Ashes of the Earth (15 page)

Suddenly
he recoiled in horror. Someone was meant to be tied to the chair.
Jonah was expected but had died before his visit. Someone had been
preparing to torture Jonah in the little isolated canyon.

He
found himself outside, his heart hammering in his chest, suddenly
fearful now that he was being watched. He picked up a piece of wood
to use as a club and pressed himself against the outside wall for
several minutes, studying the rocks and stumps along the trail,
finally reassuring himself that no one waited in ambush. As he
hurried away he paused only at the pit. Several of the covering logs
had been rolled away. As if someone had planned to dispose of a body
in the hole.

Suddenly
he was running, stopping only when he reached an outcropping that
gave a semblance of protection. His fear was irrational, he knew, but
it was real. Cold-blooded killers had been there, preparing to
torture and kill Jonah. But someone had beaten them to it. No, he
told himself, as he collected his thoughts. There was only one team
of killers. They had planned Jonah's killing, apparently planned it
far in advance, using a secret from their young jackal recruit. His
old friend had already been marked for death when Hadrian had last
met him in the library. But the killers had changed their plans. For
some reason they had to kill Jonah two days early. But why, what had
happened? Hadrian fought the answer, tried futilely to escape its
torment, tried to convince himself there was no proof, but it would
not be denied. The killers had suddenly attacked Jonah in the library
because Hadrian had uncovered the murdered scout.

Undercover
police were
a
recent innovation in the colony, and Hadrian almost felt sorry for
the two who inexpertly tailed him as he left the coffee shop.

He
led the two men on a stroll along the waterfront, weaving around
horse-drawn wagons and bicycles, then pausing at a shop to watch
their reflections in the glass. He paused again to study the little
stall where a tinker bent over a brazier, heating an iron to solder a
metal pot. Hadrian had watched the man trade with his customers
before and spotted a familiar leather pouch between his feet. He
breathed a silent apology and stepped into the shadow of an alleyway.

"Officer
Jansen, isn't it?" Hadrian asked as the older officer passed by,
nervously scanning the street. Jansen blushed, then awkwardly
accepted one of the two cheap cheroots Hadrian extracted from his
pocket. "If I'm not mistaken, I was there with the Council when
you received your badge." Hadrian struck a match on the wall.

Jansen,
a sturdy, unpretentious man, hesitantly accepted the light. "That
was years ago," he said uneasily, a hint of Norwegian in his
voice.

"Point
taken," Hadrian admitted as he lit his own cheroot. "Times
have changed. You're a leading officer of the law and I'm an
ex-prisoner."

The
Norger glanced at Hadrian's sleeve as if looking for an armband.
"Habitual offender," he added.

"Ever
hopeful of reform," Hadrian offered. "And still offended by
other lawbreakers."

Jansen
looked at him uncertainly.

"There's
still a bounty on undeclared copper if I'm not mistaken."

"Fifteen
percent."

"You
could buy your wife a nice trinket. If you're quick." He nodded
at the stall across the street. "That tinker will take payment
in kind. He's been collecting little seashells with treasure inside
that should have been declared long ago."

Jansen
cast a confused glance at the tinker.

"Watch
him carefully. When you approach he is going to drop something to
cover the little pouch between his feet."

Jansen
studied Hadrian suspiciously. "It will take me a while to finish
this cheroot," Hadrian told him, then watched as the stalwart
policeman puffed up his chest and stepped to the stall. The tinker
pushed a rag from his knee onto the pouch. Jansen pushed him aside
and grabbed the pouch, dumping its contents onto the tinker's
counter. At least two dozen little electric motors tumbled out.
Jansen picked up the tinker's hammer and tapped one. The motor popped
apart at its pressed metal seam, revealing the bright copper wire
densely wrapped around the apertures. Jansen's eyes went round. The
motors would yield enough for at least a fifty-dollar coin, a month's
wages for many in the colony. The tinker turned pale, then darted
away through a line of wagons filled with firewood. Close in pursuit
was Jansen's partner. The Norger hesitated, glancing at Hadrian, then
grabbed the pouch and joined the race, no doubt worried about his
claim to the bounty.

Hadrian
slowly stepped into the street, laid his cheroot on the tinker's
counter, helped himself to the hammer, and trotted away in the
opposite direction.

The
address listed
for
the comatose patient was in the warehouse district, a rundown loft in
one of the old buildings thrown up in the early years. It was a brute
of a structure with a first floor consisting of heavy logs lined with
large metal sheets cut from shipping containers. At the top of the
stairs that ran up the rear of the building, the door was fastened
with a padlock. With a single stroke of the hammer he knocked away
the flimsy lock and stepped inside.

The
salvage stacked along the walls of the apartment was no real
surprise. Half of the young males in the colony dreamt of making a
black market fortune. Most of the stock cluttering the rooms was
familiar. A box of razors. A carton of plastic toys. Piles of
corroded pots and pans. Toothbrushes. More cartons contained small
vases, glass paperweights, and other baubles being hoarded for the
holiday markets. Several smaller boxes were lined up on a table by a
cold pot of vermilion wax, waiting for a forged tax seal. Hadrian
paused and looked out the kitchen window. The apartment was at the
edge of the woods, half a mile from the clearing on the ridge where
he'd been attacked. Someone familiar with those paths would have no
trouble bringing the contraband to the apartment in the predawn
hours.

He
began a closer search of the apartment, pausing more than once as an
item stirred some distant, blurred memory. A metal lunchbox with a
large brown cartoon dog. Crayons still in their golden box. A little
bronze rendering of the Statue of Liberty. There were tattered
suitcases filled with girls' party dresses and three flattened soccer
balls awaiting discovery of the pump needed to inflate them.

In
the kitchen he opened every drawer and cabinet, then the icebox.
Inside were two wooden containers with sliding lids that he lifted
out and set on the table. The first was full of cinnamon, laced no
doubt with the powder smugglers used to cut the spice. The second was
filled with salvaged tins of spices, the containers rusty and
corroded but their contents still fragrant. Marjoram. Nutmeg. Cloves.
Cardamom. White pepper. All exotics, probably worth as much as all
the other salvage in the apartment combined.

Hadrian
pushed back furniture from the walls, revealing several lewd
renderings scratched into the plaster but nothing more. The drawers
of the chests in the two bedrooms yielded nothing but men's clothing.
But lying on top of one of the chests was a hand-carved fish on a
lanyard. On its belly was inscribed the word
Zeus.
Hanging from a bedpost
in the second room was a carved deer on a leather strap. Hadrian
stared at it, then reexamined the clothing in the nearby chest. On
two shirts he found a faded name inked along the tails. Hastings. The
dead scout and the fisherman in the hospital had lived together.

Suddenly
the floorboards by the entry squeaked. He grabbed the hammer from his
belt and flattened himself along the wall, inching toward the door to
glimpse the intruder.

The
figure there stood very still before lifting the broken lock from the
floor, then stepped inside and closed the door.

"I
couldn't have you think all of us are as incompetent as Jansen and
his fool," came a tentative voice.

Hadrian
lowered the hammer and revealed himself. "Jansen was doing his
patriotic duty, Sergeant," he observed. "Probably his
biggest arrest in months."

Jori
Waller nodded slowly. She seemed to have aged since he had seen her
last.

"Jamie
Reese is dead," she said abruptly. "I went back to see if
he'd regained consciousness. The nurses were wrapping him in a sheet.
That doctor of his, Dr. Salens, was already reporting it as an
industrial accident. But I told them I needed to examine his body,
alone. I looked at his eyes. They weren't white anymore, they were
pink. Blooming with broken capillaries. I looked in his mouth."

"His
mouth?"

She
reached into her pocket for a folded square of cloth. From its
creases she lifted a tiny feather. "From the back of his tongue.
I found another in his nostril. The hospital uses goose-feather
pillows."

Neither
said anything for a long time. Hadrian became aware of the hammer in
his hand and dropped it onto a crate. Jamie Reese had been smothered
with his own pillow. "You should report it," he said.

The
sergeant looked at the floor as she spoke. "I asked the doctor
for paper. I sat by the bed for an hour writing it up, linking it
back to my smuggling case. I tracked Kenton down to submit it, but he
only laughed at me and tore it up."

Now
she noticed the disarray of the furniture in the bedroom behind him.
She stepped past him and began to move the chest of drawers away from
the wall, revealing a carton on the floor that had been concealed
underneath. It was filled with cheap metal spoons.

Hadrian
watched her, realizing he was more confused about Jori Waller than
ever. "Exactly how close are you to the governor?" he asked
abruptly.

His
words took a moment to sink in. Her lips twisted in anger. "To
hell with you!"

He
stared at her.

"The
governor was against me being admitted to the corps," she
explained in a brittle voice. "When a few Council members
supported me he decided I was political, a player in his world. He
has that small team that does special assignments for him. His flying
squad, he calls it. Bjorn and two or three others. I went to him with
a theory about the smuggling, made a proposal to him. He decided to
audition me."

"What
theory?"

"Smuggling
has always been for entrepreneurs. If someone was out of work and had
the spine for it they could make one trip into the ruined lands and
earn enough to support them for a year. After the governor reached
his accord with the merchant guild, more goods were coming in through
the licensed gates but more forged tax seals were appearing as well.
Smuggling was happening on a much bigger scale."

"You
mean it became more organized. The deal with the guild became a cover
for more sophisticated smugglers."

"No
one really cared. Revenues were up, enough to pay for the new colony
projects."

"Meaning
Buchanan had no cause to tamper with the status quo." He cocked
his head at her. "Until you came in with evidence. And he knew
you had the ear of at least one member of the Council. If he didn't
listen, he knew Emily would."

"The
corps had been told to stop worrying about the salvage trade. What
was good for the guilds was good for the colony."

"What
exactly was your evidence?"

"I
got identified as the expert on official records because of my job
for the court. The clerk in charge of the fishery records came to me.
The ownership files of three of the boats were missing. But I found
the retired clerk who originally recorded them, and she had a great
memory. Companies controlled by the Dutchman own them, charter them
out to Captain Fletcher. If you want to bring in very large objects,
you need to use boats. I joined night patrols for a few weeks. On
four different occasions boats came in before dawn, met those heavy
ice wagons. I told the governor they unloaded no ice, took no fish to
the plant. I suggested that Fletcher needed to know we were watching,
just to discourage him. Maybe tell him we had grounds to perform an
audit." She halted, frowned, and cast a sidelong glance at him.
She had not intended to confide so much.

Hadrian
considered her words. He knelt at the box of spoons, lifting several.
"This is the best your mastermind can do?" he asked as he
dropped them back inside. "A few pounds of spoons and spices? I
could find a dozen caches of contraband better than this one."

The
sergeant studied him a moment, trying to understand. "Not worth
being killed over, you mean?" She gazed around the room. "What's
left?"