Final Inquiries Read online

  "Whose idea was the lockdown?" Mendez asked.

  "Well, Flexdal suggested it to me," said the ambassador. "I can't say he thought of it--but someone on that side of the wall did."

  Mendez smiled. "I think you're starting to get the hang of this, sir."

  "What reason did Flexdal give for wanting it?" Wolfson asked.

  "Protection of evidence."

  "But the joint operations room was locked down and had tamper indicators all over it. Why lock down both entire compounds as well?"

  "Whoever committed this crime would have every motive to find a way past the seals on the joint ops center without disturbing them, so as to get in there and destroy the evidence before an outside investigator could arrive. For that matter, the killer might decide to get into the ops center no matter what, even if he or she did wreck the seals. Locking down the compounds was a way to prevent that."

  "But wouldn't anyone going into the ops center be caught, or at least spotted?" Wolfson asked.

  "Someone got into the ops center, somehow managed to get a cup of coffee into a Kendari, and got away. Someone else--or more likely the same person--got in there and left a handprint and, once again, got away. Maybe they could do it again in order to remove or destroy the evidence, or maybe the guilty party would be up to some other mischief. Maybe the killer wasn't from the embassy, but was instead from the human interest-groups encampment just up the road. If so, he or she would just want to get over the wall and get away."

  "I can see why you wouldn't want anyone leaving the compound, or entering the joint ops center, but why order everyone into solitary?"

  "Witnesses," said the ambassador. "And the prevention of witness tampering--and to keep everyone from gossiping among themselves, being influenced by each other, starting to spin theories or looking for evidence themselves--or even getting ideas about who must have done it, and telling each other about them. And, of course, if it was one of us who did it, that person would be doing his or her best to muddy the waters, throw people off the scent."

  "But wasn't locking everybody in an extreme measure? And what would you do if there had been an emergency? A fire, or a riot? And, just by the way, who locked in the last of you?"

  "This crime was exposing us to the very significant risk of losing humanity's chance to claim two habitable planets," the ambassador said stiffly. "Earth times two. Consider the amount of wealth involved in gaining us a new planet--and then double it. The continents. The oceans. The mineral wealth, the living things. Two Earth-like planets--plus all the other resources in that Pentam System, plus the benefits of controlling a strategic position in space.

  "Asking twenty-odd people who had been working toward that goal, many of them for years, to allow themselves to be confined in relatively comfortable quarters for a day or two does not seem extreme to me in that context. And, I might add, that they weren't locked in. They were told to remain in their quarters in the embassy ship, and tamper-indicator seals were placed over the hatches.

  "The worst-case scenario would be that a few hatches might be jammed open if the seals weren't removed carefully first. If there had been an emergency--more accurately, a further emergency--the necessary people could have been pulled out and put to work. And the chief engineer actually did lock himself into the embassy ship's engine room. He adjusted the entry hatch's lock so it could only be opened from the outside--then stepped inside and pulled the hatch shut."

  "We'll need to check on him soon," said Mendez.

  "I'll see to it myself, this evening as soon as we are done," said the ambassador. "I'm planning to release him, escort him to his own quarters on the ship, close his door, and use tamper strips on it as well. Unless you feel that you should do it, or that I should be reconfined until morning, or whatever."

  "No," said Mendez, with a deadpan expression. "You've done things your way so far. You carry on. That way the results will be consistent."

  It was hard to miss the sarcasm in his voice, but the ambassador was a diplomat, and a past master at pretending not to notice things. "Very well then," he said.

  "Where, exactly, did you put everyone else?" Mendez went on.

  The ambassador gestured out the window. "In the embassy ship, of course. Regulations require us to have accommodation for all of us on board, so that the entire contingent can be evacuated just by launching the ship. Given that an evacuation would very likely result in everyone's having to spend two or three weeks in transit home, under the best conditions, regulations also require that there be separate cabins for each single person, and for each family.

  "This being viewed as a danger post, there are no children and no dependent spouses. There are four married couples, but in all cases both husband and wife work for the embassy. None of that is by chance, of course. An embassy this small, and with an enemy species literally right next door--plus a sometimes less-than-friendly host species--has to be a no-children, no-dependents post. This ship is designed to accommodate a slightly larger staff than we have. There are thirty cabins in all, so there was little difficulty. The cabins are very small, and rather spartan, and of course everyone normally lives in the prefab structures we've put up in the rest of the compound, so they all had to gather their personal items and bring them in--but it all worked pretty smoothly."

  "We spent all of about two minutes in the Kendari compound, but it seemed more or less deserted. Did they agree to the same sort of voluntary lockdown for themselves?"

  "Yes, of course."

  "Was there any sort of verification agreement?" Wolfson asked.

  It was clear Wolfson was asking the big-picture questions, and Mendez was focusing on details. One for strategy, and one for tactics? "No," he admitted. "The arrangements were made very quickly, under difficult conditions. You have to imagine my managing four calls at a time, with my staff all getting ready to confine themselves for what might turn out to be several days, and everyone working in the middle of the night. We had to work out all sorts of things very fast. Just to pick one, we needed to sort out communications--we needed, for example, for Dr. Zhen Chi to be able to receive medical emergency calls, but we also needed to make sure people didn't use their commlinks or the intercom system to talk among themselves. We solved that problem, but there were any number of such issues to sort out, in the dark, in a rush, and with the knowledge that any one of us could have been the one who killed Emelza 401."

  "We can appreciate the difficulty," said Wolfson. "We've been in situations that weren't any easier."

  "I sincerely hope that you are never in one that is any harder."

  "I haven't seen any sign of the embassy staff coming out of confinement," said Jamie. "Have you informed them that they can come out now?"

  "No, of course not," said the ambassador, slightly surprised.

  "But why not?"

  "Because you two haven't interrogated any of them yet," he said.

  There was a moment's silence before Mendez spoke again. "Excuse me?"

  "Interrogate them. They're all waiting for you to interrogate them. That's the whole point of their still being confined." He glanced at his watch. "In fact," he said, "given how long they've been waiting, I suggest you get started right away."

  TEN

  IN THE DARK

  Ambassador Stabmacher frowned, and looked from Wolfson to Mendez. There was a dead silence that lasted for a long time. The two agents were expressionless. They looked at Ambassador Stabmacher, then at each other, without speaking. Something in the room changed in that moment. Suddenly the two BSI agents weren't the ambassador's colleagues. They had become something else--his opponents, his adversaries, the cops that were on his tail. He had the general impression that these two agents thought he had done something idiotic and were straining to keep their tempers.

  "Ambassador Stabmacher," Wolfson said at last, in a very slow, artificially calm voice, "we started the day in another star system, and we've gone through a period of relativistic time dilation, and changed not only
time zones, but shifted to a different planet with a different rotation period and day-night cycle. Part of what that means is that we're exhausted--but it also means that Special Agent Mendez and I are more than a little disoriented as to time. How long ago, exactly, did Special Agent Milkowski contact you and tell you that he had found the body?"

  Not when the murder was, or when Milkowski found the body, because you didn't witness those things, the ambassador told himself. It was a very carefully phrased question. "I can't give it to you to within the exact second without checking the time-date stamps on my commlink log, but it was roughly twenty-one hours ago."

  "And how long did it take to get everyone organized, get them into voluntary confinement?"

  "I was the last one sealed in by the chief engineer, then of course he went below and locked himself in. That was about three hours after Milkowski called me."

  "How long between his call and the first person being confined?"

  "I would say about two hours."

  "Was there any real degree of control over everyone during those two hours?" Mendez asked. "Were they kept in one place where someone could keep an eye on them?"

  "N-n-nooo. Not especially."

  "How did you do surveillance over the compound once everyone was locked down? I would assume there were watch cameras on and recording?"

  The ambassador grimaced and shook his head. "No, I'm afraid not. The entire surveillance camera recording system was inoperative. The BSI agents managed it. The system is designed to do forty-eight hours of recording of all cameras. Then the recording media has to be switched out. There are security requirements that require us to change out the recording media manually. The procedure requires two people--again, for security purposes. A watch-me, watch-you protocol. If the media fills up, then the system stops recording and just presents live views to the security-pod monitors. And with the agents locked up--well, they couldn't do that job."

  "And the recording media filled up when?"

  "About an hour after Milkowski contacted me. Everyone just forgot about it until about four hours until the lockdown was complete."

  "Who remembered about it, and what was done?"

  "Special Agent Singh contacted me and told me that he had been assigned to do the change-out and had forgotten about it."

  "And what did you do?"

  Another long silence. "Nothing," the ambassador admitted. "I concluded that the damage had been done. In order to restart the system, we'd have to have one of the BSI agents come out of confinement, and I'd have to come out to observe him, and we'd probably have to get the chief engineer out in order to witness the work and to lock us both back up again. The odds of creating more and worse problems in the process, adding more variables, seemed very high. The decision at that point was mine, and I take full responsibility for it."

  "Unfortunately, taking full responsibility doesn't get us usable surveillance recordings," said Mendez, allowing a bit of temper to show. "From where we're sitting, Ambassador, you've handed us twenty or so witnesses, all of whom were given two to three hours to confer together, then eighteen or so hours to cool their heels, rest up, and think things over without being disturbed. And the number of ways a comm system or a computer system can be diddled to allow unrecorded conversation is almost unlimited. Furthermore, unless they were designed as holding cells, which they weren't, I'd be willing to bet that half of the cabins in the embassy ship have some other way out, via access panels or servicing hatches or escape chutes or whatever. And I'd make another bet that there are ways to communicate between cabins even if the intercom isn't used. Just whisper into an air duct, or shout loud enough, or tap on the wall to do Morse code, or one tap for yes and two for no."

  Mendez rubbed his face, let out a weary sigh, and went on. "You've given us an entire compound that has no visual record of people coming and going. Because you had the joint operations center sealed from this side before anyone else could view the body or photograph it, the only description we're going to get of the state of the body as it was when it was found is going to have to come from Milkowski, who has to be considered one of the prime suspects.

  "And, since you mentioned the enemy right next door, let me remind you that we only have their word for it that they sealed the ops center from their side when they said they did, that they kept the seals on, instead of peeling them off, going in, doing whatever they wanted, then leaving and installing fresh seals. I've got several more points on my list. Do you see what I'm driving at? Do I need to go on?"

  "Um, ah, ah, no. I see. I believe I do see." The ambassador discovered he was sweating.

  "The further problem," said Special Agent Wolfson, "is that neither Special Agent Mendez nor I is in any shape to do one interrogation--let alone twenty interrogations. We need some sleep, we need some food, and we need some sort of chance to evaluate the information we have so far--or we won't know what to ask questions about."

  "And there's another problem," said Agent Mendez. "The three BSI agents. We can't use them on the investigation, obviously. Not unless we're able to clear one or more of them absolutely, and I don't quite see a way to do that."

  "I agree," said Agent Wolfson.

  Mendez turned and looked the ambassador straight in the eye. "But let's go further. They can't do any work, can they?" he asked. "They're in charge of security--but at the same time, they have to be regarded as a major security threat. Last to see the deceased, and the persons with best access to her. I speak no ill of the agents themselves here, but it's just simple investigative doctrine. If there's prima facie evidence, even if it's just circumstantial, that a cop, any cop, committed a crime, you pull them off any sort of duty that involves criminal investigation work or security responsibility. You put them to work in the personnel office or something. But there's no way to do that here, is there? No job they could do here that isn't being done, that needs doing, that doesn't have a security element?"

  The ambassador saw the point Mendez was making, and he didn't like it. "No," he said, and left it at that.

  "Let me go a little further," Mendez went on. "In a post this small, and in this high-risk an assignment, is there any desk job at all that doesn't involve exposure to secured material of one sort or another? Sooner or later--probably sooner--something that is classified in one way or another gets to just about everyone, right?"

  The ambassador frowned. "I suppose I could find something for them to do, but it would be about on the pick-up-sticks-and-lay-them-straight level."

  "But even that level of paper shuffling would have to be set up in, what would you call it, a quarantine area where nothing sensitive could go in or out. Plus which it would probably have to be the BSI agents themselves who would set that up, wouldn't it? And it would have to be done now, while the whole embassy is in an uproar already, wouldn't it?"

  "I haven't had the opportunity to think that through," said the ambassador. "But I suspect you are correct."

  "And who is going to do that work?" Mendez asked. "Who is going to run security at this place, handle travel security, and run this investigation, all at once? Care to make a wild guess?"

  Mendez was plainly angry--and he was just as plainly someone that the ambassador didn't want to have angry at him. He found himself wondering whether or not the BSI agents' powers of arrest extended to ambassadors. And perhaps arrest was really the least of his worries.

  Senior Special Agent Wolfson spoke hurriedly, as if she wanted to do so before Mendez had a chance to explode. "We'll deal with all that, Jamie. Somehow. Frankly, I don't know how, but we will." She turned back to the ambassador, and he felt nothing but relief that he had her to deal with, and gratitude for the way she had intervened with Mendez.

  The ambassador couldn't quite tell if it was all authentic emotion, or just good-cop bad-cop theater, but he didn't care anymore. If it was theater, it had him thoroughly convinced. "Thank you," he said.

  "Let's focus on one problem at a time. As regards the interrogations--
under normal circumstances, I think we'd be lucky to do a dozen a day. Obviously, we can't keep the staff on hold that long--some might not get out until two or three days from now. It might be tempting to get a start on it this evening, but, as I said, we're just too tired to do the job properly, and we haven't had any chance at all to review the information we have. So as long as all members of the embassy staff are voluntarily confined, I think we might as well let them spend one more night there. We'll have to tackle all of them tomorrow--somehow."

  Wolfson smiled sadly. "I seem to be using that word 'somehow' a lot. In any event, we're going to bed down somewhere and get some rest, and I suggest you do the same. But first, I do want to cover a couple of other points. One, the simulants and two, the Kendari and human groups that seem to be on-planet. I suppose I have the same general questions regarding both. Who are they, how many are there, where are they, what are they doing here, and how did they get here? Let's cover the simulants first."

  Ambassador Stabmacher nodded eagerly, glad to talk on another subject, any other subject. "They got here because the Vixa insisted on them. It was a flatout condition of their hosting the next phase of the negotiations. We were to accept them and allow them, quote, 'to perform their initial functions' unquote, or else there would be no negotiations, and the Vixa would shut down the human embassy."