Rule 34 - Charles Stross [93]
The latter . . . you’d bet good money that there’s a leak inside the Operation. Otherwise, how else do they know who you’re targeting? So you’re going to set up a target. Mister family man diplomat seems like a suitable option; fat, happy, and dumb. (Move in with him, put word up the line that he’s your new COO, wait for someone to try to whack him, grab the killer, and extract names.) You do not commit this latter plan to your note-pad. You’ve got to assume that anything in your skullphone is being monitored by Control, and that Control is leaking information to the—no, they don’t exist. There are no killer lizards bleeding through from the other side of reality, the side that’s all washed-out and grainy gray and suicidal. That’s just a delusional fantasy, a side-effect of bad headmeat. And you’re not delusional, are you?
Halfway down your drink, you notice a couple of low-lifes giving you the eye-ball from across the bar. You don’t move your head, but you study them back from behind your glasses. Skinny, short hair, bad skin, track-suit-and-hoodie stereotypes: One of them’s staring and muttering to his mate, who’s nodding and not looking at you. You’re acutely aware, of an instant, that you’re wearing the Gonet on your wrist. Conspicuous consumption indeed. Shit, part of you registers, the part of you that remembers your time at school and the special education your uncle Al gave you: The rest of you feels a pulse or squeeze of momentary happy anticipation of release, not unlike what you felt with the woman. Sex and violence are all cross-wired at a low level in the brain, anyway. That’s what they say.
You finish your glass, stand, and walk out of the bar with your back straight, not looking back. You slide the glasses into their case and pocket them. There’s some movement behind you. You turn a corner and cut uphill through a grey stone canyon between windowless buildings. It’s twilight now, and there’s movement behind you, a scuffing noise like a rat in a hurry and a breath of air as you spin round.
There’s only one of them and it’s Sweaty McTracksuit, and the back of your head is no longer in front of his fist when he tries to deck you. Instead, your left heel is stamping on his right instep, you’ve got a lock on his arm, and you’re twisting as he drops the home-fabbed knuckle-duster that probably came off one of your clients’ machines and claws at your eyes with his left hand.
A second later, you’ve faceplanted him on a paving stone. Quick scan: Two’s company. For a moment, you wonder if the enemy sent him, but no—he’s just a fucking low-life mugger who’s taken you for a tourist, gone after your watch and your wallet. You can’t be having that. So you kick him sharply in the ribs, pick up the ultrahard plastic knuckles while he’s struggling to draw breath, hold down his right hand against the concrete, and use them to ensure he’ll never play Guitar Hero again.
Ants. I am surrounded by fucking ants. Can’t they get anything right? Even a fucking mugging?
Evidently not. It looks like Peter Manuel will have to teach the burghers of Edinburgh a lesson.
A lesson they won’t soon forget.
LIZ: Bereavement Counselling
Mr. Hussein is pretty much right at the bottom of the list of all the people you ever expected to be doing the Victim Response Officer tap-dance for. It is, in fact, typical of how fucked-up this week has become that you find yourself sitting knee to knee with him over a cup of tea, commiserating (for tenuous values of commiseration).
Anwar is as bent as a three-euro note: just bright enough to think he’s smarter than everyone around him, just stupid enough not to realize that they’ve got his number. He’s a walking poster-boy for the Dunning-Kruger Effect: If he says he’s going straight, it probably means one of his idiot friends told him shoplifting is legal. However, his lack of insight is a two-edged sword; it’s glaringly obvious that he’s worried sick about his cousin, who is lying dead in an upstairs bedroom while the SOCO team pin