Without warning

‘No,’ sighed Jed. ‘You are this close to giving me a migraine. What are you, McCutcheon – Blackstone’s Lord Chief Assassin? His Witch Finder General? What is it exactly that you want from me?’

‘It’s not what I want from you, Jed. It’s what you can do for your -’

‘Oh please, don’t.’

Culver turned and resumed his steady stride down towards the convention. He half expected McCutcheon to grab him by the elbow and muscle him into a black van or down an alleyway. But the air force man – if that’s what he really was – didn’t even bother to follow. He simply called out after the lawyer, ‘Room 1209.’

It took half a second for the significance to sink in, but when it did, Culver froze, almost comically, nearly pitching forward under his own momentum.

‘That’s where your family can be found, can’t they? Room 1209 of the Embassy Suites.’

Jed had to summon all of his willpower not to spin around and fly back at McCutcheon. He was still a powerful man, in spite of years of fine living. His wrestler’s physique had not run too badly to fat, and at that moment every nerve in his body was singing a high sweet song of madness. He wanted to tear one of McCutcheon’s arms out of its socket and beat him down with it. Instead, he fixed a small vulpine smile on his face and walked back slowly.

‘I don’t know who you are, McCutcheon. Who you really are,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what you really want. I’m going to do you the courtesy of presuming your intentions are honourable and that your means, like so much of what is happening in this city, are driven by the devils of necessity. But if you know about me, what I am and what I’ve done, you’ll know I neither make nor accept threats idly. Our business here today is done. But you and I, my friend – we are not.’

And with that Jed Culver turned and walked away, wondering if he should continue with his planned meeting. Could he be under surveillance?

He wondered about McCutcheon’s agenda. It seemed a hell of a risk, the major fronting him like that. What would happen if the lawyer walked up to a news crew at the convention now and started bleating about being monstered by a military officer, who had threatened his family?

And then he smiled. He knew what would happen. McCutcheon would produce a handful of impeccable witnesses, probably backed up with electronic evidence – say, date-stamped video coverage – ‘proving’ that he had been nowhere near the city at the time Culver alleged. Jed would be ridiculed as a fabulist and possibly as a fellow traveller with the subversives in the Resistance. His effectiveness as a backroom operator would be at an end.

He nodded in appreciation of the gambit, stopping and turning around. McCutcheon, of course, was gone.

‘You sly son of a bitch,’ muttered Jed. ‘You’re not half the fool you pretend to be, are you, boy?’ He snorted with wry amusement and resumed his progress towards the Municipal Tower.

His back muscles, clenched against a bullet, only relaxed a block later.

* * * *

His stash of freeze-dried rations at home was beginning to look mighty good as James Kipper surveyed the buffet in the main convention hall. The military had stocked trestle tables with light tan, plastic-wrapped MREs while a couple of ancient urns, dug out of the city council dungeons, hissed and steamed, providing hot water for powdered coffee. First cup free, then you had to supply your own makings. Kipper ripped open a sachet of army coffee, wondering if the navy’s would’ve tasted any better. He’d heard that once. Too bad if it did, because the US Army had a lock on the coffee market in Seattle now.

The air in the hall was hot and cloying. That was his doing. Power restrictions meant that the air-conditioning had to be dialled right back and the lighting had been dimmed too. Kipper had taken a lot of grief for that decision, but every time some angry state congressman with three-day body odour harassed him about it, he just shrugged and pointed out that the citizens of Seattle were restricted to eight hours of power a day for the foreseeable future. The city engineer made up his one sachet of free powdered coffee and grabbed an army chocolate bar for his daughter to have later. The soldiers called them ‘track pads’, and after sampling one, he could understand why. They were as hard as bricks, but they seemed to mollify Suzie. Kip looked at the MREs and tried to figure out which one had either Skittles or M amp;M’s in it. He’d learned that you could never tell.

He was getting ready to make a clean getaway when a Mack Truck in an expensive-looking three-piece suit suddenly blocked his way.

‘Mr Kipper, the city engineer?’