Aces Abroad

A joker wrapped head to toe in a shabby cloak stepped up and sprayed three more letters beneath the first with a hand wrapped in bandages: JJS.

The other van heeled way over to the side as its wheels rolled over the supine, body of the black American ace, and they were gone.

With her NEC laptop computer- tucked under one arm and a a bit of her cheek caught between her small side teeth, Sara strode across the lobby of the Bristol Hotel Kempinski with briskness that an outside observer would probably have taken for confidence. It was a misapprehension that had served her well in the past.

Reflexively she ducked into the bar of Berlin's most luxurious hotel. The tour proper's long since been mined out, at least of stuff we can print, she thought, but what the heck? She felt heat in her ears at the thought that she was the star of one of the tour's choicer unprintable vignettes.

Inside was dark, of course. All bars are the same song; the polished wood and brass and old pliable leather and elephant ears were grace notes to set apart this particular refrain. She tipped her sunglasses up on top of her nearly white hair, drawn back this afternoon in a severe ponytail, and let her eyes adjust. They always adjusted to dark more quickly than light.

The bar wasn't crowded. A pair of waiters in arm garters and starched highboy collars worked their way among the tables as if by radar. Three Japanese businessmen sat at a table chattering and pointing at a newspaper, discussing either the exchange rates or the local tit bars, depending. In the corner Hiram was talking shop, in French of course, with the Kempinski's cordon bleu, who was shorter than he was but at least as round. The hotel chef had a tendency to flap his short arms rapidly when he spoke, which made him look like a fat baby bird that wasn't getting the hang of flight.

Chrysalis sat. at the bar drinking in splendid isolation. There was no joker chic here. In Germany, Chrysalis found herself discreetly avoided rather than lionized.

She caught Sara's eye and winked. In the poor light Sara only knew it because of the way Chrysalis's mascaraed eyelashes tracked across a staring eyeball. She smiled. Professional associates back home, sometime rivals in the bartering of information that was the meta-game of Jokertown, they'd grown to be friends on this trip. Sara had more in common with Debra-Jo than her nominal peers who were along.

At least Chrysalis was dressed. She was showing a different face to Europe than she did the country she pretended wasn't her native one. Sometimes Sara envied her, secretly. People looked at her and saw a joker, an exotic, alluring and grotesque. But they didn't see her.

"Looking for me, little lady?"

Sara started, turned. Jack Braun sat at the end of the bar, hardly five feet from her. She hadn't noticed him. She had a tendency to edit him out; the force of him made her uncomfortable.

"I'm going out," she said. She slapped the computer, a touch harder than necessary, so her fingers stung. "Down to the main post office to file my latest material by modem. It's the only place you can get a transatlantic co

"I'm surprised you're not off pushing cookies with Senator Gregg," he said, eyeing her cantwise from beneath bushy eyebrows.

She felt color come to her cheeks. "Senator Hartma

It was an open afternoon. There wasn't much hard news here, not the kind to interest readers following the WHO tour. The West German authorities had blandly assured the visitors there was no wild card problem in their country, and used the tour as a counter in whatever game they were playing with their Siamese twin to the east-that damp, dreary ceremony this morning, for instance. Of course they were right: even proportionally, the number of German wild card victims was minuscule. The most pathetic or unsightly couple of thousand were kept discreetly tucked away in state housing or clinics. Much as they'd sneered at Americans for their treatment of jokers during the Sixties and Seventies, the Germans were embarrassed by their own.

"Depends on what gets said at the banquet, I guess. What's on your schedule after you file your piece, little lady?" He was gri

"I have work to do. And I could use a little time to catch my breath. Some of us have had a busy time on this tour." Is that really the reason you were relieved when Gregg dropped the hint that it might not be discreet to tag along to the banquet with him? she wondered. She frowned, surprised at the thought, and turned crisply away.

Braun's big hand closed on her arm. She gasped and spun back to him, angry and starting to panic. What could she do against a man who could lift a bus? That detached observer inside her, the journalist within, reflected on the irony that Gregg, whom she'd come to hate, yes, obsessively, should be the first man in years whose touch she'd come to welcome-

But Jack Braun was frowning past her, into the lobby of the hotel. It was filling up with purposeful, husky young men in suit coats.

One of them came into the bar, looked hard at Braun, consulted a piece of paper in his hand. "Herr Braun?"

"That's me. What can I do you for?"

"I am with the Berlin Landespolizei. I'm afraid I must ask you not to leave the hotel."

Braun pushed his jaw forward. "And why might that be?"

"Senator Hartma

Ellen Hartma

Her eyes were dry. They stung, but they were dry. She smiled slightly. It was hard to let her emotions go. She had so much experience controlling her emotions for the cameras. And Gregg-

I know what he is. But what he is is all I have.

She picked up a handkerchief from the bedside table and methodically began to tear it to pieces.

"Welcome to the land of the living, Senator. For the moment at least.".

Slowly Hartma

His eyes opened to darkness. He felt the obligatory twinge of blindness anxiety, but something pressed his eyeballs, and from the small stinging pull at the back of his head he guessed it was taped gauze. His wrists were bound behind the back of a wooden chair.

After the awareness of captivity, what struck hardest was the smells: sweat, grease, mildew, dust, sodden cloth, unfamliar spices; ancient urine and fresh gun oil, crowding his nostrils clear to his sinuses.

He inventoried all these things before permitting himself to recognize the rasping voice.

"Tom Miller," he said. " I wish I could say it's a pleasure."

"Ah, yes, Senator. But I can." He could feel Gimli's gloating as he could smell his stinking breath-toothpaste and mouthwash belonged to the surface-worshiping nat world. " I could also say you have no idea how long I've waited for this, but of course you do. You know full well."

"Since we know each other so well, why don't you undo my eyes, Tom." As he spoke he probed with his power. It had been ten years since he'd last had physical contact with the dwarf, but he didn't think the link, once created, ever decayed. Puppetman feared loss of control more than anything but discovery; and being discovered itself represented the ultimate loss of power. If he could get his hooks back into Miller's soul, Hartma