Chapter Nine

Mirim followed along, watching in puzzlement as Casper zigged and zagged through the city streets. He paused now and then to stare up at certain buildings or vehicles, though Mirim could never see anything special about them.

They went past the entrance to Cecelia’s law firm four times without going in.

At last Casper stopped, a block away from Cecelia’s office, and ushered Mirim into a coffee shop.

“I’m pretty sure they’re here, but they’re still setting up,” he said, leading her toward an ancient landline pay phone at the back. “They won’t have had time to monitor all the phones—I hope not, anyway. They’ll have your cell covered, and of course mine, not that it works, but they probably don’t have Celia’s phones yet, so I want you to call her, arrange to meet somewhere for lunch.”

Mirim nodded, and started to pull her calling card from her purse. Casper’s hand on her wrist stopped her.

“Use cash,” he said.

She glanced at him, then fished out a dollar coin instead. As she punched in Cecelia’s office number and waited for an answer, Mirim looked uneasily at Casper.

This was all so strange and horrible. She had always liked Casper, thought he was sort of cute—she’d often thought that if he’d had any backbone and hadn’t been dating her roommate, she’d have been seriously interested in him.

She hadn’t known then that he lived in a slum, or that he was capable of killing two armed men in a matter of seconds.

Of course, maybe he hadn’t been capable of it—but didn’t they say that imprinting couldn’t teach you anything you wouldn’t have been able to learn? It was just faster—if you weren’t able to handle something, imprinting wouldn’t change that.

Could an ordinary man learn to fight like that? Or was Casper something special?

That speech he’d given at Data Tracers had been wonderful, and he was still charming, but he’d been so ruthless. And all this cloak-and-dagger rigmarole—was he being paranoid?

But they really were after him, whoever they were.

What was going on? Casper said he didn’t know, either, but he still seemed to know what to do—could an imprinting do that?

Then Cecelia’s voice said, “Grand speaking,” and Mirim concentrated on sounding normal, as if she were still at her office, as if she hadn’t seen two men killed about an hour before, as if Casper weren’t standing behind her with a loaded handgun in his pants.

It would have to be lawyers, Smith thought. With most people he could have bullied the manager into letting them monitor the landline phones in a matter of minutes, just as he’d bullied that oaf Quinones at Data Tracers. The cells had all been tagged already, not just Grand’s but everyone in the office, but Beech might expect that—or he might just use a landline anyway. Smith needed access to the office phones, and the easiest way to get it was courtesy of someone who already had it.

Usually that just took a flashed set of credentials or a few words of warning, but lawyers were harder to intimidate—so even while he was negotiating with Mr. Arnold of Jackson-Arnold-Perez, Smith had his men tapping into the building’s central systems.

And a good thing, too, he thought, as one of his assistants signalled to him.

“Just a moment, Mr. Arnold,” he said. He flicked off the microphone—just covering the mouthpiece wasn’t certain enough.

“The Grand woman is on the phone right now…no, she just hung up,” the assistant said. “She’s meeting Anspack, we think for lunch; we didn’t get the location.”

“Follow her,” Smith snapped. “Anspack’s probably still with Beech.” Then he turned the microphone back on. “I’m sorry, Mr. Arnold—something came up here. If you insist on a court order, we’ll get one. I’ll get back to you. Thank you for your time, Mr. Arnold.”

He hung up and pocketed the phone.

A court order—ha! Arnold was stuck in the last century somewhere.

He turned to his assistant again.

“Make sure whoever’s going after Beech knows he’s dangerous—use whatever it takes to take him down. This is a national security matter. Collateral damage is acceptable.”

“Yes, sir.” The assistant began relaying orders.

“They’ll follow her,” Casper said. “We’ll have to lose them somehow.”

Mirim blinked at him, startled.

“You really think they’re going to be that thorough?”

“They were watching her office—I spotted two cars on stakeout, one man on the sidewalk, and a man on the rooftop across from Cecelia’s window,” Casper replied. “If they’re watching her, they’ll follow her.”

Mirim stared at him, and Casper thought he saw fear in her expression.

He smiled warmly. “Don’t worry,” he said, “we’ll be fine. Maybe I’m just imagining it—but after what happened at my place, don’t you think we’d better be extra-careful?”

The fear faded to uncertainty—and it occurred to Casper that he’d never been able to read Mirim’s face so easily before.

Had the imprint taught him that, too?

What sort of an imprint could that be? The fighting, the weapons, spotting traps, outthinking opponents, that all fit together—but reading faces?

And what about that speech at the office?

It didn’t all fit with the idea of an assassin very well; he was fairly certain now that whatever he had been programmed with wasn’t just assassination. Face-reading might suit a spy, someone who had to be able to tell truth from lies and know who to trust—but how did his speech fit with that?

“How do we lose them?” Mirim asked. “If they’re really there, I mean.”

Casper shrugged—and realized that he didn’t know; he wasn’t just dodging the question to save time. He had no idea at all how one could escape pursuit.

He had known a moment before, and he’d lost it.

What the hell kind of imprint was this? How could he forget something he’d known just seconds earlier? That wasn’t how it was supposed to work! Once something was imprinted it was supposed to be there whenever it was needed—Casper had read enough on the nets and spoken to enough people who had been imprinted to know that.

Once they had Cecelia away from those bastards, the next step would be to track down just what it was that he’d had stuffed into his head—what it was for, what it did, everything. Once he knew what it was, maybe he could figure out how to deal with it.

Maybe the knowledge would come back when he needed it—he sure hoped it would.

“Come on,” he said.

Mirim had told Cecelia to meet her at a restaurant and bar on Rittenhouse Square, but Casper had no intention of actually entering the place—he’d be too confined there, too easy to trap. Instead, moving easily through the lunchtime crowds, dragging Mirim behind him, he spotted Cecelia on Walnut Street and waved to her.

She waved back, and a moment later the three of them were moving side-by-side down the sidewalk, Casper uncomfortably aware of the two men following Cecelia.

“Casper!” Cecelia began, “I didn’t know…”

“Shh,” he told her. He looked around for a way to escape. So far the two men hadn’t opened fire, presumably because of the bystanders, or perhaps because they weren’t yet certain of his identity—or maybe they just weren’t close enough. He was fairly sure they’d move soon.

He would have, in their position.

“This way,” he said suddenly, turning north on the west side of 19th.

Startled, the two women obeyed.

He then turned again, onto Moravian—and here he didn’t have any crowds to help; Moravian wasn’t much more than an alley.

“Run!” he said, reaching out with both hands and swatting both women forward.

Mirim ran—she’d been there at his apartment, she was already on edge.

Cecelia, though, stopped dead and turned to face him, hands on her hips. “Casper, what the hell…”

“Run, damn it!” he shouted. “I’ll explain in a moment!” And he ran himself, after Mirim. “Turn left!” he called.

He glanced back. The two men had pushed right past Cecelia, leaving her standing there, looking confused and angry; one man had a pistol in his hand.

Mirim wheeled left onto 20th Street, Casper close behind.

Another short block brought them back onto Walnut, where at Casper’s signal Mirim turned left again.

Pedestrians turned and stared as the two of them charged through the crowd, half a block ahead of their pursuers.

Casper was considering options as he ran. Something in his brain was working again; he was running through possible courses of action, rather than simply fleeing.

He could call for help, but these people didn’t know him yet, they wouldn’t want to get involved, and the natural tendency would be to side with the pursuers rather than the fugitive.

He could make a serious effort to lose the two men—but there might be others he hadn’t spotted, lurking in the crowd as back-up. And besides, he couldn’t see any way to bring Mirim and Cecelia with him safely if he were to try any serious dodging; they weren’t ready, wouldn’t read signals in time.

But there was a third alternative.

He turned north again on 19th, Mirim close on his heels, and a moment later they were back on Moravian, having circled the block. Cecelia was still there, halfway down to 20th; Mirim ran toward her, shouting, “Run, Cecelia!”

Casper didn’t; Casper stopped dead the moment he’d rounded the corner and threw himself back against the brick wall. He pulled the Browning Hi-Power from his pants.

And as each of the two men rounded the corner, chasing Mirim, Casper snapped off two quick shots.

“Double tap,” he said, as he fired at the first man’s chest; the recoil kicked the pistol upward slightly, and Casper fired again without pulling it down. That put a bullet through the side of the man’s head. Then he dragged the gun back down into line in time to do the exact same thing to the second pursuer.

Blood and brain sprayed across the pavement and the side of an illegally-parked car. Both men dropped in mid-stride, one after the other. Cecelia screamed.

So did another woman, on 19th Street, who had seen the two men fall.

Casper ignored the screams; he ran, grabbed the two women by the arm in passing, one on either side, and dragged them to 20th Street, where he turned right this time.

Mirim ran with him; Cecelia didn’t resist, but didn’t help much at first.

“You want to stay with those two?” Casper whispered to her.

After that, she ran.

They dodged through the streets of Center City for several minutes—running at first, then trotting, then walking.

“Catch your breath,” Casper told the women. “After the next corner we want to look natural, to blend in.”

Mirim nodded; Cecelia didn’t, but Casper didn’t worry about it.

The next corner put them on Market Street, and Casper began looking for somewhere to sit down, somewhere they could eat the lunch they had promised Cecelia.

He was, he realized, really hungry. He’d worked up an appetite.

“We have a problem,” Smith’s assistant said.

“Why?” Smith asked.

“It’s Dominguez and Groves.”

“What about them?”

“They’re dead,” the assistant said. “Beech blew their brains out.”

“Did they get Beech?”

The assistant shook his head. “No. And their back-up lost him.”

“Damn!” Smith smacked his fist against the wall. “What the hell happened?”

The assistant relayed the back-up’s report—how Dominguez and Groves had seen Beech and Anspack meet Grand, how they’d followed the three of them for a block and then Anspack and Beech had started running, how they’d all gone around the block and Beech had ambushed them.

The back-up had seen most of it, and had tried to pick up the pursuit herself, but she’d guessed wrong somewhere about which way her quarry turned and lost them. She hadn’t had a chance to get off a shot.

“Damn it!” Smith said. “Why didn’t Dominguez or Groves just shoot Beech when they had the chance?”

“Crowds,” the assistant said. “At least, that’s what the back-up thinks.”

“I said collateral damage was acceptable!” Smith glared. “For Christ’s sake…next time, if there is one, tell whoever we send to go ahead and shoot on sight. And give ‘em something heavier—shotguns or full auto, something with real firepower. Something that’ll take Beech down no matter how good he is.”

He wondered just how good that was. Beech seemed to be absorbing the Spartacus File pretty goddamn fast.

“Yes, sir,” the assistant said. “Uh…the city police are on the scene of the shooting; should we contact them?”

“No, of…” Smith stopped and reconsidered. “Yes,” he said. “Give them Beech’s description and basic history. Tell them we think he’s a terrorist. Tell them Dominguez and Groves were FBI, tell ‘em we’re FBI—let ‘em think we’re going to be really pissed if anyone else gets Beech, you know, the whole ‘Untouchables’ bit. That should motivate them. These city contractors like pissing off the FBI.”

“Yes, sir.” The assistant reached for the phone.