“Yes,” the woman replied. Her voice was just as flat as Coke’s had been.
“Get on with it, Sten,” Coke said. He looked at Johann Vierziger. “Come along, Johann,” he said. “You and I are going back to Astra headquarters to give helpful advice.”
“Yes, I thought that might be the case,” Vierziger said, rising easily from his chair.
His fingers twitched the pistol in and out of his holster twice, to be sure that it didn’t bind. He was smiling.
“Patrol One to Base,” announced the console. The voice was recognizably that of Margulies, despite the stitching and compression of spread-band radio. “We’re coming in. So don’t get nervous when the door opens, Johann.”
Coke paused with his hand halfway to the latch of the front door. It swung in, pushed by Barbour while the security lieutenant watched the street in a would-be negligent fashion.
“When did you become Patrol One?” Moden asked.
“Well, it didn’t seem right to identify ourselves in clear,” Margulies said in mild embarrassment. “If you like, sir, I can be Three from here on out. We don’t know who’s listening in.”
“On this benighted planet, nobody is,” Barbour said as he seated himself at his console.
He obviously didn’t want to look like a mother desperate to check her child after the first day of school. Equally obviously, that was how he felt about having handed his equipment over to somebody else, however apparently trustworthy.
“Johann and I are going out,” Coke said. “I’d like to hear about your trip when we get back, though.”
He reached for the door again.
“Just a moment, sir,” Barbour said. “Let me find Peres for you. He’s left Astra headquarters.”
Coke blinked at the intelligence officer. “You were listening in on all this while you were gone?” he asked.
“Yes sir,” Barbour said. “Through the console. Ah—perhaps I should have asked your permission?”
He looked up in sudden concern. Barbour’s sandy hair and unlined face gave him the appearance of being a boy at least a decade younger than he really was.
“I won’t tell you how to do your job,” Coke said. “I just—well, I didn’t know you could do that from a remote location. Without special equipment.”
“Yes sir,” Barbour said. He grinned suddenly, unexpectedly. “Commo helmets are more special than most people realize. If you know how to program them, which isn’t any great trick.”
Right, thought Coke. He’d heard exceptional cooks talk the same way, in absolute honesty. Oh, there was nothing to it. Nor was there, for them. As opposed to 99.7 percent of the people who might have attempted the same dish, with results ranging from mediocre to disastrous.
The console display shifted fluidly as Barbour spoke. It locked into a section of streetscape five hundred meters west of Astra HQ. “Here’s where he’s gone, sir,” Barbour explained. “I think he’s on the third floor.”
Coke hooked a finger to Evie Hathaway to join the group about the display. “How in blazes did you determine that?” he asked. “How did you even know Peres had left the building?”
“Voice print,” Niko Daun said/guessed.
“Right in one,” Barbour agreed. “I told the software to analyze audio inputs and track Peres through it. He’d gone out past the bug at the courtyard gate a few minutes after you’d left, telling the guards he was going to the Bucket.”
“The Bucket of Blood,” Mistress Hathaway said. “Yes, it’s in that building all right. It’s an Astra bar. No worse than most places, not really.”
“I tracked him through the external sensors here on Hathaway House,” Barbour said in obvious—and justifiable—pride. “He was traveling with three companions, talking frequently enough that I could follow the audio after I lost video …though even with enhancement, I’ll admit that there was a lot of guesswork at the end, sir.”
“Your guesswork is what laymen call genius,” Coke said. “You don’t need to be modest with me, Bob. And Via! Call me Matthew, all right?”
“We need to place more sensors up and down the road,” Daun said. “Visual, too. I’ll get on that right now.”
“Would you prefer to find Roberson, ah, Matthew?” Barbour asked. “Mistress Guzman hasn’t left the building.”
“No, no,” Coke said. “Master Peres is the choice for this approach.” He smiled tightly. “He’s a gambler. That’s what we need.”
Niko Daun opened his case. He sorted through it with practiced fingers, pulling out items from several different pockets.
“Let me get something to drink,” Margulies said, “and I’ll give you some backup, kid. No rest for the wicked, hey?”
She walked toward the saloon, rubbing the shoulder where the strap of her sub-machine gun had hung during the jitney ride. At the archway she turned and said, “When we all get back, Matthew, I’d like to talk to you about L’Escorial. I don’t know how important it is.”
Coke nodded. “Sure,” he said.
“Shall we visit the Bucket of Blood, Matthew?” Vierziger said. “I wonder if the ambiance is as high-toned as the name.”
He giggled as he opened the door.
The shill for the Bucket of Blood was a woman in pirate costume on whose shoulder perched either an aviform or a bird-featured robot (the thing/creature certainly wasn’t a Terran parrot). She was bare-breasted, overweight, and seemed desperately tired.
From the way she kept trying to wipe invisible cobwebs from her face, Coke suspected that the woman had already overloaded on gage. Additional cones could no longer stave off the crash into near-coma that was due in an hour at the latest; they could only prolong its duration.
The outside stairs serving the third-floor tavern were wide enough for two to pass if they were careful. The burly Astra who came out while the pair of Frisians were midway above the second landing was deliberately clumsy. He lurched toward Vierziger, in the lead, in an obvious attempt to crush the smaller man against the railing for a joke.
Vierziger shifted stance and dodged past the Astra, right shoulder to right. Vierziger’s hand moved too, probably with something in it, though even Coke couldn’t be sure. Hand or object made the Astra’s head tunk like a hammered melon. The man slid bonelessly down the stairs to the landing, where he sprawled.
The woman who’d accompanied the Astra out of the bar stared at the Frisians without speaking. Coke politely lifted his commo helmet as he passed her on the stairs.
The Bucket’s waiters were husky, and the man in a protective cage by the door carried a beanbag gun. The big-bore weapon fired bagged shot at low velocity, giving the projectile an impact like the fist of the most powerful boxer who ever lived.
The beanbag gun could break bones, but it wasn’t generally fatal. Coke presumed the intention was to avoid dangerous penetrations rather than to spare troublemakers’ lives, however.
All the bar’s staff and most of the clientele wore blue, though some of the patrons were obvious sailors who’d simply tied on a neckerchief of the correct color as a temporary measure. The music was loud and there was a life-sized holographic sex show going on in one corner, but the place wasn’t exceptionally bad for its type.
Exceptionally tough was another matter. Most of the people, staff and patrons alike, carried guns. One wrong word and the bar would sound like Settlers’ Day celebrations on a frontier planet.
Peres wore black, not blue. He and the three men with whom he’d left Astra HQ were in a corner booth with three women and a boy. Stim cones stood to attention on the table, with empties littering the stained floor beneath. Peres groped the crotch of one of the women beneath her dress, but his heart didn’t seem to be in the activity.
Coke approached, Vierziger a pace behind to his leader’s off side. An Astra with Peres looked up and grabbed for the machine pistol he carried in a shoulder holster.