"It wasn't my people," Neumann said. "It was the political branch of the Berlin Land police. The Bundeskriminalamt had nothing to do with it."
"It was all a setup," Xavier Desmond said, stroking his trunk with leaden fingers. "That millionaire philanthropist who lent the ransom-"
"Was fronting for the political police."
"Herr Neumann." It was a Popo with grass stains on the knees of his once sharply pressed trousers, pointing an accusing finger at Tachyon "He let the terrorists go. Pauli had a clear shot at them, and he-he knocked him down with that mind power of his."
"The officer was aiming his weapon at a crowd of people through whom the terrorists were fleeing," Tach said tautly. "He could not have fired without hitting innocent bystanders. Or perhaps I am confused as to who is the terrorist."
The plainclothesman turned red. "You interfered with one of my officers! We could have stopped them=" Neumann reached out and grabbed a pinch of the man's cheek. "Go elsewhere," he said softly. "Really."
The man swallowed and walked away, sending hostile looks back over his shoulder at Tachyon. Tachyon grinned and shot him the bird.
"Oh, Gregg, my God, what have we done?" sobbed Hiram. "We'll never get him back."
Tachyon tugged on his elbow, more trying to encourage him to his feet than help him. He forgot about Hiram's gravity power; the fat man popped right up. "What do you mean, Hiram, my friend?"
"Are you out of your mind, Doctor? They'll kill him now."
Sara gasped. When Tach glanced to her she looked quickly away, as if unwilling to show him her eyes.
"Not so, my friend," Neumann said. "That's not how the game is played."
He stuck hands in the pockets of his trousers and gazed off across the misty park at the line of trees that masked the outer fences of the zoo. "But now the price will go up."
"The bastards!" Gimli turned, whipping rain from the tail of his raincoat, and beat fists on the mottled walls. "The cocksuckers. They set us up!"
Shroud and Scrape were huddled over the thin, filthy mattress on which Aardvark lay moaning softly. Everybody else seemed to be milling around a room crowded with heavy damp as well as bodies.
Hartmann sat with his head pulled protectively down inside his sweat-limp collar. He agreed with Gimli's character assessment. Are those fools trying to get me killed?
A thought went home like a whaler's bomb-lance: Tachyon!
Does that alien demon suspect? is this a convoluted Takisian plot to get rid of me without a scandal?
Puppetman laughed at him. `Never attribute to malice what may adequately be explained by stupidity,' he said. Hartmann recognized the quote; Lady Black had said it to Carnifex once, during one of his rages.
Mackie Messer stood shaking his head. "This isn't right," he said, half-pleading. "We have the senator. Don't they know that?"
Then he was raging around the room like a cornered wolf, snarling and hacking air with his hands. People jostled to get out of the way of those hands.
"What do they think's going on?" Mackie screamed. "Who do they think they're fucking with? I'll tell you something. I'll tell you what. Maybe we should send them a few pieces of the Senator here, show them what's what."
He buzzed his hand inches from the tip of the captive's nose.
Hartmann yanked his head back. Christ, he almost got me! The intent had been there, for real-Puppetman had felt it, felt it waver at the final millisecond.
"Calm down, Detlev," Anneke said sweetly. She seemed exalted by the shootout in the park. She'd been fluttering around and laughing at nothing since the group's return, and red spots glowed like greasepaint on her cheeks. "The capitalists wont be eager to pay all we ask for damaged goods." Mackie went white. Puppetman felt fresh anger burst inside him like a bomb. "Mackie! I'm Mackie Messer, you fucking bitch! Mackie the Knife, just like my song."
Detlev was slang for faggot, Hartmann remembered. He kept his last breath inside.
Anneke smiled at the youthful ace. From the side of his eye Hartmann saw Wilfried pale, and Ulrich picked up an AKM with an elaborate casualness he wouldn't have thought the blond terrorist could muster.
Wolf put his arm around Mackie's shoulders. "There, Mackie, there. Anneke didn't mean anything by it." Her smile made a liar of him. But Mackie pressed against the big man's side and allowed himself to be gentled. Molniya cleared his throat, and Ulrich set the rifle down.
Hartmann let the breath go. The explosion wasn't coming. Quite yet.
"He's a good boy," Wolf said, giving Mackie another hug and letting him go. "He's the son of an American deserter and a Hamburg whore another victim of your imperialist venture in Southeast Asia, Senator."
"My father was a general," Mackie shouted in English. "Yes, Mackie; anything you say. The boy grew up running the docks and alleys, in and out of institutions. Finally he drifted to Berlin, more helpless flotsam cast up by our own frenetic consumer culture. He saw posters, began to attend study groups at the Free University-he's barely literate, the poor child-and that's where I found him. And recruited him."
"And he's been sooo helpful," Anneke said, rolling her eyes at Ulrich, who laughed. Mackie glanced at them, then quickly away.
You win, Puppetman said. What?
You're right. My control isn't perfect. And this one is too unpredictable, too… terrible.
Hartmann almost laughed aloud. Of all the things he'd come to expect from the power that dwelt within him, humility wasn't one.
Such a waste; he'd be such a perfect puppet. And his emotion, so furious, so lovely-like a drug. But a deadly drug.
So you've given up. Relief flooded him. No. The boy just has to die. But that's all right. I've got it all worked out now.
Shroud squatted over Aardvark like a solicitous mummy, bathing his forehead with a length of his own bandage, which he'd dipped in water from one of the five-liter plastic cans stacked in the bedroom. He shook his head and murmured to himself.
Eyes malice-bright, Anneke danced up to him. "Thinking of all that lovely money you lost, Comrade?"
"Joker blood's been shed-again," Shroud said levelly. "It better not have been for nothing."
Anneke sauntered over to Ulrich. "You should have seen them, sweetheart. All ready to hand Senator Schweinfleisch over for a suitcase full of dollars." She pursed her lips. "I do believe they were so excited they forgot all about the frontline fighter we've sworn to liberate. They would have sold us all."
"Shut up, you bitch!" Gimli yelled. Spittle exploded from the center of his beard as he lunged for the redhead. With a scratch of chitin on wood Scrape interposed himself, threw his horny arms around his leader as guns came up.
A loud pop stopped them like a freeze-frame. Molniya stood with a bare hand upturned before his face, fingers extended as if to hold a ball. An ephemeral blue flicker limned the nerves of his hand and was gone.
"IЂ we fight among ourselves," he said calmly, "we play into our enemies' hands."
Only Puppetman knew his calm was a lie.
Deliberately Molniya drew his glove back on. "We were betrayed. What more can we expect from the capitalist system we oppose?" He smiled. "Let us strengthen our resolve. If we stand together, we can make them pay for their treachery"
The potential antagonists fell back away from each other. Hartmann feared.
Puppetman exulted.
The last of day lay across the Brandenburg plain west of the city like a layer of polluted water. From the next block tinny Near Eastern music skirled from a radio. Inside the little room it was tropical, from the heat billowing out of the radiator that the handy Comrade Wilfried had got going despite the building's derelict status, as well as electricity; from the humidity of bodies confined under stress.