If the security had been foreign, had come from Sear and Core’s home country, or been drafted in from its European or North American operations, they might not have obeyed. But this was Besźel and the security was Besź, and they did as Ashil said. In the elevator, he drew out his weapon. A big pistol of unfamiliar design. Its barrel encased, muzzled in some dramatic silencer. He worked the key the security had given us, to the corporate levels, all the way up.
THE DOOR OPENED onto gusts of hard cold air amid surrounds of vaulting roofs and antennae. The tethers of the Ul Qoman gasrooms, a few streets off the mirrored fronts of Ul Qoman businesses, the spires of temples in both cities, and there in the darkness and the wind ahead of us behind a thicket of safety rails the helipad. The dark vehicle waiting, its rotor turning very slowly, almost without noise. Gathered before it a group of men.
We could not hear much except the bass of the engine, the siren-infested putting down of unification riots all around us. The men by the helicopter did not hear us as we approached. We stayed close to cover. Ashil led me towards the aircraft, the gang who did not yet see us. There were four of them. Two were large and shaven-headed. They looked like ultranats: True Citizens on secret commission. They stood around a suited man I did not know and someone I could not see from the way he stood, in deep and animated conversation.
I heard nothing, but one of the men saw us. There was a commotion and they turned. From his cockpit the pilot of the helicopter swivelled the police-strength light he held. Just before it framed us the gathered men moved and I could see the last man, staring straight at me.
It was Mikhel Buric. The Social Democrat, the opposition, the other man on the Chamber of Commerce.
Blinded by the floodlight I felt Ashil grab me and pull me behind a thick iron ventilator pipe. There was a moment of dragged-out quiet. I waited for a shot but no one shot.
“Buric,” I said to Ashil. “Buric . I knew there was no way Syedr could do this.”
Buric was the contact man, the organiser. Who knew Mahalia’s predilections, who had seen her on her first visit to Besźel, when she angered everyone at the conference with her undergraduate dissidence. Buric the operator. He knew her work and what she wanted, that abhistory, the comforts of paranoia, a cosseting by the man behind the curtain. In the Chamber of Commerce as he was, he was in a position to provide it. To find an outlet for what she stole at his behest, for the invented benefit of Orciny.
“It was all geared stuff that got stolen,” I said. “Sear and Core are investigating the artefacts. This is a science experiment.”
It was his informers—he like all Besź politicians had them—who had told Buric that investigations had occurred into Sear and Core, that we were chasing down the truth. Perhaps he thought we had understood more than we had, would be shocked at how little of this we could have predicted. It would not take so much for a man in his position to order the government provocateurs in the poor foolish unificationists to begin their work, to forestall Breach so he and his collaborators could get away.
“They’re armed?” Ashil glanced out and nodded.
“Mikhel Buric?” I shouted. “Buric? What are True Citizens doing with a liberal sellout like you? You getting good soldiers like Yorj killed? Bumping off students you think are getting too close to your bullshit?”
“Piss off, Borlú,” he said. He did not sound angry. “We’re all patriots. They know my record.” A noise joined the noise of the night. The helicopter’s engine, speeding up.
Ashil looked at me and stepped out into full view.
“Mikhel Buric,” he said, in his frightening voice. He kept his gun unwavering and walked behind it, as if it led him, towards the helicopter. “You’re answerable to Breach. Come with me.” I followed him. He glanced at the man beside Buric.
“Ian Croft, regional head of CorIntech,” Buric said to Ashil. He folded his arms. “A guest here. Address your remarks to me. And fuck yourself.” The True Citizens had their own pistols up. Buric moved towards the helicopter.
“Stay where you are,” Ashil said. “You will step back,” he shouted at the True Citizens. “I am Breach.”
“So what?” Buric said. “I’ve spent years running this place. I’ve kept the unifs in line, I’ve been getting business for Besźel , I’ve been taking their damned gewgaws out from under Ul Qoman noses , and what do you do? You gutless Breach? You protect Ul Qoma.”
Ashil actually gaped a moment at that.
“He’s playing to them,” I whispered. “To the True Citizens.”
“Unifs have one thing right,” Buric said. “There’s only one city, and if it weren’t for the superstition and cowardice of the populace, kept in place by you goddamnedBreach , we’d all know there was only one city. And that city is called Besźel . And you’re telling patriots to obey you? I warned them, I warned my comrades you might turn up, despite it being made clear you have no business here.”
“That’s why you leaked the footage of the van,” I said. “To keep Breach out of it, send the mess to the militsya instead.”
“Breach’s priorities are not Besźel’s,” Buric said. “Fuck the Breach.” He said it carefully. “Here we recognise only one authority, you pissing little neither-nor, and that isBesźel.”
He indicated Croft to precede him into the helicopter. The True Citizens stared. They were not quite ready to fire on Ashil, to provoke Breach war—you could see a kind of blasphemy-drunkenness in their look at the intransigence they were already showing, disobeying Breach even this far—but they would not lower their guns either. If he shot they would shoot back, and there were two of them. High on their obedience to Buric they did not need to know anything about where their paymaster was going or why, only that he had charged them to cover his back while he did. They were fired with jingo bravery.
“I’m not Breach,” I said.
Buric turned to look at me. The True Citizens stared at me. I felt Ashil’s hesitation. He kept his weapon up.
“I’m not Breach.” I breathed deep. “I am Inspector Tyador Borlú. Besźel Extreme Crimes Squad. I’m not here for Breach, Buric. I represent the Besźel policzai , to enforce Besź law. Because you broke it.
“Smuggling’s not my department; take what you want. I’m not a political man—I don’t care if you mess with Ul Qoma. I’m here because you’re a murderer.
“Mahalia wasn’t Ul Qoman, nor an enemy of Besźel, and if she seemed to be, it was only because she believed the crap you told her, so you could sell what she supplied you, for this foreigner’s R and D. Doing it for Besźel, my arse: you’re just a fence for foreign bucks.”
The True Citizens looked uneasy.
“But she realised she’d been lied to. That she wasn’t righting antique wrongs or learning any hidden truth. That you’d made her a thief. You sent Yorjavic over to get rid of her. That makes it an Ul Qoman crime, so even with the links we will find between you and him, nothing I can do. But that’s not the end of it. When you heard Yolanda was hiding, you thought Mahalia’d told her something. Couldn’t risk her talking.
“You were smart to get Yorj to take her out from his side of the checkpoint, keep Breach off your backs. But that makes his shot, and the order you gave for it, Besź. And that makes you mine.
“Minister Mikhel Buric, by the authority vested in me by the government and courts of the Commonwealth of Besźel, you are under arrest for Conspiracy to Murder Yolanda Rodriguez. You are coming with me.”
SECOND AFTER SECOND of astonished silence. I stepped slowly forward, past Ashil, towards Mikhel Buric.
It would not last. The True Citizens mostly had not much more respect for we who they believed were the weak local police than for many other of the herdlike masses of Besźel. But those were ugly charges, in Besźel’s name, that did not sound like the politics for which they were signed up, or the reasons they might have been given for those killings, if they even knew about them. The two men looked at each other uncertainly.