The Widowmaker Reborn: Volume 2 of the Widowmaker Trilogy Page 12

  Nighthawk stared at the man and the dragon for a long moment, then turned to the tavern at large.

  “All right,” he said in a loud voice. “Everybody out. The bar's closed.”

  A few patrons looked at him curiously. He waved his gun in their direction.

  “Now,” he said.

  Most of the men and aliens got up and left. The Canphorites and a trio of men remained.

  “Ito, count to 30 and shoot any customers who are still in the tavern.”

  Kinoshita got to his feet, guns drawn, and faced the remaining patrons. The Canphorites made it out the door in ten seconds, the men in twelve.

  “All right,” said Kinoshita to Nighthawk after the last of them had left. “What's going on?”

  “I didn't want them to distract Melisande.”

  “Distract me from what?” she asked.

  “You told me that proximity makes a difference in your ability to read emotions.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “I want you to concentrate—hard,” said Nighthawk. “Can you read anything that isn't coming from me, Kinoshita, Friday, or Jory?”

  “You think that she's here?”

  As Melisande uttered the words, she reeled as if she'd been hit.

  “She's not at his place. And he just reacted at the suggestion, didn't he?”

  “Someone did,” she confirmed.

  “All right. Tell me if you can read anyone else.”

  “I'll try.”

  “Don't bother,” said a female voice from behind them, and they turned to see a slim, dark-haired woman in her late twenties stepping out through a sliding panel in the wall.

  “Cassandra Hill, I presume?” said Nighthawk.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Perfectly.”

  “I'm here to—”

  “I know why you're here,” said Cassandra Hill. “I'm sorry you've wasted your time, but I was not kidnapped by Ibn ben Khalid. I'm here of my own free will.”

  “What about the ransom demand?”

  “Ibn ben Khalid saw a way to get extort two million credits from my father. When you're in the revolution business, you do what you have to do.”

  “And you didn't object?”

  “There is no love lost between my father and me. He's a vile, corrupt man, and I hope Ibn ben Khalid brings him to justice.”

  Nighthawk frowned. “That's too bad.”

  “Why?”

  “I'm going to have to return you to him.”

  “But I've already told you—I wasn't kidnapped!” she said. “I'm here because I want to be here.” She paused. “And if I know my father, I'll bet he's more interested in killing Ibn ben Khalid than in having me returned.”

  “True enough,” admitted Nighthawk.

  “Well, then?”

  “I sympathize—but I don't have any choice.”

  “You can choose to walk away and forget you ever saw me,” said Cassandra.

  “It's not that simple,” said Nighthawk. “The life of someone very important to me depends on my returning you to your father.”

  “I don't want to go back.” She nodded her head toward Melisande. “Ask your Balatai woman.”

  Nighthawk turned to Melisande. “She's telling the truth, of course?”

  “No.”

  “That's a lie!” snapped Cassandra.

  “She doesn't want to go back,” continued Melisande. “And she seems to genuinely hate her father. But there was a lot of insincerity in her answers—I would characterize it as misdirection.”

  “Once we find Ibn ben Khalid, we'll find out how much of what she said is the truth,” said Kinoshita.

  Melisande reeled again, like a boxer absorbing a blow to the head.

  Well, I'll be damned, thought Nighthawk. Suddenly the pieces fit together.

  “I think that would be a waste of time, don't you, Miss Hill?” said Nighthawk.

  She stared coldly at him. “I don't think he could tell you anything I couldn't tell you myself.”

  “That remains to be seen,” said Kinoshita.

  “No it doesn't,” said Nighthawk.

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  Nighthawk looked at Cassandra Hill. “Do you want to tell him, or should I?”

  “You do it,” she replied.

  “Tell me what?” demanded Kinoshita.

  “Cassandra Hill is only one of her names,” said Nighthawk. He paused for effect. “Say hello to Ibn ben Khalid.”

  18.

  “You're crazy!” exclaimed Kinoshita.

  “Am I?” responded Nighthawk. He gestured to Melisande. “Ask her.”

  “He's right,” said the empath.

  “But it doesn't make any sense!”

  “It makes all the sense in the world,” said Nighthawk. “We know she hates her father. We can assume he's as corrupt as most politicians, since he paid my law firm to oversee the performance of a highly illegal act—and, of course, he's also commissioned an illegal hit.” Nighthawk paused. “I submit to you that that kind of corruption doesn't occur overnight. If Cassandra was appalled by it as an adolescent, she probably had access to enough information to start thwarting him. And since she didn't want to do it openly, for any number of reasons ranging from preserving her sources of information to preserving her life, she needed another identity.”

  “But Ibn ben Khalid is a man's name!”

  “It just means she's better at misdirection than most of us,” answered Nighthawk.

  “Ibn ben Khalid has been operating out here for a decade,” continued Kinoshita, not yet willing to admit he was wrong. “She'd have been a teenager then. Who would follow a teenaged girl into battle?”

  “You still don't understand, do you?” said Nighthawk. “Think back, Ito. We've been all over the Frontier. How many of Ibn ben Khalid's followers have actually seen him? That's why there's such a complex chain of command. There are probably less than a dozen people out here who know Ibn ben Khalid is actually Cassandra Hill.”

  “Nineteen, to be exact,” interjected Cassandra.

  “Well, I'll be damned!” muttered Kinoshita.

  “Probably you will be,” she agreed. Suddenly she turned to Nighthawk. “Now that you know, what do you propose to do about it?”

  “Nothing, for the moment.”

  “It is our mission to kill her,” said Friday.

  “Don't be a fool,” shot back Nighthawk. “You don't think she'd have shown herself if we weren't covered, do you?” He looked at Cassandra. “How many guns are pointing at us right now?”

  “Eight,” she said. Then, “I know how good you are, Widowmaker. But they're well-hidden; even you can't kill all of them before one of them gets in a fatal shot.”

  Nighthawk looked carefully around the tavern. “All right,” he said. “You're calling the shots. What next?”

  “Next? Next we talk.”

  “What about?”

  “What are your intentions if you survive this meeting?” she said. “You're being paid to return Cassandra Hill and kill Ibn ben Khalid. You can't do both.”

  Nighthawk poured himself a drink. “I'll have to think about it.”

  “There's another alternative,” said Cassandra.

  “There usually is.”

  She looked at his team. “The rest of you go outside and wait for us. I want to talk to the Widowmaker alone.”

  They arose and began moving to the door.

  “Just a minute!” she said firmly. “You—the red one!”

  Friday turned back to her.

  “Leave your weapons here on the table.”

  “Why just me?” demanded the alien.

  “Because I don't trust you. Do what I say.”

  Friday shrugged, unstrapped his various pistols and knives, and placed them gently on the table, then walked out to join the others.

  “You look approving,” noted Cassandra, sitting down across from Nighthawk.

  “You p
icked the right one. He'd just as soon kill the two of us as look at us.”

  “Then why is he working for you?”

  “If he wasn't working for me, he'd be following me,” answered Nighthawk. “At least this way I can keep an eye on him. And...” he paused.

  “Yes?”

  “We weren't going on a picnic,” he continued. “He's good at his job.”

  “I heard about his ‘job’ on Cellestra.”

  “He thought he was coming to my rescue,” said Nighthawk. “I can't fault him for that.”

  “You can fault his judgment.”

  Nighthawk shook his head. “It had nothing to do with judgment. He'll use any excuse he can find for killing Men. That excuse was better than most.”

  “What about the others?” asked Cassandra. “Do you trust them?”

  “I don't trust anyone. But I'm willing to turn my back on them.”

  “They say that Kinoshita used to be a lawman out here on the Frontier.”

  “So I've been told,” replied Nighthawk.

  “Is he good at his work?”

  “Relatively.”

  “But he's no Widowmaker?”

  “No,” answered Nighthawk. “He's no Widowmaker.” He stared at her. “Are you going to make your offer pretty soon? I'm starting to get hungry.”

  “What offer?”

  “It's pretty obvious,” he said. “You want me to join you, and you're wondering whether to make the offer just to me, or to my whole team.”

  “Well, you're not stupid, I'll give you that.”

  “I never said I was.”

  “When you virtually accused poor Nicholas of being me, I had my doubts.”

  “I didn't have sufficient information,” he replied. “He was dead drunk the first time Melisande encountered him. Once I realized Blue Eyes was leading me away from Ibn ben Khalid, I assumed the drunkenness was Jory's way of disguising his thoughts.” Suddenly Nighthawk smiled. “How could I know he didn't have any?”

  “He's a lot brighter than you think.”

  “He's willing to die for you, and you don't care a fig about him. I wouldn't call that bright.”

  “Not for me,” she corrected him. “For the cause.”

  “Most tax dodgers are in favor of overthrowing the government,” commented Nighthawk.

  “He's more than that.”

  “If you say so.”

  She stared at him again. “I'll ask you once more: if I let you live, what do you plan to do?”

  “I haven't decided.”

  “You will concede that I can have you killed before you reach the door?”

  “I concede it,” answered Nighthawk. “But I don't concede you can kill me before I can kill you.”

  “Why should either of us die? Especially for the benefit of someone as evil as my father?”

  “I told you: I don't have a choice.”

  “Since when don't clones have free will?”

  He stared at her.

  “Oh, yes,” Cassandra continued. “I know all about you, Jefferson Nighthawk. You're the second clone of the original Widowmaker. You were created for the sole purpose of returning me to my father.”

  “And killing Ibn ben Khalid.”

  “And killing Ibn ben Khalid,” she agreed. “But you're out here, hundreds of thousands of light years from Deluros VIII. What power do they hold over you? Why can't you just say no?”

  “If I don't bring you back, I don't get paid,” answered Nighthawk. “And if I don't get paid, the first Jefferson Nighthawk gets evicted from his cryogenic chamber before they've completed the cure for his eplasia.” He paused. “I kill other people. I'm not suicidal.”

  “And you feel it would be suicide?”

  “He and I are one and the same.”

  “How much money does he need?”

  Nighthawk shrugged. “Three million, four million, five million credits. Who knows? They're close to a cure, but they haven't got it yet.”

  She stared at him intently, then sipped the drink that Melisande had left behind. “What would you say to ten million credits?”

  “Explain.”

  “Would you help me bring my father down if I paid you ten million credits?” she asked. “That could keep the original Nighthawk alive for a long time—and you'd be fighting on the right side.”

  “Which side I fight on makes no difference to me,” said Nighthawk. “But I don't have any desire to kill you. If your offer is legitimate, I'd certainly have to consider it.”

  “Which side you fought on made a difference to you once,” she continued. “I've studied your career. The Widowmaker killed an awful lot of men and aliens, but he was always a lawman or a bounty hunter, never an outlaw.”

  “I was only feeding one of me then,” he replied with an ironic smile.

  “You can't convince me that you're not still an ethical man,” she said adamantly.

  “It's not my job to convince you of anything,” said Nighthawk. “You have to convince me not to kill you or return you.”

  “I can offer you ten million reasons.”

  “Okay, where are they?”

  “In my father's safe.”

  Nighthawk leaned back on his chair and considered it. “You're saying that there's no money unless we're successful, right?”

  “In essence.”

  “And it could take months to assemble and prepare your forces for an attack on your father, and even then they'll probably be outnumbered.”

  “You can't take him by force, only by stealth and surprise,” she said. “We'll have to go in with a carefully-assembled team.” She paused. “That's one of the reasons I need you. Like I said, I've studied your career. You've done this kind of thing more than once. I need your expertise.”

  “But you're not prepared to pay until we succeed?”

  “That's right.”

  “I have to consider it,” he said. “If we fail, you've killed two Widowmakers.”

  “If I kill you right now, I've done the same thing,” she noted.

  “True,” he acknowledged.

  “Consider something else,” she continued. “If you succeed and return to Deluros, they're almost certain to terminate you. It would be very awkward to have a clone walking around, one who could identify the people who created him.”

  “I've known that from the moment I woke up on a lab table,” he replied. “That's why I'm never going back to the Oligarchy.”

  “There's enough in my father's safe to keep the original Widowmaker alive and give you a stake for a new life.”

  He stared at her without replying.

  “You're weakening, aren't you?” she said with a smile.

  “I'm considering.”

  He fell silent again.

  “Well?” she demanded after another moment has passed. “Are you still considering?”

  “No—I'm counting.”

  “Millions?”

  “Men.”

  “I don't understand.”

  “If we're going to become partners, we have to trust each other,” said Nighthawk. “Until you know I could have killed all eight of your gunmen and chose not to, you'll never be sure that I won't turn on you when the opportunity presents itself.” He looked around the room. “Three behind the see-through mirror in back of the bar. Another one behind the door to the dressing room. One behind the picture that's hanging askew on the south wall. Two in the attic"—he pointed to the ceiling—"there and there. I haven't spotted the eighth yet.”

  “You're good,” she said, impressed. “I made the right choice.”

  “Not yet,” he said, still scanning the room. Suddenly he smiled. “Oh, hell, I'm an asshole. The eighth one is you.”

  She returned his smile, withdrew a tiny pistol that was attached to her wrist just inside her sleeve, and placed it on the table.

  “So do we have a deal?”

  “Yeah, I think we do.”

  “Good,” she said. “I'll tell my people that your team can come and go freely
.”

  “Tell them to keep an eye on the red alien,” said Nighthawk. “He doesn't much care about sides, as long as he gets to kill Men.”

  She nodded and extended her hand. “Welcome to the cause, Widowmaker.”

  “Keep your cause,” he said, taking her small hand in his own. “You'd just better be right about how much is in the safe.”

  19.

  It was evening. Nighthawk's team had returned to the hotel, and he had remained behind at the Blue Dragon. There was an apartment above the bar, and Cassandra Hill had invited him upstairs to join her for dinner.

  “This place is too tastefully decorated for it to belong to Blue Eyes,” commented Nighthawk as he entered the place. “You've a good eye for art.”

  “You recognize some of the artists?” she asked.

  “A few. The Morita sculpture is exquisite.”

  “I'm genuinely surprised,” she said. “I never expected a man in your profession to have any knowledge of art.”

  “I've been sent out to retrieve it often enough.”

  “There's a difference between retrieving it and studying it.”

  “You think a man who kills for a living can't appreciate art?” he asked wryly.

  “Well ... I...”

  “Let me tell you something,” he said. “When you put your life on the line all the time, it heightens all your perceptions.” He paused, staring at the sculpture. “Also, since you become so aware of your mortality, you tend to appreciate those things that will outlive you. Morita died more than a millennia ago, and people still flock to see his work.”

  “I meant no offense,” she said.

  “None taken. I was just explaining.”

  “Well,” she said, “you like artwork, so maybe my pride and joy won't be wasted on you. Follow me.”

  She led the way to a large room, paneled with imported hardwood. Three walls were covered with shelves, and the shelves themselves were covered with books. There were thousands of them, beautifully bound, many with gilt pages, a few with engraved covers, all with bent or broken spines that proved they were for reading rather than for decoration.

  Nighthawk walked to the middle of the room, stood with his hands on his hips for a long moment, and then began examining the shelves.

  “What do you think?” she asked.