"We were never friends, Kaplinski."
Kaplinski's smile became fixed, his teeth small and sharp. Had he always been bad? Some men were born predators.
Kaplinski ran a finger round the top of his glass where a smear of his drink glowed in the UV. "We could have been friends, then," he corrected himself. "We still could be. k52's fixed me, Otto." His smile jumped up and down his face, as if he couldn't quite pin the emotion down. "He can fix you too."
"I'm glad you decided to celebrate your new-found sanity by trying to kill me," said Otto. "That was you in the Rockies, and in London, trying to blow up my partner."
Kaplinski inclined his head. "Yes. Regrettable. You had to be stopped. Orders are orders."
"Money is money, you mean."
"Not this time, Klein. What k52 intends is worth a few lives."
"I feel honoured one of them is mine. How much did he pay?"
"I promise you, money had nothing to do with it. You will understand, in time."
"We've fallen for this kind of shit before, Kaplinski, or don't you read history?"
Kaplinski laughed. "Otto, what can I say? Sorry? Will that satisfy you, if I apologise?"
Otto sucked another glass of whisky through his teeth and squirted it round his mouth. He breathed in hard. His progress through the bottle was not improving its flavour. "No."
"It's not too late, Otto. Help me find Waldo."
"He is a threat to your boss? Well, that just means I will do my damnedest to make sure you never set eyes on him. You shouldn't have shot Kolosev. You didn't get what you wanted from him, or you wouldn't be here. Did he stop being so helpful before or after he was dead?"
Kaplinski stared, smile hard and close to cracking, fingernails scratching the table's active surface as his fist clenched.
Otto swilled his drink round his tumbler. The liquid was too quick to run down the glass. Chinese shit. "Kolosev, he was a mummy's boy, but he wasn't an idiot. He hid that data well, but I have a genius on my side. Where is your genius, Kaplinkski? Now we've got what you thought you had. Whatever k52 is paying, it's too much. You're a joke."
Kaplinski glared at Otto for a long moment, smile feral, then leaned back, choosing to break the tension. That was a change; the old Kaplinski would have gone for him by now. "That trick you pulled back in Kharkov was a good one, Otto, hiding in plain sight — " he looked around the bar "- but we won't be in plain sight for much longer. Once we're out in the zone I will not hold back."
"Try your best," said Otto. "It won't be good enough."
"I could have killed you tonight, Otto. I didn't have to see you. I knew you'd come here. The mentaug. It was a problem for me, I guess it's a problem for you too. Tell me, Otto, do you sleep much? I think that you don't. That damn machine whirring away up here all the time." He tapped his temple, and renewed his jerky smile. "We don't have to fight, Klein; k52 can stop it. Join with us. The memories, the violence. It can all stop."
"Screw you, Kaplinski."
Kaplinski dropped his attempt at warmth. Frustration warred with anger on his face. "You're a fool, Otto. I have changed, why can you not see that? What do I have to do to convince you?"
"As the English say, Kaplinski, leopards do not change their spots, and you're the most fucked-up leopard I ever met."
"Soon we'll all be better, only if you don't join with me, you won't live to see it."
"Thanks for the offer, but no thanks. I prefer to see what I'm buying. I don't trust k52."
"You trust Richards."
Now Otto smiled. "No. I don't." He stood and turned to go, but Kaplinski called to him.
"Tell me, Klein, I have been meaning to ask you, for years now. When you had the chance, why not just kill me there and then? Is that why you left the army, Otto? Because you couldn't kill a comrade-in-arms? Did your sense of duty desert you for a moment? Did it shake you, Otto?"
Otto stared at Kaplinski. They'd asked him that in the inquiry, asked him almost as many times as he'd asked himself since: why not go for the head shot?
He'd given neither them nor himself a satisfactory answer, and he didn't have one for Kaplinski either. He stared a moment longer, then walked away.
"Klein!"
The privacy cone cut out Kaplinski's voice and Debussy, and he was back in a world of bad Russian music and the pornographic dreams of the Slavic resource elite.
The others were eating breakfast when he returned to their compartment, the sky outside lightening.
"Where are we?" Otto said, reaching for his bag to pull out a water bottle.
"Three hours out from Bratsk," said Chures. "You been drinking, Klein?"
"Yes. Don't concern yourself about it, I can drink my own body weight in pure alcohol and not feel it. Big disadvantage of being Ky-tech," said Otto. "We need to go now. Kaplinski is on the train. We cannot disembark on the Chinese side as planned."
Valdaire put her fork down. "What now?"
The train was moving slowly through an abandoned town of ruined houses, taking it slow over track warped by melting permafrost. A battered sign, name in flaking Cyrillic illegible, passed the window. Larger signs dwarfed this, lining the track in long procession. A high fence abruptly started, caging the railway line, active electronics bearing one message in multiple languages: "Danger. Demilitarised Zone."
"We have to go now," Otto repeated. "Into the DMZ, away from the train."
"This is going to be hard," said Chures under his breath, pushing his breakfast plate away, omelette half-eaten, his expression saying he'd suddenly lost his appetite. "They'll come after us, not just Kaplinski."
Otto shook his head. "Perhaps easier than jumping the fence on the Sino-side as we planned. The Russians don't care so much, they like to make work for the Chinese."
"But the Cossacks. They care," said Chures. "They're relentless. And there's the Han. They will come for us."
Lehmann flung out his arms and patted the backrest of his chair. He shrugged with easy insouciance and smiled his little boy's grin. "Yeah, getting in to Sinosiberia won't be easy. But if anyone can do it, Otto Klein can. Now, are you going to eat that omelette or not?"
CHAPTER 12
As soon as light crept over the walls of Pylon City, a ferocious banging rattled the stables Richards and Bear had found to rest in, adding to the pounding of the city's machinery.
"All wake in the name of the Prince! Up! Up! Up!" A troop of the Pylon Guard marched up the aisle, banging the butts of their lances on iron stalls.
A guard stopped by Richards' stall and leered. "Eh, eh, what's going on here?"
Richards frowned at the skunk he was sharing his straw with, at its posing pouch and puckered vinyl arsehole. "It's not what you think."
"That's what they all say. Present yourself at Muster Station Eighteen no later than noon." The soldier tossed an orange chit at Richards. From the way it hurt when it hit his head, it was also made of iron.
"Thanks," said Richards rubbing his skull. "I always wanted to join the army."
The skunk woke at the noise, sat up and blinked. "Wh… who are you?"
"You're not Rolston any more," said Richards, matter-of-factly.
The skunk looked away, frightened.
"Great brass balls!" said a soldier further down the stable. "Look at this one! Sir! Sir!"
"Let me through, let me through! My, my, my. Sergeant Bear, we've been looking for you."
"Leave me alone," Bear said weakly. "I want to stay here, where it is nice and warm. And soft. And quiet." There was an element of threat to this last.