20) Ecce Picoscopic
KRASNIY KAMENIEV/RED ROCK
MARS
EARTH RELATIVE OCTOBER 10TH
Lovell made himself comfortable in one of the sub-Martian rooms provided for him. It had belonged to one of the dead, killed when the rec dome depressurised, killed by asphyxiation, blast, debris and exsanguination. They allocated the room to him deliberately, too; perhaps the Red Rock establishment were sending a not-too-subtle message to him. Like, don't stay.
Overall, Red Rock came as a considerable disappointment to Lovell. After a few days one's internal regimen adapted to lower gravity and you noticed nothing exotic within the complex; after all, a windowless room was simply a windowless room, and there were plenty of those back on Earth. To even get a hint of an alien vista, you needed to go peer out from one of the portholes in a rec dome to see Mars in its natural state. When Lovell suggested a trip outside the reaction of Griskiewicz had been unfeigned horror: let an untrained, inexperienced novice loose on the Martian surface in an EVA suit that cost upwards of ten million, to contend with reactive soil, friable rock strata, gas pockets, radiation, rockfalls, gravity euphoria, disorientation - no! No! and NO again!
In part of his introductory routine Lovell had thoroughly explored the layout of Red Rock, making sure that people got to see him while he saw them, so he became less of a stranger. One of the first sites on his visit was Chamber Six, the destroyed rec dome. All that remained visible - indeed, almost the only thing that remained - of Chamber Six was the door, and that was sealed off. There were camera stills that showed what remained on the other side of that sealed door: the flooring, covered with dust, jagged pieces of wall curving up from the floor like discoloured fangs, a few broken bits of furniture deemed not worth salvaging. There were also camera stills of the victims, gruesome mortuary relics that he skimmed over quickly.
Another priority venue was the plant room ante-chamber. Before the explosion it had been a small room two metres by three metres with a powered sliding door at each end. People entered via one door, then left via the other into the reactor room. Scanners and suction vents ensured that no contaminants entered or left the plant room. Had ensured. For the time being, as a stop-gap measure, a plastic see-through portable airlock stood installed inside the plant room to prevent contamination. Lovell could therefore see the damage caused to the plant room. Both ante-chamber doors had been blown outwards, the one leading into the plant room torn out of its runners and thrown across the floor, ricocheting off a supply conduit en route. The blast had damaged a control panel, which bulged and split, looking embarrassed. Inside the ante room the walls were buckled and split along weld seams; burnt insulation hung dead from loose panels, equally dead wiring dangled flaccidly. Lovell judged that if the detonation were to have taken place in the reactor room then the damage would have been far worse, possibly rendering the whole power generating process impossible.
After three days, to Bhatacharjee's mixed relief and chagrin, Lovell convened a meeting, which he wanted Prue, Griskiewicz and De Huys - the police division head - to attend. They would review evidence gathered so far. The Indian did not look forward to it. He knew from the cargo manifest that Lovell had brought a collection of specialist data-analysis electronics with him, but apart from that Anderson remained a mystery to him. One could conjecture that, since the Antiguan was here on Mars, he had a certain talent for investigation. FedCon wouldn't waste a million marks transporting a non-specialists to Mars, would they? If having FedCon breathing down his neck in the form of Anderson Lovell meant the whole messy, bizarre business got resolved quicker then Bhatacharjee would be happier. Though he'd still feel happier if he knew just what the meeting would cover.
Later, when all four had sat down in Bhatacharjee's personal quarters, Lovell asked for the door to be locked and all transmission sources turned off. His demeanour was curious and implied secret knowledge, spurring all present to wonder what that secret might be.
'Sorry for the delay,' apologised the agent. He presided over a number of black boxes wired together, plugged into a viewing screen and connected to a hand-console with attached microphone. He was having a little trouble making sure all these components were compatible since typically there hadn't been any trouble when he used the equipment himself, but at a public demonstration things went awry.
Finally Lovell felt satisfied. He too sat and handed out a fax with printed details of the presentation.
'I have to say, firstly, that my investigation was solely into the recent accident here, Mister Bhatacharjee. My brief extended no further than that. You might be a little less anxious with that in mind.
'Secondly, my results are due to having the latest electronic gear -' and here he waved a hand at his electronic hardware '- which I brought specifically because Red Rock is seen as being so important. The black boxes consist of Finnish forensic hardware and a British picoscopic analyser package.'
De Huys made a cynical moue.
'Very expensive. Very intricate,' he intoned. "Envy" said his expression.
Lovell stared at the man, wanting to add that the equipment was very difficult to use, even though he had spent the long months of the journey from Earth learning to use it.
'I'm going to channel input from the set and run it into the wall screen. That way we can all see.The wall screen was genuine wall-sized display screen, with an accompanying "laser" pointer for didactic patrons. When the disks began to play, the screen flashed up subliminal dates and times. Then came the actual footage (Imperial terms still in use) of events in Chamber Six. No sound since it was deemed un-necessary in a routine recording, no colour because monochrome was cheaper and easier to record. The view came from overhead because the camera had been placed at the chamber's apex alongside the lighting where it would be least obvious, giving a fish-eye perspective.
The panorama showed people sitting at tables, playing a game of cards, reading microfilmed books; occasionally a person entered, their head looming and receding under the lens. Two people stood at a table waving angrily at each other in apparent silence. One stood up and stamped out. Perfectly normal off-duty Martian behaviour. One man lay on the floor staring at the ceiling, and another stood staring out of a porthole at the Martian terrain. Once again, normal off-duty Martian behaviour.
This sequence ran until Lovell felt sure everyone was accustomed to its normality. He then paused the disk and pointed out the rather obvious fact that nothing was going on. Once the disk re-started they saw the prostrate man abruptly get up and walk out; as he did so he bumped into another, incoming person. The locking doors powered themselves shut behind the departee.
'That last was Halloran, going out. Lucky lad. He missed it by a whisker.'
They all watched the last entrant remain standing by the doors. De Huys recognised the man as Calvino. Again, for long, boring seconds, nothing happened. Then, no warning, a sudden flash obscured the view. When it cleared clouds of debris were scudding outwards into the Martian atmosphere, bodies threshed on the floor, the chamber walls were shattered and of Calvino - no trace remained. Nor was the camera unaffected. Gradually the after-effects of blast and decompression stripped away the chamber walls until the video lost its support and began showing images of sky, then ground and nothing at all.
'The camera got picked up ten meters from the dome but fortunately the disks were still whole and integral. Now I'm going to re-run it with the data analysers switched on.'
From a grainy monochrome image the video suddenly became cuttingly clear. Lovell demonstrated how capable the equipment was by carrying out an internal zoom on the card players, then panning across to the previously mentioned Halloran and tracking across his face.
'Look at those pupils,' muttered De Huys, professionally interested.
From that frozen frame the video forwarded to the point when Halloran rose and made ready to leave. There Lovell left the disk, paused, for a tangential discussion.
'Why did you suspect an internal explosion caused the damage, and what made you suspect that Calvino was the culprit?'
A short silence. Then a short discussion.
'Deduction,' replied Bhatacharjee. 'Over the whole history of Red Rock there have been only four disasters like this one. None were design flaws or externally influenced, they were all caused by an explosion within a dome. Their design, you see, makes them invulnerable to everything except such an event. The last one was a bottle heater with a fault, I believe.'
'And Calvino?'
'More deduction. Nothing happened until he entered the room, the blast took place where he stood, and, unlike other victims, there wasn't anything left of him to recover.
Lovell nodded. He then changed the disks in the playback unit.
'I'm playing the footage we have of Grice in the reactor section. Obviously there were more cameras there, so we have more recordings. I've copied relevant sections onto one disk. My apologies if you've been through this one before.'
Once again the black and white video tones sprang into life, showing an overhead view of a secure door. This was a solidly-built, inter-leaved access point, guarded by one of De Huys police force. Staff could enter only if the policeman was satisfied about their legitimacy.
Grice, seen from above, abruptly arrived in front of the guard and without hesitation drew a length of heavy piping from his jacket and clubbed the unfortunate warden to the floor. Such was the severity of the assault that both piping and police helmet were fractured (a sequence that made Bhatacharjee wince whenever he witnessed it). The aggressor reached down and pulled hard at his victim's uniform, ripping free a smart-card that he placed in the relevant wall slot. Obediently the door rolled open.
Lovell stopped the image temporarily at that point, indicating the wall slot with his pointer.
'Point of interest number one. Grice stole this card to use but he couldn't have known that it has an underlying code; if it is used with a different thumbprint from the user's a 999 code is entered and broadcast.'
De Huys nodded in agreement. The warden's card should not have opened the door, but it had. Only the warning function worked successfully, alerting those in the reactor complex.
Lovell started his display running again, which changed to show another overhead view. This view came from inside the reactor complex; two nervous guards could be seen, each holding a pistol, two of the twelve legally licenced guns within Red Rock now pointed at the entrance doorway where Grice stood. A strobe epi-alarm pulsed at the renegade, hopefully to incapacitate him, though in real life it had no effect. Grice started towards the ante-room door.
Red Rock used both liquid and solid fuel as emergency reserves and to power it's Rover vehicles, used in exploration, but power for the complex came from three fusion reactors (a mere fraction of the necessary came from solar panels). They had been installed recently as the size of Krasniy Kamenev increased. All residents on Mars were aware of the dangerous and paradoxical nature of their power source, being their only sole life-support and potentially able to fatally contaminate one thousand times over. Net result: armed guards stood watch over the reactor complex with standing orders to use whatever force they considered necessary to prevent damage, wilful or not. Nobody without a smart card was allowed to enter; those who arrived had to wait for processing; once through that an escort showed arrivals into the reactor section.
None of which procedure Grice had followed, so he was promptly shot while he ran, by both his fellow--workers. He didn't even slow down. One policeman lowered his gun in disbelief, the other kept on shooting whilst Grice raced into the ante-chamber and pressed a button to close the door. Once more the video view changed to an overhead shot, from a camera set into the ceiling of the ante-room. Grice managed to enter the small room whilst bullets thudded dully into it, but he failed to shut the door completely. Then he simply stood, in the middle of the floor.
As happened in Chamber Three, there was a brief, intense flash and debris filled the room.
Again the view changed, this time from a camera opposite the ante-room door, within the reactor room. Nothing happened for strained seconds. Then, as two technicians walked past, the door silently burst out of it's sockets in a storm of dust and smoke; it cannoned into the passers-by, carried on and bounced off a humpback reactor housing, careered high in the air and embedded itself in a control console. Sparks flared briefly for a few seconds. The most disconcerting part of the whole sequence was that it took place in total silence.
'All au fait?' asked Lovell. 'You ought to be, you've seen this a dozen times. Now, I'm going to run it again, but enhance this time.
'Okay, this is Interesting Anomaly Number One, where the smart card opens a door that ought to stay shut. Nobody has yet suggested a convincing explanation for it, barring divine intervention.'
Griskiewicz frowned heavily.
'What is the chance of this happening by chance?' he asked.
Lovell shrugged. As he understood if from his own background knowledge and calculations provided by a Red Rock electronics expert, the chances were of the order of once per universe lifetime.
'A gruesome bit here. Grice got shot eleven times at point blank range. He wasn't noticeably slowed down - not even carrying all that extra weight, as a policeman said.'
De Huys felt obliged to point out that his small police force used "Squash Head" bullets that were guaranteed not to go through sensitive structures like pressure dome walls but which were conversely guaranteed to make a mess of people. Grice excepted.
'Notice how the smart-card also works on the ante-room door, where it shouldn't.'
Lovell turned off the display temporarily to summarise the forensic findings and what they had all witnessed so far.
Item: Grice and Calvino were responsible for the explosions but their modus operandi remained unknown. Also, as was seen from the disks time track, both explosions took place at the same time, to within tenths of a second of each other.
Item: nobody noticed anything remotely odd about the two kamikazes before their coeval suicides. Nor were there any suicide notes or any other explanations, nor had their weekly psychology tests revealed anything untoward.
Item: the highly sensitive and accurate "sniffers" in the reactor room failed to detect any trace of explosive substances.
Conjecture: both were participants in a planned, deliberate act of self-destruction.
Lovell carried on, explaining that he had been very unhappy about the lack of any trace of explosive substance, so he went backward over the critical frames again. Each frame was resolved and enhanced, enlarged and analysed. Lovell had been surprised at his end result, and unpleasantly surprised. When he returned to the forensic results his surprise turned to perplexity.
21) Tables Overturned
BRANCUSI INSTITUTION
NOVI BUCURESTI
OCTOBER 10
Constantin strolled down the corridor towards the East Wing, swinging his collection of MagIC keys on their sealed loop. He was due to meet Doctor Buttel to help with one of the schizophrenic children who didn't respond to chemotherapy, but he was early and didn't want to rush. It could be grim work, helping to restrain a child who behaved like a little demon; then again it was equally unpleasant to see one of them lying there like a human cabbage.
A cleaner pushed a mop around further down the corridor, so Constantin stopped for a quick time-wasting chat with him.
'Hello.'
The cleaner stopped moving his piece of equipment backwards and forwards over the same piece of floor, took a cigarette from behind one ear and lit it. He stuck one hand in a pocket and nodded.
'Non-tobacco,' he said, pointing at the cigarette. 'Machorka. Off to lock 'em up, are you?'
Constantin laughed, a little embarrassed.
'No, no, not at all. They want me to help with one of the kiddies who needs holding down. They can get a bit upset.'
The cleaner nodded sagely.
'Oh aye, you're a big bloke. Do they need a bloke big as you to hold down a child?'
Constantin frowned. There seemed to be an air of criticism in the question.
'You'd be surprised how strong they can get when they go berserk, friend. I don't beat them up, if that's what you mean.'
The cleaner just went "aha" , puffing away at his cigarette. Constantin turned to go, feeling a strange unease at being talked at in such a way. He turned back to the cleaner but the man ignorantly returned to his cleaning, oblivious to anything else, so Constantin had no chance to restate his view.
The "restraining" turned out to be extremely unpleasant, with the child flailing, screaming, biting and kicking while Doctor Buttel tried to carry out the assessment. Instead of fifteen minutes it took an hour, at the end of which Buttel still looked surprisingly pleased. He carefully replaced the extracting syrette in its protective case and labelled each of the phials with their extract type.
'Good! Good!' he beamed. 'Much better!'
Better than what, wondered Constantin. The German doctor wasn't too hot on his Slavic, tending to break into excitable German if he didn't concentrate.
After saying goodbye to the cheerful doctor (who most staff were convinced was not entirely sane) Constantin made a tour of the North Wing. Because he spent far longer on the assessment than usual he was late for his rounds, which meant that he waited until mid-afternoon for his lunch. His stomach protested loudly at this imposition. Still, he remained professionally watchful and cheerful whilst patrolling the various wards and dayrooms, inspecting children at play and work. He intervened only once, to break up a squabble between two girls and a boy, using his considerable bulk to counterpoise his gentle manner. After that he returned to the canteen via the central Admin block to snatch a quick cup of coffee and a sandwich. A group of cleaners were playing cards at a table with considerable if muted cursing; apart from that he had the whole place to himself. Soon the cleaners left and he sat alone, only his thoughts for company. They weren't much, as companions went; his thoughts went continually to his wife, Jarmila, whom he hadn't seen all day and wouldn't see for another day yet. That was the big drawback of semi-residential shift work, big wages but unsocial hours. The kids at home always asked where he was if he didn't greet them at least once per day. Well, they needed the money for a new house, so he had little choice but to carry on with the slogging work - Jarmila stayed at home to look after the children so they only had the one wage coming in. He sighed deeply, glad that there were no others to hear him, feeling that at least his work here had social merit, he could be stuck in an office shuffling paper all day instead of raising the quality of life of these orphans.
Constantin had started work at ten that morning and, after taking lunch and coffee-breaks, wasn't due to finish until midnight. It was a long shift, but not one of the harder ones to work since at night the children were asleep and much less restive. Potential adopters usually came to collect their charges during night shifts for the same reason.
Before departure he needed to make out a report on the day's assessment with Doctor Buttel, his rounds on the wards, dayrooms and dormitories, any complaints or protests that staff entered and, because it was the end of the administrative month, the state of the Institute's stocks, stores and structure. Having completed this mind-numbing chore, he felt like a stroll. He was off-duty yet didn't mind an extra ten minutes or so examining "his" buildings and the orphans within them.
As expected, all stood quiet, with the Institute's secondary lighting on in corridors to save power. Constantin stuck his head around a ward entrance and nodded at the nurse on duty there. She frowned back, until she recognised him and came over.
'What's up, Monitor?'
'Just having a last look around. How's it going?'
The nurse shrugged.
'All quiet. The little dears are all asleep, even the ones who are little or dears.'
Constantin laughed quietly, thinking: for a change.
'Fine, my shift's over now. I'm off home. Bye.'
'Lucky old you,' commented the nurse, tartly. 'Mine's only just begun.'
To get from the West Wing to the staff car park meant going into the Admin block again, at ground level. Passing the main corridor to Reception he nearly tripped over a bucket and mop left lying around a corner. Cursing briefly, he pushed them aside and looked around for the absent owner, seeing no-one. Bloody careless, the lighting here isn't too good and a person could have an accident on those things. He carried on down the corridor. Then he caught sight of a door left ajar. Odd, he thought. Then: hang on, that door - is the Director's. He never stays after five and is damn certain never to let anyone not a doctor or director get in there. Who's in there at this time?
Retracing his steps he returned to the open door. Dim light, open doors, nobody in sight; pretty creepy, in fact. Nor could he hear anything from within the room. Not subscribing to the traditional method of asking "Who's there?", the Monitor threw the door open and slammed the light switch on.
Anticlimax. There were no intruders lurking in the Director's room. Nor were there many places to hide. Constantin checked behind the big mock-wood desk, beside the filing cabinets, even under the computer table, without result. There was another door in the Director's room leading into the next corridor, so Constantin tried it. Unlocked. He opened it and peered up and down the corridor but saw no-one.
Well, better not stay in the Director's precious room if there was no good reason to, he might get blamed for those opened doors. When he came back tot he corridor neither bucket nor mop remained.
I'll have words with the person responsible for that, thought the Monitor, an intent that had faded and been forgotten by the time he got home. When next he remembered, several days later, he considered that it was probably coincidence that the door stood open. After all, it was MagIC locked and only Director Iliescu had a key, so nobody else could have broken in. Constantin's decision not to follow up the incident was to have important repercussions, not least for him.
The Monitor returned to his fourteen hour shift on Thursday, later that week. Doctor Bussel wanted him to help in another assessment, one that both knew would be difficult. To pacify his stomach he consumed a sandwich before the appointment whilst going on a tour of the North Wing. This area housed the children on the "Risk" register, frequently in need of medication or restraint due to their various mental illnesses; normally, in accord with FedCon guidelines, children were integrated with their peers instead of being walled off. Constantin often felt mingled anger and pity for them: pity for their condition, anger that society so ostracised and rejected them that only the despised FedCon would take them on. These children didn't start the Last War, did they? So why treat them like the villains not the victims?
The MagIC keys on his loop were needed to get past every door in the North Wing since they were secure doors. Not just to prevent kids getting out but to prevent others getting in. So, following the insert-press-extract-open-shut routine, Constantin went around the North Wing, getting into a mannered acceptance of the security delays.
Suddenly, turning a corner, he came face to face with a man pushing a mop. The surprise made him jump.
'Sign of a guilty conscience,' said the cleaner, deadpan.
'Eh? Hang on, I recognise you. You get around, don't you.'
The cleaner tipped his hat insolently.
'I'm a general relief. I do what the others aren't around to do. Today Ion is on leave so I do his job instead. Here to straitjacket a kiddie, are you?'
Constantin flushed with anger. This man had a way of being insulting just in the way he stood.
'I don't like your attitude, friend. I don't certify the children in here - if they get jacketed it's to protect themselves and others.'
To this the cleaner responded with a shrug. "Bored already" said his posture and expression. Constantin ploughed on, goaded by the man's insulting ignorance.
'I've got two little ones of my own, so I know what I'm talking about. Our children here are treated in the best way, the best, and if you want to keep your job-' this point being emphasised with a prodding finger '-you can stop being sly with me. Now, get out of my way!'
Off strode the Monitor, fuming with righteous indignation. Guilty conscience indeed! Ha!
Jarmila got a slightly coloured version of this exchange when her husband came home from the Institute to their flat in the small hours of the morning. She could tell her husband was cross because he wouldn't sit still and instead chose to stand and pace about. Eventually he calmed down and went to bed with her. Why so upset? She wondered. He did a hard and thankless job, did it well and never allowed the ill-informed to trouble him about his occupation or how he did it. Perhaps the shift work was running him down. Yes, that must be it, he'd gotten over-tired and this temper was the result.
Having taken a fortnight's leave at his wife's urgent pleading, on his return Constantin walked back into the Institute's doors to be greeted by the mixed smells of the place: disinfectant, food (especially cabbage), vomit, lino and air freshener all blended together into Institute-smell.
Signing-in extended beyond a formally whilst Irina quizzed him about the holiday.
'Nothing much. We went to Kiev with the kids, though, stayed over a couple of nights. Nice place, but I wouldn't -'
'You wouldn't want to live there,' interrupted Irina. 'Yes, I know, one of my boyfriends lived in Kiev and I went to stay there with him. The traffic is awful and they're all really rude. The best thing about Kiev - what's that?'
A low black GEV had parked, badly, on the staff car park. It's gull-wing doors swung upwards and people climbed out, then paced over determinedly to the glass doors of Reception. One person remained outside, the others entered.
'Hi! Recognise me?' asked their leader.
'You're the cleaner - Vaclav, isn't it?' responded Irina. Constantin recognised the accusatory cleaner, too.
'Wrong.' The cleaner's voice lost all of it's bonhomie and he reached down to his boot, coming up with a long, thin metal object that both Constantin and Irina recognised as a Zap Gun.
'Recognise this? Yes, rather more accurate guess this time. Miss Eremenko, keep away from the switchboard and phones. Stasha, the wires, please.'
One of the others produced a small, mono-bladed knife and carefully cut the phone line in two places.
'What are you bloody fools doing?' exclaimed Constantin in astonishment and worry, believing that these were thieves out to rob the Insititute of - and to his astonishment Vaclav produced a Red Card and smiled broadly. The cleaner belonged to UNION?
Vaclav laughed.
'Constantin, your face. Don't worry, all will be revealed. We are working for Internal Audit, investigating the Institute and staff. Do as we ask and you may get promoted.'
They took the Monitor into an empty dayroom, leaving Irina under the watchful eye of their woman at the doorway. Vaclav produced a sealed plastic bag and tipped the contents onto a table in front of Constantin.
Skin? thought the Romanian. No, naked bodies. Porno books. So what - he looked closer and realised how young some of the featured actors were.
'Those are children!' he said, sharply. Vaclav nodded.
'Illegal and immoral. You haven't seen their last pages, though, friend, because that's where the children get murdered. Their title in English - well, no, American , the English wouldn't like it described as their title - is "Sex 'n' Snuff".'
Constantin turned to one of the rear pages and felt his stomach flip, anger welling up. He closed the book quickly, feeling tainted from merely touching it.
'Why do you show me this - this rubbish?' he asked, coldly. Vaclav replied equally coldly.
'Because those children came from this Institute, Mister Romanescu.'
Constantin looked up in astonishment.
'Yes, you heard me correctly. From this Institute. We found out when the American Catholic Underground smuggled a teenaged drug-addict out from a Californian porn-parlour. Lucky for him; not many survive this process. Name of Simon. He told us where he came from.'
'From here? He came from here?' The Monitor couldn't believe what he heard.
'Yes. Your Director, his Deputy, the Matron and a Monitor are able to sell off children. The Monitor selects them, Matron examines them, the Deputy carries out the paperwork and the Director calls in an American to take them away.'
Constantin slapped his head. Of course! Those Canadians - always present at night when there were few witnesses, with an explanation for their accents.
'Which Monitor?' he asked, wondering if he could get to the man and beat him senseless before these people arrested him.
Vaclav shook his head. He didn't want any complications, including dead suspects. The set-up here had been very compact, partly explaining it's success; only four people involved. He wanted all four to go unimpeded to trial, which might not happen -
Bang! went the table as the Monitor smashed it with a clenched fist. He had spotted a face on one of the magazine's back pages, where the thing fell open, a face he recognised amid a welter of gore: Lila Angelicu, a ten year old nicknamed "Hedgehog" because of her preferred hairstyle, a short spiky crop.
'Who is it! I'll gut the bastard with a chisel! Just tell me who -'
'Calm down, Romanescu. We want them to go to trial with all their arms and legs attached. More than that, we want their American contacts, who are due to attend a meeting with the Director this very afternoon, in this building. Must be important for them to break cover in daylight. Anything you do to the Americans, if we get them, will be pale and merciful compared to what their own people would do. Regardless, don't think of having a go yourself.'
Vaclav didn't enthuse very much because that would have given away the extent of his poking and prying, but this was the only occasion the Americans had ever done business in daylight and they were executing a major plan. The simple act of catching the Director together with American agents would doom him to at least five years ice-grinding in McMurdo Sound. Matron and Deputy Szilard were already in custody. Monitor Sabic still remained on duty within the Institute, unaware of the fate of his accomplices. Vaclav sent one of his minions off to detain the free Monitor.
'Will you be okay here?' asked the last remaining agent.
'Oh, I think so. Don't worry. Once you've taken him out to the car, bring the projector back.'
An hours-long wait ensued. Constantin fretted impatiently, mentally reviewing all the adoptions over the past years; he felt certain there had been signals he had missed and blamed himself for blind ignorance. Hindsight was a big stick and he beat himself with it, repeatedly.
Constantin had heard of American "Porn Parlours" before, a major industry in California, using non-Americans by preference because they had no legal existence and there would be no punishment if such people suffered or died. Constantin was unaware of the voracious appetite of this industry; it's victims were killed deliberately for the unbelievably vile sex and "snuff" industry grown from an underground legend into a nightmare reality, died from "client trauma application", contracted diseases, became drug addicts by policy to ensnare them further, ran away, got arrested, committed suicide. A lucky few, a fortunate, were smuggled out of America by one of the weedlike underground organisations that flourished there, such as the ACU or Democratic Labour.
The Director and two accompanying people left their very expensive car and walked across to Reception. Unseen to them, a low black GEV pulled up behind their car, blocking any movement. The sentry on watch at Reception hid carefully after giving a warning.
So the Director simply nodded to the girl on Reception's front desk and carried on. He ushered the two guests into his room and experienced a heart-stopping surprise.
'Hi there,' said Vaclav in American-accented English, very comfortably seated behind the Directors desk. The two guests, Americans, looked blankly at each other, then turned to go. Too late. Monitor Romanescu stood in the doorway, armed with a club and a stare that threatened more than his weapon. He slapped it into an open palm, making a nasty, hollow sound.
At first the Director shouted and blustered, until he caught sight of a pornographic magazine on the desk. Then he became very quiet, thinking up reasons and excuses.
Vaclav leaned back in the comfortable chair. He had to play things carefully now; a statement would be nice to tie up all the loose ends and the evidence to date, but a confession would be even better. If the Director tried to tough things out the end result would be a lengthy and embarrassing public trial, bringing all sorts of unwanted information to attention. The MJO preferred a nice low-profile prosecution of FedCon members. Captive American agents, on the other hand, were guaranteed a judicial spectacular. A detail of FAA provosts were en route from Kiev to collect the agents, so all Vaclav needed to do was baby-sit them for the immediate future. His aides dragged the Americans away, separately, to be locked up. Neither spoke (good practice for captured spies or agents) but they were pale and jittery.
That left Vaclav and the Director alone.
(First, soften your target up, like the Meatgrinder)
'You're a very unpleasant man,' said Vaclav in a neutral tone. 'One of the most unpleasant men I've met in my career.' (Technically true, even if it was a short career).
'I didn't know what they did! I didn't know - my God, do you think that I'd have done that deliberately - I didn't -'
'My opinion is that you didn't give a shit what happened to your charges once they left here, Director.'
(Second stage. Attack.)
Vaclav jumped out from behind the desk and put his victim in an armlock; he forcibly dragged the Director out of his room and down the corridor, encouraging the man with vicious, well-placed kicks.
'In there. Open it with your teeth, the lock's off.'
The Director complained. He got another kick for that, until finally he managed to open the door with his teeth, no mean feat for a terrified man held in an awkward, painful grip. Vaclav propelled him into the room with an ungentle shove.
'This is our interview room. We already have your accomplices in custody. More than that, we have all that coded information you carefully secreted on your computer. Also, we have videoed disk records from the bugs I planted in your office.'
Yes indeed. Alex - masquerading as Vaclav the cleaner - had puzzled about the information hidden within the computer. Being a night cleaner enabled him to get into the Director's office undetected but he couldn't possibly decrypt the codes in the time available. So he simply copied the hard card to another, portable one set up by a computer expert, then mailed the copy to Novi Bucuresti. He didn't have an inkling of what resided on either disk, though it must have been serious enough for the Director to turn visibly green.
Not that his complexion improved when he saw the body. That of a man, naked, lying in a pool of blood in a corner of the interview room, where blood pooled around his back. The man's face lay toward the wall yet from his bald spot the Director knew it was Sabic. His tongue stuck firmly to the roof of his mouth and his feet tingled coldly.
Alex looked over at the corner, too.
'Oh, him. You recognised him. Yes, I'm afraid we got a little carried away with him. He died.'
Alex dipped a hand in the blood and smeared it on the cringing Director's face, smiling a hateful smile of no humour but much malice.
'Imagine this is the blood of the children you sold into slavery and drug addiction and death, Director.' The voice was quiet and neutral but the eyes, the eyes were like little chips of diamond, Alex barely suppressing the disgust and anger accumulated throughout the weeks of working undercover. 'Now, suppose you start telling me the truth about your little escapades here before -' and he gestured towards the body in the corner, smiling that bleached smile again.
At this the Director's nerve broke. He started to babble in ho special order about his dealings with the Americans, arrangements for transfer, cheques, monies, vetting of children, approaching other contacts; he went on and on and it was all recorded. Finally, for verification purposes, Alex asked him to state positively that no duress had been exerted, to which the Director assented. By that time he would have cut his own throat, so desperate was he to escape from the cold, calculating hatred that shone out of the ex-cleaners eyes, a hatred only just under control.
Then Alex turned the projector off and the "body" disappeared. Making a hologrammatic representation had been relatively easy, but finding the blood to go with it had been much harder, necessitating a visit to a kosher slaughterhouse after hours (truly a quantum difference between this and shuffling paper at Benford). Of course, they could have got the same effect by turning Romanescu loose but dead suspects were hard to prosecute.
"Flexibility", it turned out, meant working undercover within the four walls of a FedCon orphans institution in Novi Bucuresti. Funny business going on there, it seemed. Alex would be a humble relief cleaner standing in for staff on holiday, working nights whenever possible, ferreting around, pushing an antique bucket with a tatty mop (local funds being low). Alex didn't mind, not at all, not after seeing where and how ex-inmates of the Brancusi Institute ended up.
The wildly-staring woman encamped behind her desk seemed extremely hostile towards Alex - or so he thought. When he reported in to the two jocular agents responsible for "Various Nefarious Activities", as they referred to themselves, they reassured him that Mad Alice always behaved like that, except when she was worse. They provided him with false ID and an accommodation address: a cheap hotel near the centre of Novi Bucuresti.
The "Elysium otel" was where Alex returned that night after the successful bagging of the Institute criminals. He bought a small bottle of Tsuica from the hotel bar where they had either that, or vodka, or imported Ukranian beer. The elevator smelt of urine and old cigarette smoke that the cloying disinfectant couldn't quite cover. When he walked down the corridor to his room a door opened and a thin, dark-haired woman clad only in underwear glared at him.
'Where the fuck have you been! - oh - shit - sorry, I thought you were somebody else. Sorry.' She slammed the door shut. Alex stared at it for a second, shook his head and moved on.
He didn't put the lights on in his room, which helped to camouflage it's seediness. Instead he opened the curtains wide, cracked the seal on his bottle and stared out into the hear of the night, taking sips of plum brandy. There weren't too many lights to brighten the nights in Novi Bucuresti but he watched them come and go; traffic on the roads, once or twice an aircraft overhead. Periodically his breath fogged the window and he had to rub it clear. From this vantage point an observer could see the Brancusi Institute if they knew where to look. Alex tried not to.
There's something sick in our world if people are capable of doing what they did to those children, he ruminated, breaking a self-made promise not to mentally go over events yet again.
Children, sold off like cattle, treated like cattle if it comes to that, he thought. People who claim it wasn't their fault, they didn't do anything terribly wrong, the children would have come to a bad end anyway. Sick bastards! I hope they get five years hard labour at McMurdo Sound. Apart from the American agents. I hope they get five-star hotel treatment, luxury accommodation, all charges dropped and free passage home to Washington. Then their own people will torture them to death.
He drank more tsuica.
I hope the next assignment is less of an encounter with low-life vermin than this one. Ugh. The things you find hiding under stones.
Collapsing backwards onto the bed, probably breaking the springs, he contemplated the ceiling whilst draining the bottle. Finally, thought processes rendered incoherent by alcohol, he fell asleep.
Next morning Alex awoke unaffected by his drinking binge of the night before. That made him feel good. What made him feel bad was that he'd neglected to make out a report on his mission. FedCon obviously wouldn't survive much longer if he didn't make out such a report so he started right away.