AS SOON AS THE room service robot took its leave, Gomez carried his bottle of ale over to a soft armchair. “What do you figure we have, Jake?” he asked as he sat down. “A lot of pieces of one big jigsaw puzzle or a few pieces for several little puzzles?”
“I’m not sure yet.” Jake was leaning against the wall near the window, arms folded, looking out at the night city. “My bet right now is that most of this does tie together.”
“Which means the Teklords are behind it all.” He drank directly from the chilled bottle.
“They didn’t, I don’t think, break Sands out of prison just because they like him or because they owe the guy a favor. My feeling is there’s some big plan in the works and they need him for that.”
Gomez studied the ceiling. “It’s possible, amigo, that Bouchon found out something about that same plan and was bumped off to hush him up.”
Jake crossed over to pick up the copy of the Unknown Soldier letter from atop the coffee table. “If this is real, it definitely establishes that he wasn’t killed by our serial killer.” He absently folded the note. “Zack Rolfe knew something, too. My guess is he helped set up Bouchon.”
“You say Madame Nana, AKA our old chum Lulu Blueberry, claims to know absolutely nada?”
“We had a lively chat after I left the private dining room and while we were waiting for the Paris cops to get there. She claims she wasn’t stalling me, didn’t tip anyone that I’d come looking for Rolfe, didn’t know anyone was planning to drop in at her establishment to kill the guy. Furthermore, the word Excalibur means nothing at all to Lulu.”
“I’ll get somebody digging deep into her recent activities and associations,” promised his partner. “As to Excalibur ...
“Yeah?”
“A very dim chime went off deep in my cabeza when first you mentioned it.” Gomez shook his head. “Nope, I am still unable to dredge anything up.”
Tossing the folded note back on the table, Jake wandered again to the window. “Sands knows quite a lot about Professor Kittridge’s anti-Tek system,” he said. “He might also know how to sabotage it.”
“Could be that hombre also can tell certain selected Tek potentates how to render themselves immune to the upcoming anti-Tek passover that Kittridge and the IDCA are planning,” speculated Gomez. “If a few dealers retained a supply of usable Tek chips, after most of the chips have been turned flooey, then they’d have a very lucrative monopoly.”
“Tomorrow we’ll also find out more about the life and times of Zack Rolfe,” said Jake. “And we have to find out what he meant by Excalibur.”
After taking another swig, Gomez again contemplated the ceiling. “Is it worth the anguish?” he murmured.
“Is what?”
“I was carrying on a debate with myself,” confessed his partner. “It’s possible that I can sweet-talk a stewpot of useful info out of the fair Natalie. I’m just not sure if I want to get snared in her web yet again.”
“Natalie can be a pest, but you’ve worked with her before,” Jake pointed out. “And she has been moderately helpful, which she was over in Japan a few months back. And just because she’s fond of you, Sid, that doesn’t mean her judgment is flawed in other areas.”
Gomez arose, smiling. “Come to think of it, amigo, the fact that she admires me does indicate a certain smartness on her part, doesn’t it?” he said. “I guess I’ll keep that lunch date.” His eyes twinkled.
The young man in the black overcoat slowed his pace. A half block ahead of him on his right, only partially visible in the night fog, rose the three tall towers of the Maida Vale Complex. Jonathan Ainsworth, member of the British Senate, was on the 18th floor of Tower 2 just now.
He was visiting, unbeknownst to his wife, a young woman named Felicity Blore.
Silly name.
Silly young woman, for that matter.
The young man, breathing in and out regularly, walked on by the apartment towers.
Just beyond them was Visitors’ Landing Area 2. There were approximately sixty skycars and skyvans parked there, swathed in fog. The globe lights ringing the wide area were all blurred by the thick mist.
The young man walked up to the small plastiglass guard hut. Wiping at his nose with the back of his left hand, he asked, in a voice not his own, “Can I maybe, gov, earn a bit of lolly by polishing up some of them cars?”
The guardbot was large and gray. He came lumbering out of the hut to eye the young man.
“I’m ’avin’ ’ard times, I am,” the young man continued. “Why, I ain’t eaten since—”
“Go away.” The robot had a deep, rumbling voice.
“Aw, I bet a lot of these toffs wouldn’t mind me earnin’ a—”
“Go away, young fellow me lad, or I shall have the law on you.”
Lurching, the young man put his hand on the guardbot’s shoulder to keep his balance. That contact produced a faint, unexpected buzzing sound.
The robot suddenly stiffened, metallic eyelids clicking rapidly for nearly half a minute.
“Back into your shed,” ordered the young man. “I have a permit to visit here and you’ve seen it.”
“Yes, sir. Right you are, sir.” Bowing once, the robot withdrew to his dim-lit hut.
The young man crossed over into the lot and walked straight to an expensive crimson skycar parked in the third row.
A uniformed human pilot, a thickset man of thirty, was dozing in the driveseat.
After easing his stungun out with his right hand, the young man held it down at his side. With his left he tapped nervously on the window.
The pilot jerked awake, blinking. “What the devil you want?” he asked, lowering his window a few inches.
“Oh, dear, I do hope you’re the person I’m seeking, sir. This is just awful.”
“What the devil are you nattering about?”
“Are you Simmons? Bert Simmons?”
“I am. What’s it to you?”
“Well, you see, I’m Alfred Swindon and I’m employed over there in Tower 2,” he explained excitedly. “I very much fear that your employer—if your employer is Senator Ainsworth—is he?”
“Yes, now quit your acting daft and explain yourself.”
“He’s had—it’s Senator Ainsworth I’m alluding to—he’s suffered some sort of seizure. In Miss Blore’s apartment unfortunately. I thought perhaps under the circumstances that you might wish to remove him to a more—”
“All right, twit.” The door came popping open and the thickset man stepped out. “I’ll come up there with you, see, and take charge.”
“Yes, you strike me as the sort of gentleman who can handle these embarrassing situations.” The young man shot the pilot with his stungun.
Then he hopped deftly backward, out of the way of the falling man.
After a careful look around, he stored the unconscious man in the back compartment of the skycar.
Next he took off his cap and removed his overcoat.
He was ready.
He was wearing a tattered, bloodstained uniform. It was the kind worn by the United Nations Combat Forces during the Brazil Wars years ago. His hair was cut short, his moustache was bushy, and from his left ear dangled an earring made of a Brazilian coin.
It was important that Senator Ainsworth see him in this uniform in the last minutes of his life. Ainsworth had been an enthusiastic supporter of those wars. He’d spearheaded the reinstatement of the draft in Great Britain. A lot of young men had died because of him.
The young man took his other gun out of his pocket. He removed the note and tucked it into the breast pocket of his tunic.
After folding up the coat and placing it carefully on the passenger seat, he slid in and sat where the pilot had been.
He didn’t mind waiting.