All came to attention.
“Dismissed.”
From start to finish, it had taken four minutes. The living filed out of the room, leaving the dead where they fell, sightless eyes still open, three tiny and nearly bloodless holes clustered within a hand’s breadth on each chest, the smell of powder mingling with the sour scent of two men’s evacuated bowels.
In a few minutes, corpsmen from the Casualty Station would come to take the bodies away to cold storage in the ship’s morgue, eventual cremation at a station or on board a hospital ship, and—if someone wished to claim the remains—a long, slow trip for their ashes on a low-priority transport back to their homeworlds. Until then, though, they lay silent and alone, the bodies now empty of whatever had driven them to live and love and eat and breathe and strive and struggle and, in the end, to betray their own people and suffer death as a result.
Later, sensing that there had been no movement and no living occupant in the compartment for more than four minutes, the computer turned off the lights, plunging the room into total darkness.
* * *
CHAPTER 19
* * *
02:27Z Hours (11:18 Local Time), 2 February 2315
Dr. Sahin shaded his eyes from the unaccustomed glare of the sun—well, of a sun at any rate—as he stepped out of “his” microfreighter onto the landing pad. He took a deep breath, his first of unprocessed air in more than two years, expecting to scent the exotic aroma of a strange, new world. Instead, all he could smell was the burned rock aroma of thermal concrete scorched by landings from the big passenger shuttles that were the bulk of the spaceport’s traffic. The exotic strange new world scent would come later, he supposed.
In less than two minutes, a ground vehicle came across the spaceport’s vast distances to the pad. A bored, dirty driver scanned the doctor’s credit chip, debited his account, lowered a tow coupling, inserted it into the socket on the freighter’s front landing gear assembly, and gestured for Sahin and his pilot, Able Spacer Fahad, to climb aboard. He put the vehicle into drive and headed toward a hangar, towing the freighter slowly behind, clearing the pad for the next ship.
After a short drive with the silent, sullen driver at the wheel, the microfreighter was situated in the hangar with about a dozen ships of roughly similar size. A spaceport official then appeared and handed Sahin a padcomp presenting him with several forms for his electronic signature, certifying that the ship did not have hazardous cargo, had been inspected within the past year, that he would pay all hangar charges promptly, that he understood that he should remove any valuable property from the freighter and deposit it in the spaceport’s vault or in one of the high-security cargo hangars provided at a reasonable charge, that the Spaceport Authority disclaimed responsibility for all thefts, and that he would not attempt to taxi the freighter out of the hangar himself.
Finally, Sahin and Fahad, each carrying a nondescript overnight bag, got into one of a pair of smaller ground vehicles parked near the door to the hangar and closed the door.
There was no steering wheel. Instead, there were twenty buttons on the dashboard, labeled Incoming Travelers, Departing Travelers, Freight Terminal, Customs, Ground Transport to City, Air Passenger Terminal, and Hangar 1 through Hangar 14. Max hit the button for Incoming Travelers.
Following an electronic track in the pavement, the vehicle quickly took them to a building marked in several languages “Incoming Travelers.” Entering the large building, they got into a fast-moving line and came to a desk behind which sat a pleasant man wearing the tan and medium-brown robes that most of the natives, plus the doctor and Fahad, were wearing. He was of apparently Arabic descent, as were most of the inhabitants of this world, in his middle fifties, with a short, neatly trimmed beard and sharp, piercing brown eyes. Eyes that the doctor could easily see belonged to a very perceptive man.
He turned to the doctor and said in Standard: “ID cube, please.”
Sahin produced his cube and handed it to the man, who placed it in his reader. The cube was, of course, an excellent forgery manufactured by the crack Intelligence Section on Admiral Hornmeyer’s flagship. As the Navy had access to the same equipment that the Union Identification Service used to make the real cubes, naval forgeries were indistinguishable from the real thing. Following the standard intelligence procedure of making the lies as close to the truth as possible, most of the information contained on the cube was correct, save that there was no evidence that Sahin was a naval officer.
“Ibrahim Sahin. Occupation: physician and independent trader. Born: Tubek. My sympathies to you, sir. Citizenship: Terran Union. Large number of entry visas for various worlds in the Free Corridor and elsewhere, short visits, perfectly ordinary for a trader. Provisional master’s license, small craft only. You might want to work on those piloting scores, Doctor; they are too low to allow you to fly anything solo in our space. Trader’s licenses and interstellar commerce permits from several jurisdictions. Comprehensive Medical License from the Interspecies Coalition for the Licensure of Health Care Providers. A very difficult credential to obtain. Most impressive. Additional credentials in natural science, interest in reptiles. What is the purpose of your visit, Doctor?”
“Business. Purchasing victuals for various freighters owned by a concern related to my family enterprises. Purchases to be transported on my Shetland microfreighter now in Hangar 3.”
“Length of stay?”
“Short. Anywhere from a day or two to two weeks at most.”
The immigration official, a lieutenant colonel according to the discrete insignia worn as a broach on his robe, gave the doctor a hard look. He was an experienced and senior officer in his world’s immigration and customs service, and also had unacknowledged connections with its intelligence establishment, all of which meant that he was a man of unusual perceptiveness. Every formal indication and every rule said this doctor was what he said he was and that he should be admitted, but something was telling the colonel otherwise. He had a great deal of discretion, but not enough to detain or to refuse a visa to a man with Dr. Sahin’s credentials, when he did not have a shred of any specific and identifiable justification for suspecting him.
“Everything seems to be in order. Welcome, Dr. Sahin. Enjoy your stay on Rashid IV.” The doctor stepped aside for Fahad to complete the same process.
After he was finished with Fahad and both men had moved on, the lieutenant colonel entered a series of apparently random characters into his workstation, resulting in his screen displaying a menu that was nowhere on any official site map. He filled in some of the blanks, copied the ID information from the doctor’s and Fahad’s ID cubes, and advised his superiors that both men should be watched. Carefully.
Still in the Incoming Travelers building, Sahin and Fahad went to an open area labeled Device Compatibility. There they found about two dozen booths, each with a table containing a compact array of electronic equipment, a computer display, and a credit chip reader. Both men took out their flipcoms, distant descendants of the smartphone, used by virtually all humans on all but the most resolutely nontechnological worlds, and set them on top of an analyzer pad, of which there were four at each table. After a few moments, the computer screen split itself into two columns, one column for each flipcom, containing identical text:
Welcome to the Galactic Telephone and Telecommunications (GT&T) Device and Communication Service Compatibility Analyzer, a service of GT&T Interspecies Enterprises, a GalactiComm Corporation. Copyright 2314. All Rights Reserved.
Device: Nokia/Sprint Uhura 1966 Ultra
Universal Band, No Metaspacial Capability
This device is compatible with local network.
Note: Your voice/data plans do not include communications on this planet.
The display went on to list the various voice and data plans available and their cost in various currencies. Dr. Sahin selected the unlimited plan for a cost of 212.14 Union credits, and paid with his credit chip.
“There, Fahad,
our phones are enabled on this planet now,” he leaned and whispered into the pilot’s ear, “but assume that every word you say is being recorded.”
“Der Feind hört mit.” The enemy is listening—a maxim famously imprinted on every field radio issued by the German army in the Second World War.
“Indeed. Now, one more stop and we will be ready to leave.”
“Good, this bag is getting heavy,” replied Fahad.
The two men went around a corner and came to a rather ornate and impressively decorated area of the building, at the entrance of which hung a large sign reading: Currency Exchanges and Banking. Inside the area were several booths labeled with the names of numerous banks, both local and interstellar. Sahin and Fahad walked up to one of the largest: The Royal Standard Chartered Bank of Rashid IV. There was no line. The two sat down at a desk in front of a handsome young man with dark skin, black hair, an aquiline nose, and dark eyes.
“Welcome to Royal Standard Chartered Bank,” he said, pleasantly. “My name is Abdul Hamani. How may I be of service today?”
“I need to purchase some currency,” answered Sahin.
“What kind of currency will you be purchasing?”
“I will be needing Rashid dinars—1000 dinar notes.”
“Very good. And what will be the purchase medium?”
“This.” The doctor gestured to Fahad, who unzipped his overnight bag and produced one of the twenty-kilogram gold bricks taken from the Loch Linnhe. The man’s eyes widened ever so minutely before he resumed his mask of bland amiability.
He opened a drawer and pulled out a small, gray box with an even smaller gray screen, placed it on top of the gold brick and pressed a button. He read from the screen and typed some numbers into his computer terminal. “Gold, twenty kilograms. Point nine-nine-nine fine. At the current rate of exchange, we will purchase at 808,325 dinars.”
The doctor smiled. “That, young man, is yesterday’s rate.” He pulled out his flipcom, opened it with a flip of his wrist, and touched a few keys.
“At the current rate on the Rashid Central Commodities Exchange, and allowing your establishment the standard 2.5 percent discount/handling fee, the buy price would be 816,052 dinars. But given that this is an unusually large amount of gold to be used in a straightforward currency exchange transaction, and given that the market is unusually volatile due to the present war, I would be willing to accept a price of 815,000 on the understanding that I may have need to exchange gold for currency at some point in the future, at which time I will expect to receive the full current rate of exchange, minus, of course, the bank’s 2.5 percent handling fee.”
The banker considered briefly. “Agreed, provided that our understanding is not of unlimited duration. It shall apply only to transactions taking place within the next year. Is that acceptable?”
The doctor nodded his acceptance. Hamani keyed a complex set of instructions into his terminal, turned to the doctor, and smiled.
“Our understanding has been entered into the records of this bank and accepted by management. May I have your ID cube so that we may know with whom we have dealt in this matter?”
The doctor handed over the cube, and the young man put it into a reader, ejected it a moment later, and handed it back. “It has been a pleasure transacting business with you, Dr. Sahin. A porter will arrive momentarily to deliver your currency and collect our gold.”
Two hours later, the doctor, Fahad, and a third man were sitting in the shady courtyard of a sprawling house about a dozen kilometers from the spaceport, drinking Earl Grey tea with sugar and lemon and listening to the voices of three blue-tiled fountains murmuring in the background.
Sahin was enjoying the interesting sensation of carrying on his person what he regarded as a huge sum of money, enclosed in a money belt strapped to his belly under several layers of robes, defended by an M-1911 pistol and a curved sword of moderate length, in the fashion carried by honorable merchants on this world. Under local laws both weapons were perfectly legal for him to carry, and under local custom, perfectly accepted and normal.
The currency amounted, in fact, to the equivalent in local bank notes of nearly three-quarters of a million Union credits. He could, of course, have deposited the proceeds of the gold sale in an account that the amiable young man at the bank would have been pleased to set up for him, but credit chip transactions always left a data trail, whereas cash did not.
“Here, cousin, is a list of the items I require. They need to be loaded on standard cargo palettes and packaged for long-term storage on board ship,” said Sahin. “I will pay the current market rates, in cash, in Rashid dinars, plus a fee of 5.125 percent for your trouble, as has always been our family custom.”
“That is very generous,” said the other man evenly. He took a sip of his tea, and then set it down gently. “However, business conditions are not what they were when you left the family concern. The handling fee is now 10 percent.”
The doctor took a sip of his own tea, stirred it with the exquisitely engraved sterling silver spoon in his cup, took another sip, set it in its saucer, and regarded the dark liquid. He briefly mused upon the curiosity of two Turks sitting in a Moorish courtyard on a mostly Arab planet, drinking a British blend of a Chinese beverage flavored with a fruit domesticated in India, sweetened with the sap of a plant from Southeast Asia, crystallized by a process invented in Louisiana by a man born in Illinois and educated in France. Truly, he thought, the civilization being spread by humans through the galaxy was the product of the whole Earth and all her children.
All men are brothers, but business is business.
“Cousin Yassir, I believe in generosity and fairness in all dealings with members of my family, but that does not mean I intend to treat you with outright charity. I am very familiar with business conditions in this sector, and they are not as treacherous as you make them out to be. Given that the merchandise I am purchasing is entirely ordinary and is sitting in your warehouse right at this moment, and given that some of what I wish has been collecting cobwebs in that same warehouse for more than sixty days and you are already looking for secondary buyers to take it off your hands at a discount, and even further given that you will be paid in Standard Chartered Bank notes rather than in electronic credits or currencies that you will have to exchange at highly volatile rates, I think that a handling fee of 6 percent is entirely fair.”
“I would be interested in knowing how you became aware of my inventory situation.”
The doctor had gotten his information because the communications section on his ship had intercepted Yassir’s communications with prospective buyers and had needed only about nine and a half seconds to break his commercial level encryption. Yassir had no idea that his communications were so vulnerable.
“You want information. Like any other commodity, information has a price. I assure you that you will find this information very valuable.”
“Eight and a quarter percent, and you tell me how you found this out.”
“Six and one half percent. The price of the information to be separately negotiated.”
“Seven and three quarters, including the information.”
“Seven. And we trade information. I tell you precisely how I know about your inventory, and you tell me what you know about certain transactions going on in this sector, without giving away any proprietary information about your own business.”
An appreciative grin slowly spread across Yassir’s face. “We have an agreement. You bargain like your father.”
“And you bargain like yours. We should have been brothers.”
“Many have died in both our families. Perhaps, now, we are.” They embraced.
Eight hours later, the doctor and Fahad were walking through a bustling marketplace in Amman, the third largest city on Rashid IV, nearly a thousand miles from the spaceport. As in Sidon, the city on whose outskirts the spaceport was located, they blended in with the locals and moved through the sea of people as though they had been
raised in the city, the doctor having spent many years of his life traversing marketplaces such as this, and Fahad because he had a pilot-athlete’s natural gifts for moving in a comfortable, easy manner and for copying the movements of others. Neither of them noticed another man, just as unobtrusive, making his way through the same crowd at a discrete distance.
Yassir had given Sahin the names of five people who, according to rumor, had been operating as middlemen, purchasing various heavy metal ores, bulk foodstuffs, and machine tools for sale to yet another set of middlemen who were believed to be selling them to individuals who were striving greatly to remain anonymous. Whereas Sidon was the shiny, upright face that Rashid IV showed to the galaxy, Amman was the rough and gritty side known mainly to the natives and to those outworlders who needed to engage in certain kinds of transactions: the kinds of transactions that, although in most cases not strictly illegal, were best kept in the shadows.
The doctor had already spoken to four of the five middlemen and was on his way to see the fifth. As was typical, these men were far more perceptive and intelligent than the people with whom they did business credited. Although the off-world middlemen thought they had never tipped their hands, all four of the Rashidians knew that the goods were all going—very indirectly, of course—to Philistos, a prefecture of the Romanovan Imperium that was waging a low-intensity rebellion seeking its independence. As Rashid IV and the Romanovans had close trade relations and a strong mutual defense treaty, the parties had a strong interest in preventing the sales from becoming known to the Romanovan government.
These four men also knew that the fifth middleman, the man whom Sahin was about to see, was not dealing in goods bound for Philistos. Rather, they believed he was supplying another buyer whose need for secrecy was even more compelling—so compelling, in fact, that the fifth man’s buyer had succeeded where the other buyer had failed. The fifth man did not know the ultimate purchaser’s identity.
To Honor You Call Us (Man of War) Page 28