Runaways nfe-16 Read online

  Roy never then nor since saw anything of his employers' faces. He never heard anything but voices which he was sure had been so completely electronically altered that there was no way he would ever recognize the originals. He had answered their questions with carefully concealed impatience-for they were a lot of the same ones he had already answered on the questionnaire, about his home life (nonexistent) and his relationships with his relatives (ditto) and his family income and so on-and finally one of the three voices which had been speaking to him said simply, "You'll do."

  "All you'll have to do for us," said another of the voices, "is go places, and either drop things off and leave them, or pick things up and bring them back. You finish the job, you get paid. Pay varies, but we start at…" and he named a figure which actually made Roy blink and think he had misheard… but he hadn't. "Can we work together?"

  "Yes," Roy had said instantly. And that had been the end of that meeting, but the beginning of what would be many brief exchanges with the third voice, the Gruff Voice, the voice on the 'phone with the source that always stood just out of video pickup.

  The work had turned out to have its elements of drudgery about it, but it was still mostly worth it, though there were annoying moments… like this one. Roy passed. By the restaurant now, just glancing in as he went by the windows and looked in at the golden stripped stone of the walls, and the couples eating and laughing together or single people sitting alone, reading as they ate or drank their wine. He walked slowly, so as to let the heat from the tall gas heaters at least drift briefly over him before he headed out from under the arcades to cross catty-corner to the other side of the square. Roy's stomach rumbled at the scent of steak and onions being sauteed inside.

  Later, he thought, and then smiled the foolish smile of someone who catches himself talking to his own guts. But this was lonely work, in its way. None of the people you met for pickups or drop-offs was ever particularly glad to see you after the first moment of your appearance. Mostly, whether you were picking up or dropping off, they wanted you to go away as quickly as possible. After that, all that was left for you was the inevitable cheap hotel room- for you dared not expose yourself to attention by paying for a good one-and fast food wolfed hastily in train stations or bus shelters. Roy had become a connoisseur of this particular style of cheap-and-cheerful eating, and prided himself on knowing the location of the best and cheapest tapas place in Chamartin station in Madrid, the last coal-fired chippie in Dublin, the immense and inexpensive bhaji booth at the Wednesday food market in the Hauptbahnhof in Zurich, and the open-air frites kiosk in Brugge that had both the best "French" fries in Belgium, and (bizarrely) a Net-access booth attached to it around the back. But even at places like these, it was Roy's business not to stand out, not to become memorable. And all of this was interleaved with endless legs of travel-almost always public transport, paid for with cash whenever you could find a form of transport that still accepted cash, or otherwise, the cheapest possible flights on the "company" debit card they'd given him… cramped in with all the other denizens of cattle class, trying to read or sleep through the noise of crying babies, and once again, trying not be noticed.

  But it still isn yt all that bad a life, Roy thought as he came under the shelter of the arcades once again. He made good money, and had put aside a fair amount of it in the private account he'd established on one of his trips over here, in a little town in the Schwaebische Alps, south of Stuttgart. The thought of that slowly growing lump sum gave him a lot of satisfaction, after all his mother's insistence that she didn't want to give him money because "he'd just spend it." And now Roy was, to a certain degree, his own boss. He could take time off from this work whenever he liked, and stay at the shelter, or go somewhere else to have a holiday by himself… always making sure not to be noticed. The thought occurred to him, as it did occasionally, of how terrific it was going to be when he finally had enough money piled up to that he could just take it all home and show it to his mother and silence her once and for all, a lump that would plainly mean its owner didn't have to even think about work for about ten years. But that won't be for a good while, he thought. Let her worry. The peace and quiet of not having to listen to her complaining all the time is wonderful…

  Roy sighed, pausing to look in another of the windows, this one belonging to a chocolatier and full of exquisitely decorated and ornamented sugar in a hundred different guises. If there was a problem with the work, that was it: the eternal necessity to move lightly on these errands, to * leave no "footprints" behind. And he also wondered fairly often what kinds of things were being dropped off or picked up by him that couldn't more easily be transmitted on the Net, in virtual meetings. Information, probably.. Though information can be encrypted.. Roy never went much further down that line of inquiry, though. It wasn't his business, and more to the point, he got the very strong feeling that it wouldn't be safe. He could lose this very nice, lucrative line of work… and something worse might happen. Better not to even think about it privately, let alone out loud to Jill or anyone else.

  A sudden spate of frantic barking brought his head up again. Down at the end of the arcade, having just come into it from down the square, was the woman in the fur coat, the one with the dogs. The collies were pulling her along as energetically as they had been before. One of them suddenly broke loose from her, and she dropped her alligator purse.

  Roy's eyes widened a little, since that was exactly the signal he had been told to look for. The purse came open as it hit the ground and sprayed stuff everywhere-

  change, little cosmetics cases, a gold pen, a wallet. But Roy was briefly distracted by the dog, which came running at him with absolute delight and an idiot grin all over its face. He just managed to snag its wildly flapping leash as the dog went plunging past him, and braced himself so that it came up sharp, with a yelp.

  He headed back toward the woman with her dog, slipping one hand into his pocket as he went, and as soon as he came up close to her Roy went down on one knee and started helping her pick up the things that had fallen out of her purse. "Merci, m'sieur," she said as he pressed the dog's leash back into her hand. "Je suis desolee, mon chien est tres mechant-" She must have picked up on Roy's bewildered expression, for then she said, "I beg your pardon, sir, I am desolated, my dog, she is-I do not have the word, but she wants a boy dog very much."

  Roy had to laugh at that. "It's okay," he said, "she didn't hurt me."

  "I am glad," the lady said. "And very much I thank you-" She took the purse from him as they got up, glanced into it, and saw what he had been careful to put into it while shielding it with his body from any possible onlooker. "Yes, everything is there, I must get this clasp fixed again, twice I have had that done and it is no better-"

  They were both standing up again now, and Roy brushed himself off a little, and was rather surprised when the lady suddenly put her arm through his. "You are very kind to help me," she said, "and my car, it is right here, can I drop you?"

  He raised his eyebrows and couldn't help chuckling a little at the turn of phrase. "Uh," he said, not knowing quite how to react to one of his "drops" actually being interested in him after the job was done.

  "Also now there will be a message to send back," she said, "I can this way have a minute to give it to you? Yes?" She smiled at him.

  Maybe there are some human beings out here after all… "Uh, thanks," Roy said, "that's nice of you."

  "This corner," she said, and while the dogs pulled and bounced at the ends of their leashes in front of them, together they walked to the end of the arcade and out of the square, turning down another of the little side streets that fed into it. About half a block down a long black car was waiting, a VW-Mercedes, and as they approached, a man in a chauffeur's dark suit got out of the driver's seat and opened the back door for them.

  Without a second's hesitation the collies jumped into the backseat, and Roy smiled slightly at the sight of it as he got in after them. There was shed hair all over-this
lady's chauffeur ought to be smacked for letting the car go out this way. As she slipped in behind Roy, the chauffeur closed the door behind her and got into the driver's seat again. "Madame?"

  "The parking garage," she said. "He will be meeting us there, he will have the article ready. Ah, mechants, a bas. R

  The dogs, however, seemed to pay no attention to anything their mistress said to them, and kept trying to jump all over everything, so Roy caught them by their leashes again and held them still, while the lady went into her purse again and came up with a pad and a pen. "They are wicked," the lady said as she started to write, "they are very spoiled, they have an obedience course that cost a thousands francs, but do they become obedient, les nullos, mais non… "

  She chatted inconsequentially to Roy for a few minutes more while writing, with occasional pauses to scrutinize what she had written. Roy resisted the temptation to spend too much time looking at where the car was going. Sometimes it was better not to notice such things. He spent that short time looking at the woman, and wondering how he had ever thought her face hard. It lit up delightfully when she laughed, which was often, especially when she talked about her dogs. Roy wondered briefly what it might be like to spend time around such a woman, maybe even to get her to smile at you the way she smiled at the collies…

  The car turned into a driveway, and its front dipped downward. A moment later it was dark, and the lady smiled at him, just once directly, ripped the top leaf off the pad she had been writing on, and put the pad and pen away. "Alors," she said as the car came to a stop. "So now we are here."

  The chauffeur got out and came around the car to open the door for the lady: She stepped out. Roy got out after her. The parking garage was like any other-harsh fluorescent lights, ribbed antisqueal concrete on the floor under his feet as Roy straightened up, after getting out of the car, and looked around him. What made it unlike Roy's usual experience with parking garages was that the chauffeur standing there had now produced a small but deadly-looking sonic, and was pointing it at him.

  The man didn't speak, just gestured with the sonic at Roy, showing him the way he wanted Roy to move. Roy had seen this kind of thing before, and didn't panic. Some of his runner's clients were jumpy people, folks who were important either in the social or business communities, or more shadowy groupings about which Roy had his suspicions, and kept them to himself-criminal, intelligence, who knew what they were, some of them? His business was to deliver as promised, and keep his mouth shut.

  There was a brief exchange between the lady and the chauffeur in French, none of which Roy followed, but none of it sounded particularly hostile. The collies were bounding out of the car again, and the lady caught them by their leashes and kept them from running off. "Over this way," she said. "Here is your message. Jacques? Ah, Jacques, void le marmaille disponable… fe pouvre faiblard."

  Roy turned and found himself looking at a beige VW- Mercedes-the kind they used here a lot for taxis-with its trunk open, and standing near it, the biggest man he thought he had ever seen, easily seven feet tall, and not skinny, either, but a veritable giant with cropped hair, a dark face, a dark coat. Roy walked over to the car, not much liking the way this was going. If this guy's the driver, Roy thought, he must get pretty cramped behind the wheel..

  Whether he was the driver or not, Roy never found out, for the next thing he knew, the man had grabbed him by the shoulders and whirled him around. The chauffeur came from behind, grabbed Roy's wrists, and before he even had a chance to struggle, pulled them around behind him, crossed, and snugged a pair of readybinders tight around them. The lady stepped forward and slipped the note she had written into Roy's breast pocket, inside his winter jacket. For just a moment while she was close, he got a whiff of her perfume, a fragrance dark and sweet. And the next moment, struggling-though it was too late now-Roy was lifted up into the air without an effort by that big man and folded ungently down into the Mercedes's trunk… and the lid of the trunk closed above him, leaving him in complete darkness.

  It was hard to know how long the ride lasted. Roy lay there gulping again and again, ineffectively, his mouth dry with fear as the engine started and the car started to move. He tried to keep his wits about him, but it was hard. No matter what anyone said, no matter how he tried to convince himself otherwise, Roy knew that no one who stuffed you into the trunk of a car and drove off was very likely to want you to tell anybody about it afterward.

  For what must have been an hour or so, in ever- escalating terror, Roy could do nothing but lie there, unable to move much, and afraid to try to thump or bang inside the trunk to attract attention, for fear that it should make whatever bad thing was about to happen, happen even faster. The blackness was full of the smell of tire irons and old gasoline spills and the cheap carpet they put inside car trunks, and lying there with his face against the harsh carpet, Roy tried to do a hundred things. He tried to think of a way out, to make a plan, even tried to pray and found that he couldn't even do that. The fear was just too great. And it was almost a relief when finally the car stopped, and he heard the driver's side door open, and close, and after a moment, the door of the trunk opened. Now at last it's over…

  He looked up into the darkness, surprised. Somehow he had expected there would be daylight. What light there was was very faint, so that Roy saw only the faintest glint of it, bluish, off the blued-metal muzzle of what the driver held: and all relief and anger fled together in one last huge wash of fear. Suddenly everything was laid out plain before him, a long road that ended here and now, this second. Roy wished with all his heart that yesterday, or one of the days before, when there had still seemed to be endless tomorrows ahead, he had called his mother and just told her he was alive, and not to worry, so that if nothing else, she could have stopped wondering what had happened to him.

  She'd never know now…

  Chapter 2

  The sun was extremely hot on the back of Megan O'Malley's neck as she rode in a careful circle, eyes ahead of her, taking care about how she sat in the saddle as she came around toward the painted white top rail of the fence around the arena-a sight which, after three straight hours of this, was now causing her a mixture of apprehension and disgust. Her muscles ached, but that was the least of her problems. The biggest problem on her mind right now was underneath her, a problem called Alistair's Kingstown Walk Softly, known to his friends as Buddy, and to his detractors-of whom Megan was rapidly becoming one-as the Big Stick.*

  This was because he seemed to have a big stick, ramrod, or other such straight and inflexible implement stuck right down the middle of his spine. In a horse being trained for dressage-the art of riding a horse with seemingly effortless grace through complex steps and paces in the showring-this made for a problem, since one of the moves required of even beginners was to walk or canter gracefully and evenly in a circle. And at the moment Buddy didn't seem willing to bend his body into the slightest kind of curve. Nor was he terribly interested in walking in circles, either. Every time he got near one of the fence rails in the dressage arena, he tried to break out of the circle and follow it straight on.

  Now they were approaching the rail again, moving softly through the sawdust in what for the moment was a tolerable enough curve. Oh, please just do it right this time, just once, Megan thought, more in despair than in any hope that it would actually happen. She concentrated on keeping her seat correct and looking straight ahead, rather than down between the brainless creature's ears at the spot where she would love to take a club and whack him, and at just the right moment shifted her weight in the saddle just fractionally to the right, just so, the signal for Buddy to turn. Megan knew that she was doing it right, she knew it, and sure enough he altered his angle toward the rail just enough, and began to make the curve, continuing the circle-and then at the point when he should have started to curve away, took another step straight, and another, and another-

  Megan couldn't stand it. She reined him in and just sat there, looking around the arena, tryi
ng to find the patience to keep from saying all kinds of horrible things. Buddy stood there, chewing reflectively on his bit and looking completely unconcerned.

  "What happened?" Wilma said.

  "You saw! He just broke out of circle and started to go straight."

  "You shifted-"

  "I didn't! Not the wrong way, anyway." She let out a long exasperated breath, glancing around the sunny ring. "I swear," Megan said, "if I owned him, I'd sell this dumb cluck off to Amtrak and let them convert him for rails. He'd be more use as part of a freight train."

  Leaning against the rails on the far side of the arena, Wilma snickered, then pushed off and walked over to her. Megan glanced around the arena, a duplicate of the one where they would be riding at Potomac Valley over the weekend-a rectangle sixty meters long and forty meters wide, surrounded by white three-rail fencing a meter and a half high. Under the downpouring sunshine, covered bleachers where all too many spectators would be sitting ran down both "long" sides of the rectangle. And in front of those spectators she and Wilma would both ride out, one at a time, on Buddy, to do their Level 3 routines…

  And die horribly, because the horse has suddenly become a waste of time, Megan thought. But she didn't say it out loud. There was still a chance of a miracle, or that something had gone wrong here that wasn't wrong in the real world.

  Wilma came over to her, looked Buddy over. It was Megan's considered opinion that Wilma Christensen had more brains, as regarded matters equine, than any other rider she'd met since she got started sitting on top of horses. Wilma seemed to think good things about Megan, too. At least, they had hit it off instantly when they'd met a few years back, though they made something of an odd pair-Wilma short and thin compared to Megan's height and somewhat athletic build, Wilma blond and fair where Megan was tanned and brown. In any case, they had become inseparable at riding school, and later it had seemed obvious that they would start eventing together. But neither of us thought we'd wind up with a horse who's overnight turned into an idiot, Megan thought, and a "model" who seems to be doing the same thing…