GOMEZ WAS RELAXING IN their compartment when Jake returned from phoning. He was sipping an eggnog while he studied a yellow faxgram. “Is all well with Beth?”
“As well as can be expected.” Letting out a disgruntled sigh, Jake settled opposite his partner. “Where’d you get the drink?”
“A robot decked out like Santa Claus came around giving them away. Even had a white beard. Very festive.” He waggled the faxgram. “Bascom sent us some info on that pair of louts who tried to sandbag you. Care to guess?”
“Let’s see ... They’re free-lance hoods,” said Jake. “Got long criminal records. They don’t know who hired them.”
“Bingo.” Gomez let the faxgram drop to the neowood table next to his chair. “Except you missed one point—they, both of them, have prior connections with Tek dealers.”
“Yeah. I’ve been nurturing a hunch that there was going to be a Tek angle to this case.”
“Whilst you were romancing Beth via satphone,” said Gomez, “I’ve been rereading all this stuff the agency gave us on the Unknown Soldier murders.”
“Commendable. Any insights?”
“Es posible,” replied his partner. “Of the nine known victims so far there are three, including our Joseph Bouchon, who were currently tied in with anti-Tek activities of one sort or other.”
“But they also had prior links with the Brazil Wars?”
“Si, that tie-in is also there.” Gomez paused to sample his drink again. “The fellow who was victim number 4—Colonel W. T. Reisberson, killed in Washington, D.C., late this past October—had trained jungle combat troops for the First Brazil War. The thing is, Jake, this hombre turned into a very vocal critic of the wars, started a stewpot of peace movements, and was eventually put out to pasture by the Army. At the time he was knocked off, he was managing an anti-Tek research facility just outside Baltimore. In fact, two of his top technicians were transferred out to Berkeley to assist on the Kittridge Project.”
“Another connection with Beth’s father,” said Jake. “Joseph Bouchon and his wife were both friends of the professor and Beth.”
Gomez took a long, thoughtful sip. “The sixth victim was Dr. Francisco Torres, who got himself bumped off in Madrid the middle of November,” he continued. “Now Torres did serve on the staff of a United Nations field hospital during the Second Brazil War, but that doesn’t exactly make him a war criminal.”
“Not to you, but a madman might look at it differently.”
“Verdad. But this Torres had been running a scatter of rehab centers for Tek users since back in 2116. Initially, and until he fell from grace, none other than Bennett Sands provided about sixty percent of the operating funds for those centers from the impressive profits from his various legit business enterprises in Europe.”
“Sands ... Kittridge,” said Jake slowly. “Okay—were there any discrepancies on any of these three killings? Details that don’t exactly match those of the other Unknown Soldier murders?”
“The message tagged to Colonel Reisberson was worded exactly like all the others, and you know that the law boys around the world have never released the exact context of any of the notes. But—”
“We found out the exact wording, so could a copycat.”
“That’s what I’m coming to, amigo,” said his partner. “The lettering on the Reisberson note wasn’t done by the same person who did the others. Wait, let me amend that. The other notes look to have been lettered by some mechanical means—by a robot, an andy, or a secretary machine. None of them showed the characteristics of a human hand at work.”
“Maybe the copycat didn’t know that when he killed the colonel.”
“Sí, but he found out sometime before he knocked off Torres,” said Gomez. “If he did knock him off.”
“Okay, suppose three of these damn killings are fake,” said Jake. “If that’s so, then we’re talking about something much more complex than someone’s killing Bouchon and trying to mask it.”
“And behind that complexity, amigo,” said his partner, “the Teklords are probably lurking.”
The highly polished bellbot carried their luggage into the second-floor hotel suite. “The Louvre Hotel has quite an illustrious history, messieurs,” he explained, placing the three suitcases on a valet stand. “Though completely up to date in its modernity, it dates back to the twelfth century. Before the Louvre became a first-rate hotel, it was—”
“We know.” Gomez wandered over to a wide window to gaze out at the simulated Tuileries Gardens that stretched away below in the overcast afternoon.
“Oui, this splendid place was once a famed museum,” continued the robot, moving around the living room to flip on switches and push buttons. “Then came the dread Panic of 2093 and our esteemed government was forced, alas, to sell all the art treasures it held and convert it into this—”
“We know.” Gomez turned away from the arched window.
One of the things the bellbot had turned on was the vidscreen that occupied one wall. Three people were sitting in uncomfortable chairs and arguing with each other on the huge screen.
“That’s none other than Professor Joel Freedon on the left there,” Jake noticed. “The guru of the pro-Tek cause.” He nodded at the thin man with the long, dead-white hair.
“I recognized him, sí.” To the lingering robot Gomez said, “You can turn up the volume on that and then take your leave.”
“Very well. Adieu.”
“... Tek simply is not addictive,” Freedon was saying. “In point of fact, Tek is a harmless liberating agent that frees the imagination, soothes the psyche that’s been ravaged by the scourges of our so-called civilized mode of—”
“Repetition doesn’t make lies any truer, Mr. Freedon,” interrupted the heavyset woman sitting two seats over from him. “You know full well that Tek is indeed dangerously addictive. That in a far too high percentage of cases it also causes severe and irreversible brain damage. The incidence of epileptic seizures among Tek addicts has been growing—”
“Folk tales and fancies purely,” dismissed the professor. “There does not exist one shred of reliable research to—”
“Perhaps,” cut in the nervous young man in the middle, “if we were to return to some semblance of coherent debate we might—”
“This man is incapable of coherence.”
“If Doctor Lance would simply attend to what I’m saying, and listen with her heart and her supposedly brilliant mind, she’d perhaps hear something new and wise. She might come to realize that she has simply been mouthing International Drug Control Agency propaganda and pap rather than—”
The three of them suddenly vanished. Replaced by a scene of fire and confusion.
“A special news bulletin,” said a deep, excited voice. “Just moments ago here at the Central London Skybus Station an alleged major British Tek dealer—as yet unidentified—was assassinated. In addition to the alleged Tek kingpin, five apparently innocent bystanders were also killed. And fifteen—no, we’ve just been informed the toll has risen to seventeen—others were seriously injured. Police believe a kamikaze was used. As you know, a kamikaze is an android loaded with explosives. When the kamikaze makes physical contact with its intended victim, a tremendous explosion follows. In this tragic—”
Gomez turned off the wall. “Those Tek lads never grow tired of their tried and true tricks,” he observed. “Yeah, and they don’t mind killing bystanders.” Gomez glanced around the living room. “I believe I’ll freshen up and change before we drop in on our client,” he announced. “Don’t let in any exploding andies while I’m away.”
The snow continued to fall in Barsetshire, England.
It flickered by the leaded windows in the main study hall of Bunter Academy.
Leaning closer to the black young man seated next to him at the long neowood study table, Dan Cardigan whispered, “What would you do, Johnsen?”
“I’d wait, old man. I’d sit on my butt, bide my time.”
“But she’s missing.”
“You think she’s missing,” said Rob Johnsen while pretending to be gazing into his studyscreen.
“She’s gone, nobody knows where she is.”
“You’re letting the fact that you’re hot for Nancy Sands cloud your judgment, Cardigan.”
“Listen, I’ve told you about her father and the way she’s been—”
“Lots of girls have crooks for fathers.”
“Ahum.” A gray monitorbot had rolled over to their table. It shook its metallic head negatively. “Quiet, please, gentlemen.”
“What about my request?” Dan asked the mechanism.
“It’s being processed, Mr. Cardigan.”
“I asked for permission to make a call to my dad early this morning.”
“Your father is in America,” reminded the robot. “Overseas calls take time.”
“No they don’t.”
“Overseas calls from Bunter Academy take time,” modified the monitorbot. “Now, gentlemen, I must ask you to refrain from further conversation.”
As soon as the robot had returned to its place in the center of the large, beam-ceilinged hall, Dan leaned and whispered to his friend, “My father may be able to help.”
“All the way from the United States, old man?”
“He’s a detective.”
“Yes, I know, Cardigan. You’ve gone on at great bloody length about him. The chap sounds like a combination of Sherlock Holmes and Sexton Blake.”
“The thing is, I don’t know if he’ll have any time to help me on this.”
“Fathers, especially fathers who stick their offspring into citadels of learning such as this one, rarely have time even to return a call.”
“No, he had nothing to do with my coming to Bunter. That was all my mother’s idea.”
“Your mother’s in England, isn’t she?”
“Yeah, in London.”
“Then maybe you ought to contact her about this.”
“No, I can’t do that,” Dan said. “She used to ... well, she’s a friend of Nancy’s father.”
“All the better, old man.”
“No, it’s ... I can’t explain all that. But if I’m going to learn what happened to Nancy, I’ll need my father’s help,” he said. “Or I’ll just have to find her on my own.”
Johnsen gave him a pitying look. “I really don’t think, old man, that detective ability is inherited,” he said. “Simply because your father happens to—”
“Mr. Cardigan.” The robot had returned.
“Sorry, we’ll quit talking.”
“I’ve come to summon you. There’s a vidphone call.”
“Finally.” He stood up. “From Greater Los Angeles?”
“No, from Paris.”
While Gomez was in using the sonishower, Jake seated himself in the vidphone alcove in the living room. He put through a call to the dorms at the Bunter Academy in Barsetshire, England. He had to argue with three robots, an android, and someone who might’ve been human, and he had to raise his voice twice before his son finally appeared on the phonescreen.
“Hi, son. Gomez and I just got to Paris to work on a new case, and I wanted to hear how you’re doing.”
“I’m glad you called.” Dan was a lean boy of fifteen, slightly taller and darker than his father. Right now he was looking worried and upset. “I’ve been trying to get hold of you.”
“Is something wrong?”
“Not with me. What I mean, Dad, is this has nothing to do with how I’m getting along at this stupid school.”
“I thought you told me you liked it at Bunter.”
“Nope, what I told you was that this shithole is better than the shithole I used to attend in GLA. But please just listen a minute, will you?”
“Go ahead.” Jake leaned closer to the screen.
“You remember my telling you that Nancy Sands was living near here?”
“Sure. You still seeing her?”
“Okay, I hear your disapproval in your voice,” said Dan. “I realize you think her father is a crook. But Nancy’s different.”
“Let’s hope so.”
“Dad, Nancy’s disappeared.”
“Give me some details.”
“For the past five or six days she’s been acting ... you know, strange. Women can be moody, I’m aware of that, but this was different. She’s been really depressed and very nervous. Unhappy, too.”
“About what?”
“She wouldn’t tell me, but she hinted it was something pretty awful.”
“Having to do with her father?”
“I think so, yeah.”
“He’s going to have a new arm fitted. It could be she’s simply—”
“No. She told me last week she knows that the facility here is just about the best in the world for that sort of work.”
“Okay. How long has Nancy been missing? And are you certain she really is missing?”
“She’s been gone for over a day and, yeah, I’m damn certain,” answered Dan. “Because one of those assholes came barging right into the school this morning to ask me if I knew where she was.”
“Which asshole would that be?”
“Oh—Mr. McCay,” answered his son impatiently. “He used to be a business partner of Bennett’s. Ever since she came over here to England, she’s been staying with McCay and his dumb wife in a big ugly mansion about ten miles from here.”
“Has McCay gone to the police?”
“No. They’re trying to find her first on their own.”
“Did Nancy give you any hint that she was thinking of running away?”
“Not exactly.”
“But?”
“Well, she has been talking about friends she knows in London.”
“What does McCay think?”
“That I persuaded her to run away for some reason.”
“He doesn’t suspect that she may have been kidnapped or had an accident?”
“I asked him about that and he told me they were certain she’d taken off on her own.”
“Then she probably left some sort of note.”
“He says she didn’t.”
“He could be lying.”
“Yeah, assholes do that,” said Dan. “Dad, could you come over here and help find her?”
“No, we just arrived in Paris. I’m going to have to work here for a few days at least.”
“But something may’ve happened to Nancy. Even if she did run away, it—”
“I’ll contact a detective agency in London, Dan, one that’s affiliated with Cosmos,” his father promised. “They’ll put an operative or two right on this. Okay?”
“Sure, I guess. But it would be a lot better if you could help out yourself.”
“These ops are good, and they know England better than I do. Do you have a picture of her?”
“Lots of them.”
“I’ll tell them to get some from you.”
“Should I go to the cops myself just to be on the safe side?”
Jake shook his head. “Wait on that,” he advised.
“It’s just that, you know, I want to be doing something.”
“Get a detailed account of everything you know about her disappearance ready. One of the detectives will be contacting you and that’ll help.”
“I want to do more than that,” said his son. “What’s the earliest you can come over here?”
“Probably two or three days from now. But if there’s an emergency, I can come right over.”
“This is an emergency.”
“I know you feel it is, Dan, but I don’t think my boss would agree,” Jake told him. “There’s still a possibility, too, that she’ll come home on her own. Runaways, it’s been my experience, do that pretty often.”
“No, I don’t think Nancy will.”
“Why not?”
“You didn’t see her these past few days, the way she was acting, the way she looked.”
“All right, hold on and I’ll see you soon as I can.” He gave Dan the number of the hotel. “Call me if anything new happens.”
“I still wish you could. Okay, ’bye, Dad.”
“Goodbye, Dan.”
When Gomez, dressed in a new suit, came back into the living room a few minutes later, Jake was still sitting in the phone alcove, a thoughtful expression on his face.