Rebirth

  **********

  Earlier on Earth, Formby had been awakened to the sound of his telephone ringing, it was Crosby and the time was six in the morning.

  "Don`t you have any thoughts for your career, Crosby, waking your superior without a jolly good reason can be fatal?" Formby asked angrily.

  "I think that you will appreciate being awakened this time Sir." Crosby hoped so anyway. "I believe we have found our Aldebran agent."

  "Send a car for me, Crosby, and make sure our spy doesn`t go anywhere in the meantime."

  "Don`t worry Sir, he won`t be going anywhere, Morrison and Chambers are on watch around the back of the hotel Mirage, whilst Jones is sitting inside the small lobby of the hotel."

  Formby quickly washed and shaved, and by the time the car had arrived, Formby was dressed and moving towards the front door of his small apartment set on the outskirts of the better side of the city. An inheritance had allowed him to purchase it, for otherwise he would still be languishing deep inside the unsavourily squalid area where he had been born.

  Formby instructed the driver to drop him around the corner, and out of sight from the hotel Mirage. Formby wanted to approach the hotel from the same side of the road so that he would not be so visible to anyone watching, so he crossed to the other side of the road before turning the corner that brought him near to the front entrance of the hotel. Crosby saw him as he turned the corner and waved to him from the hotel front entrance. Formby entered the lobby and immediately got down to business.

  "Do we have a key to his room?"

  "Yes Sir, I have it here." Jones held up the plastic electronic key card that would allow them access to the room.

  In his hotel room Tirana, had been standing by the window, and had seen Formby enter into the hotel lobby. Tirana had always been an early riser but it had been sheer chance that he had been looking out of the window when Formby had arrived, but it was not chance that Formby was known to him. He had not only seen him enter the boarding house of Mrs Maritz and question her, but he had also seen him with President Michaels at the Chichester Laboratories, for he had staked out the laboratory after the explosion so as to see which detectives had been put on the case. This was also the reason why Tirana had not returned to his lodgings, and why now Tirana quickly left this room and headed towards the stairs that went up to the roof, for he had already checked out an escape route for use if necessary.

  'How did you get onto me, I did nothing to attract your attention.' Tirana said to himself. 'Something or someone has given me away, could it have been our man at the laboratories, Wallace, or maybe it was something so small that I will never work out what it was.' Tirana mused.

  Formby took the key card from Jones and accompanied Crosby up the three flights of stairs to the room where Tirana was checked into while Jones stayed downstairs in the hotel lobby, just in case.

  "We have also located the Aldebran spy`s car; it is parked three streets away." Crosby informed his superior. "Using the CCTV cameras we backtracked him from the hotel to the place where he parked his vehicle." Crosby said sounding just a little smug, and as he should be thought Formby.

  "Good work Crosby."

  They had reached the door of Tirana`s room by now, and Formby unlocked the door with the key card and together with Crosby burst into the now empty room.

  "Where on earth is he Sir, I am positive that he hasn`t left the hotel since he returned to his room just before midnight."

  Formby dashed out of the hotel room with Crosby close behind him, Formby could see that the elevator was not in operation, and if Tirana had just stepped out of it on the ground floor then Jones would have called them.

  "His car, Crosby, get Chambers, Morrison and Jones around to it now, we may still catch him before he can escape." Formby ordered. "Meanwhile we will head for the roof and see if he departed that way, come on man."

  They were soon standing upon the roof of the hotel and looking down the fire escape stairs, but it was empty, as was the alley beneath it.

  Tirana saw Formby and Crosby dash up the stairs as he watched from the cleaner`s cupboard on the next floor up, he counted to ten and then walked slowly down the stairs, by a baffled hotel receptionist and into a passing taxicab. He took this to the busy city railway station, here he went to the left luggage department and collected a large suitcase. He then installed himself in one of the station toilet cubicles where he changed his clothes, put on a grey wig and developed a pronounced stoop. Tirana had entered as himself, six feet tall, dressed very smart, middle aged with jet-black hair and piercing brown eyes, he had left as an aging old man in a scruffy suit, with grey hair, a bad stoop and wire rimmed spectacles.

  He had another vehicle stashed away in a private lockup that he had leased when he had first come to Earth. The aged old man had left the vehicle there two weeks ago. This same old man now collected it and headed west towards another smaller and grubbier spaceport, here he would obtain a seat upon a tramp freighter heading towards the Mars colony. On Mars, he would occupy his time doing important work in the service of his Emperor, and his two agents aboard the Constellation.

  A tired Formby got back to his office at ten that morning, very angry with himself. He should have left Jones in the hotel lobby, the receptionist had told him how Tirana had slipped out of the hotel seconds after Jones had left his post down there on his superior`s orders, this case was beginning to go badly, and he may have ruined their one real chance of success.

  On his desk, he found a message from Paul Divine. 'So his gut also told him to look into the Claytons, ok that we can do immediately, well immediately after coffee and something to eat.' Formby had missed his breakfast once again, as his stomach informed him now, loudly.