Mindstar Rising

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

True to prediction, one of the yachts docked at the same quay as the Mirriam was hosting a party. A brassy, high-wattage rave; hysterical guests spilling out on to the quay itself, dancing, drawing syntho, swilling down champagne. Perfect cover. By two o'clock in the morning it still hadn't peaked.

At five minutes past two Greg walked down the quay with Suzi, the pair of them holding hands and laughing without a care in the world. He wore a dinner jacket that felt as though it was made of canvas, and reeked of starch. Suzi had slipped into a 1920s gold lamé dress, low-cut with near-invisible straps, a blonde bob wig covering her gelled-down spikes. With her size and figure she looked impossibly young—fourteen, fifteen, something like that. He reckoned that as a couple they fitted the scene perfectly. Anyone would think it was fathers and daughters night. Thank heavens for café society, immutable in a fluid world.

They infiltrated the party fringes, anthropoid chameleons.

Big Amstrad projectors were mounted on the yacht, firing holographic fireworks into the night. Upturned faces were painted in spicy shades of scarlet and green by carnation bursts of ephemeral meteorites.

Suzi lingered to watch a girl dressed in a sequin bikini and dyed ostrich feathers limbo her way under a boathook held by two semi-paralytic Hoorays.

Greg checked his watch and tugged Suzi's arm with gentle insistence, steering her into the wrap of darkness at the end of the quay. Three minutes before they had to be in position. The snatch had to be performed with exact timing; one mistake, one delay, a hesitation, and they'd be heading down the wrong Tau line and all Gabriel's planning would come to naught. He'd tried to emphasise that to the Trinities, drilling it in.

The limbo girl failed to make it, overbalancing and winding up flat on her back. The flesh of her overripe body quivered with helpless laughter. One of the Hoorays poured champagne into her mouth straight from the magnum. She lapped at the foamy spray spilling down her cheeks, her mind light-years away.

Greg and Suzi tottered away from the revellers. Nobody was paying them a second glance.

"Lady Gee was right," Suzi said from the corner of her mouth. He could sense how tight her small body was wired, rigid with restless tension.

The Trinities had been, to say the least, sceptical when Gabriel began outlining the evening's events. Their agnosticism had been whipped in staggered increments as the prophecies unfurled with uncanny precision—the party, which crewmen would leave the Mirriam for the evening, the exact time Kendric and Hermione left for the Blue Ball, the fact that Katerina had been left behind.

Other couples had drifted into the seclusion of the quay beyond the party, exploiting the penumbra of privacy provided by covered gangplanks. Greg kept his eyes firmly on the Mirriam ahead; Suzi peeped unashamedly, chortling occasionally.

Mirriam looked deserted, lit only by the intermittent spectral backwash from the Amstrads. Yet Gabriel had said there were seven people on board, two of Kendric's bodyguards, four sailors, and Katerina. She'd even reeled off their locations.

Greg wished he could use his espersense to confirm, but that was a definite no-no. The anaemia which the neurohormones had inflicted on the rest of his body had lifted during the afternoon and physically he was shaping up, but another secretion would cripple his brain.

They reached the Mirriam's gangplank and folded into the midnight shadows it exuded. He checked his watch again.

"How about we go for total realism?" Suzi whispered with a giggle in her voice as she twined her hands round his neck.

"Twelve seconds," he answered. The gangplank was one long pressure pad according to Gabriel.

"Oh, Daddy, give it to me good," she yodelled.

He could feel her shaking with laughter and a crazy burn of exhilaration.

Right on time a voice said, "Hey, sorry folks, but you're gonna have to move along."

Greg was facing the quay so he couldn't see the speaker, but he recognised Toby's baritone rumble. Besides, Gabriel said it would be him. He carried on smooching with Suzi.

There was a faint vibration as Toby walked down the gangplank.

"I said—"

Suzi's Armscor stunshot spat a dart of electric-blue flame. Greg heard a startled grunt and turned just in time to catch Toby before he hit the gangplank. Asking himself why the hell he bothered.

Suzi was racing up the gangplank. Greg followed dragging Toby. The bodyguard's breathing was ragged, slitted whites of his eyes showing in the fallout from the silent twinkling light-storm overhead.

As always Greg experienced the conviction of operating under divine protection. With Gabriel's guidance he'd become omnipotent.

Suzi ducked into the darker oval of an open hatch, fumbling her photon amp into place as she went.

Greg pulled his own photon amp out of the dinner jacket's pocket. That reassuringly familiar pinching as the band annealed to his skin. Mirriam resolved into cold hard reality around him, nebulous leaden shadows stabilising into sharply defined blue and grey outlines.

02:12:29, flashed the yellow digits.

"At two hours, twelve minutes and thirty-five seconds GMT the crewman will exit the cabin-lounge door on to the afterdeck," Gabriel had said, her voice raised above the Trinities' scoffing.

Greg dumped Toby on the glossy polished decking and ran for the afterdeck, black leather shoes squeaking.

02:12:35.

"At twelve minutes and forty-one seconds GMT he'll move into your line of sight."

02:12:38.

Greg stopped and assumed a marksman stance with his Armscor. Lining it up one metre wide of the corner of the superstructure.

02:12:41.

The crewman obviously knew something was amiss; he came round the corner of the superstructure fast, crouched low.

The photon amp showed a monster crab scuttling right at him, metre length of pipe instead of claw. He fired.

"The crewman's name is Nicky."

Metallic clangour as the crab's erratic momentum skated him into the railing, pipe skittering away anarchically. "Bye, Nicky," Greg whispered.

"Radar cancelled," Suzi's voice squawked in his earpiece. "God, this place is exactly like Lady Gee described it. Wild!"

Greg finished up at the stern, scanning the glum water of the marina and its flotsam carpet of decaying seaweed. Oily ripples slapped lazily at Mirriam's hull.

"On the taffrail you'll find a control box with six weather-proofed buttons. Press the second from the left."

The box was there. Rigid forefinger pressing. A stifled drone of a motor lowering the diving platform ladder.

The inflatable dinghy surged out of the gloaming, four figures hunched down, muffled engine cutting a hazy wake through the seaweed. It turned a finely judged arc and rode its bow wave to a halt at the foot of the ladder. The first three figures swarmed up the ladder, dressed in combat leathers and helmets. Des and two of his troop, Lynne and Roddy.

They ignored Greg and crossed the deck to the half-open cabin-lounge door. Des slid it right back and the three of them rushed in.

Greg leant over the taffrail to see Gabriel puffing her way up the ladder. She was wearing a balaclava and a heavy night-camouflage flak jacket, restricting her movements; it was the largest the Trinities had in stock. He put his hand down and diplomatically helped her over the railing.

She tugged the balaclava off, wiping the back of her hand across her perspiring forehead. "We're too old for this Greg, you and I, believe me. If you weren't such a bloody ignorant stubborn bugger." A resigned smile lifted her lips. Shaking her head. "Crazy."

Greg smiled fondly. "Tell you, I have a horrible feeling you may be right."

"That's my boy." A sudden frown wrinkled her plump features. "Damn." She thumbed the comm set in her breast pocket. "Lynne, it's not that hatch, go to the next one, that's right. The crewman is standing behind the cowling."

"Come on," Greg said. "Time for you and I to rescue the damsel."

"You know, Teddy's done a good job with those kids," Gabriel admitted grudgingly as they moved into the lounge. Greg negotiated the unfamiliar obstacles and found the central companionway. A tube of impenetrably black air, which even the photon amp had difficulty discerning.

"Are we all right for some light?" he asked.

"Yes. One moment."

Greg heard her shut the lounge door, then the biolum strip came on. He peeled the photon amp off. Suzi slithered down a narrow set of stairs from the bridge.

"Mega," she breathed, pulling off her wig and ruffing up her mauve spikes. "You got it spot on, Lady Gee. All of it. Where you said, when you said. It's fucking incredible."

"Thank you, my dear."

The three of them headed for the lower deck. Thick vermilion carpet absorbed their footfalls down the stairs. One of the crewmen was lying on the bottom step, his limbs shivering spastically from the stunshot charge. Des was waiting for them outside the master bedroom's door, helmet off, grinning broadly, his hair a dark sweaty mat.

"All right!" he whooped blithely. "We breezed it, no problem. You ever need a job, Gran, you come'n see me, OK?"

"You're too kind," Gabriel said.

Des missed the mounting testiness, but Suzi winked at Greg, rolling her eyes for his denseness. Lynne and Roddy clattered up the stairs from the crew quarters below.

"Shall we get on with it?" Gabriel said, hurriedly forestalling the compliment Lynne had opened her mouth to begin. She took an infuser tube out of her flak jacket and handed it to Suzi. "You'll need this."

Suzi turned it over, mildly curious. "What for?"

"She's a big girl."

Des and Roddy exchanged a glance.

"Is she armed?" Lynne enquired.

"No."

Greg knew that mood well enough, Gabriel at her most obdurate. There'd be no budging her now.

He opened the bedroom door. There was a subdued pink light inside.

"Hoo boy." Suzi groaned in pawky dismay. Des and Roddy piled in behind her for a look.

Katerina was sprawled across a huge circular water-bed, wearing an Arabian harem slave costume; strips of diaphanous lemon chiffon held together with thin gold chains. It was a size too small, strained by the curves of her breasts and hips. The chiffon was so flimsy they could see her large areolas through it, dark purple-brown circles with aroused nipples.

Katerina batted drowsy eyelids at the five faces staring down at her. "I'm ready," was all she said.

Roddy let out a low admiring whistle. "Makes it all kind've worthwhile, doesn't it?"

Des sniggered.

"For God's sake find something to wrap her in," Greg said. Annoyed at their abrupt lapse of discipline. Hardly surprised, though. The porno-starlet stage setting sapped any sense of urgency. He let out a hiss of breath, silently cursing Gabriel for not warning him. "Suzi, help me get her up."

Katerina looked up with innocent bewilderment as they each took an arm and tugged her into a sitting position. "I remember you," she said to Greg. "Will you make it happen, too?"

"Not tonight."

"But this is the paradise place. The hurt and the wonder always happens here."

"Bollocks, what's she on?" asked Suzi.

"Phyltre. Stuff's blowing her brain apart."

Katerina turned her head to focus on Suzi. "Can you make it happen?"

"No way, girl. Come on, let's get you out of here."

Something in Suzi's inflexible tone must've finally penetrated Katerina's befuddled brain. "I don't want to leave, not here, not the wonder. Not ever."

Suzi brought up the infuser in a no-nonsense manner.

Katerina's bare foot lashed out, catching Suzi full in the stomach. She went down with a silent oof, curling around herself and fighting for breath. Greg was suddenly left holding a screaming, scratching, biting, kicking she-demon. Gabriel was right, Katerina was big, and strong, and utterly deranged. Tapering lavender nails slashed at his eyes, a knee thudded into his pelvic bone, a tornado of golden hair filled the air. He felt soft flesh, hard flesh. Hampered by not wanting to hurt her. An inhibition rapidly dissolving.

Des made a grab for Katerina's shoulders, succeeding only in ripping her mock slave-costume. All three of them tumbled to the floor in a frenziedly bucking heap. Then Lynne waded in, trying to pin Katerina's arms down. Roddy managed to grab hold of one leg. Finally a wheezing Suzi slammed the infuser on Katerina's neck with unnecessary force. For one horrendous moment Greg thought it wasn't going to have any effect, but a look of outright surprise shot across Katerina's enraged face and she subsided into a limp bundle shrouded in wispy scraps of lemon fog.

"Goddamn… ungrateful… bitch," Suzi spat between shudders. Her face was chalk-white. Greg thought she was going to kick the unconscious body. Probably wouldn't have stopped her.

"She doesn't know what she's doing," he offered in apology. "Hey, you all right?"

Her hands were still clasped tight around her abdomen. "Yeah. Bitch."

Roddy wrapped a towelling robe around Katerina, and Des carried her out in a fireman's lift.

Gabriel stood to one side as they filed out of the master bedroom. "Told you so," she said.

The seven of them rode the dinghy back to Event Horizon's finance division offices, stealing quietly across the Nene's scummy water, making good headway against the outgoing tide. City noises thrummed around them; sirens, horns, the trill of gas-powered traffic, peals of jukebox music from riverside pubs. The sough of the dinghy's electric outboard was lost without trace.

Des dodged the big freighters anchored in the middle of the river outside the port. They were waiting for the early-morning tide to provide the draught they needed to take them down the channel to the Wash. Rust-streaked metal giants, sprinkled with tiny navigation lights, their bows a check pattern of hoarfrost where their liquefied gas tanks nestled against the hull. Greg could hear a steady plop plop plop as chunks of the mushy rime fell into the water.

Once the freighters were left behind it was a straight ride up the Nene to the Ferry Meadows estuary. The Trinities loosened up, schoolboys returning from a day outing. Their hive-buzz chatter percolated about the inflatable—Minim crewmen I have zapped.

Des even had a beacon to aim at. Philip Evans had chosen to celebrate his company's triumphant return to solid land with a thirty-five-metre-high sign perched on top of Event Horizon's finance division offices. Its core was a macramé plait of colourful neon tubes orbited by stylised holographic doodles—expanding geometric graphics, cartoon characters, origami birds, and, at Christmastime, a traditional Santa replete with sledge and reindeer. Monumentally vulgar, but mesmerising at the same time.

The deep-throated gurgling of the tidal turbines grew steadily louder as they drew near the little quay jutting out from the steep concrete embankment below the ugly cuboid building.

Victor Tyo was waiting for them, huddled in a parka against the fresh pre-dawn air rising off the estuary. He offered a gentlemanly hand to Gabriel, then grappled a semiconscious Katerina ashore. She groaned as her bare feet touched the cold concrete.

"Why are her hands tied?" Victor asked reasonably, as Greg stepped ashore and took some of the weight.

"Coz there wasn't enough rope for her fucking neck," Suzi growled out of the dark.

Victor peered down at the inflatable dinghy with its oblique cargo of well-armed hardliners and an underage girl in a revealing gold party frock. "Bloody hell."

Des gunned the throttle and the little craft surged out into the darkness. "See ya, Greg," Suzi called. "And take care of Lady Gee, she's outta this world."

Walshaw and Julia were waiting in a big corner office on the third floor. Rachel Griffith stood outside. It was a monastically simple room; the walls and ceiling were painted a uniform white, contrasting against the all-black fittings. Greg knew it was Walshaw's office without having to be told. An extension of his personality. Comfortable, efficient, and uncluttered. The furniture was unembellished, two chairs in front of a broad desk, a settee against the wall. Honey-yellow louvre bunds shut out a view of what Greg's sense of direction told him would be the estuary. The air was warm and slightly damp; stale, the way it got after people had been breathing it for several hours.

Walshaw was sitting behind the desk when they walked in. Greg was surprised to see the surface covered in little balls of scrunched-up paper.

Julia was rising from the settee, knuckles screwing sleep out of her eyes. She was wearing a V-necked lilac dress with a pleated skin. A tangerine woollen cobweb shawl was drawn around her shoulders.

She allowed herself a rueful grin. "Midnight, he says. It's gone three."

Then Victor Tyo and one of his squad members carried Katerina in between them. She'd begun to hum tunelessly.

Julia stared at her old schoolfriend, humour and toughness leaching from her face. Whatever zombie incarnation she'd been girding herself for, it wasn't a match for the mental-husk reality provided.

Katerina was lowered on to the settee, utterly uninterested in her environment.

Julia sent Greg a silent desperate plea that this was some awful nightmare, not real.

Walshaw frowned disapprovingly at the grubby rope wrapped round Katerina's wrists. Greg pointed to the fresh scratches on his face.

"See if you can find some padded cuffs," Walshaw told Victor. "And tell Dr. Taylor to stand by. She'll probably need sedating."

Victor nodded crisply and departed, happy to be out of the office.

Julia sank down on to the settee, peering timidly at the beautiful empty shell slumped quiescently beside her. "Kats? Kats, it's me, Julia. Julie. Can you hear me, Kats? Please, Kats. Please."

Katerina's lost eyes swam round. "Julie," she sighed inanely. "Julie. Never thought it would be you. They bring so many others for me, but never you. It's late, isn't it? I can feel it. It's always late when they come for me. We'll be good, won't we, Julie? You and I, when he watches? If we're good then I can go to him afterwards."

"Yah," Julia stammered. Her eyes had begun to brim with tears. "Yah, Kats, we'll be good. The best. Promise." She pulled her shawl off and tucked it clumsily around her friend's trembling shoulders. "I'd like you to leave us alone now," she said without looking round.

Greg had known some officers who could speak like that. Commanding instant obedience. Rank had nothing to do with it, their voice plugged directly into the nervous system.

As he left the office he saw Julia tenderly smoothing back Katerina's dishevelled tresses.

The corridor was narrow with a high ceiling, built from composite panels which cut up the original open-plan floor into a compartmented maze. A pink-tinged biolum strip ran overhead, its unremitting luminescence showing up the threadbare rut running down the centre of the chestnut carpet squares.

Walshaw closed the door behind him. Rachel moved down towards the lift, giving them a degree of privacy.

"I've been doing some checking this afternoon," Walshaw said. "There's a clinic on Granada which claims it can cure phyltre addiction."

"Successfully?" Greg asked.

"Forty per cent of the patients recover. I was wondering. Miss Thompson, isn't it?"

Gabriel was resting with her back flat on the wall, head tilted back, eyes closed, her breathing shallow. Greg recognised the state, he'd seen it in the mirror often enough. That relentless enervation which siphoned the vitality out of every cell.

"Morgan, to someone of your age and ex-rank I'm Gabriel, OK? But no, I can't tell if it works with Katerina. That's too far into the future."

"I don't think Julia will give up," Greg said. "Not now."

"No, I don't suppose she will," Walshaw agreed.

"You know Kendric di Girolamo is going to have to be eliminated, don't you?" Greg said.

Walshaw reached up languidly and began massaging his neck. "Eventually, yes."

"No. Not eventually. You've seen what he's done to that girl; and that was just for fun. The guy's an absolute loon. Tell you, I've seen inside his mind. Homicidal psychopath isn't the half of it. Julia needs head of state level protection while he's on the loose, no messing."

"Julia has been badgering me to do the same thing. She is even more intent than you, if anything."

"Hardly surprising, after what she went through with Kendric. Paedophile shit."

Walshaw turned his head very slowly until he was staring directly at Greg. "What?"

"Kendric and Julia; he seduced her. You didn't know?"

"She hates Kendric."

"Not always," Greg said. He couldn't ever remember seeing Walshaw so thrown before, not even the blitz and the possibility of a leak in the giga-conductor project had upset him this much. Another of Julia's secret admirers.

"So that's what is behind this sudden urge for blood," Walshaw said tightly.

"It's not just a wronged girl's lex talionis. Kendric is dangerous, believe me."

"I do." For a second the security chief looked heartbroken. Greg was suddenly glad he didn't have the use of his gland at that moment, there were some secrets people were entitled to keep. He guessed Julia had become a surrogate daughter to Walshaw over the years. That strange character flaw of his, the need to have someone to provide him with a purpose in life.

"Kendric can't be eliminated right now, dangerous though he undoubtedly is," Walshaw said. "Your episode with Charles Ellis at the Castlewood condominium confirms there is someone else involved, the organiser of the blitz. Kendric couldn't have arranged for the sniper at Ellis's penthouse, because he didn't know Wolf. Which makes Kendric our last link with the organiser. And we have to find out who that is."

"But Wolf knew Kendric," Greg said. "Weird."

"Not really," said Gabriel. "The organiser is their link, a one-way databus who passes on all Kendric's intelligence to Wolf. But there's no return flow, Wolf has nothing Kendric needs to know. And Kendric would've told the organiser that you'd confronted him, that you knew about Wolf. So the organiser fixed for the sniper. Morgan here is right, Greg. We can't get rid of Kendric, he's your only hard lead left. In fact he ought to watch out, the organiser must realise that, too."

"Shit," Greg muttered in frustration. "Kendric won't take us to the organiser, not now. He's too smart. They'll never contact each other again."

Gabriel opened her eyes. "Snatch him," she said flatly. "That's your only option. Snatch Kendric. Interrogate him. Snuff him."

"Risky," said Walshaw. "A quick clean kill is one thing, snatches have a tendency to get messy no matter how good the hardliners you use. Lots of questions asked."

"My precognition would make sure there's no mess."

"I'll authorise it," Julia said firmly.

Greg hadn't seen her emerge from Walshaw's office. But now she stood in the corridor, head held high, in complete control of herself, as if the bomb-blast of Katerina had never happened. No longer the ivory-tower habitué, but very much the Princess Regent. Some small part of him mourned the passing of the timid, sweet girl he'd first met on a sunny March day. Innocence was the most appealing of human traits.

Morgan Walshaw shifted uneasily as Julia's chillingly bright gaze turned on him, demanding. "If that's what it takes to sort this out, then that's what'll happen," she said. "It's bad enough having Kendric coming at me like this, but unknown enemies as well, that's totally out. I'm not having it. And the snatch is the way to unmask them. That bastard Kendric has been banking that we won't fight him on his own level. Well, his credit has just run out."

"Julia—" Walshaw said.

"No arguments, just do it!"

Greg could see how much effort it took Walshaw to retain control, no espersense needed for that.

"It isn't up to me, Miss Evans."

Julia realised she might've overstepped the limit. "I'm sorry, Morgan. It's Kats, you see, she keeps asking for him. Doesn't say anything else. Bastard. I think she'll have to be sedated."

"OK." He raised a cybofax and muttered into it. "Doctor's on her way."

"Who then?" Julia asked. "Who is it up to?"

Walshaw looked at Greg. "That's you, Greg. If it's to be done, it's to be done properly. Would you interrogate him?"

Greg had seen it coming, ever since Gabriel blurted the idea of a snatch. It'd given him a few seconds to chew the proposition. He spread his palms wide. "Preparations wouldn't hurt. Mind you, I'd be physically incapable of interrogating anyone for a couple of days anyway. That might give us enough time to analyse the Crays' data. See if we can't find some leads in them. Ellis should've left one."

He noticed Julia's face had gone blank, focusing inwards. Must be using her nodes, running their arguments through analysis, battling the pros and cons against each other, trying to reach the conclusions ahead of them. In a way it was a power similar to Gabriel's.

"We're going through the Crays now," said Walshaw. "Although I don't know what the hell you did to one of them, it crashed one of our lightware crunchers when we plugged it in, bloody thing is so much rubbish now. The other two Crays are clean, although it'll take time to make sure there aren't any concealed wipe instructions buried in them."

"What have you got so far?" Greg asked.

"Ellis had quite an extraordinary accumulation of data, everything from minutely detailed personal dossiers through to industrial templates. Trivia and ultra-hush all jumbled together. It's going to take some sifting, even with the lightware crunchers hooked in."

"What did you mean, Ellis should've left a lead?" Julia asked.

"Standard practice," Greg explained. "If you're plugging into those kind of deals you cover your back. Benign blackmail, to make sure your partners don't get any funny ideas afterwards. There'll be a record of all the burns he arranged as Wolf; money, clients, the names of his hotrod team; data he bought and sold as Medeor, names, companies. Every damning byte. And it'll be somewhere where it can be found after he's dead. In the Crays, the Hitachi terminal's memory core, his cybofax, public data core on a time delay, hell, even an envelope left with a lawyer."

"Nothing else?" Julia asked.

"Pardon?"

"You don't think there's anything else important in the Crays?"

For some reason her slightly querulous attitude made him aware of how immensely tired he was. He was travelling on buzz energy, had been for hours, and it was running out fast now they'd got Katerina back.

"I wouldn't know. I expect they're a goldmine of illegal circuit activity."

"That's all?" Julia was leaning forward, studying his face intently. He had the uncomfortable impression he was being judged. Crime unknown. And, frankly, he didn't give a shit.

"All I can think of, yeah."

Dr. Taylor stepped out of the lift, accompanied by Victor who was carrying her case. She was a young woman wearing a plain cerise trouser suit, her dark hair French-pleated. She had a quick word with Morgan Walshaw and went into his office. Julia started to follow, but the security chief laid a light restraining hand on her arm. For a moment she looked like she'd rebel, then nodded meekly. Victor closed the door softly after he'd gone through.

"Thank you for bringing Kats back to me, Greg," Julia said, abruptly all humble contrition.

Greg gave up trying to find motives for her oscillating moods. She was on an emotional rollercoaster; depressed by Katerina, frightened by Kendric, trusting in him, Gabriel, and Walshaw to deliver her from evil. Poor kid.

"It hurts so much just seeing her," Julia said. "Serves me right, I suppose." She reached round her neck with both hands and unhooked a slim gold chain. "For you. From me. And you don't even have to give me a kiss for it." She favoured him with a sly weary smile.

It was a St. Christopher pendant, solid gold.

"Well, put it on then," Julia said.

He mimicked a grin, feeling itchy under Gabriel's heartily bemused eye, and fastened it round his own neck. The little disk was warm on his skin as it slithered down beneath the open neck of his crisp dress shirt.

"To keep the demons at bay," Julia said. "Even though you're not a believer."

Greg pulled out of the finance division's nearly deserted car park, turning the Duo west on to the artificial lava surface of the A47. There was a single car in front of them. It wasn't quite dawn. The gross Event Horizon sign splashed the surrounding land with a guttering medley of coloured light.

"I feel sorry for that girl, you know," Gabriel said. She was looking out of the window at the clumps of hermes oak scrub along the side of the road. Beyond the bushes was a near-vertical drop to the ruffled waters of the estuary. In the distance were the dark shapes of the hydro-turbine islands, moon-glazed foam rumbling round them.

"Katerina? Who wouldn't?" Greg said.

"No, Katerina is pure survivor breed. I meant Julia; she has no real family, few friends her own age. And you're on the borderline yourself, now, despite her token of esteem."

"How do you figure that?"

"If Ellis hasn't left anything in the Crays, or whatever, about Kendric or the organiser, how do you think she'll feel about you? You've managed to be right all the way so far. She trusts you because of that. Implicitly. Screw up now and it'll all end in tears."

"Not a chance. I know Ellis's type down to his last chromosome. A hyper-worrier. He's a little-man intermediary who's lucked into a real super-rank underclass operation; elated and terrified all at once. He'll have taken precautions. That means a way of pointing his finger from beyond the grave."

"Oh, yeah?"

"Yep. Ellis's major problem was that he never got round to telling his paymasters he was insured." Greg slowed as the car in front turned off on to the sliproad for the bridge ahead, then accelerated again as the cutting walls rose on either side.

Gabriel said: "I still don't think Ellis would take such—"

The front nearside tyre blew out.

The Duo veered violently to the left, straight towards the near-vertical slope of the cutting. Greg saw sturdy grey-white saplings, impaled in the headlight beams, lurching towards him. The steering wheel twisted, wrenching at his hands, nearly breaking his grip. He jerked it back as hard as he could, with little or no effect. The Duo's three remaining tyres fought for traction on the coarse cellulose surface. It was slewing sideways, screeching hard. A flamboyant fan of orange sparks unfolded across the offside window. That alpine-steep incline was sliding across the windscreen, rushing up on the side of the Duo. Horribly close. They'd spun nearly full circle and Greg could feel the tilt beginning as the car began to turn turtle. Then there was a boneshaker impact, a damp thud, and they were disorientatingly, motionless. Silence crashed down.

Soon broken.

"Shitfire," Gabriel yelped. She was staring wild-eyed out of the windscreen, drawing breath in juddering gulps. "I didn't know!" She whipped round to look at him, frantic, frightened, entreating. Which was something he'd never ever seen in her before. And that alarmed him more than the blow-out.

"I didn't know, Greg! There was nothing. Nothing, flick it! Do you understand?"

"Calm down."

"Nothing!"

"So what! You're tired, and I'm knackered. It's only a bloody tyre gone pop, small wonder you didn't see it. Non-event." Even as he spoke he could feel some submerged memory struggling for recognition. Something about the tyre performance guarantee. Puncture-proof? That bonded silicon rubber was tough stuff.

Thankfully, Gabriel subsided into a feverish silence; eyelids tightly shuttered, mind roaming ahead. Did she suffer visions of her gland pumping furiously? He'd never asked.

Greg concentrated on his hands, still clenching the wheel, white-knuckled. They wouldn't let go.

What appeared to be a eucalyptus branch was lying across the windscreen. Its purple and grey leaves shone dully in the waning rouge emissions from the office block's sign.

Looking out of his side window he could see the bridge nearly directly overhead. They'd only just missed crashing into the concrete support wall.

"Greg—" Gabriel said in a low frightened moan.

Upright shapes were moving purposefully through the dusky shadows outside the sharp cone of light thrown by the Duo's one remaining headlight.

Greg stared disbelievingly at them for one terrible drawn-out second. "Out!" he shouted, His door opened easily enough and he was diving out, racing for the back of the Duo. A mini-avalanche of loose earth and gravel had digested the rear of the car. His hands flapped across his dinner jacket, hitting every pocket. Panicking. Trying to remember where the fuck he'd left the Armscor stunshot.

There were three of them approaching; two men, one woman. Walking down the middle of the road with a glacial panache, cool and unhurried. A confidence that'd tilted over into sublime arrogance.

The Armscor had gone, swept away by the tide of pitiful sloppiness he was screwing his life with. Given it to Victor? Suzi? Left it in Walshaw's office?

He stuck his head above the Duo's roof, ducking down quickly. The ambush team was closing in remorselessly, empty silhouettes against that idiotic phallic sign and its happy floating Disney projections. They were still carefully avoiding the headlight beam.

Gabriel's door was jammed up against the earth of the cutting; her frantic shoving couldn't budge it more than halfway open. The gap wasn't nearly large enough for her bulk.

One of the men levelled a slender long-barrelled rifle at her. Greg squirreled away his profile: leather trousers tucked into calf-high lace-up boots, last-century camouflage jacket, blind plastic band of a photon amp clinging to his face, designer stubble, small pony tail.

"Mine," the man said.

A narrow streak of liquid green flame spewing from the end of the rifle, and Gabriel was jerking about epileptically.

Greg turned and ran for the slope of crumbling earth, clawing at the dense treacherous scrub lassoing his legs, keeping low. The eucalyptus saplings were neatly pruned, a bulbous flare of foliage on top and bare slim boles, providing a meagre cover. He grabbed hold of them in a steady swinging rhythm, hauling himself upwards, feet scrabbling for purchase. The embankment seemed to stretch out for ever. It was an animal flight. Blind instinct, equating the sliproad at the top of the embankment with the grail of sanctuary. Pathetic, some minute core of sanity mocked.

"There," came the triumphant shout from below.

The shot caught him three metres short of the summit, where the saplings and scrub had given way to a bald mat of grass which bordered the sliproad. The pain seared down his nerves like a lava flow. He saw his arms windmilling insanely, fingers extended like albino starfish.

As he fell there was just one question looping through his brain. Why hadn't Gabriel known?