Jon Grimwood - redRobe

‘Evening, Leon. Did Ketzia find what she was looking for?’

It was worth the walk.

Leon’s face went slack with shock and then he was scrambling beneath the counter, hands feeling for some weapon. A hidden length of metal pipe, Axl decided, that would be about his level.

Axl shook his head slowly, locking his eyes onto those of the barman. Equally slowly, Leon dropped his hands from the bar and stood back, mouth opening and shutting silently…

‘Hey,’ said the heavy woman Leon had been serving. ‘You seen a fucking ghost or something?’

‘Yeah,’ said Axl, yanking a stool from beneath a drunken conscript, ‘or something.’ Leon glared angrily at Axl, glanced at the heavy woman and left, muttering under his breath.

‘Do I know you?’ defMoma asked. The sergeant was stripped to her combat trousers, stained T-shirt and steel-capped boots that buckled to the knee. Her biceps were thick as hams, her heavy breasts topped by nipples bullet-like enough to threaten the cloth of her T-shirt. It was an impressive sight.

Axl spread his hands slightly. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Do you?’ The long list of UN conflict zones he reeled off began with Azerbaijan and ended with Zaire, via Bessarabia and Montevideo. Actually, he’d only been to about three of them but defMoma didn’t know that. Didn’t know he’d fought mainly for the other side, either.

‘Chang,’ Axl ordered, while defMoma was still thinking over his list. The beer tasted no better than it had the last time Axl tried it, but at least Leon didn’t try to charge him.

‘And another.’

The revolver pressed hard in the small of his back. Other than that, Axl had the hunting knife stuck in his boot. Not much if putsch came to kill ... Of course he could always try to grab a better weapon, if he could just work out what defMoma was packing and where.

Back in San Salvador, when the IMF were running one of their interminable credit checks, the NCOs got issued with semiAI HiPowers, poor relations to the gun Axl used before logic went walkabout. No one knew what weapons senior officers in San Salvador carried because no one saw any.

Axl suddenly realised defMoma wasn’t listening to him anymore. She was displaying an unhealthy interest in a woman who’d just walked in, only to stop dead in the doorway, appalled by the stink of vomit and the blast of some kid’s Sony boombox.

Poor-boy’s soundtracks. Like his sergeant used to say, if it’s not fitted it’s not real. ‘Like to stay and chat,’ Axl shouted, slipping off the stool, ‘but you know how it is. Shit to do…’

Idiots to rescue.

The barefoot woman began to edge between the kids blocking the door, gazing too obviously round the crowded bar. Either she’d been to the stable but hadn’t found any more beads, and had come for help from Leon and Ketzia, or else Escondido had been occupied by PaxForce officers and she wanted Mai out of the house but needed help finding somewhere for the kid to stay.

Or both.

Axl could write the script in his head.

A ragged yellow jacket hid her upper body, while what looked like a horse blanket was tied tight around her waist, making a crude skirt. Her hair was scraped back under a blue scarf too old even to remember if it had ever had better days.

All she needed was a bottle of industrial alcohol to look like a pantomime beggar. On Samsara, of course, among the thousands of ‘fugees scrabbling to feed themselves from thin soil, she looked almost normal. Just another woman who’d lost her home, her job or her kids and been issued with two blankets and a refugee PIN number in reply.

She wasn’t.

That ash-grey blanket round her waist was cut from a shahtoosh, woven from wool combed from the stomach of an antelope. It took five animals to make each wrap. Pashmina and shahtoosh were two of the few luxury items Samsara produced for export. Cutting it up and dumping it into the mud must have really hurt Kate, which was fine with Axl. The last time he’d seen the bitch she’d just finished slapping Mai stupid.

Now the roles were reversed.

What gave Kate away was her feet. They were filthy enough, her soles and heels crusted with mud where she’d walked into Cocheforet from El Escondido. But the dirt that should have been ingrained under each toenail was missing and her ankles lacked the grey patina of those forced to live without shoes.

She was altogether too clean, as some conscript was bound to find out the moment he stuck a hand under her skirt to uncover legs that weren’t as filthy as they should be.

‘You.’ Axl pointed at Kate. ‘Over here.’ She could run or she could do what she was told. One of those wasn’t going to get her killed, if Kate got lucky.

‘Well done,’ said Axl coldly, watching her trying to work out where she recognised him from.

He slapped her. And then Kate knew.

Half a dozen of the conscripts cheered, cheers turning to crude encouragement as Axl twisted his right hand tight into the shocked woman’s hair and kissed her hard.

‘Hit any more children lately?’ Axl asked, coming up for air.

If she could have done, she’d have slapped him but Axl caught her wrist, fingers tightening until Kate bit her lip.

‘Fond of that, aren’t you?’ Axl’s smile wasn’t kind. ‘Well, try it on me and I’ll break your fucking wrist. . . And then I’ll give you to this lot.’ Axl yanked her over to the bar, booted another conscript off his stool and sat down next to defMoma, pulling Kate down onto his knee…

‘Staying long?’ Axl asked defMoma, whose blue eyes left off trying to focus on a frozen Kate and had a shot at refocusing on Axl instead. The only bit of defMoma’s iced-out brain still working almost asked what business it was of his, but defMoma was tired and Axl behaved like he belonged. On top of that, there were standing PaxForce regulations about answering reasonable questions, not that anyone paid much attention to shit like that.

'As long as it takes,’ she replied heavily. Which was undoubtedly true and told Axl zilch, which was what it was meant to do.

‘To do what?’ Axl demanded. ‘Or are you planning to stick to the usual?’ He jerked his head towards where one of the younger conscripts was hinting, with the aid of a zytel blade, that Leon might like to supply Cocheforet’s piss-poor chang for free.

‘You’re an observer,’ said defMoma flatly. And the conscript at the next stool along went hurriedly back to his beer, then snuck another look.

Axl said nothing.

If he was an official UN-appointed observer, now was the point to whip out his little holographic card and flash it in the huge woman’s face. Observers had diplomatic status, carte blanché, carte noblique… Whatever it took wherever they were. Didn’t matter which way the IMF or PaxForce cut it, observers weren’t messed with.

Observers were the control group that kept the PaxForce honest, that was the theory. They’d been introduced fifteen years back, around the time the UN gave in to IMF pressure and outsourced its rapid-response troops. Five corps tendered and DecSec won, helped by a recent devaluation of the rouble.

Killing an observer was bad news. Every conscript on the ground lost a year’s pay and had an extra year added to their contract. Axl smiled at the thickset, cropped-haired woman and did nothing more. All of the conscripts were watching him now. Most out of the corner of their eyes but a few full-on.

‘Mission statement?’ Axl kept his voice polite, wondering what he’d do if defMoma called his bluff.

She didn’t. Without a word she handed him a tiny silver disc and then, when he sighed heavily, unzipped her Sony walkWear and handed that over as well.

The instructions were simple. The unit was to search Samsara for Father Sylvester, the Vatican treasurer and return him to Earth to face a financial-crimes tribunal. The order was approved by the World Bank, signed by the current Secretary Fiscal and ratified by the International Court of Human Rights at the Hague.