Satellite City (UC) by Mack Reynolds

Author:Mack Reynolds [Reynolds, Mack]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ace Books
Published: 1975-03-01T00:00:00+00:00

XIII

Rex Bader came to his feet. He hissed softly between his teeth and said, "Do I look as though I am completely around the bend?"

The gray faced Teuton said, "A dozen nations have prices on his head, dead or alive. I would imagine the total must be nearly a quarter of a million Common Europe mark-francs which are, of course, on a par with the pseudo-dollar." He added, "The sums are all tax free."

Bader glared at him. "What good is a quarter of a million bucks, if you're dead?"

Ilya Simonov said blandly, "We know he's in Satellite City because one of my men planted an electronic bug on him, in Djakarta. Less than half an hour later, the agent was shot to death but not before being able to report the bug to me. We traced Che Djilas to Satellite City through it, but there evidently the bug was detected and destroyed."

Bader turned his glare in that direction. "Okay. Great. Do you know what that means? It means that the authorities in Satellite City are deliberately protecting him. He didn't have a mop of his own, or he would have found the bug himself, earlier. They found it for him with their sophisticated mops. Ergo, they're protecting him."

"That would seem correct," Simonov nodded.

Bader swept the table with his eyes, still unbelieving of the proposition. He said, "Damn it, my cover was blown. They know me. There are no extradition laws in Satellite City. If they allowed me to walk in, arrest this character and take him back to Earth, then a couple hundred of their high paying guests would get the willies. They can't afford to allow anybody to be arrested in Satellite City!

"This is stupid. In the first place, they wouldn't allow me to get as far as into the spaceport in Beni-Abbes, not to speak of ever entering the orbital hotel again. But suppose I did get there?" He glared at Ilya Simonov. "Nobody has ever seen this Che Djilas; seen him and lived, at least. How am I supposed to identify him, even if I did get inside Satellite City again?"

Ilya Simonov twisted his mouth in sardonic amusement. "Frankly, as the expression goes, I don't think you have a chance of an icicle in hell. But we're reaching for straws. He's there. We have him placed. And you are the only agent your government has ever been able to get into Satellite City."

Rex Bader looked back at Howard Harrigan. "Well, it's no use continuing the debate. It's no go. I was practically thrown out of Satellite City after undergoing a beating by an expert. I have no intention of going back."

Harrigan said testily, "We are not without resources. There are such things as plastic surgery, even the altering of your fingerprints."

Bader said, "You spent weeks on establishing my cover last time. How long did it last? These people have been playing cloak and dagger since the 13th Century, before America was discovered." He added nastily, "They figure you're amateurs.

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