"There're fish that have to keep swimming to breathe," Danny said—to Margritte; to himself; to the night. "For Joachim, retirement would mean suffocating. He won't retire, and the colonel—"
He grimaced. He was trying to remember that Alois Hammer was no longer a mercenary leader and that Danny Pritchard was no longer his adjutant.
"And President Hammer," he went on, "won't force him out. The colonel—"
Again!
"—is loyal too. And besides, he needs a Director of Security. He knows as well as I do that there's nobody better at it than Joachim. Nobody. The problem is that Joachim's only willing to go at the job in one way, and that way's going to be fatal to the civil government."
Danny shook his head. "Maybe he can only go at it one way," he said. "I've known Joachim for half my life, but I won't pretend I understand what goes on in his head."
"He's a monster!" Margritte said to the night in sudden, fierce anger. She turned and glared at her husband. "Danny?" she said. "If he won't leave but he has to go . . . ?"
Danny laughed. He gave Margritte a quick hug, but that was to permit him to ease back and look toward the city before speaking.
"Sure," he said. "I've thought about killing Joachim. Having him killed. It'd be possible, though it might take a platoon of tanks to make sure of him."
He looked at his wife, his face hard in the starlight. Danny Pritchard was only a little over average height, but there were times—this one of them—that he seemed a much bigger man.
"And I could get a platoon of tanks for the job, sure," he said harshly. "If this was a war, I'd do just that. I've done it, done worse, and we both know it. But that's the whole point, it's not a war: it's the civil government of the planet where I'm going to spend the rest of my life. Unlike Joachim, I won't try to preserve that government by means that I know would destroy it."
Margritte hugged herself again. "What is there to do then, Danny?" she said. "What are we going to do?"
Danny reached out and hugged her with real affection. "We're going to deal with the situation as it develops, I suppose," he said softly, stroking his wife's hair. She cut it short to fit under a commo helmet, but it retained a springy liveliness that always thrilled him. "War gives you a lot of experience in doing that, and war's been my whole life."
He kissed Margritte's forehead. "Now," he said with mock sternness. "Go back to bed and let me stand here for a little while more, all right?"
She kissed him passionately, then stepped away. "All right, Danny," she said as she went back into the bedroom. "I know you'll find a way."
I wish I knew that, thought Danny Pritchard, looking down on the nighted city. I sure don't.
All he knew was that if he stood here alone, an assassin wouldn't kill anybody besides his intended target. Joachim Steuben certainly realized that the Director of Administration was a potential danger to him, which he'd read as meaning a danger to President Hammer.
And Joachim didn't have Danny Pritchard's compunctions about how to deal with a threat.
They were expecting the knock on the back door, but even so Whitey's hand jerked the bottle; brandy splashed onto the workbench, beading on the oil-soaked wood.
Spencer said, "Bloody hell, Whitey." Then, louder and with the anger directed at the real cause, he said, "Come in then, curse it!"
The shop's harsh overhead lights were on. The stranger's distortion cape was a deeper pool of shadow than it'd been in the light of the small table lamp the night before. He closed the door and said, "How was your first day's business, then?"
Spencer didn't speak. "It was fine," Whitey said, a trifle too loudly. "Anyway, things'll pick up."
"What have you decided about my proposition?" the stranger said. His voice was like the paw of a cat playing with a small animal; it was very delicate, but points pressed through its softness.
Whitey looked at his partner. Spencer took the holochip from his pocket, activated the image of Joachim Steuben, and tossed it onto the bench.
"All right," he said in a challenging tone. "We'll do it on one condition: you pay us all the money up front."
"Every thaler!" Whitey said. His index finger had been drawing circles in the spilled brandy. When he realized what he was doing, he jerked his hand into his lap.
"Yes, that's reasonable," the stranger said. His gloved left hand slipped from beneath his cape, this time holding a small bag of wash leather. He placed it on the bench, then withdrew his hand. "I think you'll find the full amount there."
"What the hell is this?" Spencer muttered. After a moment's general silence he tugged open the drawstring closure and spilled the bag's contents, several dozen credit chips, onto the wood.
"A hundred thousand thalers in one chip," the stranger said mildly, "might present you with difficulties. But the total is correct."
Spencer began rotating the semiconductor wafers so that the amounts printed on the edges faced him. Whitey picked one up. His lips moved; then he read aloud, "Four . . . four-thousand-one-hunnert-forty-nine."
"Most of the chips range from three to five thousand thalers," the stranger said. "One's for eleven thousand, but you shouldn't have any trouble banking it if you build up a pattern of deposits over the course of a month."
"What the hell," Spencer repeated, scowling at the chips and then looking up at the stranger. "You agreed just like that?"
The shadow rippled in a shrug. "It was a reasonable condition," the stranger said. "You have no reason to trust me, after all. And as for me trusting you . . ."
He gave a chittering laugh. "You may fail, Sergeant Spencer," he said, "but you won't try to cheat me."
"No, I don't guess we will," Spencer said grimly. "But just how are you so sure of that, buddy?"
The gloved hand pointed to the holochip image. "Because if you did, he'd learn that you took money to kill him," the stranger said. "What do you think would happen next?"
"We'll do the bloody job," Spencer said, pushing the credit chips back into the bag. He hadn't counted them; at this point the money wasn't the most important thing. "We'll do it if we get a clear shot."
He glowered at the stranger's blurred face. "How d'ye plan to arrange it?" he demanded. "Because I'll tell you, nothing I know about that bastard makes me think you can do it."
The stranger put a small data cube beside the image of Joachim Steuben. "This will run in your inventory reader," he said. "It contains the full plan. I suggest you take the machine off-line before you view it, though. It's unlikely that the Directorate of Security would be doing key-word sweeps detailed enough to pick up the contents, but—"
His laugh was like bats quarrelling.
"—it would only take once, wouldn't it? So better safe than sorry."
"How are you going to manage it?" Whitey demanded, angry because he was so nervous. He's been shot at many times; he knew how to handle himself in a firefight. The thing that was happening now made him feel as though the ground was streaming away beneath his feet. "You say 'here's the plan', but what d'you know about this kinda job? You think it's easy?"
Spencer looked at the stranger's smoky features, pursed his lips, and said to his partner, "Whitey, we'll take a look at it—"
He prodded an index finger in the direction of the cube.
"—and make our go, no-go on what we think."
He shifted his gaze back to the stranger. "That's how Whitey and me've always worked, buddy," he said, raising his voice slightly. "If we don't like the mission, we don't take it. We figure we're not paid to commit suicide, we're paid to kill other people. And we're bloody good at it!"