Dutton slowly pulled his gaze from the wonder of Washbalt’s nighttime skyline and looked around the room, savoring every detail as he never had. He reached into his pocket, pulling out a datachip and a key card. He’d been carrying them around for weeks, but now he decided it was time. He laid them on Stark’s desk and slowly followed his friend into the hallway.
He was tired, so he said a quick goodnight and took the elevator down to the lobby, walking slowly out to his waiting car. As usual, the driver had the compartment warmed up, which lately meant something between room temperature and the melting point of zinc. In recent months, the cold had been cutting right through him, and he’d found it increasingly difficult to stay comfortable. It was a short drive to his apartment, a palatial penthouse in one of the Core’s most prestigious buildings, and it only took a few minutes to get there. He walked through the lobby to his private lift, nodding silently to the attendant who wished him a good evening. Once in his apartment, he went right up to the bedroom, tossing his jacket on the chair.
He was exhausted and aching, but he decided he was hungry after all. He sat on the edge of his bed and leaned over, switching on the communicator. “Gerta, bring up some tea, please. And some of those biscuits if there are any left.”
“Yes, sir.” Gerta had been with him for years – housekeeper, cook, assistant. She wasn’t as old as him – almost no one was – but she had seen a lot of years herself. Her loyalty had earned her Dutton’s appreciation, and with it some advantages rare for a Cog, including rejuvenation treatments and enough money for a comfortable retirement.
She walked into the room, carrying a small tray with a teapot, cup, and plate full of biscuits. She is optimistic, Dutton thought, as he saw the large stack of shortbread. I’ll be lucky to get one of them down.
“That will be all, Gerta.”
She nodded and turned toward the door. “Goodnight, sir.”
Dutton sat up quite late. He’d been tired earlier, but now he was awake, restless. He read for a while…and actually managed to eat two of the biscuits and a bit of a third. Finally, he laid the ‘pad on the end table and put his head down on the fine silk pillow, quickly drifting off.
When Gerta walked in at 8am, she was surprised to find him still in bed, the blinds shut. Dutton was an early riser, often up well before the sun. She couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept past 8.
She walked over, trying to decide if she should wake him or not, but when she got to his bedside she knew immediately. She stepped back, gasping, feeling the tears building in her eyes.
Jack Dutton, the master spy of the Alliance, was dead.
Chapter 19
Erik Cain sat in the palatial lobby of the Alliance Museum of History, passing the time watching the reflections dance on the polished granite floor. He was trying to focus on the mission, but he couldn’t help but wonder how much of the “history” on display here was fabricated. Most of it, he suspected. Alliance Gov didn’t have a lot of use for the truth, certainly not for public consumption.
He was waiting for his contact to arrive – he assumed that individual would know who he was, because no one had told him a thing. The trip to Earth had gone completely according to plan, and they hadn’t had any trouble passing through the spaceport and getting to the Martian embassy. Travelling as a diplomat had its advantages, Erik thought. Regular citizens were monitored everywhere they went, but the elites treated each other quite differently. They spied on each other, to be sure, but they didn’t impose the same rules they did on their pliant populations. His Martian Diplomatic Corps ID allowed him to wander the city more or less freely, probably because the Alliance diplomats in the Ares Metroplex wanted the same option.
Cain could never understand the way the Political Class thought. They fought and schemed against the other Superpowers, yet the ruling elite in each nation accorded each other a strange respect they denied their own citizens. To Erik it seemed like they were all members of some bizarre club, even when they were enemies. The Martians were a bit different, though not entirely immune.
There were a hundred things that had to go right for this mission to work, but Cain was most worried about the weapons. He’d gotten his troops in, ten of them plus himself. People were easier to sneak in – Vance just issued them all diplomatic credentials, and they walked right off the Martian shuttle into a waiting limo that whisked them to the embassy. But the guns and ammo were different – they had to be smuggled in.
He appreciated the help Vance and his colleagues in the Confederation provided; it was doubtful he could have gotten his team to Washbalt without their assistance. But they had been sitting here for weeks now, waiting for the equipment they needed for the operation…and he was sick of waiting.
Cain was grateful for the assistance the Martians had given his people, but that didn’t mean he trusted them. They had one plan, but he had his own. And he had some ideas on how to get the equipment he needed too.
Vance had given him 40 bars of platinum, untraceable currency for bribes if they were needed. But Cain had another use for this small fortune. He was going to rely on knowledge and skills from his past, things he’d thought he had long forgotten – things he’d tried hard to make himself forget.
There was a vast, shadowy labyrinth of abandoned tunnels and infrastructure under the cities of the Alliance, the detritus of centuries of growth, decay, destruction, and rebuilding. Erik was well-aware just who would know the secrets of this maze of dripping, rat-infested, crumbling tunnels…and who would also have weapons he might be able to buy. The gangs of Washbalt’s vast slums were even worse than the ones he’d run with in New York, and they almost certainly knew every millimeter of the vast undercity, just as he and his compatriots in New York had mastered theirs.
That life was long ago, and it seemed alien to him now, like some bad dream, hazily remembered. But the gangs were the key to this subterranean world, here just as they were in New York. That was the way to get into Alliance Intelligence; he was sure of it. He just needed the gangs to help. It was a plan so audacious, so crazy on its face, that only he could have devised it. The fate of the colonies and the future of the Alliance could very well hinge on his ability to cut a deal with a murderous gang leader. But first he had to get his people out of the Core and into the slums where the gangs were located.
He hadn’t left the embassy more than a couple times since he’d arrived, and then only briefly. There were just too many cameras, too much facial recognition software, too big a chance he’d be recognized by some security system matching him to a database, either from his gang days or his military service. It was just too risky. But this is where his contact agreed to meet him, so this is where he came. Just setting the meeting had cost him two bars of platinum, worth enough to buy a small apartment in one of Washbalt’s nicer neighborhoods.
“Mr. Daniels?” A tall, middle-aged man in a worn brown coat sat down on the bench. He didn’t look over at Cain; he just sat next to him, eyes forward, watching the crowds go by. Daniels was Erik’s alias, his identity as a Martian diplomat.
“You are late.” Erik hated all the cloak and dagger nonsense. He much preferred blunter means to accomplish his ends, but he wasn’t going to get Garret out with a frontal assault. Not unless he found an army of fully-equipped Marines somewhere.