by Dan Moren
The man had been surprised because he hadn’t expected Eli to offer him a deal – because he’d thought Eli already knew that they wouldn’t want a deal. His head spun. If they didn’t want a deal then they also didn’t want money, so there was some other reason they’d taken the heir to the Imperium. Which meant they weren’t mercenaries; it had to be political.
The Commonwealth? They’d have a political reason to knock Hadrian off the chessboard. But that’d tip off a galactic incident and turn Bayern into a hot zone. And he had to believe that M’basa would have fought harder to keep Eli and the rest of the team out from underfoot if she’d known this was going down. Plus, the little he’d picked up from Kovalic about the Commonwealth Intelligence Directorate suggested that this would be pretty damn ballsy of them.
He scrambled to fit the pieces together as his interrogator unlocked the door. His window was rapidly closing: once they left the room, he might not get another shot in whatever the hell this was.
Threats. It all came back to the threats. The man had wanted to know what Eli knew about a threat against the prince, what Eli knew about them. They were worried that Eli had the inside line on them – no, not Eli: IIS. They were worried that IIS knew who they were. They’d recognized Frayn’s name because they’d suspected he’d be involved in any attempt to track them down. But by offering a deal, Eli had tacitly confirmed that the IIS colonel didn’t know what their agenda was. And that put them home free.
He’d tied the threads together in a knot about as tight as the one in his stomach, but it all pointed to one conclusion: something very, very wrong was going on here. To make matters worse, not only was he right in the middle of it, but he didn’t have the slightest idea what it was, and he was rapidly running out of cards to play.
“Wait,” he said slowly.
The second man had already shoved Erich out the door, but Eli’s interrogator paused halfway through the doorway, looking back over his shoulder. He cocked an eyebrow.
“Look,” said Eli. “On a purely professional level, I don’t want any harm to come to the prince. But on a personal level, I don’t give a shit about His Imperial Highness. The woman you took with him, though…” He looked down at hands, doing his best to don a sheepish expression. “I care about her, and she’s not involved in any of this. I just want to know that she’s OK.” He raised his head, locking a plaintive gaze on the other man. “Please, let me see her.”
The man gave a nasty chuckle. “You’ve got terrible taste in women, you poor bastard. That one threw you over as soon as she was within half a mile of the prince.”
Eli cast his gaze downward again. “I… I know. Still…” He gave a helpless look at his captor.
With a deep, suffering sigh the other man finally shrugged. “No promises, but I’ll see what I can do.” With that, he left the room, closing and locking the door behind him.
Eli stared at the door listlessly, then fell back onto the cot, ignoring the jab of pain from the lump on his head. That was it. He’d expended every option he could think of, short of telling them who he really was. That didn’t seem like it would buy him much, especially after he’d lied about everything else. The only thing left for him to do was sit back and wait – and hope that they wouldn’t decide he was a liability. Hopefully, he’d at least bought a little breathing room.
Hurry up, Tapper. My time’s running out.
Chapter 18
“It wasn’t us,” were the first words out of Kovalic’s mouth. “What’s more,” he continued as he felt the gun muzzle jab into the nape of his neck, “you don’t think it was us either. If you did, you wouldn’t have been lurking here like a cheap cliché of a spy. Hell, we wouldn’t even be having this friendly conversation.”
“Don’t mistake being friendly for being friends.”
“As a mutual acquaintance of ours is fond of saying, in a business where you have no friends–”
“–the only people you can rely on are enemies,” finished the other man with a sigh, pulling the gun barrel away from Kovalic’s neck almost reluctantly. “Certainly would have made things a lot easier if it had been you fellows.”
“You know as well as I do that nothing in this life is ever easy, Harry.” He paused. “Can I get up now?”
“I’m not going to shoot you, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“More or less.” Kovalic got to his feet slowly, and turned around.
Colonel Harry Frayn was tucking the gun back in his waistband and rearranging his jacket. He’d put on a little weight since Kovalic had last seen him, about three months ago, but he’d never been the sveltest of men to begin with. The file that Kovalic had seen on him suggested he’d been a wrestler when he was younger – he’d always made a point to stay out of the man’s reach as much as possible. But of the many IIS officers Kovalic had encountered in his career in intelligence, he disliked Harry Frayn the least. For all of Frayn’s pompous bluster, he was not only an extremely competent intelligence officer, but a good man to boot. Kovalic knew that he’d been a protégé of the general’s back when the old man had still been in charge of IIS – and he suspected that Frayn was all too well-informed about the general’s current whereabouts.
Which, it occurred to Kovalic, also adroitly positioned him to keep the general in the know about certain sensitive subjects…
“Also, if you wouldn’t mind,” Frayn continued, nodding at the bedroom door, “you might tell Sergeant Tapper he needn’t lie in wait, ready to brain me over the head with–” he pursed his lips in thought, “–the lamp, unless I’ve missed my guess.”
Kovalic grunted. “It’s OK, Tapper. Come on in.”
The door swung open slowly. “Seems to me we’ve got him outnumbered,” said the older man, peering in, light fixture indeed clutched in one hand.
Frayn eyed the two of them. “Given the goodwill I just showed by not shooting Captain Kovalic in the neck, I think you might demonstrate the same level of restraint.”
“I don’t recall any expression about honor among spies,” Tapper said cheerfully.
“Call it professional courtesy, then.”
“Great,” interrupted Kovalic, “now that we’re all on the same page, let’s talk about why we’re here.” He waved a finger in the air, indicating the room at large. “Anything to share, Harry?”
Frayn crossed his arms, tilting his head to one side. “You first.”
Kovalic threw up his hands. “Sure, why not? We followed the registration on one of the vans used in the abduction, which gave us a dummy ID that had provided this address. Ipso facto presto change-o.” He gestured around. “I take it you were on the prince’s security detail?”
The older man tugged at his collar, grimacing. “In charge of, in fact. I mean, he has his own personal military guard, of course, but I was supposed to be handling the intelligence side of matters.”
“Ouch.”
“Quite.” Frayn rubbed his jaw. “I don’t have any more than you do, unfortunately.”
“Super,” said Kovalic. “You guys must have some leads. What kind of threat assessments do you have on the prince?”
“You mean the heir to the Illyrican Empire? Oh, you know, the usual ten thousand.”
“Any in play on Bayern?”
Frayn shook his head. “That’s where it gets weird. Bayern’s pretty green in our matrix. The Corporation has adhered to its neutrality policy without fail – and made a tidy profit in the process. Whatever the threat is, it isn’t homegrown.”
“External groups?”
“Besides the Commonwealth?” said Frayn, raising an eyebrow.
“Harry, seriously. I don’t know anything about this. I give you my word.”
Frayn sighed. “Look, I believe you. But not only is the Commonwealth at the top of the list, the heir was seen leaving the party directly before the abduction in the company of a known Commonwealth agent.” His blue eyes focused on Kovalic’s. “It’s circumstantial, but it’s not good circumstantial.�
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Kovalic scratched his neck. “You, uh, know about–”
“Natalie? Yes. And I’m sorry, Simon. Damn fool girl,” he muttered, “I told her to stay away from him.”
“Well, you know Nat. Once she gets her teeth into something, she doesn’t like to let go.”
“I’m a little surprised that you sent her in with that new guy, what’s his name?” Frayn’s eyes narrowed, fishing.
Kovalic didn’t blink. “He’s young, but he’s got potential, and there’s really no substitute for field experience.”
“Well, perhaps Mr Adler – for lack of a real name –” at this, Frayn’s lips quirked into a smile, “could offer more information about what happened?”
Kovalic exchanged a glance with Tapper. “Mr Adler has not reported in since the incident.”
“Oh dear. To paraphrase an old favorite, to lose one covert operative may be regarded as a misfortune – to lose two sounds like carelessness.”
It was Kovalic’s turn to fix his gaze on Frayn. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you, Harry?”
“My dear boy, are you implying that I have detained a Commonwealth intelligence operative on foreign soil?”
“Implying? No. Flat-out asking. From one enemy to another.”
Frayn laughed. “Fair enough. No, Simon, I have not seen your Mr Adler since the party, nor have I had any report of his arrest. Meaning the logical conclusion is–”
“–whoever has Nat and the prince also has him.”
The middle-aged man spread his hands wide, as though he were a magician producing a dove from thin air.
Kovalic’s jaw clenched. Not the most welcome of news, but it confirmed the intuition that had already knotted his gut. “I intend to get them back.”
“Of course, of course,” said Frayn quickly. “I didn’t mean to make light of the situation. Heaven knows I’ve plenty at stake of my own.”
“Speaking of which,” Tapper interjected, “perhaps we could get on with this.”
Frayn looked around the room, shaking his head. “I’ve been over it with a fine-toothed comb. It’s clean.”
“Someone wiped it down?”
“No, you misunderstand me. It’s clean. Look at this.” Frayn pulled out a pocket lamp and flicked it on. The light was ultraviolet, filling the room with an eerie purple glow, like a photograph in negative. He played it around the room – the walls, the bed, the desk, the carpet. Everything was uniform, perfect.
“That’s way too clean,” murmured Kovalic. “Nobody wipes things down that much.”
“It’s factory clean,” said Frayn. “As in ‘never been used’ clean. There should be at least a few splotches of bleach or other… less savory fluids.”
“A dummy apartment to go with a dummy ID,” said Kovalic. “I like the sound of this less and less.” He nodded to the door. “We can send a team over to do a thorough sweep, but I don’t think they’re going to find anything.”
Frayn coughed. “Or we could send a team over for a sweep. I was, after all, here first.”
A tight smile appeared on Kovalic’s face. “OK, cards on the table. We both want the same thing – to find whoever took our people. So maybe it’s time to pool our resources.”
“You want to work together?”
Kovalic shrugged. “Why not?”
“Maybe because our governments are at war?”
“A cold war,” Kovalic pointed out. “Plus, it’s not the first time you and I have found ourselves on the same side. Or have you forgotten that magical weekend we spent together on Trinity?”
Frayn sighed. “I have not. But this is different, Simon. The second most important person in the Imperium is missing. I’m going to have to report this to IIS Control and it’s going to very quickly be out of my hands.”
Kovalic tapped a finger against his lips. “Can you at least buy us some time?”
Frayn met his eyes, and his expression wavered. “It’s going to take close to twenty hours to get word back from Illyrica as it is,” he said. “I can’t delay it too much or it’s going to be my head when they find out I didn’t report the abduction promptly.”
“And what happens when you do, Harry? Your bosses are going to send a fleet full of soldiers who will tramp all over what little evidence we have, and we’re going to get sidelined. The Illyrican military isn’t exactly known for its deft touch.”
Frayn let out a long breath. “Fair point.”
“I’m just saying that we have a better chance of quietly finding them ourselves than with the kind of furor that’s going to be raised by a galactic incident. And I know you – it’s not like you’re going to sit on your hands waiting for them to show up. I’m just saying that we wait a few hours and see if we turn up anything that leads us to the abductors before the military gets involved. Plus, how good would it look if you were to catch them on your own?” Kovalic raised his eyebrows.
“I’m not exactly in this for the commendations, as you might have noticed. The odds of me ever making anything beyond colonel are slim to no-chance-in-hell.” He eyed Kovalic, as if weighing the options. “Fine. I’ll delay the report. But if we don’t have anything in six hours, then I need to send a courier.”
“Six hours is more than reasonable. I’ve already asked our station chief to delay her report until we make some headway.”
Rubbing at his eyes blearily, Frayn gave a nod. “Then I suppose we better make some sooner rather than later.”
“All right,” Kovalic said. “In that case, you get your team over here to analyze this place, see if they turn up anything. Tapper and I will check out the spaceport lead, just in case we can track down any sign of whoever rented that vehicle. We’ll report as soon as we find anything.”
“I’ll do the same,” said Frayn.
“Oh, and Harry,” said Kovalic, testing a theory. “You do remember the cardinal rule of intelligence, right?”
Frayn returned a tight smile, but if he picked up on Kovalic’s emphasis, he didn’t show it. “Roll with the punches, Simon. Roll with the punches.” With a tip to his disheveled mess of gray hair, he disappeared out the door.
“What was that about?” said Tapper.
“I’ll tell you when we’re…” he looked around the room, “… somewhere else. Come on.”
Getting out of the apartment building was even easier than getting in; and within five minutes they were back in the silver hovercar. Fortunately, it came equipped with its own baffle, which Kovalic switched on as Tapper pulled away from the curb. The sonic dampening curtain descended around them, as though they’d suddenly set foot in a soundproof recording studio.
“What I’m about to tell you doesn’t leave this car, sergeant. You don’t tell anyone: Commander Taylor, Brody, Page – wherever the hell he is – nobody. Copy?”
“Cross my heart, hope to die.”
“I never liked that expression.”
“You were saying?”
Kovalic cleared his throat. “The general’s got an asset embedded somewhere in the Imperial court or its staff.”
“An asset?” Tapper whistled. “Do you know who–” he broke off, glancing sharply at Kovalic. “You think it’s Frayn?”
Kovalic shrugged. “The general trained him. He’s traveling with the prince. The shoe fits.”
Tapper scratched his head with his free hand as he turned them left down a cross street. “I dunno, cap. Frayn’s OK and all – as Eyes wonks go – but I don’t see him leaking intelligence like that.”
“I suppose it’s academic. Either way: the general’s asset told him that the prince would be here. That’s why he sent me to Bayern – to warn Nat.”
“Only you were just a little bit too late,” finished Tapper.
“That’s why I hate flying commercial.”
“I thought it was the terrible food.”
“That too.”
Tapper glanced up through the transparent smoked aluminum that made up the hovercar’s roof. “
We’re rapidly running out of night. So, now what?”
Kovalic drummed his fingers on the car’s dashboard, staring out at the orange lightstrips streaking past in the darkness. “I’m not sure what we can do beyond what we told Frayn.” It was silent for a moment, so he glanced over at the sergeant who was staring out the windshield.
“What’s on your mind, sergeant?”
Tapper shook his head slowly. “Just thinking about the missing pieces.”
“Care to elaborate?”
“We’ve been approaching this from the perspective that somebody’s grabbed the prince just because he’s the prince.”
“Right.”
“But because that crown is so shiny, it’s blinding us to another important detail. We also know that Prince Fancypants is here as the Imperium’s special envoy to Bayern, right?”
“Two for two.”
“So maybe whoever grabbed him did so because of that hat, not the shiny, princely one.”
“Huh.” Kovalic blinked. “That’s a really good point.”
Tapper shrugged, an expression of faux modesty on his face. “I do have them from time to time, boss.”
“That you do, sergeant. Have we figured out what the prince was supposed to be doing here?”
“Not beyond meeting with some Corporation bigwig.”
“And I’m sure the Illyricans aren’t going to be terribly forthcoming on that subject,” said Kovalic. He reclined in his seat and stared up at the light that was starting to blossom across the cavernous city as the heliostats came online. “So, maybe it’s time we paid a visit to the Corporation.”
Chapter 19
“I just want it on the record,” M’basa said, buttoning up her dark jacket, “that I think this is a stupid idea.”
Kovalic was leaning against the elevator’s chrome railing and staring through the glass sides, surveying the cityscape of Bergfestung falling below them. The sun had evidently risen outside, as the mirrors and fiber cables poured golden light across the buildings. To Kovalic, it looked surprisingly, heart-achingly, like a scene from Earth – albeit inside a giant volcano, which was a little odd.
