Regeneration (20 page)

“The bottom line is this,” she had said to an aggrieved deputy chief operating officer who was trying in vain to persuade her that such exhaustive scrutiny was quite unreasonable. “If you can't even hazard a guess how your ex-employees came to know about the Pure Fuel premises, much less gain access to it, you can't expect me to accept your assurance that it was a one-off. For all I know—for all
you
know—they might have found their way into
any
of your other properties by that same mysterious route. Surely you must want to ensure that Bankside BioMass and its affiliates are not unwittingly harboring terrorists, Mr. Han—
don't you
?”

Which had left Mr. Han even more aggrieved, and thoroughly flummoxed. He'd muttered something about challenging the warrant, which had made Sharon smile.

“That's your prerogative, of course,” she'd said sweetly. “Would you like to tell the press you'll be doing that, or shall I?”

Han had looked appropriately horrified and hurriedly ended the conversation, and Sharon was pleased to have heard nothing from the company since. She would have been happier still if her warrant had extended upstream as well as down, to allow her to dig deep into the bastions of Bankside's parent company, but the Met's legal team had blanched at the suggestion and advised her to stick to what could be credibly argued from existing evidence. She'd not mentioned Mikal's clandestine conversation with Abraham Mitford to them; the likelihood that the financier was pursuing a criminal strategy alongside a corporate one would be judged too small, the link too tenuous to pursue. She could barely credit it herself. Unless Kaboom gave her
something that pointed at Standard as well as Bankside, they would have to proceed on the assumption that the plot, if it had a corporate sponsor at all, was being directed from one of the limbs, not the head.

If Kaboom did link the two, that would change everything.

The streamers were all freelancers, specializing in the kind of unethical publicity work forbidden under that Code of Practice that Gabriel had felt so strongly about. They reacted with varying degrees of indignation and bewilderment to their arrests, all of them insisting that nothing they had done was illegal. The request to “Tell us about your last instructions from Conrad Fischer” knocked them back a bit, although a couple of them tried claiming they knew no one of that name. When vid evidence of their meetings made those denials impossible to maintain, the more seasoned clammed up and asked for lawyers, and the others started talking.

Fischer himself was a different story. Sharon had suspected as much from the moment she scanned the Met's dossier on him, with its long list of top-tier companies he had once worked for and which had since become his clients. As the hours went by, it became clear that her initial assessment of him had been correct. Though he had never been arrested before, Fischer obviously understood the basic rule: if you said nothing, nothing you said could be used against you. Moreover, he was disciplined enough to be able to stick to his silence through increasingly frustrating sessions with her and Achebe, both singly and together. Even after his solicitor showed up he refused either to confirm or to deny that he had ever known, met, spoken with, or instructed anyone, on any matter, at any point in his life.

“You realize,” Sharon said wearily, as she went back in for the third time, “that we have recorded evidence of your meetings with these people, and that they are currently relating to us the details of those meetings? If you don't speak, we will have only their side of the story.”

“My client has no comment to make at this time,” Ms. Marcos, the lawyer, repeated for the umpteenth time.

Sharon ignored her and stared at Fischer until he looked up, his face expressionless, as it had been from the moment he was arrested. “Let me make this clear to you: because of the nature of the crimes, because of the confessions, and because of the evidence we already
have against you, we have more than enough to hold you. We have located the account you used to pay for the streamers' services and it is only a matter of time before we trace the origin of those funds. It will go far better for you, Mr. Fischer, if you tell us now on whose behalf you have been acting.”

“My client has no comment to make at this time.”

“I don't think you appreciate the serious nature of the crimes here, Mr. Fischer. We are not talking about conspiracy to slander, unpleasant though that is. We are talking about terrorism, do you understand that? We're talking about aiding and abetting a terrorist attack. We're talking about attempted murder. Those are not charges that you—or your business—can just shrug off.”

“My client has no comment—”

Without another word, Sharon got up and left the interview room. Outside, she spoke to Achebe, then called Mikal.

“I've advised the investigation that you were at the Karma Club for a business meeting the evening before several suspects were tracked there,” she told her husband. “It would be helpful if you could look at some photos, tell us whether you recognize anyone.” She stayed firmly in official-speak and he picked up his cues smoothly.

“Of course. Anything I can do to assist.”

“I'm handing you over to Constable Danladi, who will take you through the photographs.”

Sharon sat in the background, listening silently as the young PC asked a few questions to establish place, date, and time. Then she piggybacked a file link onto the connection and took him through the lineup, one at a time.

“No,” he said apologetically, “I'm afraid I don't recognize any of them. Although—” He stopped, frowning.

“We need you to be as certain as you can, Councillor. Would you like to see them again?”

“Just the last one, please.”

It was the handler, Conrad Fischer. Sharon waited with bated breath as Mikal studied the photograph, but at last he sighed and shook his head. “No, that's definitely not the man I saw talking to Moira Charles; he was shorter, with darker hair and skin. It's just that
this guy looks like someone who'd fit in perfectly in the private area upstairs—there's something about his clothes, his expression; that kind of senior-executive look. I wondered if maybe I'd glimpsed him in the background.”

“Did you?”

“I don't think so—but I was whisked through pretty quickly so I wouldn't swear to it one way or the other.”

Sharon scowled as Constable Danladi broke the file link with Mikal's tablet. He caught sight of her expression over Danladi's shoulder as the photo disappeared from his screen and said, “Sorry. That's not very helpful.”

“Don't be,” Sharon replied, adding, “A false positive would be even less helpful. As Constable Danladi says, it's important to know that the information provided is completely reliable.”

“Under the circumstances,” said Mikal, “I believe it would be advisable for me to make a full statement about my visit to the club—what I was doing there, and who I saw.” He blinked solemnly at her.

Sharon had been thinking exactly that, and trying to decide how to tell him so; now it struck her that his mention of Moira Charles's name had probably been intended to signal
her
that this was what he was about to do. She shot him a brilliant smile and in her best detective-superintendent voice said, “Obviously I can't take your statement myself; Constable Danladi can take it from here.”

“Me?” the young woman said in surprise as her senior officer stood up to leave the room. She was a recent arrival, and Sharon barely knew her; she trusted that after a moment's thought PC Danladi would realize why that made her a good choice.

“It might prove completely irrelevant,” Mikal was saying, looming large on the tablet as he leaned forward, “but I'd like to put it on the record, just in case. Shall I come in—?”

Danladi turned back to him, and Sharon slipped out. She wondered if something had happened in the aftermath of Mikal's meeting with the UPP, and his subsequent press conference alongside a thunderous Jack Radbo. Maybe Mitford or the Trads had tried to turn the screw somehow? She didn't doubt that very public display
of which alliance he had chosen must have ratcheted up the stakes considerably.

She met Achebe in the corridor, coming up from the interview rooms below. The normally phlegmatic detective was looking rumpled and tired, still peering at his tablet as he walked.

“Boss,” he said, “good. I was just coming to find you.”

“Anything new?”

“Nothing from the search teams. Fischer's still silent, but the others are singing like the proverbial. It looks like his instructions to them were timed to capitalize on specific incidents: the turbine sabotage, the Estuary Preservation petition, the TideFair, the first stage of the illness when it was thought to be contagious, the second stage, when it was identified as a toxin, and so on. They all maintain he never
told
them that he knew what was going to happen next, but they're all pretty certain he did.”

“Great: informed conjecture from a bunch of two-bit criminals.” She sighed. “I believe them, but I don't know if a jury will feel the same way. Do we have anything useful on him
at all
?”

“No. Well . . . no.”

“What?”

“I can't see how it could be useful—it's curious more than anything. It's just that he's got a very tenuous link with a very old case of ours.”

“Which one?”

“Zavcka Klist and the genestock theft—remember that whole crazy business from eight years ago?” Achebe saw her expression change, misunderstood, and grinned. “I know: our first. At least we don't have Rhys Morgan trying to get himself killed this time.”

Sharon worked to keep her voice steady. “So what's Fischer's connection?”

“He doesn't have one, at least, not with the case. But you know this weird cult that's sprung up since then? Those idiots who think Klist knows the secret to immortality? The ones who think she deserves all kinds of exemptions on account of it?” He shook his head at the foolishness of some humans. “It looks like he's a member.”

Eli Walker gazed steadily into the tiny round aperture of a vidcam as he spoke his name. The security panel was discreetly set into the side wall of the grandly pillared entrance to the townhouse. Glancing back from the porch as he waited to be acknowledged, he thought that the building, like the elegant square within which it stood, must be at least three hundred years old. The heavy paneled wooden door with its round brass knob stood at the top of four broad granite steps that led up from the flagstoned pavement; across the street, a matching ribbon of pavement fronted an ornate wrought-iron fence, behind which trees as ancient and tall as the six-story townhouses were shedding their leaves in silent red and brown drifts. Beneath the trees he glimpsed patches of lawn between evergreen shrubs, winding gravel paths punctuated by slatted wooden benches, a central fountain, and the spiky tendrils of a rose garden. Were it not for the state-of-the-art entry panel and modern vehicles parked on the street he could almost have imagined that he'd stepped into a vid documentary from the pre-Syndrome era, or even before, into a sepia-tinted still from the dawn of photography, when horse-drawn
carriages conveyed their wealthy owners along this very street and up to this very door.

A chime sounded from the panel and the blue rectangle of the scanner was softly illuminated as a polite male voice instructed Eli to confirm his identity. He rested the fingertips of his right hand inside the blue border; the light brightened, flashed, and the door unlocked with an almost imperceptible
thunk
.

“Take the elevator up to the fifth floor, please, Dr. Walker,” said the voice, and Eli pushed the door open and stepped through into a hallway with an ornate staircase, an unmanned reception desk and a small elevator at the rear. Though it was no more than an empty entrance hall in which no one would ever spend more than a few seconds, there was none of the scruffiness or air of benign neglect that often clung to such places; every surface was bright and gleaming, the floors were spotless, the potted plants were as jungle-fresh as if they had just been delivered. He had spent years of his life in apartments that were considerably less inviting.

The elevator opened to reveal an equally well-appointed hallway on the top floor, with light flooding in through a window that faced onto the square. There was no grand staircase this time; instead a closed door presumably led to an enclosed stairwell. On the opposite wall another door was opening as he approached.

“Good morning, Dr. Walker.” The man was in late middle age, bald save for a fuzz of gray hair across the back of his skull, and neatly dressed in the kind of sober, dark, nondescript garments that made Eli immediately think
uniform,
although they were of the best quality and there was no insignia of any kind. “I am Marcus. Please come in.”

He stood aside as Eli entered, then silently closed the door behind him and just as silently took his coat and hung it in a closet in the hall. Eli surveyed the rich, polished wood of the floors and furniture, the bowl of fresh roses that gently scented the air, the paintings—not vidart, but genuine acrylics and watercolors and oils—hanging on the walls and tried to think if he had ever before been anywhere that evoked so clearly the tastes of a different era. The place lacked the self-consciousness of an interactive museum diorama or the self-importance of eminent old university chambers he had known, or
the impersonality of either. Nor did it have their sense of sacrosanct antiquity, for the modern world lived here too: in the earset Marcus wore, and the outline of a tablet in the slide-pocket of his shirt; in the photosensitive glass of the tall windows and the baskets of engineered aerial plants that reduced humidity and cleansed the air; in the small screens of the household-management system discreetly tucked away here and there, and the large one for stream-feeds that he glimpsed mounted on the wall of a luxurious sitting room as he was ushered past it and into Zavcka Klist's study.

She was seated in an upright chair upholstered in quilted leather. He suspected it had been made for her, so perfectly did it conform to the lines of her tall frame. In front of the chair was an elegant console of engineered wood with an angled reading screen, a separate input panel for more comfortable note-taking, and a dock for her tablet. There were a few other leather-covered chairs, a couple of small tables, and several strategically placed reading lights. The narrow window had a view into the thinning canopy of the trees across the street.

But what struck him most forcefully was not the vista, nor the expensive furniture: it was the shelves of printed books that lined the walls.

He knew at a glance that they were neither replicas nor some carefully contrived selection put together for appearance's sake; there was too much variety in their sizes and colors and bindings, and many had the cracked spines of volumes that have been read and reread. Nor were they in temperature-controlled cases, as they would have been if their monetary value were the collector's highest priority. They just sat on the packed shelves, in rows and in stacks, obviously there to be touched and taken down on a whim. It was a bibliophile's fantasy.

Tearing his eyes away, Eli focused on his host.

She had not bothered with the pretense of ignoring him when he was shown in, as she might have done in the old days; she had looked up from the screen at once, though she did not immediately move. For a moment she merely regarded him, chin propped on her bridged fingers, elbows on the console; then she pushed the unit aside, sliding it away noiselessly, and rose to her feet. She was wearing
a crisp white shirt with an upright, open collar, and for the barest of moments, as her hands dropped and he caught sight of her throat, he thought that a snake was coiled around her neck.

“Dr. Walker.”

“Ms. Klist.” She had not offered her hand, and he did not extend his.

“I see you appreciate my library.”

“It's impressive,” he said. “It's rare to see this many bound books outside of a museum or university.”

“I imagine so—I've had these a very long time. Most were new when I bought them, or when they were given to me.” She nodded to Marcus, still waiting silently by the door, and he bowed slightly and disappeared, leaving it slightly ajar. She turned to contemplate the shelves herself, her arms folded across her chest. Eli knew from experience that the key to maintaining a sense of equilibrium with Zavcka Klist was not to be intimidated by her haughtiness; he decided to treat the gesture as an invitation instead of a snub and he moved to stand next to her and surveyed the shelves himself, thinking that this was oddly both like and unlike the Zavcka he remembered, or the altered woman that Aryel had described. She had never pretended friendliness toward him any more than she was doing now, but neither had she ever before been conversational, or offered an insight into her own pleasures and influences. He had never known what she cared for, beside herself. Perhaps there was less to hide now, he thought, although it did not follow that she would be less fierce in the defense of what secrets remained.

Still, the initial moves were, if not warm, not openly hostile either. And when a subject this enigmatic provided an opportunity, one did not pass it up.

“Given to you,” he repeated. “By your father?”

“Some were gifts from my father—this one, and that. Most of those up there.” She touched the top corner of one volume, lifted out another and handed it to him, indicated a row of similarly bound books on a top shelf. “This one was a keepsake from my tutor.” She passed him another hardback volume. “There were so few students then, because of the Syndrome, and consequently many subjects were taught one-on-one, or not at all. And this”—she bent and pulled out
a badly battered paperback—“was from one of my college classmates. I was supposed to return it, but she got ill and so—” She shrugged, leaving the sentence unfinished.

Eli studied the books in his hands. From her father she had received
(Un)Natural Selection: Beyond Evolution,
from her tutor
An Incomplete Education,
and from her long-dead friend,
The Time Traveler's Wife
. There was, he thought, a world of meaning in those titles, as well as in her decision to show them to him. He doubted they had been selected randomly.

A sound at the door made him look up. Marcus was bearing a tray, which he placed on one of the low tables set between plush leather chairs. He straightened up with an inquiring expression.

“Thank you, Marcus.” Zavcka glanced at another book she had half pulled out, shoved it back into place, and strode past Eli. “I take it you still prefer coffee, Dr. Walker?”

“I do, thank you.” He wondered how she had known that—he had never before had coffee, or indeed, anything much besides harsh words with Zavcka Klist. But back then she would have made it her business to gather as many details as possible about the likes and dislikes of the people whom she expected to manipulate, blackmail, or negotiate with. Some of those details would be petty and some less so; she would have forgotten none of them. This was, he assumed, a reminder that, however far she might have fallen, she still possessed a great deal of information and a modicum of power.

“Please, have a seat.” She gestured to the armchair opposite as, with confirmation that nothing else was needed, Marcus departed silently, this time closing the door behind him. Zavcka busied herself pouring. They made a companionable picture, Eli thought, sitting across from each other, chatting about books with the sleek stainless-steel coffee service between them. It occurred to him that she might be constructing the scenario for Marcus's benefit, although he could not imagine what domestic intrigue might underlie such a stratagem.

He sipped, savoring the rich, bitter warmth of the coffee; he'd've been willing to bet it was neither tank-grown nor tent-reared but imported from lush tropical mountains halfway around the world.

“Thank you for seeing me,” he said after a moment. “I was pleasantly surprised.”

“Did Aryel tell you I was going to say no?”

“She didn't get the impression you were inclined to say yes.”

Zavcka looked slightly, cynically amused. “I wasn't when she mentioned it, or when I first received the request. I thought you and I had seen quite enough of each other. But the abstract you attached was interesting; I found that I kept returning to it. So much of what happened . . . People today have no idea what things were actually
like
. And it's not as though
I
could write about it.” She waved a languid hand at the absurdity of the idea.

“You could, if you wanted to.”

“Not if I wanted to be taken seriously. And I'm not allowed noms de plume, at least for the foreseeable future.” She held the cup between the tips of her fingers and sipped delicately, frowning. “That's beside the point, really. No amount of time is going to turn me into a writer, or an academic, so unless I talk to someone like you, everything I know will remain inside my head.” She shook it, as though irritated by the baggage there. “I've had a lot of requests for interviews over the years, Dr. Walker. Most were from two-bit charlatans happy to write endless treatises on what I'm supposed to know or think or have done. I refused to speak to any of them then and I'm certainly not going to be speaking to them now.”

“They'd be stunned if they knew you were speaking to me.”

Again that hint of wry amusement. “I hope so. With any luck it'll shut them up.” She looked him straight in the face. “I want to be absolutely clear on this: the research you're doing isn't about me, correct? You are interested only in my perspective as a witness. Do I have that right?”

“You do.”

“Good. I've witnessed a great deal and I can tell it to you, because you and I have a history that means no one will assume either fear or favor. You have an unimpeachable reputation, and I have a lot of time on my hands.”

“I understand.”

He was not sure that he did, although she sounded sincere. The notion of a Zavcka with no agenda, merely looking to while away the long, lonely days reminiscing, was too preposterous to entertain; there must be a scheme afoot, and he was not naïve enough to imagine himself exempt from it. Maybe she hoped her confidences would lure him into letting slip something about the fate of the child she had created and then lost? Perhaps this was part of whatever Byzantine strategy lay behind the recent financial fluctuations Aryel had noted at Bel'Natur—or maybe it stretched even further than that.

It wasn't clear to him or Aryel how volatility in the company she had once led and still had huge shareholdings in could benefit Zavcka, unless she had some plan to destabilize it now and capitalize on the chaos later. Whether, or by what means, she might be behind a conspiracy against Thames Tidal Power was even more obscure, and as they talked, Eli became ever more dubious of that possibility. But he constantly reminded himself not to be lulled by her apparent quiescence: they did not operate on the same timescale as Zavcka Klist, and if he had ever been inclined to forget that fact, the brief tour through her century-old book collection was a sharp reminder. She had been alive for a hundred and twenty-six years already and might live centuries longer. She could wait lifetimes for a single stratagem to bear fruit.

At least he knew where he stood with her. Even if she lied, he would learn something.

They talked for more than an hour, and when Eli went over his notes later, he realized that he didn't think she
had
lied—or at least, not much. Her memory was prodigious, and while she revealed almost nothing about her personal life, there was enough anecdotal detail of people, places, and events to lend credence to the recollections she did share. He'd quickly fallen into the rhythm of the interview, discovering to his surprise that Zavcka Klist was possessed of a sly wit and an acid-tinged sense of humor.