Redding chuckled and butted her cigarette in the ash stand to her left. "What clinched it for you?"
"I don't know if you remember, I suppose after a while it comes to be second nature, but I heard you say something that I heard someone in Authority and someone I suspected of being in Authority say."
"I can't imagine." Redding shook her head.
"What's a clusterfuck?" I grinned and knocked ash from my cigarette. "I heard you say it and I've been called a clusterfuck by Cane, and by Willieboy. I never asked what it meant, I just kept noticing it."
Redding burst out laughing. She doubled over, then looked up at me and burst out again. I tried to take it all in stride. Redding had a lovely laugh. She raised a finger and struggled over the last of her chuckles.
"In basic, in Authority-basic training-we get the once over on graduation day by the Inspector General. He has a cluster of oak leaves on his collar. We call grads, clusterfucks, because their collars are clean. They have clusters of fuck-all." She started to giggle. "I don't suppose it's a nice thing to say to anyone."
"Well, it put me onto you." I fell silent a moment to sober her. "Where did your people come in at the Galaxy Tower?"
That hit the spot. The serious line between her eyes tightened up enough to set a silver dollar in. "We lost a lot of good people." She fell silent. "God, that's such a cliche, but we did. I guess I say it because good people are rare." She struck another match and lit a cigarette. "We came in through the roof-got there late. You see I didn't spend all of my time at the Gazette. For reasons I'll explain later I had Mary Redding's extension hooked to my office at HQ. Whoever took the message either tried to obstruct me on purpose or it was a real oversight, it didn't get it to me for thirty-five minutes. Almost too late. When we did get there we saw all the Authority vehicles, so I was a little uncertain of what to do. I knew the King's men would be there, and the Twelve Stars. Both those groups employ hard-assed Enforcers who fight like demons. They have terrible punishments for disloyalty, I'm told. I didn't have enough people with me to take both groups on at once. But, there was no turning back.
"We had a little trouble in the lobby with an Enforcer stationed there. But we took him out and then found a woman tied up behind her desk. She told us that everyone had gone up to the penthouse. I wasn't sure how to deploy my people. I just didn't want to lose too many. So, we went up in a service elevator to try a forced entry through the roof. We have sensing equipment, echo-radar, to be certain no one is killed when we blast, so our munitions expert popped a hole in the ceiling twenty yards from echo sources to minimize bystander casualties. Down we went." She took a long drag on her cigarette, and her eyes seemed to cloud up momentarily. "Of course, Cane's people were coming up through the floor at about the same time. Of the forty Enforcers I went in with, only eighteen made it out. That fucking helicopter was unexpected! God damned maniacs took out the whole top floor, and wasted some of their own people too. A couple of us kept our heads after the concussion, we were pretty well protected by our armor but the concussion can knock you out. I was down but my people saw a group of Enforcers come in, meet up with Willieboy, then watched them taking you out. A few shots were fired, but no kills. We had you followed to the King's castle. It took us a while to get our shit together after the blasts. We had to identify forces and our casualties-call in reinforcements and medics."
"Was Cane still there?" I sat forward now, hands set flat on the desk blotter.
"Hard to tell, the firestorm burned up a lot of the bodies. I can't be sure. There wouldn't be much left. Anyway, we got reinforcements, and started the fight at the King's gates."
I gave her a hard look.
"We just broke onto the King's courtyard when that transport came roaring out of the ground. We opened fire on it. Christ, we almost got you too. We won the fight, if that's anything, and have rounded up about a quarter of the King's men. But the rest are spread out and dug in deep. When we got inside his castle, we couldn't find your body, or anybody living, for that matter, I assumed that you had left in the transport. I don't know what the hell happened inside, but you sure did a number on the King. I assume you did it." I didn't answer. "Whatever, you've got to remember we were right in the middle of a fire fight when you left, so it took a few minutes to muster troops to chase you. When we did get someone after the transport, we found it empty."
"Then I called you from Simpson's," I grumbled. "You got there and found a couple of murderers, but no Wildclown and no Regenerics Secret."
"What was the Regenerics Secret?" Redding asked then, uncrossing her legs, and standing up from the chair. "So far Van Reydner hasn't been specific. I think she's holding onto that card for leverage. I can't blame her. I have my own theories, but I'm not sure."
"Before I answer that, tell me why you let me get involved."
"Difficult tale. You must know about the divisions in Authority. The special interest groups."
"Which one do you belong to?" I was almost afraid of the answer.
"The one that believes in justice. There are a few of us who were in the first Authority units formed after the Change-we were hired right out of the civilly run policing agencies. But we were in the minority. Those of us who couldn't hide our true feelings disappeared. Others among of us hid our loyalties and bided our time. We didn't join any group, chose strange assignments, and were pretty much outcasts in the force. Over the last couple of years things have been getting worse. The special groups were beginning to form alliances that would at best, tear Authority apart, or at worse, turn it into a monster the likes of which the human race has never seen before. Those of us who stayed clean-I'd say, pure, but nobody's pure-knew that something was going on that would start the final battle. The only good thing about all those groups forming on the inside was we could form our own. Honestly, I'm surprised there were only two of the bad ones involved. The Twelve Stars and the King's men are the largest, but there are at least ten more. I suppose a lot of them didn't have the belly for it, or had already been squeezed by the bigger guys, and stayed out of it." She smiled then, and a look of exasperation crossed her face. "I found out about you from a recording we made in Willieboy's car-Oates, that's his real name. We were following him after the Billings murder-he was identified at the Morocco-and our people taped him talking to the King. He mentioned a bush beater named Wildclown. We didn't have much on you in records. Officially you don't exist past two years ago. There aren't a lot of detectives walking around in clown makeup so you stand out. I didn't know who you were until I saw you. Even then it took a while before I was sure."
"Sure about what?" I felt my entire soul focus on the question.
"Who you were." She looked embarrassed, a flush crossing her cheeks. "And I didn't know what to think. It wasn't an act. You really didn't recognize me."
"Why should I recognize you?" I didn't move a muscle. I felt the first clamoring of Tommy's spirit.
"We trained together, Authority Enforcement division. They had a center in northern Florida back in the first decade." Her eyes centered on mine. "I heard you quit the force after the dead riots."