DeRicci had forgotten to turn the main links back on. Brodeur shook his head. She wondered what his excuse was.
“The governor-general and the Mayor are going head-to-head about letting some known terrorists into the dome for a political meeting. The Mayor just issued a statement disagreeing with the governor-general’s decision.” Passolini shrugged slightly. “It’s already a feeding frenzy. I had to shut off the news links because I don’t need the distraction.”
“But the city does,” DeRicci said. She was more relieved than she would have thought possible. “Good. That buys us some time. Let’s make the best of it.”
“Any objections if I assign some of my best assistants to help me finish quicker?” Brodeur asked. Normally he wouldn’t have to check, but DeRicci was glad that he had. This case was messy enough without accusations of incompetence coming their way.
“So long as you review their work,” DeRicci said. “And by that, I don’t just mean reviewing the reports. I want you to look over their shoulders before you sign off on anything.”
“All right,” Brodeur said. “I’ll have as much as I can as early as I can.”
“And I’ll do the same with the trace,” Passolini said. “You might want to assign someone the site. The more good people we have working on this, the better off we’ll all be.”
DeRicci fingered the card in her pocket. They were right. Everything had to be by the book.
She pulled out the card and handed it to Passolini. “I found this in one of the woman’s blazers in the master suite,” DeRicci said. “Have your computer techs see what they can get off of it.”
Passolini studied DeRicci for a moment, as if trying to decide to speak up. She finally did.
“You know you should have given this to a tech on-scene,” Passolini said.
DeRicci nodded. “I know. I could lie to you and tell you that I forgot that part of procedure or that I took it and forgot about it. I recognized it. It belongs to my old partner, Miles Flint. He’s a Retrieval Artist now.”
“It’s not even properly bagged,” Passolini said. “I hope it’s not an important piece of information.”
“Why would it be?” Brodeur asked, his sarcasm evident. “We have a newly returned Disappeared and a Retrieval Artist in the same case. Of course, they’re not connected.”
DeRicci felt her cheeks heat. “I didn’t know she was a Disappeared when I was in the apartment.”
“So you thought you’d protect your old partner,” Passolini said.
DeRicci shook her head, even though that thought had been on her mind. But she decided to tell these two the other part of the truth.
“I asked him to give me his confidential files,” she said. “I actually thought he might, given our past. He didn’t. So now I’m turning in this evidence. Flint and I are no longer partners, and he made it very clear that we never will be again.”
“Angry, DeRicci?” Brodeur asked, the sarcasm gone from his tone.
“Disappointed,” she said. “It was a good partnership. But now, I guess, we’re on opposite sides.”
Even though she didn’t want to be.
Twenty-one
Kreise hunched in front of her wall screen, staring at the image flat against the paint. She hadn’t expected this. She hadn’t expected to be outmaneuvered by a regional government—and so quickly.
Döbryn and her security team, as the press was calling them, would be allowed into the dome—might already be in the dome, for all Kreise knew.
She was trapped in her suite on the fifth floor of Armstrong’s nicest and oldest hotel, the coyly named Lunar Lander. She had come up for a nap after the tense meeting that afternoon, not expecting any decision from the city on Döbryn’s status—at least not that fast.
Normally she would have thought that an official had been bought off. But the governor-general of the Moon had many other, more important things on her agenda than some visitors to Armstrong, and the mayor, well, had a reputation for complete honesty.
Apparently that reputation was correct. It had been his press conference that she had watched, not the governor-general’s, and he had been mad. Soseki had even tipped off the press that the Alliance’s Executive Council was in town, and then he had mentioned Etae and Döbryn’s name.
If anything was guaranteed to bring out the crazies, that was.
Kreise stood and shut off the wall screen by hand. She had only a few choices. She could cancel the meetings now that Soseki had breached security. However, if she canceled the meetings, the others might claim she was being petty—having lost her chance to silence Döbryn, she was going to stop Debris’s opportunity to speak—which she would love to do, without the accusations, of course.
Her other choices included continuing the meetings and allowing Döbryn to make her case; not calling a meeting until the Armstrong political situation settled down; or calling the press and having them show up at the meetings, effectively destroying the meeting’s privacy and its main purpose.
She wanted out of this mess, which seemed like it was getting larger by the minute. Soseki had said that he would protest the release of these terrorists—his word—into the dome. He was informing his citizens now that the dome was no longer a safe place, and they would have to watch out for any kind of troublemakers.
He had also said that he didn’t have the information on all of the Etaens being allowed into the dome, but the moment he had it, he would release it. In the meantime, he was going to have his office prepare video documentation of what he did know about the Etaens, just so that the people of Armstrong would be informed.
Theoretically, Kreise should have approved of the anti-Etaen attitude. But it didn’t help her much. Soseki’s methods were crude, and the very opposite of the diplomacy that she practiced.
Soseki had placed himself in a political war with the governor-general, pitting the City of Armstrong against the Unified Domes of the Moon. He had also exposed the Etaen-Alliance meeting, which was supposed to have occurred in secret.
Now everyone would be debating the merits of Etae joining the Alliance, and most of that debate would happen out of ignorance.
Whenever ignorance ruled, the correct decision—no matter what it was—got buried in a flood of irrational responses. This situation could quickly escalate into something unpredictable.
At least Soseki hadn’t announced the location for the meetings, although anyone with some sense should be able to figure it out. Very few buildings in Armstrong had the size and the security measures already in place to handle diplomats—at least outside of the Port. And anyone who was watching live news would now know that the meetings weren’t in the Port.
Kreise sighed. Her own tricks had backfired and now she was in a mess. From now on, she was going to have to play this one straightforwardly. She was going to have to let the entire Executive Council make its own choices on where to go next.
She opened her private Executive Council links, and sent a message to all the ambassadors. They had to have an emergency meeting, and they had to have it now.
Twenty-two
When Flint came back from the Brownie Bar, he brought up all five screens on his desk, ran a quick debugging scan, and had the system search for new spyware. Then he double-checked what he had done, made certain that the outside links were still off, and called up the information from the Lahiris’ apartment.
He was most interested in their security and cleaning systems. He had the cleaning system run its findings on the screen farthest to his left. That run he started two months before, first letting his computer find the everyday patterns. Then he would have it search for anomalies in the month, starting with the week before Flint contacted the Lahiris to tell them that he had found their daughter.
The system should find differences when Carolyn Lahiri entered her parents’ apartment. Even though she went through decon, no system was perfect. She would be carrying a bit of Earth and maybe something of some of the other places she had been before
she went to the Lahiris’ apartment—maybe even some kind of trace material from Spacer’s Pub.
To find that sort of material was extremely detailed work, best done by computer. While his machines cross-compared trace findings, he searched the security protocols for the audio and video recordings.
He should have found them easily. Theoretically, they should have been the first option—the thing he found as he opened the security files.
Instead, he had to search for any kind of audio or visual record at all. People like the Lahiris, who spent a lot of money on their security system, always thought aurally and visually first. Some people even forgot to buy the other systems—the ones Flint considered even more important—the smells, the cleaning records, including the components of the dust and dirt picked up every week, and the history of who entered the apartment and when.
He would get to those things after he found the audio/visual. According to the records he had in front of him, the other systems stayed on until the day of the murders. Then something had changed with them too.
But there had been no audio or visual record for nearly a month before the murders—and that bothered him. He had double-checked the Lahiris’ security account a number of times before he actually accepted their case, and their audio/visual was always running.
It never ran in the bedrooms, bathroom, or kitchen—something he had found frustrating, because that meant the Lahiris had places to have private conversations and often used those places, but at least he had seen who entered and exited their apartment.
In those months, the Lahiris had had few visitors. Mostly, their visitors consisted of food delivery personnel—usually bots who had special serving trays to keep the food warm—and the occasional colleague. If one or the other Lahiri had to discuss business, it was always done off-premise.
Judge or Dr. Lahiri would greet the business colleague, exchange pleasant chitchat for a moment with the other spouse, and then go out the main door.
But that got Flint thinking. Both Judge Lahiri and Dr. Lahiri were in professions in which confidentiality was a major component. If either one of them had to discuss business at home and for some reason couldn’t do it in the back bedroom or even the kitchen (although some of the kitchen conversation floated into the living room), then the Lahiris would have to have a way to shut off the audio and visual portions of the security system—usually before the guest arrived.
If it had been Flint’s system, he would have kept a visual link to the hallway, but the apartment complex itself probably covered that. He would have to check their systems.
In the meantime, he was going to look for the on/off toggle—if indeed there was one.
By the time he had found the on/off switch, he had gone through six different layers of code. Finally he had traced Judge Lahiri’s command sequences. The judge had shut down the audio/visual portions of the security system nearly two weeks before Carolyn joined them in the apartment. Either he forgot to turn that part of the system back on or he wanted it off.
Flint studied the information for a long time. As phobic as the Lahiris were about security—rightly so, given that their daughter had been a Disappeared—they wouldn’t have left the a/v off that long. Something was wrong with his findings.
So Flint kept tracing Judge Lahiri’s command codes, and found that the judge had reactivated the full system the next day. But the a/v records never made it into the security’s archives—and that seemed even odder to Flint.
He paused, stood, and stretched, feeling the muscles groan. He hadn’t exercised all day, except for his walk to the Brownie Bar, and his body felt it.
But the stretching gave him enough time to recall that security systems were redundant by design. If something didn’t make it into one part of the system, it would be backed up in another part, and maybe even backed up again in a third part.
He sat back down and set to work, hoping he would find exactly what he needed.
Twenty-three
The restaurant just inside the north exit to the Port was ancient. Anatolya Döbryn wasn’t sure she had ever seen a restaurant so old, let alone eaten in one.
The booths were made of a plastic designed to look like fake wood. They had metal bases that were bolted into the floor, just like booths on a commercial space yacht. The seats encircled the booths in a giant U shape, making each booth large and somewhat uncomfortable.
Even though the booths were set up for a kind of privacy, the sound still carried. Conversation became muted echoes that mixed with the clang and clatter of dishes. In the distance, she could hear an androgynous voice calling various arrivals—public transport ships that had come in from Earth or Mars.
Collier sat beside her, his fingers tapping on the table’s fake-wood surface. He had ordered coffee and then pushed it away when he realized it wasn’t real. Anatolya had confiscated it; she didn’t care if the coffee was real so long as it had caffeine.
She also ordered a sandwich and some soup. The sandwich’s bread was made of Moon flour—always identifiable by how thick, pasty and tasteless it was—and the meat wasn’t real. Still, the sandwich was one of the best she’d had in years, and the soup, thin as it was, was even better.
Collier watched her eat with distaste. He probably thought she was some kind of heathen, enjoying this food. Probably saw it as one more sign that she wasn’t worthy to lead her people into the Alliance.
She didn’t care. Collier was lucky; he’d never starved or coped with dwindling resources. He probably ate well and richly every day of his mediocre little life.
He could judge her all he wanted, so long as his prejudices didn’t influence his bosses. She needed the Alliance, and she was pleased they’d given her this second chance.
She was trying not to fidget. The wait for her people seemed to go on forever, even though she knew it hadn’t been. She just wanted out of this port. She was ready to give her speech and leave Armstrong, heading back home, where she was in control.
As she ate, she glanced up at the old etched-glass windows that separated the restaurant from the rest of the port. Humans and aliens of various types filed outward, heading toward the exit. Some were chatting; others looked serious as they pushed their luggage forward. Still others seemed harried, as if they were running chronically late and would never catch up again.
She looked away. At least Collier wasn’t trying to make small talk. That would irritate her. She didn’t like exchanging pleasantries with minor officials.
She finished her coffee and then his. And at that moment, Collier stood.
“Here they come,” he said.
She glanced around the restaurant, but saw nothing. Then she looked into the corridor and still saw nothing. Just the same sorts of people—wearing different clothing but the same expressions—and the same sorts of aliens heading toward the exits.
Collier beckoned her to stand. Apparently, he had gotten notification through his links.
“Let’s go out front. We’ll be less conspicuous.” He pressed his fist into the slot on the side of the table, connecting his payment chip with the collection chip embedded into the fake wood, then extended a hand to help her up.
She ignored it, standing on her own accord, and walked toward the door, stepping gingerly over other people’s luggage, scattered across the floor as they ate their quick meals. Her legs felt shaky, mostly because she felt shaky.
As she stepped out of the restaurant door into the corridor, she looked for her team. She had asked for, not her security team (even though that was what she had called them), but her main advisors.
Collier had moved away from the door, standing against the wall, almost blending in. His head was turned toward the right, watching the people exiting the main part of the port.
She stood next to him, her hands folded in front of her, trying to blend in as well.
This was the dangerous moment. If anyone was going to attack her, they’d do so now. They’d expect her guard to be down while she was w
aiting: that relief she had felt in the restaurant would be her enemy if she let it.
So she didn’t look in the same direction as Collier. She scanned the entire corridor, and stood with her back against the wall. She made certain that any time someone stood close, she moved just a little away.
She protected herself as best she could.
Collier didn’t notice. Secure little man—he was oblivious to anything and everything that had any danger attached to it. If she had planned this—and if she wanted the person in her position dead—she would have sent a flunky just like Collier, in case he got killed in the crossfire.
To her left, the corridor turned slightly, and people vanished as they rounded the corner. She wished that Collier had stood closer to that bend so that she could see anyone who came around it, but he hadn’t.
And she didn’t want to call attention to her nervousness by moving away from him, closer to the exit.
“There they are,” he said again.
This time, she turned slowly, scanning everyone before looking to her right. Her team was walking toward her, their strides long, their hands at their sides.
Her deputy, Gianni Czogloz, walked in front, as he always did, as if he had nothing to fear. He was a large man with a full head of thick silver hair. Years ago, he’d been the first to get the new enhancements, and now the muscles made him look doughy, as if he weren’t quite made of flesh.
But his walk was smooth and elegant, his scarred face familiar and trusted. The relief she had felt in the restaurant grew, and because of it, she kept her place, unwilling to walk to him.
He nodded to her.
The rest of the team—six women and two men—followed closely behind. They were surrounded by Port officials and other people she didn’t recognize.
“Dismiss the employees,” Anatolya said to Collier.
“What?” He glanced at her, startled. Apparently he hadn’t expected her to speak.
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