“I have to talk with Griff, first thing. Has to be private. You help me with that?”
“Sure. Your best bet’s Hong’s. That one table, off in an alcove? I’ll have him hold that for you. Otherwise, you can’t know who’s on the other side of the nearest tarp.”
“Thanks.”
And then the truck was in the alley behind Fab, sandwiched between the two SUVs as they disgorged black-jacketed Burton boys, everybody with a bullpup except Leon.
“Ready?” Tacoma asked, killing the engine.
Flynne hadn’t been ready for any of it, she thought, not since that night she went to the trailer to sub for him. It wasn’t stuff you could be ready for. Like life, maybe, that way.
102
Netherton found Ossian waiting, a narrow rosewood case tucked beneath one arm, beside Ash’s tent, the unpleasant profile of the six-wheeled Bentley nowhere to be seen.
“Is Ash inside?” Netherton asked, Flynne’s peripheral beside him, watching him speak. He’d awakened it, if that was the term, after Ash had phoned, asking him to bring it along to the tent, for a meeting.
“She’s been delayed,” Ossian said. “She’ll be along shortly.”
“What’s that?” Netherton asked, eyeing the rectangular wooden box.
“Case for a pair of Regency dueling pistols, originally. Come in.” The tent smelled, familiarly now, of the dust that wasn’t there. Ash’s displays, the agate spheres, were the sole source of light. Netherton held a chair for the peripheral, which then sat, looking up at Ossian. Ossian put the rosewood box down on the table. Like a shopman, employing a certain constrained drama, he undid two small brass latches, paused briefly for effect, then opened the hinged lid.
“Temporarily deactivated,” he said, “and for the first time since they left the pram factory.” The case was lined with green felt. In identical fitted recesses nested a pair of what Netherton assumed to be guns. Like toys, really, given the glossy candy-cane cream-and-scarlet twisted around their short barrels.
“How is it that they fit the box so perfectly?”
“Rejigged the interior. Wanted something to carry them in. Wouldn’t want one tucked in my pocket, however positive I am that they’re disabled. Took some serious doing, to turn them off, but we managed to only release assemblers the one time, when you were there. Zubov has the Bentley with a specialist now, having five meters of leather cloned, to repair the upholstery.”
“Lowbeer values these things because they’re difficult to trace?”
“Because they’re terror weapons, more likely,” said Ossian. “They aren’t guns in any ballistic sense. Not about the force of a projectile. They’re directed swarm weapons. Flesh-eaters, in the trade.”
“What trade would that be?”
“They project self-limiting, single-purpose assemblers. Range a little under ten meters. Do nothing whatever but disintegrate soft animal tissue, including, apparently, your finer Italian leathers. But more or less instantly, and then they disassemble themselves. That way, they’re of no danger to the user, or rather to the infant, as their only user was intended to be the pram.”
“But they have handles,” Netherton observed. The handles were shaped something like the profile of a parrot’s head. They were the same cream shade as the barrels, minus the scarlet, but matte, bonelike.
“Grips and manual triggers are your Edward’s, to Lowbeer’s specifications. He isn’t bad at all.”
“I don’t understand why a pram would have been equipped with these in the first place.”
“Aren’t Russian then, are you? Effect of one of these on a human body will absolutely get your attention, foremost. Quite the spectacular exit. See a fellow kidnapper go that way, the thinking runs, you’ll flee. Or try to. Self-targeting. Once the system acquires a target, it sends the assemblers where they’re needed.”
“But you’ve entirely disabled them?”
“Not permanently. Lowbeer has the key to that.”
“Why does she want them?”
“Discuss it with her,” said Ash, ducking in, something fleeing cumbrously, on four legs from her cheek, across her neck, as she entered.
“When are we expecting Flynne?” Netherton asked, glancing at the peripheral.
“I’d assumed she’d be here by now,” Ash said, “but we’ve just been told she’s unavailable. And that we’ll wait.” Briefly, she cawed to Ossian, in some coarser birdsong. He lowered the lid over the peppermint pistols. “In the meantime,” Ash said, “we think we’ve solved the problem of Flynne’s lacking the gift of neoprimitivist curatorial gab.”
“How is that?” Netherton asked.
“I suppose you could call it fecal transplant therapy.”
“Really?” Netherton looked at her.
“A synthetic bullshit implant,” Ash said, and smiled. “A procedure I don’t imagine you’ll ever be in need of.”
103
The tunnel to Sushi Barn was less a tunnel than a giant hamster run. Madison had built two seven-foot walls of shingle bags, with a walkway in between, from a hole in the wall in the back of Coldiron, across the vacant store next door, through another hole in its far wall, across the next empty store, and finally through another hole, into Hong’s kitchen.
Coming in from the alley, Flynne had seen Burton, looking pale, under one of the white crowns. Conner was under another. “Want to switch jobs?” Clovis asked Tacoma, seeing her. “Neither of these guys are home much.”
“They’re making Burton work?” Flynne asked.
“Nobody’s twisting his arm,” Clovis said. “Glad to get out of his body. Conner just comes back to be fed and sleep.”
Griff didn’t seem to have any idea what Flynne might have on her mind. She wasn’t sure what Lowbeer might have heard, or what Griff might know. She wanted to look at his hands now, but he had them in his jacket pockets.
Hong’s kitchen was humid with cooking rice. He led them out to the front room, where the seating was at secondhand picnic tables, painted red, and over to an alcove, a sheet of red-painted plywood forming one of its walls. The alcove had its own picnic table, and a framed poster of the Highbinders on the inside of the red wall, a San Francisco band she’d liked in high school. She put the Wheelie Boy down on the scuffed, red-painted concrete floor, under the seat, and sat, facing the Highbinders poster. Griff took the seat opposite. A kid she recognized as a cousin of Madison’s brought them glasses of tea.
“You need food, just let somebody know,” Hong said.
“Thanks, Hong,” she said, as he turned back to the kitchen. She looked at Griff.
He smiled, raised a tablet, consulted it, looked up from it, met her eyes. “Now that we know that a safe house elsewhere isn’t an option for your mother, we’re looked into maximizing security for your family home. With a view to keeping it as low key, as transparent really, as we possibly can. We don’t want to disturb your mother. We think a compound might be in order.”
“Pickett had a compound,” she said. “Don’t want that.”
“Exactly the opposite. Stealth architecture. Everything remains apparently the same. Any new structures will appear to always have been there. We’re speaking with specialist architects. We need it done yesterday, largely at night, silently, invisibly.” He scrolled something with a fingertip.
“Can you do that?”
“With sufficient money, absolutely. Which your firm most certainly has.”
“Not my firm.”
“Partially yours.” He smiled.
“On paper.”
“This building,” he said, “isn’t paper.”
She looked out at the front room of Sushi Barn. Noticed four members of Burton’s posse, men whose names she didn’t know, seated two-by-two at different tables, black Cordura rifle bags tucked under their seats. The rest of the customers were in KCV county outfits. “Doesn’t feel real to me,” she said. She looked back at him. “Been a lot lately that doesn’t.” She looked down at his hands.