"One of them just got hit in the back after buying weapons for you guys if you're taking the job," Tom replied. "He's in intensive."
"You bulldrekkin' me?"
"Sure. I come here with tens in sticks and bills and we're bulldrekking you. We even shot up our own man, right? You want us to take you to the hospital so you can see for yourself?" Serrin snapped angrily.
"All right, all right," Gunther said. He ducked into a back alley and motioned them to follow as he rapped on a slogan-splashed door. It opened and he disappeared into the gloomy interior.
Following him in, Serrin wished that orks were more prone to using deodorant. The six samurai and the woman, the Cat shaman Tom had mentioned, were waiting with a variety of unimpressive pistols leveled at them as they entered. Their dirty jeans and frayed jackets confirmed for the eyes that they gave jack squat about personal hygiene.
"Now you tell us everything," the shamam said. "You lie and I'll know it. You're masking," she said to Serrin,
"that might cover you. But I can read him just fine. Now give it all to me."
"Two things first," Serrin surrendered, knowing he really didn't have much choice. "One, we had a friend shot up real bad about thirty minutes ago and I need to make a call to find out how he is. You can enter the code, verify that it's legit. Second, well…" He paused and ran his fingers through his hair. "This is going to be one long crazy story. You probably won't believe half of it. All I can say is that we can pay you a hell of a lot of money to come with us and scan it for yourselves. Meaning you," he said, meeting the shaman's intense gaze. "You can assense the place when we get there. It's just outside Regensburg. We want to make the hit at dawn."
"That can be done if we start out before midnight," the shaman said casually, turning to Tom. "We've got time to hear you out. Now talk, troll, and make it good."
"You can only see him for a minute," the nurse told her. "He's asleep now, resting. He's very poorly still. Please try not to disturb him." She scowled suspiciously at the marriage registration. This scrap of a girl certainly didn't look like a suitable match for the wealthy man who'd purchased the best coverage money could buy. His clothes, and the money inside them, didn't speak of someone likely to marry this African waif. But the girl had the ID and the doctor had agreed to let her see the man.
Kristen was scared. The police had spoken to her only briefly here at the hospital, but they were obviously puzzled that Michael had not been robbed, which eliminated the obvious motive for the crime. She hoped desperately they weren't going to tail her when she left.
"How is he? Is he going to be all right?" she ventured.
"Doctor Kohler can tell you that. He'll talk to you afterward." The nurse ushered Kristen into the room. "Take care not to disturb him. He needs to rest."
Michael's appearance was shocking, even though she was glad to see he was alive at all. Tubes were sticking out of his nostrils and arm, with a drip rig and the electronic technology of intensive care providing the usual dehumanizing stage for the patient. His body was wreathed in a semi-transparent plastic cocoon, a light pink fluid filtering through it. She thought she could see a couple of places where it was hooked into him, processing body fluids, oxygenating him, calibrating the serum levels of painkillers and keeping the level constant, though of course Kristen had never seen anything even remotely like this before and had no idea exactly what it
did.
His eyes opened. She couldn't hold his hand, sealed away from her as it was. She kissed him on the forehead and brushed away the hair stuck damply to his brow.
"Hi," he said, his voice little more than a croak as she lowered her ear to his mouth to hear. "Listen, it's vital. Record it." She dug into her bag for the little portable disc player and recorder that he'd bought her. A ghost of a grin passed over his face at the sight of it.
Then Michael told her when to expect the call and told her Walter's name. "Serrin take all the money to the samurai?" he managed to ask. She told him no, most of it was still there.
"If Serrin can't call himself, you'll have to make the meet. Take the marriage ID." Another painful smile played over his lips. "You know where the money is?" She nodded and told him to be quiet, to rest now. The nurse was hovering in the doorway.
"Hey, kid, if I die you're going to be a wealthy woman," he said, and coughed.
"Don't you dare say that!" She wanted so much to hug him, to throw her arms around him and make everything right. But the most she could do was touch his lips with her fingertips before the nurse ordered her to go.
Kristen stood alone in the corridor outside, smelling the eternal disinfectant reek of the hospital all around her, holding on to her bag, refusing to cry.
"Frau Sutherland?" She turned to look at the doctor; a dapper man with a fashionable haircut and something that in a different age might have been a dueling scar on his right cheek. Not on the chin, she was glad to see, remembering Serrin's description of the man who had tried to kidnap him. He looked like the kind of doctor who probably paid more attention to pretty young nurses than to patients.
"How is he? What's going to happen?" she blurted, feeling so helpless.
"He is stable, Frau Sutherland, that much I can say. Your husband's injuries are not fatal unless there are unforeseen complications. He will undergo exploratory surgery tomorrow and we have a trace on a donor for a kidney transplant. The spleen damage is more serious, but his insurance covers a prosthetic implant that should fulfill almost all the functions of that organ."
Kohler looked very pleased with himself, but only for a moment. "Unfortunately, we aren't sure whether he's taken spinal damage. Fragments of the bullet have lodged very close to the spine. Some we may not be able to remove even with microsurgery because it's simply too dangerous. We won't know until after the surgery tomorrow morning."
"Will he be " She didn't want to say the words. Paralyzed. Crippled. Confined to a wheelchair.
"As I said, we won't know anything until tomorrow and perhaps not for another twenty-four hours after that while we wait for the results of the diagnostic tests. If you wish to remain here in the hospital overnight, we have facilities. The insurance covers it."
"I can't," she blurted out and saw his shocked reaction. "I mean, Michael was going to meet someone um, family relations. I will have to tell them. And there are friends."
"Of course," Kohler said, his voice expressing as much disapproval as his expression. "We have the number of your hotel. We'll call if there's any change." He gave her directions to the exit.
Passing under a clock in the lobby, Kristen looked up to see that it read 19:40. All she could do now was hope desperately that Serrin would call back to the hotel in the next two hours.
"No details on Mr. Sutherland are publicly available," the robotic voice informed him from the telecom. "Infor"Spirits, I'm his best friend. I only want to know if he's alive or dead, dammit," Serrin yelled, then forced himself to calm down. "His, er, wife was intending to visit him. Can I speak to her?"
"I cannot confirm or deny that any of Mr. Sutherland's relatives have or have not been in attendance on him at this time," the voice droned back. "Thank you for your inquiry." With that, the connection broke.
"I can't fraggin' believe it!" the elf shouted. "I mean, is there some special archipelago somewhere in the world where they breed people like that?"
"Kristen will be back at the hotel," Tom said calmly. "Call her there."
"No more calls." The shaman, who'd given her name as Mathilde by now, was adamant. She took the portaphone away from the elf before he could key in the hotel number.