“So then,” she said brightly. “I’d been given to understand that your colleagues had all the information they needed, but clearly that’s not the case. So what is it I can do for you?”
Rovayo looked over at Carl and nodded with ironic largesse. She was still visibly fuming from their reception at the front desk and the subtle relegation Ren had dealt her. Carl shrugged and stepped up.
“Ward BioSupply’s fields are a good two hundred kilometers northwest of here,” he said. “Nearer three hundred, when you went up there two days ago. You mind telling us why you didn’t hold off until the Cat got a little closer?”
“Well.” Carmen Ren gestured apologetically. “I wasn’t the duty manager for that shift, so it’s not a question I can answer fully. But we quite often do attend to a contract ahead of time that way. It depends more on staffing rotations, hardware overhaul, that kind of thing, than actual proximity. As you’ll probably know from our promotional literature, Daskeen Azul has an operational deployment radius of up to five hundred kilometers should the need arise.”
“And the need arose here.”
“So it appears, yes. Though, as I said—”
Rovayo joined the play. “Yeah, you weren’t on duty. We heard you. So who was?”
“I would really need to check the duty logs to be certain.” A hint of reproach tinged Ren’s voice. “But I’m reasonably sure that the officers who visited us yesterday will already have that information.”
Carl ignored the significant look he was getting from Rovayo.
“I’m not concerned with what you told Donaldson and Kodo,” he said bluntly. “I’m looking for Allen Merrin.”
Ren frowned, genuine puzzlement or immaculate control. “Alan…?”
“Merrin,” said Rovayo.
“Alan Merrin.” Ren nodded seriously, kept to the slightly vowel-heavy mispronunciation of the first name. “I’m afraid we don’t have an employee of that name. Or a client, as far as I’m aware. I could—”
Carl smiled. “I’m not a policeman, Ren. Don’t make that mistake with me. I’m here for Merrin. If you don’t give him up, I’ll go through you to get him. Your choice but one way or another, it’s going to get done. He can skulk about America, hiding in the crowd like a cudlip if he wants, but it isn’t going to save him. This game is over. Next time you hear from him, you can tell him that from me.”
Ren let go a small, sliding breath, the sound of politeness embarrassed. “And you are, exactly?”
“Who I am isn’t very important. You can call me Marsalis, if it matters. What I am, well.” He watched her face closely. “I’m a variant thirteen, just like your pal Merrin. You can tell him that, too, if you like.”
A defensive smile hesitated at the corners of the woman’s mouth. Her eyes slipped sideways to Rovayo, as if in appeal.
“I’m afraid I really don’t know who you’re referring to with this Merrin. And, Detective Rovayo, I have to say that your colleague here is being considerably less well mannered than the two officers who preceded you.”
“He’s not my colleague,” said Rovayo indifferently. “And I don’t think he’s that bothered about manners, either. I’d start cooperating if I were you.”
“We are already cooperating fully with—”
“You put in to Lima on your way up here,” Carl asked her. “Right?”
This time, he thought the frown was genuine. “Bulgakov’s Cat very rarely puts in, as you express it, anywhere. We are dry-docked in the Angeline Freeport on average every five years, but otherwise—”
“I’m not talking about the Cat. I’m talking about Daskeen Azul. You got friends on the Peruvian coast, right?”
“I, personally, do not. No. But it may be that some of our employees do. Bulgakov’s Cat is, as I’m sure you’re aware, licensed for the whole of the Pacific Americas Rim. And Daskeen Azul certainly has contracts along the Peruvian segment. As do many of our fellow companies aboard. But this, all of this, is common knowledge—you could have ascertained it using any corporate commerce register for the region.”
“Seen Manco Bambarén recently? Or Greta Jurgens?”
Another elegant furrowing of the clean white brow. Lips pursed, regretful shaking of the head. Her long glossy hair shifted in sheaves. “I’m sorry, these names. None of them is familiar to me. And I’m still not clear exactly what—if anything—you are accusing us of.”
“What are they paying you, Ren?”
Pause. The brief smile again. “I really don’t think, Mr. Marsalis, that my salary is any of your—”
“No, really. Give it some thought. I think the people I represent would make it worth your while to turn. And this is coming down around you anyway. We don’t have enough yet, but we will. And when Merrin breaks cover, I’ll be there. You don’t want to get caught in that particular crossfire, believe me.”
“Are you trying to scare me, Mr. Marsalis?”
“No, I’m appealing to your sense of reality. I don’t think you scare easily, Ren. But in the end, I think you’re smart enough to recognize when it’s time to cut cable and bounce.” He held her gaze. “That time is now.”
The polite, sliding-breath sound again. “I don’t really know how to respond to that. You’re attempting to…bribe me?” Another shuttled glance at Rovayo. “Into what, exactly? Is this standard RimSec procedure these days?”
“I already told you I’m not a cop, Ren. I’m just like you. For hire and—”
Ren shot to her feet, clean and rapid motion, no leverage with either arm on the furniture around her. In the confined office space, it was a remarkable piece of physical precision. She brought loosely cupped fists together at her chest, a formal stance that echoed dojo training.
“That’s it,” she flared. “This conversation is over. I have been as cooperative as possible, Detective Rovayo, and all I have received in return are innuendo and insult. I will not be compared to some…variant in this way. Take your offensive, genetically enhanced friend, and get out. If you wish to speak to me again, you will contact our legal representatives.”
“Think that was for real?” Rovayo asked him as they walked back to the landing pad. She was still fingering the tiny lawyer’s card Ren had handed her.
Carl shook his head. “She wanted us out of there, and she hooked the best opportunity there was to shut us down fast.”
“Yeah. What I thought.”
“If she’s a Daskeen Azul duty manager, then I’m a fucking bonobo. You see the moves on her?”
Rovayo nodded reluctantly.
“Still think I’m paranoid?”
“I think you—”
And out of nowhere, a corner in the mall, shoppers still around them, out of the fractured crowd, out of the sweet piped Muzak and murmur, suddenly a panicked bystander screamed, and then the figure leaped, tall and lean, distorted face around the gut-deep yell, eyes blown wide with hate, and gunmetal glint of the machete hacking down.
CHAPTER 37
Scott Osborne had seen and heard enough.
Nearly five months of sitting on his hands, waiting because Carmen told him that was how it had to be. Months while Bulgakov’s Cat churned up and down the coast of the Americas, coastline always out of sight, just below the horizon, like the harrowing that Carmen had promised was to come but hadn’t still. Months adrift. Scott had never seen the ocean for real before he came to the Rim, and living afloat in the middle of it, week after landless week, didn’t seem natural, never would. He bore it because he must, and because when Carmen came to him, it all seemed worth it. Lying with her afterward, he seemed to feel the approaching storm, and to accept it with the same comfortable ache he’d felt that last summer before he left for Bozeman and the fence run. It was the sense of your time running out, and the sudden value in everything you’d ordinarily take for granted, everything that would soon be swept away.