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brain would realize that. Making useful suggestions doesn't--" "Cease this," said Gomez quietly. Jenny eyed him for a few seconds, then turned away to stare out the window. The gaunt young man in the long black overcoat stumbled. Jake, the slip of paper clutched in his hand, was a half block behind him. He slowed now, waiting for the young man to regain his balance and continue on his way. The rain was growing heavier and immediately ahead of him a heavyset blonde woman clicked on her force field umbrella. Jake's quarry was moving again, hurrying in a longlegged, jittery way. The skirt of his black overcoat flapped and billowed. From a sausage shop on Jake's right a plump man came hurrying He clutched a large plyowrapped parcel of soy wurst and engraved on his bald, polished head was a bloodred swastika. Up ahead the thin young man went scurrying around a corner. Jake opened his hand and read the note again. "She's still alive." He wanted that to be true. And if Beth were alive, he had to find her. "But she can't be," he told himself. He'd seen her die, seen the damn explosion on the damn vid screen. "That could' ye been faked," he reminded himself inside his head. Unlikely, though. Just because you wanted something to be true, that sure as hell didn't mean it was. Beth's murder and the deaths of the others had all been investigated. By the Berlin police and by several United States agencies. "But they haven't been investigated by me." The young man in the black overcoat had entered a small park. A rundown, weedy square with a rusted metallic arch rising up at its center. Spelled out on the arch in dim, dusty plazbulbs was UNTERGRUNDSTADI. Jake could hear the rusty metal gate creak open from across the way. The man he was following pushed through the old gate, headed down the shadowy stairway beneath the arch. When Jake reached the staircase, he heard footsteps come echoing up from underground. Easing his stun gun out of his shoulder holster, he slipped it into his jacket pocket and kept his fingers around the grip. The metallic steps were part of a non functioning escalator system that descended deep under the streets of Berlin. Every few yards a pale ball of yellow light floated, barely pushing back the surrounding darkness. There was a thick smell of damp earth all around and a prickly chill hanging in the air. Halting after he'd been climbing down for a few minutes, Jake listened. He could still hear the footfalls down below him as someone moved deeper into the rundown underground town. After he'd dropped one more level down, he heard noise and saw lights off beyond the stairway. People were laughing, a robopiano was playing. The German words for food, sausage, beer and sex floated in the air, spelled out in twisted tubes of colored light. He caught a glimpse of the young man as he ducked into a narrow saloon. The name scrawled over the neo brick entrance in glochalk was M^uxwuRv CI, UB. His right hand clutching the stun gun in his pocket, Jake pushed the swing doors open with his left. The room beyond was small, cold, smelling of mold and decay. All but one of its ten small tables were empty and behind the bar stood a large robot bartender who'd long ago been painted crimson. There was no sign of the young man Jake had been trailing. Occupying the table nearest the doorway was a pink faced moustached man in a grey suit. His feathery blond hair was parted neatly in the middle and he wore a pair of rimless blue tinted spectacles. Raising his copper tankard, he smiled at Jake. "Welcome, Herr Cardigan. We have some good news for you," he said. "Ja, some very good news." The day had dawned bright and clear in the Santa Monica Sector of Greater Los Angeles. The sky bus let Dan Cardigan off at the edge of the five acre campus of the SoCal State Police Academy and went climbing back up into the brightening morning. Since it was so early, Dan was the only cadet to disembark. He showed his ID packet to the robot guard at the high pl asti-glass gates and was admitted. Dan strode along a wide pathway that cut up across a stretch of fake grass passed the dorms and took him finally to the domed Reference and Research Wing. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |