The Heist of Hollow London, page 24
When Loren read this they had to take a break for a few minutes, because they had some sense of what Mia had been through for her to resort to such extreme measures, and it hit them surprisingly hard.
There was no reversing what Mia had done to herself. The internal communications that had closed Oakseed’s file on Mia stated she would be housed at one of their discreet assisted living facilities under an assumed name, and her family had been paid off to ensure no details of this emerged publicly, because they figured the story would play badly. But it meant the person Loren had met in Vancouver wasn’t Mia.
* * *
Loren had no opportunity to discuss this with Drienne before the operation commenced, but Loren had decided not to give the Coyne to Mia until they’d examined it themselves and found out what was actually on it. To this end they printed off another fake Coyne using the same template for the one they’d given Arlo, only without the dent he’d asked them to include. Loren knew Arlo wouldn’t let them have the Coyne, but Drienne could get Arlo to do anything, so if she could convince Arlo to let her carry it, she could then covertly pass it to Loren—probably the journey on the overline would be the best time. Loren could stash it in their rucksack and scan it through the canvas and the others would have no clue what they were doing. The fake might turn out to be unnecessary, but Loren felt it could come in handy: Drienne could keep it in everyone’s view and no one would suspect Loren had it—classic misdirection.
“If it turned out Mia was straight with us about what was on it,” Loren told Drienne as the truck train rumbled south, “I was gonna just restore it to the state it was in when we found it, and get you to hand it back to Arlo.”
“And risk Mia finding out you looked, and risk her cutting you out of your share.”
“I could’ve covered my tracks, I reckon. She was bluffing when she said she’d know if any of us looked, I think.”
“But you don’t think it’s legit?”
“I think you were spot-on about Samson and the laundering business. Doesn’t feel right. I’m convinced it’s not money on there, and the only thing I can think is it’s information.”
“Something compromising, you mean?”
“Presumably. I just can’t see what else would be worth all the effort. Now, if it’s not money, Mia lied to us and we’re not getting rich from this and I don’t trust her to lib us either. But if it’s compromising information—”
“That could be worth something.”
“Must be worth something. And if there’s no money, the only way we’re getting anything out of this situation is if we use it as leverage with Mia.”
On the surface, the Coyne appeared to contain a mere r95,000 in cash: more money than Drienne or Loren had ever seen, but some way short of what they’d been promised. Loren had already started the process of poking around to find where the false tray could be lifted, and they assured Drienne this wouldn’t take long. Drienne focused on steering the truck train and telling herself they weren’t making a terrible mistake.
35
STUPID ENOUGH TO WALK THE DERELICT STREETS SHOUTING HER NAME
Mia sat at her table in the copter with several windows open in front of her, trying to locate Drienne and Loren. Arlo wasn’t sure if he should help or not. If Drienne was having an episode, she needed to be found as soon as possible, and she must be having an episode, because he couldn’t imagine she’d be so stupid as to steal the money, and even if she did she’d never cut him out of it. But Arlo wasn’t sure Mia would take such a charitable view. (Arlo didn’t know Loren well enough to say whether it was in character for them to steal the money. They seemed smarter than that. But then, they’d been off with him at the final meeting. Maybe they’d been plotting this all along?)
“Doesn’t look like security footage from the plant got uploaded before the cops took the network down,” Mia said. “But neither Loren nor Drienne have been arrested or listed dead … They must have taken that truck train, there’s no way they’d just hang around with all that shit going down…” She stared at her windows for a while. Then she smiled and pointed at one of them. “Yes. We have it. Ha!”
* * *
The stolen truck train was still feeding its location back to the plant using its relay. There was no plant to receive this signal, but the truck kept feeding it back regardless, because if the plant wasn’t there anymore then it made no sense for the truck to be in operation. The plant hadn’t received this information, but Mia had.
The train registered two people had been inside it on its journey. It identified one of them as Annie Clarke, the visiting debrander from RookDivest, and the other as casual laborer Cas Woodforde, who’d been logged minutes before the system had gone down. It had stopped just across the river from NiZCOval, and Mia felt sure Drienne and Loren were either still inside or had not gone far. The copter was on its way there now.
“I’d like you to go and talk to them first,” she told Arlo.
Arlo also wanted this, but felt unsure why Mia did, and said so.
“If they are trying to steal the money, they’ll freak out if I walk in there. You’ll get a calmer response. Don’t tell them I’m here.”
“Okay.”
“I’m serious,” she said, fixing him with a hard glare. “Don’t tell them.”
“How do I explain how I got here? They’ll hear the copter.”
“I’ll land a reasonable distance away and you can walk. Tell them you managed to get a ride part of the way somehow, I don’t know.”
Arlo nodded; it didn’t matter, he’d think of something. He wanted to go in alone too, talk to them before Mia did. But before he went, there was something he needed to hear. “You’ll keep your word, won’t you? If we deliver the money?”
Mia looked up, surprised. “What?”
“You really will free us? Like you promised?”
“Of course. I do business on the level, I always have.” She made a rueful face. “That’s how Oakseed screwed me.”
In the light of this it made sense she’d shot Kline dead as soon as he refused to do business with her on the level. Perhaps that was, after all, a reasonable thing to do. And if Arlo continued to deal with her on the level, she was no threat to him.
* * *
Drienne wished she had a better weapon. All she’d been able to find was a metal bar that looked like it had once been a support for a rack of shelving, which had been twisted apart and had an awkward sharp point at one end. The building they were in had been an office, but had likely been cleared out prior to London’s collapse; it contained very little in the way of furniture. The only light in the room came from Loren’s windows.
Loren had been so confident that lifting the tray would take less time than driving the truck train from Kentish Cyc to NiZCOval, but this had not been the case and they needed to lift it before they arrived at NiZCOval, in case Mia was waiting for them. So Drienne parked up near an old art gallery and asked how much longer it was going to take.
“I don’t know,” said Loren.
Despite the darkness, they were very conspicuous parked in the street, and Drienne was concerned about being preyed on by vagues. She found the whole environment unsettling, and suggested they go inside the office while Loren finished the job. If anyone did come, they’d check out the truck train first, so Drienne wanted to keep it in sight, so they’d have some warning and could sneak away.
Drienne was wondering how Loren could have been so badly wrong about their ability to lift the tray, but hassling them would only be counterproductive, so Drienne occupied herself by working out the explanation she’d provide to Mia of what had happened and why they’d taken the truck train instead of going to the rendezvous. It didn’t need to be too far from the truth, but there were certain details that needed to be—
Then, through the broken office window, Drienne heard someone shouting her name. Her real name. Only four people currently in London knew her real name, and one of them was inside this room. She heard it again, and it was the voice she knew best in all the world. Which made sense, because only Arlo would be stupid enough to walk the derelict London streets shouting her name. She edged over to the window, peered through the grimy pane—and there he was, standing by the truck train, looking around.
Loren had heard it too and identified the voice. “What the fuck is he doing?” they asked.
“Keep working,” said Drienne, and headed downstairs.
From the doorway (there was no door) Drienne managed to attract Arlo’s attention by hissing his name and waving a hand. He hurried over to her, she pulled him inside the building, embraced him quickly, told him she was glad to see him, then asked if he had gone completely insane, shouting her name like that.
“I didn’t know how else to find you,” he replied. “Where did you go?”
“I…” She’d been all set to spin him a yarn, but now they were face-to-face, she couldn’t. She’d confided everything to him when they’d lived together; she seldom had private thoughts of any significance. She’d confessed some dreadful things to him, and here they were, still together, because he’d told Mia to buy her for this operation. And now she was the one fucking it up for everyone because she didn’t trust Mia. But she couldn’t lie to Arlo about it.
And so Drienne led Arlo up to the office where Loren was still trying to lift the tray. Loren barely looked up to greet him, and Arlo’s first words to them were, “You do have the real Coyne. What…? I don’t understand.”
“Okay, Loren found out Mia never really worked in London,” said Drienne. “And the person we’re working for isn’t the real Mia.”
“How do you know this?” asked Arlo skeptically.
“I dredged some data,” said Loren, “and—”
“Have you seen evidence of this?” Arlo said to Drienne, then he pointed at Loren. “Because they’ve been acting weird since—”
“I’ve been acting weird?” said Loren.
“Yes, since last night.”
“You’re the one who’s got a problem with me.”
“What?”
“Loren—just focus on the Coyne,” Drienne said. Then she explained to Arlo the suspicions she and Loren had developed.
Arlo thought for a moment, and Drienne could see it made sense to him. “So … you think our Mia’s a made, like us?” he said.
“If Oakseed had someone supersmart on staff they’d make a backup, right?”
“But she’d be younger … she must have made herself look older with cosmetics.” Arlo gave a sudden laugh. “When she first brought me to her apartment my eyes were bandaged, and she spoke to me and I had a mental picture of someone younger. I remember being surprised when the bandages came off.”
“So she’s impersonating her donor,” said Loren. “Just like you did to open the locker. But seems like her goal is to do it full-time—she wants to buy the rights to the real Mia’s personality and IP, and then she’ll take over.”
“She could have just told us all this,” said Arlo. “We’d have understood.”
“Well, there’s another possibility—”
“But wait.” Arlo put his fingers to his eyes. “If she’s a made, she can’t be our legal holder. Someone else is. So she can’t cancel our debts either.”
“No,” said Drienne. “If she’s falsified the deeds, the deals she made are null and void and our holding reverts to RookDivest.”
“Or maybe the deals are in someone else’s name.” Arlo grasped at this possibility. “Maybe that person will free us—if Mia tells them to.”
“Do you think that’s likely, though? She’s already lied to us about a bunch of stuff, we can’t trust anything she says.”
“So what’s your plan? You’ve run off with her money, what now?”
“That’s just it,” said Loren. “I don’t think this is about money.” They kept their attention on the windows running the programs that were trying to lift the false tray, but spoke in the most fluent and confident manner Drienne had heard from them in the short time they’d known each other. “Drienne wasn’t convinced by that stuff about Samson stashing money as a nest egg, and I agree. I think there’s something else going on here and when we find out what it is, then we’ll have some bargaining power with—” And their face fell.
“What is it?” said Drienne.
“Can’t be right…” said Loren, looking from one window to another.
“What?” said Arlo.
“There’s nothing.” Loren looked up. “There is no false tray.”
“You said it’d be easy to crack,” said Drienne, striding across the room to look over Loren’s shoulder.
“That’s why it was so hard to crack, there isn’t one. I’ve checked the whole thing, there’s nothing on here but the ninety-five grand. There’s no other money, no eighty million dollars.”
“So you were wrong,” said Arlo. “Fuck!”
“I wasn’t wrong about there being no more money.”
“But you said there’d be something else,” said Drienne, “something we could use as leverage. You haven’t, like, wiped the data by accident—”
“No, I know what I’m doing. Jesus.”
“But if there’s no eighty million, and nothing else, why—”
“Drienne,” said Arlo abruptly, “there’s something you should know. Mia’s already here, in London, and she’s looking for you.”
“What?”
“Yes, look—there’s no time, we need to work out how we’re going to play this because she’s going to be here, like right here, any minute.”
“Wait—why didn’t you tell us this at—” Drienne said, stepping forward, intending to cross the room to Arlo. But she didn’t get there, or complete the sentence, because a bullet whizzed through the open window, missing her by centimeters. She dodged back.
“What the fuck was that?” said Loren.
Arlo swallowed. “Mia had a gun. She killed Kline—”
“Arlo,” Drienne said, “why the fuck didn’t you tell us—”
“She told me not to tell you. Look, she killed Kline—I thought she was going to kill me…”
Through the window they could hear heavy footfalls heading their way and Arlo’s first thought was the police must have caught up with them. But did that make sense? Why send a sniper after them for stealing a truck train?
“This way,” Loren said and pointed toward a door that led into another office that overlooked the back of the building. This room had windows big enough to climb out of, and one was already open. Arlo and Drienne helped Loren climb onto the frame—they were only one floor up, but in the darkness it was impossible to see what they were jumping into. They could hear footsteps inside the building, coming up the stairs, so Loren jumped.
Drienne could hear them land painfully and cry out.
“I’m okay,” Loren said in a stage whisper.
“You next,” Drienne said to Arlo, and he didn’t waste time protesting—he clambered up and jumped out, stumbling as he landed.
Drienne pulled herself up to the window ledge—
And a gunshot sounded from outside the room. The pane in the open window shattered, glass exploding past her face. A man entered through the door they’d just used, wearing black combat clothes with no identifying markings, and carrying a handgun. He wasn’t police. Drienne raised her hands.
“Go!” Drienne yelled down to Arlo and Loren.
“They’re getting away out the back!” shouted the black-clad soldier to others in the building.
Drienne heard footsteps running away into the night. It sounded like only one set of footsteps, and she knew exactly what her dumbass partner was doing right now.
“You too, Arlo,” she shouted.
The soldier marched over to her, brandishing his gun. “Out of the way.”
“Oh, you want me to get down from here?”
“Yes.”
“I’m in your way? Is that the problem?”
The soldier reached out, grabbed Drienne’s hand, and went to pull her down from the window—but as he leaned in, she kicked down on the hand with the gun, forcing him to drop it. Then she threw herself off the ledge and onto him, knocking him to the floor. She kicked him in the head, grabbed the gun, hauled herself back onto the ledge—
And Mia walked in, with two more soldiers behind her, wearing the same dark clothes. All three of them were armed. Mia directed a weary look at Drienne.
“Do you have it?” Mia asked.
Drienne hesitated before saying, “Yeah.”
“Liar.”
Mia nodded, and one of the soldiers shot Drienne in the throat.
* * *
Arlo was still waiting for Drienne in the alley behind the office. He heard the shot and saw her fall from the window ledge, out of the building. He should have run away at that point. He should have run when Drienne told him to. He should have run the moment his feet hit the ground. But you didn’t leave your partner, it wasn’t done.
She landed horribly, heavily. He ran to her side.
* * *
She was still conscious, but weakening, and if she moved her mouth it just brought up more blood. She could hear someone at her side, asking if she was okay. It was Arlo, and he called her Drienne. She couldn’t speak to tell him not to use that name.
All she could think was, how dare they do this to her. They probably thought she was a common made and they could kill her with impunity. Well, now that she was dying it would all finally come out. There’d be an autopsy and they’d realize the truth and then there’d be trouble. They would all realize how wrong they’d been.
