He had no pict terminal either, or any other device of any kind in the office (at least not visible to the naked eye). He distrusted any communication device that left a trace or record. Nor did he use paper and pen. Kauderer committed everything to memory and transmitted all messages verbally. He never left a paper trail and he could never get caught by means of eavesdropping in his own office, as it was well shielded from external listening devices at all times.
Kauderer did his best thinking at the desk. With no distractions calling for his attention, he could devote one hundred per cent of his quite abundant brain power to whatever task he set before himself, which at the moment was one Obidiah Clein. He could simply kill the odious little man in his sleep, but that was bound to bring repercussions from any number of sources. You didn’t just kill one of Lord Helmawr’s advisors and hope to walk away clean.
That, of course, was what currently kept Clein at bay as well. Clein needed hard evidence against Kauderer before he could move. He was trying to use Katerin to get that evidence, which would ultimately fail. The problem with Clein, thought Kauderer, is that he’s too stuck in the real world. Why look for evidence when you can create it instead?
An idea began to form in Kauderer’s mind. Evidence could point in any direction if handled properly, and it could find its way into any number of hands as well. An odd series of knocks at his door broke the intrigue master’s concentration. He played back the sequence in his mind and translated the coded message. It was time.
Captain Katerin had set up a meeting with Clein, ostensibly to discuss how to gather the evidence against Kauderer. They were now in Katerin’s office, which would give Hermod fifteen to twenty minutes of uninterrupted time in Clein’s office, more than enough for a professional intrigue operative such as he.
He left his office and strode through the palace, making sure to be seen by a number of high-ranking officials on his way to the lower levels and the secure room. However, upon entering the antechamber – the darkest room in the entire palace – he made a slight detour to the side wall. He tapped a code into a pad concealed in the wall and entered a secret passage that opened before him.
Hermod now had complete access to almost the entire palace. He had the map of the secret passageways committed to memory, so it was a simple matter to make his way up to Clein’s office and enter, the same way he had accessed Katerin’s office earlier. Kauderer could have entered the passage from his office, but now had an irrefutable alibi should he need one. He was meeting with Lord Helmawr, whom he knew to be napping in his office at the moment.
Clein’s office was a mess. Kauderer had no idea how he could find anything in the clutter. Papers were strewn everywhere on every single horizontal surface. His desk was covered in a mound of papers, books and file folders. Messages were pasted on the walls, chairs and even on his pict monitor. The bookcases were stacked two and three volumes deep and crammed into every single pocket of space on every shelf. Boxes filled with even more books were heaped in every corner, some of which had fallen over and then been pushed out of the way to make a path from the desk to the door.
When Kauderer opened the panel access to Clein’s office, a stack of boxes nearly fell over on him. He had to prop it up and sidle through the opening, and then close the panel behind him lest the boxes spill into the secret passage. He looked at the office and realised that fifteen minutes wouldn’t be nearly enough.
‘First things first,’ he said, as he donned a pair of skintight gloves. He entered a few commands on Clein’s control panel, sending a brief message that would appear on Katerin’s monitor. It said, simply, ‘stall.’ A few more commands gave Kauderer complete access to all of Clein’s files. He checked Clein’s daily itinerary for the past week. Oddly, the file was empty. He checked the contacts file. Again, empty.
Was he covering his tracks? Kauderer glanced down at the mess on the desk. A scrap of paper sat on the top of the pile. It read: ‘Meet Kat, Re. Kau’ with a time and date. The time was now. The other scraps of paper had similar notes. Messages from subordinates, notes about calls, meeting schedules; they were all written on pieces of paper and then pasted on the walls or left lying on the desk.
‘How does the man function?’ Kauderer muttered. If Clein had kept his records in some kind of legible order like any normal person, it would have been a simple matter of accessing the files and comparing schedules to itineraries to find holes in his day, or combing through his data for hidden files or messages.
In an odd way, he and Clein were alike. Kauderer kept all of his information in his head to ensure against just this kind of data mining. Clein seemed to do it because he was a slob, or perhaps he was the classic absent-minded professor, spending too much time researching and too little learning how to function in the real world. Kauderer had to remind himself that up until just a few days ago, Clein was a junior political officer, toiling away in near obscurity.
‘I just have to think like Clein,’ Kauderer said to himself. He picked up a pile of folders from the man’s chair and sat at the desk. He looked at the folders, assuming they would be the most recent additions to the mess. They all seemed to deal with political issues with other houses. It looked like he was getting himself up to speed on the current political climate in the Spire. He sat the folders on the floor.
Kauderer needed to think, but the clutter made it difficult for his ordered mind to concentrate. Clein was working for someone. There was no other way such a junior official could have risen so far so fast, unless he had gotten outside help. But from the look of this office, Clein was no spy, at least not a professional. That meant he would think like an amateur. He wouldn’t hide his biggest secrets in plain sight where nobody would think to look. He would hide them in dark corners which were like beacons to thieves and agents alike.
He scanned the office again, this time looking not for items within the clutter, but at the structure of the clutter itself. When he saw it, Kauderer felt like kicking himself for not noticing the incongruity earlier. One pile of boxes in the back corner of the room, quite close to the desk, had been very purposefully stacked to look like a haphazard pile. But it was obvious to Kauderer’s practiced eye that the boxes had been arranged in such a way that they could be moved without upsetting the pile.
He rose from the chair, replaced the folders to within millimetres of where they had been originally, carefully moved the chair back to its original position, and then stepped over a pile of books to get to the stack of boxes. He slid it out and looked at the floor. One of the tiles had minute scratch marks on the edge from where Clein had prised it up.
Kauderer pushed on the opposite edge and the tile flipped up. The floor below had been cut away, allowing access to the space between the floor joists. Kauderer reached in and pulled out a box. Inside the box he found about a dozen canisters used for sending messages via the Hive tube system.
‘Perfect,’ said Kauderer. He pocketed a single canister and then replaced the box, the tile, and the stack of boxes. He checked the room to make sure he had left no mark of his scrutiny, then opened the access panel and left Clein’s office.
‘We should be able to gain access just up ahead,’ said Jerico. They were trotting down a large utility tunnel, like many that ran beneath and between the Hive City domes. Pipes carrying everything from power and water to message canisters and effluvium ran along one side of the tunnel. The one-metre diameter pipes were stacked five high and three deep on large metal racks.
The walkway next to the racks was only wide enough for the gang to walk two abreast. Cyklus actually had difficulty getting through some of the narrower sections in his bulky rig. Light came from circular lamps hanging from the ceiling, but these were spaced about ten metres apart, giving the tunnel eerie pools of light all along its length.
‘That’s what you said half an hour ago,’ commented Vicksen.
‘And half an hour before that as well,’ added Jonas.
The entrances to these utility tunn
els were hidden in the dark recesses of the sewers and locked at all times. Only maintenance workers were supposed to have access to the maze of tunnels, but maintenance personnel are notoriously underpaid and easily bribed, so most bounty hunters and many of the more prominent gang leaders all had keys and had mapped out the sections of the tunnels they used most often.
Kal had a map of the entire complex of utility tunnels under Hive City. It had cost him the credits of five bounties to get it, but it had paid off five times that amount over the years, in bounties he never would have been able to collect without the map.
Unfortunately, they had come into the tunnels through a different entrance than the one marked on Kal’s map. It had been thirty minutes before he had realised his mistake and another thirty before he had asked Scabbs for help, but now Jerico was confident that they were near their objective; confident enough to finally tell his ersatz gang where they were headed.
‘This time is different,’ Kal said with a smile on his face. ‘Scabbs has figured out where he went wrong–’
‘Where I went wrong–’ began Scabbs.
Kal continued. ‘And you are all about to see something the likes of which very few alive today in the Hive have seen.’ They had come to a spot in the tunnel where the pipes made a ninety-degree turn toward the wall, plunging through the wall and leaving a gap in the bank of pipes. The pipes seemed to emerge again from the wall five metres further on, where they once again turned and continued running down the tunnel under the pools of light as far as the eye could see.
Kal turned and scanned the bare section of wall. There was a double door set into the concrete wall, but it had no knobs nor any visible lock. Kal found what he was looking for on the far side of the door: a small panel set between two of the pipes coming out of the wall. Opening the panel revealed a key pad. Kal grabbed the map back from Scabbs and folded and unfolded it, looking for the access number.
‘Where in the Hive are we?’ asked Jonas. ‘Tell us now or I’ll kill you, take that map from your dead hands, and open the door myself.’
Every member of the group was nodding in agreement after this statement, even Scabbs and Yolanda, so Kal thought it best to finally reveal what he had figured out. ‘The vampire, my own brother Armand Helmawr, has had unparalleled access to all levels of the Hive,’ he said. ‘There’s only one way he could have gotten everywhere he’s been in the last few days…’
Kal had found the code and tapped it into the panel. The doors slid apart, disappearing into the tunnel wall with a slight hiss. Beyond was utter darkness. Kal flicked on a torch and beamed its light through the door. The pipes from the tunnel could be seen intersecting other pipes that ran up and down in a huge vertical shaft. The torch light just barely licked the far wall of the shaft some fifteen metres away from the door.
‘He followed the utility pipes,’ finished Kal. He tossed the map to Scabbs, pulled a credit from his pants and flipped it into the shaft. The gangers listened to the credit bang its way down the shaft. It never hit bottom.
‘He’s in the shaft,’ said Yolanda.
Kal nodded.
‘You don’t suppose he might have heard all that banging just now?’
Kal gave Yolanda a sheepish grin. ‘Oops!’
‘Up or down,’ said Vicksen.
Kal just looked at her, his eyebrows creased in puzzlement.
‘Is the vampire up or down from here?’ she asked again.
Kal shrugged.
‘Up,’ said Yolanda. They all looked at her. She pushed a few wayward strands of hair out of her eyes. ‘He took Valtin up through that utility access tunnel at the top of the dome. Plus he seems to have a penchant for heights.’
‘Comes from too many years living in the Spire,’ said Kal, nodding his head. ‘Okay. Up it is.’
Lysanne stepped up to the doorway and peered into the shaft. ‘Um, how do we get there?’ she asked. ‘Hey, there’s a couple of buttons here on the inside wall.’
‘That would be for the service lift,’ said Scabbs. He smiled at her and pointed at the map in his hands. ‘It says so right here. Go ahead and push the up button.’
‘No.’ said Kal. Everyone froze. ‘Armand would surely hear the lift moving. We have to climb. There should be ladders on either side of the door as well.’
The entire group groaned.
A little way down the tunnel, there was another groan, unheard by Kal and his merry band.
‘Looks like your day just went into the sump,’ said Bobo.
Dutt nodded in the shadows. ‘I have to go up there,’ he said. It was almost a question, as though he were pleading with Nemo through their link. If he was, the answer wasn’t good. ‘Crap!’
‘Lucky for me, the Spyrers are working on my side,’ said Bobo. ‘I can just sit back and wait to make sure they have the item when they come back down.’ He decided to take another shot at getting the informant’s name. ‘You don’t have that luxury. I mean you can’t rely on what’s his name up in the palace to hand it over to Nemo.’
‘Clein or…?’ asked Dutt, and then immediately clamped his hand over his mouth.
‘Yeah, Clein,’ said Bobo as smoothly as possible. He recognised the name and knew Kauderer would definitely be interested in this bit of news. He palmed a dagger while talking, just in case Dutt tried anything after letting the name slip. ‘Like I said, he’s only out for himself. You know how political officers are, they’re… well, political. You can’t trust ’em.’
Bobo smiled again, keeping a watchful but relaxed eye on his counterpart. He decided to change the subject. ‘Buck up,’ he said. ‘Maybe it won’t be that long a climb.’
Dutt remained silent. Bobo noticed a tenseness about the other spy’s shoulders and elbows, as if he was preparing to strike. The Helmawr spy slipped the point of the blade in his palm into the crease between his middle and ring fingers and prepared to jab it into Dutt’s neck. The anxious silence continued for several heartbeats, but was then broken by a shuffling sound echoing down the tunnel.
Dutt and Bobo dropped to their stomachs at the same moment and rolled under the racks of pipes. A moment later, Derindi tiptoed past them, doing his best to move silently, but failing miserably. Bobo stifled a snigger. Once the snitch was out of earshot, he looked at Dutt, whose face was no more than a metre from his own, and said, ‘Maybe you won’t have to follow them after all.’
Both spies heard a sharp metallic sound like bones breaking. It was Wotan barking. Of course, thought Bobo, the dog couldn’t climb up the shaft. ‘It’s Jerico’s dog,’ he said. ‘There’s no way Derindi will be able to get past it.’
‘Not without help,’ said Dutt. He slid out from under the pipes and dashed down the tunnel.
Bobo wanted to go help. He enjoyed Dutt’s companionship, and was just starting to get some good information out of him, but he knew he should take the opportunity to check in and send the name of the spy inside House Helmawr. He pulled out a small tablet and typed out a quick message, his fingers practically flying across the tiny keys.
He hit ‘encode and send’ just as Dutt returned. He slipped out from his hiding spot and stood up. Down the tunnel, steam erupted from a hot water main and he could hear the dog yelp, which sounded a little like metal scraping against metal.
‘Derindi got away okay, then?’ he asked.
Dutt nodded again. ‘Derindi is on his way up the shaft,’ he replied, telling both Bobo and Nemo at the same time.
Bobo smiled and pocketed the dagger. The diversion had eased the tension between them. ‘You know you’ll need more than a little steam to get the item away from Jerico – or the Spyrers – when they come back down.’
Dutt nodded, but remained silent this time. Something in his eyes told Bobo that he and Nemo already had a plan in place for when the time came. Now Bobo needed a plan as well.
Kauderer had been working on the canister for several hours when a signal alerted him to an incoming message. He ignored the signal for the moment. He w
as at a critical juncture with the canister. He’d attached leads to both ends. One set of wires led to a digital readout. The other set was connected to an input pad. He nearly had the password decrypted and would only have a few precious moments to key the sequence into the pad, before the sensors within the canister detected the worm working its way through the data and triggered any number of booby traps inside.
There it was! Kauderer deftly typed the complex set of digits and symbols into the pad and the canister snapped open. He sat back and shook his hands to release the tension and then smiled. He still had not figured out what message to send to Clein’s employer. It would have to be a fairly vague message as he didn’t know the name of his contact, but too vague a message would give the game away just as much.
He’d almost forgotten about the message when the signal buzzed again. Kauderer disconnected the leads from the canister, picked it up along with his code-breaking equipment, and stepped to the back of his office. He depressed three switches that were camouflaged as part of the decor on his wall and a section of wall opened up, revealing a pict phone, a terminal and a bank of monitors.
A light on the terminal blinked. He waited for it to repeat to make sure he’d gotten the correct pattern and then keyed in the corresponding code to accept and decrypt the incoming message.
‘How timely,’ said Kauderer. He deleted the message and then erased all traces that a message had even been received. Thoughts flew through his mind as he closed his monitor station and returned to the desk, with the open canister still in his hand. Clein was working for Nemo. That much he could have guessed, but confirmation was always a necessity in a high stakes game like this one. Bobo also had knowledge of a possible second agent in the palace. That knowledge might prove quite useful in the endgame. The last bit of the message had been even more intriguing. An idea crystallised in Kauderer’s brain and he sat down to craft a message for the canister.
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