Shadowrun 44 - Drops of Corruption Read online

  “Stop here,” the guard said. Bannickburn just smiled and slowly drove on.

  “Sir, the law requires—”

  The guard was interrupted by a loud rev of the cycle’s engine. Bannickburn jerked the handlebars to the left as the tires squealed, and he left a stripe of black that veered off sharply. The guard drew his weapon, and turned to fire, only to be blocked by his own kiosk.

  The guard triggered an alarm, and ran around the kiosk. The motorcycle sat there, engine purring gently, with no rider in sight. The guard arrived too late to see the seat of the motorcycle ease shut by itself.

  The guard slowly walked forward, machine gun held steady. He came within five meters of the cycle when the engine roared again and the cycle sprang ahead.

  The guard fired a burst into the cycle, and surrounding emplacements leveled blast after blast of bullets and arcane energy at it. The Growler traveled no more than twenty-five meters forward before it came to a final stop, engine smoking, tires ruptured, frame bent and broken in several places.

  The guard walked cautiously toward it. As he approached, he saw plenty of gasoline and oil on the pavement, but no blood. He knew exactly what that meant.

  He ran back to his kiosk. Bannickburn, jogging invisibly on the left side of the highway, was pretty sure what order was coming next—an order to cease all magical activities, including any active detect spells. That would clear up the astral plane around the gate, so anyone using something like, say, an invisibility spell, would stick out like a sore thumb. In a matter of seconds, he’d be plainly visible to security.

  But he didn’t have to wait that long. Spindle’s van rolled toward him. He ran so it was between him and the gate, then he deactivated his focus and jumped in the van. Spindle wheeled it around and drove away from the gate.

  The Portland police knew something was amiss, but they didn’t know quite what. And Bannickburn’s timing had been perfect, slipping into the van just before any security would have noticed the astral signature of his spell. So when the van arrived back at the gate out of the city, no one had been alerted to look for it. Spindle showed her Mustaffah Cartage ID again, and the van, with its precious bottle of water sitting wrapped in a towel and deposited gently inside an iron box, casually drove out of town.

  23

  Stupid fragging water hadn’t even made it into Portland. Bailey would have felt contemptuous of the kind of people the Finnigans had working for them down there, but, then, the people Bailey himself sent had done even worse. Until now. Kross had managed to sneak in one last call, saying they were about to meet Bannickburn and get out of town. Kross said he was pretty sure Bannickburn had the water.

  Bailey had gotten lucky. The collapse of Cabel’s mission should have doomed him. The Finnigan people should have had enough time to get the water out. But they’d screwed up, been stuck in the Tir for whatever reason, and Bailey had been able to get another team down there. He didn’t like relying on luck, but he’d be damned if he wouldn’t take it when it was available.

  Now Bailey had to wait. Kross probably wouldn’t get a chance to phone in again, which was fine—they should just make a straight shot back to Seattle. He could follow their progress on his terminal, but watching a small dot crawl across a map grew old very quickly.

  So Bailey had to find other ways to occupy his time, which was probably for the best since he had a backlog of tasks to accomplish. At the top of the list was making sure he would use the bottle of water wisely once it arrived.

  He placed a few calls, pulled a few strings, and before he knew it his receptionist’s voice came over the intercom. “There’s a Willie Snowmaker here to see you.” The receptionist sounded echoey, which wasn’t surprising, since she was talking from a steel desk in the middle of an enormous, empty metal airplane hangar. Bailey’s office was through a door hidden by a stack of metal drums. This was his secure office, where he went when he didn’t want people finding him. Only people he trusted were allowed in it. Snowmaker was one of those people.

  “Send him in,” he said.

  Snowmaker, all 1.3 meters of him, strolled in, an ebony cane on his arm and an equally dark derby on his head. His charcoal gray suit was pinstriped, his hair was slicked back, and his blue eyes twinkled like he’d just heard an excellent joke. Bailey always enjoyed it when he could get Snowmaker to drop by for a visit.

  “Mr. Bailey,” Snowmaker said in a voice that strived for upper class but couldn’t shake its Brooklyn origins. “A distinct pleasure, as always. Am I here for business or personal reasons today?”

  “Business, of course,” Bailey replied. “Much as I respect your line of work, the hazards of indulging in your product are too great.” Bailey always found his diction becoming more formal in Snowmaker’s presence.

  “Of course, of course. No matter—you send enough customers to my network to qualify as three of my top ten clients. The fact that you don’t indulge has little impact on my bottom line.”

  “I’m thrilled to hear that.” Bailey suddenly remembered something from his last conversation with Snowmaker. “Did that voodoo situation ever work itself out?” Snowmaker smiled. “Why yes, thank you for asking. As it turned out, the bocor in question was disassembling the doll into its component parts each night, which made it somewhat more difficult to find. However, find it we did, and we then dealt with the bocor appropriately.” Bailey was interested to know what Snowmaker considered “appropriate,” but the etiquette of the situation unfortunately demanded that the specifics of the punishment go undiscussed.

  “I’m glad to hear it’s taken care of,” Bailey said. “I hope your health continues to improve.”

  “You’re quite kind,” Snowmaker replied. He sat with his legs crossed, hands in front of him resting on top of his cane. His feet dangled a good thirty centimeters above the ground, but it didn’t seem to bother Snowmaker in the least. “Now, I know you’re a busy man, and the message I received seemed to indicate this was a matter of some urgency. With what can I assist you?” Bailey had to tread cautiously now. At the moment, only a handful of people knew exactly what the water bottle project was about, and Bailey was determined to keep it that way. Snowmaker would need some info if he was going to answer Bailey’s questions, but the goal would be to give him as little as possible.

  “I have a product,” Bailey said. “A product that’s your kind of thing, but a little different. I need to know if you can handle it.”

  “Well, Mr. Bailey, my first inclination is to say yes, I can handle it, as I feel my distribution network can handle anything put into it. However, the fact that you’re asking would seem to indicate that this is an unusual request. Perhaps if you provide more information about the nature of the substance in question, I could give you a more detailed reply.”

  Snowmaker was fishing. The best-case scenario was that he was digging for information simply because he needed it to answer the question, but in Bailey’s experience that was almost never the case. Everyone always wanted to know more than they should.

  The best thing to do at the moment was to pretend he didn’t have the information Snowmaker wanted. Hopefully that would throw him off the scent.

  He spread his hands. “This is the problem I have. The product is something that’s filtered down to me, and everyone’s quite careful about what they tell me. So I barely know anything about what’s going on—all I know is, I was supposed to talk to you and share what little I know.”

  “That makes things somewhat more difficult,” Snow-maker said. “Perhaps instead of worrying about what we don’t know, we should discuss what we do know.”

  The man was focused—Bailey had to give him that. “Here’s what I know—the customer base for this substance will be different than your usual users. They won’t be buying the substance to use on themselves; they’ll be buying doses for others.”

  “I assume you do not mean they will be buying the substance as gifts,” Snowmaker said dryly.

  “Quite right,” Bailey
said with a grin.

  “Would it be similar to a poison, then?” “Somewhat.”

  “Then we have no impediments,” Snowmaker said grandly. “Poison is part of our normal distribution channels. I would simply take your substance and introduce it to that same customer base. I’m sure we’d find takers for your product, assuming it is of any quality.”

  “Okay,” Bailey said, not wishing to present any hints as to what he thought about the quality of the substance. Now for the tricky part. “There’s a very real chance that some customers might get it into their heads to use the substance on your people.”

  Snowmaker widened his eyes. “Kill their own suppliers? That seems remarkably shortsighted.”

  Bailey shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “No, no, that’s not it. The substance wouldn’t kill them. But it could make their lives . . . interesting.”

  Now Snowmaker was really intrigued. His posture remained firm, but there was no concealing the predatory interest in his eyes. “ ‘Interesting’? How do you mean?” Bailey shook his head, hoping he looked exasperated. “I wish I knew. Like I said, the people running this show haven’t really bothered to tell me. Let me give you their exact words, then you can try to figure out what to make of it. They said, ‘Snowmaker needs to make sure his people steer very clear of the substance, or we could end up giving a lot of it away, and not even know it.’” Snowmaker slowly lowered his chin onto the top of his cane, his eyes glazing as he lost himself in thought. Bailey had started writing that sentence this morning, then rewritten it, then edited it a few times, then thrown out what he had and tried again. He hoped the final version gave out just enough information and not a bit more.

  Snowmaker was still trying to puzzle it out. Eventually, he either gave up trying to guess what was happening, or actually did figure it out, and then put on a show of befuddlement.

  “I don’t believe this should present any significant difficulty,” he said. “As you are aware, many of my people on the street conduct business at a healthy remove from their clients, separated from them by steel doors and the like. When this . . . whatever it is comes on the market, I shall simply strongly advise them to include such precautions in the course of their normal business.”

  “Fine. That should work out.” Bailey stood. “I appreciate you coming by, Mr. Snowmaker.”

  Snowmaker adroitly hopped to his feet. “My pleasure.” He turned to leave, then stopped. “When this product becomes available, do you, perhaps, have an estimate of what sort of sales I should be expecting?” “FTP,” Bailey said. Faster than production—the gold standard in the narc trade. High demand and low supply that would allow Snowmaker to indulge in the kind of price hikes he generally only dreamed about.

  Snowmaker almost rubbed his hands together greedily, but caught himself. “Excellent. Quite excellent.” He grinned, revealing the sharp, pointed teeth that he had used on several occasions to rip out the throat of a treacherous underling. “I’ll be ready, Mr. Bailey. You can count on me.”

  Bailey just nodded and watched Snowmaker go. The distribution questions were dealt with, at least in principle. Now all he had to do was make sure the bottle made it safely to him.

  He checked in on the tracking map. They’d progressed almost two millimeters since Snowmaker arrived. Bailey sighed. He really needed to stop looking at that. He’d just assume that everything was safe and sound, and that he was mere hours from becoming Sottocapo Martel’s new favorite lieutenant.

  The phone on his desk buzzed harshly, and at the same time a red light blinked rapidly. That would be a call on the secure line. Bailey prepared to talk in his serious voice.

  “This is Bailey,” he said after picking up the handset. “Bailey? This is GreenJeans. We’ve got trouble.” GreenJeans was one of Bailey’s prized possessions, a smooth-talking young woman who had at least six members of the Finnigan family convinced that they were a mere hairsbreadth away from bedding her. It would only take one more little gift, or one more piece of information, they thought, until she finally caved. That she could delay gratification among a group of men whose whole business was founded on the idea of instant gratification was a constant source of amazement to Bailey.

  GreenJeans then said the last words Bailey wanted to hear from her.

  “Someone here knows about your van.”

  “What?” Bailey leaped to his feet reflexively. Nobody was supposed to know about the van. Even GreenJeans, who knew the van existed, had no idea why it was important. And now someone in the Finnigan family knew? “Are you sure?”

  “Quite. I was just talking to Reggie Riko, and he was trying to prove how big his balls are. He said he was leaving, hunting down a few elves in a van on their way from Portland to Seattle. Sounded like your guys to me.” “Frag it all to hell!” Bailey swore. “When did you talk to him?”

  “Just fifteen minutes ago. But he jumped into an SUV when we were done talking, so he’s already on the way.” “Hell. All right. Thanks, Green.” He hung up while running out the door.

  “Lock up!” he yelled to his receptionist as he ran by her. Then he looked at Stella and Stewart, Stephen and Bruce’s replacements. They had spent the whole day crouching behind the metal drums that hid his office. “You two, with me.”

  He’d need more people. He’d make a few calls from his car, see who was on wheels already and could make a quick run south. He didn’t need a full army, but if he knew the Finnigans, he’d need more than a couple of cars if he was going to head off the ambush headed toward his precious bottle of water.

  24

  The first trick had been getting a few drops of water from the bottle without Kross noticing. Jackie was impressed at how quick on his feet Bannickburn had been to make that happen. They pulled him into the van, gasping, and he collapsed in the front seat, doubled over like he had severe stomach cramps. He asked Jackie for a drink of water. She passed him a bottle. Still hunched over, he labored to take a sip in between breaths. When he passed the bottle back to her, he gave her the bottle first, then the cap. He squeezed her hand, briefly, when he gave her the cap, and she had understood immediately. This was the cap to the bottle he’d just smuggled out. It was turned upside-down, so it held a few drops of the water from Bannickburn’s bottle. That was her sample.

  The next part was easier. Once Kross had settled into his seat and wasn’t paying attention to much of anything (and Bannickburn, coming down from the drugs he’d taken, had fallen into an unshakeable slumber), she dumped the drops into a chemical analyzer she’d brought along for exactly this purpose. A few lights flashed, the machinery inside did its business, and soon a list of chemicals was spread out on the analyzer’s small display. As she flipped through the results of the analysis, she found all sorts of interesting information—what chemicals were in the water (and there certainly were more there than hydrogen and oxygen), how the various elements were bonded together, and even the expected boiling and freezing point of the substance. What she didn’t find, unfortunately, was any indication of what the hell the stuff actually was.

  But she had the data, and if there was anything she knew, it was how to handle data. She transferred the results to her deck, then jacked in using the van’s satellite hookup. Since everyone expected her to be doing that anyway, no one paid any attention to her actions.

  She felt almost embarrassed by what she was about to do. She wasn’t going to do anything illegal. She wasn’t going to break into anything. It was a humiliatingly simple action.

  Then she brightened. If she went through conventional channels, she could be waiting hours to get the analysis she needed. Plus, there’d be a series of difficult questions about why she was requesting just what she was requesting. No, this was something best done through the gray market, if not the black. She felt a little better.

  She zipped to an innocuous brown rectangle in a low-rent, low-security node. The door to the building she was looking for was a simple black opening—whatever money had been spent here hadn’t
gone to appearances.

  She passed through the doorway, and found herself in a waiting room. Four other icons were there—a man with at least a dozen metal studs in his face, a burly man with a slim, elegant horse head, a green blob wearing a brown leather jacket and a fedora, and a four-foot-tall owl flipping through a magazine with its talons. A nurse in a starched white uniform sat behind a metal desk, and Jackie’s inner alarms went off as soon as she saw her. The nurse looked petite and even a little frail, but she was also a powerful piece of IC. Jackie resolved to stay on her good side.

  “Hello. I’m here to see Dr. Strangehooves.”

  “Yes,” the nurse said in a voice as pinched as her face. “Do you have an appointment?”

  “Does anyone here have an appointment?” Jackie snapped, but backtracked as she saw the nurse’s face pucker in anger. “That is to say, no, I don’t, but I have a matter of some urgency.”

  “I see. Unfortunately, so does everyone else here. Unless I can be persuaded that your matter is more serious than theirs, you’ll have to wait.”

  Jackie knew how this game was played, and she didn’t waste any time describing the situation to the nurse. Instead, she held her right hand in front of the nurse’s face. There was a number on it, followed by a nuyen symbol. It looked like it had been scrawled there in black marker.

  “It’s this serious,” she said.

  “You claim it’s that serious,” the nurse amended. “But I don’t see evidence of that yet.”

  Jackie transferred the money to the good doctor, and the nurse abruptly changed. The older woman was gone, replaced by a tall, narrow-waisted man with long blond hair and dimples. Now that’s customer service, Jackie thought.

  “Please go right through the door,” the nurse said in a seductive baritone. “The doctor will see you immediately.”