A Gathering of Widowmakers (The Widowmaker #4) (13 page)

"Anyway, that's the shuttle stop." Nighthawk looked around, spotted three restaurants, and finally walked to the one that would afford him the best view of the area. When he asked for a booth by the window that faced the shuttle stop, he was told that they were all full.

"We'll wait in the bar," he replied. Then he slipped a couple of bills to the manager. "Bring us two beers and let me know as soon as a booth opens up."

He and Kinoshita walked to the long polished bar, made of some dark alien hardwood. There were no stools, but rather cushions and foot rests, each hovering above the floor.

"Interesting sensation," remarked Kinoshita after their beers have been delivered. "I keep feeling I'm going to fall off."

"Try not to think about it and you'll be okay," said Nighthawk.

"What if she shows up right now, before you can spot her?" asked Kinoshita.

"Then she won't be able to spot me, and that'll make her nervous. She'll be back."

"I'm always amazed at how you cover every angle," said Kinoshita. "It's been a while. I'd almost forgotten just how thorough you are."

"Isn't Jeff?" asked Nighthawk. "I taught him to be."

"Jeff assumes that he can handle any foe or any situation, and so far he hasn't been wrong. To use your analogy, he's the young athlete who's relying totally on his speed and strength. You're the aging athlete who's using his brain and his experience to make up for the step he's lost."

"It sounds good," said Nighthawk. "But I was always like this. This isn't a profession where you can say, 'I lost the last three gunfights. I think I'd better start relying more on my intelligence in the future.'"

"But when you were young, you were as good as Jeff. You didn't need your brain then."

"I
always
used it," replied Nighthawk. "It came with the rest of me."

"Then why doesn't
he
? It's
your
brain, after all; we know it works."

"Probably because he knew from the outset that he was the Widowmaker, created with all the abilities I possessed in my physical prime. There wasn't any Widowmaker when I started out, and I didn't have the benefit of another Jefferson Nighthawk who'd been through it all and could teach me the ropes or tell me how good I was."

"How old were you when you killed your first man?" asked Kinoshita.

"Not very."

"
How
old?" persisted Kinoshita.

"I just told you," said Nighthawk.

The booth emptied out just then and Nighthawk headed over to it before the servo-mech had a chance to clean it. He sat down and let the robot work around him. Kinoshita stood back until the robot left, then sat down opposite Nighthawk.

"Do you see anyone who might be her?" he asked.

"I can't tell yet."

"I see three women. If she's here, she's got to be one of them."

"What makes you think so?" said Nighthawk.

Kinoshita blinked rapidly. "You're right," he admitted. "I wasn't thinking. If she's just scouting out the area, of course she could disguise herself as a man." He paused, studying the bypassers. "Jeff would just stand out there and dare her to face him."

"I hope I trained him better than that," said Nighthawk. Kinoshita looked at him questioningly. "She doesn't have to take the shuttle. All she has to do is show up at the spaceport in time for her flight. If he felt he
had
to force the issue, the place to wait for her is there, not here." He sipped his beer. "I may wind up having to do that myself, but I've got about twelve or fourteen hours to spot her here first."

"If you do spot her, will you try to take her now?" asked Kinoshita.

"Depends."

"On what?"

Nighthawk shrugged. "Instinct. I'll know what to do when I finally see her."

Kinoshita finished his beer. He pressed his thumb on a small red circle on the table, and instantly a holographic drink menu popped into existence, rotating slowly just above the surface of the table.

"They've got quite a selection," he commented. Nighthawk didn't answer, and he kept on reading. "I think I'll have a Dust Whore. They tell me that it was actually created back when we were still Earthbound. Some country called Chicago, as I recall. Or maybe it was an independent city-state." He looked across the table at Nighthawk, who was looking off to his left and smiling. "What's so funny?" asked Kinoshita. "I wasn't making a joke."

"I wasn't laughing at one," said Nighthawk, staring out the window.

"Well, then??"

"She's one smart lady."

"Who are you talking about?"

"Cleopatra Rome," he said.

"You see her?"

Nighthawk nodded.

"Where is she?" demanded Kinoshita, peering out through the window.

"You'd have to be blind to miss her."

Kinoshita scanned the area, and finally his gaze fell on a gorgeous young woman riding in a rickshaw-like contraption. She was clad entirely in well-worn leather, loaded top to bottom with weapons, her keen purple eyes coolly surveying her surroundings.

"Boy, she really looks the part, doesn't she?" said Kinoshita.

"She sure does," said Nighthawk, still smiling.

"What's the joke?" demanded Kinoshita. "What do you know that I don't know?"

"Don't give me straight lines like that," said Nighthawk. "I could write a shelf of books about what I know and you don't."

"What's this got to do with Cleopatra Rome, and why do you think she's so damned smart?"

"Because you were a pretty fair-to-middling lawman, and yet she fooled
you
completely," said Nighthawk in amused tones.

"What are you talking about?"

"See the woman pulling the cart?" said Nighthawk.

Kinoshita stared at the tall, lean woman with the square jaw and almost alien eyes that seemed to see everything, the scar running from the edge of her ear all the way down her cheek and onto her neck, the wide belt that had a pair of tell-tale bulges over the hips, the calf-high boot that held more than her muscular leg.

"Are you trying to tell me—?"

"Right," said Nighthawk, getting up from the booth and heading toward the front door. "That's Cleopatra Rome."

15.

Nighthawk walked out onto the street to better study his quarry. Kinoshita was a step behind him.

"Widowmaker!" yelled the girl in leather, pointing to him. "Come a step closer and I'll kill you!"

Suddenly the street became totally silent. There was no talk, no music, none of the normal hustle and bustle. Most people froze where they were, not wanting to get close to either the Widowmaker or his prey; a few raced for shelter.

"Spare me your threats," he replied with no show of concern.

"Go back where you came from and leave me alone!"

"I'm not here for you," said Nighthawk.

Even the girl seemed surprised. "Then go away!" she finally managed.

But Nighthawk was no longer paying any attention to her. His concentration was focused on Cleopatra Rome, who stared at him emotionlessly, sizing him up as much as he was doing to her.

"I'm warning you!" said the leather-clad girl.

"Do you see this man by my side?" said Nighthawk. Without waiting for an answer he continued: "I have no interest in you, but if you try to involve yourself in what's about to happen, he'll kill you. There's no need for you to die. If there's paper on you, I don't know about it and I don't care about it. If you walk away right now, nothing will happen to you. If you stay, you're putting yourself at risk for no reason." The girl looked flustered and indecisive. "You're in over your head. Walk away now and nothing will happen to you."

The girl seemed unable to move or speak for a moment. Then she jumped out of the rickshaw and raced off into an alley.

"Nice try," said Nighthawk to Cleopatra Rome.

"She served her purpose," said Cleopatra Rome.

"Oh? Just what
was
her purpose?"

"To attract your attention. I like to look upon the face of my enemy before I dispatch him to the next plane of existence." She smiled a cold, passionless smile. "Now I've seen it."

"Do you always speak like that?" asked Nighthawk.

"Do you have a problem with the poetry of language?"

"Use some and I'll let you know."

She looked up at the sun, then back at Nighthawk. "It's a hot day, Jefferson Nighthawk, and only one of us will live to see the end of it. There's no reason why either of us should die thirsty. Let's go inside for a drink."

Whatever Nighthawk was expecting her to say or do, that wasn't it. "Why not?" he replied, forcing a shrug to show that he wasn't surprised. "I'm new to the District. Have you got any place in mind?"

"Anywhere but Horatio's," she said. "I disapprove of their clientele."

"You're well-informed."

Another cold smile. "I'm alive."

Nighthawk indicated a tavern across the street. "How about that one?"

"That will be fine."

The second the words left her mouth, the tavern emptied out. By the time they'd crossed the street even the bartender had raced out the door.

Nighthawk turned to Kinoshita. "You wait here."

"But—"

"Do
you
want to go up against her? Just say the word and I'll wait out here for you."

"Damn it, Jefferson!"

"Let's try again," said Nighthawk. "You wait here."

Kinoshita nodded his agreement and kept his mouth shut, and Nighthawk followed Cleopatra Rome into the tavern. She walked behind the bar, examined the stock, and pulled out a bottle of Alphard brandy.

"Three-century-old stuff," she said approvingly as she studied the label. "Have you ever had any?"

"More than a century ago," said Nighthawk. "It was pretty good drinking when it was only two hundred years old."

"Yes, I heard about you," said Cleopatra Rome. "They say you came down with some disease and froze yourself for a hundred years or so."

"Essentially."

"What does that mean?"

"It means I didn't freeze myself. I had help." He smiled. "I thought you were the stickler for language."

"My error," she said. "I also heard that you got some kind of rejuvenation treatment, that suddenly you were twenty-two or twenty-three years old and back in business. I guess the treatment wasn't permanent."

"I guess not," said Nighthawk. If she was good enough to kill him, he wanted it to end right there. He saw no reason to tell her that there were two more versions of him abroad in the galaxy.

"Too bad," she said with no show of sympathy. "You're an old man, Jefferson Nighthawk. How much longer do you think you can keep on being the Widowmaker?"

"Long enough."

"To kill me, you mean?"

He saw no reason to answer such an obvious question, so he simply took the bottle from her, uncorked it, and took a swallow before handing it back.

"Why don't you hire me instead?" said Cleopatra Rome.

This time he couldn't hide his surprise. "You want to say that again?"

"You heard me."

"Why would I want to hire you?"

"Why not?" she replied. "We're both in the same business."

"The hell we are."

"Think about it. I kill people for money. You kill people for money. The only difference is that I'm a private contractor and you work for the Oligarchy."

"I work for
me
."

"Oh?" she said, arching an eyebrow. "Who do you collect your bounties from?"

"The Oligarchy."

"Well, then?"

"They're not my employer," said Nighthawk. "They're my bank."

"You're splitting hairs," she said. "We're both killers, and we both get well-paid for what we do. No one forces us to kill. We choose to—and if we don't like the price, we choose not to."

"There are differences. I don't break the law. You break it every time you work."

"Some of the men and aliens I kill are very bad," she said. "Some of the ones you kill are very good."

"It's possible," he acknowledged. "But under the right conditions even good men can do terrible things."

"So you kill some good men and
I
kill some good men," she said. "I told you we were the same."

"We're not the same, and we're not in the same business. This is a galaxy of laws. You break them. I don't."

"This is a galaxy of meat-eaters and meat," replied Cleopatra Rome. "And you and I are at the top of the food chain. We shouldn't be fighting each other when there's enough raw meat for both of us."

"Are you enjoying yourself?" asked Nighthawk.

"Why do you ask?"

"Because if I was about to die, I sure as hell wouldn't waste my last few minutes having a philosophical debate with the guy who's going to kill me."

"Actually, I
was
rather enjoying it," said Cleopatra Rome.

Nighthawk shrugged. "To each his own."

"Still, I've got enough," she said. "I suppose we can stop now."

"Enough
what
?" he asked.

"Enough Jefferson Nighthawk."

"I don't know what the hell you're talking about."

"You will," she said with a predatory smile. "You will."

His fingers inched down toward his burner. "Promises, promises," he said sardonically.

"Why do you suppose I came in here with you?" said Cleopatra Rome. "Your talents are well-known. I can't outfight you. I'm not as accomplished with my weapons as you. Why should I put myself at your mercy?"

"It was a stupid decision," said Nighthawk. "My mercy is in short supply these days."

"How do you think I killed all those men and aliens?" she continued. "By shooting them?"

"I assume you're going to tell me," said Nighthawk.

"No," she said, still smiling. "I'm going to
show
you."

And suddenly she wasn't Cleopatra Rome any longer. She was Sarah, her binoculars slung over her shoulder, a bird guide in her hand.

"Look!" she said, pointing to a tree that suddenly seemed to spring into existence. "A silver-throated sunbird!"

"This is wrong," said Nighthawk, frowning.

"Okay," said Sarah. "What do
you
think it is?"