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  Both the men stiffened slightly; she watched the play of muscles around mouth and eyes, listened to the involuntary intake of breath. Not enough for a human to notice, but meaningful. Both men recognized the name, of course; but their fright was direct and personal. Fear produced anger.

  "Shut up, puta. Miguel, you take the other one."

  "I don't think so," Gwen said, as he reached past her for Dolores.

  She grabbed the wrist; it was thick, a thin layer of blubber over solid muscle and bone. A quick jerk, and the big man stumbled forward, sending his lighter companion spinning aside to crash into the flaking stucco of the alley's wall. At the same time she squeezed, feeling the small bones of the wrist grate and splinter under her grip. The man gave an incredulous grunt, eyes and mouth flaring open in three O's of surprise. She jerked again, bracing her feet—he was heavier than she, even though she weighed over a hundred and ninety pounds, much more than a human of her size. When a lighter object reacted against a heavier, the lighter tended to move regardless of energy outputs; it was a matter of leverage, not strength.

  He stumbled again, to his knees. Gwen pivoted on her left heel and kicked with her right, into his throat, releasing her hold as the blow impacted. The body snapped backward several meters and fell limp, head lying back between the shoulderblades. She took a deep breath and stepped closer to the survivor; he was standing with his hand half under the tail of his zippered jacket, eyes bulging in shock.

  "Miguel?" he said, halfway between a croak and a whisper.

  Humans are slow, she thought. Not just their reaction time, but their ability to assimilate data.

  "Miguel is dead," she said. "Now, I need some information."

  The hand came out with a knife, curved and sharp, moving quite quickly for a human. Gwen swayed her upper body back just enough for the cutting edge to miss as it ripped upward, her hand snapping out to grab and span the others fist where it clenched around the hilt. She continued the natural path of the weapon until the point touched the man's throat just below the angle of the jaw. For a long moment they stayed locked, a trickle of blood running down his throat from the knifepoint. His pulse fluttered on the edge of shock and then steadied a little; there was a irritating edge to his scent, a hint of metabolic wrongness. Some sort of drug interfering with the metabolism, she decided.

  "Who are you?" he shrilled. "What are you doing?"

  "What I'm doing," Gwen said, leaning a little closer and increasing the pressure of the steel, "depends on you. If you're not cooperative, I'm going to torture some information out of you and then kill you. If you were better looking and didn't smell so bad, I'd rape you first. Or you can tell me what I want to know."

  "Si, si, anything you want to know, lady, anything! Look, I know where you can get kilos, the real thing, cheap, I'll—"

  "That's my boy!" Gwen said cheerfully, patting him on the cheek with her free hand. His made vague pawing motions at the air. "Now, Señor Mondragón."

  "Oh, Jesus and His Mother, no soy nadie, I don't know him."

  "But you know someone who knows someone, don't you, little one?" she said softly.

  The drops of blood flowing down his neck became a steady trickle. Tears and mucus from eyes and nose joined them. Unconsciously his right arm kept trying to jerk the knife away from his throat, but she controlled the surges without allowing more than a quiver in the metal.

  "Si, I know Pedro, Don Pedro, and he—"

  Gwen waited until the babbling began to repeat itself. "That's all," she said, and pushed with quick, savage force.

  The knife slid through neck and throat and into the small man's mouth, then crunched into the bones of the palate. She pushed a little harder, and there was a yielding crackle as it slid into the brain. The body arched in spasm, a thin trickling whine blowing out of clenched teeth, then slid to the ground, voided, and died. Gwen sighed and turned.

  Dolores was backed against the wall, hands pressed to either side of her head, her mouth trembling. Trembling with terror and a dreadful reluctant excitement.

  Ah, Gwen thought. Got to watch the pheromones.

  "Come on," she said soothingly. "Enough outdoor work for one night."

  ***

  "You make me tired. Just looking at you makes me tired, Carmaggio."

  Looking at you generally makes me want to puke, Captain, Carmaggio thought. He could feel the back of his neck flush, which was usually a bad sign; probably Captain McLeish could see the thought printed across his face like an LCD display. McLeish smirked and leaned back in the swivel chair behind his desk; there were pictures of himself with several commissioners and mayors on the walls, and a slight smell of old socks. He looked Carmaggio up and down, letting the contrast between the other man's rumpled off-the-rack and his own beautifully tailored suit speak for itself. He was in better shape than Carmaggio, too, which the tucked waist showed off quite well.

  Looks like a pimp, Carmaggio thought. Right down to the cool-dude side whiskers, although at least he didn't have letters shaved into his 'fro.

  It wasn't that he had anything against blacks. Not after Happy Lewis saved his ass that time he didn't see the claymore; he'd made a private resolution right then and there not to use the word "eggplant" for anything but vegetables ever again.

  It was asskissers and fuckups he didn't like. McLeish was a prime example of both, in his considered opinion. How he'd gotten as far as he had only God and the Echelons Beyond Reality who thought they were God knew. Welcome to the wonderful world of the civil service. He was profoundly glad that they'd found out ulcers were caused by bacteria, not stomach acid—because every time he had to report to McLeish, he got a couple of cupfuls of the original patented bile spewed out into his gut.

  "We've got twenty-three homicides, Captain. With all due respect—"

  "How many thousand homicides do we have in this shitty city, Carmaggio? You've got no evidence to put a solid link between them, and nothing new has turned up in six months. It's spring—wake up and smell the roses. Serial killers don't stop. That's what our great good friends at Federal Bullshit Incorporated keep telling us."

  "Yeah, they don't stop. Not permanently. If we let this one go—"

  "They've already gotten away." The you dumb guinea bastard was unspoken but plain. "Not to mention the FBI say they don't want to hear about it anymore; and whose idea was it to call in Quantico, in the first place? This is not, for your information, some pissant little two-sheriff town without its own forensics department."

  Carmaggio felt the flush spreading from the back of his neck to his ears.

  "Maybe the tooth fairy did it, Carmaggio. Maybe that Jew cunt at Primary Belway Securities was the one who offed Fischer."

  Maybe Jojo beat his own head in against that wall because he realized he'd never be President, Henry thought, as his superior went on:

  "And maybe you don't have enough work to do. You want me to put a few more on your docket? Didn't you have a court appearance today?"

  "Yessir."

  He didn't slam the door as he left. There hadn't been any more action on the file, and there was a lot of other work to do. He'd long ago resigned himself to the fact that he'd retire not much above his present rank; interviews like this were simply a symptom of that. People got to the top of the greasy pole largely because they wanted to, real bad—sometimes so they could do the job, more often not. He did this lousy job because he wanted to, not to get a better office. Shits like the captain regarded actual police work as a distraction from more important matters.

  Whether or not the captain thought it was too much trouble to bother with, they'd be hearing from this particular perp again, closed file or no closed file.

  Or somebody would be hearing about them. This isn't the sort that goes somewhere and hides.

  Chapter Five

  The tropical sun was a flat glare on the surface of the water. The compressor on the barge throbbed tirelessly, pumping water down a thick tube to blow sand off the bottom thirt
y feet below; that made the sea around them turgid, greenish compared to the usual turquoise of the waters off Abaco. They were eighty miles southwest of Marsh Harbor, not far from Mores Island; that flat sandy speck of land was just visible, but nothing else marred the circle of sky and sea except the barge and its attendant boats. There was a silty undertone to the usual sea-salt smell, faint beneath the diesel stink of the exhaust.

  Captain John Lowe looked at the water in disgust, then back at the woman who'd chartered his outfit, in puzzlement. Nothing here to find. Sure, there were plenty of wrecks around the Abacos, all over the Bahamas—the archipelago was famous for it. But these waters had been searched bare, long ago.

  The money's good. He'd insisted on getting it up front and in cash. There was a lot of that sort of business in the Bahamas, and a tradition of not asking too many questions. The country lived off being an offshore tax shelter even more than it did from tourism and the . . . unregistered transit trade. An old tradition: Conchy Joes like him had always been smugglers, from cocaine back through Prohibition rum boats and Civil War blockade runners, and before that wreckers and pirates.

  Crazy bitch.

  She stood at the rail of the boat, looking over at the floats that marked where the divers were working. Crazy, and I can't figure her. He couldn't even decide whether she was white or not. She'd darkened up considerably since they started, to milk chocolate color, but the tan seemed to go all over—he had a good view, with the loose cotton shorts and sleeveless singlet she was wearing. The green eyes and red hair were genuine, though. Her papers said Colombian, but the accent was American—South Carolina, maybe, or Louisiana, hard to place, despite the pretty latina secretary she had hanging around. The body said American too, the fitness-freak look, like some of the richer women tourists. Not very bulgy, but every muscle precisely delineated, moving under the smooth skin like machined steel in oil.

  Nice tits, though. And no bra. Maybe a hundred and forty pounds, a little more.

  One of the standing bets had been whether or not she was queer. That was settled up when Jamie Simms had been seen coming out of her cabana back in Marsh Harbor at six in the morning, but the young deckhand had steadfastly refused all details. That was odd, because everyone had expected a stroke-by-stroke description, and he'd screamed at them to stop asking and then quit the job. Damned odd.

  Lowe moved up to stand beside her. "How much longer?" he said.

  "Until it's found," she replied. Her voice was soft and pleasant, rather deep, but the tone expected instant obedience.

  He gritted his teeth. Sure, she was paying, but there wasn't enough money in the world to make him swallow that much longer.

  "It's your three hundred thousand," he said. And the meter was still running. Next week it would be four hundred thousand.

  She didn't bother to reply.

  Lowe felt the bottom drop out of his gut when the diver surfaced, tearing off his mask and waving something in the air. It looked like a black lump at this distance—exactly the black of corroded silver.

  "Silver," she said. "Silver ingots and coin, gold ingots and chains, and a bronze casket full of emeralds. After your government takes its cut, probably about eight million dollars' worth." She smiled slightly. "Aren't you sorry you insisted on a flat fee instead of a percentage of the take?"

  Lowe pulled off his hat, knotting it in one ham fist, and took a step toward her. She'd offered him a quarter share and he'd laughed in her face, and she'd given him the same damned smile then. I'm going to knock her—.

  The green eyes narrowed slightly, and he stopped; stopped: as if he had run into a wall of ice.

  "Not even in your dreams," she whispered.

  He coughed to cover his confusion. "How? How the fuck did you know?"

  She turned her head back to the divers. Two more had surfaced, and the first was dancing around the deck of the barge.

  "I knew what, and where," she said. "Then I checked to see if anyone had found it. Nobody had. Therefore it had to be here."

  She went on, still looking out over the water. "I'm doubling your fee, Captain Lowe. I'll probably need your services again, and your nephew the pilot."

  That put a different face on things. "Happy to oblige, ma'am."

  "Just remember this," she said. "What I say I can do, I can do. Those who get in my way will regret it. Those who help me can expect to get rich. Very rich. Wealth, and great power . . ."

  She turned and smiled at him. "You'd like that, wouldn't you, Captain Lowe."

  Another face altogether. He made a sweeping bow, grinning back. "Happy to oblige, ma'am."

  Crazy bitch of a woman. But crazy like a fox.

  ***

  "Very satisfactory," Gwen said.

  Thomas Cairstens lifted his glass and clinked it against hers.

  Woman of the hour, he thought, as he smiled at Gwen, although she'd managed to evade the Nassau press with delicate skill—giving them just enough to prevent a feeding frenzy. Lost pirate treasure stories were an overnight sensation. The foreign press had dropped it a week ago, although she'd become well known locally.

  The dining room of Greycliff was emptying out, as the Friday evening moved toward midnight and the clientele made for bed or nightspot. The fans turned lazily overhead, and the air smelled of flowers from the small yard outside as well as of traffic from West Hill Street, muffled by the high whitewashed wall of limestone blocks that fronted the restaurant. The room itself smelled of good food and expensive perfumes. A bit of a guilty pleasure, but one he allowed himself after a profitable deal.

  She pushed a check across the table at him. "For Greenpeace," she said.

  Tom looked down at it and raised his brows before he tucked it into his jacket pocket. A hundred thousand. Not too shabby.

  "I didn't know you were an environmentalist," he said. She'd been all business while he handled the incorporation of IngolfTech.

  "I'm anti-stupidity," she replied coolly. She was dressed simply, in a cream-colored linen dress that brought out her café-au-lait complexion and the brilliant green eyes; an emerald dragon brooch closed the high neck.

  "In a hundred years or less, this planet's going to collapse—it might even become uninhabitable," she went on.

  He nodded grimly, turning the wineglass in his hands. "That's why I got into Greenpeace in California," he said.

  "Why did you get out?"

  He put the glass down and met her eyes. Compelling. God, that's an attractive woman. He wasn't normally very receptive to feminine charms, but there was the occasional exception. Gwendolyn Ingolfsson just didn't feel like a woman, though. Or quite like anyone he'd ever met. Smart, too. How did she know about me? When she was there, you just didn't notice anyone else.

  "Because it wasn't doing any good," he went on. "Not Greenpeace or Earth First, or any of the others. We were putting Band-Aids on cancers at best. More often, we were just provoking backlash. Earth First couldn't think of anything better to do than try and get poor dumb loggers fired. I'd have joined the ecoterrorists, if I thought they'd accomplish anything. Detroit can produce bulldozers a lot faster than anyone can blow them up, though."

  "So you gave up and came to the Bahamas to practice corporate law," she said.

  He nodded his head jerkily. He'd gone a little further into the fringes than that, which made the move advisable until things quieted down, but it was essentially true. His parents had helped; Dad had real pull, enough to square his work permit with the Bahamian government. It was stupid not to take advantage of family connections if you had them. There were more lawyers in Nassau than sharks in the waters offshore, but he'd done well.

  "Sure. Why not dance on the deck if the Titanic's going down?" And what a depressing subject for a dinner date.

  Gwen leaned forward, fixing his eyes with hers. "Imagine a world," she said softly, almost whispering, forcing him to lean closer to hear, "where the population of Earth is five hundred million and stable, not seven billion and rising. Where not
an ounce of fossil fuel is burned. No mines, no factories, no fission reactors or coal-burning plants, no tankers full of oil. The sea and the skies and the land swarm with life, and whole continents are nature preserves."

  He jerked his head away. "That's not funny."

  "No, it's not funny. But it's possible, given the right technology and the right management."

  "And we'll never get there from here," he said, feeling anger mount. "Look, what's the point of this?"

  She smiled and pulled a featureless black rectangle the size of a credit card out of her bag.

  "Yes, this civilization is never going to do that," she agreed, and ran a fingernail down its side.

  The card opened out, and opened again, until it was the size of a hardcover book. The surface was black in a way he'd never seen before, as if it drank every photon that impacted on it and reflected nothing. A hole in the table, thinner than a sheet of paper and completely rigid. She touched the side, and the background noise faded quickly to nothing. He looked around in startlement; they were off in one corner, near the tall windows, but he could see mouths moving in talk, silverware in use. Everything was dead silent, like a video with the sound control turned off.

  "What is that thing?" he said. His voice sounded slightly flat in the perfect silence, as if in a room with absorptive baffles on the walls.

  "It's the equivalent of a file-folder," Gwen replied. "For old-fashioned types like me who don't like to just close their eyes and downlink from the Web through their transducers for an image. Now, we were discussing the potential future of civilization."

  Tom felt sweat break out on his forehead and trickle clammily down his flanks, more than the Bahamian night could account for. He reached for his wineglass and drank. It was no easy thing, to have your ordinary life suddenly touched by strangeness.

  "Go ahead," he said softly.

  "A planetary surface is a bad place for an industrial economy," she went on. "You could have gotten out of that trap, but it's probably too late now, and certainly will be in another generation."