“How big a bribe?”
“Think of a number. What she’ll eventually get, if anything, will depend on what she has to sell. As to what we can offer—the sky’s the limit.”
There was no point in insisting that what Stella Filisetti would eventually get was at least ten years if Lisa had any say in the matter. “She’s not stupid,” she said instead. “She’s not going to believe you if you offer her a million euros. In fact, our principal problem is going to be persuading her that anything we say can be trusted—and persuading ourselves that anything she says can be trusted. As you’ve already pointed out, people desperate to buy time will come out with any old bullshit.”
Leland sighed. “All the effort that went into the Human Genome Project,” he said, “and we still have no trustworthy truth serum. Call that progress?”
Jeff returned. “She’s very woozy,” he reported. “Might be better to catch her before she’s collected herself.”
“Oh, well,” said Leland. “I guess it’s play-it-by-ear time. Come on.”
Lisa took a quick peek through the kitchen curtains as she followed Leland back to Stella Filisetti’s bedside, but there wasn’t much to be seen through the reflection of the lighted room. The absence of any discernible lights outside suggested that they were quite a way from the cityplex, but she already knew that. There was a faint animal odor in the corridor, but the suggestion that they were in an old farm laborer’s cottage could have been misleading.
Woozy or not, Stella Filisetti recognized Lisa immediately, and her eyes grew wide. She looked around as if unable to reconcile Lisa’s presence with the surroundings. The fact that one of her wrists and one of her ankles were secured to the head and foot of the bed by smartfiber cords must have told her that she was not in police custody, even if the godawful carpet and matching curtains hadn’t.
“Hello, Stella,” Lisa said, unable to deny herself the satisfaction. “How does it feel to be such a lousy shot?”
The younger woman didn’t reply, although her eyes certainly reacted. Lisa moved a straight-backed wooden chair to the side of the bed and sat down, her face no more than a meter from Stella Filisetti’s. Leland remained standing, showing off his intimidating bulk.
“This is how it is, Stella,” Lisa said, improvising furiously. “For me, this is a personal matter, for reasons you’ll understand perfectly. For my friend here, it’s business. He wants to bribe you and I want to cause you pain, but we both want Morgan Miller and we’re prepared to settle for that. If anything happens to him that you could have prevented by talking to us sooner, you’re going to answer to me as well as to the courts—and I can guarantee that it won’t be a comfortable ride.” She really had intended to start out gently, but it wasn’t so easy to play nice while she was staring into the unrepentant face of the person who was responsible for this whole sorry mess, who had compounded that offense by trying to shoot her.
“You can’t do this,” the younger woman said, with little conviction.
“Yes, we can,” Lisa retorted, figuring that she might as well go with the flow now that she had turned on the tap. “You know full well that anything that could motivate you to pull off this crazy stunt has to be important enough to motivate us to do what it takes to prize it out of your hands. It’s driven you to the brink of committing murder, although I doubt that you had any inclination in that direction beforehand, so you can imagine well enough how far it might drive us. It’s time to give it up and save yourself—and we can arrange that too. Just tell us what we need to know while there’s still time and you can walk away.”
“I don’t know where Morgan is,” Stella replied swiftly. “They thought it best that I didn’t, just in case …”
Was it too glib? Lisa wondered. It would, after all, have been a sensible precaution to keep Morgan’s location secret even from their own field troops—but these conspirators had not so far shown much sign of being sensible people. Even by the standards of a crazy world, they seemed seriously deranged.
“I don’t believe you,” Lisa said when she’d paused long enough. “The stupid thing is, Stella, that your scruples have led you astray. It was all a scam—a trap. Morgan seems to have fallen into it too, but he always did like to be out there ahead of the field, didn’t he? Never a team player, alas, even while he was playing for the greatest team of all in the cause of progress. Heroic individualists can be so seductive, don’t you think? Well, of course you do. I know exactly how you feel, because I’ve been a victim too—for forty years. Imagine that! I know exactlyhow you feel, Stella, because I’ve been up and down the same escalator half a dozen times. I know exactlyhow seductive Morgan can be, and exactly how deceptive—but I love him anyway. I always have. I love him enough to do whatever’s necessary to save him from his own recklessness. So I’d be very grateful if you could just tell me where he’s being held. It’s over anyway. You must see that. You don’t have the data, and time’s already run out.”
All the time she had been speaking, Lisa had been moving her face closer to Stella Filisetti’s, flaring her nostrils slightly and widening her eyes so that the whites would be visible all around the irises. As mad acts went, it lacked all subtlety, but subtlety didn’t seem to be an issue anymore.
It didn’t work. It wasn’t, as far as Lisa could judge, that the younger woman didn’t seem convinced. It was more a matter of the conviction being woefully insufficient to break her resistance.
“Okay, Dr. Friemann,” said Leland, his voice lowered almost to basso profundo. “That’s enough of the threats. I warned you, didn’t I? Now get the hell out of here so I can have a sensible conversation with the young lady.”
Lisa winced inwardly, not so much at the “young lady” bit as at the realization that Leland had obviously learned his good cop/bad cop routine from classic movies that Stella Filisetti had probably seen and laughed at while she was in her teens. Lisa had no alternative, though, but to keep on going with the flow and hope that the oldest tricks were still the best. She stood up and stalked out of the room, closing the door behind her before pausing and gluing her ear to the ancient hardboard panel.
“She’s upset,” Leland explained to his prisoner, his deep voice clearly audible through the door. “She doesn’t understand modern commerce. The police tend to have a very jaundiced view of the way the economy works—but that’s necessary to the way they play their role. They’re obliged to regard most forms of private enterprise as evil, and they don’t have to recognize or face up to the fact that if they weren’t necessaryevils, they wouldn’t exist. Personally, I’m a pragmatist. No ax to grind. To me, it’s just a matter of fixing a price.”
“It’s not for sale,” Stella Filisetti told him. Her voice wasn’t powerful, but the words were quite distinct. “If you think it could be, you don’t know what you’re talking about. She’s lied to you.”
“She? You mean Dr. Friemann? Why would she do that?”
Lisa bit her lip, but reminded herself that Leland had to know that this was a ploy even older and more hackneyed than his own. Being helpless, the only chance Stella Filisetti had was to sow dissent in the opposition ranks.
“Because she wants it for herself. She’s taken the long way around, but she knows what it is and she wants it. We have proof of that.”
“What proof?” Leland wanted to know.
“Check your records, megacorp man. It’s in the freezer.”
What’s in the freezer?Lisa thought, knowing that Leland must be wondering exactly the same thing.
“If Dr. Friemann already knows,” Leland said, “the secret’s already out. What harm is there in letting me in on it too?”
“It’s been buried too long already,” the higher voice said, becoming slightly shrill as hysteria sharpened its edge. “She’s helped to keep it under wraps—but we’re not going to let it stay buried. It doesn’t matter what you do to me. I can’t tell you where Miller is. We had to make certain of that.”