by David Weber
Lisa winced. Shiflett was a cousin to one of the Peers—Lisa forgot which one, exactly—and she had a definite Peerage slant to her ideas of how Navy officers should behave. As well as who she thought they should behave with. “I wanted to make sure things were going smoothly, Ma’am,” she said in explanation.
“Very commendable,” Shiflett said. “But that’s what petty officers are for.”
“I understand, Ma’am,” Lisa said. “But the captain gave me responsibility—”
She broke off as one of the faces across the room suddenly seemed to jump out at her. Plain, average, topped by a neat flow of short blond hair…
An instant later, the face registered: Coxswain Second Class Plover. Definitely not the murderer from the Havenite recording.
“TO?”
“Sorry, Ma’am,” Lisa apologized. “I thought I saw something.”
And instantly felt like an idiot. Because there was no way the murderer could have gotten from Haven to Casca this quickly. Not unless he’d had a fast courier standing by at his beck and call.
Or had been aboard Soleil Azur herself.
Lisa frowned. He hadn’t been aboard Soleil Azur, had he? Surely someone had checked on that.
Hadn’t they?
“Sorry, Ma’am,” Lisa said again. “You’re right. I should go back.”
“Good,” Shiflett said. “Let’s go.”
The lounge that Commodore Henderson had set up for the senior officers’ get-together was more elegant, more refined, and far quieter than the bash going on down the street. Lisa found Captain Marcello near one of the buffet tables, chatting with Commodore Henderson, each man holding a glass of some fragrant wine. “There you are,” Marcello greeted Lisa as she came up. “We were just wondering where you’d gotten to.”
“I was checking on the spacers’ party going on down the street,” Lisa said. “Commodore, this is probably a silly question, but someone did check Soleil Azur’s crew and passenger lists to make sure Mota’s murderer wasn’t aboard, right?”
“I’m sure they did,” Henderson assured her. His smile seemed to go a little more brittle. “On the other hand, empires have risen and fallen because someone was sure something crucial had been done.” He craned his neck, looking around the room. “Come on—I see Commissioner Peirola over there. He’s head of the Department of Ports and Customs.”
Commissioner Peirola was a short, plump man, the sort who clearly loved the good life and didn’t care who knew it. He was standing in the middle of a small circle of officers, some from Damocles, others wearing Cascan Defense Force uniforms, his arms waving expansively yet without spilling so much as a drop from his glass. As Lisa and the others approached she discovered he was discoursing on the joys of imported wines. A stray and probably unfair thought flicked across Lisa’s mind: that Peirola had taken the post of customs chief mainly so that he would have first crack at any delicacies that might arrive at the Quechua City spaceport.
“Of course they were all checked,” he huffed after Henderson finally found an opening in the monologue to ask his question. “Standard procedure, my dear sir. Not to mention plain common sense.”
“Of course,” Henderson said. “You wouldn’t mind checking again, would you? Just to set our minds at ease.”
Peirola gave a theatrical sigh. “This is supposed to be a party, you know. But I suppose our brave men and women in uniform never rest. Come—my tablet’s over with my coat.”
Still holding his glass, he led them to the cloak room and pulled a compact tablet from one of the coat pockets. He dithered a moment, then carefully set the glass on top of the hat ledge and turned on the tablet. A quick punching in of password and access codes—
“All right,” he said, turning the tablet around for the others to see. “Here are the crew photos…here are the passengers. Whose file do you want me to pull up?”
“Commander?” Henderson invited.
Lisa scowled, again feeling like an idiot. None of the faces on Peirola’s tablet looked like the killer on the prison recording. “None of them, Sir,” she said. “Sorry. It was an odd thought.”
“That’s all right.” Henderson gestured to Peirola. “Thank you, Commissioner.”
“No problem,” Peirola said. He turned the tablet back toward him, reached for the power switch.
And paused, a sudden frown creasing his forehead. “Commissioner?” Henderson asked.
“A moment, Commodore,” Peirola said, still frowning. “It looks like someone’s been into the packet the Soleil Azur brought in last week.”
“Someone who?” Henderson asked.
“Someone whose call mark I don’t recognize,” Peirola said. “Someone…no. Someone who hasn’t got a legitimate call mark.”
“You saying you’ve been hacked?” Marcello asked.
“Unless someone’s changed their call mark,” Peirola said, still studying the tablet.
Lisa and Marcello exchanged glances. “And this doesn’t worry you?” Marcello persisted.
Peirola shrugged. “Not really. A fair amount of the data in the packet is public record—news from Haven, the League, and elsewhere. We don’t charge for most of that, you know. Or maybe you didn’t. As for personal notes and business transactions, well, it’s up to the parties involved to encrypt that properly, and most of them have done so.”
“What about the pirate data?” Lisa asked.
“That’s in with the government data, which are the most heavily encrypted files in the lot,” Peirola said. “I shouldn’t have to tell you that—I presume you have the same key as we do.”
“I don’t think that’s what Commander Donnelly was asking,” Marcello said. “I believe she was wondering if those files had also been hacked.”
“Oh.” Peirola peered at Lisa a moment, then returned his attention to his tablet. “Let me see…yes, I believe they were. In fact, it looks like those were the first group of files that were tapped into.”
“Including the video?” Lisa asked.
“There’s a video?” Peirola asked, looking up again. “They caught some pirates on a video?”
“Not exactly,” Marcello said. “Can you see what else they got?”
“I don’t know that they got anything,” Peirola said, a little testily. “All I can tell is that they got in. I can’t tell from here whether anything in there was copied.”
“Then you’d best go someplace where you can, hadn’t you?” Henderson said.
“Really, Commodore, I don’t think it’s that serious,” Peirola protested. “Just because someone got past the firewalls and copied some files doesn’t mean they’ll be able to access them. The encryptions are unbreakable—trust me. They’re not going to be able to get anything critical.”
“How do you know?” Henderson countered. “I hardly think our hacker is just someone who’s impatient to get their mail. This needs to be looked into. As in, now.”
Peirola sighed. But he clearly knew the discussion was over. “Very well, Commodore.” He threw a last, longing look at his wine glass, then tucked his coat under his arm and hurried through the sea of uniforms toward the exit.
“Anything we can do?” Marcello asked.
“I don’t think so,” Henderson said, his eyes following Peirola across the room. “Peirola’s right about the encryption—aside from the public information like news bulletins most everything in a mail packet is going to be unreadable.”
“Unless the hacker already has the decryption code.”
“True,” Henderson conceded. “Either way, it looks like there’s some critical timing involved here. Otherwise, why not wait until the particular message file of interest was delivered and grab it then?”
“Hasn’t everything been delivered already?” Marcello asked, frowning. “It’s been a week since it arrived, hasn’t it?”
“Your question implies a much more efficient mail system than we have here,” Henderson said. “Most of the files are delivered within a couple of hours, bu
t there have been cases where something got hung up in the system for a couple of days. Bureaucratic or computer problem—I don’t know which. We get so few mail deliveries in a typical year that apparently no one’s had enough incentive to fix it. There’s also a will-call option for people who want a message left in the central clearinghouse until they use their passcode to retrieve it.”
“Odd arrangement,” Marcello rumbled. “Why not just collect it and just read it later?”
“There are a few reasons,” Henderson said. “The legitimate ones usually involve business transactions where both parties want to see the message or data at the same time, and in each other’s presence. The less-than-legitimate ones are criminal groups who don’t want a fixed address that can be tracked.”
“A question, Sir?” Lisa spoke up. “Is it possible that the hacker didn’t go in to find something, but to delete something?”
Henderson huffed out a breath. “Wouldn’t that be cute?”
“You still wondering about the passengers or crew?” Marcello asked.
“Or else something in the pirate data,” Lisa said.
“Well, that one, at least, we can check,” Henderson said. “We copied those files over as soon as Soleil Azur arrived in the system. A simple check will show whether there’s any difference between our copy and the original.”
He squared his shoulders. “In fact, I think I’ll go over to my office and do that right now. Captain Marcello, Commander Donnelly; please enjoy the rest of the evening.”
He headed off in Peirola’s wake. “I think, TO,” Marcello commented, “that our mail-pickup duty just got interesting.”
“Yes, Sir,” Lisa said. “Orders, Sir?”
Marcello pursed his lips. “Just a suggestion that you follow Henderson’s suggestion and enjoy the evening,” he said. “I’m guessing that starting tomorrow we’re going to be joining the Cascans on a snipe hunt.”
CHAPTER SIX
The buildings at the intersection of Fourteenth and Castillon were, in clockwise order, a café, a small-appliance repair center, a breakfast/coffee shop, and a specialty food mart. All were still closed at seven in the morning, though the breakfast shop was getting ready to open. The lack of traffic was probably why Khetha’s people had chosen this particular place and time.
There were good reasons, as well as ominous ones, why the Supreme Chosen One might not want witnesses to the rendezvous. Fortunately, Llyn had reasons of his own for going along with that strategy.
He’d had a private bet with himself that, despite Pinstripe’s statement that he would be picked up, that he might instead be hustled into one of the buildings on or near the corner. Zinc-plate dictators like Khetha liked to think they were being clever.
But in this case, security concerns apparently outweighed the urge to impress the visitor with the Supreme Chosen One’s cunning. The ground car that pulled up to Llyn’s side as he reached the corner was large, heavy-looking, and had the traditional darkened windows of such errands. The door opened as it rolled to a halt, and a large figure in the shadows beckoned to him.
Llyn climbed in. The inviting hand changed position, turning palm-upwards in silent command. In equally silent compliance, Llyn handed over his uni-link, stood still for the quick weapons wanding, then reached behind him and pulled the door closed.
They were rolling again almost before the door was completely shut. “Nice vehicle,” Llyn commented, peering across the darkened interior. Aside from the large man sitting beside him, there was only one other person in the rear part of the car, a thin man occupying a drop-down jump seat across from the two of them. An opaque barrier blocked the view of the driver and whoever else might be in the front. “I appreciate not having to go with the bag-over-the-head routine.”
One of Khetha’s mid-level associates would probably have made some polite but neutral comment. A higher-level associate might have tried a gentle probe, a casual question as to whether Llyn did this sort of thing often. Simple, low-level guards would say nothing.
Llyn’s companions said nothing.
Which was as Llyn had expected. A clever despot, as opposed to one who merely thought himself clever, might have sent someone to sound out the mysterious visitor during the drive. That could have been inconvenient, on a number of different levels. Not only might a competent intermediary have smelled the proverbial rat before Llyn ever got to Khetha himself, but it might also have left a potentially embarrassing witness out of easy reach. But Llyn’s warning about Khetha letting only the most trusted people in on this had apparently trumped the dictator’s good sense. It appeared he had alerted only his most trusted henchmen to the meeting.
The probable bonus was that there was now a good chance he’d alerted all of his trusted subordinates. That would put them all in one handy spot when the time came. It was so convenient to deal with someone predictable.
Of course, if Khetha brought his closest cronies he would also have a of number of armed and dangerous men in attendance. But that, too, was perfectly fine with Llyn. He’d had a week to read everything the Cascan archives had on Canaanites in general and Khetha in particular, and he had a pretty fair feel for how this meeting would be staged and formatted.
The first tick on that mental checklist was Khetha’s eagerness overcoming caution and cleverness, embodied in the fact that the drive turned out to be short. Barely fifteen minutes after leaving the rendezvous the car pulled to a stop. The man across from Llyn opened the door and stepped out, glanced around, then motioned the passenger to join him. Surreptitiously crunching the outer coating on the pill he’d tucked into his cheek before leaving his hotel, Llyn did so.
He found himself in a tunnel running from the street to what was probably an underground parking garage. He was still looking around when the other man from the back seat exited and closed the door, and the car took a sharp left into a curved connecting tunnel, presumably heading back to the street.
The thin man got a grip on Llyn’s arm and headed down the tunnel, walking briskly toward an unmarked door halfway down to the left. Llyn followed in silence, the third man bringing up the rear. As they approached the door it opened, and Pinstripe and Blue Shirt, Llyn’s tails from the previous day, stepped out into the tunnel. Pinstripe gave the area a quick scan as the newcomers approached, then gestured them inside. Beyond the door was a short hallway leading to another door, this one clearly heavily armored.
The outer door behind Llyn closed with a solid-sounding click. Pinstripe brushed past them to the big door, with Blue Shirt now playing rearguard, and pulled it open.
Beyond the door was a small room, metal-walled and probably soundproof, with a long table in the center. At the far end of the table sat a man in a muted military tunic with rows of medals plastered across his chest: General Amador Khetha, the Supreme Chosen One himself. Just around the corner of the table to the general’s right was a second man, considerably more plump, dressed in casual civilian garb. Both were watching Llyn closely as he and his escort stepped into the room. Standing behind Khetha was a pair of large men, one on either side, their hands folded loosely in front of them in standard bodyguard stance. They were watching Llyn even more closely and suspiciously than the general. A third chair waited at the near end of the table, clearly intended for Llyn.
On the far left side of the room was a short table holding a steaming samovar and a row of mugs.
Llyn suppressed a smile. Tick number two on his list. The Canaanites had a whole spectrum of hospitality rituals, which varied according to the social and economic status of the two sides of a meeting. The samovar-and-tea setup was reserved for first meetings between strangers who might be expected to become associates in business or politics. The subtle nuances would be lost on someone who wasn’t intimately familiar with Canaanite etiquette, but all indications were that Khetha had clung to the customs of home with the deathgrip of an involuntary expatriate. Llyn had guessed that Khetha would follow that pattern, even though the dictator would ha
ve no way of knowing whether or not his guest understood all of the implications.
Or perhaps this was a test, something Khetha had deliberately set up to see just how thoroughly Llyn had researched his hoped-for associate and Canaanite culture.
Ultimately, though, it didn’t matter. There were other approaches Khetha could have taken, and Llyn had plans to cover each of them. But the samovar gambit would certainly be the easiest to play off of.
It was always so gratifying when the fish baited his own hook.
Up to now, Khetha and his men had had most of the initiative. Time to even things up a bit. “Good morning, General Khetha,” Llyn said briskly as he stepped to the table and sat down. The pill had started to kick in, and he could feel his heart pounding almost painfully in his chest. “I appreciate you seeing me on such short notice.” He cocked his head. “I’m sorry. Should I be addressing you as ‘Your Worship’?”
The plump man bristled. But Khetha merely smiled. “‘General’ will do,” he said. There was movement to Llyn’s right and left as his two companions from the car took up guard positions to his sides. From behind him came more sound of movement, and reflected from the wall behind Khetha he caught a fuzzy glimpse of Pinstripe shoving the door closed, leaving him and Blue Shirt outside in the corridor. “Please don’t assume my presence here means I necessarily have any interest in doing business with you,” Khetha continued. “You’re here simply because you intrigue me.” A faint, unpleasant smile touched the corners of his lips. “You had best hope you continue to do so. Let’s start with your name.”
“I’m afraid that would mean nothing to you,” Llyn said. “More well-known, at least in the upper-level circles where the true decisions of the galaxy are made, is the name Pointer.”
The man at Khetha’s side snorted. “I believe that’s a breed of dog.”
“Correct,” Llyn said, inclining his head to the other. “And be assured that I’ll be as doggedly persistent in my service to you as my four-legged namesake.” He shifted his attention back to Khetha. “But first things first.” He reached into his jacket.