The daddies blocked most of my pain, but not all; the rest they held at a distance. Still, I couldn’t move yet, and it would be a few minutes before I could do anything useful. I watched Khan’s skin turn a cyanotic blue as he fought to draw air into his lungs. He went into convulsions and then suddenly relaxed completely, only a few inches from me. I sat and gasped until I was able to shake off the effects of the fight. Then the first thing I did was pop the Khan moddy out of his head. I called Lieutenant Okking to give him the good news.
Chapter 18
I found my pill case in the zipper bag and took seven or eight sunnies. I was trying something new. My body was aching after the fight with Khan, but it wasn’t the pain so much; purely in the interest of science, I wanted to see how the opiate would affect my augmented sensations. While I waited for Okking, I learned the truth empirically: the daddy that cleared alcohol from my system at a faster rate also kicked out the sunnies, too. Who needs that? I popped that moddy and took another hit of Sonneine.
When Okking arrived he was buoyant. That was the only word to describe him. I’d never seen him so pleased. He was attentive and gracious to me, concerned for my wounds and pain. He was so nice, I figured the holo news people were around taping, but I was wrong. “I guess you’re one up on me now, Audran,” he said.
I figured he owed me a lot more than that. “I’ve done your whole goddamn job for you, Okking.”
Even that didn’t puncture his elation. “Maybe, maybe. At least now I can get some sleep. I couldn’t even eat without imagining Selima, Seipolt, and the others.”
Khan roused; without a moddy in his socket, however, he began to scream. I recalled how awful I felt when I took the daddies out after just a few days. Who knows how long Khan — whatever his real name was — had gone, hiding beneath first one moddy and then another. Maybe without a false personality chipped in, he wasn’t able to confront the inhuman acts he’d performed. He lay on the pavement, his hands cuffed behind him and his ankles chained together, thrashing and thundering curses at us. Okking watched him for a few seconds. “Drag him out of here,” he said to a couple of uniformed officers.
They were none too gentle about it, but Khan got no sympathy from me. “Now what?” I asked Okking.
He sobered up a little. “I think it’s about time for me to offer my resignation,” he said.
“When the news gets around that you’ve accepted money from a foreign government, you’re not going to be very popular. You’ve dented your credibility.”
He nodded. “The word has already gotten around, at least in the circles that count. I’ve been given the choice of finding employment out of the city or spending the rest of my life behind bars in one of your typical wog hellholes. I don’t see how they can fling people into those prisons, they’re right out of the Dark Ages.”
“You’ve put the numbers on your share of the population, Okking. You’ll have a big welcoming committee waiting for you.”
He shivered. “I think as soon as I get my personal affairs tied up, I’ll just pack my bags and slip away into the night. I wish they’d give me a character reference, though. I mean, foreign agent or no, I’ve done good work for the city. I never compromised my integrity, except a few times.”
“How many other people can honestly say the same? You’re one of a kind, Okking.” He was just the kind of guy who would walk away from this and turn it into a recommendation on his résumé. He’d find work somewhere.
“You like seeing me in trouble, don’t you, Audran?”
As a matter of fact, I did. Rather than answer, though, I turned to my zipper bag and repacked it; I’d learned my lesson, so I tucked the seizure gun under my robe. From Okking’s conversation, I gathered that the formal questioning was finished, that I could go now. “Are you going to stay in the city until Nikki’s killer is caught?” I asked. “Are you at least going to do that much?” I turned to face him.
He was surprised. “Nikki? What are you talking about? We got the killer, he’s on his way to the chopping block right now. You’re obsessed, Audran. You don’t have any proof of your second killer. Lay off or you’ll learn how fast heroes can become ex-heroes. You’re getting boring.”
If that wasn’t a cop’s way of thinking! I caught Khan and turned him over to Okking; now Okking was going to tell everybody that Khan had bumped them all, from Bogatyrev to Seipolt. Of course, Khan had killed Bogatyrev and Seipolt; but I was sure that he hadn’t killed Nikki, Abdoulaye, or Tami. Did I have any proof? No, nothing tangible; but none of it hung together any other way. This was an international rat’s nest; one side tried to kidnap Nikki and bring her alive to her father’s country, and the other side wanted to kill her to prevent the scandal. If Khan had murdered agents of both parties, it made sense only if he was merely a psychotic who cut up people senselessly, in no pattern. That just wasn’t true. He was an assassin whose victims had been put away to further his employers’ scheme and to protect his own anonymity. The man who cut Seipolt up was not a madman, he was not really Khan — he only wore a Khan moddy.
And that man had nothing to do with Nikki’s death.
There was still another killer loose in the city, even if Okking found it convenient to forget him.
About ten minutes after Okking and his crew and I went our separate ways, the telephone rang. It was Hassan, calling back to tell me what Papa had said. “I’ve got some news, too, Hassan,” I said.
“Friedlander Bey will see you shortly. He will send a car for you in fifteen minutes. I trust you are at home?”
“No, but I’ll be waiting outside the building. I had some interesting company, but they’ve all gone away now.”
“Good, my nephew. You deserved some pleasant relaxation with your friends.”
I stared up at the cloud-covered sky, thinking about my confrontation with Khan, wondering if I should laugh at Hassan’s words. “I didn’t get much relaxing done,” I said. I told him what had happened from the time I’d last talked to him until they carted Okking’s hired killer away.
Hassan stammered at me in amazement. “Audran,” he said when he finally regained control, “it pleases Allah that you are safe, that the maniac has been captured, and that Friedlander Bey’s wisdom has triumphed.”
“You right,” I said. “Give all the credit to Papa. He was giving me the benefit of his wisdom, all right. Now that I think about it, I didn’t get a hell of a lot more help from him than I got from Okking. Sure, he backed me into a corner and made me go along with having my head opened; but after that he just sat back and tossed money my way. Papa knows everything that goes on in the Budayeen, Hassan. You mean to tell me both he and Okking have been standing around with their thumbs in their ears, absolutely baffled? I don’t buy that. I found out what Okking’s part in all this was; I’d like even better to know what Papa’s been doing behind the scenes.”
“Silence, son of a diseased dog!” Hassan dropped his ingratiating manner and let his real self peek out, something he didn’t do very often. “You still have much to learn about showing respect to your elders and betters.” Then, just as suddenly, the old Hassan, Hassan the mendacious near-buffoon, returned. “You are still feeling the strain of the conflict. Forgive me for losing my patience with you, it is I who must be more understanding. All is as Allah wills, neither more nor less. So, my nephew, the car will call for you soon. Friedlander Bey will be well pleased.”