Baltic Gambit: A Novel of the Vampire Earth (19 page)

The translator did not bother with that, but the kid got the message. The deadly embrace released, they stepped away from each other.

The leader of the mob took the coins and kissed them before pocketing them deep in his jacket. Then he laughed in Sime’s face.

“A most friendly gesture,” he said through the translator. “Be on your way with our permission.”

A couple of the youths spat as they moved off. Not on anyone, of course, but the general intent was clear.

“See, Valentine,” Sime said. “We still have all our limbs. It doesn’t always have to end in blood.”

Valentine shot Sime an angry look. Valentine evidently wanted to treat the mob like a mob and shoot one or two, which would no doubt disperse the rest.

“Ja. Yes,” the leader said. He waved his gang back and then did a strange little flourish that involved his hand and forehead being directed at Sime, wincing a little as he bent slightly at the waist in pain.

“If you give every two-bit thug gold to leave us alone, we’ll be broke in forty-eight hours,” Duvalier said.

Sime shrugged. “I was told in my briefing that this would be the only difficult part of the journey, getting inland on the German coast. There are experts helping us with the rest.”

“Expertise like that almost got us killed outside of Halifax,” Valentine said.

“I suppose we could strike out on our own,” Sime responded smoothly. “Except we don’t know where we’re going. What do you say, Valentine? Warsaw? Oslo?”

“Everyone is getting raw,” Ahn-Kha said. “We need some food and a hot drink.”

“You feeling okay?” Valentine asked her.

“It’s just my crotch. I’ve had plenty of scumbags cop a quick feel. At least this one was young and reasonably good-looking. Body odor like a summer swamp, but good-looking. Now we’re out Sime’s bribe.”

“They would have run,” Valentine said.

“What about the shotgun?”

“If it even was loaded, I wouldn’t have given him a chance to use
it. He would have taken my first bullet. He wasn’t watching me so closely, because I had my gun on someone else.”

“You didn’t like seeing someone touching me like that,” she said.

“Of course not. It’s disgusting.”

She shrugged. “One man’s disgusting is another’s champagne. I’ve learned that much in my years roaming around the zones.”

“You okay?” Pistols asked, as he checked his guns before putting them back in their holsters.

Why is everyone worried about my condition? I’m not a pregnant fifteen-year-old. I’m a goddamn Cat with over a decade in the KZs.

“Better than ever,” she said. It was nice of him to ask and not make a big scene about it. She shouldn’t have been so quick to judge. He seemed to like playing cards with Sime. Maybe they could switch from pinochle to poker one of these evenings and bury the hatchet. Valentine might even join in. She’d heard from sources in the Wolves that he was a pretty good cardplayer, too.

Their guide got them back in line and they struck out between the fields.

“We’re being followed,” Ahn-Kha said. “Some of the kids, I think.”

“Tell the guide to stop,” Sime said. Pistols loosened his weapon in its holster.

It turned out to be a couple, both in their early teens, a boy and a girl. They had a brief conversation through the translator.

“We want to travel with you. Just far enough to get out of the state. We’ve had enough of that gutter-pack.”

“We’ll be no trouble. We want to try to make it to the North. The Arctic.”

Sime shook his head. “No, our arrangements—”

“Were for two more than we actually have with us,” Valentine said.

“It’s too dangerous.”

“To whom? I doubt the Kurian Order took two kids out of Youth Vanguard training, or whatever they call it here, and inserted them into a gang of starving hooligans in the hope they’d be able to penetrate one of the Refugee Network’s lines. They don’t waste their agents hanging out with kids.”

“I’m in charge of this delegation.”

“You are in charge of Southern Command’s delegation,” Ahn-Kha said. “The Kentucky Alliance is willing to have these kids with us. For a little way.”

“You’ll have to forgive him, Sime,” Duvalier said. “He’s always picking up strays. It’s easier this way—believe me. Otherwise he’ll bitch all the way to the Baltic.”

In the end, they let “the kids” follow along. They shared their simple provisions with them. The kids produced some chocolate of their own, disgusting stuff that Duvalier recognized as KZ ration chocolate. If anything, it was worse than the American brand. She was a little surprised at that; she’d thought Europeans were connoisseurs of luxury goods.

They were passed over to a bike gang for transport to the Baltic, the Funkrad.

They were willing to take the kids along as well. They’d been expecting seven travellers from the North American delegation.

The phrase “bike gang” brings to mind leather, boots, and roaring motorcycles. This gang had the leathers, certainly, but they were
leaner-lined, almost like sporting wear. The motorcycles were all electric jobs, slower but infinitely quieter. There were a few true bicycles in the group as well, pedaled by Germans with thighs like tree trunks. Along with the two-wheeled vehicles, there was a subcompact car and a van with cargo containers strapped to the roof and a rear hatch that held spare bike equipment, a camp stove, and other necessities for life on the road.

Most of Germany was well organized, by Kurian standards. Every person carried an identity card with home city and state. You needed no special authorization to move about your town or city, and within the state itself a pass was fairly easy to obtain. To leave your state, however, required approval from one of the regional security centers.

There were special exemptions, of course, and one of them was sporting teams and sports trainers. The Funkrad competed five or six times a year in Pan-European contests; the rest of their time was spent “training.” The men and women on the bicycles were “supported” by “coaches and trainers,” all riding the electric motorcycles, thirty all told, a group large enough to raise a cheer from sporting fans in the towns they passed through, but not so large it required much notice from city police or security forces.

Sometimes sports photographers rode along with the team, or journalists, or athletic candidates for membership on the team. Young fans who won entry into contests by participating in scrap metal or rubber drives could spend a week with their bicycling heroes as well. And sometimes they shuttled a handful of refugees from the northern foothills of the Alps to the North Sea.

Their pair of young lovers was dropped off at a junkyard near
Itzehoe. One of the coaches knew the owner; the owner saved bike spares for the team, and they were always looking for help on their pickup routes. Even if the kids didn’t like Itzehoe, they might discover a new location while searching through scrap piles and demolished homes.

The only tricky part was finding an out-of-sight spot for Ahn-Kha, who was sure to excite comment.

“Perhaps we could be trying out a mascot?” one of the cyclists asked Doktor Lauter, the head coach and manager of the Funkrad.

“No, make a space for him in the van. Throw some sleeping mats down. We can put him just behind the seats. We will simply take precautions, many precautions, every time we stop to have a piss.”

That sort of earthy practicality marked their week with the Funkrad. They quietly buzzed through village after village on back roads as they headed east. Ahn-Kha suffered, having to stay in hiding, but the rest of the group relaxed and regained the camaraderie that had been lost with the death of Stamp and the wounding of Alexander.

The only one who seemed ill at ease during their time with the Funkrad was Pistols. Where the Germans were all sleek and graceful, he was awkward and waddling, a cowboy among ballerinas. They joked, she suspected, about the number of guns he carried (she knew the German word for gun:
pistole
, not that different from its English pronunciation). Pistols might be a tough enough man, but he was no cyclist or athlete, and he made no friends among the Germans.

Duvalier was no hand holder by nature, but at night she made an
effort to socialize with Pistols. Sometimes she played cards with Ahn-Kha and him, or they patched their clothing. They fell asleep together in the back of the van, Ahn-Kha’s bulk warming them like a hot stove, talking quietly about whatever drifted across their minds.

She’d made many journeys in her life, but she remembered the trip with the bike team as one of the best.

It was even fun. Fun was a stranger to her, or at best an acquaintance of limited contact.

Once in open country, flat and a mixture of woods, pasture, and field so that it resembled, to her, some parts of the Midwest, they began to really make time. The team’s management knew which towns held one or more Kurians, which had tougher Quislings and which didn’t, and they zigzagged through, heading mostly west, with little turns to the north.

One of the professional cyclists, a shaven-bald German named Horst who had leg muscles like oak roots wound around a boulder, took her out on a few trips on one of the coaches’ road bikes.

She’d been watching him practice, quietly enjoying the view. Before she knew him, she’d just mentally named him Fritz; he reminded her a little of a German shepherd she’d known by that name.

She was comfortable on bicycles, and they were a simple, inconspicuous way to get around a Kurian Zone. But she’d never ridden to race, just to get from point A to point B or to disappear quickly.

Of course she couldn’t match Horst’s power. So when they rode, she took off cross-country or through the woods, where her reflexes gave her an edge against those legs of his. She led Fritz on a merry
chase, turning frequently so he couldn’t take advantage of his muscles to overtake her.

About the time she decided he was just lagging behind because he liked the view of her bottom bouncing above the bike saddle, she skidded to a halt.

“I’m lost,” she said. “I hope you can find your way back to the rest of the team.”

“They are south of us, heading for the Kiel Canal,” said Horst. “We will follow it to the Baltic.” Then he took a step closer and went on with “I would like to explore your canal.”

Yeesh.
Leave it to a German to put it like that. Much of the fun went out of the day. She’d have to deal with either hurt feelings or anger. And who knew how much of it would transfer to the rest of the team?

“Down, Fritz,” she said, then realized with horror that she’d said it aloud.

“Excuse me?”

“I’m sorry, Horst. Horst. I’m not in the mood for that right now. You know? Wrong time of the month,” she lied, but it would be a lie that wouldn’t hurt his ego.

He shrugged. “I am not bothered by such matters.”

“Well, I am. Red rain check, okay?”

“As you like.”

They came to the Kiel Canal, a shipping lane that allowed the great former naval base access to the North Atlantic rather than the Baltic. It looked like a very well-maintained river, wide enough for large
ships, with even banks and working locks and dams that allowed the flow to be controlled.

The wind blew relentlessly in this part of Germany and there were windmills for power generation everywhere. Only about a third of them seemed to be working, which struck her as strange for the efficiency-driven Germans. Some even had anti-Kurian graffiti written on them, but you could make out the letters only by getting off the roads and really close to the windmills, or by using binoculars, of course.

There were excellent paths and roads bordering the canal. And a heavy police presence, but they just applauded or cheered the Funkrad, or made obscene gestures, depending on the affiliation of the particular officer. Some of the barges on the water recognized them as well and honked their horns in appreciation.

Valentine joined her in cycling with the Germans, tucking his hair up into the little helmets they wore, in brief training runs, riding in the middle of the pack of Germans where they wouldn’t be noticed and others could speak for them just in case. As they ran along the canal, it felt more and more like the pleasure jaunt they’d been promised, especially as the weather grew less foggy and more summery.