Shudder (24 page)

“Just stay behind me and let me do the talking,” Andy told Dave out of the corner of his mouth.

Phil the Kill saw them coming which made him light up a nervous cigarette and point his shades the other way.

Both detectives worked on gathering additional evidence in order to build up on the solitary eyelash found in Jane's home.

Dave was in his leather jacket, with an ancient
Immortal
sweater, in blue jeans, and wearing worn sneakers. He was acutely aware how stereotyped an attempt this was of an inquisitive servant of the law trying to blend in. It was the best he could do.

Andy was in his usual denim man style.

They approached Phil the Kill, crowding him a little.

Andy initiated contact. “Hi, Philly,” he drawled with the classical menacing, amiable, thin smile which combines both the good cop and the bad cop in it.

“Hi,” answered the reluctant informer, without pointing his shades at their faces.

“I have a question, Philly.”

“Surprise of the century.”

Andy measured him with a gaze that was quickly going cold, “Tell me, smart ass, who deals the best stolen cars lately?”

“What? Er...Loco Bob.”

“No, not Loco Bob, I mean the really classy stuff,” now Andy spoke furtively and even made his eyes shifty in an attempt to start up Phill's reflexes. “You know, not the Pao Pao Volvos. For instance if I wanted a Toyota Focus, but didn't want to pay full price—where should I go?”

“Go to a second-hand car dealer.”

“Philly.” Now came the time for a stern hint of being offended, “Philly, I've been good to you so far.” He edged himself even closer to the informer, “Don't you start giving me no lip.”

The shades finally pointed into the direction of Andy's face, “Okay, okay, don't get worked up, lieutenant. If you want a new Focus with a makeover, you want to go to Croc Jock, in the east side.”

“Where exactly?”

“Tesla street, by the book market.”

Dave's world exploded
. Everything he saw jumped erratically as if a power surge had hit a computer, and a deafening hum filled up his ears.

As he staggered forward, he heard a sharp loud noise.

A shot. Guns.

Old training sprung out of the nooks in which it slumbered and took over Dave's body. With a subtle movement of his feet and knees he found his perfect fighting balance and turned to face the enemy.

Blurry fragments picked up by his eyes were immediately rearranged by his brain into an identifiable coherent picture. Nomies.

They were attacked by a bunch of nomies.

He blocked an amateurish attempt to stick a knife into him and automatically, as a simple continuation of his movement, broke the nomie's arm at the elbow.

At the same time another shot came from Andy's gun, another man doubled up and collapsed.

Dave heard a scream behind him. He and Andy spun around simultaneously.

Andy shot the last nomie in the face, but it was too late. The informer sank to his knees clawing at the knife hilt protruding from his throat.

Suddenly, the situation was over. Three nomies shot, one nursing his broken arm, not daring to ran away, not daring risk a bullet in the back.

One informer who had just gargled his last gargle.

There were only four nomies to begin with.

The smell of gunpowder lingered, together with the mental echoes of the gunshots.

Dave touched the back of his head gingerly and looked at his fingers. No blood, thankfully. Still his brain buzzed. It must have been a bottle. Most likely the broken one by his feet.

He kicked at it half-heartedly and looked at the corpses again. Bloody idiots.

Someone screamed. It was a woman, who was looking at the dead bodies and at the three men standing. More people loitered nearby.

Andy took out his phone and called for an ambulance and for backup. Then he took out a cigarette and smoked silently, looking at the dead nomies but apparently seeing nothing.

Soon cars arrived, doors slammed, radios crackled, brief explanations were taken down, bodies were covered up and taken away, the wounded attacker was pushed into a patrol car, the broken bottle stuffed into an evidence bag, and only Dave, Andy, some curious pedestrians, and three small puddles of drying blood were left.

Then some faint gray smoke whipped up by the exhaust pipe of Andy's car, the clicking of signal lights came to life as Andy put a hand on the steering wheel, Dave buckled himself in, and they too were gone.

“You think this was an accident, man?” Dave asked after some silent fidgeting.

Andy didn't take his eyes of the road and didn't answer.

“I mean,” Dave continued, “there is a chance that someone told the scumbags to attack us and kill the informer before he sings. No?”

Still silent, still not looking at Dave, Andy fumbled in his coat pocket and took out a cigarette pack. He lifted it up to his parted lips and dragged one out with his teeth. Then he offered the pack to Dave.

“No thanks, man.”

Andy hid the pack back in his pocket, took out the lighter and lit his cigarette. He pressed the breaks softly. It was a red light.

He breathed the smoke out of his window and finally looked at Dave, “I have no idea what happened there. But it was a very close shave. How's the head by the way?”

“Fine, no blood. I don't think I have a concussion.”

“Let me see your pupils,” said Andy and studied Dave's eyes. “Yeah, I think your brain is fine.”

The lights changed again, they drove on. Andy spoke some more, in a measured tone, alien to his lips, “While we have our little talk with Croc Jock, the boys back in the precinct will have their little talk to the fella whose elbow you pointed backwards.”

He curled up the right side of his mouth, a half-grin for Dave's benefit. “He's already signed in as a ‘wounded suspect'; they can work him over a little if he tries to act the iron man.”

When they finally reached the book market there were already three fire trucks in front of a nearby warehouse. There was the usual crowd of spectators, firemen darting hither and thither, two patrol cars, and two ambulances.

Flames reached high from the windows and even as Dave and Andy got out of the car, a series of explosions rocked the place.

Andy flashed his badge at the nearest fireman, “What happened here?”

“A gas truck crashed into this place and it was full of cars,” the fireman replied with guttural indignation at the stupidity of truck drivers. “You missed the big explosions. These are just the last of the cars inside going up.”

Andy looked at Dave. Now his tone was so measured one would think he was a Roman stoic freshly fortified with an opium mix, “To answer your questions, Dave: no, I do not think that the nomie attack was an accident. Phill's death was also not an accident, and this here,” he pointed at the flaming husk of the warehouse, “this here is also not an accident.”

Dave had never seen Andy so white. As if reading his mind, Andy rubbed his cheeks, spat on the pavement and continued looking down at his spit.

“I have a family, Dave,” he said presently, “I have a wife, I have two daughters, and I love them all dearly. I'm going to let this case go. I can't take on senator Eysenck.”

Dave looked at the deflated Andy, and felt a general sadness. “I understand man, I really do.” He ran his tongue over his upper teeth, “I don't have a family so I'm going on.”

Anton nodded cordially at the colleagues in ‘monitoring', he waved cheerfully to the junior analysts, and entered his private office.

He plopped into his chair, which also gave a cheerful squeak at impact, and switched on his computer.

It was a fine day. It was a fine day, in a fine city, and he himself was one fine fellow.

His little Natalie was all right. He had pulled it off and she had stepped back from the brink of broken existence.

This was certainly cause for celebration. He ripped open a pack of expensive Camels and lit up.

The bitter taste ripped into the tip of his tongue, then spread, crawling over the roof of his mouth, making even the teeth itch with delight.

He reviewed the news headlines with a tolerant expression. Blah-blah, explosions in a warehouse, mass knife fight in the Tropica bar, nomies shot by undercover cops, mother convicted of strangling baby, father convicted of honor killing of daughter, boy crossing the world in a balloon shot down over Minsk.

He pressed the ‘politics' section, and simultaneously opened a gossip site. Ah, Natalie's people, the nationalist nerds, will have a rally outside the ministry of education, demanding more patriotism in schools.

Anton shrugged, deposited some Camel ash in the longship, and clicked ‘more world news'.

He reviewed the gossip concerning the upcoming marriage between the Belgian princess and the son of Khazakstan's hereditary dear leader and the union of the son of the Greek Prime Minister with a Saudi princess. Through these archaic maneuvers, the EU would guarantee itself more natural resources outside the Kremlin's influence.

Anton leaned back on his chair. The historical fluke, which took place between the chaos of WWI and the fall of the Soviet Union, was finally over.

Although there were many new players on the global stage, in general business was now as usual, as it had always been for centuries. Only ageing anarchists like him could see anything wrong with that.

The short-lived window of unpredictable change, opened by the bullet in Sarajevo in 1914 and later maintained by nuclear standoff was finally closed.

The 21st century was now a jazzed up continuation of the 19th, with the hundred years in the middle laying discarded on the rubbish heap of history together with a hundred million corpses.

With some anger, he opened the ‘Our Earth' section of the world news.

The annual meeting of the heads of the environment ministries of the developed world, this time taking place in Seoul, was over. Notes were compared, progress was recorded, credit was given where credit was due.

In spite of various panic-mongering alarmists, things were looking up.

The latest strain of the genetically modified moths finally worked, successfully filling the ecological niche left by the bees. In the places where the bees were dead, pollinating could now continue. The new deserts were, even now, being reclaimed.

Another victory for a healthy and robust can do attitude.

Where we're going , we won't need Bees
, was the highlighted stance of a confidence-radiating analyst in a dark blue suit.

The disappearance of marine life was also successfully battled. The huge inland breeding tanks were now capable of covering eighty percent of the world's demand for fish.

The forecast was that, within two years, the supply of fish bred in captivity would completely compensate the disappearance of fish in the wild.

Levels of oxygen and carbon monoxide were monitored worldwide and there was no cause for undue alarm. The strains of oxygen producing algae were already making up eight tenth of what the disappeared phytoplankton had produced.

Three hundred people were arrested and three have died—one of them a policeman, during the riots outside the high level environmental summit. The mayor of Seoul assured the world that the troublemakers were professional terrorists from abroad, not honest Koreans.

Two billion people were estimated to be living on the edge of starvation this year. The top fifteen economies of the world pledged to end world hunger by 2080.

At this Anton finally smiled.

The date.

Exactly a hundred years after the time when true communism was supposed to arrive in the USSR. As promised by comrade Khrushchev. Instead, only the Soviet Olympics had arrived.

God, I'm so full of useless knowledge
, Anton thought and blinked frantically with an unconsciously savage expression, trying to rattle his mind into line.

With a few tense clicks, he closed all the websites and rocked on his chair for a few seconds. Then he pressed the buzzer and asked the secretary to invite the junior analysts into his office. It was time to return to the normal tempo of work.

Natalie sat at her desk in the National Patriots HQ, her fingers merrily clicking away at the keyboard.

Kurt was sitting near her and marveled as in front on his gaze a strictly organized list of bullet points for Mister Eberstark's forthcoming interview took shape in a matter of minutes.

Tomorrow Eberstark would be a guest in the morning
Opinion Hour
show, which claimed to be watched by half the nation.

The host, Rachel Feist, was a shrewd journalist. While she wasn't likely to attack Eberstark, she would certainly make him sweat as she nit-picked what her monitoring team prepared from the available info concerning the National Patriot agenda.

So now, Natalie prepared the likely questions which Rachel would ask and the answers which Eberstark must give. Alternatively, when that was impossible, at least the general framework within which he should improvise.

Question: You say that the government spends too much money on wars. Do you believe that the budget for the army should be smaller?

Answer: Evade this trap by saying: I have the deepest respect for our fighting men and women and realize that they deserve the best equipment, training and living conditions which money can buy. I do believe that at least the mainstream arms deals must be opened to public scrutiny and therefore public control.

Likewise, I am certain that an unbiased audit would show how costs in the army can be reduced without the need to inconvenience our brave soldiers. True honesty, transparency, and accountability, will certainly help make our army better.

Question: Do you think that failing big businesses and banks should not be bailed out by the government?

Answer: You've already committed yourself, so you can't evade the issue. Say that helping big businesses must be done in a more transparent way, with greater control and with direct responsibility.

Possible topic: Pensions—say that retirement age must be dropped immediately back to seventy, and that a committee must be formed, to figure out how to make possible bringing it down even further .

General position: Ignore any presented facts and go for pathos. When the welfare and dignity of our honest and hard working citizens is concerned, we must not say “It's impossible”, we must ask: “How do we make it possible?” Nothing is impossible for our great nation, as we have proved time and time again, and it is most emphatically
not
impossible to allow dignity and comfort for our deserving fathers and mothers.

Kurt grinned at Natalie. He had found her quite attractive initially, but now she looked even more attractive.

Beyond attractive.

There was an air of self-confident leisure in her every movement, and when she talked her eyes looked into the eye of the other person, but without any challenge, just making contact.

He was supposed to be working with her, but she obviously didn't need him and only listened to his comments and ideas out of politeness.

“I'll go get us some chocolate,” he said and stood up. At least he could make himself useful by purchasing something to feed the beautiful mind inside this beautiful head.

The beautiful head turned to him for a second. “Yes that we great Kurt,” she said curtly, “and a coffee please. Cream, no sugar.”

Kurt nodded with a smile, but all that was wasted, because Natalie was already re-submerged, continuing her typing.