Black Madonna

27

“So we breeze into a bandit heartland with a photo-ID and say, Excuse me, gun-wielding bandit-type fellow, but have you seen these men?’ when we know one of ‘em doesn’t look like this anyway,” Geraint pondered over a junk-food brekfast. The airport didn’t seem to offer anything better, but at nearly noon-by the time they’d managed to wake, bathe, dress, and pack everything again-they didn’t fancy the lunchtime menu and the junk was all they could face.

We’ve got Blondie and he’s impossible to miss with that pony tail,” Michael replied.

“He could tuck it inside his jacket.”

“Ever seen him do that?”

“He still might.’’

“Yeah, right, and that’s why when his master fragged the photo ID, he left him so clear-as-day to make it hard for us,” Michael replied with some venom. “Sorry. I’m still tired. I really do think he actually wants us to find him.”

“That’s bizarre.”

“Is it really? Look, the guy has to have some ego. He’s a genius-look at what he’s done. He must have some desire for recognition. He must want someone to say ‘look how clever I am’. He’s just picked us, that’s all.”

“Fair enough, I suppose, but why us? I mean, there have to be a dozen teams out after him.”

“There are. Matter of fact I caught a glimpse of Denison from MCT Frankfurt in Venice, unless I’m much mistaken. But I think we’re closer to him than anyone else. After all, Renraku was the only corp that got the Shroud icon,” Michael finished, pensively. Still not sure why he did that.”

“Well, we have nowhere else to go” Geraint said. “And if the Matrix crashes I lose a bundle, so let’s get the fragger.”

“We’re actually going to have a day to spare,” Michael said. “if this was the movies, we’d only get to him five seconds before he pressed the button. and you’d see the time display counting down the time before-bang!”

“Hmmm,” Serrin said for no reason in particular. He’d been lost in his own thoughts for most of the morning, gazing at pictures of paintings and reading notes. It was obvious he wanted to be left alone until he’d worked out whatever he was wrestling with. Kristen was more than familiar with these moods by now, and had learned just to be around when the elf came back to the real world.

“I got permission to cross the relevant air space, so far as that goes” Streak told them. “Mind you, it’s bound to be pretty dicey passing over Iraq, so frag that. We’ll take the southern route over Saudi. I don’t fancy the Turkish route, not with heading down the Caspian past Azerbaijan. They let off SAMs for recreation down there. Saudi’s okay.”

“Have we got everything we need?” Geraint asked him for the tenth time that morning.

“Your Lordship, you’re already dosed with quinine and KZT and half a dozen other drugs, which is why you’re so happy stuffing your face with the kind of drek you wouldn’t dream of eating back home. Kind of frags your body that way” Streak grinned. “You’ll sleep ten, twelve hours a night for a week or two as well. Trust me. Oh, and it’ll turn your piss green, but that’s always a good party trick if you can do it. If I was a bug, I’d avoid you like the plague.”

He leant back and laughed loudly. “Whoops, mixed metaphor. You know what I mean.”

“Fine,” Geraint said, having indeed swallowed a disturbingly large number of oddly shaped tablets at Streak’s behest before breakfast and then wondered whether he should show such naive trust. The hypo, at least, he knew had come from a hermetically sealed pack; it was the same pack he’d used a few times previously, prior to business jaunts to the Far East.

“Then let’s go. No point in wasting any more time.”

They paid their bill, headed through the small concourse to the VIP and private-passenger lounge, and made their way slowly to their small plane. The last week of their lives had seemed to hold so many plane journeys. taxi rides, and car trips that they were beginning to get homesick in their various ways-not that any of them was actually aware of it. What they all felt more than anything was relief that, at last, they were going to meet the man who’d caused them, one way or another, so much trouble.

They’d already been followed by more than one group of people, and been attacked by at least two of them. They’d also eluded at least two other groups of runners set on their tails by other corps who knew that Michael and his friends had some kind of head start. They’d missed only one tail, which was not entirely surprising for he did, after all, get immediate updates on all information Michael sent back to Renraku. Since Michael had already extracted a six figure sum in expenses and fees from Renraku, he thought he had to give them some justification for that, and some account of his work. So it hadn’t been too difficult to trace him.

The spy made his report and asked for instructions. He was told to wait for reinforcements and told which plane to wait for.

“Frag, that’s military issue. I don’t know if we can land in that thing,” he balked.

The voice on the other end of the line was calm but steely. “Not to worry. We have records of the construction and very recent satellite confirmation of structural integrity,” his boss said in the strangled vocabulary of the corporate executive. “Three craft will be despatched.”

“Three?” The spy was incredulous. That meant the best part of two hundred paratroops and auxiliary military being flown into the place. Since they were supposed to be hunting a lone individual, this seemed to be overkill, to put it mildly.

“The locals may be hostile.”

“Oh, come on, they’re just primitives with bloody hunting rifles!”

“Don’t be so patronizing. You know, your last profile suggested you might have latent racist tendencies.”

“Don’t sell me that crap,” the man said with some feeling. “Twenty of these guys could take out a bunch of hijackers on a Boeing and you’re sending in two hundred? What the frag is going down here? What are you sending me into?”

His suspicion was not unjustified. His superior paused for a moment before reassuring the man and smoothing his ruffled feathers.

“Don’t worry Johanssen. Were just taking all due precautions. You do know, after all, something of what is at stake here”

“But what about Sutherland?”

“Don’t harm him unless it’s absolutely unavoidable. The same for the Welshman. He’s a Brit noble and any trouble there could be extremely bad publicity.”

“The others?”

“If they get in your way, remove them.”

A pause. “I need formal warranty of all negotiating latitude that I have,” Johanssen said at last. “What we can offer the man, if force fails.”

“Force is not going to fail.”

“Of course not. Fifty tons of black ice failed but two hundred goons will work. You know, it just might now.”

“We’ll deal with that if the need arises. You have this direct encrypted link to me and I’m available twenty-four hours a day.”

Johanssen tapped off the telecom. He’d thought that tracking Sutherland, having managed to find him in Venice after losing him twice before, was all that he’d be asked to do until the call had come through from Chiba this morning. Now he was going to be accompanying two hundred or so Renraku troops on what looked like an orthodox single-target strike, and he just knew it was going to be a total disaster.

“It’s going to be near eighty even at this time of year, and thank your lucky stars the town’s on a river so it isn’t even bloody hotter,” Streak shot back at them over his shoulder from the pilot seat.

Though they’d taken the medicines they needed, had the sunblock they needed, and the weaponry they hoped they wouldn’t need, they didn’t really have hot-weather clothing. The elf had, however, given them copious amounts of talcum powder with which to dose themselves to prevent what he unpleasantly termed ‘bollock rot’ from excessive sweating. Exposing flesh to the sun to keep cool would mean more insect bites, despite the best efforts of all the repellent one could smear on, and some risk of sunburn for the fairer among them.

“Just what are we going to say when we get there?” Geraint mused, staring down at the featureless sands of the Saudi Arabian desert.

“That’s a good question,” Michael said. “My guess is that our man is going to have some kind of agenda of his own. He’s going to want something.”

“I thought we knew what he wanted,” Geraint put in. “A very, very large sum of money.”

“That’s what he asked for, yet it doesn’t make sense that it’s all he wants. Why are we playing this game?”

“Hmm,” was all the Welshman could manage.

“So when we get out of the plane and find our Leo lookalike, we’ve got to figure out a way to make sure he’s not holding all the cards.”

“What do we have?”

“Little more than our native wit and intelligence I’m afraid.”

“We’re buggered then,” said Streak cheerfully. “ETA twenty minutes. Not a rocket in sight. Thank heavens for that. No worries.”

“We don’t have parachutes,” Michael observed.

“Yeah, but we’ve got sonic antimissile rockets. Never fly without them.”

“Do they work?”

“Yup. Or, I should say they worked on this baby the couple of times they were needed.”

“Do you really think we’re going to get shot at coming in?” Michael asked earnestly.

Streak laughed heartily. “Nah, I don’t think so. Latest update from Jane’s says there’s nothing too close to where we’re going. It’s lively down in Basra, but we’re well away from that drekhole.”

Events proved him right. As they began the descent to a runway that was little more than a parched strip of reddened soil, everyone in the group felt the tension knotting inside them. It wasn’t fear for their safety, but the excited hope that they might at last be at the end of the trail.

The wheels of the small plane bounced a few times along the bumpy runway. Streak deliberately perpetrating some mischief among his passengers with cries of “Whoa!” and “Oh no!”, as if something serious might actually be happening. Finally, somewhat shaken and apprehensive, his passengers tottered out of the aircraft. To their surprise, a Rolls Royce, gleaming silver and gray in the brilliant sun, was standing by the huts that passed for airport buildings. With his arms crossed, dressed for all the world like an English chauffeur, the man they knew as Salai was lounging against the front door of the car. He waved to them cheerfully, as if welcoming old clients.

“You are expected,” he said.

Streak drew his Predator from his jacket and advanced on the man.

“Now, you little fragger, let’s see who our blackmailer is. Take me to your master!” he growled.

The young man laughed. From the buildings behind him, forty or fifty men, armed with positively prehistoric carbines and rifles, emerged to form a very wide circle.

“My friends have slightly antiquated technology, but I think you will find that, by sheer force of numbers, they exceed your capability,” Salai said evenly. “There really is no need for this whatsoever. Demonstrations of such puerile machismo on your part only leave you lower in my estimation than you previously were, if that is possible. Now do me the honor of getting into the back of this extremely comfortable vehicle, which is far better than you deserve, for you all have a meeting to attend.”

Streak shrugged his shoulders, pocketed the weapon, and called out rather needlessly to the others, who’d been in full earshot.

“He says get in the car. What do you reckon?”

“I reckon we get in the car,” Michael decided for them

Everyone followed him. This time there was no problem fitting the seven of them into the back of the spacious limo. A thick glass partition separated them from Salai, and it appeared to be entirety soundproof since he did not respond to their queries. However, a loudspeaker in the back of the limo permitted him to pass messages of his own.

“Your journey won’t be long and I trust it will be comfortable. No iced champagne in a silver bucket for Lord Llanfrechfa, I fear. You must understand the difficulties one encounters in such a remote location.”

When they asked him why they were in such a remote location, they got no reply and swiftly realized the young man wouldn’t respond to interrogation.

“I’m not at all happy with this,” Streak bristled. “We could be going anywhere.”

“If he’d wanted to harm us, he had all those guys at the airport,” Michael pointed out.

“True, but I still don’t like sitting around on me arse waiting for ten tons of crap to fall on me head,” Streak announced.

“I could have handled them,” Juan said evenly. He had dispensed with the usual heavy jacket and his almost grotesque cyberarm was all too apparent.

“Well, maybe,” Michael said in an irritated tone, “but we’re here to talk.”

“Well, bufldrek away, Mister Negotiator,” Juan said evenly. “Better than getting shot at, I guess.”

As they made their way along the appalling road, the car bumped and bounced far less than it should have, providing excellent testimony to the skill of the Rolls Royce engineers and their suspension systems. Now and then they passed straggles of people, with their donkeys and carts and baskets and homes, until eventually they saw the building in the distance.

The dome structure had what seemed to be silvered or smoked glass atop it, and it looked like an observatory some corporate or military interest might have constructed on the moon. Its futuristic and hi-tech appearance contrasted startlingly with the humble, simple nature of everything else in the place as they reached the outskirts of the town itself.

“What the frag is that?”

“And how the hell was it kept secret?”

“It was kept secret,” Salai announced to them, proving that he could converse with them when he wished to do so, “because the local people are very, very loyal and do not speak to outsiders.”

“But satellite systems would have detected this.”

“They can be dealt with,” Salai said offhandedly. “It’s not difficult to crack them.”

“I suppose if you can crash into the megacorps, then that wouldn’t be so difficult,” Michael tried as a gambit This time he got no reply.

“This seems too easy, too quiet,” Michael fretted after their attempts to grill Salai got them nowhere. “We can’t just turn up and meet the man here. Something’s got to go wrong somehow. It doesn’t feel right.”

“Feel right?” Kristen smiled. “I don’t usually hear you talk like that, Michael.”

“I’m not usually in this kind of situation.”

“Where you’re not in control.”

“When I have no control whatsoever.”

The conversation was cut short as the car came to a halt before the domed structure, and Salai hopped out to open the rear doors for them.

“Oh, and don’t wave that silly gun at me,” he told Streak in a bored voice. “I don’t need men at my back here. One false move and you’ll have the flesh stripped from your bones by spirits in a second.”

“He’s not lying,” Serrin said flatly. He’d been as self-absorbed and quiet as he had been all day, thoughts and theories spinning in his head, but he took note of the presences here and warned Streak not to step out of line. Geraint, too, could sense the strong magical presence of the place. though no magician, he had some latent psychic gift, and something this strong he could sense. He was uneasy.

The automatic doors of the building opened, but before Salai could show them in, a small group of local men rushed toward them, one of them grabbing Michael’s arm as he walked toward the door.

“Is this not a great time? Are you with the prophet?’ the man said eagerly, his eyes wide with near-rapture. Astonished, Michael could only mumble some inane pleasantry and bolt for the door like a rabbit for its hole.

“What the frag-”

“This way,” Salai said with no word of explanation. They got into the elevator and descended some unknown distance before the doors swished open again to reveal the neat, cool, air-conditioned corridors of a subterranean complex.

“How the hell did you build this out here?” Michael asked, astounded.

“These people have been working on it for nearly twenty years,” Salai said slowly. “They really are faithful. They have been for a very, very long time.”

“The Mandaeans, you mean,” Serrin said lightly, as if it were an offhand observation.

“Yes,” Salal answered him with a gleam in his eye. “So you have begun to form a picture.”

“I think I finally realize the importance of the image outside the basilica.”

“Ah, that was a fine work. My master can craft great illusion-illusion that is great because it reveals the truth. So you think you know, then.”

“No,” the elf said slowly, “but I think I’ve learned not to ask the wrong questions.”

Salai stopped and looked at him hard. “I may have underestimated you,” he said. “Perhaps you will be ready for the move beyond. You’ve put your finger on the Johannite heresy.”

“I read about it,” Serrin confessed. It had only been a recent acquaintance.

“What on earth are you two talking about?” Michael demanded.

“It’s the belief that John the Baptist was the true divine figure,” Serrin said. “The people here have always believed that. Their sacred text is the Book of John. It was the image in the photo ID from the airport, the raised finger. ‘Remember John’. It’s something to do with this belief. That’s why we’re here. It’s the only thing about Ahvaz that’s singular. The cult is very small.”

“Good, you’re still only halfway there,” Salai said with the relief of someone who’s found that a bright and thoughtful child was not, after all, more intelligent than he or she ought to be. And they may be few in number, but one faithful and loyal man is worth more than a hundred fainthearts. Isn’t that true, Mister Mercenary?”

He looked at Streak and the elf saw him as someone not half so foppish and supercilious as he’d taken him to be.

“Too true, mate,” the elf said. “Well, now where?”

“To meet my master. But I cannot permit any form of weaponry. That means, I regret, that our fine friend here”-he looked disapprovingly at Juan-will have to remain outside. I cannot allow that thing,” and he pointed to the cyberarm, “inside a room with my master.”

“Of course,” Michael said. He handed over his own gun, and told the others to do the same.

“I don’t like this,” Streak growled. “I feel naked.”

“Get used to it,” Michael told him. “We have no choice. We’re not here to be threatened or harmed.”

“Far from it. You are called as witnesses,” Salai said with a returned air of annoying superciliousness.

“Bugger that. When they knock on the door it’s definitely time to get the Predator out,” Streak growled.

“I hardly meant Jehovah’s witnesses,” Salai said impatiently. “Nothing could be less apt, under the circumstances.”

“And now enough of this. If you’re ready, it’s time to meet my master and behave with the deference he deserves.”

Michael already had whoever they were going to meet tagged as a serious nutcase. Brilliant, obviously, but the man gibbering about the Prophet outside made him think they were about to meet someone with some very serious delusions indeed. He couldn’t know that the belief was useful to that very person, and one he allowed to remain unchallenged not least because it gave comfort to simple people who had, in return, given him sweat, labor, and love for many years now.

The internal doors down the corridor swung open. They were made of smoked glass and revealed nothing inside the room, so when what lay beyond them was revealed, the newcomers did not have the benefit of forewarning, and they were astounded by the scene before them.

The figure sat with his back to them in a high-backed chair, only the long, flowing gray hair visible to them, save for his long-fingered hands resting on the arms of the chair. The walls were covered with designs and sketches, finely rendered, apparently blueprints for optical systems of extraordinary complexity. On the desk before the figure was what had to be a cyberdeck, though it was unlike any they’d ever seen. It made the finest customized Fairlight look like a child’s toy. There was not a right-angle on it. It was sculpted, apparently of ivory or something similar, and had fluted edges and the eerie, unreal hyperreality of some alien artifact. It looked like it could only ever exist inside the extreme geometrical perfection of the Matrix, not out here in a real world of chaotic imperfections. Pearly light glowed around it, and in the near-darkness of the room it seemed for a moment that a reflection of that light covered the head of the seated figure like a halo. The nimbus winked out of existence and the figure turned around, the chair swiveling through a hundred and eighty degrees.

My God, Michael thought, this is the finest cosmetic job I’ve ever seen in my life. Forget the supermodels and the simsense stars, this is an absolutely perfect replica. Younger, of course. The photo ID wasn’t decked at all.

Staring at them, quietly and gravely and with his hands folded gently in his lap, was a person who for all the world was the perfect image of Leonardo da Vinci.