David Nickle - Rasputin's Bastards

And of course, the Emissary. The Home. The Hall. Though its windows were dark, it gleamed with inner light amid its taller siblings.

Mrs. Kontos-Wu was near now. But was she near enough to paddle ashore? She would have to take the chance. She rummaged under the gunwale, where a small oar had been stowed, then rummaged again in the TOC cushion-raft for the spare CO2 cartridge. It only took a minute to hook it up to the raft’s valve. As the raft began to inflate, Mrs. Kontos-Wu felt a pang of guilt. She wasn’t a killer, Mr. Bishop had said.

The half-inflated raft slapped against the waves like the palm of an angry giant’s hand. Maybe, thought Mrs. Kontos-Wu, old Mr. Bishop had been wrong about her not being a killer. The dead Bergensens certainly made for compelling evidence to the contrary. So maybe — maybe there was a part of her that Mr. Bishop had not been able to apprehend so well during her years at Bishop Hall. Maybe that part was a killer.

Maybe the voice that spoke to her now — the one that was congratulating her for her quick and smooth reactions, her ability to make difficult and necessary decisions — maybe that voice was a truer one than Mr. Bishop’s ever was.

The brochures didn’t lie when they said the Emissary Hotel had a view of Central Park. Not technically. It was true for nine rooms, stacked on top of one another on the 11th through 19th floors. If you knelt on the corner of the king-sized beds, pulled yourself up on the headboard and craned your neck just so, you could make out the tufts of greenery through the twenty-metre space between the water tanks that crowned two ancient apartment blocks.

There was a better view, of course, but it took some work to see it. You had to slow down your breathing, empty your mind of worldly worry, reach into yourself and unleash your imagination. Then you could expand the greenery here and here, there and over there, transform the buildings and water towers into transparencies until the deep green splendour of the heart of Manhattan was spread before you.

For guests of discipline and vision, these nine rooms were a deal. The rooms cost no more than the other thirty-seven similar-sized rooms at the Emissary that looked out on the roof of the parking garage next door.

Stephen Haber sucked his cigarette dead and climbed down off the corner of the bed in the topmost of those rooms. The vision of Central Park shrank back to its unimpressive line of green.

The telephone was ringing. Stephen lifted it from its cradle and readied himself for the worst.

“Good afternoon Amar,” said Stephen.

“M-m-mister Haber?”

Stephen relaxed. It wasn’t Shadak, or Shadak’s people. As per Kolyokov’s instructions, Stephen had put the call in for the Turkish gangster — but he wasn’t looking forward to having it returned. Amar Shadak liked to fuck with him on the phone, play the big-time power broker to Stephen’s meagre executive assistant, and Stephen did not like that at all.

This was just Richard, the day guy at the front desk. Richard used to be one of their professors at MIT, before they’d retired him in ’95. Kolyokov had locked up the old identity as tight as he could, but nothing was airtight, and the procedure had left poor old Richard with a quavering voice, a tic in his lower lip, and an unshakable sense he should be off inventing something instead of here, waiting for reservations that seldom came. Stephen liked talking to Richard a lot more than he did Shadak.

“Hello Richard,” said Stephen.

“The-e-ere is a young woman here to see you, sir.”

“Yeah? Don’t move, buddy.” Richard gripped the phone tight against his head and shut his eyes.

Kolyokov wasn’t teaching him shit about dream-walking, so Stephen had done a little work on his own. Last month, he went down to the psychic fair in Jersey while the old bastard was sleeping.

There, he’d met Lorelei Jones, a middle-aged lady with wide raccoon eyes and a constant smile, who claimed to be able to use telephone lines to read people’s feelings. She’d sold Stephen some tapes that promised to help him do it too. The tapes turned out to be a pretty basic alpha-state inducement loop, but she had some handy visualization metaphors and Stephen had incorporated a couple of them into his repertoire.

So, eyes closed, Stephen imagined himself climbing a set of spiral stairs that went up the twisty wire of the telephone receiver. He opened the big iron door behind Richard’s ear that led into his head. And he sat down at the big control panel behind the old engineering prof’s eye sockets. He flipped the on-switch to fire up the twin security monitors that would tap into Richard’s visual cortex, so he could get a look at this woman who knew he was staying at the Emissary.

“Mr. Haber?”

The metaphor dissolved and Stephen’s own eyes snapped open. “Fuck!” He bashed the telephone receiver against the night table. “I said sit still!”

The outburst had left Richard flummoxed. He cleared his throat for a few seconds before asking: “Mr. Ha-a-aber? She say-ays she works with you? At Wo-olf-Jordan? Shall I send her u-u-u-up?”

“Wolfe-Jordan.” Stephen calmed down: he wouldn’t need to get a look at Richard’s “young woman” if she was from Wolfe-Jordan. He knew who she was. The only other person in the world who worked at Wolfe-Jordan was a piece of thick-necked ex-KGB muscle named Kilodovich — whom they’d hired just a couple of months ago over Stephen’s objections.

It would have to be Kontos-Wu. And neither she nor Kilodovich should have any reason — any means — to be showing up at the Emissary tonight. Unless — unless she was coming back with some resolution to the snafu with the pickup this morning.

“Send her up,” said Stephen. “Just have Miles follow her. Make sure she’s not being followed by anyone else.”

“I-I-I’ll call him, sir.”

Miles Shute was the Emissary’s Convention and Conference Liaison. Being as the Emissary didn’t generally attract too many of either, it didn’t matter that Miles’ true skill set lay elsewhere. If there was any trickery in this unannounced visit, Miles would ferret it out and eliminate it before the elevator had made it between the 12th and 14th floors. Stephen hung up, satisfied that he’d covered everything. He thought briefly about going and rousing Kolyokov, and thought better of it. The old man had been in a rotten enough mood the last time he’d woken — and that was only because he had to pee. Stephen didn’t want to think about what kind of wrath a deliberate interruption would bring down on him.

And frankly, it was only Kontos-Wu. Stephen didn’t need Kolyokov awake to deal with her.

So Stephen shucked his bathrobe, pulled on a pair of pants and a T-shirt, lit another cigarette and waited for the knock at the door. Kontos-Wu would be easy. It was Shadak he was worried about, and that call might not come for a while.

There were no elevators at Bishop’s Hall — if a young lady wanted to change floors she used the sweeping mahogany-banistered staircases with plush violet-patterned carpets, thank you very much — so Mrs. Kontos-Wu didn’t even think about using the ones here. There was a staircase around the corner, under the creamy white EXIT light, and there she went.

The stairs immediately disappointed her — The Emissary was no Bishop’s Hall, not by any means. The banisters were metal, for one thing, and the steps weren’t carpeted but covered in a knobby black plastic deal.

Mrs. Kontos-Wu ran the first nine floors before the cumulative fatigue of the day caught up with her and she had to rest. It was then, as she stood bent over, gasping for breath, that she heard her pursuer — just for an instant, clattering up the stairs as she had been. Then the noise stopped. Mrs. Kontos-Wu gulped one more lungful of air and pulled back against the wall. She slowed her breathing, willed her thundering heartbeat back, and as she did so, she could almost trick herself into believing she was standing on a landing in the west wing of the Hall — evening sun casting shafts of light through the leaded glass windows behind her. She could almost imagine the other there with her: not Mr. Bishop this time, but a student — her best friend Lois? Yes! Lois! Thick black hair and the palest of skin, Mrs. Kontos-Wu had thought she was the most beautiful girl in the world. She’d wanted desperately to be like Lois, and missed her fiercely when she’d graduated.