“Jesus, Yuri, there’s no need for this!” Karno’s agitation was making his flab wobble obscenely. “We are friends.”
“
“Conrad McGlasson.”
“And where do I find him?”
There was no physical address, only an access code. The G7Turing was running tracers before Yuri reached the lobby.
He called Jessika as he went through the doors back out into the unrestrained heat of the street. “How’s it going?”
“I’m on Althaea; some town called Bronkal. The Tarazzi van drove into the dredger docks. There’s no traffic network, so I haven’t got a final destination yet.”
Yuri didn’t have to get Boris to gather data on Althaea. It was a gas-giant moon in the Pollux system, which after fifty years of aggressive terraforming was just about capable of supporting terrestrial life. The flip point had almost been reached, when the biosphere became stable without any more intervention. “Okay. Call in our local office.”
“Already have. And the tactical team is with me.”
“Good. Those frontier towns can be rough in places.”
“No kidding.”
“I’ve got a possible lead here. If it checks out, I should be with you in half an hour.”
“Can’t wait.”
Boris sprayed up a file of Conrad McGlasson’s hub travel record. He traveled around London a lot, Yuri noted, which fitted the whole matcher profile. The G7Turing pulled up a lot of ancillary data: the flats he used, financial data, which was nowhere near complete; that could only mean Conrad had dark accounts.
“What was his last hub use?” Yuri asked.
“He left the QE-Two South Road hub seventeen minutes ago.”
“Okay, he’s probably on the bridge; there’s a lot of footfall there. Cancel his hub access. I want to keep him there.”
“Done.”
“Send three hawkeye drone squadrons through to find him. And dispatch a tactical team to both ends of the bridge. They’re to remain on standby until I call for them, zero public exposure.”
“Confirmed.”
—
Yuri walked out of the QEII South Road hub two minutes later and looked up the imposing concrete road ramp that rose up to the Dartford Bridge. As part of London’s old M25 orbital motorway, the huge old suspension bridge that crossed the Thames used to carry 130,000 vehicles a day over the muddy tidal estuary. Now it was simply a monument to the obsolete past. He couldn’t imagine what it had looked like while it was in use.
Since the last cars and lorries had driven away into history, new money and real estate opportunities had allowed the bridge to reinvent itself. Big tubs had been fixed to the carriageways and planted with trees, turning the whole edifice into a flying greenway. Lightweight buildings had colonized the edges of the bridge, glass walls giving bar, club, and restaurant customers an unrivaled view along the river, both into the city and out across the surrounding countryside. Smaller pop-up specialist fabricator stores shared the ancient tarmac with the verdant trees, completing the transformation to a funky concrete rainbow of small-trader commerce.
Yuri began the long walk up the ramp, sticking to the shade offered by the tree canopy. Here above the river, the humidity was reaching a dismal crescendo. He slung his lightweight suit jacket over his shoulder and wished he had some kind of hat. Unseen above him, the hawkeye drones spread out and started searching for Conrad McGlasson.
They found him sitting at an outdoor table halfway along the southern side. A beer glass was on the table in front of him as he watched the people thronging along the central greenway. Yuri approached at an unhurried pace, keeping his eyes on the target. “Boris, shut down the local internet nodes in a hundred-meter radius around him.”
“Confirmed.”
The man was in his forties, with short-cut hair as black as his skin. Shorts and an old orange t-shirt gave him an unremarkable air. The only unusual thing was his lack of sunglasses; everyone else on the bridge that day was wearing them like it was a compulsory dress code. Conrad’s eyes were too precious for that. He scanned the people wandering past, studying them.
Conrad saw Yuri while he was still twenty meters away and immediately tensed up.
Conrad hunted around for other potential hostiles. When he didn’t find any, he returned his gaze to Yuri.
“I’m not going to chase you,” Yuri said as he arrived at the table.
“Nice to know,” Conrad replied, trying to keep it cool. Small beads of sweat on his high forehead were giving away his inner anxiety.
Yuri pulled out a chair and sat down. “My teams will do that. They’re all young and fit, and eager to show me how efficient they are. They’re armed, too. Ever been hit with a taser dart? Ours are very good, because we can’t be bothered restricting them to the legal maximum charge. Oh, and I’ve revoked your Connexion account. You’d have to run the whole way home. I imagine that would be quite exhausting in this heat. The teams will probably start a book on how far you’d get. I’d say about a hundred and fifty meters. What do you reckon?”
“What do you want?”