Jon Grimwood - redRobe

Around that time the Cardinal was still a street priest from newVenice doing mission work in Spanish Harlem. Seeing a CySat broadcast about Moritz’s billions he’d written to the man—pen and ink, envelope and FedEx—never expecting a reply. The amount he received by return was ten times larger than the priest had even dreamed of asking for.

They had talked on their mobiles, then sat face to face on Moritz’s roof garden. Later on, they would walk down to Washington Square to play chess badly and, later still, to play it well, with an audience of drifters around them. Everywhere Father Declan Begley was sent by his mission, Moritz followed, buying a house for himself nearby and letting the priest use Moritz’s money as his own.

Sexless. Unspoken. It was a love affair, never acknowledged. And there was nothing physical in it, ever. . . The Vatican had checked that out, more than once. But the inquisitors never made anything stick. Not even that Father Declan fed from the Latin Queens, taking only blood from the young girls, nothing more and never enough to be harmful. Moritz took nothing because there was nothing he wanted. He seemed so sexless he was almost neuter.

In the decades that followed, Father Declan became Santo Ducque, bishop in Bogotá, then archbishop of Havana and finally Cardinal of Mexico. Moritz had his circadian rhythms modified to reduce his need for sleep, but still couldn’t burn up his wealth fast enough. When he hit an income of five thousand dollars a second his mind went walkabout for a month, refusing even to acknowledge the numbers that flashed lightning-fast direct to his optic nerve.

So at the Cardinal’s suggestion, Moritz gave his wealth to the sole organisation with enough lawyers and knowledge of arcane banking back-history to be able to crack open the trusts. Only, even then, it wasn’t as easy as the Vatican Bank—in its arrogance—had thought it would be. Moritz’s wealth was vast, self-perpetuating, growing uninterrupted like cancer through the markets to touch everything. Water, steel, fusion, reclamation of the subSahal, reforestation of the Amazon… His money owned the very AIs that negotiated its own tax breaks.

And there was one big problem that the Vatican hadn’t been expecting. The money didn’t want to change owners, thank you very much. It was happy shuffling between shell companies, bouncing off orbitals, living dangerously.

It took a young nun in the St Peter’s secretariat to do what no one else had considered. Joan talked to the money direct. And her conversation was very short and simple and went as follows.

‘We wash whiter...'

And the money thought about it and realised that, by definition, the Vatican’s cash was self-laundering, not to mention zero-rated and tax exempt. Joan closed the deal and the Vatican walked away with credit lines worth trillions, a forty-three percent stake in LunaWorld, fifteen percent of CySat’s original holding company, an offshore datahaven in the Bahamas and a whole string of Panamanian orbitals, that turned out to be laundering sites for Cartel drug money.

They also—obviously enough—also got Moritz’s original Genome patents. Not to mention his character rights to LC/GbH’s Lucifer’s Dragon. Overnight, St Peter’s was richer than San Lorenzo, the Geneticists’ base in Megrib. The games income in North America alone was worth more than the entire GDP of Saudi, which was deep in recession, but still…

Joan was trustee. And inside Moritz’s head the numbers stopped spinning for the first time ever, leaving silence.

For the last four decades Moritz had quietly collected alms at the cathedral door and cleaned the relics in the Sangrario, that overdressed eighteenth-century fortress built next door to Mexico’s Catedral Metropolitana. The fat little man came and went as he liked and no one worried that he might steal, because no man had less interest in money than the one man who’d had the most.

Now, Moritz wanted something else, something even simpler. And the Colt had promised he would get it. What’s more, Moritz believed the gun.

‘Bonefish,’ the Cardinal said, pointing to gulls gathering over the reef. One of his bodyguards looked doubtful but, when the Cardinal raised one eyebrow, the man didn’t open his mouth to differ.

‘Maybe not,’ admitted the Cardinal, reaching for a fresh glass. ‘It’s a long time since I’ve been out there.’ He started to raise the Bohemian crystal to his lips, then paused as a liveried servant dashed forward to wipe a drop from its delicate base.

His Excellency Cardinal Santo Ducque shrugged, as if to say, you see how I have to live… And then behind his shades focused golden pupils on Moritz and the small talk was over.

‘I’ve come to say goodbye,’ Moritz said, ‘which brings me to this ...' He slid his hand into the leather bag on his lap and pulled out the Colt. Three things happened simultaneously. The Cardinal’s face slid straight from shock to resignation, bypassing fear, Moritz grinned and the gun uncloaked, cutting its fooler loops to trip every alarm in the Villa.

It wasn’t the bodyguards who took apart Moritz’s head, the first hollow-point full-ceramic-jacket punching a golfball size hole just below his hairline. The guards fired a split second after that first shot, their slugs adding a jerky rhythm to his dancing, already-dead body as it went over backwards. The initial shot came from the Villa’s AI, before soundwaves from the exploding security sirens even reached the Cardinal’s ears.

Moritz’s head had no exit hole at the back, largely because there was no back to Moritz’s head, too much of his skull was scattered in sticky white fragments on the flagstones of the terrace behind him. And the heavy stink of bougainvillea had been edged out by shit, blood and cordite.

‘Get a doctor,’ the Cardinal demanded. ‘Full mediSoft now. I want him chilled down, his heart preserved. While you’re at it, scoop out what’s left of his brain and chill that too.’

‘No way,’ said a voice. And then it went harsh, street-smart and heavily Brooklyn. ‘Stop exactly where you are and no one else gets dead…’

Both bodyguards were spinning like tops, combat ready with left hands gripping right wrists, H&K .38s held at forty-five degrees to the upper body as they looked for the newcomer. And then they all realised it was the gun talking.

‘ Black Jack Hot.’ The Cardinal sounded vaguely surprised.

‘Yeah. Episode one, opening sequence. Didn’t know you were a fan. Hey. . .’ That was to the two hovering bodyguards. ‘Any closer and I’ll blow your boss to meatballs.’

‘Moz’ll die if we don’t help him,’ said the Cardinal.

‘That’s what he wants,’ said the Colt. ‘Besides, he’s already dead as dogmeat. And it’s time you got over this resurrection shit.’

Both bodyguards looked at the Cardinal, who looked at the Colt lying on blood-splattered slabs where Moritz had dropped it, tiny diodes lighting in sequence along its exposed side, fast and rhythmic, like the click-track on some mixing deck.

‘You don’t get it, do you?’ The Colt sounded cross. ‘Death was what I promised him. You can patch him up, reload his brain, grow a new reverse to his skull. Fuck it, you could grow him a new head, couldn’t you? Or do a transplant…’

The Cardinal groaned. It had been the Vatican who did the first successful head transplant, back at the end of the twentieth century, and no one had ever let them forget it.

‘. . . but do you think he’ll thank you for it,’ demanded the Colt. ‘The fuck he will.’ The Colt was flipping lights faster now, opening dialogue not just with the houseAI but with the Villa’s titanium gate, persuading it to lock out the CCPD hovers that were tearing up the narrow blacktop towards it, demanding access.