Gary Gibson - Final Days

He scooted the live-sheet towards Saul, who stopped it with his fingertips.

‘Diplomatic clearance and your ticket home,’ explained Donohue. ‘All appearances to the contrary, you’ve done good, Saul.’

‘That’s funny, because I could have sworn it was a total fuck-up.’

‘It was,’ Donohue replied. ‘But we already had a pretty good idea that Hanover was our man. We couldn’t prove it, however, unless we found some way to draw him out and catch him in the act.’

‘So I was just bait,’ said Saul, glowering.

Donohue merely smiled, without humour.

‘He sabotaged my A/V uplink,’ Saul continued, leaning forward. ‘That means there’s no proof any of this actually happened. You must know that?’

‘Corporal Helena Bryant’s A/V systems were working just fine,’ Donohue replied. ‘You’ll remember she interrupted your conversation at a particularly crucial juncture. Her contacts had a heavily encrypted satellite uplink, so we’ve got more than enough solid evidence of what took place.’

‘The man is a piece of shit,’ Saul observed. ‘You’re not seriously going to give him what he wants, are you?’

‘That decision’s not up to anyone in this room,’ Donohue replied, standing.

‘You have to give me some idea what’s going on here.’ Saul stared up at him. ‘What the hell was all that stuff he mentioned about the colonies being on their own?’

Donohue gazed down at him with an expression halfway between scorn and pity. ‘I’ve no idea what you mean, Saul. Maybe you need to cut back on some of that loup-garou you love so much.’

‘What about the hijacked shipment? What’s in it that everyone wants so badly?’

Donohue shook his head without answering that, then stepped over to the door and pulled it open. The distant tones of an automated announcement echoed along the corridor. ‘You’ve got just over halfere&rsqur to catch your flight,’ he said.

‘Wait.’ Saul could hear the blood pounding in his head. ‘What did Hanover mean when he said the colonies were going to be all on their own? And what the hell about finding out who destroyed the Galileo wormhole?’ he yelled, anger welling up inside him. ‘Does Hanover know something about it, or was that just some bullshit you concocted?’

Donohue shook his head as if in pity. Saul watched as he stepped towards him, pulling a plastic inhaler out of a pocket and dropping it on the table.

Saul stared down at it. ‘What the hell’s that for?’ he asked.

‘A little pick-me-up,’ Donohue sneered. ‘Had the feeling you might need it.’

‘Fuck you,’ Saul snapped, sweeping the inhaler on to the floor with one hand.

‘You used to be a good agent, Saul,’ said Donohue, stepping back to the door. ‘Maybe you should take Hanover’s advice and have a vacation somewhere off-world. And, when you get there, I’d strongly advise you to stay there.’

Saul stared at the closed door, once Donohue had departed, a hundred more questions remaining stillborn in the back of his throat.

THIRTEEN

Lakeside, Montana, 30 January 2235

Jeff woke up in the back of the car he’d stolen, now parked behind a bar and grill in Lakeside with his down jacket pulled up over his shoulders. He sneezed loudly, though he’d left the heating turned up full all night. The recycled air tasted stale, humid and disgusting.

Pushing himself upright, he found to his relief that the clothes he’d left draped over the backs of the two front seats had mostly dried out. Wincing at the smell, he dragged on his shirt and trousers, then fumbled to open a door before dragging himself out into painfully bright morning sunlight. The car had expanded to allow him the room he needed to sleep, but upon sensing his exit it hummed and creaked as it reassumed its default configuration. A room in a local motel would have been a lot more comfortable, but it had occurred to Jeff that it might well be the first place the surviving assassin would think of looking for him.

He stepped around to the front of the bar, and glanced up and down the single highway running through the small town. He could see two- and three-storey buildings stretching off in either direction, while bull pines spread up the steep slopes rising immediately beyond the rooftops, reaching towards the wisps of cloud streaking an azure sky. Jeff activated his contacts, and a breakfast menu appeared next to the bar’s entrance.

Jeff listened to his stomach grumble, then noted with some misery that the bar wouldn’t open for another couple of hours.

serace="Times New Roman">Something flashed in the corner of his vision and he saw that he’d finally got a reply from Mitchell Stone. He’d tried to get hold of him a dozen times as he fled in the stolen car, before finally giving up, so he opened the message without hesitation. Through his contacts, Stone’s words were projected as thick black letters floating against the brilliant sky.

Need to talk with you urgently , the message read. Bring Dan to these coordinates, and meet me there .

The coordinates were tagged on to the end of the message, which turned out to be someplace in Sioux Falls, the better part of two thousand kilometres to the east.

Sioux Falls, wondered Jeff. What the hell was in Sioux Falls?

He swallowed, his throat dry, and wondered again if looking to Mitchell for help was the right decision. But there were so many questions Jeff wanted to ask him – so many! How on Earth could he have survived, where Vogel hadn’t? And where had Eliza actually had him taken after he was rushed back home?

In that same moment, Jeff became aware of someone watching him from across the road. It was a middle-aged man, in scuffed trousers and work-shirt, leaning against the wall alongside a fabricator kiosk.

Jeff shut down his UP and focused his gaze on the window of the restaurant, as if still consulting its vanished menu. When he turned back to view the street half a minute later, he saw the man was gone, but a light had come on inside the store adjoining the kiosk.

Glancing down the highway to the east, he felt his heart skip a beat when a police car emerged, low and black and shark-like, from a side road and turned in his direction. Jeff ducked back into the alleyway and pulled open his car door, grabbing up his rucksack before hightailing it around the far end of the building that stood across the alley from the bar. After a minute he heard the sound of wheels crunching over gravel as the police car entered the alley.

Jeff peered cautiously around the corner, in time to see the police car pull up next to his own. A uniformed officer stepped out and walked once around the stolen car, before glancing all about. Jeff ducked back out of sight, praying that he hadn’t been spotted.

Long seconds passed, then he heard the sound of a car door opening and closing, followed again by the sound of tyres rolling over gravel. Jeff stepped back out from hiding in time to see his stolen vehicle, now slaved to the police car, following it back out on to the highway, like a new-born calf trailing its mother.

Jeff let out a long groan and wondered what the hell he was going to do next.

He waited another minute before venturing back out on to the highway, glancing warily in both directions. The shops still seemed mostly deserted, though he could hear tinny music from behind one window as he headed a couple of blocks west, keeping an eye out for the cop car. He recollected seeing a bus station a little further along, and before long found himself standing before a parking area containing a half-dozen unmanned buses gathered around a towering stack ofbiomass bales.

Jeff glanced back towards the highway, wondering about using the car-jacker to steal himself another car, but that carried its own risks. If a cop could track down a stolen ride that easily, they’d have no trouble catching him driving on the interstate once the theft had been reported. Carjacking might seem a viable option down Mexical way, but the roads were much better protected this far north.