He said nothing, his gaze fixed on some spot outside the window as they climbed into the stratosphere at a steep angle.
“You know what’s going to happen when we get there?” she inquired lightly.
“You walk me past a warm judge and shoot me.”
“No, Dan. We’ll take you to a navy biomedical facility where you’ll have your memories read. By all accounts, it’s not a pleasant experience. Losing control over your very own mind, having other people invade your skull and examine any section of your life they want. Nothing is private; your feelings, your dreams. We rip them all out of you.”
“Great. I always had an exhibitionist streak.”
“No you don’t.” She sighed in a sympathetic manner. “I accessed your file, I’ve talked to your workmates. What are you doing mixed up in all this nonsense?”
He looked over at her. “Your interrogation technique is crap, you know that?”
“I’m not an experienced spook like you, Dan.”
“Very funny. I’m not a spook. I’m not a terrorist. I’m not a traitor. I’m none of those things.”
“Then what are you?”
“You read my file.”
“Remind me.”
“Why?”
“All right, the bottom line is this: cooperate, spill your guts and your heart out to me, and I might recommend we don’t bother with a memory read. But your story had better be a damn good one.”
“And my trial?”
“I’m not cutting you a deal, Dan; it doesn’t work like that. You go to trial whatever happens. But if you help us, then I’m sure the judge will take that into consideration.”
He took a minute, but eventually gave a soft nod. “I have a grandson, Jacob. He’s eight.”
“Yes?”
“I had to go to court to get access to him. Damnit, he’s all I’ve got left from this screwup of a life, the only decent thing anyway. It’d kill me not to be able to see him. Have you got children, Lieutenant?”
“Some, yes. None this time around yet. But they all have children. I’m a great-great-grandmother these days.”
“And do you see them all? Your family?”
“When I have the time. This job, you know…It isn’t a nine to five.”
“But you get to see them, that’s what counts. My daughter took her mother’s side. And we’re all native Earthborn, that’s the problem. You need to be a millionaire just to get an appointment with a lawyer on this planet. And I’m not.”
“So someone offered you some money? Enough for a lawyer to get you access?”
“Yeah.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know his name, I never met him, he’s just an address code in the unisphere. He’s an agent for people in the personal security field. A friend told me about him. Said he might be able to help me.”
“Okay, the friend’s name?”
“Robin Beard.”
“So this agent recruited you?”
“Yes?”
“To do what?”
“The way he put it, virtually nothing. I was worried I’d have to kill somebody—probably would have done it, too. But all he wanted was for me to apply for the UFN Science Agency technical maintenance job out at the observatory. I had to monitor the Martian data they were receiving, make sure there were no problems. He said that one day somebody would come and collect a copy of it, and when that happened I was to erase the original. That was it, all I had to do. And for that I got to see little Jacob again, once a year at Easter. It’s hardly a massive crime, so I figured what the hell.”
“All right, Dan, now this is the really important bit: Do you know what that data was?”
“No.” He pursed his lips as he shook his head. “No, I swear. I tried looking at it a couple of times. I mean, it was obviously valuable to the agent, but it just looked like ordinary remote station data to me.”
“Did you make your own copy, Dan, maybe try for a bit of leverage?”
“No. I got to see my Jacob like they promised. So I played fair with them. I didn’t think they’re the kind of people you should try and cross. I guess I was right about that; you said they’re terrorists.”
The answer vexed Renne; she had a nasty feeling he was telling the truth. Dan Cufflin wasn’t criminal enough to try a little spot of blackmail on his own initiative, just a weak, desperate man easy to exploit if you knew which buttons to press. And who was ever going to be looking for some sleeper in a radio telescope observatory in the middle of the Andes?
Whatever the Guardians had done on Mars, they’d made a damn good job of covering their tracks. Until someone murdered Kazimir McFoster.
A day later she was still puzzling over how that killing fitted in to an otherwise watertight operation. The Paris office was investigating the case on a twenty-four/seven basis, backed with the highest navy priority; nobody in accounts was going to question budget or timesheets on this one.
Late morning she caught herself yawning as her console screens pulled up yet another sequence of information on the illusive Lambeth Interplanetary Association. There was only so much coffee she could take to counter the fatigue toxins accumulating in her bloodstream. It was another gray Paris spring day outside, with rain running down the windows. Inside, her colleagues were getting cranky from lack of sleep and frustration at the loss of the assassin in LA Galactic. There’d been more than one argument shouted between desks that morning. And no one’s humor had been soothed by a report on their office featuring heavily on the Alessandra Baron show. The beautifully poised presenter had taken particularly malicious delight showing how the murderer had struck his victim down while surrounded by navy intelligence officers, before making good his escape. She also hinted that the LA Galactic killer was wanted for questioning in connection with the Burnelli murder.
“Where does she get this from?” Tarlo had growled. “That’s classified.”
“The Burnelli family, probably,” Renne said. “I don’t think we’re terribly popular with them right now. After all, that was Justine’s toy boy that got slaughtered. She’s probably angling for the case to be turned over to Senate Security.”
Tarlo lowered his voice, glancing around guiltily in case anyone else overheard. “I found out while you were away in South America; the boss is receiving all our data as and when we file it. Hogan’s been going quietly crazy knowing she’s watching everything over his shoulder.”
“Finally,” she murmured. “Some good news. Has she contacted you?”
“Not yet. You?”
“No.”
“If she does, tell her I’ll help her any way I can.”
“Will do.”
They parted like a couple having an illicit office romance, both trying not to smile.
Commander Alic Hogan arrived back at the Paris office just after lunch. He was in a bad mood, he knew he was in a bad mood, and he knew being in a bad mood was bad for a decent office environment. Frankly, he didn’t give a shit. He’d just got back from Kerensk where he’d spent an hour in Admiral Columbia’s office trying to explain the LA Galactic fuckup—the Admiral’s personal description. He knew of no reason why he shouldn’t spread the misery.
Everybody in the big open-plan office looked up from their displays as he came in. He caught quite a few smirks that were hurriedly smothered. “Senior officers, progress meeting in conference room three: ten minutes,” he announced as he stomped through into his own office. There were muttered comments behind him, which he didn’t bother with.
Alic settled into the chair behind the desk, the kind of ordinary black leather office furniture a secretary would have. It was left over from Paula Myo’s tenure, and he hadn’t got around to replacing it yet. Like everything in the office. Including the people.
He took advantage of the solitude to rest his head in his hands, making an effort to dump his emotional baggage and focus. Taking over the Paris office had been such a huge opportunity. The navy was growing at a phenomenal rate, and he was
on the inside track, moving up fast. Attaching himself to Columbia’s staff had been the smartest thing he’d ever done back in the days when it was the Directorate. He’d done a lot of troubleshooting for Director Columbia, filing reports on nearly every division. It made him an automatic choice to keep an eye on Paula Myo after Rees left. Now he could finally appreciate what she’d been up against all those decades.
Christ, is this how Myo felt for a hundred and thirty years? The way the assassin had eluded them at LA Galactic wasn’t so much amazing as downright insulting. And judging by how his escape route was so immaculately planned out, he had to have known the navy was observing McFoster. Which implied there really was a leak somewhere—the one thing Alic could never tell the Admiral, not until after he had absolute proof, and preferably a full confession as well. There was also the extreme problem of exactly who the assassin was working for. The most obvious conclusion, the one Myo had settled for, was politically impossible. He could never admit that to anyone. The idea was career suicide.
He simply had to get the whole Guardians situation under control, report some solid progress to the Admiral. If there weren’t any results—and fast—he’d be following Myo out of the door. And he was pretty certain nobody would be offering him a cushy job in Senate Security.
On the plus side, the fallout from LA Galactic had produced a good range of leads into various Guardian operations and personnel. His Paris officers were good, despite the bitterness left from Myo’s forced departure. All he had to do was ensure they had the resources to complete their various investigations, and coordinate a decent strategy for the overall case. There would be results that would cut deep into the Guardians’ operation. There had to be.
Alic drank down a full glass of mineral water, hoping it would calm him and get him into the right frame of mind to chair the meeting. Maybe he was just dehydrated, it had been a hectic twenty-four hours. When he was ready, he headed for the conference room. Renne Kampasa was in front of him, carrying a tall mug of coffee.
Tarlo and John King were already waiting inside. John had been an investigator in the old Directorate, moving over from the technical forensic department a couple of months before the administrative changes began. The timing of that move meant he wasn’t quite as frosty toward Alic as the other two senior lieutenants.
“Too much caffeine,” Tarlo said loudly as Renne sat down “That’s what, your eighth this morning.”
She glowered at him. “I either drink this or I start smoking. Your call.”
John laughed at the shocked expression on Tarlo’s face.
Alic Hogan went in and sat at the head of the white table. “The Admiral is not pleased with us at all,” he told them. “A fact which he made very clear to me, as I’m sure you can appreciate. So…somebody please tell me we have finally got a name for our assassin.”
“Sorry, Chief,” John King said. “His face isn’t on any database in the Commonwealth. It’s a reprofile job, of course. We’ve probably got him under his old identity. But his current features are completely unknown.”
“Not so,” Renne said. “McFoster knew him. In fact, he was glad to see him. Overjoyed, actually. For my money, our assassin is from Far Away.”
“Who on Far Away is going to send an assassin into the Commonwealth?” John asked.
She shrugged. “Don’t know, but at the very least we should check CST’s records to see if he came through the Boongate station in the last couple of years.”
“All right, I’ll get my people on that,” John said. “Foster Cortese is running visual recognition programs for me. He can add the Boongate database to his analysis.”
“Good,” Alic said. “Now, what about the equipment he was wetwired with? We all saw what he was capable of. That stuff was cutting edge; there has to be some sort of record.”
“Jim Nwan is following that up for me,” Tarlo said. “There are plenty of companies across the Commonwealth who manufacture that kind of armament. I didn’t realize. A lot of it is supplied to Grand Families and Intersolar Dynasties for their security divisions. Tracing the end user through them is difficult; they’re not being very cooperative. Then there’s always Illuminatus. The clinics there are even less friendly.”
“If anyone blocks you, let me know right away,” Alic told him. “The Admiral’s office will apply some pressure directly.”
“Sure.”
“Right, Renne, what did you turn up at the observatory?”
“Quite a lot, though I’m not sure how much of it is relevant.”
“Let’s hear it.”
She sipped at her coffee, wincing at how hot it was. “First, we confirmed what McFoster collected: a whole load of data that they’d been storing. Apparently it all came from Mars.”
“Mars?” Alic frowned. “What the fuck is on Mars?”
“That’s where we start running into problems. We don’t know. The data was transmitted from a remote science station. Officially, it was a project sponsored by the Lambeth Interplanetary Society to investigate the Martian environment. The station has been transmitting the signals for twenty years, supposedly from automated sensors dotted all over the planet.”
“Did you say twenty years?”
“Yeah,” she said sardonically. “However, the Lambeth Interplanetary Society no longer exists. It went virtual eight years ago; today it’s just a named address logged with an equally bogus legal firm. There’s an administration program overseeing a bank account with just enough money deposited to pay for the Mars project to its conclusion. The observatory gets its annual fee, and if anyone calls the society with a query the program has a menu of stock replies. In other words it’s a typical Guardians’ front operation.”
“Was it ever real?” Alic asked.
“When it was set up, yes. There was a physical office in London, along with staff. I’ve got Gwyneth trying to track down anyone who was employed there; we’re hoping to turn up a secretary or some junior staff member. It’s not promising; anyone important would be a Guardian, the rest would be offworlders on a standard employment visa. As there aren’t any records, we’re checking with offworld employment placement agencies.”
“Why did the Guardians abandon the society office if the observatory is still collecting data for them?” John asked.
“The switch coincides with the last set of instruments being sent to Mars,” Renne said. “They paid for a lot of packages to be deployed in their first twelve years. You can’t do that entirely through the cybersphere. There have to be meetings, actual people to talk to the UFN Science Agency staff and take them out to lunch, attend seminars, designers for the sensors packages, that kind of thing.”
“So there are records of what they shipped out to Mars?” Alic didn’t like the implications of how big the Guardians’ operation was; nor that it involved something new, something they couldn’t understand. That was too many negatives to file in any report to the Admiral.
“We have UFN Science Agency manifests for their transport ships,” she said. “As to what was actually placed on board at the time, there is no way of knowing. Those ships travel all over the solar system, and the planetary instruments they deploy are packed in secure containers inside one-shot landers. Nobody at lunarport would ever break open a sealed system as they load it on a ship, there’s no reason.”
“You’re telling me that the Guardians have been running an operation here in the solar system for twenty years right under our noses, and we still don’t know what it is?” Alic stopped. He didn’t want to come over as critical; they had to work together on this. “What about other planets? Are the Guardians running operations on them?”
“It doesn’t look like it,” Renne said. “Matthew Oldfield is running verification on all the solar planetary projects the UFN Science Agency knows about; so far they look legitimate. It was only Mars.”
“But there’s no way of knowing what they placed there?”
“No, short of physically visiting and inspecting the eq
uipment. But the systems have been returning data for two decades, and were scheduled to continue for another ten years. I can’t see that they’d be any sort of weapon. To be honest, I don’t see it’s worth wasting any more of our resources on; whatever it was, the whole project is obviously over.”
“I can’t agree with that,” Tarlo said. “They’ve been running this for twenty years. It’s got to be important to them. That means we have to find out what it was.”
“It was the data which was important,” Renne replied. “That’s what they were after. And now it’s gone. Cufflin wiped the observatory memory, and McFoster didn’t have it on him when he was killed.”
Alic didn’t like the reminder that McFoster appeared to be carrying nothing, although that whole issue was blowing up into a big political fight between the Admiral and the Burnellis. He certainly didn’t want to drag the Paris office into that, and he could almost agree with Renne about Mars being a waste of their resources to chase up. But…twenty years. Johansson had obviously thought it extremely important. “What about this Cufflin character? Have we had a memory read off him yet?”
“I don’t see the point,” Renne said. “He told me everything voluntarily on the flight back to Rio. We pumped him full of drugs here, and he repeated the same story. He was just a paid accomplice; he’s not big time. My recommendation is charge him with criminal conspiracy, and let the courts sort out what happens next.”
“If you don’t think he’s any more use, then fine.” Alic told his e-butler to make a note.
“He did produce one useful name,” Renne said. “Robin Beard. He was the intermediary who put Cufflin in touch with the anonymous agent who set up the whole deal. Now this is only a hunch, but several of the team involved in the assault on the Second Chance were recruited through an agent who specialized in security operatives, and who, also, was very careful to remain anonymous. Could be coincidence, but they were both Guardian operations.”
“Do we know where this Robin Beard is?” Alic asked; he tried not to seem too excited, that would be unprofessional, but the agent did sound like a very promising lead.