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Yard, yet he doubted that.
When she was a few feet from the stable door, he eased out from behind
the wagon and poked the barrel of his stun gun into her back.
Dan had seen what was left of the vast Westminster Abbey rising up out
of the fog. The remains of the Gothic structure lay dead ahead across
a wide, weedy field that was pocked with craters and dotted with
scrubby brush and a few stunted trees. Most of its nearest tower was
gone and there were great gaps in the stone walls.
Dozens of sooty pigeons were circling the abbey in a restless way.
Ludd held up his hand and halted. "Bollocks," he muttered,
moving behind a gnarled tree midway across the field.
Angel stopped, too, yanking Dan over beside him. "Something's bloody
wrong." He was squinting up at the pigeons as they circled in the
foggy sky.
Whipping out his knife, Ludd said, "Something's gone and got them
bleeding birds all excited." Uneasiness sounded in his voice.
"I'll slip closer," offered Angel, letting go of Dan, "to see what's
going on."
Ludd shook his head. "No, you stay here with the ponce," he ordered.
"I'll do the bloody reconnoitering."
"Hell, I'm smaller and quicker."
"Stick here." Ducking low, Ludd started a zigzag course across the
field.
Dan asked Angel, "What do you think's wrong?"
He was watching his buddy move closer to the ruined abbey.
"Could be most anything," he answered as the fog swallowed up Ludd.
"But those pigeons being agitated like that, it definitely means
something must be going on wrong at our camp." "Westminster is your
camp?" "I just said that, didn't I now?"
"But I'm looking for the Westminster Gang."
"That's not too smart, since we don't take kindly to visitors,"
said Angel. "Or tourists."
"Is there a girl named Silverhand Sally with you?"
"How'd you know that name?"
"Somebody told me to ask for her. Is she here?"
"Sal might be or she might not." He turned to scrutinize Dan.
"Why do you want our SalT'
"Because I'm hoping she can help me find a friend of mine girl named
Nancy Sands."
"Ar, I see."
"Do you know Nancy? Is she at the abbey?"
Before Angel could answer, there was a shout from up ahead in the fog.
"Been a damned raid!" yelled Ludd through cupped hands. "Get your
arse over here, Angel. There's a lot of people dead."
"Now here's what you do," suggested Jake. "Very slowly and carefully,
turn around. Then explain why the hell you've been tailing me."
The pretty, auburn-haired young woman was smiling when she faced him.
"I underestimated you," she said, rubbing the toe of her boot across
the imitation flagstones of the inn courtyard. "You'll have to forgive
me. I guess taking care of myself over in the gang zones has made me a
trifle too confident."
"You're not with the police."?"
"No, the Welfare Squad," she explained. "I'm Marj Lofton." "Oh,
so?"
"Beth Kittridge suggested that I look you up."
"Really?"
"Didn't she tell you about me? Beth implied that she had. We're old
friends from SoCal Tech days." In the stable one of the robot
horses whinnied.
Jake took a careful step backwards, keeping his stun gun aimed at her.
"Show me your ID packet."
"Sure." She slid her hand into a jacket pocket. "I was going to
introduce myself to you in a minute. Honest."
He accepted the proffered IDs, glanced through them. "Why trail me at
all?"
"Showing off. I was anxious to impress you."
After handing the packet back, Jake slipped his gun away. "Why?"
Marj said, "Beth told me, when she called a couple hours ago, that she
thought I might be able to help you. But she also warned me that
you're very independent, a true loner."
Jake grinned. "Nope, I'm actually a team player from way back," he
assured the young woman. "Thing is, I have to be captain of the team
and pick all my crew."
"Fair enough," Marj said. "Do you know for certain that your son's
over in gang territory?"
"There's a very strong possibility," he answered. "He's trying to find
his missing girlfriend and she's supposed to be holed up with the
Westminsters."
Frowning, Marj shook her head. "A very rough bunch," she observed.
"Why'd the girl pick them?"
"A friend of hers apparently runs with the gang. Kid they call
Silverhand Sally."
"Yes, I know Sal. For a while I even thought she might be
"You don't think that anymore?"
"Oh, it's still possible maybe, but the odds are getting longer." Jake
said, "I'd like to go over there soon as I can." "Could you use a
guide?"
"I could use a good one," Jake told her. "But I don't want anybody
who's trying too hard to impress me. Somebody who's more interested in
show boating than in getting the job done."
"I'm sorry I stalked you," she said. "Most days I'm not like that."
"When can we leave?" "I have to gather up some stuff for the
trip," Marj said. "Suppose I meet you at your hotel in two hours?"
"Okay, fine." He held out his hand.
Shaking it, she said, "I really am pretty good."
"I'm counting on that," he said.
The Parisian night was crisp and clear. Hands in the pockets of the
stylish thermocoat he'd purchased earlier in the day, Gomez was
strolling along beside the dark Seine. He'd found over the years that
solitary walks sometimes helped him think.
"Muy friend," he remarked to himself. "Being a crackerjack
international investigator has its disadvantages. One of which is
frigid climes."
On the night river a music barge was slowly sailing by. A band of
brightly uniformed robot musicians was playing a solemn Xmas carol. The
golden glitter of their uniform trim sparkled and flashed in the
illumination from the boat's multi color tube-lights.
Gomez continued along parallel to the boat for a few minutes. Then,
turning his back to it, he walked away from the river and headed in the
direction of his hotel.
"I have a hunch that various events, including some of what's afoot in
England with Jake's offspring, ought to tie together," he reflected.
"But, madre, I still don't see quite how."
He chose a different route than the one he'd traveled on his way to the
Seine and just off the Place du Chfitelet he spotted someone who looked
vaguely familiar. The man was walking hurriedly along, coming toward
Gomez on the opposite side of the street.
"Who the hell is that hombre?" the detective asked himself, feigning
indifference.
Then, snapping his fingers without taking his hand out of his pocket,
he realized who it was.
The man hurrying now up the stone steps of a narrow apartment building
across the way was Bram Wexler, the head of the Paris office of the
International Drug Control Agency and the guy Natalie Dent had just
been showing him pictures of. He was the one their client's late
husband had suspicions about.
Gomez glanced, quickly and casually, around. He spotted a recessed
doorway that was very sparsely lit. He entered it, striving to look
innocent, and took up a watchful position.
The night grew colder.
Gomez turned up the controls on his coat, but then the garment started
giving off a burning plaz smell. He turned the controls down again.
Fifteen chill minutes later, the IDCA man came out of the building. He
was accompanied by a plump woman of forty-some years. The two of them
walked to the end of the block and got into a parked land car
"Chihuahua," commented Gomez. "I know that lady. In fact I once
enjoyed a broken leg because of her. What the devil is she doing in
Paris? And why's she hobnobbing with this lad?"
Gomez was hunched in the vidphone alcove, a glass of ale in his left
hand, talking to a robot. He was in the living room of the suite at
the Louvre Hotel and the got was in the Data Center of the Cosmos
Detective Agency in Greater Los Angeles.
"Nothing out of the ordinary on Dr. Hilda Danenberg," the silvery [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]