Aphrodites tears, p.25
Aphrodite's Tears, page 25
The Craddock angle required more thought as well. Grimes knew Craddock very well, and even the cold assassin had noted that when a goal looked like it was within his grasp, Craddock could develop tunnel vision sufficient to blind him to all sorts of iniquities.
Nothing the woman was saying was impossible, and only a few parts were improbable. His mind, detached and emotionless, demanded more information. No conclusions could be drawn from what he knew right now. Quality of judgment was directly proportionate to the quality of data, and his data was too scant for the quiet mind to trust any judgments based upon it. He decided to shift tactics and see if there was any way to shake the woman’s story.
“You haven’t really made your case very well.”
“Once we go through those records, the case is going to make itself. What you do with that is up to you.”
He tilted his head. “You assume you will survive this?”
“Yes. Eighty-five percent sure I survive this.”
“That’s oddly specific. Do you want to tell me why you picked that number?”
“Sure. You drugged me because you need me alive and can’t beat me in a fight. You could not have taken me too far from the hotel because Manny will have traced your car. I’m certain you did something to hide where we stopped, because otherwise Roland would be cleaning your organs off of his boots by now.”
Grimes let his eyebrows rise a touch. The woman continued. “You can’t kill me yet because you haven’t got Manny, so I’m safe until you do. That would mean that your people will be trying to set up a meet to discuss my release in exchange for Manny.” She dismissed this with a huff. “We all know that will never work, but you don’t care. You just need him out in the open so you can take your shot. By now Hardesty will have called for all of us to be killed because we now have evidence about what he’s been doing.” She paused for a breath. “So, you can’t kill me yet, and every second that goes by is another second for the rest of my team to find me. They will find me.” She raised her chin and shook her head to forestall his response. “No, no, no. That’s not an expression of hope or faith, Grimes. That’s just the truth. Roland has been doing ‘search-and-destroy’ work his whole life. Manny was your best infiltrator, and Mindy still holds the top seat on the Hunter’s Lodge leader boards. It’s not a question of ‘will they find me?’ but rather a question of ‘how quickly.’”
“But if not quickly enough? Or if they have already been handled?” Grimes pushed her. He was intrigued by her analysis. There was much more to this woman than mere wired reflexes.
“There’s your fifteen percent uncertainty.”
He almost laughed. “I would think there is a lot more than fifteen points’ worth of variation to that!”
“There would be, except you have to balance that against me escaping, too. The chance of me extricating myself offsets the additional risks. The scenario trees get complicated fast, with lots of branches crossing each other.”
“Even if you are right, that does not explain why a drugged woman tied to a bed thinks her chances are so good.”
Her face broadcast confidence bordering upon conceit. “That’s because your data is bad.”
“Do tell.”
Lucia’s hand darted forward and struck Grimes under the chin. His head snapped back and his teeth clicked together. She followed with another blow that drove the assassin off the cot and sent him sprawling to the floor. She was upon him before he understood what was happening, and his hasty defense was batted aside with skill eclipsed only by the contempt served with it. She cinched a forearm across his throat and pinned him to the floor.
“You see, Grimes. I’m not drugged, and I’m not tied up.”
On cue, a massive crash shook the building, and heavy rhythmic thuds vibrated the floors. Someone very heavy was stomping their way.
“You got lucky, Grimes,” Lucia hissed into his ear. “I got to you before Roland did.” Then louder, she called out, “In here, Roland!”
Killam Grimes did not feel lucky. The door to the cell first crumpled, then tore away from its moorings. The towering black shape of the fixer blocked any view of the hall beyond it. Lying on his back, Grimes was forced to look way up to see the man’s face, and for an instant it looked as if the big thing might stomp on his head.
Instead, Tankowicz looked to the woman and spoke. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” she replied. “Dad’s bots handled whatever gunk he stuck me with. I played possum to see if I could get anything out of him.”
This statement made the Balisong’s heart sink. He did not even know at what point he had lost control of the operation, or if he ever had it. He put this out of his mind and focused on escaping before they got around to killing him.
“Did you?”
“Not really. He’s clueless. They’ve been keeping him in the dark.”
Roland huffed. “Of course they are. Can’t have good little killers asking too many questions.”
Lucia looked down to the pinned man, “See? Everybody knows about using zealots.”
The words stung, but Grimes could not afford to dwell on it. He shifted just a touch, probing for flaws in the woman’s balance and posture. This hideout had a dozen secret entrances and exits, and he did not need a large head start to make any of them.
Lucia continued to converse with her partner, and Grimes waited for her weight to change when she moved. His timing would need to be perfect, and that was fine. His timing was always perfect.
When Lucia moved to drag him up, he exploded. In her haste, she had failed to search him after bringing him down, and thus his escape was made. He burst forward to his feet, knowing full well he was not fast enough to evade the woman. A nimble arm flicked out, palm extended. A small round metal ball arced from his outstretched hand and bounced off the fixer’s chest. It hit the floor with clunk and Grimes heard Tankowicz bark, “Shit!”
With speed that was difficult to imagine for one so large, the big man pushed the woman aside and fell on the device. Killam Grimes did not stop to evaluate all the things that happened next. He sped through the door like a jackrabbit and streaked down the hall toward the closest exit.
The explosion was not as loud as it should have been. Grimes attributed that to the giant’s body muffling the blast. He still had little idea exactly what Tankowicz was, but he felt certain it would take more than a small grenade to stop such a thing. Grimes ran faster. He cleared the door to the alley and was on the street in just a few seconds. In an instant, he had disappeared into the knots of people and autonomous rolling carriages bustling both ways up and down the lane.
Clearing the block, he reached for his comm. The next logical step was to call Craddock. To apprise his leader of the situation was the natural follow-up to losing the girl. But something stayed his hand, and he simply looked at the small black handheld.
What if the woman had not been lying?
He could not fathom such a thing. It made no sense. Hardesty was an ally, a friend to the cause. He had been one for as long as Grimes had been alive. Craddock was no fool, either. If Hardesty was up to something, Craddock would know. Nevertheless, if he separated his prejudice from the information, none of what that woman had said was all that far-fetched.
Doubt was poison. His masters had drilled that into his head from birth. To doubt was to invite weakness. He walked on, passing the first of his potential hideouts in favor of more time to think. This was an uncharacteristic choice for the dedicated assassin. His zanshin was shattered, he knew, and mushin remained maddeningly elusive.
Even for one such as him, internal conflict was inevitable. This could be excused if he was not in the middle of an operation. This did not seem an opportune moment for introspection. The thought made Grimes scowl even more deeply. The old war-master who had mentored him in his youth would have laughed at this fallacy. The wizened fighter would have rebuked his student, telling him that this was exactly the correct time for introspection. A doubt, a conflict such as this one could not be ignored or put aside lightly. Left unresolved, it would grow and weaken him in a moment requiring strength. He had to explore it, to confront it so it could be expunged.
He walked on.
So much of what he knew to be true was telling him the woman was a liar. Yet everything he knew about the nature of human weakness said that she could very well be telling the truth. He trusted Hardesty with the same blind loyalty every member of the union and the Red Hats did. This should have been enough to convince him of Hardesty’s innocence; however, he also knew better than anyone that men were innately weak. This was fundamental. Resolve and dedication could erode over time. The keen edges of a true believer often wore down to the shapeless malaise of a jaded cynic. How did the old poet put it? What happens to a dream deferred? Had the years of struggle without success eroded the support they all relied on so much? Had Lincoln Hardesty’s dedication to Free Venus dried up like a raisin in the sun? The sun was very hot on Venus, and truly strong people were few and far between.
Grimes thought of everything he knew about Hardesty. He mentally played all the conversations he had ever had with Craddock in his mind as well. The mental exercise calmed him, and his mind finally grew clear enough to let go of the terror his doubts had birthed. Without fear, without prejudice or bias, Grimes at last grasped what he needed to do with crystal clarity.
He had to know. If he did not kill the seed of doubt in his mind it would grow into a mighty oak before long. He would prefer to die rather than crumble under such weight.
A decision made, he stopped walking. He found he needed to look around just to get his bearings. He had become so entrenched in his own ruminations he had lost track of where he was. He stifled another internal rebuke for the stupidity of his lapse, as it served no purpose. Then he looked back down at the comm in his hand.
Craddock would want an update soon. That meant he had very little time to do this. No one could know what he was about to do.
Killam Grimes needed answers, and he knew exactly where to find them.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“What the hell is going on!”
Craddock was shouting into the connection at the bruised and ashen face of Lincoln Hardesty. Hardesty snarled back, no less vehement. “Where the fuck is Grimes? You said he was handling them!”
“Grimes got the woman. Last I heard he was holding her somewhere near you.”
“Thank goodness for small fucking favors, then! Do you have a plan for retrieving what they took?”
“Link, I don’t even know what they took, so how the fuck am I supposed to have a plan for getting it back?”
Hardesty wiped at his face furiously with a palm. “It’s just some records. Data. It’s sensitive as all hell, so I gotta get it back before they give it to anybody who can use it to hurt us.”
Craddock refused to let the matter go. “Hurt us? Or maybe what you mean is before it can hurt you? I told you before that if this starts to stink like shit you and I were going to have a reckoning. I’m starting to think that reckoning happens now, Link.”
“Don’t be like this, Al...”
“Like what? Like a guy burning resources to clean up a mess somebody else made? Or like a guy who is starting to think he is getting played like a fool? Let me lay it out for you, Link. Right now I am sitting in The Colander surrounded by loyal and dedicated soldiers for the cause. These boys trust me to lead them to a Free Venus. Now you want me to throw them at off-world hitters because they stole something from you that you are too fucking scared to tell us about? Do you know how that looks?”
“You have to trust me, Al...”
“You have to trust ME!” Craddock roared. “You have to trust me with your stupid little secret, because the fact that you don’t is telling me that whatever it is you’ve lost is going to piss me way the hell off. There are only two things that would piss me off enough to tell you to fuck off, Link. One of them is you asking to date my niece, the other is you selling the Red Hats out. You haven’t asked about my niece since she turned eighteen, so I assume that one ain’t the problem.”
Hardesty watched that barrel chest heave as his friend’s breath came in heavy waves. The pause in his rant was a test, a chance to see if anything said had struck a nerve. Hardesty’s face was unliving stone, betraying nothing.
Craddock calmed his voice and continued. “I am not an unreasonable man, Link. You are old and tired, and maybe you are done fighting for our freedom. I can get that. Really, I can. If you’ve sold out the Hats, just say it now. You are too far away for me to get to you, so you’ll have plenty of time to run away. I won’t chase you. Tell me the truth, cancel your deal, and just run. That will be the end of this. I’ll end this scrap with the fixer and I’ll cut Manny loose. We can survive that. You and me both can survive that. But you gotta level with me right now.”
With his plans in a very tenuous place, Hardesty actually considered just spilling his guts to Craddock. It would ruin him financially, but he would be safe. In the war between greed and cowardice, however, Lincoln Hardesty’s avarice remained the undisputed victor. “I haven’t sold out the Hats, Al. You know I’d never do that. They stole a bunch of union records and OmniCorp communications. If you look real close, you’ll see that some money is missing, too. Quite a bit, really. I ain’t proud of that, all right? I’m sorry.”
Alasdair Craddock did not buy that for a picosecond. Hardesty had been skimming from everyone for so long it was a cliché. He did not need to call Hardesty out on his lie, either. The mere attempt at deception was all that was necessary to confirm Cradock’s suspicions. “Fine, Link. You’re a crook. We can handle that. Let me contact Grimes and we’ll sort out the situation with Richardson.”
“Thank you, Al.” Hardesty’s relief looked and sounded sincere, at least. He cut the connection before Craddock could badger him any further and dialed up another call. This one was to Earth, and thus had to be routed through an Anson relay lest each sentence be saddled with a fifty-second light-speed delay. There was the small consolation of light carrier-wave traffic this time of night, so at least he could enjoy clear sound and video.
The face that appeared on his screen was as lean as his own, with a pointed widow’s peak and narrow black eyes. The proud red and white OmniCorp logo was glowing warmly on the wall behind his head. The man on the screen did not look pleased to be receiving a late-night call from Venus. His mood did not improve when Hardesty laid out the evening’s events and how they might affect the future of his dealings with OmniCorp.
“So exactly how sensitive is this stolen information, Mr. Hardesty? OmniCorp has a large investment in you already. The board of directors will not appreciate this setback.”
“It’s not really a setback just yet,” Hardesty replied calmly. “The data is still here on Venus, and they won’t be able to access the dangerous stuff without breaking a hidden layer of encryption. That will take quite a while. If we can bring them in soon, there will be no issue. I need access to some of your assets here to make this happen is all I’m saying.”
“Exactly what are you referring to when you mention ‘assets,’ Mr. Hardesty.”
Lincoln had a chuckle at the question. A suit-wearing businessman trying to play coy with a career smuggler and power broker was highly amusing indeed. “In this case, I am referring to your three operatives in The Colander. The ones mounted to Kanos. I have already closed off the spaceport here in Caelestus to the thieves, so I am confident the data will be returned to The Colander for extraction. I would like for it to be intercepted there by your people. Oh, and one of the targets is a heavily augmented man, ex-military. If you can spare some scanning drones or other espionage assets, he should be easy to spot and follow. I am also moving Craddock’s people to help, but in this case, I think a little redundancy is in order.”
Hardesty was rewarded with a small twitch of the man’s face. It betrayed obvious irritation with how poorly OmniCorp had hidden its movements. “Fine then. Though I am very dismayed that you felt compelled to compile such a large quantity of sensitive intelligence, I suppose I can understand why you thought it necessary. As long as the data stays secure this should not upset our relationship. We are aware of Mr. Tankowicz already, and I will have our operatives intercept him and his people as soon as they return to The Colander. Please don’t make this worse by attempting anything while they are still in Caelestus.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Hardesty dismissed the admonition. “I’m trying to get off this rock, not sit in one of its prisons for the rest of my life. It has taken a lot of effort to keep the union in the dark about how dire the economic situation here is. If the regular troops find out I’ve been fudging the numbers to prevent a panic?” He shrugged at the screen. “My life is over and your investment becomes worthless.”
“It is not OmniCorp’s fault that Venusian labor is too expensive to be competitive.”
“Yeah, but it is your problem. If the union finds out you’ve been propping up exports to satisfy your investors, there will be panic and rioting. Nobody is going to invest in your contracts if you set up your autofactories in the middle of a civil war.”
“That is already understood, Mr. Hardesty. Until this matter is resolved, you will need to stay in Caelestus. If any union feathers get ruffled by fallout from this mess, you will have to stay there to un-ruffle them. How about Craddock?”
“Craddock is becoming very suspicious. I told you he wasn’t stupid. It’s only a matter of time before he puts it all together.”
“Will he need to be managed?”
Hardesty thought about that for a long moment. He did not like the answer, and he hated himself for giving it. “Yeah. I think it’s about time to take him off the table. His boy Sully is well-liked and not-too-bright. He’ll be a perfect replacement.”
“Excellent. My people will make that happen. You cannot be connected in any way to that event. In the meantime, I suggest you put the rest of your house in order. Mistakes like this have ended profitable relationships more than once, Mr. Hardesty.”
