Greenhouse Summer (23 page)

“So it would seem. But why then do they have this Monique Calhoun hire
La Reine de la Seine
as a data sponge targeting the conference participants—”

“—knowing that we’re running it!” Eric exclaimed. “They’ve been fools to take the risk, and these recordings prove it!”

“Never assume that your adversaries are fools, Eric,” Eduardo told him. “They may
be
fools, but making the assumption is never an advantage. So assuming they’re not fools . . .”

“There’s something they have a major need to know. . . .”

“Very good, Eric. And therefore . . . ?”

“The white tornado disneys aren’t their capper. They’ve got something else up their sleeve. But whatever it is, it’s not something they believe they have under control, at least not yet . . .”

“Excellent, Eric. And we must . . . ?”

“Find out what it is before we make our next move.”

Eduardo Ramirez nodded. “And how do we do that?” he asked.

But this time Eric felt that the question wasn’t rhetorical, that Eduardo was no longer playing sensei, that he was finally asking a question to which he did not have the answer, man-to-man.

“Through Monique Calhoun,” he told Eduardo. “After all, they
have
put her on
La Reine
to find out something, and if we can find out what—”

“Then we know what it is. But how—”

Eric found himself speaking as fast as he thought, or perhaps even a bit faster, and if Mom would say he was thinking with his dick, then so be it.

“I let her seduce me. . . .”

“I am truly touched by the sacrifices you are willing to make for the syndic, Eric.”

“I don’t make it easy, but under enormous sexual pressure, I finally admit that I lied, that all the data feeds on the boat
are
recorded—”

“We cannot compromise Ignatz,” Eduardo said firmly.

“We don’t. All I allow her to get out of me is the existence of the raw recordings, thousands of hours of them. So which ones she takes will probably tell us something itself. And just maybe, she seduces me into helping her with the tedious task of rooting through it all. Which allows me to monitor what she’s searching
for
.”

“Another disney,” Eduardo said. “Nice. It even gives us a credible way to leak the existence of the white tornado recordings to her handlers if and when the time comes. . . .”

Eric nodding knowingly, as if he had thought of that angle too, which he hadn’t.

Eduardo Ramirez smiled.

Eric smiled back.

There was a long moment of satisfied silence.

“Another tequila, Eduardo?” Eric finally said.

“I do believe I will,” Eduardo said. “But let’s go outside.”

It was quite warm for the season, and the air was unpleasantly and uncharacteristically muggy, but the view from the terrace garden was still lovely at this hour, made even more dramatic by a rather unusual weather condition.

The sky over Paris was a clear royal blue not quite yet deepening to purple at the zenith, but on the western horizon, a pearly fog bank seemed to be moving in like an enormous slow-motion breaker of cloud, turning the sun in the process of descending into it into a glowing disc of fiery orange that cast long mauve-tinted shadows over the streets of the city below, glazed the waters of the Seine with a golden sheen. The deeply shadowed vegetation encrusting the quais
now seemed reminiscent of the lost reefs of tropic coral or a verdantly green human brain.

Eduardo Ramirez sipped thoughtfully at his tequila as he gazed out over this tropical urban vista.

“Paris is a fortunate city,” he said softly. “It was always a beautiful city, but before the warming, the climate was foul. The skies were gray and the weather was cool and dank for more of the year than not. Doubly fortunate to be situated in these rich climes.”

“Doubly fortunate?”

“Doubly fortunate that northwestern Europe can afford to pay the price to maintain the Gulf Stream with orbital mirrors. Without which . . . who knows, or wants to find out?”

Eric had never observed Eduardo in such a mood before. But then, he had seldom had a real conversation with him in the absence of Mom.

“Yes, a fortunate city, Eric. Almost as fortunate as Siberia the Golden. . . .”

He turned to face Eric, and Eric saw that he was frowning now.

“To maintain this balmy climate, the Gulf Stream must be maintained, and to do that, tropic waters must be heated thousands of miles away, which only adds more heat to the planet, and who knows, perhaps causes the north polar ice cap to melt faster than it otherwise might . . .”

“I didn’t know you were an amateur climatologist, Eduardo.”

Eduardo Ramirez laughed softly, ruefully so it seemed. “I may not know much about climatology,” he said, “but I know what I like. And I know we would lose these long sweet Parisian summer seasons should Big Blue succeed in its schemes to cool the planet back down. As Siberia the Golden would once more be locked in snow and ice.”

“But they won’t,” Eric said him. “We have what it takes to stop them whenever we want to.”

“But
should
we?” said Eduardo.

“
Should we
?”

“The Big Blue Machine may be a collection of revenant capitalist corporations out to turn a profit above all else, they may have faked the white tornadoes, but . . .”

“But . . . ?”

Eduardo shrugged. “But none of that necessarily prevents them from being
right
,” he said. “Perhaps Condition Venus
is
imminent. Perhaps the biosphere
is
in mortal danger. In which case . . .”

He sighed. “In which case, we would not do right by stopping them, now would we? In which case, must we not sacrifice the lovely climate of this beautiful city, Siberia the Golden, and all the rest?”

“Must we?” said Eric. Eduardo was unexpectedly floating out into waters a bit too deep for him.

“If that should
really
be what it takes to preserve the biosphere itself, what choice would there be?”

This was an Eduardo Ramirez that Eric had never known, and he was beginning to show Eric levels within himself that he had never known either, starting with the revelation that Eduardo owed his elevated position in the syndic to an elusive something more than cunning.

“Your mother so enjoys Bad Boys’ gangster mystique,” Eduardo said, “and it’s certainly true that we evolved from mafias and triads. By certain definitions in certain jurisdictions we may even still be a ‘criminal organization.’ But we are
not
capitalists, never forget that, Eric. Do you know what
really
destroyed the capitalist global order?”

Eric shook his head, never having given such matters any thought.

“The economic historians speak of the bursting of the Great Bubble, the Markowitzians speak of the entropy created by the disjunction between the virtual and the productive economies, the Third Force mystics claim it was the despiritualization of capitalist man, and no doubt all that is true,” Eduardo told him. “But in the end, the capitalist world global order was destroyed by the very thing it worshipped. . . .”

“The so-called sacred bottom line . . . ?” Eric ventured, and was rewarded with a nod and a rueful smile.

“If capitalists had to choose between their own short-term economic self-interest and the survival of a larger common good, even one that included themselves, they would take the money and run. Even if there was no place to run
to
. It was said they would sell you the rope to hang themselves if they could do it at a profit.”

Eduardo laughed. “And that’s essentially what they did.”

“I don’t understand,” Eric said with utter sincerity.

“Someone also once said that you have to be honest to live outside the law.”

Eduardo turned to look out once more over balmy beautiful Paris and Eric too turned to stand beside him, surveying from on high the City of Light of which he was at least an ersatz prince.

“Just what are you trying to tell me?”

Eduardo did a fair imitation of Mom.

“We’re Bad Boys, but we wouldn’t flush the world down the toilet just to make a fast buck in the process, kiddo! That’s the difference between predatory capitalist pigs and the bastard sons and daughters of romantic buccaneers and honest gangsters like ourselves!”

Prince Eric Esterhazy struggled to fully understand what Eduardo Ramirez was trying to tell him, but it remained elusive.

But somehow, as the heady floral fragrances of the city drifted up to mingle with the winey perfumes of the potted plants closer to hand, his rooftop garden seemed to transform itself into a disney of the tropical city below.

As Paris itself too, in that moment, seemed to him a disney.

But of what, he could not tell.

WHAT IS THE LEVEL BEYOND VIP?

Stella and Ivan Marenko.

The only thing missing is the “Ode to Joy” over the speakers and a twenty-one-gun salute, and I’m liable to catch shit for not providing them, Monique Calhoun thought as she stood outside the Hotel Ritz watching the clattering Force Flic helicopter descend to the Place Vendôme perilously close to the central column in a fearful whirlwind of dust and debris and noise against all conventional rules and rational safety reason.

“Do you know who these people
are
?” Avi Posner had asked when he called to inform her that the Marenkos were already on their way by private jet from Zekograd.

“The names are familiar . . .” Monique had said slowly, pretending to be searching her protoplasmic memory while running a quick netsearch on the fly. “The honcha and honcho of Meat & Potatoes, aren’t they?”

She didn’t need to be told that the co-chairs of the largest Siberian agricultural syndic were just the sort of bears that the client had laid on the UNACOCS honey pot to attract, but Posner did it anyway.

“That makes them important enough. But they are a lot more than that. They are . . . shamans, as the Siberians have it.”

“Shamans . . . ?
Witch doctors
?”

“Siberian hyperbole, of which they are major exporters. Powers. Influences. Weighty personages.”

Posner’s image on the vidphone screen shrugged.

“I am not a doctor of political philosophy from the Sorbonne, so please do not expect me to explain the politics of the Siberians, who claim not to have any,” he said. “Suffice it to say that Stella and Ivan Marenko have influence beyond their official positions of the sort that can open or close the Siberian purse strings. They are now your number-one priority. I want daily reports from you on everything they do and say, everything they
think
, if you can manage it. And they are to be afforded
every
courtesy, no matter how expensive, no matter how extravagant, no matter how bizarre. Without limit.”

“Without limit?”

“They are to be treated as the Second Coming of Santa Claus. What they request, you
will
obtain for them. If God Himself is occupying the suite they require, you will eject Him forthwith.”