezed out the silver oval of the
mind-shield. He mopped the blood, cleaned the shield, and slipped it
into the carry-case.

He took out the
deactivated shield and, surprised at how easily it slipped into
place, inserted it into the slit on the exec's chest and sealed the
incision with a strip of synthi-flesh spray. Seconds later there was
not the slightest sign of a wound to indicate the operation.