2 cobra 10

 

Chapter 10

 

I think Mr. Oppenheimer was actually shocked when Ichiro’s pursuer turned up with the news that the former champion was dead.

“Dead? But what did he die of?” he yapped.

“Gravity,” said the man in cop uniform, laconically.

“What?”

“He misjudged his jump between rooftops; maybe a bird flew up, I don’t know, the drone operator says he seemed to have become suddenly startled mid jump. He missed. Broke his neck because his face didn’t miss, and fell.”

“Let me see the footage,” Oppenheimer demanded. The drone operator silently handed over his control panel.

Oppenheimer watched it through three times.

“Did you look for a bullet?” he asked. “It looks as though he was shot.”

“I had them check,” said the drone operator. “Wasn’t any bullet.”

“Nothing blunt that wasn’t enough to penetrate but could leave a bruise?” asked Oppenheimer.

“Only the ground,” said the drone operator.

“So, we can tell his family it was just an accident?” Oppenheimer looked relieved.

“I still think it was a bird which I didn’t catch on film being at the wrong angle,” said the drone operator.

Well, that was a bit handy.

I could relax, now, and enjoy the final event.

Wait a minute.

I did not have to do the final event.

But then, doing as well as I was, it would be suspicious if I dropped out now.

I might, just the smallest amount, have been enjoying showing off to Willow. Willow was also in charge of my fan mail, as Jay Silverheels had burst rather spectacularly onto the stage of ‘Extreme.’ Most of my fanmail was answered “Take two drop dead pills, signed Mrs. Silverheels” My wife doesn’t let me see those ones; she says I’m too young.

I don’t have any objection; I opened one by mistake once, and the outpouring of sexual frustration and amorous suggestion would be enough to make a man become a monk. Her plans for my beautiful body in conjunction with a punnet of strawberries and a can of cream might traumatise me for life; how can I look a strawberry in the face again, knowing that somewhere a woman ten years older than me wants to do that to it!

I write back to the children of course; Willow fishes their mail out for me. Most of what I write is ‘don’t try these tricks at home without extensive training in the gym first,’ or at least, that’s what it breaks down to. I have no desire to have some kid hurt by trying to emulate me.  I mean, walking the top of a fence or trying to pole-vault an obstacle is what all kids do as a matter of course, but rock climbing needs to be learned properly.

Oh, I had one guy who was not a fan, and that was Mike, who turned up in the underwear I had left him in, because I’m too skinny for him to get my clothes on.

“I checked with you that it was in the rules,” I told him. “You said there were no places I was not allowed to go. So I went.”

He glared, and grumbled, but he could not say I had broken the rules.

 

The eight who had come in fastest, when also balanced with their cave escape, were Dave, me, Dave’s Valkyrie, (I must remember that her name was Julie,) Elizabeth, Ray, and three workout freaks. Sam, the lad I had given water to in the desert had cruised in ninth and was happy to stay there. I referred to the hunks of meat as Tom, Dick, and Harry, which would probably have offended them had they known; but I wasn’t going to tell them. As far as I could see, they were pretty interchangeable. Oh, one was black, one was white, and one was some Asiatic mix, but they still came off the same peg. The peg labelled ‘muscle-bound thugs with delusions of literacy.’

 

 

We now had two weeks in which to recover and get ready for the dive into the cold.

 

oOoOo

 

Tarquin came to dinner. Willow pulls out all the stops for him, because he appreciates her. So do I, but she likes to keep Tarquin as well buttered as her parsnips. We opened with salmon en crôute – that’s in puff pastry for anyone who hasn’t been well trained by Willow – with green peas, fries, and leek in parsley sauce. It being near enough Thanksgiving by now to make no odds, our main course was turkey, with all the trimmings, which for Willow was three kinds of stuffing, roast potatoes, roast onion, sprouts cooked the only way I’ll eat them, in a heap of butter with tiny lardons of bacon, sweetcorn, and cranberry sauce made from real cranberries. This was finished up with apfelstrudel bursting with dried fruit as well as apple, dripping with icing, and then smothered with cream.

“I shall put on weight,” I said.

“You can afford to do so, especially with that stupid final contest you insist on taking part in,” said Willow.

She had a point.

Tarquin was surprised.

“Seeing it through?  I suppose it’s the professional thing to do, make no waves,” said Tarquin, as he surreptitiously unbuttoned his vest.

Tarquin was the sort of man who always dressed formally. Willow smiled on him.

“I do like to see a man enjoy his food,” she said, slipping him another helping of apfelstrudel.

Tarquin made token protest and dug in.

“I don’t often get a good, sit-down meal,” he excused himself.

“You can always find one here,” I assured him. “And time to eat it without being called.”

“Yes, it’s amazing how I’ve never been paged here,” he said.

I smiled an enigmatic smile.

Willow used a signal which interfered with his pager whilst the poor man was eating.

Once when they were going berserk, she slipped out to the kitchen and answered, “Hello, you have reached Pussy Galore’s real time sex chat, are you a very naughty boy?” There was a very rude click.

So, Tarquin had his time with us to himself, and he enjoyed it. I’m sure he must have suspected but decided not to investigate.

I wonder if they thought the lines were crossed of if he was visiting Pussy Galore in person; well, he wasn’t married, so it didn’t matter if they thought he was capable of being a very naughty boy. It might even have enhanced his reputation.

“We let the Black Rose gumi know that Ichiro did not fall unassisted,” he said, conversationally. “They’ve been studying the footage, and checking it against other people; I did insist one of our agents did it, but they might be out for one of the two people who were in the wind.”

“Who was the other?” I asked.

“The little guy who divorced his wife,” said Tarquin.

“Dave? Shit, Tarquin, you have to protect him – he’s not geared up to handle Yakuza,” I said, in lively alarm.

“Don’t worry; they already figured out he was at City Hall by the time you made the sanction,” said Tarquin. “That was a slick piece of work on his part, though; do you think he’d work for the government?”

“So long as you guarantee that not a penny of his salary goes to Norah, I don’t suppose he’ll mind,” I said, dryly

“I’ll do that,” said Tarquin, who is never joking if it’s about government work.  “In the meantime, you have disappeared as Jay Silverheels so nothing to worry about. One of those out to get you is Ichiro’s brother, Sanji. He’s on my list.”

“Oh, I get it,” I said. “If Jay Silverheels were seen and tracked back, we could take another of the bozos down before I do penguin impressions.”

“It crossed my mind,” said Tarquin.

 

oOoOo

 

It did not take much setting up to install Jay Silverheels in a hotel in downtown Seattle... and because of my new celebrity status in that guise, I had to put up with reporters birddogging me all over the place. Well, in a way, crowds can be armour as well as disguising an enemy.

Now, unlike Ichiro, who was the sort of man who thought with his muscles and testosterone, Sanji was an intellectual, and rather good at electronics.

I paid the staff in the hotel to let me know when the phone people and the bot maintenance turned up; I figured that it would be one or the other.

I had also taken the room adjacent each side, booked in other names, in the sort of hotel which has all its wiring in the roof spaces and removable panels below.

A paranoid assassin lives longer.

I was glad I had done so, however, on returning from a restaurant, when the bellhop told me that the new cleaning droid had been delivered.

“I don’t know what you think is wrong with the hotel ones, sir,” he said. He sounded faintly injured. He was a spotty youth who was inclined to hero-worship a finalist on ‘Extreme,’ and I decided to be honest.

All right, I decided to be partly honest. He had puzzled eyes, and he struck me as cleverer than he looked.

“There’s nothing wrong with the cleaning bots,” I said. “But you know that I’m in the last eight, and there are a lot of people who have money riding on the results of ‘Extreme,’ and some of them will stop at nothing.  Come with me, and you might have a story to sell to the newsmen; we’re going into number 19.”

“That’s been taken by a Mr. Smith,” said the boy.  I think he was named Jeff. “Oh! It’s hired for you, to keep you safe.”

“I thought you were a likely lad, Jeff,” I said.

He looked like he had grown two inches. Which he could do with; grew up malnourished, like as not. He must have got some kind of education, but he’d probably be a menial in the hotel for life.

“What are you going to do, sir?” he asked.

“I’m going to vandalise the fitments,” I said. “To make things easier, can we borrow a stepladder?”

“There’s one in the janitor’s cupboard on this floor,” he said.

I thought there should be.

Jeff and I fetched a ladder, locked the door of number 19 on the inside, and I went up to disarrange the ceiling.

This was a mighty adventure in itself to Jeff, who had no idea that such crawlspaces existed.

The thing squatted sullenly in concealment behind an easy chair.

“It’s bigger than most bots,” opined Jeff.

“It would have to be, to get a pop-up sentry gun inside it,” I said, quietly, and holding up a finger to indicate he should keep his voice down. “Now, how is it activated, I wonder? Does it go off when the door is opened? That could make short work of the hotel maids.”

“Maybe it’s gurfer knows when you come in,” said Jeff.

“That would make most sense,” I said. “He must be wondering why I took my time if he’s got anything monitoring the room. Now, if your voice registered....”

It would be hard enough fitting a sentry gun in the thing without giving it the range to fire at the ceiling.

But then my phone rang, and the gun whirred slightly.

Ohho.

I took a chance, and answered the phone.

“Mr. Silverheels? This is the management. Could you come to the door, please?”

So that was how it was going to be done.

“Certainly,” I said. I have a number of sound effects saved on my phone; I used them as misdirection.  Remember, I spent two years as an actor. Sound effects make people think what they are supposed to think. I played a door opening.  “I... there’s nobody there.” I made my voice sound confused.

“Die, you bastard, you killed my brother,” snarled the voice on the other end. “Shouldn’t have made haiku about trivia; your style betrayed you.” The sentry gun opened up.

I switched my phone off.

I had left a haikyu for Kenichi as well as the one I made in the cave; well, that would teach me to be flippant poetically.  It was careless of me. I’d left one long since for another Yakuza boss I had killed but at least it was a different clan, and that character had been retired. Unless they though Jay Silverheels was Takashi Kurita with a skin job and some surgery. Oh, well, Jay Silverheels had been good for this mission and would also disappear.

Anyway, Sanji was convinced I was dead, which would be good. The management and the cops would appear any time soon; the door was splintered to hell.

I slipped Jeff a cred stick; he could see by the colour that it was about as much as three months’ salary.

“Get back into nineteen and make the ceiling good. If anyone asks, Mr. Smith asked you to change a lightbulb,” I said. “He’s an old gentleman, very finicky and reclusive.”

“Won’t that thing shoot you again?” asked Jeff, fearfully.

“No, it’s rigged, not auto,” I said, dropping down.

First thing I did was to heave off the satellite uplink on the effing droid.  This is the second time someone has tried to kill me with a cleaning bot; but this was, at least, a little more sophisticated than the first time. The cops might puzzle about how it had been programmed, but it was better than Sanji killing random people if he heard my voice. I opened the door, and cowered in the corridor. I waxed indignant when the manager showed up.

“What sort of hotel is this, is people can be shot at in their own rooms?” I demanded, querulously.  “I open the door, and someone opens fire on me. Do something!”

The ugly black bot and its uglier gun were visible, and the manager jumped back.

“This is a job for the police,” he said.

“Well, do something!” I quavered. I pulled myself up; no point playing the total coward. I poked a finger into his chest. “If this is an unspoken test for ‘Extreme,’ I am most displeased,” I added. “Avoiding a fixed trajectory gun in an assault course is one thing, and I still took a live round. This is... this is preposterous!” I managed.

“I’ve got nothing to do with that damned stupid show,” he said. “Here, Jeff! Where are you going with that ladder?”

“Putting it away, Mr. Sullivan,” said Jeff. “Mr. Smith called me to replace a lightbulb.”

“Oh, right,” said Sullivan. “I hope this excitement will cure you of wanting to compete on ‘Extreme.’ Mr. Silverheels is extremely lucky to be alive.”

“Gee, I should say so,” said Jeff. His tone was heartfelt; the door had a large hole ripped in it.

From behind his boss’s back I nodded encouragingly, winked, and put a finger over his lips. He nodded and hurried off with his alibi of a ladder. He wouldn’t boast, if only in hopes of further largess.

He was a good lad. I might just buy a hotel and install him as supposed bell hop with a salary commensurate with an agent.

 

The police were tedious and I got truculent at them. They weren’t in Sanji’s league and I had no intention of leading them to him; that was the way to get good cops killed.

I let them take me to hospital to be treated for shock, Sullivan assuring me that my room would be restored to pristine beauty by the time they let me out.

Yes, I managed to distract the nurse who was to give me a sedative, and empty most of it out. Fortunately she did not look at it.

I let my liver handle what I had to accept.

Most nurses are overworked; my eyelids drooped, and she left. Being a celebrity, I had a room to myself, which was good. I fought off the urge to sleep, and jandered down the corridor for the room used to store clean bedlinen and other stuff. An overgrown cupboard, really, more than a room, but there was room to go in and shut the door. There’s room for the hospital menials to have a cart full of linen fresh from the laundry in here, out of the way to sort things away. I found, and donned, a white coat. I wandered onto a busy ward, and borrowed a stethoscope from a junior doctor. I left it round my neck and wandered off. The junior intern made a token protest but shrugged and took it with philosophy.  Doctors do things like that. I heard a story about one consultant who was ‘undressed’ at the end of each day by his juniors, having accumulated a dozen or more stethoscopes.

I left my white coat on a pile of others in a doctors’ rest room on the ground floor, and the stethoscope on a table. It would get back to the right lad eventually.

 I spent some time in the euphemistically named rest room part of the rest room facility, which had armchairs and was what the label said, with a few things I had grabbed before leaving the hotel room.

A little hasty bleach combed into my hair and eyebrows, blue contacts dialled, and I changed the nanotractors for my face as well. I also nicked some surgical gloves. Now I was honestly working as Rick, the Cobra, I could do such things.

Once again, I was in the wind.