Mark Tiedemann - Chimera

"Here," Capel said.

Hands grasped his arms; Capel pulled his right side around, and Coren swung his legs over the edge of the cot.

"Oh, that hurts," Coren groaned.

"You're bruised. Hairline fracture on the clavicle-no wonder the painkillers you've been taking don't work. You should take better care of yourself, Mr. Lanra. Stop doing foolish things. Like running from the police."

Coren looked up at Capel. "I was surrendering to the uniforms."

"They saw a weapon," Capel said reasonably. "You'd already shot one officer and had the other under threat."

"I was checking her ID. They were following me."

"You have some reason to be running from strangers?"

"Strangers usually don't follow me."

"Here."

Capel offered a glass of amber liquid. Coren automatically accepted it and straightened. "How long?"

"They brought you in an hour ago. If you hadn't been so beaten up you'd have been awake by then. Since you weren't, we brought you to the infirmary first."

"Thanks." Coren lifted the glass and sniffed. He recognized the acid smell of the standard enhancer cocktail used by people in high stress occupations-like emergency medical techs and the military and police-to provide quick, temporary revitalization. He would sleep later, sleep deeply, if he drank this now, and he was not sure he liked that. But his head felt wrapped in thick wadding and his thoughts came sluggishly. He drank down half the liquid.

"Who did you think we were?" Capel asked after a minute.

Coren felt sharper already. One drawback was that the pain in his shoulder was more acute.

"First, were you following me, or did I stumble into something?"

"We were looking for Ree Wenithal. You were seen leaving his apartment warren, so I assigned a team to follow you. After you left Myler Towne, I decided we needed to have a talk. "

"Ah. You found out Wenithal was Damik's sponsor."

Capel nodded. "Do you know where he is?"

"Last I knew, in the Auroran embassy."

Capel frowned. "What's he doing there?"

"It's a long story."

Capel backed away from the cot and sat down. He crossed his left leg over his right, propped his head on his left hand. "You aren't leaving till I hear it all."

Coren finished the glass of unpleasant fluid, looked around the sterile infirmary room, and decided that he had no real choice. Still, he felt compelled to bargain.

"Quid pro quo?" he asked.

"We'll see." Capel smiled. "You go first." In his years as a government agent, Coren had found that lying to the authorities only gained time, and not very much at that. If you were not part of the center of their attention, a lie could pass almost unnoticed, but if you entered their field of interest even a little bit, lying never proved a sound policy. The only people who could get away with it were those who could afford to hire people to lie for them.

Coren doubted he could talk his way past Capel with anything less than a complete disclosure. At this point, it might be worth it to see what Capel knew. Besides, he had no time for anything else.

When Coren finished, Capel was leaning forward, arms on his knees, listening intently. After a time, Capel straightened and pushed a button on the wall behind him.

"Coffee, two," Capel said, then folded his hands in his lap and looked at Coren. "I suppose it's occurred to you to wonder why Damik ran to Wenithal in the first place?"

"I was coming to ask him that the night you and I met."

Capel's face flexed in a half-smile. The door opened, and a uniformed officer brought in a tray bearing two cups and a carafe. He placed it on the table beside Capel and left. Capel poured and handed a cup to Coren. After the revitalizer, it smelled wonderful.

"We dug up Wenithal's case logs after we found the connection," Capel said. "He was a reliable cop for most of his career, nothing special. That last case was his entree to bigger things. Very high profile. And very successful, as far as it went."

"That's rather ambivalent."

"He didn't finish. Arrests were made, several facilities were closed down, a big media event;resulted making him out to be a hero. It benefitted everyone more than not, so Wenithal was allowed to quietly resign. But he wasn't guilt free, and some people wondered if his success hadn't been just a little too convenient. "

"You're saying he was corrupt?"

Capel shrugged. "My personal take, after reviewing the logs, is that Eurosector Enforcement Agent Ree Wenithal was handed that success as a reward to stop looking. The missing children that were recovered comprised less than one percent of the total, which is still a considerable number. But he was far from over when he started arresting people. You know and I know that once you start making arrests, those you don't get in the first wave go to ground and get harder to find. If they're adequately resourced, you never get them. They leave Earth and you lose them."

"And he lost some?"

"I'd say he probably lost the core perpetrators. Nobody who served time as a result of that case damaged the organization by their absence. There was a four- or five-year hiatus and the abductions began again. The market wasn't shut down, the routes weren't closed. What happened afterward was all public relations, and no one was willing to look foolish by calling it into question. "

"No other agents followed up?"

"Two of Wenithal's partners from those days died shortly thereafter-one from natural causes, the other in an accident. There were three people in the civil advocate's office connected to the case who died." Capel waved a hand. "All the deaths were explained, and from what I can tell the explanations were legitimate, but the fact remains that those closest to events either died or quickly found new careers. I'm reading all this and I'm thinking coverup. Call me paranoid. It's ancient history, though, so there's no way to find out for sure. "

Coren sipped his coffee. "And Damik?"

"Damik is a little less problematic. He was definitely receiving bribes. Most of them were coming through Wenithal. Nothing large by some standards, a lot of gray market material-adjusted tariff stamps, relabelled goods, that kind of stuff. But he was also plugged into the baley network. One of them, anyway."

"Which one?"

Capel shook his head. "Does it matter? As it turns out, the one being run by Imbitek under Alda Mikels. Oh, yes, we knew about it, but we could never get enough evidence for warrants. Besides, baley-running is generally considered a victimless crime. These people want to leave, who are we to say no? The laws are more symbolic than anything. What's relevant here is that ten months ago Wenithal cut Damik off. Within a month, Damik had found other sources of income, and was finding more, but it hadn't yet equaled what he'd been getting from Wenithal."

"I saw reported payments in Wenithal's records to Damik up till a few weeks ago. "

"Really. Where did you see those?"

Coren cleared his throat. "Something Wenithal left lying open on his desk."

Capel smiled wryly. "In any case, there had apparently been a falling out between them. Maybe Wenithal had started paying him again, but we know he had stopped payments for several months. "

"How do you know they were bribes?"

"Because of the source of Wenithal's funds."

"May I guess? Either the Hunter Group or Kysler Diversified. "

"No. Imbitek. Or was. This new guy, Towne, has been trying to clean the company up, shutting down a lot of its illicit ventures. But under Mikels they'd been buying from Wenithal for years, except they paid him five times market value for what he supplied them. Half that money ended up going directly to Damik."

"Imbitek…"

"Something else, though." Capel took a folder off the table beside him and handed it to Coren. "Look at this and tell me what you think."