Finally, she checked the door. It was locked. Good, she thought. She walked over to the bed, set a wake-up alarm on her rings, and collapsed, not bothering to undress first. She was asleep almost as soon as her head hit the pillows, and the nightmares, when they came, were as bad as she’d feared.
Light’s, sirens, and night. A welter of impressions had closed around Wednesday, threatening to engulf her and cast her adrift on a sea of nightmare fodder. Svengali staggered alongside her, nursing an arm. A paramedic shone a torch in her face. She waved it aside. “He needs help!” she shouted, holding the clown upright. She sat beside him for an eternity while a paramedic strapped up his arm, ran a teraherz scanner across his skull to check for fractures — someone else was working on her bruised forehead, but it was hard to keep track of things. An indeterminate time later she was standing up. “We need to get to the port,” she was explaining in nightmare slow motion to a police officer who didn’t seem to understand: “Our ship leaves in a couple of hours—”
She kept having to repeat herself. Why did she keep having to repeat herself: Nobody was listening. Lights, sirens. She was sitting down now, and the light were flashing past and the sirens were overhead … I’m in a police car, she realized hazily. Sitting between Svengali and Frank. Frank had one arm around he shoulders, sheltering her. But this was wrong. They hadn’t done anything wrong, had they? Were they under arrest? Going to miss the flight—
“Here you go.” The door opened. Frank clambered out, then held Wednesday’s arm, helping her out of the car. “We’re holding the capsule for you — step this way.” And it was true. She felt tears of relief prickling at her eyelids, trying to escape. Leaning on Frank. Svengali behind her, and two more carloads — the police were helping, shunting the off-worlders off-world. The full VIP treatment. Why? she wondered vaguely. Then a moment’s thought brought it home. Anything to look helpful to the diplomats …
Wednesday began to function again sixty kilometers above the equator, as the maglev pod began to power up from subsonic cruise to full orbital ascent acceleration.
“How do you feel?” she asked Frank, her voice sounding distant and flat beneath the ringing in her ears.
“Like shit.” He grimaced. His head was bandaged into something that resembled a translucent blue turtle shell and he looked woozy from the painkillers they’d planted on him. “Told me to go straight to sick-bay.” He looked at her, concerned. “Did you just say something?”
“No,” she said.
“You’ll have to speak up. I’m having difficulty hearing.”
“What happened to Sven?” she asked.
Svengali, who was sitting on Frank’s far side, took it on himself to answer. “Someone tried to kill the Ambassador,” he said slowly. “The Dresdener government shat a brick. I have no idea why they let us go—”
“No. It was you,” Frank said flatly. “Because you’re Muscovite. Aren’t you?”
“Yes.” Wednesday nodded uncertainly. “Whatever that means…”
“So.” Frank nodded tiredly. “They assumed your guests were, too. As the embassy net was down and all they had to go on were passports issued by wherever the guests lived — you’re traveling on Septagon ID, but you’re not a citizen yet right?”
“Oh.” Wednesday shook her head slowly, her neck muscles complaining because of the unaccustomed gee load. “Oh! Who could it be?” she asked hesitantly. “I thought you said whoever was after me—” Her eyes narrowed.
“Who’s after you?” Svengali asked, clearly puzzled.
“I was sure.” Frank looked frustrated. “The, the security alert. They canceled my interviews. In fact, that was the only public appearance the Ambassador put in while we were groundside. And did you notice the way she didn’t go outside? Didn’t even move outside of that podium with the reactive armor? But they left the windows and doors open. And there were cops everywhere on the grounds as soon as that bomb went off. Didn’t she look padded—”
“The Ambassador was miming the speech,” said Wednesday.
“What?” Svengali looked surprised. “What do you mean she was miming?”
“I saw her,” Wednesday said. “I was right in the front row. It was the way she spoke — and she was wearing an earbud. From where I was sitting I could see it. Wearing body armor, too, I guess. You know what? I think they expected something to happen. Only not what did, if you follow me.”
“An assassination attempt. The wrong assassination attempt.” Frank sounded almost dreamy. “On the wrong target. Not you, Wednesday.” He gave her arm a light squeeze. “A different assassin. One who didn’t play ball. Sven, what were you doing down there?”
“I was hired to do a fucking floor show after dinner!” he snapped tensely. “What do you think? This isn’t a vacation for me, laughing boy.”
“That’s okay,” said Frank. He closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair.
“Sorry,” Svengali grumbled.
“This would be for the house you’re planning on buying when you retire,” prompted Wednesday, a cold sweat prickling in the small of her back.
“Yeah, that’s it,” Svengali agreed, sounding almost grateful.
“I hope you get there,” she said in a small voice.
“I hope they find the fucking assholes who crashed the party,” Frank said, sounding distantly angry. Wednesday stroked his knuckles, soothing him into silence, then leaned against his shoulder.
The rest of the trip back to orbit passed uneventfully.
INTERLUDE 3
Several new passengers had joined the Romanov at New Dresden. One of them had taken an imperial suite with the nobs on A deck while the rest were accommodated variously in business- and tourist-class staterooms, but all of them had these things in common: they had booked rooms on the liner at short notice roughly a day after a private yacht, the Heidegger, had briefly called at Dresden station, and they were all traveling under false passports.
The luxury suite was not an extravagance, but a necessity. As was the way Lars swept it regularly for transmitters and the various species of insect that might creep into a room aboard a luxury liner that had been booked by an arms merchant from Hut Breasil. Portia wanted the cubic volume for conferencing and a base of operations, and the cover identity excused some of the rather more alarming contents of her personal luggage. Which was why Mathilde, answering the invitation to visit the imperial suite, was startled to find the door being held open for her by an armed bodyguard and the room’s occupant seated on a chaise longue in front of an open crate of self-propelled gun launchers.
“U. Mathilde Todt. Come in.” Hoechst inclined her head. “You look confused,” she said.
“Ah. I was expecting—”
Hoechst beamed at her. “An austerity regime?” She rose. “Yes, well, cover identities must be maintained. And why would a rich arms dealer travel in cabbage class?”
Marx let the door close behind the woman. She stepped forward, as if sleepwalking. “It’s been too long.”
Hoechst nodded. “Consider yourself under direction again.”
Mathilde rubbed her face. “You’re my new control? Out here in person?” A note of gratified surprise crept into her voice.
“Unlike U. Scott, I don’t believe in letting things slide,” Hoechst said drily. “I’ve been running around for the past two months, tying ligatures around leaks. Now it’s your turn. Tell me how it’s going.”
“It’s—” Mathilde licked her lips — “I’ve got everything in place for both the scenarios I was given, the abduction or the other one. Everything except the primary strike team. We’ve scoped out all the critical points, and the necessary equipment is on board. We had to suborn three baggage loaders and one bellboy to get it in place, but it’s done, and they swallowed the cover story — there was no need to get technical with them.” Getting technical was a euphemism for sinking a tree of nanoelectrodes into their brain stems and turning them into moppets — meat puppets. What it left behind afterward wasn’t much use for anything except uploading and forwarding to the Propagators. “Peter is my number two in charge of line ops, and Mark is ready with the astrogation side of things. In fact, we’re ready to go whenever you give the word.”