"Then why are we here?"
"A test, I figure. Dusek wants to see if I really have the credentials."
Sitting across from him at the small table in a corner, Yana continued her casual inspection of the place. So it would seem to any observer, at any rate. The fact that she spent at least a minute doing so would be understandable enough. Any woman as good-looking as she was would have a few trepidations about being in the place.
Victor had done some quiet checking after Triêu Chuanli had more-or-less ordered him to spend time at the Rhodesian Rendezvouz. He'd discovered, not to his surprise, that the placewas notorious for being a hangout for mercenaries, even by the standards of notoriety that held sway in the worst seccy district of Mesa's capital city. It was one of those places where the police were said to always come in pairs—except no policeman had set foot in the Rhodesian Resort in over eight years. According to the stories he'd heard, the last one to do so had left in a body bag.
There'd been no repercussions, apparently. The cop had been new to the police force and trying a private shakedown of the bar. If the owner hadn't had his own people take care of the problem, the district's police captain probably would have done it for him.
Victor had spent years in districts similar to Neue Rostock. For a spy like himself, they were often good places to go to ground or set up an operation. There were some disadvantages to working with criminals, to be sure. But the one great offsetting advantage was that very few hardened criminals were burdened with anything in the way of idle patriotic impulses. As long as they got paid, they didn't care who you were or why you were doing whatever you were doing—which they didn't want to know, anyway.
Every planet with a large population had districts like this in their major cities. The Neue Rostock was by no means the worst Victor had run across. Two of the slum areas in Nouveau Paris, one of them less than a mile from where he'd been born, were just as rough or worse. And, everywhere, there were certain standard practices. Not quite formal rules, but very close. One of them was that any establishment—certainly one like the Rhodesian Rendezvous—had to pay off the cops to stay in business. But the pay-offs were done in a proper and orderly manner, from the top down. Freelance policemen were not welcome and usually didn't last long.
The only thing out of the ordinary at all about Mesa was that the police were almost completely indifferent to what happened in the seccy slums. The cops left the maintenance of order in these districts to the bosses who ran them. As long as they got their baksheesh, they simply didn't care what happened there. And, being fair about it, the bosses probably maintained order at least as well as the police would have done, and the cut they took from every business was no worse than taxes would have been.
Still, it was a rough sort of order—at least, in a place like the Rhodesian.
"It'll be the three at the table on the south wall," Yana predicted. "The ones who came in a few minutes ago."
She spoke softly also; but, just as Victor had done, she relied on their scrambling equipment to protect them from being overheard by eavesdroppers. Nobody would think anything of that, either. Such equipment was pretty much de rigueur in a place like this. If there was any blind trust or milk of human kindness to be found on the premises, it'd be in the paws of a blind mouse hiding in a hole somewhere.
"I think you're right. They're avoiding looking at you. Half of the other men in the place haven't stopped ogling you since we came in."
Yana's cold smile appeared. "You sure you want to handle this? I can take care of it myself, you know."
"I don't doubt that. But I'm the one they want to find out about."
In point of fact, Yana was a bit nervous. Not because of the three men at that table. She ate alpha males for breakfast. What made her nervous was the man she was with.
Victor Cachat. Her friend Lara, not long before she died, had made the quip that with Victor on your side, you don't need to make any bargains with the devil.
It was true enough. She saw the men at the table push aside their chairs and come to their feet. All three were large, muscular, and obviously experienced when it came to physical confrontations. They were probably all mercenaries.
She sensed a very slight motion in Victor's right arm and knew that he'd slid the pistol all the way down his sleeve. He'd be holding it there, on his wrist, with just one finger. One quick motion—very well practiced in simulation chambers, Cachat being Cachat—and the gun would be in his hand.
As three more babes in the woods are about to find out.
Jurgen Dusek leaned forward to study the recording Chuanli had brought him. The three men were now within two meters of the couple at the corner table.
They were almost certainly carrying weapons. One of them was, for sure. Jurgen could see the pistol butt peeking out from under his jacket. Careless of him. But in practice there was no chance he'd get accosted by the police—not in Neue Rostock—and as long as he kept the weapon technically out of sight the barkeeps at the Rhodesian wouldn't make any objection.
All three men had that certain sort of smile on their faces, that Jurgen recognized from long experience. Dangerous thugs, about to prove it once again, taking the first steps in a familiar dance. When the dance was over—clearly, they didn't expect it to take long—they'd have some new female company to enjoy and a punk would have learned his true place on the pecking order. Maybe he'd survive the experience, maybe he wouldn't.
Dusek now looked at the man still seated at the table. If McRae was carrying any weapon, it wasn't visible. There was no sign of the pistol that Thiêu had sold him. In fact, he seemed oblivious to the menacing trio approaching him. So far as Jurgen could tell, McRae hadn't noticed them at all. The good-looking blonde sitting across from him had spotted them coming, sure enough, but she didn't seem too twitchy either.
Chuanli had told him it was interesting.
"What's your name, sweetheart?" asked one of the three men, when they came up to the table.
Yana glanced at him, shook her head, and pointed at Victor. "Ask him."
Cachat didn't even glance at them. "She's my woman. Leave it at that." His tone of voice was that of a man thoroughly bored.
The man who'd made the initial advance began to bridle. "Listen, shithead, you—"
Victor slid his pistol into his hand. He brought it up, still seated, and shot the man in the chest. As he began to crumple, Victor rose, smoothly and easily, and shot him in the head. Twice. Then shot the man to his left, then the one to his right. Three shots each. The first center mass, then a double-tap to the head.
It all took maybe three seconds. Only one of his victims even got a hand on a gun, and he didn't succeed in pulling it out of its shoulder holster. When it was over, half the floor of the bar was covered in blood and brains and the other dozen or so patrons—all of them very tough people in their own right—were pale-faced with stunned surprise.
"Which word in 'she's my woman' does anybody in this bar have trouble understanding?" the gunman asked. He still sounded thoroughly bored.
"Jesus H. Christ," said Jurgen Dusek. "Run it again, Chuanli."
The crime boss watched the recording three times over. Each time looking to see . . . anything that would make that gunman seem like a human being. Or even a normal sociopath.
Nothing.
After watching the recording four times, though, Dusek understood what had happened. It wasn't that McRae was some sort of "fast gun." True, he'd figured out a way to get the pistol into his hand without anyone spotting it, and then he'd moved quickly and surely, with not a single wasted motion. But any man well trained, familiar with weapons and in good condition could have done the same.