“Well, he blames himself for having sold the house,” Georg said. “And it was Pedro’s fault, I know, partying with Master Suterbilt who’d been trying for years to buy the ambiance and Suzette wouldn’t hear of selling to him. But it’s a shame that one mistake should ruin his life.”
“The major’s coming back,” Barbour called from the foyer. He looked toward the policemen and grinned. It was the first smile any of his teammates had seen on his face. “He’s returning your shock baton, gentlemen.”
“One mistake can ruin more than a man’s life, Master Hathaway,” Vierziger said to the innkeeper. “It can ruin all eternity.”
He smiled tightly, terribly. “Of course, I’ve made many more mistakes than one.”
Coke entered the lobby. He closed the door behind him, then rested his back against the cool metal surface.
“Any excitement, sir?” Margulies asked.
“Matthew, please, Mary,” Coke said with his eyes closed. “And no, nothing to speak of. The usual run of port-city foolishness, nothing serious.”
“What’s the next order of business, Matthew?” Moden asked. “We continue to wait?”
“I could use one of those beers,” Coke said, snapping alert again. He strode into the saloon alcove. From there he continued, “Yeah, we wait. I figure it’ll be days before either side makes an approach. Two gangs may make this a tough place, but it sure isn’t an organized one.”
“Is organized better, Master Soldier?” Evie Hathaway demanded from her chair.
“Evie, please,” said Georg.
“Yes, ma’am,” Coke said, taking the mug the innkeeper had drawn him. “It is. Highly developed parasites see to it that the host body stays healthy. Less developed ones, roundworms and the like, are often fatal. Cantilucca has a bad case of roundworms, I’m afraid.”
“And your prescription?” the woman said. She’d stopped knitting so that she could turn to look directly at the Frisian leader.
Coke drank, then shrugged. “Arsenic or the equivalent, Mistress Hathaway,” he said. “The trick is to titrate the dose, of course, so that you only get the worms.”
“In the short term, Matthew,” Mary Margulies said, “would you have any objection to me doing a little sight-seeing in the countryside? Tomorrow, maybe?”
Coke shook his head “No, we need to learn as much about the place as we can,” he said. “Potosi may be the head of the planet, but it’s not the whole place. Ah—I’d rather you didn’t go any distance alone.”
“I’ll go along, sir,” Robert Barbour said. “That is, if you’ll permit me. I’ll have the AI in this console dialed in to take care of ordinary business in an hour or two, now that you’re back.”
“No, that’s fine,” Coke said “Just remember, we’re in a fluid situation. Things might happen pretty fast. And I’m Matthew.”
“My old driver came back here when he got out of service,” Margulies explained. “He came from a place called Silva Blanca. It’s supposed to be fifteen klicks away.”
“Good,” said Coke. He handed his mug to Hathaway for a refill. “It’ll be good to get a professional’s viewpoint about the situation here.”
“I’m not sure there’s enough arsenic, Master Soldier,” Evie Hathaway said. She had resumed knitting. “Certainly there can’t be too much.”
Cantilucca: Day Two
The messenger at the door of Hathaway House flashed his gray cloak open toward the viewslit, displaying a blue uniform jacket with chromed buttons and frogs. By trying to look simultaneously self-important and inconspicuous, the man gave the impression of a rat tricked out in pheasant plumage.
“A lady wants to see Major Coke!” he hissed meaningfully, casting a wary glance over his shoulder toward L’Escorial headquarters.
Coke nodded toward Mistress Hathaway at the door. He was shrugging into his body armor. The location of Hathaway House wasn’t ideally neutral, but the team hadn’t been sent to Cantilucca to be fair. Just to strike a deal, and that seemed to be a practical proposition.
“A bit earlier than I’d figured,” Coke said to his three fellows. “Niko, you’re ready on your end?”
The sensor tech grinned brightly. He patted a magazine pouch on the right side of his waist belt, opposite the holster clipped for cross-draw.
“The bugs’re here,” he said, “not in my case.” He waggled the attaché case in his left hand.
“Sten, you’re comfortable with the hardware?” Coke went on, shifting his attention to the man who would remain behind in the hotel lobby.
“Quite comfortable,” the logistics officer said. His arm swept across the terminal, changing the display from streetscape to a close-up of the Astra messenger’s face, then back. “This isn’t my specialty, but I’ve probably spent as much time at consoles as you or Bob have.”
“Come on,” the messenger whined. “Do you think I like standing out here?”
“Do you think we care?” Niko Daun snapped. The suddenness with which the young technician’s smile broke and reformed indicated that he was jumpy, reasonably enough.
Johann Vierziger grinned at Coke. Neither man bothered to speak the obvious truths.
Coke settled a gray cape over his armor, his attaché case, and a slung sub-machine gun. “All right,” he said. “Then let’s do it.”
The messenger scampered ahead. He was probably afraid to be seen with the trio of Frisians. It was late morning and the sun was hot. L’Escorials had removed the wrack of bodies from against their wall, but the stench of rotting blood was fierce even against the reek of garbage and human excrement.
The gates to the L’Escorial courtyard, vertical steel bars in a wall-height framework, were closed. Half a dozen gunmen sat beneath an awning inside, playing cards. The concrete around the titular guards was littered with gage injectors and empty bottles. None of the men paid any attention to traffic from Hathaway House.
The messenger was ten strides ahead of the Frisians. He turned around and waggled his hands toward them in a pulling motion. “Come on, come along,” he urged.
“We’ll get there, little man,” Johann Vierziger said calmly. “And the more surely if we watch what we’re about, not so?”
Though the messenger wasn’t a prepossessing physical specimen, he was bigger than Vierziger. Nobody hearing the comment smiled at it, however.
A combat vehicle converted from a bulldozer was now parked in the entrance to the courtyard in front of Astra headquarters. Metal plates were welded to a framework around the bulldozer’s sides.
The add-on armor didn’t look to Coke as if it’d stop much. The earthmoving blade which protected the front would originally have been tempered soft so that it wouldn’t shatter if it hit a rock. The alloy steel could have been surface hardened during the conversion process, but he doubted that it had been.
The vehicle mounted a twelve-tube launcher for hypervelocity rockets. These could be extremely effective weapons, capable of penetrating more than a meter of ferroconcrete; but the mounting was fixed in azimuth, so that aiming a salvo required the vehicle itself be turned toward the target.
The messenger led the Frisians past the ’dozer’s worn tracks. Astras on the vehicle and around it had their guns out. None of them spoke to the Frisians, but Coke heard several deliberately loud sneers about the pansies come to call. At least the blue-clad guards seemed to be more alert than their rivals down the street.
“The Widow’s waiting for you, gentlemen,” the messenger called, several strides ahead again. “Do come along.”
Niko Daun stumbled twice while easing past the converted bulldozer. The first time he slapped his hand against the armor covering the commander’s station on the right side of the vehicle; the next time he caught himself on the gatepost. He’d touched his belt pouch before either slip, but there was nothing noteworthy in that.