Spin State - Chris Moriarty [144]
“And you never asked how she was going to square things with MotaiSyndicate?”
“I told you. She was going to buy out my contract.”
“Even Sharifi didn’t have that kind of money. She cut a deal with Korchow. And you were the go-between. Did they expect her to fall in love with you, or was that just a windfall?”
“It wasn’t like that,” Bella whispered, and now she really was crying.
“Wasn’t it?” Li asked. “Has anything you’ve told me been true, or has it all come from Korchow?”
“I never lied to you,” Bella sobbed, just as Li’s comm icon flared in her peripheral vision.
“Christ!” Li muttered, and shut the icon off.
“She wanted to do it,” Bella insisted. “It wasn’t just for me. It was for the principle.”
“It’s not Sharifi’s motives I’m questioning.”
The comm icon flared again, more urgently. The caller had disabled Li’s call filter and wouldn’t go away now until Li answered.
She made a sharp gesture of annoyance, and Bella flinched, fear rising in her eyes behind the tears. In any other mood, Li would have been horrified; now she felt only a grim satisfaction.
She took another step toward Bella, consciously intimidating the woman, God help her. “What was Korchow buying? And don’t even think about saying you don’t know.”
“I don’t—” Bella swallowed. “Information.”
“Information about Sharifi’s work.”
Bella nodded.
“And you were the go-between. The go-between and the payment.”
“No! It wasn’t like that. They just talked.”
“Well, those little talks got your girlfriend killed.”
“I loved her!”
“Like you love me?” Li said nastily. “How convenient.”
“I don’t love you,” Bella said in a voice suddenly tight with anger. “I never said I did. You think having the same geneset is enough? That I’ll fall all over you just because you look like her? You’re nothing but a cheap copy. You wouldn’t understand Hannah if you spent the rest of your life poking and prying!”
Bella swept out of the room before Li could answer—and if she could have slammed the door, Li was sure she would have.
Her comm icon flashed again, and Li opened the line with a feeling of rising fury. “What?” she snarled.
Nguyen.
“Have I caught you at a bad time?” the general asked as her sunny office took shape around Li.
Li took a deep breath and set her jaw. “Not at all.”
“Well, how do things stand, then?”
Li swallowed. She was drifting into shipwreck waters; any misstep now and she would be past the point at which she could credibly claim to have shared everything with Nguyen. Keep it true as far as you can, she told herself, remembering Nguyen’s own advice. The true lie is the best lie. And the hardest one to get caught in.
She had told Nguyen about Korchow’s nighttime visit, right up to the moment when he produced the chop shop receipt. Now she described her meeting with Arkady, the files he’d passed to her, his reaction to the news that Cohen was not yet committed, the appointment—only a day and a half away now—in Helena.
“What good will the intraface do him without Sharifi?” Nguyen asked.
It was the first question out of her mouth when Li finished—and Li had been waiting for it, had planned for it. Now she fed her the story Korchow had concocted, passed along his feigned confidence that Syndicate nanotech, Syndicate gene therapy, Syndicate expertise with mingling constructed genesets would be able to make a partial construct work where the UN had needed a full one.
Nguyen appeared to believe it. “We’ll have to take care,” she said. “Korchow’s played the double game before. He stung us badly that way on Maris. Or one of his crèche brothers did. Even the As are hard to tell apart sometimes. Anyway, he’ll have a safe house somewhere. He’ll try to narrow your options, isolate you, push you into a situation where you rely on him for everything.”
“I don’t know that we can avoid that.”
“I don’t know that we should. We’ll just have to handle things as they come up. And you’ll need to rely on your judgment.”
“I always do, don’t I?”
Nguyen smiled. “I’m counting on it.”