Mappa Mundi (34 page)

Despite the relative ease of this escape Natalie knew there was no time for a mistake and she didn't make one. Knowing what to do and then doing it was an easy, fluid flow that came unhurriedly to her.

She ran towards town and turned into Haley's Terrace by the old baths, using her old Pad to hail a taxi. As it drew up to the curb at her side a few moments later she paused only long enough to send it an instruction to get lost on the ring road and fling the more modern Pad, her friend until a few minutes ago, in through the door.

As her police minders came running around the side of the building looking for her she was already at the bus stop two roads away, getting on the first bus she caught sight of going anywhere. By the time they'd figured out that she wasn't in the taxi she was walking fast down Coppergate, heading directly for the King's Arms.

It had occurred to her that she did know one person who was capable of giving her a temporary change of identity and who wasn't a fussy feeder. He might even know where Dan was, and she might spare him an audience with the local police about it if he did.

The back bar was dim and smoky but she caught sight of Ray's form immediately, recognizing him from Dan's descriptions: thick coat, slick hair, self-satisfied, belly-out air of a man in complete control of the pond. Some small, bent-over person was hunched opposite him, caught between the rosy glow of the fringed lamp and the orange ripple light of the fake fire. They were pleading ineffectually about something. Ray was grinning and his forehead was sheened with a mix of sweat and hair oil.

Natalie knew that her hours of listening patiently to the area's psychotics
had been well spent. She put her hand on the whiner's shoulder and told him to piss off in a kind but authoritative voice, which he did, without even looking at her. She heard his scuttling as he made the turn for the door and his cut-off cry as one of Ray's heavies cuffed him in passing.

“Who the fuck are you?” Ray said with an amiable smile, waving a hand to suggest she take the vacated seat; all the largesse of a rich man welcoming a friend in his body language, all the good intent of a rattlesnake in his blue eyes.

“I'm one of Dan Connor's friends,” she said, turning the chair around and sitting astride it, glad she was wearing her leathers and not some work trousers that day.

“Oh aye?”

“You don't happen to know where he is?”

“What's it worth?” Ray dropped his friendly arm and signalled his man for drinks. “You want anything?”

“No.” She got an eyeful of his thick fingers and triple gold signet rings, one of them a sovereign. No taste, but they probably hurt when he hit you. She knew that he had no more idea about Dan than she did. She didn't know if she should be relieved.

“And what
do
you want if you don't want a drink?” he said suddenly, leaning in on her, his beery breath hot and faintly tainted with onion.

Natalie had to struggle not to flinch back, but she held her ground. “I want a temporary six-hour identity change with full international pass documents and a plane ticket, first class, on the next parabolic out of Leeds to Washington, DC,” she said.

Ray sat back with his grin restored.

“Don't want much, do yer?” His thought process had a stage that passed visibly across his face, very finely. She could see him calculating. Then he grunted and adjusted his position to something more comfortable. “You're that doctor bird aren't you? The one that Connor shacks up with when he's not lifting shirts. Work for the MoD. I bet there's good money for not sending you on your way. Better than—”

“Mister Innis,” she said quietly, maintaining a pleasant smile and eye contact. “I have a perfect record, crime-free. I am also the most wanted woman in Europe at this moment. When I tell the police that you kidnapped me outside the Clinic and have been planning to hold me to ransom, they aren't going to be impressed with your long list of convictions, nor your attempts to set up lab staff to feed you with illegal medical technologies. The disappearance of Dan Connor, who owed you money, will look like something other than a coincidence. I can assure you also that the US and European governments are so keen to find me that anyone causing the slightest delay wouldn't be so much compensated as erased. I have fifteen thousand pounds. I want a six-hour pass and the flight. I know you have contacts who can provide them. Get them for me right now, or I will drop you in the shit when the military police arrive. You've got about five minutes, max.”

She could see him struggling to believe her, not knowing if he could delay, wondering how to stall her. He badly didn't want to believe her, but she knew that her performance was convincing and with the extra force of personality that the Selfware seemed to have given her since she woke up that morning he wasn't able to stop himself, even though it must have seemed most like a bad joke to him.

After about ten seconds he nodded.

“Fifteen?” he said. “That'll get you four hours on the pass, should get it in a few minutes. There's a flight in one hour from now. Think you'll make it?” He sat and stared at her, the left side of his upper lip curled in a snarl that was almost comic, daring her to protest.

“Fine.” She beamed the access code for the money across to his Pad before he had time to argue. “It'll clear as soon as I leave the ground.”

As long as she could get past Immigration she didn't care when the damn' thing expired. This transaction would make her doubly vulnerable. It would also seal Ray's fate, although he wasn't fast enough on his feet to realize that yet; he still thought that the banks' encryption suites were as good as they claimed.

As he waited for someone else somewhere else who owed him favours to sort it out, Ray looked her over with a casual air, belly-confidence restored.

“So, you don't know where Connor is either, the lying tub of shite,” he said. “Run away, has he? After that accident or whatever it was. Some poor bastard dead on the slab somewhere having his grey stuff poked at because of you, are they? Or did he die on the table and you're all covering it up? You make me sick, you know that? I'd rather stick you in the river with lead boots on than help you do whatever it is you're doing. It's a crime against human nature.” His smile became a snarl. “And you can tell that cunt Connor that he'll get the same if he doesn't deliver soon.” He sent her Pad the relevant files with a heavy slam of his index finger.

Ray's man arrived with his pint on a tray.

Natalie, standing up to go, picked up the glass and made to put it down for him. Then, making eye contact, she smiled with heartfelt hatred and poured the contents over Ray's head.

“Thanks for the lecture.” She put the glass back on the tray as both men, stunned, watched her, their shoulders rigid with disbelief. Foam and ale dripped from Ray's chin. Globules ran, mouselike, through the stiffly waxed tufts of his hair.

“I'll see myself out.”

She expected to have the tray smashed down over her skull forthwith, but she was a fast mover these days and they weren't quick enough. She made it to the public bar and the street unscathed.

Her exultant, teeny victory over sad-twat Ray didn't last, however, not least because he'd still got her money and it was all she'd had. As she joined the express train service to the airport she tried calling Dan again. And again his Pad told her he wasn't available and took the message of her long, uncomfortable silence.

Jude in the office was a very unproductive worker. He turned the vial over in his fingers but it wasn't helping him think. Despite the air-conditioning
he was sweating under his arms and the cold patches where his shirt stuck to him felt like dead skin. He couldn't stop seeing Tetsuo's surprised face and the flat, happy whiskers of that wretched cat, big eyes like twin dishes able to pick up Jude's thoughts. Those eyes had seen the shooting, he'd bet on it. If only there was a way to stick cats in some kind of scanner and read their minds…They'd have found Jude's DNA lurking in the apartment by now, be readying themselves to come and talk to him, or kill him, one or the other.

He'd submitted his reports on Atlanta to Perez. She was reading them now. But it was the Mappa Mundi project that bugged him even more than the cat. He worried about White Horse and her sketchy assurances that the people who'd kidnapped her wanted an investigation. All he had to do to set that in motion was write another report and use the file as evidence, with White Horse as the witness. All he had to do…

Or he could hang fire until Mary got back and let her in on it. He'd feel better if she knew. Somebody had to know, or the whole lot was likely to get blown away when they sprayed his brains all over the sidewalk one of these fine days. Thinking of dying made him hungry. It was afternoon and he hadn't eaten yet today.

He was in the middle of paying for a street hot dog, mustard, no onion, when he got a call from Natalie Armstrong. Juggling the ‘dog and the Pad he moved to a patch of grass where a ginkgo tree gave shade next to the sidewalk and sat there cross-legged.

He didn't recognize Natalie in the vidlink at all, except for the half-face beneath the big, dark glasses and baseball cap, showing a dark mouth which was sincere on one side with a slight cynical upcurl at the other.

“Give me your address,” she said. “I'm coming to visit.”

“What…never mind.” He sent it. “When?”

“Real soon.” She broke the line.

Jude ran a check on it, but even Nostromo couldn't get a trace.
Groaning, he raked through his hair, took a bite of the ‘dog, and tasted nothing but the turmeric and vinegar of mustard exploding in his mouth, which was the way he wanted it so he didn't have to think of Tetsuo's cat and its rose-petal tongue.

He dumped the ‘dog into the nearest trashcan and went back to the stand for coffee. The guy gave him a tired, seen-it-before look. Jude left him with the change and turned back to the steps leading into his building. His boldness felt like it was coming to an end.

He called in to Perez and said he was going to interview a witness, then went home.

When he got there White Horse had left him a note written on paper in her tough scrawl, “Gone to meet lawyer at office downtown. Back p.m. Will call you if needed.” She gave the address, which he checked against the city listings. It looked okay. The firm had a history, financial reports, tax records, famous cases, all above board.

Jude sat down on a stool at the breakfast bar and wondered why he didn't feel so good. He figured it was the ‘dog and went to watch TV for ten minutes while he thought about actually calling the lawyers to see if she'd arrived okay. He moved his thumb over the Pad controls and played back Natalie's message a couple of times.

There was no doubt, she was wearing a disguise. That didn't leave a lot of time.

He was thinking that there wasn't a lawyer in existence who could touch this one. He wouldn't have. Who could he tell?

Working fast on the Pad he put together a list of tantalizing clues and information, rushed off a quick analysis, and put it on standby in the “message send” waiting list, addressed to the premier investigative journalists he knew operating out of Independent Networks in Manhattan. They'd gone into China undercover, scraped out alive from Libya. They'd try.

But then, on the verge of sending it, he hesitated, not even sure whose surrogate finger was on his, ready to press the key. The dark faction
of government topplers? White Horse's own brand of deception and deceit in the name of the People? His own fear, trying to get anyone to help out?

In the end he left it sitting there and went to look for the Pepto-Bismol. He thought he'd wait until Mary got back and then tell her all about it. For the time being he was going to sit tight and do nothing except use what he already had to try and link detail from the CDC vial and Ivanov's other lives.

In his mind Jude heard White Horse telling him the People would lose Deer Ridge if he didn't carry on. He wondered how deep a conspiracy went that involved officers at Fort Detrick and federal court judges. He felt his guts tighten uncomfortably.

He sat with the ghost file and the open bottle of pink medicine and started to try and decipher the tightly packed Russian notes. The message to the journalists sat on file. He looked up at it now and again, but as he read on the idea of casually sending such a time bomb to some unsuspecting guy or girl started to shrivel and falter. By the time he'd found out the extent of Mikhail Guskov's dealings he wasn't sure if he should be more afraid of him or the government. In their ways and their powers, they were a nearly inseparable tangle.

As for Natalie, that side of the conundrum would solve itself when she arrived. He read on and the level of pink in the bottle slowly went down.

White Horse knew from the minute she set eyes on Roger Fassmeyer that he was no lawyer. The offices, the staff, everything at Gutierrez, Fassmeyer, Pilkington seemed fine, from their smart downtown location, their expensive stationery, and their external glass-floored elevator. But Fassmeyer looked lawyerly only in the cut of his suit and the cold demeanour that sealed his face off from his brain. When he stepped in to meet her White Horse's entire body experienced that terrible plunging sensation of a sudden fall; it tightened, braced and
closed in. Her heart almost failed. She prayed that it would, and spare her the rest, but it didn't.

Fassmeyer gave her some cordial bullshit she ignored. She watched him invite her to take a short trip with him, a drive, for the sake of security and no bugging and all that crap. She didn't want to leave the cool room and its mahogany chairs. But she did get up and leave and they walked out together. She stared hard at every secretary she passed, willing them to notice. They smiled at her, their pretty and made-up faces blank.

White Horse thought that Mary surely must have known. Mary might have set her up. But the idea didn't sit right. Mary was Jude's best friend. Mary was kind. White Horse had looked into her face and there'd been none of that badness in it. Nothing. She'd tried to help.