The three large cars carrying Paula’s Senate Security arrest team wove through Manhattan’s midmorning traffic. As always the antics of the city’s yellow cabs drew a small frown on her forehead; whoever programmed their drive arrays did an appalling job. Her own car had to brake sharply several times as they cut in front.
When they arrived at the Lucius, their clearance codes opened the barrier guarding the ramp down into the multilevel underground parking garage. Two vans carrying the forensic staff and their equipment followed them in.
Up in the lobby, four of the arrest team immediately covered the stairwell exits. Paula led the remaining twelve into the elevator. Six of them wore force field skeletons under their ordinary dark suits; she wasn’t taking any chances.
The offices of Bromley, Waterford, and Granku took up six floors, from the forty-second to the forty-seventh. Their reception area was dominated by a broad curving desk, where three well-dressed and attractive human secretaries sat receiving calls, giving clients an exclusive personal touch that lesser law firms would use an array for. They were all busy trying to sort out the sudden communications glitch in their array, which Paula had embargoed from the cybersphere as soon as they arrived.
“I would like to see Ms. Daltra, Mr. Pomanskie, and Mr. Seaton, please,” Paula told the senior receptionist.
He gave her and the arrest team a nervous glance. “I’m sorry, they’re not in.”
“Do I need to show you my authority certificate?”
“No, of course not, Ms. Myo, I know who you are. But that’s the truth. This is the second day they haven’t shown up. It’s quite a talking point here. The senior partners aren’t happy.”
“Check their offices,” she told the arrest team.
The forensic staff was given the all clear to come up. Freeze programs were loaded into the company’s entire array network, and their data copied into high-density storage systems for analysis by an RI. All three offices of the missing associates were sealed off, and a detailed examination initiated.
Seaton lived closest to the office, an apartment in a luxurious block on Park Avenue, just past East Seventy-ninth Street. Paula took five of the arrest team with her, using their priority clearance to bounce through traffic, even sidelining the cabs.
As before, she embargoed the building’s cybersphere connection. The uniformed doorman let her and the team straight through the grandiose lobby and into the elevator.
Mrs. Geena Seaton came hurrying into the hallway as soon as the maid announced her notorious visitor. According to Paula’s file, the Seatons had been married for eighteen years. Neither of them came from a particularly well-to-do background, though they were clearly making up for that now. Raw ambition was powering them up toward the kind of wealth and professional status that would support their high-life aspirations.
Geena Seaton wore a prim floral-print silk dress, her face and hair perfectly made up, heels clicking on the polished floor, looking as if she were on her way to some career-making function of her husband’s. The perfect supportive wife for an ambitious associate in New York’s ruthless corporate society.
When asked about her husband’s unexplained absence, she said he was away at a legal convention. Somewhere in Texas, she wasn’t sure where, the office would have the address. He’d left with rather short notice, admittedly, but someone else from the firm had dropped out at the last minute. “Why do you need to know?” she demanded. “What is this about?” Her delicately mascaraed eyes scanned dismissively across the team standing behind Paula.
“There are some anomalies we believe your husband can help to clarify for us,” Paula said noncommittally. “Isn’t it unusual for him to be out of contact with you for this long?”
“Hardly. I expect he’s getting intimate with some female delegate and doesn’t want to be disturbed. Really, we have several clauses about nonexclusivity in our partnership contract. It benefits both of us.”
“I see. In that case we will require you to come with us for a medical forensic examination.”
“Impossible, I have a hundred things to do.”
“You will come with us now, either voluntarily or under arrest.”
“That’s outrageous.”
“Indeed it is.”
“What are you looking for?”
“I’m not at liberty to disclose that.” Paula wasn’t even sure if a neurological scan would be able to identify a Starflyer agent. All she had to go on was Bradley Johansson’s propaganda, that the alien somehow mentally enslaved humans. There might be unusual brain wave activity that the forensic neurologists could spot. It was a long shot, but everything else he had been claiming for the last hundred years was coming uncomfortably true.
“Am I under suspicion? What is this anomaly? Surely it’s not that tiresome undeclared payment to the Senate aide again. That was cleared up last year, you know.”
“We can discuss this at our headquarters.”
Geena Seaton glared at Paula. “I hope you know what you’re doing. Legally, I mean. My husband’s firm is not to be trifled with. I had to threaten that dreadful reporter girl with an antiharassment suit yesterday; and I certainly won’t hesitate to apply for one against you.”
“What reporter girl?”
“The cheap one who dresses like a hooker the whole time. I remember she did an invasion report for Alessandra Baron. Mellanie somebody.”
The express from EdenBurg delivered Renne back in Paris just after midday. She should have gone back to the office straightaway to file her report, but it had been a long frustrating trip. Her duty shift had lasted for nineteen straight hours so far, and as well as being irritable from lack of rest she was also ravenous. The little restaurant she and her colleagues often visited was only three hundred meters from the office, so she got the cab to drop her off there first. Fifteen minutes while she had a coffee and a burger wouldn’t make any difference. With any luck, Hogan and Tarlo wouldn’t be back from Mars yet. She was still mildly jealous she hadn’t been included.
It was cool and dark inside, with every table illuminated by its own cozy triple-wick candle. Fans spun slowly overhead, churning the humid city air around the room and blending in the cooking smells from the kitchen. There was a bar stretching along the entire back wall, a piece of antique wooden saloon furniture rescued from some ancient Left Bank café over two hundred years earlier. Its walnut veneer had been scuffed and repolished so many times down the centuries that the surface was almost completely black, with only the odd, even deeper sable swirl to show the original beautiful grain pattern.
Renne sat at a stool, hung her uniform jacket on a hook just below the counter, and gazed at the long shelves of exotic bottles from all over the Commonwealth. It was the restaurant’s boast that every planet was represented.
“A Rantoon green cherry fizz,” she told the barkeeper, knowing he wouldn’t have it. She was in that kind of mood.
A minute later she had to smile as he produced the tall frosted glass filled with a jade-colored liquid that was as sluggish as chilled vodka. “Salut.” She raised the glass to him. “Can I get a cheeseburger, with bacon, hold the mayonnaise, and fries, not a salad.”
“Certainly, Lieutenant.” He disappeared through a small door and called her order out to the chef. Some comment about the mayonnaise was shouted back in a stream of obscene French.
Renne spread her elbows wide on the bar, and took another sip. It felt wonderfully decadent, drinking something so strong in the middle of the day. She caught a movement in the tarnished mirrors behind the rows of bottles.
“Isn’t it a little early for that kind of drink?” Commander Hogan asked.
“Hi, Chief,” she said, deliberately not sitting up or even looking around. “I figured I can—I’m still in the middle of last night, timewise.”
Hogan’s face puckered into disapproval. He sat next to her, with a grinning Tarlo taking the next stool along.
“You two want to join me?” she asked.
&
nbsp; “Mineral water,” Hogan told the barkeeper.
“Beer,” Tarlo said.
“So what was Mars like?”
“Fun,” Tarlo said. “I had a ball driving the transRover. And it’s a weird-looking place, the colors are strange. We saw all the old NASA ships as well. They were falling apart. Sheldon and the Admiral were getting all misty-eyed about them.”
“We found the Reynolds ground station,” Hogan said in a reproving voice.
“The forensic team downloaded every program in its arrays, and we impounded the transmitter equipment for analysis.”
“Impounded.” Renne just managed not to giggle. She had an image of Hogan imperiously waving a court order at a bunch of angry little green men, furious at the navy marching off with their planet’s property.
“Problem?” Hogan asked.
“No, Chief.”
“I understand you left the office while we were away,” he continued. “For most of the time, actually. Did you pick up any leads?”
“Nah! Not one. It was a completely wasted journey. Victor and Bernadette, Isabella’s parents, haven’t got a clue where she is, and frankly don’t show a lot of interest.” The two interviews rankled with her. Warren Yves Halgarth had acted as her escort again; without him she doubted she would even have got in to see Victor. Isabelle’s father wasn’t exactly pleased to see her; his new job as managing director of the Dynasty’s second largest manufacturing bureau was a high-pressure management role. They specialized in force field generators and other high-technology machinery, and as such were one of the thousands of organizations that had suddenly found themselves supplying components to the navy on a crash priority basis. The whole workforce was badly stressed, and it showed. Victor barely knew what his current kids were doing, let alone one who had left home years ago. As for Bernadette, Renne had rarely met anyone who qualified for the title “idle rich” more than Isabella’s mother. The only surprise was that she stayed on EdenBurg, which had little time or space for anyone who wasn’t a hundred percent committed to the work ethic. Warren had explained that Bernadette was one of Rialto’s more renowned society hostesses, throwing parties that attracted a good selection of the corporate and financial elite. That didn’t leave her much time for keeping in touch with children. she hadn’t even known Isabella had disconnected her unisphere address.
“Are there any further leads on Isabella?” Hogan asked.
Renne took another drink of her green cherry fizz, enjoying its cold burn down the back of her throat. “Not direct ones. I thought I’d try and go through her activities on Daroca before she vanished, see if I can find any clues about where she might go. Then there’s Kantil, I could go see her.”
“All right, enough.” Hogan’s hand came down on her wrist, preventing her from lifting her glass. “I don’t want you wasting any more time over this girl. You made your long shot and it didn’t come off. I don’t mind you going out on a limb every now and then, but you have to know when to cut your losses. Understand me, this is that time.”
“There’s something wrong about her.”
“Maybe so, and because of that the warrant still stands. The police will find her eventually, and when they do I’ll authorize you to handle her interrogation yourself. But until that happens, I want you working on our priority cases.”
Renne stared resentfully at his hand; deep inside, the little sensible part of her brain was telling her this wasn’t the issue to make a stand on. “Yeah, okay, Chief.”
“And I certainly don’t want you bothering people like Christabel Halgarth again. If you want to talk to someone that senior in the Grand Families and Dynasties you clear it with me first. There are a lot of political angles in our investigations, not to mention protocols, which should be followed.”
“She was happy to see me.”
“You don’t know what she was thinking. I don’t want a repeat of that incident, understand?”
“Right.” His hand withdrew, and she lifted her glass to her lips. The barkeeper delivered the water and the beer, putting a small bowl of cashew nuts in front of Hogan.
“Our trip produced some very decent results,” Tarlo said. “The forensic guys managed to crack the program routines in the Reynolds arrays. We know what was being encrypted now.”
“What?” Renne asked automatically.
“Every scrap of data from meteorological sensors all over the planet.”
With Hogan distracted by Tarlo, Renne’s finger rose slowly above the rim of her glass, remaining stiff for a couple of seconds. Tarlo saw it, and pressed down on a grin.
“That makes no sense,” she said. “Why would the Guardians be interested in Martian weather? I don’t understand.”
Tarlo gave her his full bright smile. “Me neither.”
“But it’s the kind of solid result we can run with,” Hogan said, glancing back at Renne. “I want the two of you working together to find out what you can. Admiral Kime has given this a very high priority.”
“Figures, with his background,” she grunted, and snatched some of the cashews.
“Okay then,” Hogan said. He drained his mineral water in one. “Have your lunch, Renne, then when you get back to the office this afternoon, I want the two of you heading up this new angle on the Mars investigation. Call in some experts, find out every conceivable application for the meteorological data.”
“Yes, sir.”
Hogan nodded happily, and left them with a wave.
Renne watched him walk out of the restaurant. “What an asshole.”
“To be expected right now,” Tarlo said with a grin. “He had some bad news waiting for him when we got back.”
“Oh?”
“Thought that would cheer you up. Get this, Senate Security has officially requested we begin a covert observation of Alessandra Baron.”
“The celeb?”
“None other.”
“Why?”
“The official reason is that they suspect her of involvement with quote ‘detrimental individuals.’ How about that for covering a multitude of sins. But guess whose name was on the request file.”
Renne’s grin brightened to match Tarlo’s. “The boss.”
“Now do you see why our Great Leader is walking about like he’s got a bug up his ass?”
“Yeah. But that’s no reason for taking it out on me.”
“You’re the easiest, closest target. I warned you about chasing the Halgarth girl. He was never going to like that. And visiting Christabel was a big risk. He was bound to find out.”
“Yeah, yeah. But you’ve got to admit it’s odd. Why should Isabella vanish like this?”
“No,” he said, and held his hands up. “I refuse to get involved; it’s not just hanging on to the uniform, I need the money my job brings in. And I’m making the kind of progress which Hogan approves of.”
“You’ve got to look at the whole picture, Tarlo.”
“Sure you do. Just remember what happened to the last person who took that view. Oh, hey, here’s Vic.”
Renne twisted around on the stool to see Vic Russell walking through the restaurant. He held up a hand. “Better get a table,” she said.
They chose one along the wall, where a high partition veiled them from casual view. “Some good news for you,” Vic said as Renne’s burger was delivered. He took a couple of fries from her plate.
“I could do with some,” she admitted. “It’s been a long shitty day.”
“I’ve backtracked eighteen items from Edmund Li’s interception on Boongate.”
Renne paused in examining her burger for signs of mayonnaise. “Their entire routes?”
“Yep.” Vic’s big round face produced a smug expression. “You think you haven’t had much sleep. This has taken me weeks, they were so bloody complicated. It helps that we had the manufacturer and the final smuggling disguise; I could work the route from both ends, fill in all the gaps, and believe me, there were some massive gaps. Each route is a chain of courie
r companies playing the shell game between warehouses—some of the components were in transit for ten months. And all the finance used to pay the shipment costs came from onetime accounts. There was a hell of a lot of organization went into this operation. We may have underestimated how many Guardians are active inside the Commonwealth. Shipping the items like that had to triple the cost of each piece by the time they reached Far Away. Whatever they’re building, it’s costing them a fortune.”
Tarlo and Renne exchanged a glance. “They can afford it,” she said. “Remember, the Great Wormhole Heist is paying for this.”
“Even so,” Vic insisted. “This is true paranoia. Effective, mind, I’ve got to hand them that.”
“It won’t be all Guardians,” Tarlo said. “Elvin will recruit from any unsavory source; remember that agent Cufflin put us onto.”
“Thanks, Vic,” Renne said. “This is really good work. We’ll get the RI set up to cross-reference with our existing Guardian database, and the team can review the strongest leads for direct follow-ups.”
Vic settled back in his seat, and stole another fistful of fries from Renne’s plate. “You know, I was thinking about this when I filed the report. We’ve already got a ton of information, so many names and smuggling operations, and black market arms deals; it goes back decades.”
“I know,” Tarlo said, swirling beer around his glass. “Renne and I loaded half of it in there ourselves.”
“All right,” Vic said, suddenly earnest. “So how come we never managed to nail the bastards?”
“Sore point,” Renne said.
“Because it’s all peripheral information,” Tarlo said. “One day we’ll reach critical data mass, and the whole case will fall into place. We’re going to make a thousand arrests that day.”
Vic shook his head. “If you say so. I’ll see you back in the office, yes?”
Renne nodded. “Half an hour.” She eyed her nearly empty glass, wondering if she should order another.
“Give me a second,” Tarlo said to Vic, “I’ll come with you.” He waited until the big man was standing by the door. “You going to be okay?”
The Commonwealth Saga 2-Book Bundle Page 147