Repaired, refurnished, and extensively rehearsed, Corto's subsequent testimony was detailed, moving, lucid, and largely the invention of a Congressional cabal with certain vested interests in saving particular portions of the Pentagon infrastructure. Corto gradually understood that the testimony he gave was instrumental in saving the careers of three officers directly responsible for the suppression of reports on the building of the EMP [ 17 ] installations at Kirensk.

His role in the trials over, he was unwanted in Washington. In an M Street restaurant, over asparagus crepes, the aide explained the terminal dangers involved in talking to the wrong people. Corto crushed the man's larynx with the rigid fingers of his right hand. The Congressional aide strangled, his face in an asparagus crepe, and Corto stepped out into cool Washington September.

The Hosaka rattled through police reports, corporate espionage records, and news files. Case watched Corto work corporate defectors in Lisbon and Marrakesh, where he seemed to grow obsessed with the idea of betrayal, to loathe the scientists and technicians he bought out for his employers. Drunk, in Singapore, he beat a Russian engineer to death in a hotel and set fire to his room.

Next he surfaced in Thailand, as overseer of a heroin factory. Then as enforcer for a California gambling cartel, then as a paid killer in the ruins of Bonn. He robbed a bank in Wichita. The record grew vague, shadowy, the gaps longer.

One day, he said, in a taped segment that suggested chemical interrogation, everything had gone gray.

Translated French medical records explained that a man without identification had been taken to a Paris mental health unit and diagnosed as schizophrenic. He became catatonic and was sent to a government institution on the outskirts of Toulon. He became a subject in an experimental program that sought to reverse schizophrenia through the application of cybernetic models. A random selection of patients were provided with microcomputers and encouraged, with help from students, to program them. He was cured, the only success in the entire experiment.

The record ended there.

Case turned on the foam and Molly cursed him softly for disturbing her.

The telephone rang. He pulled it into bed. `Yeah?'

`We're going to Istanbul,' Armitage said. `Tonight.'

`What does the bastard want?' Molly asked.

`Says we're going to Istanbul tonight.'

`That's just wonderful.'

Armitage was reading off flight numbers and departure times.

Molly sat up and turned on the light.

`What about my gear?' Case asked. `My deck.'

`Finn will handle it,' said Armitage, and hung up.

Case watched her pack. There were dark circles under her eyes, but even with the cast on, it was like watching a dance. No wasted motion. His clothes were a rumpled pile beside his bag.

`You hurting?' he asked.

`I could do with another night at Chin's.'

`Your dentist?'

`You betcha. Very discreet. He's got half that rack, full clinic. Does repairs for samurai.' She was zipping her bag. `You ever been to 'Stambul?'

`Couple days, once.'

`Never changes,' she said. `Bad old town.'

`It was like this when we headed for Chiba,' Molly said, staring out the train window at blasted industrial moonscape, red beacons on the horizon warning aircraft away from a fusion plant. `We were in L.A. He came in and said Pack, we were booked for Macau. When we got there, I played fantan in the Lisboa and he crossed over into Zhongshan. Next day I was playing ghost with you in Night City.' She took a silk scarf from the sleeve of her black jacket and polished the insets. The landscape of the northern Sprawl woke confused memories of childhood for Case, dead grass tufting the cracks in a canted slab of freeway concrete.

The train began to decelerate ten kilometers from the airport. Case watched the sun rise on the landscape of childhood, on broken slag and the rusting shells of refineries.

7

It was raining in Beyoglu, and the rented Mercedes slid past the grilled and unlit windows of cautious Greek and Armenian jewelers. The street was almost empty, only a few dark-coated figures on the sidewalks turning to stare after the car.

`This was formerly the prosperous European section of Ottoman Istanbul,' purred the Mercedes.

`So it's gone downhill,' Case said.

`The Hilton's in Cumhuriyet Caddesi,' Molly said. She settled back against the car's gray ultrasuede.

`How come Armitage flies alone?' Case asked. He had a headache.

`'Cause you get up his nose. You're sure getting up mine.'

He wanted to tell her the Corto story, but decided against it. He'd used a sleep derm, on the plane.

The road in from the airport had been dead straight, like a neat incision, laying the city open. He'd watched the crazy walls of patchwork wooden tenements slide by, condos, arcologies, grim housing projects, more walls of plyboard and corrugated iron.

The Finn, in a new Shinjuku suit, sarariman black, was waiting sourly in the Hilton lobby, marooned on a velour armchair in a sea of pale blue carpeting.

`Christ,' Molly said. `Rat in a business suit.'

They crossed the lobby.

`How much you get paid to come over here, Finn?' She lowered her bag beside the armchair. `Bet not as much as you get for wearing that suit, huh?'

The Finn's upper lips drew back. `Not enough, sweetmeat.' He handed her a magnetic key with a round yellow tag. `You're registered already. Honcho's upstairs.' He looked around. `This town sucks.'

`You get agoraphobic, they take you out from under a dome. Just pretend it's Brooklyn or something.' She twirled the key around a finger. `You here as valet or what?'

`I gotta check out some guy's implants,' the Finn said.

`How about my deck?' Case asked.

The Finn winced. `Observe the protocol. Ask the boss.'

Molly's fingers moved in the shadow of her jacket, a flicker of jive. The Finn watched, then nodded.

`Yeah,' she said, `I know who that is.' She jerked her head in the direction of the elevators. `Come on, cowboy.' Case followed her with both bags.

Their room might have been the one in Chiba where he'd first seen Armitage. He went to the window, in the morning, almost expecting to see Tokyo Bay. There was another hotel across the street. It was still raining. A few letter-writers had taken refuge in doorways, their old voiceprinters wrapped in sheets of clear plastic, evidence that the written word still enjoyed a certain prestige here. It was a sluggish country. He watched a dull black Citroen sedan, a primitive hydrogen-cell conversion, as it disgorged five sullen-looking Turkish officers in rumpled green uniforms. They entered the hotel across the street.

He glanced back at the bed, at Molly, and her paleness struck him. She'd left the micropore cast on the bedslab in their loft, beside the transdermal inducer. Her glasses reflected part of the room's light fixture.

He had the phone in his hand before it had a chance to ring twice. `Glad you're up,' Armitage said.

`I'm just. Lady's still under. Listen, boss, I think it's maybe time we have a little talk. I think I work better if I know a little more about what I'm doing.'

Silence on the line. Case bit his lip.

`You know as much as you need to. Maybe more.'

`You think so?'

`Get dressed, Case. Get her up. You'll have a caller in about fifteen minutes. His name is Terzibashjian.' The phone bleated softly. Armitage was gone.

`Wake up, baby,' Case said. `Biz.'

`I've been awake an hour already.' The mirrors turned.

`We got a Jersey Bastion coming up.'

`You got an ear for language, Case. Bet you're part Armenian. That's the eye Armitage has had on Riviera. Help me up.'