A Night Without Stars (75 page)

“We could try that,” Corilla said thoughtfully.

Jenifa was seriously impressed with herself for keeping her emotions so tightly under control. When she was in the club, all she wanted to do was snap the cuffs on Terannia and haul her back to the Eliter cells at the PSR office and ask her the questions properly.

Overheard them talking.

Relatives keeping watch.

All of it was such total bollocks—and Chaing had let them get away with it.
Typical.
Now he was enacting an even bigger crime, using Eliters to observe the stolen ammunition shipment rather than trained and loyal PSR officers.

It was as if everything he did was designed to taunt her.
You are a crudding Eliter, and I will bring you down.

She stared at the back of his head as they sat in the Torova, waiting for an update from the “relatives.” Beside her on the backseat, Corilla sat with her eyes half closed as if she was on the verge of sleep. Every time Jenifa checked her link detector, the red light was on.

Are they linking to each other? Laughing at me?

She dearly wished the little device were directional.

“Terannia knew Rasschaert, you know,” she said. “She employed him nine years ago. I interviewed her when we were hunting Florian. She's a radical.”

Corilla opened her eyes. “You see all of us as radicals.”

“And today justified that, didn't it? Terannia is part of your network. And Rasschaert Fell; I saw blue blood coming from the bullet holes my colleagues put in his body. But when did he Fall? Did Terannia tell you that? Exactly where do her sympathies lie?”

“You're an idiot.”

Jenifa's hand bunched into a fist.

“We're using connections,” Chaing said calmly from the front seat. “That's all. And because of that, we're going to find a route into the nests.”

“Yes,
sir.
”

A small sigh escaped form Chaing's lips, and Jenifa saw Corilla's lips twitch in amusement.

You'll make a mistake. And when you do…

Twenty minutes later, Corilla said: “Uh-oh.”

“What?” Jenifa and Chaing said together.

“A sheriff car just pulled up outside Minskies.”

“Crud,” Jenifa grunted. “We need to order them away. The gangsters will panic.”

“They're not sheriffs,” Chaing said with quiet excitement. “Remember Hawley Docks? That's the transport team.”

“You don't know that.”
Unless you're part of the links.

“Only government vehicles are allowed on the street during martial law. It's them.”

“They're coming out of Minskies,” Corilla said. “Bringing boxes. Ah, it's terVask himself.”

Five boxes were loaded into the trunk of the sheriff car; then terVask climbed into the backseat, and it pulled away.

“Start the engine,” Chaing told their driver.

“Turning west onto Eaux Avenue,” Corilla said. “Now Pinchat Road.”

“Let's go,” Chaing said. “Take us around to the Veralson district. There's no rush. I don't ever want to get within a kilometer of them. Understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

The bogus sheriff car wove an intricate route across Opole, taking twenty minutes to travel four kilometers, using the side roads and sometimes tiny back alleys so they avoided every checkpoint. Eventually they finished up on the north side of the Jaminth district.

“Larncy Square,” Corilla said finally. “They're pulling up in Larncy Square.”

“There won't be any dodgy nightclubs there,” Jenifa said. “Jaminth is a business district with some upmarket residential blocks.”

“Take us up to Quillit Road,” Chaing told the driver, visualizing a map of the area. “Quickly now. And park just short of Simonet Street; that's the one that leads into Larncy Square.”

“So what are we doing there?” Jenifa asked.

Chaing twisted around in his seat to grin at her. “You, Corporal, are going to take a walk along Simonet Street and see which building they're using.”

“Me?”

“My leg and arm mark me out even in civilian clothes. You don't trust Corilla and the Elites. So yes: you. Confirm the location. We'll circle around and pick you up on Florissant Avenue.”

The Torova pulled in at the pavement, ten meters short of Simonet Street.

“Five minutes,” Jenifa said gruffly and stepped out. The car pulled away. She didn't hesitate; people noticed hesitancy. Not that there were many people on the pavement, and those were mostly old, past reservist age. A few bicycles slid along Quillit Road, with only the occasional car and truck. The tram tracks down the middle were empty.

She turned down Simonet Street. Its buildings were ancient, four or five stories high—grand homes or the apartments of nobility back in the Void when they'd been constructed. Then slowly as the city expanded, they'd been adapted into smart offices.

Her heart rate accelerated as she approached the end of the street where it opened out into Larncy Square. Her right hand hovered over the concealed shoulder holster. If this was a setup, she'd been played perfectly. Not that she believed Chaing would do that; he seemed genuinely intent on capturing Roxwolf.

Jenifa had only managed a few words with her furious mother before he'd come wheezing and sweating into her seventh-floor office.

“Why?” Yaki had demanded. “You could have been safe by now. You have nothing to prove, not to me.”

“If we get Roxwolf, we can break the nests wide open. That is how the proper PSR operates. We don't give up because things are difficult, or hard for individuals. You taught me that.”

“This isn't
difficult,
” Yaki said through gritted teeth. “This is the end.”

“Not if we're strong.”

Larncy Square had been built as the exemplary heart of the Jaminth district, formed by matching white-painted stucco terraces with high bay windows and curving balconies on the upper floors. They caged a communal park of tall walwallow and vive trees, itself encased by iron railings that now acted as security posts for the dozens of bicycles the residents left chained there. A fountain pond in the middle had been allowed to decay into a circular marsh of mushy leaves; tiny higkel birds waded over the rancid surface to their mossy nests adorning the central statue.

As soon as Jenifa reached the square, she saw the sheriff car parked on the other side. She made a play of walking purposefully to one of the bicycles near a corner of the railings, bending over to unlock it and pantomiming lost keys.

Two men in sheriff uniforms were unloading boxes and carrying them into one of the terrace buildings. She caught a glimpse of terVask's profile as he sat in the backseat. Then she was striding through the huge archway that connected the square with Florissant Avenue.

“They were off-loading into the Cavour office,” Jenifa said as she tumbled into the backseat of the Torova.

“Cavour. That's a law firm, isn't it?” Chaing asked.

“Yes. They handle evasion cases for the tax office, along with normal criminal prosecution for the city sheriff's office.”

“Then they should be right at home cohabiting with Roxwolf,” he murmured.

“So what now?” she asked.

“Back to the PSR office. I need to review things.”

“What's to review? There's a crud-load of ammunition on its way to the nests so they can kill us. This is obviously a staging post, and judging from the setup possibly Roxwolf's new hideout. We call in an assault squad and snatch as many of the bastards as we can, then sling them into the cells and interrogate them. If we get lucky, we catch Roxwolf himself.”

“Charging in unprepared was what we did last time. Remember how well that went? Besides, you can't interrogate Fallers; it never works.”

“But Roxwolf isn't a Faller.”

“Exactly. He's a tricky little swine. We have to be smarter this time.”

Most of Opole's government departments were in disarray trying to implement the proscriptions of martial law, with uncertain chains of command and urgent orders contradicting one another. On top of that, the remaining residents were trying to cope with restricted travel and a chaotic tram network. It was a city edging close to a nervous breakdown.

Turmoil, however, was not a concept that infiltrated the PSR records division. Down in the basements under the Broadstreet offices the air was still and dry, the temperature stable, along with the demeanor of the black-suited clerks who bustled around hugging their files with the same care they'd show a newborn infant. This department carried on unaffected by anything.

Chaing knocked on Colonel Kukaida's door. He thought he'd be exasperated by the normality pervading her domain, but he actually found it quite a relief.

“Come.”

Nothing had changed. Kukaida sat behind her broad desk, her gray uniform buttoned neatly. Photographs formed a grid before her. Two clerks hovered, awaiting instructions.

“Colonel, I—”

She held up a finger, and shamefacedly Chaing fell silent. The finger dipped and landed on the photograph of a middle-aged woman in an expensive fuchsia-pink cardigan. “That one,” she said.

A clerk nodded and picked up the photo, carrying it out of the bright-white office like a sports trophy. The other clerk began to tidy away the remaining photos.

“Yes, Captain?” Kukaida asked.

“I need some files.”

“Then it is fortunate that you're here. Files are the one thing we have in great abundance.”

“Not files on people.”

“Really? How intriguing. What kind of files do you want, Captain?”

“Civic files. Specifically building blueprints and city engineer utility plans. Very old ones.”

“The appropriate city hall department can provide you with those, Captain.”

“I don't want to use city hall, Colonel. I have reason to believe it is compromised. My mission is of the highest priority, and top secret.”

“What an important man you are, comrade Captain. Luckily for you, we do have copies of all city files, of course. However, they are microfiched. Searching through even one cassette for a specific blueprint may take you some time.”

“I can accept that.”

“Very well.” She signaled the clerk. “Please inform my colleague what it is you require, and the relevant cassettes will be brought to you in the second-level viewing library.”

“Thank you, Colonel.”

The assault team had walkie-talkies, but on Chaing's orders these remained switched off during deployment. They all wore civilian clothes, carrying bags or suitcases containing their weapons. Fortunately most of the reservists walking about Opole's streets were carrying similar bags stuffed with clothes as they reported to their registration center. It made the team unremarkable—as Chaing intended.

Scouts went into the buildings on both sides of the Cavour offices. If they found any sign of gang activity, they would come out again within ten minutes. No gang activity would see them place a red cloth in the second-floor windows.

Team members entering the square from its various access roads saw two red cloths and proceeded into the buildings over the next ninety minutes. The regular occupants who were still working under martial law were hustled into a room on the third floor, and held there. Not under arrest, the team leaders assured them, but for their own protection.

In one building, five team members went up into the loft space and quietly cut through the partition wall, clearing a route into the attic above the Cavour office.

Without radio communication—which they knew Roxwolf monitored—the assault sequence was all down to timing. From Chaing initiating the mission, they had ninety minutes to infiltrate the teams into the neighboring buildings and quarantine their workforces. Fifty minutes to cut through into the attic. A further fifteen minutes to assemble in position; subteams in each building behind second-floor balcony windows were ready to launch grapnel ropes and swing across, blasting their way in with grenades, with more subteams at the back door to overwhelm any gang guards posted at the rear alley entrance. Main teams were in the hallway, heavily armed to storm through Cavour's front entrance.

It was planned down to the last detail, approved by Yaki and the duty assault team captain. And doomed to fail.

Roxwolf's hideaways, of which there were several in Opole, were superbly integrated into their surroundings. In Larncy Square, there were watchers behind the blinds on the fourth floor of the offices, covering the square and the alley behind. Clerks and secretaries in several companies around the square were affiliated with the gangs, with dedicated phone lines into the Cavour office. There were even optical tubes blended discreetly into the architecture, allowing Roxwolf to observe suspicious activity directly.

As the assault team started to infiltrate the adjacent buildings, three separate warnings were triggered before the gang associates moved obligingly to the third-floor quarantine rooms. Thus warned, Roxwolf himself watched the steady arrival of men and women with similar-sized bags. Nobody now was coming out of the neighboring buildings. A scan around the square revealed that new checkpoints had been set up at the far end of the access roads. The already reduced level of government-authorized traffic trundling around the central park was shrinking toward nonexistent.

Without warning his underlings—human or Faller—he armed the trips on the demolition charges and opened the secret panel in the sub-basement where he'd lived for the past fortnight. He moved quickly through the dank catacombs that stretched beneath Larncy Square. Retracing the route he'd taken to reach the Cavour offices, he found the narrow service hatch in the wall of a long-abandoned culvert and squeezed through.

A pistol muzzle pressed into the side of his head. Five bright torches came on, leaving him blinking in their dazzling light.