They were in a cheap hotel in Kharkov, five hours east of Kolosev's hideout, posing as tourists. The desk clerk hadn't believed them, but had not said a word. She'd taken one look at Otto and Lehmann and her face said it all. The Ukraine was a part of the European Union, but Russia was close, and altered men like Otto were a common sight, enforcers for exile Chinese clan-gangs, or muscle for Russian oligarchs and resource barons.
The room smelled of pickled cabbage and heavy bread. There were hairs on the soap and grease stains on the headboard above the bed. There were no modern materials in the room to absorb the signs of human life, no drones to scrub them away. Veronique had not felt clean since she came to the country. It didn't seem to bother Chures, who sat in a corner eating a bowl of borscht bought from a vending machine with a sour look on his face. He raised another spoonful to his lips, changed his mind and put the bowl on the scratched coffee table.
"Not to your taste?" she said.
" Sopa de mala," Chures replied. "How is your work coming?"
Valdaire tapped a few icons on Chloe's screen and sat back. She rubbed her eyes; she'd been staring at screens and holos for three hours and they ached with the glare. "I'm done. Chloe will do the rest. I've constructed a set of algorithms that should get round Kolosev's security — to say he was a hacker, his 'ware is pretty simple, all sequential, once you untangle the cover. If he knew where Waldo was, we'll know soon enough. I've some financial transactions to look at, which he buried deep. I've also got Chloe burrowing into the Russian military datanet, to check out likely locations for Waldo's base of operations should Kolosev's data lead us to a dead end. Their data is patchy, but one way or another we'll find Waldo."
Chures' face was hard to read. Valdaire couldn't hold his gaze for long; he was too cold and appraising, but spoke relatively warmly now. "Good, you're pretty good. You've been working hard. Want a beer?"
"It's not much," said Valdaire.
"You shouldn't be modest," said Chures. He hunted round for a bottle opener in the room's dirty mini-fridge. "Your record is impressive; not many backroom operatives get medals. I don't impress easily."
"I was only one person on my squad. I don't know why they singled me out." She meant that too. She had a suspicion, planted in her mind by Reardon, her jealous NCO, that she got picked out of all of them because she was the most photogenic, and because she was an immigration success story. That annoyed her, more because she hated to be judged for her looks, though like anyone she enjoyed being thought attractive. That annoyed her too, an annoyance at herself for such paradoxical, typically human, typically female, thinking. And fuck Reardon if he hadn't planted a worm of doubt in her mind over it.
Chures moved carefully. He was such a precise man, thought Valdaire. "InfoWar is a serious business. You should be proud of the service you gave our country."
"I don't see it that way," said Valdaire. "Most of the programmes I use are buy-ins."
"Apart from the illegal ones," said Chures. He found what he was looking for. Bottles clinked as he gripped two in one hand. "What about those? All self-written? You're a skilled programmer."
"I'd love a beer," said Valdaire.
A pair of sharp escapes of gas, and Chures handed a beer to Valdaire. "No need to be nervous, senorita," he said.
"Do you always tell women what to do, Mr Chures?"
That made him smile, a slight curve on his full lips, barely perceptible. "I am a Latino of a very old-fashioned kind."
"The patronising kind."
He shrugged. "I apologise, I am what I am." Chures took a pull of his lager. "These Ukrainians make bad soup, but their beer is not so bad. Where are our German friends?"
"I made Otto get some rest," said Valdaire. "He was beginning to look twitchy. He's emotionless at the best of times, but he was looking through me as if I wasn't there. I guess five days with no sleep is no good even for cyborgs. No, make that especially for cyborgs."
"And Lehmann?"
"Up on the roof, keeping watch. I have Chloe plugged into every piece of surveillance in the area, but he insisted. I think it's hardwired into him. They're worried about this Kaplinski."
"They should be. Have you read his file?"
"No."
"Then don't. You will not sleep for weeks."
"I can handle it."
"If you say so."
"You don't like them much," said Valdaire. It was getting dark early, winter drawing in, the rain showing no sign of letting up.
"No," said Chures. "No man should become too much like them; like the machines."
"You used to wear a personality blend. That kind of mind-tomind intimacy made you closer to the numbers than the cyborgs are," said Valdaire.
Chures rubbed at the scar on his neck where his AI partners' receiver unit had been implanted before it had betrayed him. "It was limited, traffic between him and me, buffered in my favour. I did it so I could understand them better, not because I wanted to be more like them," he countered.
"We'll never have a world without machines," said Valdaire. "You're swimming against history. Give up. Better to follow the current and hope we wash up somewhere safe."
"I don't recall saying I wished for a world without machines," said Chures mildly.
"OK, fine. Do you wish for a world where there are no thinking machines?" said Valdaire baldly.
"You come from the south," said Chures, and sat back in his chair.
"You're changing the subject," she said.
"I'm not. You ask why I wore the blend. I am telling you. Do you remember what it was like, for you, there in…?"
"Cote D'Ivoire, we came from Cote D'Ivoire. And no, I don't, not much. I was very young."
"Your file says you were seven, that's not so very young."
Valdaire let out a ragged breath and put her beer down, although she didn't let it go. Through the glass, the table, to the floor, its touch anchored to the room. "I've blanked most of it. It's all very dark and thankfully a very long time ago. And before you ask, I really don't want to talk about it."
"You were talking to Klein about it."
Her hands, around the neck of the beer; across the back of the left, if she looked hard, she could see a thin line, barely visible through the heavy pigmentation of her skin. They could never get rid of all the scars. "No, not really. I was talking to myself, I think. It helps. I don't want to talk about it now."
Chures took another swallow, fixed her with those cold grey eyes. "Your father was a university man, yes? He got you into Canada, right away. Good points score, straight over the Atlantic wall."
"The walls had not been finished then," Valdaire said, "but if that's your point, yes, we were lucky."
"You were. My family was not."
"You don't know what you're talking about," said Valdaire. A machete blade flashed in her mind, and she closed her eyes. She remembered more than she let on.
Chures cradled his beer. "I grew up a refugee, a real refugee, no home. We left Colombia; I was seven too, struggling north with thousands of others. Mexico was still in chaos back then, just joined USNA and under martial administration. What we found when we got there was…" He paused for a moment, took another mouthful of beer. "I was in Puerto Penasco. You ever hear of it?"
"No," said Valdaire.
Chures pursed his lips. "Why should you? It was one camp among many. But it was there, when I was ten years old, that I killed my first man, Ms Valdaire, a stinking beast who tried to rape my baby sister. There was such trafficking in the young then, such abuse, so easy in the confusion. He thought she was easy prey." He took another sip of his drink. "I used a screwdriver, one of the tools provided by the USNA authorities. It was carbon plastic, supposedly too hard to weaponise. One of the things I discovered in the camps was that there is little that cannot be used as a weapon. I sharpened it and sharpened it, grinding away at stones until they were worn to sand. Grinding it took me weeks, but eventually it took such an edge I cut my own finger just by touching it. The blood fascinated me, but I never cut myself again. I saw some of the other kids go that way, carving themselves in the night time, trying to secure an illusion of control." His eyes flicked toward her arms, and she hugged herself self-consciously. She wanted to shout that she hadn't done that to herself, she wanted to hit him, she wanted to cry. She did none of these things. "There is no control there, only despair," said Chures. "Despair is the worst emotion of all, it makes men weak, it makes them give up. Whatever happens, Ms Valdaire, never give in to despair."