Free Arabesk by Jon Courtenay Grimwood Page B

yards later. Fifty yards in which ZeeZee sat in the passenger seat aware he was going down the interstate, backwards…
    Very sensibly, the pick-up truck kept going, dragging the ripped-off remains of a Lincoln’s bumper behind it in a flashy display of sparks.
    “Jesus,” said ZeeZee when he could say anything at all. “You trying to kill me?”
    “No,” said Clem. “Nothing that simple.” He fished in the car’s glove compartment and came out with a matt black Para Ordnance .45—the 15-round, police-issue model.
    ZeeZee didn’t register the make, finish or calibre. He was too busy looking at the void of its muzzle, which pointed straight at his head.
    “This is where you escape,” announced Clem. “And over there’s where you run, towards that nice big sign saying Flight Departures.”
    “And just about here’s where you shoot me in the back,” said ZeeZee, nodding to a spot ten paces from the car.
    “No,” Clem shook his head as he leaned across and shoved open ZeeZee’s door. “I’m retiring and you’re my pension plan.” Reaching under his seat, Clem yanked out a briefcase. “The combination’s your DOB.” He grinned sourly. “I don’t want to know what’s in here. Just make sure you open it well away from my car…”
    “Who’s paying you?”
    Clem didn’t know, but he had no intention of admitting that to ZeeZee.
    “Tell me,” ZeeZee insisted. What with remand, taking the plea and developing his designer mad-fuck persona, he’d put a lot of effort into staying alive.
    Clem pulled back the slide on the Para Ordnance.
    Stay and get shot, run and ditto. It had been a day full of shit choices. But what really scared ZeeZee was that the whole wired-out scenario had Wild Boy stamped all over it and ZeeZee didn’t trust Hu San’s deputy. The Boss—now, she’d have done it differently, smoothly.
    “I’m not going unless you tell me,” ZeeZee said, slamming shut his door. No one tried to escape from Huntsville because no one could afford to. A bond was posted prior to arrival. Any attempt to escape automatically forfeited the bond, which was a multiple of the number of years in the sentence times a sliding scale according to the severity of the crime and the perp’s previous… Killing a police informant—ZeeZee didn’t even want to think what his bond would have been set at.
    Unless it really was Hu San organizing this, busting out of Huntsville was just a quick way to commit suicide. Marginally less dramatic than standing up in court to name the woman. But only marginally…
    “Your choice,” said Clem, raising the automatic. He was smiling.
    The briefcase was retro Alessi, with a numerical lock and little purple LCDs that glowed through black glass: Fooler loops were built into its sides and the handle housed a semi-AI whose sole job was to inform airport scanners that the contents were covered by diplomatic protocol.
    Holding his breath, ZeeZee started counting to ten in his head and lifted the lid. He reached seventeen before he realized he could stop now. His initial haul from the case was a plane ticket, a white passport and a strip of photos from one of those Kodak booths found at stations. The smiling girl in the shots was young, dark-skinned, middle Eastern. Four different poses, but each frame showed the same wide-eyed teenager.
    ZeeZee flicked open the ticket and scanned the details. All the real data was encoded in a strip running along the outer edge of the front cover: the printout inside was just a reminder. It was made out to Ashraf al-Mansur, OA-273 flight to Cairo, with a connecting flight to El Iskandryia, taking off—
    In about fifteen minutes, according to ZeeZee’s watch. He checked the passport and blinked as his own face stared up at him, only shaved and without the dreadlocks, surrounded by a sea of unreadable foreign type. That the photograph had him wearing a suit and tie he’d never seen before was weird, but what really weirded him out was the