A Song Called Youth (127 page)

“Must’ve been confused as all hell.” Roseland tilted his head to one side, rubbed his chin, and looked Torrence over thoughtfully. “You know something, Dan—”

“Don’t say it.”

“Now that I look you over—”

“I’m warning you.”

“You really—look—”

“Don’t say it!”

“—much better as a Japanese.”

“I told you not to say it.”

“If only they’d made you Jewish.”

Paris, a boat on the Seine.

Watson sat in one of the rows of canvas chairs on the afterdeck of the big patrol boat, between Giessen and Rolff. Just behind the boy Jebediah.

You deal with one problem, Watson thought, and five more crop up to take its place. The Hydra of chaos. The sword of order, the Second Alliance’s new order, must keep chopping at the proliferating heads of the Hydra of chaos—cutting short the vector of disorder they called subversion. That was just part of the job—a perpetual tidying-up.

Giessen wasn’t making it any easier.

It was time to see if Giessen could be transferred out. “You’re needed in America, Giessen,” Watson said. “That’s where Hand is hiding out, where this Barrabas traitor is, where the gadfly Jack Smoke is—if you’ll excuse the pun, it’s where he’s blowing smoke up the asses of the American public. We need you there.”

Giessen shook his head. “America is unfriendly to our people these days.”

They were in the back of one of the new UPSS patrol boats, moving upstream on the Seine. It was a warm evening. There were silver and black clouds wreathing the horned moon, and streetlights glowing softly from the bridges; the natural and man-made light melting together in the silk fan of the boat’s wake. The living smell of the river melded with the boat’s methanol vapors.

Watson could have enjoyed it, as a tourist, under different circumstances. But he had to deal with Giessen and the Unity Party officials, and the blasted kid Jebediah.

“A little wine, Colonel Watson?” Bisse, the party’s general vice secretary, was acting the steward. He was a stooped, vulpine man with bad teeth and a cheap government-issue suit—which he wore piously to show his dedication to the U.P. austerity program.

“No, thank you,” Watson said.

Bisse’s corroded smile didn’t waver; he took his tray of plastic bubbly to Rolff, who accepted politely.

There were guards to either side of them, of course, in armor, standing at the rail, wearing night-seeing goggles; they were watching the stone walls along the banks of the river, and scanning the bridges. The U.P. had invited them along on this ceremonial boat ride at the last moment. Chances were small the Resistance had found out about the cruise. But it was a bit of a risk here. Put a man on that bridge coming up, say, crouching with a sniperscope behind the big ornately laurel-wreathed
N
for Napoleon . . . 

Watson and most of the others were wearing bullet-proof vests. He would like to have worn a helmet too, but he needed to project a certain confident bravado today. And of course a helmet was no use in the event of a hit from a missile launcher. The bastards were just as likely to use a hand-held launcher as a rifle or a machine gun . . . 

Giessen interrupted his thoughts. “This man Torrence was not my only assignment here, Herr Watson. I was under orders from Rick Crandall to do a general review of the security arrangements . . . ”

“Were you indeed? This is the first I’ve heard of it.” This was interesting. Why hadn’t it occurred to him before? He could work up an animation of Crandall “ordering” Giessen to get out of his hair. “Crandall” could have Giessen arrested. But no—Giessen was useful. Would be quite useful—in some other arena. Mustn’t allow himself to waste resources. He’d simply have Crandall order him out of the country.

Watson smiled in relief, knowing he’d soon be rid of Giessen. Who looked at him with suspicious puzzlement, wondering why Watson was so much at ease of a sudden.

Watson stretched, pleased with himself. Sometimes you didn’t see the forest for the trees. Elegant simplicity. That was similar to the RSV. The Racially Selective Virus was elegant simplicity—would be, anyway, once it was deployed. So much simpler than the old Nazi Final Solution. And, should things go awry, so much more difficult to trace.

He wondered if he should move up the date for the viral dissemination. And he wondered whether people like Bisse, who likely had some Jewish blood in them, would blow a gasket if they knew about the virus. Oh, yes.

Watson noticed the boy Jebediah watching him. Was it his imagination, or was the little martinet glaring at him?

Watson shrugged. He turned to Giessen, feeling at ease enough to bait him now. “You’ve been crowing about capturing this Torrence, who essentially just blundered into our hands—but really, my dear fellow, it was you who took matters into his own hands to retrieve Steinfeld and Hand and this Barrabas creature—and then lost them.”

“Barrabas—A man notably well named,” said Jebediah with the casual pretentiousness only a boy could come out with. “His first name ought to be Judas. But maybe that name ought to be reserved for someone else.”

What the devil did he mean by
that
? Watson decided to ignore him, going on, “And it was you, Herr Giessen, who lost them. By now they’re probably in the States.”

“I am not a specialist in military strategy,” Giessen said stiffly. “That is Rolff’s work. I located them—and pinpointed the place to stop them. I could not do everything. We had logistical problems getting enough troops there.”

“I think that what we’re hearing from you now, Giessen, is what the Americans call ‘passing the buck,’ ” Watson said.

“Giessen’s right,” Rolff said. “It was my failure. I did not anticipate that the autotank was controlled by the NR. I can only say that one cannot anticipate everything.”

“Well, you will have no military stresses on you when you work in the States, Giessen,” Watson went on relentlessly.

“I could not possibly work in the United States, the way things are there now,” Giessen said, prissily adjusting the set of his antique tweed jacket. He showed his irritation in the excessive briskness of the movement. “America is awash with liberalism now.”

“Yes,” Jebediah said, nodding, trying to be part of the adults’ discussion. “Secular humanism.”

Giessen said, “They’ve done away with the AntiViolence Laws—no more public executions, no more public beatings. Scrutinizing every court case with maddening slowness. In such an atmosphere one cannot work fruitfully with the police. One is on one’s own.”

“Liberalism? America?” Watson laughed. “Only on the surface. A little media oil to quiet the turbulent waters of the Grid, my dear fellow. So long as Mrs. Anna Bester is still president, so long as her administration is still in place, America will be functionally a conservative nation. And that means we will have sympathizers in high places. There are many of us still in the CIA, the NSA—you will have help, Giessen. I rely on you to find Hand and this Smoke before they poison the waters of the media—”

“I am taking orders from Rick Crandall,” Giessen said. “He is my employer. We shall see what he says.”

Giessen stood and walked forward, to join the U.P. officials in the pilot’s cabin.

Yes,
Watson thought with some satisfaction.
We will see what Rick Crandall says . . . 

They sat on the edge of the subway platform, Steinfeld and Torrence and Roseland, feet dangling over as if they sat on the bank of a dry underground river, waiting for a ghostly UPSS boat that would come only in fancy.

“And he’s on the boat with Watson now?” Torrence asked.

Steinfeld nodded. Looking into the shadowy riverbed of the subway tracks, as if seeing the boat there. Seeing the boy Jebediah on it.

“How did you get the story to him?” Roseland asked.

“Through Cooper. When we found out that Cooper was Witcher’s Second Alliance contact, we were able to use the same intermediary to inform Cooper. And Cooper saw the potential; he’s scared of Watson and Rolff. We knew Cooper was in touch with Jebediah’s father. Father told son, trying to decide what to do about it. The boy, being a boy, will probably confront Watson—some sort of interesting schism should develop.”

“How did you get onto this thing in the first place?” Barrabas asked.

“Why do I feel as if I’m on one of those talk-show things,” Steinfeld said, tugging his beard. “Well, now. We found out by accident that was not entirely accident. We had our video-propaganda man scanning all the SA output. Our man Kessler. He’s very good. When we got the vid of Crandall talking about his new version of the Bible, Kessler noticed a few telltale signs. He realized that Crandall is now animated. Which might mean that the real Crandall is too paranoid to go to wherever it is he does his video recording—but we think it means he’s dead. There’ve been changes out at Cloudy Peak Farm. No sign of him out there. None of his favorite foods ordered in . . . Lots of secretiveness . . . We think Watson may have, well, taken over by puppeting the image of Crandall. The one we see on the net is most definitely a phony.”

“A computer animation? Maybe he was all along,” Roseland said.

“No,” Steinfeld said. “He was quite flesh and blood, I assure you. At one time.”

“Now he’s ascended to video heaven,” Roseland said. He grinned. “TV-evangelist heaven.”

Torrence looked at him. “Having fun? You don’t snow me. What the fuck were you doing running up there by yourself when we came in? If you thought we were SA.”

“Uh . . . I don’t know.”

“Bullshit. You were taking them on alone. Confronting what you thought was the SA. What was that all about?”

Roseland shrugged. Looked at them with raised eyebrows. “Uh . . . heroism?”

Steinfeld snorted. “The opposite. Cowardice. You wanted to be killed, man. And I understand how you feel.” He put a big, clumsy hand on Roseland’s shoulder. “But . . . if you desert us that way, you are a coward. You paid attention when they trained you. You are a good shot. You are motivated. We are undermanned. We need you, Roseland.”

Roseland swallowed, hard. The lump didn’t go away.

Across from him was an old subway billboard advertising a cocaine fizz. “
COU-COU! La Boisson De Vos Jeune Petiller!
” A swatch of light from behind them fell onto an old, dusty billboard photo of a young woman’s sparkling eyes seeming to fizz the same color as the drink in her hand. She was a satire of being alive, he thought.

Seeing, in his mind’s eye, her pretty blond head exploding the way Gabrielle’s had. Gabrielle falling . . . 

What was that old Rickenharp song lyric?

Something like:
Just bein’ alive is the Original Sin . . . And steppin’ outdoors is givin’ in . . . 

But Steinfeld needed him. Torrence needed him. They needed him alive.

“Yeah,” Roseland said. “Okay.”

He looked down at the subway tracks, into the river of shadows.

The boat was heading downstream, back to the gendarme marina. The other guests had gone forward, were standing at the rail of the prow, praising the sleekness and speed and stability of the boat. But they held on to the rail for dear life, fighting queasiness as it went through choppy water set up by another boat.

Watson had decided he wanted a drink after all. He went down the stairs to the afterdeck, made himself a Scotch and water at the temporary bar set up there. He was alone on the deck but for the solitary silhouette of an SA bull, standing guard at the rail, staring out over the wake, his back to Watson.

And then suddenly the boy Jebediah was there. Coming from the bathroom below, Watson supposed.

Jebediah was staring up at Watson accusingly. “You didn’t think God would let you get away with it, did you?” the boy asked smarmily.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I’ve been trying to talk to Rick Crandall for two months. He always took my calls before. He was always willing to see my father. Now he won’t see anyone, won’t take calls. And those videos of him. They’re fake. I’ll tell you what we think, my father and I. We think he’s dead. We think you
killed
him.”

Watson was unable to resist looking around to see if anyone was within earshot. The noise of the boat would prevent the guard from hearing. The others were well forward.

“It’s true, isn’t it,” the boy said, with his childish self-righteousness. “I can see it in your face.”

Watson took a deep breath. To think that once he had rather admired this pestilential little bugger. Well. This was a sticky wicket, as his father had been fond of saying. He sipped his Scotch, and then said, “Don’t be absurd. I can arrange a meeting with you and Rick, if you like.”

“You can?” The boy’s eyes widened.

“Quite.” Thinking: Can’t even stall this thing. He mustn’t so much as breathe a word of this to anyone. “And anyone else you’ve told. We’ll bring them along, have Rick reassure them.”

“It’s just me and my dad. He didn’t want me to tell anyone until he’d decided what to . . . ” The boy’s voice trailed off as he realized he’d said more than he should have.

Watson looked at his watch. They’d be at the marina in ten minutes. There wasn’t much time. “Wait here. That guard is carrying the, ah, communications codebook for me. He always contacts Crandall for me, you see, it’s a security, ah, method.”

The boy nodded. One good thing, despite his precocity, he was still a boy. He’d swallow any technical-sounding spy gibberish you fed him.

Watson went to the guard at the taffrail. What was the man’s name?

Stuart. Jock Stuart. Big, muscular, balding fellow with bristling red eyebrows. He’d been hinting about a transfer to England.

“Jock,” Watson said. “Open your helmet.”

Stu moved the curved mirror of the helmet aside, looked at Watson. “Jock—I can fiddle you a posting in England, anywhere you like, but there’s something messy you’ve got to do for me. Not only will you get the posting you want—you’ll get a promotion. And even a nice bit of cash. This little thing you’ve got to do, you’ve got to do very discreetly. It’s a sort of purge, in a small way. Something only you and I will know about . . . ”