Geraint had to nod in agreement

“And you, you’re conservative by nature. So you’d want time to try to piece it all together. Our top shrink said you wouldn’t blow the whistle until you’d gotten a high level of personal satisfaction from your own involvement, all of you, and he was right. Guess we should slip him a bonus for that. When you did finally go to the media, it couldn’t have suited us better.

“Thank you. Lord Llanfrechfa.”

Signed, sealed, delivered. The logic of it was inexorable. There was almost nothing left to say, apart from a couple of final queries.

“But why a Ripper? Why the hell would anyone believe that Transys would want to clone him, rather than their own executives, for example?”

“Because they’re a megacorporatlon, and our glorious British public knows that megacorporations are bastards. And research scientists are mad boffins, right? Oh, there are theoretical reasons, too. Such as, it is important to know that it is possible to successfully clone even an old and degraded sample of DNA. Working that out is easiest if you try to clone someone with known and extreme behavioral patterns, right? You can test the validity of your experiment best when you can more easily appraise the outcome. Then again, the Brazilian scientist was obsessive; he had a personal thing about serial killers. Sick, sad man. Its just what he wanted to do, and then Transys took the experiment over, as it were. We’ve established all that in the data we had leaked to the press.”

“The Duke of Clarence? He was really the original Ripper?”

The suits burst into peals of amused laughter.

“Good God, almost certainly not! No one has any idea who the original Ripper was, well, not really. We cloned him because we wanted a Royal involvement. You’ll find out more about that later, too. He was the one Royal possible in the frame. The clone was conditioned to become a Ripper, sir. A whole year of dream conditioning, psychodrama, subliminals, neuroactives, sadistic surrogates, you name it, we pumped him full of it. We patterned his innate psychosis, or rather, our insiders at Cambridge did. Stuffed him full of the original scenes, stories, and rumors. Boy, did he have a downer on whores when we were through with him.” The men shook their heads and sighed quietly.

“Well, we’re going to take you home now. Very soon, there’ll be a huge gaggle of reptiles from the media outside your front door. Wouldn’t be surprised if they started bribing your security and getting up to all sorts of shameful mischief to get a story. Tomorrow, you'll have to give them the full monty on how you caught the Ripper.”

“Incidentally, I’m sure I hardly need point out that you don’t have a thing on us. We spent seventeen million nuyen and almost three years on this, and you won’t find anything. You’re smart enough to have tracked the purchasing of Transys shares to us, but that could just be insider knowledge. It would only prove we have someone inside Transys, that’s all. The Cambridge lab was stripped out in midweek. There is nothing left to show that the project ever existed. Trust me on this.”

His face was grim and Geraint knew it was true. People who could go to such lengths really wouldn’t have left anything to chance.

“And, sir, you wouldn’t want to hurt your friends. Mr. Shamandar thinks he has avenged his parents, doesn’t he? It would be tragic for him to learn, as he certainly would, that the datafile you got at was, ah, slightly modified. It would pain him deeply to know that he has just delivered Transys to the company that really paid for his parents death.”

“As I say, Fuchi is a good client of ours. When Kuranhta was unable to continue working as a samurai, we were happy to pass him along. Most people thought he was a freelancer. We knew better.” He smiled warmly. Oh, neural implants can buy such loyalty. You never betray a company that can turn your brain to soggy mush in five seconds flat. Those mycotoxins are lovely agents. don’t you think?” The second man grinned his agreement.

“Then again, Ms. Young feels she has avenged her friend Annie Chapman. Wouldn’t it cut her to the quick to learn that she has done nothing of the kind? That she’s just handed a billion-nuyen company over to the people who really killed Annie Chapman? From what I read in her psychiatric files, well, she just might suffer some kind of permanent breakdown if she learned that. I don’t think that’s something you’d want to risk with your ex-lover, I really don’t.”

“I admit our files on the gopi are a bit thin, but she’d feel the same about her family, no doubt about that. Rather like the elf. Isn’t it convenient, all these dead families lying around the place? People are so sentimental about their kin. Such a terrible weakness. And I believe honor is very important to the baldricks down there. Consider how she’d feel if she learned the truth. Only eighteen, too, I gather.”

Bastards, Geraint agonized. That’s the real killer. I can’t do this to the others. I can’t tell them the truth, I can’t. I’ll have to live with this all my life. He looked at the two of them, with their self-satisfied smiles. “Why the hell are you telling me all this?” he said.

“Why?” The mouthpiece seemed slightly startled. I’d have thought that was obvious. Now you know what lines not to cross, what rocks should not be turned over. You can’t hide behind ignorance, sir. You now know too much.”

“Doesn’t that make me a threat?”

“Of a sort, but your own complicity guarantees your silence. That, and the complicity of your friends. Speak about it, and not only will you be implicated in what’s occurred, but your friends will too.”

Geraint took this in, but when he got out of the car. he shook the man’s hand. Somehow, he felt that he had to accept his defeat that way.

“By the way, might I know who I have been speaking to?”

To his surprise, it was the man who’d remained quiet for almost all of the journey who leaned forward and shook his hand. The mouthpiece had done all the talking, but the other man was the real puppeteer.

“Paul Bernal the Third, my Lord. Be seeing you.”

The limo swept off into the distance. Paul Bernal III, Geraint thought. The new Deputy Chairman of Hildebrandt-Kleinfort-Bernal, the most ruthless financial corporation in the City of London. The shadow lurking in the sea of little fish. The great predator.

King Of Swords.

Geraint had only just been smuggled back into his flat by a posse of twitchy Cheyne Walk security men when his doorbell rang. He ignored it for a while, but it just kept on ringing, so he slouched to the door to shout at the intruder to rakk off. A reptile already. He just couldn’t face the media tonight.

But it wasn’t the media, nor was it a visitor he could ever have expected.

“Must speak with you, old fellow. Political crisis. Very important indeed.” The flatulent Earl of Manchester ignored Geraint’s pleas to he left atone and bustled in, parking his gross frame in an armchair. Wearily, Geraint closed the door behind him and poured two large brandies.

“Please, sir, make this quick. I’m not feeling very well tonight,” Geraint said as he handed him a glass. The Earl looked at him most appraisingly.

“Well, old feller, this Ripper business of yours has been causing a bit of a stir, I must say. Duke of Clarence. you know, he's related to the Gordon-Windsor side of the Royal Family.”

Related to the pretender to the throne. After the Royal Schism of 2025, it had been a long-running internecine war between the Windsor-Hanoverians of George VIII’s circle and the rival Gordon-Windsor bloodline. The appearance of the Ripper would drive a stake through the heart of the rivals to the throne. Or, at least, set them back a long way. Utterly idiotic and illogical, but a smear was a smear. Geraint took a large swig of brandy, but did not taste it.