Sol Arbiter Box Set: Books 1-5

by Chaney, J. N.

  “Andrew and I have some progress to report,” replied Vincenzo Veraldi, her second-in-command.

  “We’ll get to it in a second,” she said. “First I want Tycho to report on last night’s mission.”

  I took a seat across from Thomas. “We got in and out successfully and cloned the minister’s workstation. While we were there, what I believe to be an aide came in and removed a data cube we hadn’t known was there. We didn’t interfere.”

  “I don’t understand why,” commented Thomas. “In all likelihood, that data cube held the information we were hoping to find. Why didn’t you take it?”

  “Because that could put Lindelt on alert and compromise one of our few leads,” Andrea replied. “Given their orders, it was the right decision. Second-guessing after the fact is pointless. Raven, do you have anything to add?”

  Raven shrugged. “What we got from his workstation looked promising at a glance. More is always better, but we didn’t have much choice.”

  Thomas looked unconvinced, but he didn’t say anything else.

  “Okay, Vincenzo,” said Andrea. “What do you have for us?”

  Vincenzo folded his arms and delivered the facts in something close to a monotone. He sounded tired. “Cabinet Minister Charles Wyland died last night. The timing seemed suspicious, so I went over it with Andrew via dataspike and we made a few discoveries.”

  “You’re getting a bit ahead of yourself,” replied Thomas, deciding to pick on Veraldi now. “What was suspicious about the death? That wasn’t clear when Andrew contacted me.”

  “As soon as I heard that Wyland had died, I looked up any available records. The medical examiner’s preliminary report was already available. It cited cardiac arrest as the cause of death. This was around 0500.”

  Thomas furrowed his brow. “When exactly did Wyland die?”

  “Around 2300. You see the problem.”

  “Yes,” replied Thomas. “That isn’t enough time.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Raven. “It’s six whole hours.”

  Thomas nodded. “Exactly. That’s hardly enough time to process the scene. It certainly isn’t enough time to perform a proper autopsy.”

  Andrea frowned. “If this is a cover-up, they must have been in a rush. Getting the medical examiner’s report out so early is a little sloppy.”

  “I agree,” said Andrew. “When Veraldi called me about it, that’s the first thought that sprang to mind. I think someone got nervous and rushed out this fake report just to make sure they were covered. Bad news for them, it had the opposite effect. If not for that report, we might have been inclined to view this death as a coincidence.”

  “So we think the other conspirators killed Wyland,” I asked. “Why would they?”

  “That brings us to the work we did early this morning,” replied Andrew. “After Veraldi called me up, I reached out to one of Wyland’s aides. It was still early, he was stressed out from his boss’s unexpected death, and he wasn’t thinking about not giving any information away. I told him I was Inspector General Alex Laughlin and I needed to check a few details of the minister’s activities the night before. He was pretty damn sleepy and rambling, but he mentioned a woman named Maria Valeryevna.”

  “Mistress?” I asked.

  “That’s what I was thinking, yeah. I found a border entry record with a picture of her face, but no depth information so there was no way to get solid topography. I realized I was going to need to search the security camera network with a facial recognition program to generate it, and Thomas can do that kind of thing a little quicker than I can—”

  Thomas scoffed.

  Andrew glared at him, then continued. “So I brought Thomas on board, and we did everything we could to check up on Maria and her activities.”

  “You did all these things this morning?” I asked. “Before 0900?” Apparently, some of my Section 9 comrades liked to start the workday earlier than I did.

  “I’m always working by six,” Thomas replied. “Well, except when I’m going to bed at six.”

  “Why did you zero in on this woman so quickly?” asked Andrea.

  “The death took place at the Minister’s home,” Veraldi added. “This kept us from getting access to his personal effects and belongings, which shut down most of what we could have done to find out how Wyland actually died. Basically, Valeryevna was the only lead we could pursue at the time.”

  Andrea nodded thoughtfully and continued with her questions. “Was she with him last night?”

  “Yes, we believe she was,” replied Andrew Jones. “What the aide said was something like you’d have to ask Maria. I played dumb and just repeated the name as a question, and he clarified that he was talking about Maria Valeryevna. That’s what made me decide we should have a closer look at her.”

  “Okay. I’m just trying to form a clear picture. So, you brought in Thomas to do the facial recognition search. Thomas, what did you find?”

  “You can’t just expect me to tell you what I found without knowing anything about my methodology.”

  Andrea blinked at him. “Why not?”

  “Because faulty methodology invalidates results.”

  She was looking at him like she wasn’t sure whether he was serious or not. In fact, I often wondered about him myself. “Thomas, I’ve never known you to use improper methodology. Not once,” she said.

  “You wouldn’t know if I had,” he pointed out. “I’m the only person in Section 9 who understands anything about which processes are appropriate under what circumstances.”

  “So if I wouldn’t even understand the answer, then why would I ask you about the methods you used?”

  He sighed. “Disappointing. I started a comprehensive search of the Metro security stream archives, looking for any hits against the image of Valeryevna’s face. I set the heuristics to filter out one-time appearances and show me only results where she’d had her image captured more than once.”

  “And what did you find?” asked Raven.

  “Plenty of static, of course. Even with the filter, most of us would appear on the same MetSec cameras over and over again. But there was one search result that did interest me. MetSec video shows Valeryevna leaving the home of one Cassandra Mirrah on four occasions in the past two weeks.”

  Andrea smiled. “Ah, so that’s why you asked me to look up Mirrah.”

  “Yes,” replied Veraldi. “And that brings us to the end of our report. I’m curious what you’ve found about Cassandra Mirrah.”

  I still couldn’t believe that all of this had happened between five a.m. and eight a.m. while I was fast asleep. Apparently Raven and I were more useful in the field and less useful for the kind of rapid research Section 9 was so adept at performing.

  Raven turned to me with a rueful smile. “Hard to believe we were asleep for all of that.”

  “No kidding,” I replied. “Breaking into someone’s home isn’t really so exhausting. We could have helped.”

  “Speak for yourself.” Raven grinned. “I need my beauty sleep.”

  “If I needed you to do anything, I would have called you.” Veraldi’s voice was still a monotone, and I realized he probably hadn’t slept at all.

  Andrea raised a hand. Her eyes were straight ahead and unfocused, which meant that she was looking at something projected by her dataspike into her field of vision. “Mirrah’s single and is the only person named on her lease. Despite that, water and power use are consistent with multiple occupants.”

  “That sounds like a safehouse,” Veraldi commented.

  “It does,” replied Andrea. “On top of that, her dataspike firmware is four revisions behind, so I was able to pull her messages. She was careful, but I did find something.”

  I was surprised to hear that Andrea had actually hacked Mirrah’s dataspike. Even if it was a simple matter of running some tools, she usually left that kind of cybersecurity task to Thomas and Andrew.

  “One of the messages says to contact M. I don’t know who M
is, but the UUID for this contact shows as not registered to any individual.”

  Veraldi put a hand up to his chin as if pondering what that might mean. “Hmmm. So, what do we have here?”

  Andrew replied. “Let’s run through all the facts we have so far. Cabinet Minister Charles Wyland died last night, possibly while in the company of his friend Maria Valeryevna. He died around 2300, but just six hours later there was a medical examiner’s report citing cardiac arrest as the cause of death, which we know can’t be legitimate. As for Valeryevna, she’s been seen repeatedly leaving the home of Cassandra Mirrah, who seems to have several people living with her but who tries to be discreet about it. Mirrah had a dataspike message to contact someone called M, who uses an unregistered dataspike. Is that everything?”

  “That’s about the size of it,” replied Raven.

  “It’s a little careless on Mirrah’s part,” I replied. “If she’s trying so hard to be careful, why be so lax on device security?”

  “The medical examiner’s report was careless as well,” Veraldi pointed out. “The evidence suggests a degree of ineptitude.”

  “Any theories?” asked Andrea.

  Veraldi nodded. “I think I know what we’re dealing with here. Not all spies are the same. Some specialize in covert combat missions, like Section 9. And some analyze intelligence gathered from other sources like, Section 5. But there are also swallows. The Sol Federation doesn’t employ them, but that isn’t to say our adversaries wouldn’t. I think that’s what we’re looking at.”

  “Swallows?” I asked.

  “Sex spies,” said Raven. “Take an attractive asset—whatever your target likes—and have them meet in some context where they won’t suspect anything. They cater to whatever the target is looking for—love, sex, whatever. Pillow talk can be valuable intel. Or the target can be coerced or blackmailed. The possibilities are endless.”

  “So, what makes you think this is a swallow?” Andrew asked Veraldi.

  “It’s a specialization. It takes a certain type of skill. Not everyone can do it, so someone with the capability to be a swallow is highly valuable to whoever’s employing them. Even if they’re a little weak on other aspects of their tradecraft.”

  That made sense to me. “So that’s the reason for the weak encryption software and the implausibly fast autopsy. Those are just aspects of espionage this swallow simply isn’t all that good at.”

  “That’s my guess, yeah.”

  Andrea looked thoughtful. “It’s the strongest theory we have, I think. So let’s say Vincenzo’s right, and Maria Valeryevna is in fact a spy. Where does that take us?”

  “The question is which type of swallow Valeryevna is,” replied Andrew Jones. “Was she sweet-talking the minister into passing on classified info, or was she blackmailing him into doing something he wouldn’t otherwise have done?”

  “We can figure that out when we get our hands on her,” Raven commented. “The question I think we should be asking is where has this bird flown?”

  “I’m working on that now,” replied Thomas. “As you know, running a facial recognition program through the MetSec surveillance archive is nowhere near as easy as it sounds. The number of video feeds to search is astronomical, and in many cases your target appears only fleetingly. Having said that—”

  Andrea reigned him in. “Let’s not go off on a long tangent, Thomas. I agree with Raven. The logical next step is to find Maria Valeryevna. Once we know where she is, we can put a surveillance plan in place and find out who else she’s working with. This could open up the entire conspiracy.”

  “Unless it’s a distraction,” replied Veraldi.

  Andrea frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Not an intentional distraction, just a red herring. Based on the file we got from Edward Yeun, this assassination plot is something the Cabinet Ministers put together. Maria Valeryevna is not a Cabinet Minister.”

  “Okay,” replied Andrea, still frowning.

  “We have some circumstantial evidence that Maria Valeryevna was working one of the ministers, and that she may have killed him. I can see two possibilities there. One is that he was being pressured to participate in the plot. If that’s true, then focusing on Valeryevna will unravel the conspiracy. But what if it’s totally unrelated? What if she’s trying to steal trade secrets, or get access to new technology?”

  Andrew nodded. “I see your point. We could be dragged off on something that has nothing to do with our actual case.”

  Thomas scoffed. Not only did he scoff, but he also made some sort of disgusted sound that was loud enough to get everyone to pay attention to him.

  Andrea’s frown was gone. Now she was staring at Thomas with her eyebrows raised and an expression of long-suffering patience on her face. “Yes, Thomas? Do you have something to add?”

  “I have something to explain. I have something to tell you. The thing I was trying to tell you when I was dismissed for going off on a long tangent.”

  Andrea blinked slowly and took a deep breath, though I thought I caught a hint of an amused smile as well. “Okay then, Thomas. I apologize for interrupting you. What was this essential piece of information that you were trying to share when I cut you off?”

  “You may think I can’t recognize sarcasm, but I can perfectly well.”

  “Again, Thomas, I’m sorry. Please go on.”

  “Without quite as much drama,” added Andrew.

  Thomas glared at him, but Andrea put a hand on his arm. Thomas continued. “I analyzed the data from Lindelt’s home when Raven uploaded it last night. In particular, the exchange she noted while uploading it. It casts some light on the question we’re trying to resolve here.”

  “In what way?” asked Veraldi.

  “The data cache she uploaded contains a long exchange between the minister and a third party. That third party was being intentionally vague, but the meaning is clear when you read the complete exchange. Whoever this person was, they were blackmailing the minister with compromising material. I posit that was probably the material Valeryevna produced. I don’t know this for a fact, of course, but it survives Occam’s razor.”

  “What does that mean?” asked Raven. “Occam’s razor?”

  “It’s an inductive principle named after William of Ockham, a Franciscan friar involved in the Nominalist controversy.”

  Andrea risked Thomas’s wrath by gesturing for him to hurry up.

  He frowned at her and continued. “To oversimplify, it means that we should always prefer the simpler of two explanations for the same phenomenon. Applying Occam’s razor, it’s more likely that Charles Wyland was being blackmailed by one organization, not two or more.”

  Veraldi nodded. “Okay. At least provisionally, I’m willing to accept that Minister Wyland was being blackmailed to participate in the assassination plot. In which case I think we can assume that he tried to say no, and that’s why the blackmailers ultimately killed him. If they had simply used the kompromat they had on him, it could have blown open the whole conspiracy. It’s safer for them if he just dies, seemingly of natural causes. They might even be able to exert some influence over who gets chosen to replace him.”

  “I like that. It makes sense,” Andrew added. “But if the plot is being directed by a third party, then who is this third party?”

  Thomas raised a hand, looking much like a schoolboy trying to get his teacher’s attention. “We might be able to figure that out.”

  “How would we do that?” asked Raven. “There wasn’t any contact information at all for the person the minister was talking to.”

  Thomas gave her a superior little smile. “No, there wasn’t, was there? But even so, it isn’t that easy to disguise your location when connected to a system for so long.”

  Andrea perked up. “You figured out the blackmailer’s location?”

  “Last night. In fact, I was planning to reveal the information at the start of this meeting, until Jones and Veraldi called me up this morning asking
me to track down this Valeryevna woman.”

  “Well, don’t keep us waiting,” said Veraldi. “What did you learn?”

  Thomas now looked about as smug and self-satisfied as I had ever seen him. “The sender seems to have attempted to obfuscate their location, of course. Unfortunately for them, they only cycled through a limited set of network entry relays. I was able to narrow the point of origin to a residence in north London.”

  The expression on Andrea’s face at that moment was hard to describe, but it was clear she was almost as pleased with herself as Thomas. After all, she was the one who had to put up with most of his quirks. “You know, Thomas, I sometimes forget that you’re an absolute genius. The next time I’m annoyed with you, please remind me of that fact.”

  “Don’t worry.” He beamed. “I will.”

  Andrea sat up straight, a new look of determination in her eyes. “Tycho and Raven, gear up. We’re heading out.”

  I glanced over at Raven, who seemed perfectly happy at the opportunity to go into combat. She was already moving with renewed energy, and her eyes gleamed with joy at the prospect of action. I would do whatever Andrea wanted me to do, of course, but I wasn’t quite so enthusiastic. The way things were shaping up, both Raven and I were getting chosen for all the brute-force work.

  “I think I’m getting typecast,” I said to no one.

  8

  Two hours later, I was sitting in front of a plate of lamb vindaloo in an Indian restaurant. Across the plaza outside and up a plasticrete embankment was a row of modest, six-storey townhouses. The easternmost building was what Thomas had identified as the point of origin.

  Raven was looking through the window, watching the townhouse through her scope. I thought it was wildly indiscreet at first but, detached from her rifle, the scope didn’t look like much more than a toy. It could even be plausibly explained away as a camera.

  “What can you see up there?” asked Andrea.

  “Give me a minute,” replied Raven. “I’m checking the other buildings too. We don’t need any surprises when we kick the door down.”

  Technically we didn’t have any authority to go kicking any doors down because we didn’t have a warrant from a magistrate. If we raided the apartment and it went bad, we’d have to make up some fictional explanation to justify our presence there. Or we’d have to be long gone by the time MetSec arrived.