The Scarab (18 page)

“I was ten years old.” If I had
been holding anything in my hands, I would have crushed it. I wanted to shout
and put my fist through the drywall. Instead, I looked at my shoes, relating
the events as if they were part of a news story, and not my life. “My dad was
on a corporate fishing trip. Everyone on board was taken hostage by the
Committee.” Mare and Nigel looked horrified. I hadn’t told anyone this before. “Two
Exotech workers from the pier turned up dead, tied to the pilings under the
wharf with steel fishing line. Given that there were no signs of a struggle, it
had to have been an inside job. Someone from the company helped the people in
black ski masks on board. Until the bodies turned up, they wouldn’t know who.”

I took a deep breath and continued.
“The wait was agonizing. We knew the government would never give in to the
demands. Our only hope was that the military was rounding up all known or
suspected members of the Committee for interrogation. A few weeks later, a man
from the Brazilian Department of Commerce showed up at our front door. My
mother was terrified that Dad had been found dead. What happened was worse.
According to members of the Committee questioned at length by government experts,
there would be no survivors. Since the kidnap victims were all supporters of an
exploitive and oppressive regime, and no evidence could be left, the victims
were cut up and thrown into the ocean as shark bait. Every half hour the ransom
was late, another company employee died while the others watched. The judges
were then thrown to the sharks. From that, the government deduced that anyone
left alive must be a collaborator. To cover their bases, they filed charges
against all Exotech employees who had been on the ship. My mother and I were
asked to leave immediately. Our work visa had been revoked. We weren’t even
allowed the decency of a funeral.”

I closed my eyes, remembering a
list of indignities and innuendoes I would never forgive. “In answer to your
question, my family is not, nor ever has been, a member of the Committee for
Social Justice. I do, however, have an abiding dislike for both kidnappers and
idiotic bureaucrats. So when I met the guy that was working Mare over, maybe I
did get carried away. I told you I blacked that part out. You’re lucky I left
him one good leg. I’m sure if Mark hadn’t been there, that man would never have
walked again. Tell me again why you think I’m working with these subhumans?”

Larry was pale. Reynolds wiped his
face sheepishly. “Over ten thousand dollars was recently charged to your hotel
account. The recipient field on the credit slip was left suspiciously blank.
Since the issue of ransom was never mentioned, we naturally assumed it was a
pay off. What was the money for, Mr. Hayes?”

“I can’t tell you,” I mumbled. Mary
Ann would not find out about the ring from anybody but me at the proper time,
and I certainly didn’t plan to tell these guys first.

“Excuse me,” said Larry. “He asked
you a direct question. What are you hiding? Explain to him that he’s got to
answer us, counselor.”

“I can’t tell them,” I protested.

“Why not?” Nigel asked me.

“I can’t say,” I repeated, looking
at the champagne.

With astounding intuition, Nigel
hit on a solution. “Would he be permitted to tell Special Investigator Anselm?
Then she could share it with the rest of us as she deems appropriate.”

I nodded. “Alone.”

When everyone, including Nigel had
left the room, I closed the door behind them. I sat on the bed beside Mary Ann’s
chair, and held her right hand in my left. “There’s something I have to say,
and I wanted you to hear it first.”

“Oh, Ethan. How bad is it?” she
asked, squeezing my hand tightly.

I groped for words desperately, but
I kept fumbling them. I made three false starts, but the words never got to my
lips. I could feel my pulse in my hand. Mare was truly beautiful. I focused on
her eyes and concentrated. She was my oldest friend. If anyone would
understand, it had to be her. I just had to start saying something. “These aren’t
ideal circumstances. I’m sorry. I wanted to tell you in my own time, in my own
way, but they’ve forced my hand. Before I tell you, I need to know. Do you love
me?”

With everything we had been
through, she had never said those words. I think it was a defense mechanism. If
she didn’t say it, it wouldn’t hurt as bad if I rejected her. I waited, tense,
as she started to cry. I kneeled in front of her chair and put my arms around
her. She had been holding back all day. Tears rolled down her face.

After a long moment, and several
sniffs, Mare said, “No matter what you’ve done, I’ll be there to help you,
Ethan.”

The words sent a tentative wave of
excitement through me, flipping my stomach and increasing the volume of my
heartbeats. “This isn’t about friendship. I don’t need to ask about that.” I
took a deep, shaky breath. If she said yes after a day like today, I knew she’d
be with me through anything. I stared into her shining eyes and brushed a stray
hair out of the way. “Before I tell you what I spent the money on, I need a
simple yes or no.”

She swallowed, and then replied
with a soft, deep, earnest, “yes.”

I exhaled and a smile wrapped
itself around my face so wide I wouldn’t be able to pry it off. “I told the
clerk not to put the description in the billing record because I didn’t want
anyone to know...” Casually, I reached into my pocket and pulled out the black
velvet ring box. “...what I got you this morning.” After a struggle, I managed
to flip the box open one-handed. I had kept it simple, a single large round-cut
stone. Twice, she looked down at the ring and back up at me, trying to change
gears.

“Oh my God, Ethan. It’s...” Now she
was speechless, but her smile was as big as mine.

“Will you marry me?” I asked.

Mare laughed. “Yes,” she said
again, in the same tone as before. I loved that word. Seeing what an awkward
time I was having pulling the ring out, she pried it out and handed it to me. “This
finger,” she coached, bouncing up and down on her chair as I slid it on.

After the diamond was all the way
on, she held her hand out at arms length and moved it to watch the sparkle. She
giggled and then picked me up under the arms in a full hug. I didn’t even mind
the pain. Her whoop brought the Feds running. When she showed them the
engagement ring, still bouncing, Reynolds let us go. “I guess that makes us a
sorry bunch of detectives.”

Nigel pulled out the champagne and
shouted, “You scoundrel!”

I shrugged. “I had to be devious or
she’d find out. Mary Ann’s a hard woman to surprise. Besides, these reporters
have been into everything. I didn’t want it announced on the evening news
before I asked her.”

“No hard feelings?” Reynolds asked,
shaking my left hand.

“Why, what do you need?” I said
cautiously.

He paused for a moment, feigning
hurt. Upon weighing his options, however, he decided on the honesty approach. “We
have it on good authority that GEDM is going to make a play for you tomorrow.
When they kill you...”

“Excuse me?”

“We need a couple of minutes
preparation to set up the sting. We can only tap one line at a time with the
analyzer and we were hoping that...”

“I’d roll over and die? Take a hit
for the home team? No way,” I said loudly enough to attract Nigel’s attention.
He shushed me, not wanting to ruin what remained of the night for Mare.

“You said you’d cooperate. It was
part of the conditions when we released you the first time,” Reynolds hissed.

I gave a sardonic laugh and turned
to Nigel.

For once I let my mouthpiece speak
for me. “Any attempt to force my client into actions which could harm his
company or prevent him from crossing the finish line would be actionable as
restraint of trade.”

On my way to the door, I eased his
mind. “Relax. You want a human sacrifice, I can arrange one.” Over the course
of the evening, I had figured out how the Exotech stealth craft was making its
impossible gas mileage. They were riding the slipstream behind another vehicle.
I’d find out who when we got the printouts at eleven. “Frodo is dead; he just
doesn’t know it yet. I can choreograph his death to the second. I just want to
get back in the race first.”

Nigel was impressed. Reynolds wasn’t
so sure. He slipped a CD into my pocket. “Just in case, we put a file on here
we want you to put on your system.”

“Virus?”

He nodded. “The tech boys isolated
it on one of the dead disk drives. We call it a rattler. When it’s read off of
certain disk drives, it activates a test pattern on the controller chip. It’s a
bug we just found. The test pattern wipes the drive clean and crashes the heads
by the time it’s done. Your workstation is safe.”

“A cyanide capsule?”

He nodded. “The fingerprint doesn’t
match Kali’s scrubber. This rattler belongs to a third party. But if we don’t
catch her before she finishes draining you, this will give her system
indigestion.” If the Feds couldn’t have the data, then no one would. It was
second prize at best.

“I’ll keep it in mind,” I promised.
Mare practically skipped past me into the hall. Foxworthy gave us the bottle
and feigned sleepiness so he could leave us alone.

I pulled him close for one last
favor. “We’ve got to pick up a printout from the judges at eleven. You are a
registered team member. Could you...?”

He nodded, and vanished.

Back in our new room, I left my
shadow outside and spent some quality time with my partner. I made sure to
disconnect all the phones. Mare and I didn’t talk about the race all night. She
eventually fell asleep in my arms with her head against my chest.

We slept in late Sunday morning. When I woke to a gentle
knocking at the door, my right arm and neck were stiff. Remembering last night
made me smile. Mare looked at the clock; it was almost ten. This was unheard-of
because she always got up religiously at seven every morning. Seeing how late
she was, Mare muttered a brief curse and dashed for the bathroom. This time I
heard the lock click shut behind her. I was going to ask for my hairbrush, but
running a hand through my ridiculously short hair, I decided not to bother. “Be
right there,” I shouted, changing quickly into my new Snap-On jumpsuit.

“Whitaker?” I asked through the
still-bolted door.

“Sir. A gentleman from California to see Special Investigator Anselm. I believe you were expecting him?” said my
FBI bodyguard. He had been with me when I called Mare’s youngest brother
yesterday.

I heard a muffled, “Special
Investigator, too cool.”

I unlocked the door in record time.
“Steve.” He had a brown leather jacket on, and an overnight kit under one arm.
Comically, our haircuts were almost the same, neither one of us had shaved that
morning. We pointed and laughed at the same time, too, making the slap-stick
even funnier. Because I was using my left hand, it came off like a mime in the
mirror routine.

“Ethan, good to meet you,” he told
me, moving to shake my hand. He had still been in the service when I was dating
Mare last time and hadn’t a chance to inspect me like the rest of her family
had. Steve looked more like his father than the other two brothers did, but he
still acted like the teenage beach bums I had seen in Hawaii. Noticing my
injuries, he went into professional mode. Examining my bruises, he said, “I
didn’t know racing was a contact sport.”

I cracked a smile. “We had a little
excitement yesterday. I’ll tell you about it some other time. We’re running a
little late. The bruising looks worse than it is. I’m a hemophiliac. Mary Ann
will be so surprised to see you. Come in and have a seat.” I went to the
refrigerator to see what I could offer him.

Steve lost his smile and put down
his bag. “I didn’t know that. Where’s your ID bracelet or tags?”

I shrugged. “I never bothered.” The
cupboard here was bare. We’d have to stock up on our own food supplies again.
Did the Feds handle that now? I wasn’t exactly sure.

He looked around. This place had
darker carpeting than our old suite and a large round Aztec calendar hanging on
the living room wall. “No vaporizer either. Man, if you get a nosebleed in this
dry air, you’re screwed. You’ve got to take better care of yourself. Did you
know about this?” Steve asked Whitaker.

Whitaker looked upset, too. It was
nothing, but they were treating me like a minor whose parents had just caught
him smoking cigarettes. “No, sir.” I realized from his demeanor that I had just
made his difficult job even harder to do.

I looked in the bedroom for my
prescription and closed the door when I remember where I had left them. I was
also a little skittish about letting anyone else see in the room; it was none
of their business. “It’s okay. I have my pills right next door. I suppose I
should have taken a few yesterday, but I got distracted,” I explained weakly.

“Pills?” Whitaker asked. He wore
the same suit as yesterday, but his shirt had a faint maroon tint to it, and
the tie was dark red. He had found time to shave and didn’t have a wrinkle on
him. I’d have to ask his secret.

“Type B? Desmosuppressin, the
usual?” Steve said, helpfully.

I nodded and offered to take his
coat. He wore a shirt commandeered from a set of hospital scrubs, and
loose-fitting, baggy, tan pants.

“We show no such inventory from the
crime scene. I would have been informed,” Whitaker said with unshakable faith.

I put two and two together in my
head while I was hanging the coat. “The only other person in that room was
Kali. You don’t suppose she took the bottle?”

“Crime scene?” asked Steve. “I
thought this guy was here because of the bomb threat yesterday.”

“Steve!!!” shouted Mare as she ran
from the bathroom, looking fresh and ready for the cameras.

As she was hugging him and catching
up on family gossip at mach speeds, I whispered to Whitaker. “Find out for
sure. If Kali knows my secret, you may need some help.” He growled and left the
room.

“Congratulations!” Steve said when
she showed him the ring. “Jeez, no wonder you said yes.” He laughed, and she
punched him in the shoulder.

Steve clapped me on the back and
said, “You didn’t tell me about that. Have you told Mom yet?”

She replied, “It was too late last
night to call.”

“Well what are you waiting for?”
Steve said.

Mare glanced at me for permission. “We
do have a lot to accomplish before the race,” she said to give me an out.

The race didn’t come online till
noon, to give people time to get back from church. We were, after all, in the
Bible belt and some states still had laws about commerce on Sunday. As usual,
we’d have some time to scout and repair before today’s race officially started.
“Go ahead. When you’re done, we can all go to the hotel brunch. I hear it’s a
four-star affair. Meanwhile, I’ll head down to Nigel’s room and get the latest
printouts. Make all the calls you want. The convention happens every year, but
engagements only happen once.” I kissed her good-bye temporarily and touched
the side of her face as I left. In the hallway, I could still smell her
perfume.

When I reached his room, I found
Nigel was beaming this morning, too. He was dressed to the hilt in a British
motorist outfit from the early 1900s, complete with the aviator goggles. “Working
too hard?” I asked.

He chuckled. “This is nothing, you
should see what I golf in. I brought this for the costume party,” he said,
modeling the outfit. “It belonged to my grandfather. He was in the RAF.”

I asked him for the printouts, and
he said, “Over there. I’ve got the executive summary on my laptop. Let me print
a copy. This thing is essential for contracts. I can get 300 lines per page if
I have to.” He must have brought half his office in those suitcases. The second
bed, TV, and both walnut dressers were loaded with suitcases. His wall had a
nice tapestry, but little other decoration. Compared with other accommodations
I had seen here, this was almost Spartan. In contrast to my old apartment,
though, it was still incredibly lavish. The rest of the room was cluttered with
SimCon pamphlets, maps, and notes that he must have retrieved from our old
suite. I’m glad he got them, because I wouldn’t have thought of them until it
was too late.

“I appreciate this Nigel, but I
didn’t bring you here to work,” I explained.

“Nonsense. I can’t remember when I’ve
had a better time. All this is very exciting. Did I tell you I’ve always wanted
an Astin Martin, just like James Bond? Well now I get to be on his racing team.”
He pulled a single sheet of paper off the mini-printer.

He was wired! In truth, I’d never
seen Nigel this excited. “Well, I know what Celeste can get you for Christmas.”

“Celeste! Yes. I forgot. She’d
roast my toes for that. I just called her last night, and she was delighted! I’m
told I can’t go home again unless I invite both of you to dinner at your
earliest convenience. More of a dinner party, actually.”

“I appreciate the thought, Nigel,
but I wouldn’t want to put her to any trouble.”

He laughed. “I confess, she means
to ambush you and introduce you to all her friends and family as a kind of
engagement party. But remember, you didn’t hear it from me.”

I zipped my lips by way of promise.

“Where is the girl?” he asked,
casually.

“Uh, woman,” I corrected. Mare has
flayed people for less. “With her brother Steve, telling the whole family. I
don’t have anyone to call.” I pondered this for a moment. “We haven’t set the
date yet, Nigel. But would you consider being best man?”

He was taken aback. “I’m very
honored, but don’t you have anyone else your own age?”

I shrugged. “My best friend in
school was Nick. He died in the last NATO action. My best friends since then
have been Mare and you. I can’t very well ask Mare, can I? Just think about it.
Nothing is settled yet.”

He nodded. “Certainly, certainly.”

“Oh, we’re all going to the hotel
brunch. We’d like you to come along, our treat.”

He agreed under the condition that
I wouldn’t tell Celeste if he snitched a few strips of bacon. Then he handed me
today’s game bulletin along with the executive summary containing the status
and weaponry on every remaining contestant. Since I was pretty familiar with
these already, I flipped through the color fliers first.

We would resume from where we left
off in the morning session. The first session would last three hours, and it
would be a free-for-all. At 4:00 PM, the race would stop for the last break.
The final session would begin at 5:00 PM, immediately after the charity banquet.
Since we should have been passing Nuremburg by then, the press releases
included information about the trials held there after World War II, as well as
the monuments built later. I was more interested in the tourist promotion for Munich’s Octoberfest. “Too bad we didn’t go through in October,” I muttered.

“Oh, they don’t hold it in October
any more. It’s too cold, and the drunks freeze,” he said with a straight face.

“You’ve been?” I asked.

“My brother runs a little
electronics company there. I can tell you a little about it if you like,” he
volunteered.

“Good beer?” I asked.

Foxworthy frowned a little at this,
perhaps remembering the FCC accusation of alcoholism. “I suppose. They have
beautiful old architecture, a wonderful subway system, and old Bavarian castles
that put the rest of the world to shame. King Ludwig knew how to decorate. What
they won’t tell you on the news is how bad the drivers are there.”

“I thought the Autobahn was a model
system.”

He shook his head. “In the city,
they are maniacs. And the swearing! You can always tell when a person from Munich is worked up because they slip into a very clipped Bavarian dialect.”

“Anything else I should know?” I
asked, scanning first his report and then a highlighted printout. He must have
been preparing this for hours.

“They’re very rigid, like
everything to be proper. I remember when my brother...”

“I meant about the race.”

We were interrupted by a knock at
the door. After introductions, I passed the summary to Mare, and Nigel
continued. “Look at the GEDM entry closest to you, the weapons.”

Steve blurted out a word we couldn’t
broadcast over the network feed. “Microwave lasers.”

“MASERs are illegal in most
countries,” Nigel said.

I wasn’t impressed. “We break ten
laws a minute in this game, what’s the deal?”

Nigel was serious. “The microwaves
pass through windshields without being affected. Once inside the vehicle, they
heat up any water molecules, cooking the target long after the beam shuts off.”

Steve understood immediately. “So
they have one purpose, to kill the pilot while leaving the vehicle unharmed. It’s
kind of like the neutron bomb on a small scale.”

Nigel nodded.

“You’ve put an enormous amount of
work into this. Thank you, Nigel. But, I don’t have a pilot to cook yet,” I
said.

Steve chimed in. “MASERs are still
nasty. Even if they don’t melt through you, they can blow up your radiator from
the inside.” Mare stared at him. “What are you looking at me like that for? I’ve
never used them. Marines just need to know these things.”

“I’ve got foil countermeasures,” I
explained.

Steve snorted. “Why stop there, why
not stuff popcorn up his barrel?”

This gave me an idea. I filed it
for future reference. “What concerns me is how much power those things take.
What kind of power plant do they have?”

“Nuke,” Mare said, glancing at the
sheet.

I sighed. “Great. When I kill him,
I’m going to have to be really careful or I’ll pollute half the countryside. I
don’t want to contaminate my hull any more than I already have.”

“When you kill him? What are you
packing?” Steve asked. He didn’t seem to be questioning my confidence. If I
said it, and Mare let it pass, he believed it. He was enjoying his new-found
insider status and had a healthy, if morbid, curiosity.

“Machineguns.”

“Is that it?”

Nigel intervened. “We can use our
repair funds to purchase special ammunition to counter this threat. I took the
liberty of highlighting the selections available on this page,” he said turning
to a page near the end where the highlighting color had changed to blue. He had
been a very busy boy.

“Spent uranium slugs?” asked Mare.

“Rock and Roll,” said Steve.

“Too heavy,” I explained. “In fact,
I’m jettisoning most of what’s left of the normal bullets from the sled so we
can travel as light as possible. I will be loading some blue paint pellets for
emergencies, though.”

Mare nodded. She knew about our
invisible enemy and approved. “Good for style points if you want to count coup,
and the sensors won’t go off when you arm them because it’s not live ammo.”

“Why don’t you have more weapons?”
Steve asked, staring at our specifications.

I shrugged. No one else had
questioned my design, maybe because they were afraid of offending me. Normally,
these questions would have rubbed me the wrong way, but he asked them in a way
that assured me he was only a novice trying to help. “Partly because of cost
and weight. This is a race. Mainly, I made the decision because of philosophy.
The fifty caliber shells will penetrate any middle or lightweight like butter,
and if I meet anybody bigger than me, I should run. People who think a big gun
is an excuse to fight whomever they meet usually end up dead. I plan to win.”