Peter Hamilton - The Mandel Files

“I expect you know the routine,” Greg said.

“Remind me,” the old man said vaguely.

“Hard or soft. We don’t leave without the data we came for. And I do have a gland, so we’ll know if it is the right data. Clear enough?”

“My word, am I really that important? A gland, you say. You obviously cannot read my mind directly.”

“I’m an empath; you lie, and I know about it instantly.”

“I see. And suppose I were to say nothing?”

“Word association. I reel off a list of topics, and see which name your mind jumps at. But it’s an effort, and it annoys me.”

“So what would you do should you become annoyed, beat it out of me? I imagine I would feel a lot of pain at my age. The old bones aren’t very strong now.”

“No, I wouldn’t lay a finger on you. That’s what she’s here for.”

There as a sharp pulse of indignation from Suzi’s mind, but she held her outward composure.

Baronski studied her impassive face for any sign of weakness, then sighed and sat carefully in the settee. “I suppose this day was inevitable, I just pushed it away to the back of my mind, always secretly hoping that I would be proved wrong. But I can honestly say that I never intended to upset Julia Evans. In a way she is an admirable woman, so many would have squandered what she has. Yes, admirable. You can see that I’m telling the truth, can’t you?”

“I knew that before I came,” Greg said.

“Yes. Well, what do you wish to know?”

“Charlotte Diane Fielder.”

“My yes, a beautiful girl, very smart. I was proud of Charlotte. One of my triumphs. What has she done?”

“Where is she?”

“I genuinely don’t know.”

Greg frowned, concentrating. There was a strong trace of disappointment in Baronski’s mind. “Do you know who she left the Newfields ball with?”

“It was supposed to be Jason Whitehurst. My problem is that I can’t find out if she actually did or not. I haven’t been able to contact her or Jason since.”

“This Jason Whitehurst, is he about fourteen, fifteen?”

Baronski gave him a surprised look, and picked up one of the beer glasses from the table. “Good Lord no, Jason is in my age bracket. He has got a son, though, Fabian. Fabian is fifteen, perhaps you mean him.”

“Could be.” Greg pulled out his cybofax, and summoned up the memory of Charlotte and the boy leaving the El Harhari.

“Yes,” Baronski said, studying the wafer’s screen. “That is Fabian Whitehurst.”

“And this?” Greg showed him the chauffeur.

“No. I don’t know that man at all.”

“OK, what does Jason Whitehurst do?”

“He’s a trader, shifting cargo around the world. A lot of it is barter, buying products or raw material from countries that have no hard cash reserves, then swapping it for another commodity, and so on down the line until he’s left with something he can dispose of for cash. There’s quite an art to it, but Jason is a successful man.”

“Said it’d be some rich bastard,” Suzi said. “Money lifted her over the border, no need for a tekmerc deal.”

“Yeah,” Greg agreed. “Where does Jason Whitehurst live?”

Baronski took a sip from the glass. “On board his airyacht, the Colonel Maitland.”

“What the fuck’s an airyacht?” Suzi asked.

“A converted airship. Jason tends to the eccentric, you see. He bought it ten years ago, spends his whole time flying over all of us. I visited once, it has a certain elegant charm, but it’s hardly the life for me.”

Greg sat heavily in one of the chairs. Wringing information out of the old man was depressing him. It was psychological bullying. Dmitri Baronski was a man who took confidentiality seriously. He’d built his life on it. “Do you know where Whitehurst was flying to after Monaco?”

“Yes. That’s why all the heartache. The Colonel Maitland was supposed to be flying straight to Odessa, so Jason told me. But there’s been no trace of them, no answer to any of my calls. I tell myself it cannot be an accident. Airships are the safest way to travel; a punctured gasbag, or a broken spar, the worst that can happen is a gradual deflation. The Colonel Maitland would simply float to the ground. But it hasn’t happened. Such an event would be on every channel newscast, rescue services all around the Mediterranean would be alerted by emergency beacons. Jason Whitehurst and his airyacht have simply vanished from the Earth. I don’t like that. I always keep an eye on my girls, Mr Mandel, I’m very stringent about the patrons I introduce them to. There are certain members of my charmed circle who develop, shall we say, unpleasant tastes and requirements. I won’t have that, not for my girls.”

“Very commendable. Did you try phoning Whitehurst’s office?”

“He has several agents dotted about the globe, and yes I called some of them. It was the same answer each time. Jason Whitehurst is currently incommunicado.”

Greg looked at Suzi, who shrugged indifferently.

“Julia and Victor won’t have any trouble locating something that size,” she said. “There can’t be that many airships left flying.”

“Yeah,” Greg acknowledged. There was something faintly unsettling about the way the world lay exposed to Event Horizon. A single phone call and someone’s credit record was instantly available; a request to the company operating the Civil Euroflight Agency’s traffic control franchise, and Europe’s complete air movement records would be squirted over to Peterborough for examination. If an Interpol investigator had requested the data, it would take hours or even days for the appropriate legal procedures to be enacted and release it. Companies and kombinates were developing into an extralegal force more potent than governments, but only in defence of their own interests. It was a creep back towards medievalism, he thought, when people had to petition their local baron for real action, when the king’s justice was just a distant figurehead.

One law for the rich, another for the poor. Nothing ever really changed, not even in the data currency age. And why was he getting so cynical all of a sudden?

Baronski was sitting listlessly in the settee, face morbid. “Please tell me, what has Charlotte done?”

“She hasn’t done anything herself,” Greg said. “It looks like she just got caught up in something a lot bigger. We’re not angry with her, OK? But we do need to talk to her. Urgently.”

“Yes. I’ll tell her if she gets in touch. Thank you, Mr Mandel.”

Greg stood up. There was a sharp twang from his intuition, an intimation that he was being sold short. He glanced sharply at Baronski, a shrunken figure lost in his own anxiety. The curse of intuition was its lack of clarity, he was never quite certain.

“Anything you want to ask?” he asked Suzi.

“Nah.”

“OK. If Charlotte does get in touch with you, ask her to call us, please. It will save everyone an awful lot of trouble.”

“I shall,” Baronski said. He put his glass down, and picked up a gold cybofax. Greg squirted his number over.

“Well?” Suzi asked as they left the apartment.

“Dunno. I get the impression he’s cheating us somehow.”

“So why didn’t you ask him about it?”

“Ask him what? Sorry, Dmitri, but what haven’t you told us? Fat lot of use that would be. You know my empathy is only good for specifics.”

“Yeah. Skinny little fart, wasn’t he?”

“It’s not a crime.” Greg saw Malcolm Ramkartra was still waiting by the open door of the lift. His espersense stretched out again. There were four observers in the well now, and that was just the ones within range. “I think it’s about time we found out a bit more about the opposition.”