Judas Unchained

“Does Hogan know? For Christ’s sake, Renne, I thought you’d dropped the whole Isabella thing.”

“I had. But Christabel Halgarth put Bernadette and Victor under surveillance as a favor for me, I didn’t even have to ask her. Both of them have been receiving and sending some encrypted messages, nothing too suspicious; but today Bernadette just dropped everything and came here. Halgarth security has her under surveillance at the Octavious hotel, which again is a strange choice for a socialite like Bernadette. We’re going to join them in the morning.” She waited for Tarlo to answer.

“Got us a hotel,” Vic said cheerfully. “Not very cheap, sorry.” He and Matthew shared a grin.

Renne waved a hand for silence. Her virtual vision showed her the link was still active. “Tarlo?”

“Yeah, hi, sorry. Do you need any help?”

“Not yet. But if we do, I’ll yell for you. And that’s a reciprocal.”

“Sure. Thanks. Okay, good luck.”

“Yeah, you, too,” she told him.

***

“Paula, we’ve got an interesting situation developing.”

“What is it, Hoshe?”

“I’m with Nadine and Jacob on Illuminatus, running the electronic surveillance on Tarlo while he goes after Beard. Now Gus and Isaiah have joined us; they’re monitoring Renne.”

“So both targets are on Illuminatus?”

“Yes. Renne arrived twenty minutes ago, following Bernadette Halgarth. As soon as Renne got here she called Tarlo, then five minutes later Tarlo called Bernadette. It was an encrypted message and routed through a onetime address, but for once we got lucky; we infiltrated scrutineer software into Bernadette’s hotel node as soon as Warren told me she was here. We haven’t managed to decrypt yet, but the message Tarlo sent is the one she received. It looks like Tarlo was warning her she’s under observation. There’s no other reason.”

“Tarlo. Damnit.”

“I’m sorry, Paula.”

“Not your fault. I knew it had to be one of them.”

“What do you want to do?”

“Keep a close eye on him and Bernadette. I’ll join you in a couple of hours.”

“Are you going to tell Renne?”

“Possibly. Our priority has to be getting Tarlo into custody. But I don’t want to scare off Bernadette until she’s contacted whoever she’s there to meet. This is our first real chance to penetrate the Starflyer agent network. Timing is going to be critical.”

“Tarlo’s going to be wetwired. Bernadette as well, probably.”

“Definitely. Don’t worry, my team will be armed.”

***

The room didn’t look like anything special, a simple cube of gray walls and a worn carpet. Two polyphoto strips in the ceiling made it brighter than it strictly needed to be. A single air-conditioning grille high above the malmetal door hissed away unobtrusively. There weren’t any sensors visible, but they had to be there somewhere.

Robin Beard sat on a cheap plastic chair with his feet up on the table that was bolted to the middle of the floor. He didn’t look particularly concerned that he’d been arrested. But then, Lucius thought, he’d been in custody so many times he was familiar with the routine. Say nothing and wait for the lawyer.

Lucius followed Tarlo into the interview room. The blond surfer gave Beard a friendly smile.

“You’re not a lawyer,” Beard said.

“Smart,” Tarlo said. “I like that. That’s going to be helpful for both of us.”

“You guys are really going to suffer for this,” Beard said. “I was walking through a garage and you restrained me for no valid reason with undue force. You didn’t even read me any rights.”

“That’s because you don’t have any,” Tarlo said.

Beard smiled.

“Sit down,” Tarlo said.

The smile flickered on Beard’s face. “I am—”

Tarlo’s fist swung fast, smashing into the small man’s nose. There was a crunch of bone breaking as the chair tipped back spilling him onto the floor, limbs all in a tangle. His head caught a nasty crack as he went down. “Jesus fucking Christ!” Beard wailed. One hand was cupping his nose, with a copious amount of blood leaking through his fingers; the other hand was probing the back of his skull. His eyes had watered.

Lucius had taken a half pace forward, then halted, unsure what to do. He glanced to the ceiling corner where one of the visual sensors was hidden. Nobody was calling him.

Tarlo grinned as he squatted down beside the mechanic. “Always hurts like a son of a bitch, doesn’t it? Busted my own nose a couple of times on a board, so I know.”

Beard glanced desperately at Lucius. “You saw that. You’re my witness.”

Lucius managed to let his gaze drift away. Tarlo had told him to say nothing, but this wasn’t what he was expecting.

“We couldn’t get hold of a good cop to work this routine properly,” Tarlo said. “They’re all out on the streets helping decent citizens in these troubled times. So we’re just going to have to do the bad cop, worse cop setup instead. Know what? The boys in the office, they’re running a pool on how long you can stand up to the beating before you crack. I’ve got fifty pounds on ten minutes, but I’m gonna be on the level with you here, buddy, I’m not even going to wait that long.” He drew a slim medical infuser patch from a pocket.