"I know," said Ian, seating himself in a chair opposite Tyburn.
"All right, you know! I'll tell you anyway!" said Tyburn. "Their grandfather was a local kingpin - he was in every racket on the eastern seaboard. He was one of the mob, with millions he didn't dare count be cause of where they'd come from. In their father's time, those millions started to be fed into legitimate businesses. The third generation, James and Brian, didn't inherit anything that wasn't legitimate. Hell, we couldn't even make a jaywalking ticket stick against one of them, if we'd ever wanted to. James was twenty and Brian ten when their father died, and when he died the last bit of tattle-tale gray went out of the family linen. But they kept their hoodlum connections, Commandant!"
Ian sat, glass in hand, watching Tyburn almost curiously.
"Don't you get it?" snapped Tyburn. "I tell you that, on paper, in law, Kenebuck's twenty-four carat gilt-edge. But his family was hoodlum, he was raised like a hoodlum, and he thinks like a hood! He didn't want his young brother Brian around to share the crown prince position with him - so he set out to get rid of him. He couldn't just have him killed, so he set out to cut him down, show him up, break his spirit, until Brian took one chance too many trying to match up to his older brother, and killed himself off."
Ian slowly nodded.
"All right!" said Tyburn. "So Kenebuck finally succeeded. He chased Brian until the kid ran off and became a professional soldier - something Kenebuck wouldn't leave his wine, women and song long enough to shine at. And he can shine at most things he really wants to shine at, Commandant. Under that hood attitude and all those millions, he's got a good mind and a good body that he's made a hobby out of training. But, all right. So now it turns out Brian was still no good, and he took some soldiers along when he finally got around to doing what Kenebuck wanted, and getting himself killed. All right! But what can you do about it? What can anyone do about it, with all the connections, and all the money and all the law on Kenebuck's side of it? And, why should you think about doing something about it, anyway?"
"It's my duty," said Ian. He had swallowed half the whisky in his glass, absently, and now he turned the glass thoughtfully around, watching the brown liquor swirl under the forces of momentum and gravity. He looked up at Tyburn. "You know that, Lieutenant."
"Duty! Is duty that important?" demanded Tyburn. Ian gazed at him, then looked away, at the ghost-sleet beating vainly against the glass of the window that held it back in the outer dark.
"Nothing's more important than duty," said Ian, half to himself, his voice thoughtful and remote.
"Mercenary troops have the right to care and protection from their own officers. When they don't get it, they're entitled to justice, so that the same thing is discouraged from happening again. That justice is a duty."
Tyburn blinked, and unexpectedly a wall seemed to go down in his mind.
"Justice for those thirty-two dead soldiers of Brian's!" he said, suddenly understanding. "That's what brought you here!"
"Yes." Ian nodded, and lifted his glass almost as if to the sleet-ghosts to drink the rest of his whisky.
"But," said Tyburn, staring at him, "You're trying to bring a civilian to justice. And Kenebuck has you out-gunned and out-maneuvered - "
The chiming of the communicator screen in one corner of the hotel room interrupted him. Ian put down his empty glass, went over to the screen and depressed a stud. His wide shoulders and back hid the screen from Tyburn, but Tyburn heard his voice.
"Yes?"
The voice of James Kenebuck sounded in the hotel room.
"Graeme - listen!"
There was a pause.
"I'm listening," said Ian, calmly.
"I'm alone now," said the voice of Kenebuck. It was tight and harsh. "My guests have gone home. I was just looking through that package of Brian's things..." He stopped speaking and the sentence seemed to Tyburn to dangle unfinished in the air of the hotel room. Ian let it dangle for a long moment.
"Yes?" he said, finally.
"Maybe I was a little hasty..." said Kenebuck.
But the tone of his voice did not match the words. The tone was savage. "Why don't you come up, now that I'm alone, and we'll... talk about Brian, after all?"
"I'll be up," said Ian.
He snapped off the screen and turned around.
"Wait!" said Tyburn, starting up out of his chair. "You can't go up there!"
"Can't?" Ian looked at him. "I've been invited, Lieutenant."
The words were like a damp towel slapping Tyburn in the face, waking him up.
"That's right..." he stared at Ian. "Why? Why'd he invite you back?"
"He's had time," said Ian, "to be alone. And to look at that package of Brian's."
"But..." Tyburn scowled. "There was nothing important in that package. A watch, a wallet, a passport, some other papers... Customs gave us a list. There wasn't anything unusual there."
"Yes," said Ian. "And that's why he wants to see me again."
"But what does he want?"
"He wants me," said Ian. He met the puzzlement of Tyburn's gaze. "He was always jealous of Brian," Ian explained, almost gently. "He was afraid Brian would grow up to outdo him in things. That's why he tried to break Brian, even to kill him. But now Brian's come back to face him."
"Brian... ?"
"In me," said Ian. He turned toward the hotel door.
Tyburn watched him turn, then suddenly - like a man coming out of a daze, he took three hurried strides after him as Ian opened the door.
"Wait!" snapped Tyburn. "He won't be alone up there! He'll have hoods covering you through the walls. He'll definitely have traps set for you..." Easily, Ian lifted the policeman's grip from his arm. "I know," he said. And went.
Tyburn was left in the open doorway, staring after him. As Ian stepped into the elevator tube, the police man moved. He ran for the service elevator that would take him back to the police observation post above the sensors in the ceiling of Kenebuck's living room.
When Ian stepped into the foyer the second time, it was empty. He went to the door to the living room of Kenebuck's suite, found it ajar, and stepped through it. Within the room was empty, with glasses and overflowing ashtrays still on the tables; the lights had been lowered. Kenebuck rose from a chair with its back to the far, large window at the end of the room. Ian walked toward him and stopped when they were little more than an arm's length apart.
Kenebuck stood for a second, staring at him, the skin of his face tight. Then he made a short almost angry gesture with his right hand. The gesture gave away the fact that he had been drinking.
"Sit down!" he said. Ian took a comfortable chair and Kenebuck sat down in the one from which he had just risen. "Drink?" said Kenebuck. There was a decanter and glasses on the table beside and between them. Ian shook his head. Kenebuck poured part of a glass for himself.
"That package of Brian's things," he said, abruptly, the whites of his eyes glinting as he glanced up under his lids at Ian, "there was just personal stuff. Nothing else in it!"
"What else did you expect would be in it?" asked Ian, calmly.
Kenebuck's hands clenched suddenly on the glass.
He stared at Ian, and then burst out into a laugh that rang a little wildly against the emptiness of the large room.
"No, no..." said Kenebuck, loudly. "I'm asking the questions, Graeme. I'll ask them! What made you come all the way here, to see me, anyway?"
"My duty," said Ian.
"Duty? Duty to whom - Brian?" Kenebuck looked as if he would laugh again, then thought better of it. There was the white, wild flash of his eyes again. "What was something like Brian to you? You said you didn't even like him."
"That was beside the point," said Ian, quietly. "He was one of my officers."