The other two men took off their masks as well, folding them and tucking them into pockets in their dark Banana Republic-style jackets.
She tossed them canvas bags, and they began stuffing things into them—wallets, weapons, the IDs of the three tied to chairs.
The blond man looked over and spoke: “Need someone to finish off the kaffir?”
“Schalk, shut up,” Adrienne said, her face thoughtful as her eyes went back and forth between Bosco and Tom.
“What’s going on?” Tom asked hoarsely.
“Well,” Adrienne said, “you did sound odd. I suspected you were being naughty. So we paid a visit to your place first. Tsk, tsk. All that research! Why did you leave it in place?”
“Too much to move quickly, and we were in a hurry,” he said. “But there are backup duplicates, and it’ll all be—”
Adrienne laughed a little, shaking her head. “Going down swinging, eh, Tom? I’d expect nothing less. But you know as well as I do nobody would believe a word of it without more proof—that’s why you’re here, to get the proof. Lucky you didn’t give me an even later false time, though, or I’m afraid Toni here would have done something really unpleasant to y’all before I arrived.”
Her leaf-green eyes turned to Perkins. “I presume the FBI agent is in it with you—this must be unofficial, or there would have been more of you. From the date on that movement survey on me, you only told her today….” Her tone altered, losing the bantering note. “I’m trying to come up with reasons not to kill anyone, Tom. I really am. So tell me the truth.”
“Yes,” he said bitterly, and spat—clearing his mouth and expressing his opinion at the same time.
Perkins spoke for the first time: “Fuck you!” she snapped with a flat murderous glare. “You’ve killed plenty, and you’ll get the needle for it.”
Adrienne inclined her head. “I don’t think so, Special Agent Perkins. Schalk, one dose of neurotone.”
The man began to complain, and she made a chopping gesture. “Schalk, for the last time, shut up and do as you’re told!”
“What is that stuff?” Tom asked.
He tried to keep the fear out of his voice as she pulled a disposable hypodermic needle out of a case the Afrikaner handed her. Perkins simply glared silently as the injector approached.
“Think of it as a chemical equivalent of electroshock, which mimics the effects of a moderately severe concussion very closely,” Adrienne said, working the plunger with her thumb until a bead of clear liquid appeared on the tip. “Developed for the GSF—the Gate Security Force—here on FirstSide; not that the developer knew who we were or what we wanted it for. Usually the subject wakes up with a splitting headache and no memory of the recent past. The past day or two.”
“Usually?”
“Sometimes the effects are… more drastic.” She looked up at him as she pulled back Perkins’s sleeve. “Good, the bruise here will hide the needle mark….”
The black woman didn’t flinch when the thin steel pierced her skin. A few seconds later she yawned uncontrollably; then her eyes rolled up and her head slumped. Adrienne waited a moment more, then peeled back an eyelid with her thumb and studied the reaction of the pupil.
“Looks good,” she said. “No adverse reaction.” At his glare, she went on: “Tom, the alternative is letting them find her body and making it look like you killed her. We can’t just disappear an FBI agent, not these days; they would keep looking until they found something. They know she’s been working with you, and the cover story we’re using with you wouldn’t wash.”
“Cover story?” he croaked. Damn, I’m turning into the straight man here!
“Well, when they search your hurriedly abandoned apartment, I’m afraid they’re going to find very convincing evidence that you and your short friend here were involved up to your necks in the endangered-species racket. Not to mention a forgotten stash of twenty thousand dollars in cash, and clues that with some work will lead them to offshore accounts with over a million. That will be extremely convincing, since we’ve also removed all trace of what you found. It’ll be assumed you got out of the country and are living in affluent retirement somewhere else.”
She smiled—a little sadly—at his fury. “It was necessary. That dodo, and you clicked faster than I thought you could… none of it will matter where you’re going, Tom.”
“Through your dimensional portal,” he said. “That’s how you dispose of the inconvenient, isn’t it?”
“We usually call it the Gate,” she replied. Her smile grew broader for an instant. “Think of the other side as bizzarro Sunnydale. Or another dimension of time and space.”
She hummed under her breath: du-du-du, du-du-du. Even then, Tully couldn’t control a strangled grunt of laughter as he recognized the theme song. It was his partner’s reaction that prompted Tom’s memory.
And Perkins was still alive, unconscious but twitching. Adrienne’s attention had turned to Anthony Bosco. With the adrenaline of rage still running through his brain, Tom was still grateful that the look wasn’t directed at him. It was an expression he’d never seen on her face before, calm and implacable and colder than the moon.
She tossed a comment over her shoulder, not taking her eyes from Bosco’s face. “This is the man responsible for the warehouse full of skins and the condor,” she said. “And the dodo.” She leaned forward slightly. “Why, Toni?”
Bosco licked his lips, but spoke calmly enough. “Money. I’ve got expensive tastes I can’t satisfy back in New Virginia. All right, you got me; now take me back to the Commonwealth and we’ll have the fucking trial.”
Commonwealth? Tom thought. Not the Commonwealth of Letters, I think. Well, it beats “Hole in the Wall.”
“Toni, don’t insult me,” Adrienne said. “I get very upset when people insult me. You can draw on the Colletta accounts FirstSide and live like a pasha without going to all this trouble and risk. That’s what put me onto this in the first place. And the dodo wasn’t just a risk; it was insane. Unless you weren’t really trying to cream off some extra FirstSide currency. If you were trying to convince some FirstSiders that the Gate was real, seeing as how you can’t actually show it to them… now, then the dodo would make sense.”
Bosco went silent, shaking his head.
“Come on, Toni. We both know that Giovanni Colletta’s behind this somehow. You’re one of his hatchet men and you’ve been carrying water for him for years. What does your Prime get out of this? And don’t say money. This is political.”
Another head shake, but Bosco’s eyes were flicking back and forth in an instinctive search for escape.
“Hold him,” she said.
Piet Botha grinned like a gorilla and seized the smaller man by the back of the neck with a shovel-sized hand.
Bosco gave a grunt of pain and glared at her. “Tell this Settler bastard to get his hands off me, Adrienne,” he said. “You know the law—he can’t touch one of the Thirty!”
Adrienne walked over and stood close to the young man, wrinkling her nose slightly at the smell of vomit from his jacket. She reached out and pulled a ring off his left thumb—Tom could see that it was like hers, gold and platinum braided together.
“I do know the law,” she said. “Since they’re Gate Security operatives, they can touch you, over here on FirstSide. In fact, if I tell them to, they can kill you. Habeas corpus doesn’t apply this side of the Gate. You know that part of the law, don’t you? And the provisions about treason?”