The Clone Assassin (8 page)

Somebody said, “Three dead clones and a missing Marine? Sounds like they canceled each other out.”

Most of the men under the awning cackled, but not the big man. He continued staring at Freeman. The calm and quiet of his voice cut through the laughing. He said, “Jimmy, make yourself useful, take Frankie to the hospital.”

Frankie now lay on his side, unconscious, blood streaming from his mouth. He’d need a very good doctor. Freeman’s punch had shattered two ribs and ruptured his kidneys. The one with the broken jaw was ambulatory. Frankie would die.

Four men scraped Frankie off the ground, using his legs and arms like handles. Two more grabbed the other guy.

The man in charge said, “I could kill you right now if I wanted. You’re a tough guy, but that doesn’t make you bulletproof. Next time you come to my camp looking for trouble, you better be bulletproof . . . Mr. Freeman.”

Then, pretending he could read Freeman’s thoughts, he added, “Yeah, I know who you are.”

Freeman said nothing.

The man asked, “What do you want to know?”

“I want to know what happened to Harris.”

“You want to know what happened to Harris,” the man repeated. “You want to know what happened. So do the police. So do a lot of people. That doesn’t make you special. If you got business with us, say what you got, then get running.”

“What happened to Harris?” Freeman repeated.

One of the thugs, not the man in charge, shouted, “How the speck should we know?” Another said, “Why don’t you take it up with Story? I hear you’re tight with the cops.” A few of the men under the shelter laughed. Most remained silent.

The man in charge said, “No one here had anything to do with it.”

“That wasn’t what I asked,” said Freeman.

The man said, “You’re not winning friends here.”

Freeman didn’t answer. He wasn’t looking for friends.

Location: Washington, D.C.
Date: July 18, 2519

“Why did he have to take our air-conditioning with him . . . in July? I’m as open to suicide bombers as the next guy,” Cardston told Watson as he escorted him through the security station, “but why couldn’t he have waited for November to off the air?”

Watson had been in the Pentagon on the day of the bombing. He’d been evacuated from the building with everybody else. Having left later that day for the New Olympian Territories, he hadn’t been briefed about the aftermath of the provocateur’s attack. He knew that the provocateur took dead MPs with him, but he didn’t know that the grenade had destroyed the air-conditioning system.

He said, “If all the bomb did was blow up the air-condition—”

“Grenade,” said Cardston. “He left a bomb on the third floor, then killed himself on a service floor with a grenade.

“I suppose we did get lucky. Now we know how to screen for burners.”

“Burners?”
asked Watson.

“Burn-a-bombs.”

Watson had read the first few pages of the official report during his flight into Washington, D.C. He hadn’t been drunk, at least he wouldn’t have labeled himself “drunk.” He’d certainly guzzled off any rough edge. None of the information he’d read had stayed with him.

He’d also been distracted. With Cutter dead and Harris missing, Watson wondered what would become of the Enlisted Man’s Empire, a military regime run by clones who had been designed to take orders, not give them. Some of the clones made excellent commanders, but in his experiences, most of them failed miserably in command.

Watson said, “This Herman . . .”

“Leonard Herman,” Cardston said.

“He came in through the main entrance?”

“Cleared the same security station you just passed.”

They stood a few yards away, watching the station. A long queue of people, some military, some civilian, passed through the posts.

“The report said something about his having a weapon on him when he passed through the posts,” said Watson.

“A ring with a poison-laden spike hidden under a gem . . . small but effective in the right situation. He only needed to kill one person to accomplish his objectives—to kill the guy he came to visit. Didn’t even need the ring, not really, he could have strangled Day with a general-issue belt or stabbed him with a pen. Have you seen images of Herman?”

“Just what you included in the report. Not the most intimidating man I’ve seen,” said Watson.

A steady line of people filed through the security station. They submitted their bags to be searched and scanned, then they walked between the posts, for metal detection and spectral detection.

“Do you know if Herman was his real name?” asked Watson. “Even his name sounds harmless.”

“So far, his entire story checks out. Leonard Herman, resident of Chevy Chase, Maryland, owner of Rolenta Cleaning Supplies. We’ve been to his house and his factory. I’ve got teams investigating every angle.

“Would you like to see the security feed?” asked Cardston.

His eyes still on the line as it filtered through the posts, Watson said, “I better pass. Do I have time to speak with Tasman before the meeting?”

Cardston looked at the wall clock—07:21. He tapped his earpiece, and asked, “Has Tasman checked in?”

“Yes, sir. Came in early today. Security checked him in at 05:00.”

Cardston told Watson, “He’s in his lab. Keep it short.”

 • • • 

Watson had not returned to Washington to meet with Howard Tasman—the Unified Authority scientist who had developed the neural programming used in the cloning program. Watson’s official reason for returning was to hold a leadership summit—something akin to attending the conclave of cardinals who select the next pope.

In this case, only one cardinal qualified, and in everybody else’s mind, he wasn’t fit for command—Major General Pernell M. MacAvoy. With Cutter dead and Harris missing, MacAvoy was the highest-ranking officer in the Enlisted Man’s military. Along with MacAvoy, the people attending the meeting would be Rear Admiral Thomas Hauser—captain of the EMN
Churchill
and the late Don Cutter’s second-in-command—and Hunter Ritz, only a colonel in the Enlisted Man’s Marines but Harris’s most trusted officer.

Watson understood why Hauser, Ritz, and MacAvoy needed to meet. He had no idea why he’d been summoned to attend. He said, “I want a word with Tasman before the summit. We’d better get to the lab.”

As they walked toward the elevator, Watson said, “It’s not that bad in here. Maybe we can get by with the air-conditioning out.”

Cardston laughed. “It’s only 07:00. Stick around a while.”

They joined the crowd beside the elevator door. The elevator opened. A couple of Army officers stepped out. Cardston and Watson waited their turn, then stepped onto the elevator. Once on, they stood in silence. Cardston watched the floor numbers flash above the door.

Pressed against the side of the elevator, towering over all the other passengers, both clone and natural-born alike, Watson watched the people around him. He had long ago noted the way clones fastidiously watched the floors flash by and wondered if it was part of their programming.

Cardston led them off the elevator on the third floor. He pointed down an empty hall. “We found the burner in a closet down that hall.”

“Were they after the lab?” asked Watson.

“I thought about that,” said Cardston. “Could be, but if that’s the case, we have a bigger problem than terrorists with burners. The lab’s supposed to be a secret. I’d hate to think that the Unifieds know what floor our high-level security lab is on.” He sighed, and added, “We have a leak. That much is certain.

“You know why we stuck Tasman on this floor, Watson? We stuck him here because nobody in his right mind sticks an operation like this on a middle floor. Your secrets become more secure when nobody knows about them, right? You come off the elevator on this floor, what do you see? You don’t see guards and checkpoints, you see an open hall. We got plenty of security protecting the lab, but it’s discreet. You put up a set of posts and a big security station, and you tell your enemies that this is the spot to hit.”

Antiseptic,
Watson thought.
Fluorescent lights, white floors, empty halls, we might as well be in a damn hospital.
As he thought this, he remembered the weeks Harris had been in the hospital after all the trouble on Mars.

Mars. Specking Mars,
he thought. Watson had arrived on Mars just as the trouble began. He’d started working for Don Cutter when Harris and his entire regiment had been abducted on Mars; they’d simply vanished. When they resurfaced a week later, they acted as if nothing had happened. Believing Harris had been reprogrammed, Cutter relieved him of command. A short time later, everything started going to hell. Cutter, who sent Watson, a civilian advisor and untested in battle, to the Mars Spaceport. Watson arrived, and two days later . . .
two specking days later
, a U.A. thug nearly beat him to death. On the third day, he hiked ten miles across the Martian desert with a broken jaw, busted ribs, and not nearly enough pain medication. Freeman had been there. Watson would never have made it to safety without Freeman; no one would have.

Freeman had forced him to shoot an unarmed man that day. Whenever Watson thought about Mars—he avoided thinking about the red planet as much as possible—he always concluded that he had left most of his soul on the plains between the spaceport and the Air Force base.

Watson had returned with a poorly set jaw, a broken nose, four broken ribs, and a body so bruised that his doctor put him in a body cast. He’d looked better than Harris, though. The man who attacked Watson had gunned down Harris from behind, shooting him at nearly point-blank range with a shotgun. After pulling shot from his lungs, liver, and muscles, his doctors had had to restore his tissue and skin.

Tasman was on Mars,
Watson thought. Since returning to Earth, Watson had purposely avoided the old man’s lab. It wasn’t the lab or the unpleasant old man that kept him away. He didn’t want to deal with memories of Mars.

Cardston led him through the maze of nondescript doors and halls. Entering a suite of offices that looked like any other from the outside, they came to a bulletproof barricade behind which sat four Marines in combat armor. The glass that screened them was nearly two inches thick. Since taking up with Cutter, Watson had entered dozens of checkpoints with quarter-inch armored windows. This barricade wasn’t just bulletproof; it was meant to stop bombs.

Even though he was with Major Cardston, the head of Pentagon Security, the guards asked Watson for his ID. Both Cardston and Watson passed through posts to be DNA-typed and scanned.

Watson commented, “You run a tight ship,” meaning to congratulate Cardston on the way his security team protected Tasman’s laboratory.

Cardston said, “This security station? This is just the part you see; sometime I’ll show you what’s behind the curtain.

“You know how we located that burner? It was hidden in a scan-proof case in the large closet in the Pentagon and we spotted it ten seconds after catalyzation began. I had six independent sensor arrays in that closet, and every one of them detected that bomb the moment Herman lit it up. He never even armed the damned bomb. My bomb removal team entered the closet forty-two seconds after catalyzation began.”

As they waited for a very thick mechanical door to slide open, Watson asked, “Would the explosion have reached the lab?”

“Probably not. Then again, it wouldn’t need to,” said Cardston. “Demolish enough of the building and everything else comes down, right? If the first floor and the second floor collapse, the third floor comes down.”

“Was the bomb big enough to do that?” asked Watson.

“No,” said Cardston. “Not even close.”

Once you got past the security station, entering the lab was like stepping into a bank vault. The door that cleared out before them was six inches thick with steel and chrome.

Six men in combat armor sat in a bulletproof booth on the other side of the door.

“More Marines?” asked Watson.

“Not Marines,” said the old man in the wheelchair sitting beside them. It was Howard Tasman. Watson recognized the cantankerous old bastard’s voice even before he saw him. As his motorized chair wheeled forward, he said, “However much time I have left, I wouldn’t want to shorten it by entrusting it to clones.”

Tasman was ninety-one years old, but he looked older. He had a full head of fine white hair, so fine that his scalp showed through it. His skin was white as paper, the blue veins running beneath it as visible as the streets on a city map. His eyes were clear and white though the rims had turned red. His head, neck, and arms were skeletal, bones held together by skin so thin that Watson suspected a strong wind might blow him apart.

He said, “How are you doing, Watson? It’s been a long time. I would have thought you’d visit an old comrade in arms more often.”

Watson didn’t like to look at Tasman. He didn’t like being reminded that men become decrepit before they die; seeing Tasman reminded him how cruel the years become. Watson didn’t like Tasman’s wrinkled, desiccated looks, and he didn’t like the old man’s odor, either. He smelled old and antiseptic, like the spleen of an ancient Egyptian pharaoh who has been washed, mummified, and stored for six thousand years in primitive formaldehyde. Watson thought,
“Comrade in arms” my ass, you old bastard.
He said, “These last few months have been spinning out of control.”

Tasman turned to Cardston, and said, “Watson and I have some catching up to do, Major. Would you mind if we chatted alone?”

Not wanting to be alone with the living fossil, Watson hoped Cardston would hold his ground. He didn’t know what he could tell Tasman.

Cardston said, “Keep it short, he has an important meeting coming up.” He made a show of checking his wristwatch and left.

Tasman said, “Let’s go to my office,” and started rolling away at top speed, forcing Watson to trot. The scientist steered his chair to a door at the far end of a hundred-foot-long hallway. Like every door in the lab—
possibly even the toilet,
Watson suspected—the door to Tasman’s office required DNA identification. Tasman touched a finger to it, and it opened.

The old scientist entered the office. Watson followed. When the door closed behind them, the scientist said, “If they exploded a thermonuclear bomb out there, it couldn’t break these walls. We’d be killed, of course, but not by the explosion.

“Do you know what that means, Watson? It means that the people protecting me place more import on my work than my life. God help you, Watson, I hope you never live to see every world and person in your life turn to dust. My work, my home, my family. The only reason people bother with me is because of the things I got wrong.”

The old man’s complaining bored Watson. He said, “You’ve made more than your share of monumental mistakes.”

Tasman glared at him. At first, anger and hate blazed in his clear green eyes. He laughed, an ugly sight that revealed teeth as gray as storm clouds. He said, “‘Monumental’? Is that what my mistakes have been, ‘monumental’? Why not ‘cataclysmic’? You want to remember that, Travis. You’re an important man, and important men make monumental mistakes.”

“I couldn’t make mistakes on your level if I tried,” said Watson. “Your mistakes brought down the Unified Authority. They may bring down the Enlisted Man’s Empire as well.”