House of the Sun

18

And so, yet again, I got to ride in a fragging Rolls Phaeton. It was almost too much deja fragging vu for me to handle. If the driver had run down the bullet-proof partition, turned round to me, and grinned with Scott's face, I'd have taken it in stride and offered him a fragging drink.

Once we were off the TIC facility grounds-the corp building looked just as wiz from outside as it did from in- the driver wanted to know where to take me. That took some deep thought. All the places I'd already flopped were blown, one way or another, and my invitation to a meet with Chantal Monot had interrupted my search for another. I chewed on it for a few minutes while the driver "orbited" Kapiolani Park. Finally, I gave up, and did what I probably should have done from the outset. I asked the driver.

Frag, it's not that illogical, is it? Cab drivers know all the best bars, the best restaurants, the best flops, and the best places to get into deep trouble. And when you get right down to it, a corp chauffeur's not that much different from a hack driver, is he?

I laid out my requirements to the chauffeur-low profile, no questions asked-and let him think on it. Not so much as a minute later he nodded his head, and we took off in the direction of Waikiki.

(Hold the phone: Wasn't getting the chauffeur involved a major breach of security? Well, yeah, talking solely in terms of fieldcraft, it was a drek-headed move. Speaking practically, though? If Monot and her colleagues at TIC wanted me dead, I'd be dead. If they wanted to know where I went, they'd had several hours to plant a tracer-inside some body cavity, if they wanted to make it secure-that I'd never be able to find. The way I had it figured, getting the chauffeur to help me out didn't increase my exposure any. In fact, it decreased it, by saving me from blundering into something unwelcome as I'd done the night before.)

The Phaeton rolled west on Monsarrat, then turned right onto Kalakaua Avenue. Into the gleaming heart of Waikiki we drove, then the chauffeur cut right and cruised down a ramp into an underground parking lot. The security guard in his little booth flipped my driver a quick salute and raised the blast-proof barrier. Without slowing, the limo rolled on into the parking concourse.

We pulled up right in front of a bank of elevators. A big crest identified the place as New Foster Tower.

I rapped on the transpex partition and gave the driver a "what the frag now? look.

"Ms. Monot always has a number of rooms reserved here in TIC's name," the chauffeur replied via the intercom, "to handle unexpected visitors." (I reckoned I certainly fit that categorization…) "Room nineteen-oh-five is yours for as long as you need it."

I raised an eyebrow at that. Once he'd figured out where he was going, it wouldn't have taken the driver much effort to link the car's computer system with the hotel's and check me in, but… "What about the key?" I asked.

"It's already programmed for your thumbprint," the driver answered.

Oh, really? That meant Monot had scanned my thumbprint into the TIC computer system while I was sleeping off the narcodart, and my records were accessible from a mobile computer system, i.e., the limo. The driver had obviously contacted the TIC central system, and had it download my print data to the security system at New Foster Tower. Efficient as all hell.

But I didn't like it, not one bit. Throughout my career, I've gone to great lengths to keep personal data flags like prints out of corporate records. I can think of too many ways to frag with someone's life once you've got access to flags like that. Of course, there wasn't squat I could do about it at the moment. When I had some time-and some cred-to spare, I'd have to make arrangements for new fingerprints.

I pushed the limo door open and climbed out, heading for the elevator. I turned at the soft whine of a power window behind me.

"Here, I was told to give you these back." The driver tossed the two objects, which I caught a little clumsily. My deputy's badge from King Kamehameha V. And, more important, my Manhunter. I drew breath to thank him, but he'd already powered the window back up and was pulling away. Just as well-I didn't have any cash to tip him anyway.

Room 1905 at New Foster Tower wasn't anywhere near as luxurious as my room at the Diamond Head corporate hostelry. That still left it one giant step above anywhere else I'd stayed in my life, though. The entire convenience suite at the Ilima Joy would have fit into the bathroom-fragging near, at least-and while the bed wasn't quite big enough for a Roman-style orgy, I couldn't imagine that I'd have any opportunity to be disappointed by the fact.

The view was nice, too-a southwestern exposure, looking out over Mamala Bay. The hotels on the other side of Kalakaua Avenue-the ones that actually lined the waterfront-were too tall to give me a view of Waikiki Beach itself. They were "terraced," though; the buildings between me and the ocean were lower than New Foster Tower… as, presumably, the ones behind the Tower were taller. (Good civic planning there, now that I thought about it.) That meant that, even if I couldn't see the beach, I could still see the ocean, in its impossible blue. As I watched, a huge ocean-going trimaran-forty-five meters along the waterline, if it was a millimeter-was outbound under full sail, its garishly colored spinnaker seeming to burn with its own internal light. For the first time in a long time, I actually saw Hawai'i through the eyes of a tourist rather than as a shadow-slag running for his life.

It didn't last, though. Biz was pressing. Doss at New Foster Tower or no, my nuts were still in a very tight vise. It was time to do something about mat.

Room 1905's telecom didn't measure up to the one at the Diamond Head hostelry either, but that didn't matter. I didn't need any more than the most rudimentary of features at the moment. Jacking in ray Quincy-modified 'puter, I quickly established my own equivalent of a blind relay-a simple little subversion of the telecom's programming so it wouldn't append an accurate "originator address" to any messages I sent. Once I was happy with my attempts at security, I placed a call.

Jacques Barnard picked up almost at once. (Didn't the slag ever do anything but hang by a phone?) His face clouded up the moment he recognized me, and he opened his mouth to bitch, but I overrode him. "I want out, Barnard," I almost yelled. "Now, chummer, okay? You got me into this, now you get me out."

The corporator blinked wordlessly for a moment; I guess senior veeps or whatever don't get screamed at very often. Then his brows drew together in a nasty-looking scowl, and he snarled, "You've got a lot of gall-"

"That's not all I've got, you slot," I broke in again. "You owe me, okay? You said so, and I'm holding you to it. I've found out a few things over here about Yamatetsu's operations that might attract a little unwanted attention, karimasu-ka?" That was pure bluff, of course. I didn't have any dirt on Yamatetsu-nothing I could use, at least. But Barnard didn't have to know that.

Not that the gambit worked anyway. His nasty scowl became an equally nasty smile. "I doubt it, Mr. Montgomery. I seriously doubt it. And as to debts? Well, I consider any beholding I might have felt toward you to have been voided when you broke security."

That set me back a little. "Play that one back," I told him. "'Broke security'?"

Barnard looked almost pityingly at me. "I expected better of you, Mr. Montgomery." And with that, he reached out to cancel the connection.

"Wait," I barked. "Just wait a tick, okay?" Barnard's face shifted into an expression of much put-upon patience, but at least he didn't hang up. "I'm not running a scam here," I told him as sincerely as I could. "I don't know what the frag you're talking about."

"I seriously doubt that."

"It's true, frag it all," I shouted back. 'Tell me what the frag you're talking about. Then, if I did 'break security,' I'll snivel and crawl and kiss your hoop at midday in downtown Kyoto, or whatever the hell you want. But at the moment I honestly don't know what the frag you're accusing me of."

Barnard gave a long-suffering sigh. 'The Ali'i, Mr. Montgomery," he said wearily. "Your meeting with the Ali'i. It was supposed to be confidential." He hesitated. "Or, at least, the fact that you were serving as my agent was supposed to be confidential.

"Yet what did you do? Virtually the moment you left the Iolani Palace, you started spreading the word that you were a corporate emissary, conveying personal messages from the Corporate Court to King Kamehameha V. Do you have any understanding of how damaging that has been?"

I shook my head. "Bulldrek, I did that!" I shot back. "Pure, unadulterated kanike, okay? I didn't tell anyone. Look somewhere else for your security leak, goddamn it."

Barnard's voice was deceptively quiet, and his expression had settled into a cold, emotionless mask. "But I did look elsewhere, Mr. Montgomery. With no success whatsoever. You are the only possible leak."

"Bulldrek I am!" I shouted again.

"If not you, then who?"

"What about Ho himself?"

"Ho?" Barnard laughed aloud at that. "That's the last thing Ho would leak. If the rival faction in the legislature plays their cards right-and there's no reason to expect that they won't-he stands to lose his throne… and possibly more. Try again, Mr. Montgomery, hmm?"

"Christ, I don't…" I pulled up in midbluster. Maybe I did know. "Do you know someone named Quentin Harlech?" I asked.

"The name doesn't mean anything to me."

"Then maybe you should run it through your 'puters and your databases and your legions of fragging informants, Barnard. I'd lay long odds that Harlech's the one who blew your op." Yes… as I spoke, I grew steadily more convinced that it had been the strange elf. After all, hadn't he as good as admitted that he'd blown my cover? I hadn't known what he was yapping about at the time, but now I thought I had it chipped.

Barnard's expression made it clear that he wasn't even a little convinced mat I was telling the truth. But at least he didn't seem to be quite so convinced I'd ratted him out.

"I'll run the name," he said slowly.

"While you're at it," I suggested, "why don't you tell me what the frag's going on here? Okay, so the word's out King Kam's talking to the megacorps. So what?"

Barnard sighed again, and shook his head. "Haven't you been paying any attention whatsoever to the political situation in the islands?"

"Like I told you before, I've had other things on my mind recently," I said dryly.

He didn't dignify that with a response. "Gordon Ho's position depends on a kind of balancing act, you might call it," he went on as if I hadn't even spoken. "The megacorporations on one hand, certain factions within his own government on the other."

"Na Kama'aina," I put in, just to show I wasn't totally brain-fried.

"Na Kama'aina, yes. If the Na Kama'aina faction can prove to the populace that their king is toadying to the megacorporations, the people will remove him from power. If, on the other hand, the corporations are dissatisfied with Ho's efforts to maintain a stable business climate, they will remove him from power."

I nodded: pineapple plutocrats all over again, neh? "So what's going on?"

"The former, of course," Barnard said flatiy. "Events have obviously been manipulated to stir up anticorporate sentiments-among the people as a whole, but more important among various militant groups…"