Visions of Liberty (25 page)

The ride from the airport to the hotel—a slow crawl through an almost continuous traffic jam on what was labeled an "expressway," interrupted only by detours around numerous potholes—did nothing to convince me that much had improved in three generations. Beggars in rags cadged pennies from millionaires riding in chauffer-driven air-conditioned limousines. Here, a glitzy apartment building that wouldn't have been out of place in San Francisco stood opposite a pile of garbage blocking the sidewalk and spilling out onto the street; there, a wall topped by razor-sharp barbed wire prevented the wealthy occupants of a village from seeing the teeming slums across the street.

My guess was that Murdock was merely waiting for the heat to die down before moving on.

Andy had set up twenty-four-hour surveillance on Murdock. Two of our operatives had moved into one of the condos as a "couple," and had even become vaguely friendly with Murdock and Sophia Ackerman. Murdock's story, they were told, was that he and his "wife" were retired and were taking a slow, multi-year trip around the world. His next stop? "Well, when we've finished here we'll decide. Maybe flip a coin. Who can say?"

Andy introduced me to our local contact, José Guzman, known to everyone as "Boyet," who I'd called on to help Andy "meet" Sophia Ackerman off the plane.

"We've got one of our people in the condo security force, and three or four others discreetly patrolling the streets around the building."

"Is that enough?" I asked.

"You have to understand that in the Philippines most everything is the opposite to what you're used to. For example, in America, you have law but no government; here we have government but no law."

"Maybe it's jetlag, but I don't get it."

"The system here works on grease. Bribery and corruption. Of course there are laws—the government makes new ones every day. But whether they're enforced, or how, depends on who pays what to whom. Going to court here is like going to an auction.

"What that means is everything and everyone is for sale. So you've got to know who you can really trust.
That's
why I've put so few people onto Murdock. Once somebody talks, inevitably it will get back to Murdock or the people
he's
paid off, and your bird will fly away."

"So what do we do? And there's no extradition agreement we can use."

"Andy and I have talked about that. Here's what I suggest we do. . . ."

It took another week of long days and sleepless nights, intense negotiations, not to mention considerable expense, before we were ready to spring the trap on Murdock. Speed, Boyet stressed, was the essence—a difficult proposition in a country where the local equivalent of the Mexican word
mañana
didn't have quite the same sense of urgency—to make sure Murdock didn't get wind of what we were up to.

As every day passed, more and more people were involved. We did our best to ensure secrecy by paying officials—up to and including the President—bribes we were pretty sure Murdock couldn't match; and one condition of the payments was that 80 percent of the money only got paid when Murdock was on a plane out of the country in handcuffs.

That didn't mean someone who got wind of things couldn't extract a healthy "reward" from Murdock for tipping him off. In my nightmares I was part of a gun battle between two groups of rent-a-cops on the streets of Manila.

On the appointed day, Tim—one of our two operatives who'd befriended Murdock—knocked on the door of his apartment. I, Andy, Boyet, the local chief of police and a couple of cops stood well back from the door. Other police, teamed up with Boyet's people, stood guard on the apartment's rear entrance, and took control of the lobby to guard the elevators as well as prevent the security guards from giving any warning.

"Hey, Tim, come in," said Murdock as he opened the door. Tim took a step forward and then pushed Murdock hard in the chest so he fell backward, landing in a heap on the floor. We rushed in, guns drawn.

"You bastards. And
you,"
he screamed, pointing at Tim, "are a low-down, lying, shit-faced scum of the earth."

Two of the cops pulled him up and handcuffed his wrists behind his back. I heard a crash as Andy put his foot through one of the bedroom doors. In a moment a chastened Sophia Ackerman was led into the living room.

"You bitch," said Murdock, his face reddening with his fury.
"You
brought them here." Forgetting the handcuffs, he struggled to hit her. Realizing he couldn't, he spat in her face instead.

"Yes," said Andy, smiling, "she led me a merry chase. Almost lost her a couple of times. And it looks like we got here just in time: she was packing for a trip."

"And I never saw you, damn your eyes," she said.

"Another hour, we'd have been outta here," said Murdock. "You bastards." I managed to pirouette out of the way as he spat again in my direction.

"Anyway," he said, pulling himself up and trying to look officious and innocent at the same time, "you have no right to be here. I've committed no crime. What's this all about?"

The chief of police pulled out a thick file of papers. Waving them in Murdock's direction he explained: "I have here an order of extradition, signed by the President of the Philippines, for the apprehension of Gerald Murdock and Sophia—"

"Gerald
who
?" said Murdock.

"You," I said. "The goatee and the nose job are certainly a good disguise. Even if you've changed your fingerprints all we have to do is pull off those contact lenses and a retina scan will be conclusive."

Murdock's shoulders slumped.

Sophia Ackerman turned to the chief of police: "You have a warrant for
my
arrest? On what grounds?"

"Embezzlement, false pretences, defrauding an insurance company," he replied.

"I've not been convicted of any such thing," she said adamantly.

"True and not true. At the same time," I said.

A puzzled look crossed her face. "What bullshit!"

"This gentleman here," I said, indicating the chief of police, "has a presidential order to extradite you from the country. So you
must
have been convicted. Here, at least. By the time we land in San Francisco, All-Risks will have presented its case before an adjudicator. In your absence there's a chance the hearing will find,
prima facie,
against you. The best you can hope for is a new date for the hearing, since All-Risks won't have given the proper notice."

"Anyway," said Murdock, "what's this about extradition? The Philippines has no extradition treaty with America."

"It does now. Here," I said, pulling out a sheaf of papers, "is a treaty between All-Risks and the government of the Philippines, signed by the President. Something for you to read . . . on the plane."

"That can't be legal," said Murdock. "Don't you need an act of Congress or something? Presidential order ain't enough. I want to talk to my lawyer."

"That won't be possible," said the chief of police. Pulling out another sheet of paper which he offered to Murdock, grinning when he remembered the handcuffs, he continued: "This is an order for your immediate deportation. It seems that your visa, as well as Miss Ackerman's, has expired."

Murdock looked like he was about to explode. Then his body relaxed and he turned to me with a glint of admiration in his eyes. "You really pulled out all the stops, eh?"

"Well, Berkshire Re did."

"Oh, that I didn't know."

"You know, you'd have done better to stay at home," I told him. "Not in San Francisco, of course. Some other American city. With your money, your disguise and new fingerprints, just by avoiding retina scans we might never have found you. In a place where government is for sale, you can always be outbid."

"Maybe you're right," he said.

"Look on the bright side. Here, the penalty for murder is death. Back home, all you have to do is pay back all the money and you're a free man." The prospect didn't seem to be all that appealing to Murdock. I could sympathize: from wealth to poverty in matter of moments.

"And what about me?" asked Sophia Ackerman.

"Same thing. The presumption is you're an accessory to murder. That was your plan, right?" I said, looking from one to the other. "You were after Ackerman's insurance—the 110,115 gold ounces Sophia got for your murder of hubbie."

They stared at me blankly, neither agreeing nor disagreeing.

I looked at Sophia admiringly—an easy thing to do.

"You're a good actress," I said. "I saw the holo."

She spat at me, this time connecting.

"Time to go," said Andy, looking at his watch.

"Right," I agreed, wiping the spittle off my face. "Let's move—we all have a plane to catch."

Records from the colony's founding years stated that the town of Ferrydock had grown from an early base established near the river mouth, where a motorized pontoon raft had provided the crossing to the peninsula. With its rocky prominences, dunes, and beaches, the peninsula—later named Strandside—was an attractive place for walks and swims or just lazing around to get away from the routine of the settlement for a while. Later, it acquired some stores, a bar, restaurant, and a small hotel to become one of the more popular recreation spots. Although Ferrydock was now a fair-size town, and a low, sleek bridge of concrete spans with a raisable center section—sitting on incongruously ornate steel piers reminiscent of nineteenth-century ideas of aesthetics—crossed the river, a ferry still ran alongside. Not everybody was in enough of a hurry to need the road, one of the locals had explained to Duggan and another official with the mission sent from Earth to reestablish relations with Tharle. And besides, the kids liked the water ride. Notions of cost effectiveness didn't seem to count for much here—and that fitted with the other bizarre notions of economics that had taken root here, which the theorists up in the orbiting mother ship
Barnet
had already decided were probably the major factor responsible for the planet's evident regression in many ways from the levels of technological and political capability possessed by the founders.

Duggan stood in the square at the heart of Ferrydock's central district—an open space really too irregular to justify its name geometrically, bordered by narrow, erratic streets and buildings of the peculiarly curved architectural style reveling in orange-brick walls and green- or blue-tiled roofs that brought back childhood memories of an illustrated edition of Oz. The Tharleans seemed to delight in turrets and towers too, which was also odd, since there was no history of militancy or defense needs to have inspired them. Simply another of their odd whims and fancies expressing itself, Duggan supposed.

It was apparently market day. The stalls around the square were heaped with assortments of unfamiliar fruits, vegetable-like offerings, and other plant forms that grew under the purple-tinted sky. There were refrigerated racks of strange fish, joints of meat, tanks of live fish, and cages containing furry and feathered animals of various kinds, whether intended for food or as pets, Duggan didn't know. And there were tables displaying tools and other hardware, ornaments, art works, kitchenware, haberdashery, household goods, and clothing—much the same as market places anywhere, anytime. Duggan watched a tall, weathered-looking man in a gray shirt and loose blue jacket examining a pair of ceramic sculptures in the form of elongated feminine heads with a suggestion of styled Oriental features.

"How much for these?" he asked the graying-haired lady in charge of the stall. She was sitting in a folding alloy-frame chair, a many-colored, open-weave blanket pulled around her shoulders. A shaggy, yellow-haired creature with a huge-eyed, owl-like face studied the man alertly from the top of an upturned box next to her.

"Ten draks," the woman replied.

The dialect had drifted to a degree that now sounded quaint; or was it that English as spoken on Earth had progressed? Schooling in Tharlean pronunciations, usage, and idioms had been required of all the delegates on the contact mission, and after a few days on the surface Duggan found he was experiencing few problems.

The man turned one of the sculptures over in his hands again and pursed his lips. "I'll give you fifteen."

The woman smiled in the kind of way that said it was a good try. "What do you think I am, destitute or dysfunctional or something? They're not worth that."

"Hey, come on, gimme a break and let me help you out a little. We've all got our pride."

"Eleven, then."

The man shook his head. "I can manage more than that. How about fourteen?"

They eventually settled on twelve. Duggan turned away, mystified, and shook his head. The two armed troopers that regulations required escort him when away from the surface lander at Base 1 beyond the far edge of the town looked back at him unhelpfully. "A strange way of playing poker," Duggan commented.

"They're all crazy," one of the troopers offered.

Then Duggan noticed the woman in a shirt of leafy design on white and bright red shorts, standing a few yards away in front of a mixed, chattering group of people but apparently not with them. Farther back, others among the crowd had stopped and were staring at Duggan and his escorts unabashedly. The woman was perhaps in her mid thirties if Earth standards were anything to judge by, with wiry, shoulder-length hair that varied between being auburn and orange depending how it caught the light, and the bronzed skin with a hint of metallic sheen that the blue-shifted light from Xylon-B evoked among Tharleans generally. Her body was slim and lithe, her face tapering to a pointy chin, with a straight nose, dimpled cheeks, and a mouth that was hovering on the edge of wanting to smile but at the same time hesitant, as if she were unsure how it might be taken. Instead, she let her eyes interrogate him silently. They were deep, brown, intelligent, and mirthful, the kind that could arouse immediate interest in possibilities and prospects—especially in a new and strange, yet-to-be-explored place, after an excruciatingly uneventful voyage dominated by routine and officiousness. Duggan's features softened. He let his mouth pucker in the way of one of two people unsure of their ground offering to meet halfway.