‘You’ll do it?’ Valery asked him.
‘Yes, I’ll do it.’
‘You have to say it,’ Valery said gently. ‘Say it to her. For the record.’
Moh drew a deep breath. ‘As a citizen of the United Republic I claim the protection of its armed forces and pledge on my honour to exercise when called upon by its lawful authority the Army Council of the Army of the New Republic all the rights and duties of such citizenship including but not limited to the franchise and the common defence. Is that it?’
‘Basically, yes,’ Valery said. ‘So, Cat, unless you want to tangle with the ANR I suggest you put that gun away.’
Cat stared at them both. ‘This place is ANR?’
‘Yes,’ Valery said.
Cat’s shoulders slumped. She lowered the pistol.
‘You still owe me one, Moh.’
‘Later,’ Moh said through gritted teeth. Calming himself, he smiled. ‘You are pretty,’ he said – as if that would be enough, would help, would cover everything – and backed out. He sprinted across the courtyard lawn, leapt flowerbeds and shrubs, dodged people. He wasn’t surprised to find Valery Sharp keeping pace. A sidelong glance showed muscles firmed, doubtless by aerobics, under the clothes which also weren’t as daft as they looked; they didn’t get in her way.
‘I’m sorry,’ Valery gasped. ‘We never expected—’
‘It’s OK. Neither did I.’
They stopped in the cool gloom of the entrance-way. Crates were being loaded on to the truck. Only a couple more to go.
‘Now, what were you going to tell me?’
‘Take the truck,’ Valery said.
‘Where?’
‘As far north as you can, then to any controlled zone. We’ve got clearance for all the borders, and tax-in-kind, but…if it looks like anyone’s going to find out what’s really in it, stop them at any cost. If necessary, burn the container section. At any cost.’ She looked at him. ‘Can you do that?’
‘Yes. Will you call my co-op, with a message from me to a guy called Jordan: the search is over, do your own thing.’
‘I’ll do that. And I’ll keep Cat out of Donovan’s way for a bit.’
‘OK. I hope I see you again.’
Valery smiled and shoved him on his way. ‘Go!’
He ran to the back of the truck, grabbed the last crate and hurled it in, jumped up to the deck and hauled the tailgate down after him as he vaulted back out. A man fumbled with a lock. Kohn waited for what felt like seconds until it was secure, then ran to the cab and almost flew through the door. He found himself facing his own gun. Janis was crouched under the steering-wheel, aiming at the door and trying to fit an ammunition clip at the same time. The whiplash sensor extension writhed as it tried to keep level with the windscreen.
‘Get down!’ she hissed.
Kohn threw himself on the passenger seat, gasping. Janis passed the gun to him as if pushing it away from her.
‘It talks,’ she said.
‘Yeah, yeah, you knew that.’ Kohn rolled on to his back and clashed the clip and the computer into place. ‘What’s it say?’
‘Cranks. Coming for us. It’s picking up signals—’
‘Helmet.’ He waved a hand in front of Janis until he felt the helmet in it. He half-sat, cautiously, slid the helmet on and flipped the glades down, jacked the lead into the gun and keyed the screensight to head-up. The gun’s two views – where it was pointing, and what the eye-on-a-stalk was seeing – overlay his own like reflections in a window. They had never looked so distinct.
‘What did you get, gun?’
There was a pause as the computer interrogated the even tinier mind of the gun’s basic firmware.
‘Phone call, public, CLA encryption style, otherwise no data extracted. Source vehicle now entering square at—’
And there it was, flashily outlined in red: a black Transit van with black windows, turning the corner. It drove around the square and rolled to a stop a couple of metres in front of the truck. Kohn made out two heat-images behind the light-shaded windscreen of the van.
He turned on the engine and grabbed the steering-wheel with his left hand. Janis watched.
‘Seat. Belts,’ said the truck.
‘Oh, shut the fuck up.’
Janis clunk-clicked the belt on the driver’s side and looped her arms through it, grasped it firmly with her hands, letting it take her weight.
‘Good,’ Kohn said, like some psychopathic driving instructor. ‘Expect a jolt. Now take the brake off and give us some juice.’
He braced his legs together against the lower edge of the dashboard. The truck lurched forward. There was a heartening crunch as its steel fenders rammed the thin metal and hard plastic of the van. Janis yelled but it was surprise – the impact hadn’t been too severe.
Kohn jack-knifed up and out of the cab, hit tarmac and made a low lunge for the van door, his body wrapped around the gun. He used the butt to smash the side window and whirled the weapon around to cover the inside. A young man and a young woman, both long-haired, oily-denimed, hailstoned with safety glass and still shaking from the collision. The man reached under the dashboard. Kohn fired one shot across the back of the man’s hand and into the corner below the steering column. The hand snatched back and something hydraulic failed at the same moment.
‘Out,’ Kohn said, and stepped backwards off the running-board.
They came out. The woman had her hands on her head. The man held his bleeding hand to his mouth.
‘You come for me?’
The woman shook her head, the man nodded.
‘Well, now you’ve f—’
Kohn’s words were swamped by a thrumming roar, a skidding screech.
He turned his head – the gun stayed steady like a handrail – and saw an overdeveloped ’thirties Honda rocking gently where it had halted, a couple of metres away. Its rider was built to match, all the way from leather boots to leather cap. He dismounted, thus revealing that what had looked like a spare fuel-tank was actually an armoured codpiece. His arm and chest muscles would have been troubling even without the holografts.
He held up a badge. ‘Rough Traders,’ he said. ‘Do you have a problem?’
Kohn pointed the gun groundwards and said, ‘A disagreement.’
‘Does anyone wish to lay a charge?’
The couple by the van shook their heads.
‘Nor me,’ Kohn said. ‘But I wish to claim a ransom for a hostage, and I’ve had some difficulty persuading these two. I think you’ll find that they do have the documentation.’
They nodded frantically. Kohn felt some tension ease. It had been just a guess that Donovan’s mob would try to maintain the cover.
‘How much?’
‘Five hundred marks,’ the woman said, finding her tongue at last. She held out a grubby banknote. Kohn made an insultingly elaborate show of scanning it with one of the gun’s sensors (which duly registered that it didn’t contain any large masses of moving metal) and wrote out a receipt pertaining to the release of one Catherin Duvalier for the sum of, etc. The rent-cop witnessed it and the man took the top copy, with the wrong hand at first.
‘Please make sure this is delivered to the person mentioned in it,’ Kohn said, handing over a second copy to the Rough Trader. ‘She’s currently resident at this block.’
‘OK.’
Kohn walked back to the truck and climbed in, to find that Janis had been covering the whole incident with his previously discarded pistol. He smiled, kissed his finger and thumb at her and strapped in. The Rough Trader was striding towards the apartment block; the crank agents were talking into a mike in their disabled van. Laughing, Kohn eased the truck out of the square and along a narrow street, forcing a ridiculously broad pink Cadillac to mount the pavement as it came towards them. Then, after a few more back streets, they were on the clearway again.
Janis said, ‘Explanation time.’
‘Parachutes,’ Kohn said.