“That’s essentially where we’ve got to,” George said heavily, “except for the final part.”
“Explain.” She leaned forward attentively.
“We don’t have time to stake them all out. Given the current attrition rate, we’ve got to face the risk of losing four more ambassadors in the next month. We haven’t caught a single assassin, so we don’t know who’s doing it. So tell me what you deduce from that fact.”
“That we’re in the shit,” Rachel said in a low monotone. She leaned forward tensely. “Let’s look at this as a crime in progress. If we shelve the means and opportunity questions, who’s got a motive? Who could possibly gain by arranging for Moscow to bomb the crap out of Dresden in thirty-five years’ time?”
She held up a hand and began counting off fingers. “One: a third party who hates Dresden. I think we can take that as a non sequitur; nobody is ever crazy enough to want to exterminate an entire planet. At least, nobody who’s that crazy ever gets their hands on the means to do it.” Well, virtually nobody, she reminded herself, flashing back a week. Idi would have done it—if he’d had an R-bomb. But he didn’t. So . . . “Two: a faction among the Muscovite exiles who really, really hates Dresden—enough to commit murder, murder of their own people, just to make sure. Three: someone who wants to strike a negotiating position of some kind. It could be blackmail, for example, and the ransom note hasn’t arrived yet. Four: it’s a continent smasher. Could be a really nasty bunch of folks have decided to make sure it goes home, as a prelude to a, uh, rescue and reconstruction mission of a rather permanent nature.”
“You’re saying it could be some other government that wants to take advantage of the situation?” Gail looked aghast.
“That’s realpolitik for you.” Rachel shrugged. “I’m not saying it is, but . . . do we have any candidates?” She raised an eyebrow at Tranh.
“Possibly.” He frowned. “Among the neighbors . . . I can’t see the New Republic doing that, can you?”
Rachel shook her head. “They’re out for the count.”
“Then, hmm. Forget Turku, forget Malacia, forget Septagon. None of them have an expansionist government except Septagon, and they’re not interested in anything with a primary that masses more than point zero five of Sol or comes with inhabitable planets. There’s Newpeace, but they’re still in a mess from the civil war. And Eiger isn’t likely. Tonto, that’s another of those weird semiclosed dictatorships. They might have an angle on it. But it’s not anything obvious, is it?”
Rachel frowned. “There seem to be a couple of dictatorships in this sector, aren’t there? Funny: they aren’t normally stable enough to last . . .”
“There’s some kind of weird political ideology, calling themselves the ReMastered. Tonto went ReMastered forty or fifty years ago,” offered Jane. “Don’t know much about them: they’re not nice people.” She shivered. “Why do you ask?”
Rachel’s frown deepened. “If you can dig anything up I’d appreciate hearing it. George, you’re holding something back, aren’t you?”
The ambassador sat up slightly, then nodded. “Yes, I am.” He glanced round the table.
“You probably figured out why I wanted you; it’s because none of you had any conceivable link either to Moscow or New Dresden. Which, incidentally, is where we’re en route. It so happens that Ambassador Elspeth Morrow is in residence in Sarajevo, and Harrison Baxter, former trade minister of the Muscovite government—and the highest surviving government officer, he’s also on the code schedule—is there, too. He was sent just before the incident, to attempt to resolve the trade dispute. I strongly suspect that they’re the next logical target, being a two-for-one hit. Our cover story—for everyone outside this room—is that we’re here to discuss the R-bomb situation with Morrow and Baxter.
“The real task in hand is somewhat different. It’s to keep them alive and if possible capture one of the killers and backtrack to their masters. Which is where you come in, Rachel. Tranh, your job is to brief the embassy guard and the Dresdener Interior Ministry special security police and act as external security liaison. Gail, you and I are going to talk directly to the Minister and the Ambassador and impress the urgency of the situation upon them. You handle protocol, I’ll handle diplomacy. Pritkin, you’re our switchboard and front office. Jane, I need you on back office, coordinating any intel we get from home about the circumstances of the murders. Rachel, you’ve got a nasty, suspicious mind. I want you to try and set up a trap for the killers—assuming they surface. And I’ve, well, got a little surprise.”
“Surprise,” she mimicked. “Uh-huh. One of those surprises?”
“Those?” echoed Jane.
“Those.” Rachel grimaced. “Spill it, George.”
Cho took a deep breath. “For you, I’ve got a covert job in mind. You’re about the same size and build as Ambassador Morrow. You fill in the dotted line.”
“Oh. Oh no.” Rachel shook her head. “You can’t do this to me!”
“Oh yes?” Tranh’s smile wasn’t entirely friendly. “What was that you were saying earlier about wanting to nail the culprits?”
“Um.” She nodded like a puppet with a blown feedback circuit. “If you’re right about there being a hit planned.”
“I think we’re right.” George nodded. “Because there’s another datum I haven’t given you.”
“Oh yeah?”
“In addition to a time series on the murders, we ran a spatial map and a full shipping traffic analysis. It turns out that there are about three starships that called at each location a day or so before the hit, then moved on afterward. They’re busy places, mostly. Anyway, one of those ships is a freighter, and none of the crew went down from orbit at any port on its cycle. Another is—well, if you want to accuse the Malacian Navy of trying to start a war with three of their neighbors by whacking diplomats, you draw their attention to the suspicious maneuvers of one of their cruisers. Whose flight plan for the current goodwill tour was finalized nearly a year before Ambassador Black arrived on Eiger’s World. Which leaves just one suspect.”
“Stop winding me up, George. Just tell it straight.”
George looked at her, his expression one of wounded dignity. “My, my! Very well, then. It’s the WhiteStar liner Romanov, outbound from Earth on a yearlong tour circuit. It was in orbit around Eiger’s World when Ambassador Black was murdered. It was in orbit around Turku when Pendelton was murdered. And while it wasn’t parked over Kilimanjaro when Ambassador Davis was murdered, the smoking gun is that it arrived a day later, then departed. That was the zero incident. The arrival times line up. It is in principle possible that an assassin joined the Romanov after killing Ambassador Davis, then traveled to Turku and Eiger’s World to repeat the task.”
Rachel knotted her fingers together. “Tell me it isn’t calling at New Dresden next?”
“It’s not. It’s en route to Septagon Four—but first port of call after that is New Dresden, sure enough. We should get there a couple of weeks ahead of it. And that’s basically why I wanted you on board. We’ll show up as a special diplomatic team tasked with demonstrating that the Dresdener governments’ hands are clean. You will be attached to our team—that’s your cover story—but your real job will be to set up a trap in which you body double for Ambassador Morrow, a week before our killer turns up. And when they try to take you out, we’ll have them. And then”—his expression was fierce—“let’s hope we can get to the bottom of this before the assassins murder 800 million people.”
spy vs spy
wednesday was so busy working on a better way of expressing her rage that she didn’t notice when the walls around her recliner softened and flowed, containerizing her in a lozenge of dark foam and dropping her through the floor of the terminal into the cargo mesh of an intrasystem freighter bound for Centris Noctis. “Stupid brainless unplanned intelligence, no, stupid brainless unplanned stupid—what?”
Her itinerary cleared its throat again: “Please hold on tigh
t! Departure in three hundred seconds! Departure in—”
“I heard you the first time, fuckmonster.” Anger was better than the gaping hole in her life, the absolute bitter despair she was trying so hard to ignore. The walls, flowing past and re-forming into the shape of a compact hexagonal cabin, did nothing to soothe her. “How long am I in transit?”
“Eep! Don’t hurt me! TransVirtual TravelWays welcomes all passengers to the transit shuttle Hieronymus B., departing Centris Magna hab four port authority bay sixteen for Centris Noctis hab eleven port authority bay sixty-two in four minutes and thirty seconds. Please familiarize yourself with our flight profile and safety briefing. After a few seconds of free fall, we will be under continuous acceleration at one-tenth of gee standard for eight hours, dropping to—”
Wednesday shut it out, nodding along vaguely and watching the blurred images in the wall through a thin haze of angry tears with her arms wrapped around her legs. Fuckmonsters, she thought vacantly. Following me, vaccing out the apartment, Mom, Dad, Jerm— The concrete horrors of the vision rubbed it all in, forcing it home. People chasing her, Herman admitting a mistake, unimaginable. Her credit balance when she’d checked it, This has got to be a mistake: there was enough money to buy a house, a good-sized cubic in an upmarket swing zone, never mind a ticket out of town on the next shuttle. “Give you a job.” Yeah, but how much use is it? She’d give it all back in an instant to have the past day to run again with a different outcome. Just to be able to have that chat with Dad.
“How long?” she asked through her misery.
“Total transit time to Centris Noctis, currently six point one million kilometers distant, is sixteen hours and forty-one minutes. We hope you enjoy your flight and choose TransVirtual Travel Ways again!”
The itinerary froze, motionless. Wednesday sighed. “Sixteen hours?” I should have caught the high-delta service, she realized. Not that she was used to flying anywhere at all, but this would take almost a day. “What shipboard facilities are available? Am I stuck in here for the whole trip?”
“Passengers are invited to remain in their seats for the duration of path injection maneuvering. Your seat is equipped to protect you from the consequences of local vertical variances. Eep! Please do not damage company assets willfully as these items are chargeable to your account. When the ‘thrust’ light is extinguished you may release your safety belt and walk around the ship. You are on A deck. B deck, C deck, and D deck are the other passenger decks on this flight. F deck provides a choice of entertainment arcades and the food court—”
“Enough.” Wednesday’s stomach lurched; she looked up in time to see the stylized thrust light in the ceiling flash urgently. Loops of safety webbing crawled out from the sides of her chair, wrapping around her securely as the gravity failed. “Oh, shit. Uh, how many other people are on this flight?”
“The manifest for this flight shows a total of forty-six passengers! You are one of five lucky Sybarite-class travelers! Below you in space, comfort, privacy, and our estimate are six Comfort class business passengers! The remainder are making use of our Basic-class package in common—”
“Shut up.” Wednesday squeezed her eyes shut tiredly. “I’m trying to think. I should be thinking.” Memories of lessons, way back in her early teens when Herman had first tempted her with strange adventure games. Playing at spy versus spy? She wouldn’t put anything beyond him: clearly Herman wasn’t simply a pet invisible friend, and equally clearly he had fingers in a lot of pies. All that stuff about evasion and tailing, how to locate surveillance nets and make use of blind spots, how to break relational integrity by finding camera overlaps and spoofing just one of them so the system interpolated an error . . . Wear the black hat. I’m chasing me, Wednesday. Just killed—her train of thought faltered for a moment, teetering on the edge—and now I’m after her. Who, how, where, what? “Can you stop listening until I call your name, ticket?”
“Madam is now in full privacy! All speech commands will be ignored until you unlock your suite. Call for ‘Wendigo’ when you want to discontinue privacy.”
“Uh-huh.” She glanced at the itinerary; it curled up, gripping the end of her recliner, and mimed mammalian sleep. “Hmm. At least two bad guys. If I’m lucky they think I was in the apartment when they, when they—” Don’t think about that. “If not, what will they do? Worst case: they’re covering the transit ferries so there’s one aboard right now. Or they’ve got friends waiting for me at the other end. I can’t evade that. But if they’re limited to following me, then, then . . .”
She sighed. Shit. The prospect of spending nearly seventeen hours trapped in the recliner was already beginning to seem like hell. There was a quiet chime, and the thrust light went out. “Oh.” It seemed to be taunting her. “Maybe they didn’t cover the port. Maybe.” She stared at it for another minute, then reached for the quick release on her safety belts and picked up her itinerary, stuffing it into a jacket pocket. “Wendigo. Open the door. There’s a manual outside? Okay, close the door and go back to full privacy mode as soon as I’ve gone.”
Outside the door of her room she found herself in a narrow circular corridor, with cabin doors spaced around the circumference and a twisting circular staircase leading down to the other decks. The ship hummed quietly beneath her as she took the steps six at a time, floating effortlessly down. The two lower passenger decks looked like open-plan seating, rows of recliners bolted side by side. As she passed she saw that most of them were empty. Business must be down, she decided.
The food court turned out to be a cramped circle of tables in the middle of a ring of food fabs programmed for different cuisines, a belt of arms waiting overhead to take orders. Wednesday found a small table at the edge and tapped it for the menu. She was just beginning to figure out her way around it when somebody sat down opposite her.
“Hi.” She looked up, startled. He smiled shyly at her. Wow! Two meters tall, he had blue eyes, blond hair that looked so real it had to be a family heirloom—tied back in a ponytail—diamond earrings, not too much muscle or makeup, skin like—“I couldn’t help noticing you. Are you traveling alone?”
“Maybe not.” She found herself smiling right back. “I’m Wednesday.”
“Leo. May I . . . ?”
“Sure.” She watched him sit down, graceful in the low-gee environment. “I was about to do lunch. Are you hungry?”
“I could be.” Beat. He grinned. “Food, too.”
Oh. Wednesday watched him, beginning to have second thoughts about the idea of a full stomach. He was gorgeous, and he was focused right at her. Where were you at Sammy’s party? “Where are you traveling?” she asked aloud.
“Oh, I’m on vacation. Going to stay with my uncle.” He shrugged. “Can I interest you in a drink?”
“What, you want to get me drunk and drag me off to my cabin?” She tapped on the tabletop for a bowl of miso soup and a hand roll. “Hmm. What kind of drink did you have in mind?”
“Something exquisite and bubbly, I guess. To fit in with the company.” He leaned forward, close enough for her to inhale the faint scent of his skin: “If you’re interested?”
“I think so.” She waited a second, then leaned back, watching him with narrowed eyes. “Are you going to order anything?”
“Mm-hmm.” She watched him as he scrolled the tabletop, jabbing at the wine submenu and ordering a plate of spiced noodles—coordinated and confident, she thought—and a bottle of something that was not only exquisite and bubbly, but also expensive. “Do you often go to stay with your uncle?” she asked, feeling idiotic, a conversational casualty in progress. “I don’t mean to pry or anything—”
“Not really.” The waitron was back, bearing a bottle with an intricate pressure-relief cork and a pair of fluted glasses. He took them and raised an eyebrow at her. “It’s not like there are more than two flights a day between Magna and Noctis, is it?” He poured carefully, and handed her a nearly full glass. “To your very good . . . taste?”
/> Wednesday took a gulp of sparkling wine to hide her turmoil. Everything about Leo was right, and he was an eminently eligible choice for a friendly fuck to while away the journey—except that he was too right. Too polished, too witty, too includable. He was the sort of fashion accessory the “in” crowd always had on display. Why pick on her for an evening’s dalliance? She glanced around. There was a double handful of other passengers in the food hall, mostly in groups, but there were one or two singles of indeterminate age: well, maybe he was telling the truth. “To my very good luck—in meeting you,” she said, and knocked back the rest of her glass. “I was really afraid today was going to be a dead loss.”
The food arrived, and Wednesday managed to drink her soup without taking her eyes off him. Lust confused her. What is it about him? she wondered. “Are you traveling in Comfort or Syb?” she asked.
“Cattle class.” He frowned momentarily. “All I get is a seat, a curtain, and a boring neck massage. Why?”
“Oh, nothing,” she said innocently. My place or yours? was a no-brainer. In fact—
Her earlobe began to vibrate.
“ ’Scuse me a moment.” She tapped the table for privacy, then yet more privacy: everything around her went distant and fuzzy, like being inside a velvet-lined black hole. “Yeah?” she demanded.
“Wednesday?” He sounded hesitant.
“Who—wait a minute. My phone was switched off!”
“You said if I was serious I should find your links myself?”
Well not exactly, but—She crossed her legs, uneasy. “Yeah, you did, didn’t you? Look, I’m going to be away for a while. You were lucky to get me without a twenty-second lag. I won’t be back for months. Is there anything we need to say?”
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