Aces Abroad

Facts dropped into place like tumblers in a lock. Molniya-lightning. Suddenly Hartma

Hartma

His other self was ice. He doesn't know anything. But how can you know? We don't know his powers. He's a puppet.

It was a fight to keep his face from matching his emotion. How the hell can that be?

I got him when he shocked me. Didn't even have to do anything; his own power fused our nervous systems for a moment. That's all it took.

Mackie squirmed like a puppy caught peeing on the rug. "Did I do right, Comrade Molniya?"

Molniya's lips whitened, but he nodded with visible effort. "Yes

… under the circumstances."

Mackie preened and strutted. "Well, there it is. I executed an enemy of the Revolution. You're not the only ones." A

Mackie licked his lips and slunk away, flushing. Puppetman felt what was going on inside him, like the roil beneath the surface of the sun.

What about him? Hartma

Him too. And the blond jock as well. They both handled us after the Russian shocked you. That jolt made me hypersensitive.

Hartma

I'm your subconscious, remember? Always on the job.

Comrade Molniya sighed and returned to his seat. He felt hairs rise on the back of his hands and neck as his hyperactive neurons fired off. There was nothing he could do about low-level discharges such as this; they happened of their own accord under stress. It was why he wore glovesand why some of the more lurid tales they told around the Aquarium about his wedding night had damned near come to pass.

He had to smile. What's there to be tense about? Even if he were identified for what he was, after the fact, there would be no international repercussions; that was how the game was played, by us and by them. So his superiors assured him.

Right.

Good God, what did I do to deserve being caught up in this lunatic scheme? He wasn't sure who was crazier, this collection of poor twisted men and bloodthirsty political naifs or his own bosses.

It was the opportunity of the decade, they'd told him. Al-Muezzin was in the vest pocket of the Big K. If we spring him, he'll fall into our hands out of gratitude. Work for us instead. He might even bring the Light of Allah along.

Was it worth the risk? he'd demanded. Was it worth blowing the underground contacts they'd been building in the Federal Republic for ten years? Was it worth risking the Big War, the war neither side was going to win no matter what their fancy paper war plans said? Reagan was president; he was a cowboy, a madman.

But there was only so far you could push, even if you were an ace and a hero, the first man into the Bala Hissar in Kabul on Christmas Day of '79. The gates had closed in his face. He had his orders. He needed no more.

It wasn't that he disagreed with the goals. Their archrivals, the Komitet Gosudarstve

KGB.

But the method…

It wasn't for himself he worried. It was for his wife and daughter. And for the rest of the world too; the risk was enormous, should anything go wrong.

He reached into a pocket for cigarettes and a lighter. "A filthy habit," Ulrich said in that lumbering way of his. Molniya just looked at him.

After a moment Wolf produced a laugh that almost didn't sound forced. "The kids these days, they have different standards. In the old days-ah, Rikibaby, Comrade Meinhof, she was a smoker. Always had a cigarette going."

Molniya said nothing, just kept staring at Ulrich. His eyes bore a trace of epicanthic fold, legacy of the Mongol Yoke. After a moment the blond youth found somewhere else to look.

The Russian lit up, ashamed of his cheap victory. But he had to keep these murderous young animals under control. What an irony it was that he, who had resigned from the Spetsnaz commandos and transferred to the Chief Intelligence Directorate of the Soviet General Staff because he could no longer stomach violence, should find himself compelled to work with these creatures for whom the shedding of blood had become addiction.

Oh, Milya, Mashes, will I ever see you again?

"Herr Doktor."

Tach scratched the side of his nose. He was getting restive. He'd been cooped up here two hours, unsure of what he might be contributing. Outside… well, there was nothing to be done. But he might be with his people on the tour, comforting them, reassuring them.

"Herr Neuma

The man from the Federal Criminal Office sat down next to him. He had a cigarette in his fingers, unlit despite the layer of tobacco that hung like a fogbank in the thick air. He kept turning it over and over.

"I wanted to ask your opinion."

Tachyon raised a magenta eyebrow. He had long since realized the Germans wanted him here solely because he was the tour's leader in Hartma

"Ask away," Tachyon said with a hand wave that was only faintly sardonic. Neuma

"Were you aware that for the past hour and a half several members of your tour have been trying to raise a sum of money to offer Senator Hartma

"No."

Neuma

"Not my government."

Neuma

Tachyon felt his cheeks turn hot. "That's damned high-handed."

Neuma

"Why me?"

"You're an acknowledged authority on joker affairs-that's the reason you honor our country with your presence, of course." He tapped the cigarette on the table next to a curling corner of a map of Berlin. "Also, you come of a culture in which kidnapping is a not uncommon occurrence, if I do not misapprehend."

Tach looked at him. Though he was a celebrity, most Earthers knew little of his background beyond the fact that he was an alien. "I can't speak of the RAF, of course-"

"The Rote Armee Fraktion in its current incarnation consists primarily of middle-class youths-much like its previous incarnations, and for that matter most First World revolutionary groups. Money means little to them; as children of our so-called Economic Miracle, they've been raised always to assume a sufficiency of it."