This time, it was Kawahara.
‘I have what you want,’ she said offhandedly. ‘A dormant version of the Rawling virus will be delivered to SilSet Holdings tomorrow morning after eight o’clock. Address 1187 Sacramento. They’ll know you’re coming.’
‘And the activator codes?’
‘Delivery under separate cover. Trepp will contact you.’
I nodded. UN law governing transfer and ownership of war viruses was clear to the point of bluntness. Inert viral forms could be owned as subjects for study, or even, as one bizarre test case had proved, private trophies. Ownership or sale of an active military virus, or the codes whereby a dormant virus could be activated, was a UN indictable offence, punishable with anything between a hundred and two hundred years’ storage. In the event of the virus actually being deployed, the sentence could be upped to erasure. Naturally these penalties were only applicable to private citizens, not military commanders or government executives. The powerful are jealous of their toys.
‘Just make sure she contacts me soon,’ I said briefly. ‘I don’t want to use up any more of my ten days than I have to.’
‘I understand.’ Kawahara made a sympathetic face, for all the world as if the threats against Sarah were being made by some malignant force of nature over which neither of us had control. ‘I will have Irene Elliott re-sleeved by tomorrow evening. Nominally, she is being bought out of storage by JacSol SA, one of my communications interface companies. You’ll be able to collect her from Bay City Central around ten o’clock. I have you temporarily accredited as a security consultant for JacSol Division West. Name, Martin Anderson.’
‘Got it.’ This was Kawahara’s way of telling me that if anything went wrong, I was tied to her and would go down first. ‘That’s going to clash with Ryker’s gene signature. He’ll be a live file at Bay City Central as long as the body’s decanted.’
Kawahara nodded. ‘Dealt with. Your accreditation will be routed through JacSol corporate channels before any individual genetic search. A punch-in code. Within JacSol, your gene print will be recorded as Anderson’s. Any other problems?’
‘What if I bump into Sullivan?’
‘Warden Sullivan has gone on extended leave. Some kind of psychological problem. He is spending some time in virtual. You will not be seeing him again.’
Despite myself, I felt a cold shiver as I looked at Kawahara’s composed features. I cleared my throat.
‘And the sleeve repurchase?’
‘No.’ Kawahara smiled faintly. ‘I checked the specs. Irene Elliott’s sleeve has no biotech augmentation to justify the cost of retrieving it.’
‘I didn’t say it had. This isn’t about technical capacity, it’s about motivation. She’ll be more loyal if—’
Kawahara leant forward in the screen. ‘I can be pushed so far, Kovacs. And then it stops. Elliott’s getting a compatible sleeve, she should be thankful for that. You wanted her, any loyalty problems you have with her are going to be your problems exclusively. I don’t want to hear about it.’
‘She’ll take longer to adjust,’ I said doggedly. ‘In a new sleeve, she’ll be slower, less resp—’
‘Also your problem. I offered you the best intrusion experts money can buy, and you turned them down. You’ve got to learn to live with the consequences of your actions, Kovacs.’ She paused and sat back with another faint smile. ‘I had a check run on Elliott. Who she is, who her family are, what the connection is. Why you wanted her off stack. It’s a nice thought, Kovacs, but I’m afraid you’re going to have to support your own Good Samaritan gestures without my help. I’m not running a charity here.’
‘No,’ I said flatly. ‘I suppose not.’
‘No. And I think we can also suppose that this will be the last direct contact between us until this matter is resolved.’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, inappropriate though it may seem, good luck, Kovacs.’
The screen blanked, leaving the words hanging in the air. I sat for what seemed like a long time, hearing them, staring at an imagined afterimage on screen that my hate made almost real. When I spoke, Ryker’s voice sounded alien in my ears, as if someone or something else was speaking through me.
‘Inappropriate is right,’ it said into the quiet room. ‘Motherfucker. ’
Ortega did not come back, but the aroma of what she had cooked curled through the apartment and my stomach flexed in sympathy. I waited some more, still trying to assemble all the jagged edges of the puzzle in my mind, but either my heart was not in it or there was still something major missing. Finally, I forced down the coppery taste of the hate and frustration, and went to eat.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Kawahara’s groundwork was flawless.
An automated limo with JacSol insignia lightning-flashed onto its flanks turned up outside the Hendrix at eight the next morning. I went down to meet it and found the rear cabin stacked with Chinese designer-label boxes.
Opened back in my room, the boxes yielded a line of high quality corporate props that Serenity Carlyle would have gone wild for: two blocky, sand-coloured suits, cut to Ryker’s size, a half dozen handmade shirts with the JacSol logo embroidered on each wing collar, formal shoes in real leather, a midnight blue raincoat, a JacSol dedicated mobile phone and a small black disc with a thumbprint DNA encoding pad.
I showered and shaved, dressed and ran the disc. Kawahara blinked up on the screen, construct-perfect.
‘Good morning, Takeshi-san, and welcome to JacSol Communications. The DNA coding on this disc is now webbed into a line of credit in the name Martin James Anderson. As I mentioned earlier, the punch-in corporate prefix for JacSol will negate any clash with Ryker’s genetic records or the account set up for you by Bancroft. Please note the coding below.’
I read off the string of digits in a single sweep, and went back to watching Kawahara’s face.
‘The JacSol account will bear all reasonable expenses and is programmed to expire at the end of our ten-day agreement. Should you wish to dissolve the account earlier than this, double punch the code, apply the gene trace and double punch again.
‘Trepp will contact you via the corporate mobile some time today, so keep the unit with you at all times. Irene Elliott will be downloaded at 21.45 West Coast time. Processing should take about forty-five minutes. And by the time you receive this message, SilSet Holdings will have your package. After consultation with my own experts, I have appended a list of the likely hardware Elliott will need, and a number of suppliers who can be trusted to acquire it discreetly. Charge everything through the JacSol account. The list will print out in hardcopy momentarily.
‘Should you need any repetition of these details, the disc will remain playable for the next eighteen minutes, at which point it will self wipe. You are now on your own.’
Kawahara’s features arranged themselves in a PR smile and the image faded as the printer chittered out the hardware list. I scanned it briefly on my way down to the limo.
Ortega had not come back.
At SilSet Holdings I was treated like a Harlan Family heir. Polished human receptionists busied themselves with my comfort while a technician brought out a metal cylinder roughly the dimensions of a hallucinogen grenade.
Trepp was less impressed. I met her early that evening, as per her phoned instructions, in a bar in Oakland, and when she saw the JacSol image she laughed sourly.
‘You look like a fucking programmer, Kovacs. Where’d you get that suit?’