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.Daahl just smiled and kept smoking.When he had finished precisely half of the cigarette Li had given him, he pulled a handkerchief from his shirt pocket, put out the half-smoked butt, wrapped it carefully in the handkerchief, and tucked it back into his pocket.This operation took Daahl’s full attention for a good quarter of a minute, and when he finally spoke his voice was as steady as if they were discussing the weather.“Why did you make Haas drain the glory hole?”Li shrugged.“I thought he was hiding something about the fire.I wanted to get to the bottom of it before he sent anyone else down.”“That’s altruistic of you,” Ramirez said.“Oh, sure.I’m a real hero.”“Why did the Secretariat really send you?” Daahl asked.Li took a sip of her beer, stalling, and winced as the liquid hit the raw nerve where her tooth had been.“To fill in for Voyt and handle the accident follow-up.If there was another reason, they didn’t let me in on it.And anyway, I thought the idea here was that you were going to tell me something.”“We’ll get there.But first I want some answers.” “I may not have the answers you want, Daahl.”“Of course you do.You just haven’t thought about it enough to realize you have them.So.Why did the UN send you?”Li shrugged.“Sharifi was famous.When someone like her dies, people want to see heads roll.I’m the axe man.”Ramirez stifled a laugh.Daahl just kept watching her with his pale sharp eyes.“If someone—let’s say a friend of ours—were to possess information that helped you do that job, what would you be willing to give for it?”“If you mean am I prepared to buy information from you, the answer is no.”“Not buy.” Daahl stood and walked across the room to the single small window.The shutter cast bars of rain-green light across his face and lit up his thinning hair like a halo.“Money would be simple compared to what we want.And we’d have to know you were the right person to do business with.We’d have to have … assurances.”Ramirez seemed to have dropped out of the conversation, and when Li glanced over at him he was leaning forward on his stool staring at the two of them like a rat blinded by a miner’s lamp.He might know the geography down here, she realized, but in this room he was the odd man out.This was miners’ territory, soldiers’ territory.Blood-bargaining territory.“Why don’t you tell me what you’re charging,” she told Daahl.“Then I’ll know if I can pay it.”“Two things.First, if what you find out about the fire explains anyone else’s death besides Sharifi’s, we want to know about it.”“You want me to pass information on an ongoing investigation to you? I could lose my job for that.” “We don’t necessarily need the information ourselves,” Daahl said.“We just need it made public.” “You mean included in the investigation report?”“Included in anything that’s public record.We can figure out how to use it from there.Right, Leo?” Ramirez nodded.“We really just need you to bring the accident reports up to date.”“AMC’s accident reports? I can’t believe you have to go to me under the table to get that,” Li said.Daahl raised his eyebrows.“Then you’ve obviously forgotten even more than that chop shop doc said you would.”Li pushed her beer around the table, turning it in precise right angles, leaving a square of condensation on the cracked tabletop.“So basically,” she said, “you’re just asking me to do my job.An open investigation on Sharifi’s death.And these accident reports.Which are public information anyway, right?”“Yes.As far as the deaths go.”“Ah.What else do you want?”Daahl bit his lower lip, glanced toward the window again.“We want Sharifi’s dataset.”Li choked on her beer and slammed it back onto the table, spilling it.“She was doing defense R&D, Daahl.That’s covered by the Espionage and Sedition Act.People get shot for breaking that law.And getting shot isn’t on my to-do list this year.”“Some things are worth breaking the law for, Katie.” “To you, maybe.”“It’s not only miners AMC’s killing.There’s something happening in the mine.In all the mines.Look at the production records.Look at the ratio of man-hours to live condensate pulled out.We’re striking less and less live crystal down there.The bootleggers have been saying it for years.Now even some of the company miners are saying it.And Sharifi said it, before she died.She looked me in the face and said it straight out.The Anaconda’s dying.All the condensate on Compson’s World is dying.”“Oh, come on, Daahl.The Security Council—”“They know,” Daahl said, and gave her a moment to digest that fact [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]