Altered Carbon(177)

Kawahara raised her eyes theatrically to the ceiling. “I framed Elias Ryker. I set him up with a false tip about a clinic in Seattle. We built a phone construct of Ryker and used it to pay Ignacio Garcia to fake the Reasons of Conscience decals on two of Ryker’s kills. We knew the Seattle PD wouldn’t buy it and that Garcia’s faking wouldn’t stand up to close scrutiny. There, is that better?”

“Where’d you get Garcia from?”

“Research on Ryker, back when we were trying to buy him off.” Kawahara shifted impatiently on the lounger. “The connection came up.”

“Yeah, that’s what I figured.”

“How perceptive of you.”

“So everything was nicely nailed down. Until Resolution 653 came along, and stirred it all up again. And Hinchley was still a live case.”

Kawahara inclined her head. “Just so.”

“Why didn’t you just stall it? Buy some decision makers on the UN Council?”

“Who? This isn’t New Beijing. You met Phiri and Ertekin. Do they look as if they’re for sale?:

I nodded. “So it was you in Marco’s sleeve. Did Miriam Bancroft know?”

“Miriam?” Kawahara looked perplexed. “Of course not. No one knew, that was the point. Marco plays Miriam on a regular basis. It was a perfect cover.”

“Not perfect. You play shit tennis, apparently.”

“I didn’t have time for a competence disc,”

“Why Marco? Why not just go as yourself?”

Kawahara waved a hand. “I’d been hammering at Bancroft since the resolution was tabled. Ertekin too, whenever she let me near her. I was making myself conspicuous. Marco putting in a word on my behalf makes me look more detached.”

“You took that call from Rutherford,” I said, mostly to myself. “The one to Suntouch House after we dropped in on him. I figured it was Miriam, but you were there as a guest, playing Marco on the sidelines of the great Catholic debate.”

“Yes.” A faint smile. “You seem to have greatly overestimated Miriam Bancroft’s role in all this. Oh, by the way, who is that you’ve got wearing Ryker’s sleeve at the moment? Just to satisfy my curiosity. They’re very convincing, whoever they are.”

I said nothing, but a smile leaked from one corner of my mouth. Kawahara caught it.

“Really? Double sleeving. You really must have Lieutenant Ortega wrapped around your little finger. Or wrapped around something, anyway. Congratulations. Manipulation worthy of a Meth.” She barked a short laugh. “That was meant as a compliment, Takeshi-san.”

I ignored the jibe. “You talked to Bancroft in Osaka? Thursday 16th August. You knew he was going?”

“Yes. He has regular business there. It was made to look like a chance encounter. I invited him to Head in the Clouds on his return. It’s a pattern for him. Buying sex after business deals. You probably found that out.”

“Yeah. So when you got him up here, what did you tell him?”

“I told him the truth.”

“The truth?” I stared at her. “You told him about Hinchley, and expected him to back you?”

“Why not?” There was a chilling simplicity in the look she gave me back. “We have a friendship that goes back centuries. Common business strategies that have sometimes taken longer than a normal human lifetime to bring to fruition. I hardly expected him to side with the little people.”

“So he disappointed you. He wouldn’t keep the Meth faith.”

Kawahara sighed again, and this time there was a genuine weariness in it that gusted out of somewhere centuries deep in dust.

“Laurens maintains a cheap romantic streak that I continually underestimate. He is not unlike you in many ways. But, unlike you, he has no excuse for it. The man is over three centuries old. I assumed—wanted to assume, perhaps—that his values would reflect that. That the rest was just posturing, speechmaking for the herd.” Kawahara made a negligent what-can-you-do gesture with one slim arm. “Wishful thinking, I’m afraid.”

“What did he do? Take some kind of moral stand?”

Kawahara’s mouth twisted without humour. “You mock me? You, with the blood of dozens from the Wei Clinic fresh on your hands. A butcher for the Protectorate, an extinguisher of human life on every world where it has managed to find a foothold. You are, if I may say so, Takeshi, a little inconsistent.”

Secure in the cool wrap of the betathanatine, I could feel nothing beyond a mild irritation at Kawahara’s obtuseness. A need to clarify.

“The Wei Clinic was personal.”

“The Wei Clinic was business, Takeshi. They had no personal interest in you at all. Most of the people you wiped were merely doing their jobs.”