His suspicion was not unjustified. His superior paused for a moment before reassuring the man and smoothing his ruffled feathers.
“Don’t worry Johanssen. Were just taking all due precautions. You do know, after all, something of what is at stake here”
“But what about Sutherland?”
“Don’t harm him unless it’s absolutely unavoidable. The same for the Welshman. He’s a Brit noble and any trouble there could be extremely bad publicity.”
“The others?”
“If they get in your way, remove them.”
A pause. “I need formal warranty of all negotiating latitude that I have,” Johanssen said at last. “What we can offer the man, if force fails.”
“Force is not going to fail.”
“Of course not. Fifty tons of black ice failed but two hundred goons will work. You know, it just might now.”
“We’ll deal with that if the need arises. You have this direct encrypted link to me and I’m available twenty-four hours a day.”
Johanssen tapped off the telecom. He’d thought that tracking Sutherland, having managed to find him in Venice after losing him twice before, was all that he’d be asked to do until the call had come through from Chiba this morning. Now he was going to be accompanying two hundred or so Renraku troops on what looked like an orthodox single-target strike, and he just knew it was going to be a total disaster.
“It’s going to be near eighty even at this time of year, and thank your lucky stars the town’s on a river so it isn’t even bloody hotter,” Streak shot back at them over his shoulder from the pilot seat.
Though they’d taken the medicines they needed, had the sunblock they needed, and the weaponry they hoped they wouldn’t need, they didn’t really have hot-weather clothing. The elf had, however, given them copious amounts of talcum powder with which to dose themselves to prevent what he unpleasantly termed ‘bollock rot’ from excessive sweating. Exposing flesh to the sun to keep cool would mean more insect bites, despite the best efforts of all the repellent one could smear on, and some risk of sunburn for the fairer among them.
“Just what are we going to say when we get there?” Geraint mused, staring down at the featureless sands of the Saudi Arabian desert.
“That’s a good question,” Michael said. “My guess is that our man is going to have some kind of agenda of his own. He’s going to want something.”
“I thought we knew what he wanted,” Geraint put in. “A very, very large sum of money.”
“That’s what he asked for, yet it doesn’t make sense that it’s all he wants. Why are we playing this game?”
“Hmm,” was all the Welshman could manage.
“So when we get out of the plane and find our Leo lookalike, we’ve got to figure out a way to make sure he’s not holding all the cards.”
“What do we have?”
“Little more than our native wit and intelligence I’m afraid.”
“We’re buggered then,” said Streak cheerfully. “ETA twenty minutes. Not a rocket in sight. Thank heavens for that. No worries.”
“We don’t have parachutes,” Michael observed.
“Yeah, but we’ve got sonic antimissile rockets. Never fly without them.”
“Do they work?”
“Yup. Or, I should say they worked on this baby the couple of times they were needed.”
“Do you really think we’re going to get shot at coming in?” Michael asked earnestly.
Streak laughed heartily. “Nah, I don’t think so. Latest update from Jane’s says there’s nothing too close to where we’re going. It’s lively down in Basra, but we’re well away from that drekhole.”
Events proved him right. As they began the descent to a runway that was little more than a parched strip of reddened soil, everyone in the group felt the tension knotting inside them. It wasn’t fear for their safety, but the excited hope that they might at last be at the end of the trail.
The wheels of the small plane bounced a few times along the bumpy runway. Streak deliberately perpetrating some mischief among his passengers with cries of “Whoa!” and “Oh no!”, as if something serious might actually be happening. Finally, somewhat shaken and apprehensive, his passengers tottered out of the aircraft. To their surprise, a Rolls Royce, gleaming silver and gray in the brilliant sun, was standing by the huts that passed for airport buildings. With his arms crossed, dressed for all the world like an English chauffeur, the man they knew as Salai was lounging against the front door of the car. He waved to them cheerfully, as if welcoming old clients.
“You are expected,” he said.
Streak drew his Predator from his jacket and advanced on the man.
“Now, you little fragger, let’s see who our blackmailer is. Take me to your master!” he growled.
The young man laughed. From the buildings behind him, forty or fifty men, armed with positively prehistoric carbines and rifles, emerged to form a very wide circle.
“My friends have slightly antiquated technology, but I think you will find that, by sheer force of numbers, they exceed your capability,” Salai said evenly. “There really is no need for this whatsoever. Demonstrations of such puerile machismo on your part only leave you lower in my estimation than you previously were, if that is possible. Now do me the honor of getting into the back of this extremely comfortable vehicle, which is far better than you deserve, for you all have a meeting to attend.”
Streak shrugged his shoulders, pocketed the weapon, and called out rather needlessly to the others, who’d been in full earshot.
“He says get in the car. What do you reckon?”
“I reckon we get in the car,” Michael decided for them
Everyone followed him. This time there was no problem fitting the seven of them into the back of the spacious limo. A thick glass partition separated them from Salai, and it appeared to be entirety soundproof since he did not respond to their queries. However, a loudspeaker in the back of the limo permitted him to pass messages of his own.
“Your journey won’t be long and I trust it will be comfortable. No iced champagne in a silver bucket for Lord Llanfrechfa, I fear. You must understand the difficulties one encounters in such a remote location.”
When they asked him why they were in such a remote location, they got no reply and swiftly realized the young man wouldn’t respond to interrogation.
“I’m not at all happy with this,” Streak bristled. “We could be going anywhere.”
“If he’d wanted to harm us, he had all those guys at the airport,” Michael pointed out.
“True, but I still don’t like sitting around on me arse waiting for ten tons of crap to fall on me head,” Streak announced.
“I could have handled them,” Juan said evenly. He had dispensed with the usual heavy jacket and his almost grotesque cyberarm was all too apparent.
“Well, maybe,” Michael said in an irritated tone, “but we’re here to talk.”
“Well, bufldrek away, Mister Negotiator,” Juan said evenly. “Better than getting shot at, I guess.”
As they made their way along the appalling road, the car bumped and bounced far less than it should have, providing excellent testimony to the skill of the Rolls Royce engineers and their suspension systems. Now and then they passed straggles of people, with their donkeys and carts and baskets and homes, until eventually they saw the building in the distance.
The dome structure had what seemed to be silvered or smoked glass atop it, and it looked like an observatory some corporate or military interest might have constructed on the moon. Its futuristic and hi-tech appearance contrasted startlingly with the humble, simple nature of everything else in the place as they reached the outskirts of the town itself.
“What the frag is that?”
“And how the hell was it kept secret?”
“It was kept secret,” Salai announced to them, proving that he could converse with them when he wished to do so, “because the local people are very, very loyal and do not speak to outsiders.”