“You bet.” She held the moneybelt tight around her waist.

“Good. If you need more the credstick’s been linked to any branch of Coutts’ to dispense cash at the addresses I’ve listed, and it will only work with your retina scan. We’ll be back in London by ten tomorrow, but it would be great if you could call us here tonight to let us know about your street samurai.” Geraint smiled at her look of eager anticipation. “And Rani. good luck!”

She walked out of the room, down the hall, and out of the keep. She strode across to the waiting helicopter, its blades still whirring. All right, Mohinder, she thought. Let’s see the meat you’ve got for me. This weekend is the real life.

31

Mohinder sat with four of his samurai in the dusty, cobweb-strung upstairs room. Rani was sure that she'd seen a couple of them on the streets before, but she’d never known their names until now.

The one-eyed man with the combat axe and the Bond and Carrington Elite, especially, had an unforgettably familiar face. The way the missing eye had been gouged out wasn’t a pretty sight. He shook with a fine tremor that suggested either brain damage or heavy drug use, but his speech was controlled and coherent enough.

The little Sicilian, Scirea, too; she had certainly seen him scurrying in the shadows. Cybereyes, hand razors, boosted reflexes, sure as hell. He had his bandolier of throwing knives, the bulge of a pistol in his pocket, and body armor, too. With all that she was sure he was probably worth what he was getting paid.

In addition to these two were an immense, bone-headed troll and a muscle-bound dwarf.

After the brief introduction, Mohinder quickly got down to business. “Tell us about the deal,” he said. His granite-faced expression told her not to waste their time and that she would pay for it with her life if it was a double-cross.

“I have friends who are trying to prevent someone being murdered, Saturday night or early Sunday morning. There was a low guffaw from the group.

“Sure do, baby. I thought that’s what we were being paid for, to dust someone.” The dwarf sniggered as he picked at his over-long fingernails with a knife.

“No. We need to stop the murder or catch the assassins. Hopefully both.”

“Sounds easy,” Scirea said. “All we got to do is sit tight and ambush them when they come”

Not as easy as that. We’re still trying to trace the woman who might be the killer’s target. That’s why it’s contingency payment. The basic five hundred hires you to sit tight for the whole weekend. Maybe we won’t find the woman in time. If not, you get good pay for doing nothing more than chewing the fat and playing poker for a few days. If we do find the one you need to protect, you get paid extra for that part of the run. Fifteen hundred apiece.”

“Fifteen hundred nuyen? Makes two thousand total?” Scirea was incredulous.

Well, knock me down with a cricket bat, he knows how to add, Rani thought, but kept the scorn off her face. It was true that she was the one calling the shots here, but that didn’t mean she had no need for a certain finesse. ‘My friends are rich people.”

“So why don’t they just hire security?”

“They have. At least, we have that ready if the target is somewhere like the West End. But a team like you is better suited to a job down here. You know this patch as well as I do, far better than any hired security goons. Plus, we got a little extra in the way of weapons and contacts, yeah? Down here you’re the best there is, everyone knows that.”

Scirea was smiling now, a grin that would have been equally at home on the face of a rabid werewolf. The deal made sense and the pay was good. It didn’t sound like a shag job. Besides who’d send an ugly little gopi to try to sucker hardened killers like them?

“Which reminds me, Mohinder,” Rani continued. “That bag you got looks good. You got something for me?”

He showed her the Uzi, the heavy Imperial pistol, the boxes of ammunition. The crossbow and the other bits and pieces didn’t count for a lot compared with the power of the automatic and the heavy pistol. “Eight.”

“What?” Rani lost her cool for a moment; Mohinder was pushing his luck. “Come on. For that price I could get a pair of Uzis and a fresh elf’s head into the bargain.” She knew that the haggling was going to be tough. In front of four of his own, Mohinder wouldn’t want to look bad by giving away too much. To make it worse, two more men arrived just then, one of them even smuggling in a grenade launcher, by the look of it. Rani consoled herself with the thought that even if she ended up having to pay through the nose for the hardware, she couldn’t complain about the meat and muscle here. Mohinder had pulled out all the stops.

After a heated debate they eventually settled on a price of sixty-five hundred nuyen, far more than the equipment was worth, but everyone was happy enough with the final deal. Rani gave Mohinder one of the scrambled telecom codes, showed him the one she’d kept for herself, and told him of the third, which Gemini had. When they heard that it was a noble lord on the other end of the third line, the whole group began to look at her with new respect. That she had just handed out more than ten thousand nuyen bought her even more. She stood up as tall as she could among the hulking bodies in the room.

“Okay, you guys just keep together. Like I say, it’s tomorrow we expect the drek to hit the fan. Now I’m out of here; I’ve got some other work to do.”

Just two more Mary Kellys on the list. She might get around to the first tonight, but it was getting a little late and Rani decided not to take any chances alone on the street, not even with a heavy pistol in her jacket and a Uzi in her carryall. It would have to wait until the morning.

The others had agonized long and hard over the question of where to stay once they got back in London. They needed total privacy and protection, but couldn’t risk having a security firm around while plotting their moves. Despite the certain knowledge that their enemies knew the exact location of Geraint’s flat, it seemed the only viable choice. He settled for the discreet security outside and the new bulletproof glass and security systems inside. Not much short of assault cannons could get to them now, and the licensed security mages outside gave them as much protection as anyone could hope for against subtler infiltrations. For good measure Serrin also placed watchers around the building.

By noon, the computers were overheating, the telecoms beeping, and the data downloading.

“Right. London Security is posted at the second-level targets, the possibles. We’re down to eleven left to trace and, ah”-Geraint paused as another download came up on the screens-“make that ten. Mary Christine Kelly of Acacia Avenue, Neasden, is currently visiting her aged mother in a charming suburban crumpler somewhere in deepest, darkest Kent. Anyway, she’s a nice person. Goes to church every week, member of the Universal Brotherhood, according to this, Well, well. I think we can knock her off the list.”

“A crumpler? What’s that?” Serrin wasn’t entirety familiar with the more arcane Britspeak.

“A place where old folks go to crumple quietly. Their sympathetic young relatives prefer them somewhere out of sight.”

“By God, Geraint, look at this stuff. Where do you get this kind of detailed information about people? It’s damn scary.” Francesca was astonished at the sheer depth of data she was trawling.

“Francesca, dearest, it’s not for nothing that I'm a nobleman with friends in government and the corps, that I’m familiar with common and semi-restricted databases, and also an occasional employer of security services. One of the mixed blessings of living in our over-regulated society is that so much information is stored somewhere or other on almost everybody. The government sells a lot of it to various commercial concerns to raise money for the Exchequer. For a fee, those same concerns will allow access to the information. You’d be surprised what all kinds of people know about you. For example, only this morning I learned about the plastic surgery you had at Guy’s. Frankly, I think your nose looked cute the way it was.” He smiled broadly at Francesca’s half-angry, half-startled look.