Jon Grimwood - redRobe

Yeah, thought Axl, I bet you do.

Half the planet thought Kate was the sister of a saint, the other half wanted her on trial for reformista war crimes committed when 20,000 pre-teens took over Northern Mexico in Joan’s name.

Twelve-year-olds with antiquated Kalashnikovs had been a feature of subSahal warfare for two centuries. Ever since the animist army of the SPLA first took Islamic Khartoum with ex-Soviet AK47s donated by a Bible Belt baptist show. The Children of God were something new. At least they were to Day Effé and to Washington politicians who thought that kind of shit didn’t happen in what was still laughingly called the First World.

‘Anything I can help with?’ Axl made it sound like he always went round offering aid to complete strangers, which would have amused the Colt. But from the look on Kate’s face, it seemed his help wasn’t something she needed.

The onions made his eyes water but Axl kept at it, cutting out the rotten bits and tossing the onion flesh that was still edible into an iron bucket. He was sitting on a bench in the kitchen at Escondido preparing supper.

The Hideaway.

Axl didn’t know if it was Kate who’d called the place El Escondido. He only knew Father Sylvester wasn’t based there and the monastery was unoccupied except for Kate, the kid, Kate’s servant Louis and the Clone. And except for the kid they were all down in the village, doing something he wasn’t meant to know about.

There was nothing of value in the enormous house, unless you liked old statues and musty wall hangings that reeked of damp and dust. Axl knew. He’d laboriously checked every room from the slab-floored cellars to the empty attic with its broken roof tiles that let heat out and rain in.

Mind you, Axl hadn’t expected to find some elegant little smartbook belonging to Kate, still powered up and containing details of transparent bank accounts at Hong Kong Suisse in Zurich. Not straight off. Unlike His Excellency, Axl didn’t believe in miracles. He believed in sex and cheap drugs and all the other shallow gratifications that made life bearable.

Only you couldn’t get 4-MTA in Cocheforet. In fact, from what Axl remembered from the newsfeeds back home, you couldn’t score anywhere on Samsara. The wheelworld was a drug-free zone. Privately, Axl doubted that. All he needed to make life bearable was a heat source, some fairly basic chemicals and a half-intelligent twelve-year-old amateur chemist. And if crystalMeth was off the menu then someone somewhere had to be cooking china white. All that took was bloody poppies, for God’s sake, the kind Kate kept doping him with.

But if the kid was to be believed there was no meth, no china white and not even any cooking sulphate. There would be—of course—somewhere. In one of the tourist towns just outside Vajrayana. Some makeshift kitchen would be turning out meth by the tray. The big problem for Axl was he didn’t know where that town was and couldn’t afford the time to get there even if he did.

On the other hand, supplies aside, he could hardly claim life wasn’t interesting. In the last week he’d got beaten up, fucked somebody’s wife without even bothering about retro Virus, taken down that fat sergeant… What was even better, he’d made contact with Kate without having to leap through too many hoops. All he need do now was get into the Japanese girl’s confidence and find out what the fuck was making Kate so jumpy.

It was hardly a difficult assignment. He went in, he found Kate and grabbed her. Then he revealed himself as a member of the Rights Police, pulled a Section 53i on Tsongkhapa and took the woman to Vajrayana for repatriation. The job was so basic even a kid could have done it. Axl knew that for a fact, the Cardinal had told him so.

Axl tossed down his knife.

Slouched next to him on a bench in the kitchen, a mound of raw onions at her feet, Mai grinned sourly. She was meant to be peeling the onions and he was only there to keep her company, but so far he’d done all the work.

‘Jesus, you really need ice, don’t you?’

Ice, a life, some guaranteed way off Samsara… Axl got through a lot of his life on nodding, and the bits where a nod didn’t work could usually be covered by silence or a simple shake of the head. Chuck in the trademark looks that ran from quizzical to coldly amused and in many ways his working vocabulary was no better than it had been back when he was nine.

‘Kate’s got medical drugs,’ Mai told Axl. ‘Want me to look for you?’

Axl did, though he went along with her, climbing the narrow back stairs from the kitchen to a small landing so slowly that Mai had to stop to let him catch up Axl didn’t mind taking his time. The kid had a nice arse and it helped that all she wore on her bottom half was a pair of thin black leggings so tight they edged between her buttocks with every step she took. On top Mai had a short red jacket machined from cloth that looked like it had started out as a dog blanket.

Axl kept watching her arse until she paused at the landing. And then he looked at what she was looking at. Attached next to a door in the far wall was an open padlock, hooked over a clasp. Both were new.

‘My room,’ she said bitterly. ‘Kate has this one,’ Mai jerked her thumb towards a single door behind her. To the right of the narrow landing were two other doors, both shut.

‘And in there?’ Axl asked, as if he hadn’t already looked.

'The Clone and Louis ...'

‘There’s no one else living in this house?’

The girl looked at him.

‘How about nearby?’

‘Kate’s followers,’ Mai said sourly, making it obvious she had little time for the other ‘fugees in Cocheforet. ‘No one else, okay? Or I’d have found them, believe me…’ The smile on her childlike face wasn’t kind. But then she wasn’t doing this to be nice to Axl, she was doing it to spite Kate. Which didn’t matter a fuck to Axl, because complicity was complicity.

‘Look,’ said Mai. ‘You want to help me find some stuff or not?’

Stuff, when they found it, was in a cheap plastic tray inside a folded blanket crammed under Kate’s bed. Mai crawled under to get it while Axl searched the almost-bare room a second time, moving fast.

A wooden crucifix was nailed up above a wood-framed single bed that sported only one sheet and a tattered low-tog quilt over a mattress of uncovered foam that was no thicker than a smart book.

The walls were white, with no pictures or rugs. The floor was also bare, its faded red tiles cold as ice to the touch. Apart from Kate’s bed, the only other item of furniture in that room was a simple wooden desk made from oak. It had three drawers down each side, all empty of everything except dust and dead insects. What clothes Kate had—and there weren’t many—rested in neat piles on one side of the door.

Axl had been around enough to know what punishment looked like. Since it was unlikely anyone else had imposed this cell on Kate, she had to be inflicting it on herself. Which, maybe wasn’t so unusual from the sister of the Pope who had cleared St Peter’s of all its art treasures and thrown open the gates of the Holy City to all comers. And God did they come. Hyps, Ishies, the Wild Tribe. The influx made the medieval crusades look like ordered outings.

‘Sweet fuck.’

Axl looked round to find Mai sitting on the bed tossing bubblepacs back into the tray, one after another. ‘Dandelion, arnica, teatree oil…’ She read a few more out in disgust and then scooped the rest noisily back into the tray and slung it under Kate’s bed. ‘You’re out of luck.’

‘Maybe,’ said Axl as he slid the drawers out of their runners and skimmed his fingers across the backs. Nada. Nothing taped to the underside of the desk either.