CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Ortega’s list was over two thousand names long, each annotated with a brief surveillance report and any Organic Damage convictions tied to the operators or clientele. In hardcopy format it ran to about two hundred concertina’d sheets, which started to unravel like a long paper scarf as soon as I got past page one. I tried to scan the list in the cab back to Bay City, but gave up when it threatened to overwhelm us both on the back seat. I wasn’t in the mood anyway. Most of me wished I was still bedded down in the stern cabin of Ryker’s yacht, isolated from the rest of humanity and its problems by hundreds of kilometres of trackless blue.
Back at the Watchtower suite, I put Ortega in the kitchen while I called Kawahara at the number Trepp had given me. It was Trepp that came on screen first, features smeared with sleep. I wondered if she’d been up all night trying to track me.
‘Morning.’ She yawned and presumably checked an internal timechip. ‘Afternoon, I mean. Where’ve you been?’
‘Out and about.’
Trepp rubbed inelegantly at one eye and yawned again. ‘Suit yourself. Just making conversation. How’s your head?’
‘Better, thanks. I want to talk to Kawahara.’
‘Sure.’ She reached towards the screen. ‘Talk to you later.’
The screen dropped into neutral, an unwinding tricoloured helix accompanied by sickly sweet string arrangements. I gritted my teeth.
‘Takeshi-san.’ As always, Kawahara started in Japanese, as if it established some kind of common ground with me. ‘This is unlooked-for so early. Do you have good news for me?’
I stayed doggedly in Amanglic. ‘Is this a secure line?’
‘As close as such a thing can be said to exist, yes.’
‘I have a shopping list.’
‘Go ahead.’
‘To begin with, I need access to a military virus. Rawling 4851 for preference, or one of the Condomar variants.’
Kawahara’s intelligent features hardened abruptly. ‘The Innenin virus?’
‘Yeah. It’s over a century out of date now, shouldn’t be too hard to get hold of. Then I need—’
‘Kovacs, I think you’d better explain what you’re planning.’
I raised an eyebrow. ‘I understood this was my play, and you didn’t want to be involved.’
‘If I secure you a copy of the Rawling virus, I’d say I’m already involved.’ Kawahara offered me a measured smile. ‘Now what are you planning to do with it?’
‘Bancroft killed himself, that’s the result you want, right?’
A slow nod.
‘Then there has to be a reason,’ I said, warming to the deceit structure I’d come up with, despite myself. I was doing what they’d trained me to do, and it felt good. ‘Bancroft has remote storage, it doesn’t make sense that he’d light himself up unless he had a very specific reason. A reason unrelated to the actual act of suicide. A reason like self preservation.’
Kawahara’s eyes narrowed. ‘Go on.’
‘Bancroft uses whorehouses on a regular basis, real and virtual. He told me that himself a couple of days ago. And he’s not too particular about the quality of establishment he uses either. Now, let’s assume that there’s an accident in one of these virtuals while he’s getting his itch scratched. Accidental bleedover from some grimed-up old programs that no one’s bothered to even open for a few decades. Go to a low enough grade of house, there’s no telling what might be lying around.’
‘The Rawling virus.’ Kawahara exhaled as if she had been holding her breath in anticipation.
‘Rawling variant 4851 takes about a hundred minutes to go fully active, by which time it’s too late to do anything.’ I forced images of Jimmy de Soto from my mind. ‘The target’s contaminated beyond redemption. Suppose Bancroft finds this out through some kind of systems warning. He must be wired internally for that kind of thing. He suddenly discovers the stack he’s wearing and the brain it’s wired to is burnt. That’s not a disaster, if you’ve got clone backup and remote storage, but—’
‘Transmission.’ Kawahara’s face lit up as she got it.
‘Right. He’d have to do something to stop the virus being ’cast to the remote with the rest of his personality. With the next needlecast coming up that night, maybe in a few minutes’ time, there was only one way to ensure the remote stack didn’t get contaminated.’
I mimed a pistol at my head.
‘Ingenious.’
‘That’s why he made the call, the timecheck. He couldn’t trust his own internal chip, the virus might already have scrambled it.’
Solemnly, Kawahara lifted her hands into view and applauded. When she had finished, she clasped her hands together and looked at me over them.
‘Very impressive. I will obtain the Rawling virus immediately. Have you selected a suitable virtual house for it to be downloaded into?’
‘Not yet. The virus isn’t the only thing I need. I want you to arrange the parole and re-sleeving of Irene Elliott, currently held at Bay City Central on conviction of Dipping. I also want you to look into the possibility of acquiring her original sleeve back from its purchasers. Some corporate deal, there’ll be records.’
‘You’re going to use this Elliott to download Rawling?’
‘The evidence is she’s good.’
‘The evidence is she got caught,’ observed Kawahara tartly. ‘I’ve got plenty of people can do this for you. Top line intrusion specialists. You don’t need—’
‘Kawahara.’ I kept my temper with an effort, but heard some of it in the tightness in my voice. ‘This is my gig, remember. I don’t want your people climbing all over it. If you unstack Elliott, she’ll be loyal. Get her her own body back and she’ll be ours for life. That’s the way I want to do it, so that’s the way it’s going down.’
I waited. Kawahara stayed expressionless for a moment, then bestowed on me another carefully calibrated smile.
‘Very well. We will do it your way. I’m sure you’re aware of the risks you are taking, and what will happen if you fail. I shall contact you at the Hendrix later today.’
‘What’s the word on Kadmin?’
‘Of Kadmin, there is no word.’ Kawahara smiled once more, and the connection broke.
I sat staring at the standby screen for a moment, reviewing the scam as I’d laid it out. I had the uneasy feeling that I’d been telling the truth in the midst of all the deceit. Or, more, that my carefully spun lies were treading in the tracks of the truth, following the same path. A good lie should shadow the truth closely enough to draw substance from it, but this was something else, something altogether more unnerving. I felt like a hunter who has tracked a swamp panther a little too close for comfort, and expects at any moment to see it rear up out of the swamp in all its fanged and tendril-maned horror. The truth was here, somewhere.
It was a hard feeling to shake.
I got up and went into the kitchen, where Ortega was foraging through the almost empty fridge unit. Light from within cast her features in a way I hadn’t seen before and below one raised arm her right breast filled the slack of her T-shirt like fruit, like water. The desire to touch her was an itching in my hands.
She glanced up. ‘Don’t you cook?’
‘Hotel does it all for you. Comes up in the hatch. What do you want?’
‘I want to cook something.’ She gave up looking through the fridge and closed the door of the unit. ‘Get what you wanted?’
‘Think so. Give the hotel a list of ingredients. There are pans and things in that rack down there, I think. Anything else you need, ask the hotel. I’m going to go through the list. Oh, and Kristin.’