Final Inquiries Read online

  "Very well. Wolfson?"

  Hannah read. "FLASH TRAFFIC MILKOWSKI REPORTING. IN RECEIPT OF AUTHENTICATED DIRECTIVE FROM HOUSEHOLD OF PREEMINENT DIRECTOR QUOTE CREDENTIALS OF PIRATE (SIC) EMBASSIES OF HUMAN AND KENDAL ARE HEREBY WITHDRAWN EFFECTIVE LOCAL DATE CODE (CONVERTED) 1943 HOURS TODAY. ALL AND ONLY ACCREDITED EMBASSY PERSONNEL MUST EVAC EMBASSY PROPERTY AT THAT TIME. EMBASSY PROPERTIES TO BE PUT UNDER PROTECTIVE SEAL TO AWAIT LEGITIMATE DIPLOMATIC REPRESENTATIVES ENDQUOTE. REQUEST INSTRUCTIONS MILKOWSKI OUT."

  Stabmacher was silent for a moment before he spoke. "Well, one piece of good news. It sounds like the man picked the right moment to sober himself up. But what the hell happened with the Kendari? They were the fair-haired boys when we left."

  "The Vixa picked a fight with us, sir. Why not them?" asked Jamie.

  "Why not indeed? But why pick fights with either of us?"

  "Ah, sir--can they just kick us out like that?"

  "It's their planet," said Stabmacher. "If the host government doesn't want you, there's no point in trying to stick around."

  "Isn't there any appeal? Any way to protest or something?"

  "On some worlds, with some species, yes. You might call some friendly official, or diplomat, and call in favors. Have X have dinner with Y, and see what arrangements might be made. Not with the Vixa. Decisions flow from the top down, and never the other way." Stabmacher thought a moment longer, then turned to Hannah. "Acknowledge the signal and instruct Milkowski that our arrival is imminent. Instructions to come in person. Send that and cut comm."

  "Yes, sir."

  The ambassador found a jumpseat, folded it out, sat down, and looked at Jamie. "Can you think of anything that hasn't happened yet?"

  Jamie was about to reply when he got his answer from a source they had all forgotten for a moment.

  "Whaa. Uhh." Zamprohna was waking up. Jamie knelt and helped him sit up a little. "Mmm. My daughter," he said. "What have you done with my daughter?"

  "Who is your daughter?" Jamie asked. "What are you talking about?"

  "My daughter," Zamprohna said again, in a groggy tone of voice that made it clear that everyone knew who his daughter was. "Where is she?" He shook his head mournfully. "I lost time. So much time. Too' me th' better part of a day t' be sure she was in th' embassy when it was locked down. What did you do with her? Where is she?"

  Jamie was about to protest that he had no idea what Zamprohna was talking about--but then he realized that wasn't true. He remembered a missing-person report that he had decided that he didn't need to follow up on. And then all the pieces of the puzzle suddenly dropped into place. Jamie did know who his daughter was.

  He knew exactly where she had to be.

  And he knew what she had done.

  TWENTY

  DUNGEON

  If Jamie had thought that too much was going on aboard the aircar, he had his mind changed for him once they landed. Groppe powered the vehicle down in record time and had it safed and sealed for storage almost before the passengers were off. She shouldered the ambassador out of the way without a word of apology and made a beeline for the Kofi Annan.

  But the ambassador wasn't paying any attention to her, either. The moment he was inside the compound and his commlink could patch into the embassy's secure net, he was on the comm to the Stanlarr and Pavlat embassies, activating a contingency plan for those two powers jointly to oversee and look after human interests on Tifinda--including the far-from-minor task of looking out for the welfare of the humans who would remain on the planet.

  Meantime, Milkowski, who not only seemed to have sobered up but also to have turned ten years younger--was passing Stabmacher dispatches to read, actions to approve, checklists to authorize, and at the same time keeping Singh and Farrell hopping, juggling a dozen details of the situation in his head. Hannah had been right. Give the man some real work--and he would really do it.

  Most important was the formal order to evacuate. Once Stabmacher had signed that, everyone just reached for their contingency plans and started in on them. Fires lit up in the center of the compound as the staff found papers that needed to burn. There were small bumps and thumps popping off here and there around the compound as small self-contained self-destruct units were activated. Farrell and Singh were already at work inside the joint ops center, burning and wrecking and shredding all the sensitive material on the human side of the structure.

  Just as all that was getting under way, the Kendari embassy aircar came in for a landing, dropping in hard, sharp, and fast. Jamie couldn't imagine why they were being kicked out too. They sure looked to be the flavor of the month an hour or so before, when the humans were shooting their way out of the conference.

  The armory was unlocked, and everyone, including the ambassador, was issued a sidearm. But they all knew if it came down to the embassy staff defending themselves in a shoot-out, the fight was lost already.

  Hannah and Jamie had no part to play in any of those contingency plans. The best service they could perform would be to get out of the way. Besides, they had their own job to do. Their biggest problem was what to do with Zamprohna while they did it. Jamie decided to settle it in the simplest way possible. He ducked into the Snack Shack and came out with a chair no one was likely to need between then and Evac Hour. He carried it along back to where Zamprohna was waiting with Hannah at the aircar. "Come with me," he said to both of them. They made the short walk to the joint ops center. Jamie planted the chair on the ground directly in front of the entrance, facing the door. "In a minute, you're using that chair. But first I'm going to search you. Arms out from your side."

  "I'm not going to--"

  "It's our job to find your daughter and get her to safety," Jamie said. "We have to do it. We don't have to let you see her. Arms out."

  Zamprohna cooperated. Jamie patted him down, even running his fingers through the famous head of hair.

  "Looking for bombs in there?" Zamprohna said. "Or you figure this is your big chance to find out once and for all if it's a wig like the gossip sheets say?"

  "I don't read gossip sheets," said Jamie. "But if it'll make you feel better, I'll tell all my friends that it's really all your own hair after all. Feet forty centimeters apart." Jamie did a quick, smooth, professional check of the lower half of his body. Zamprohna flinched away when Jamie's hand slid over his ankle. Jamie pulled Zamprohna's trouser leg up to his calf, and pulled down his sock--producing another flinch from Zamprohna. "Nasty bruise or something there," said Jamie. "You bang yourself up getting into the aircar or something?"

  "I don't know. Maybe. I don't remember how it happened all that well."

  "Wise choice. It wasn't your finest moment. Keep on forgetting it. All right," said Jamie as he stood up. "There's your chair. Now sit," he said.

  Zamprohna did so. He was still a bit subdued, and Jamie wanted to act on that before the man started feeling his oats again. He crouched in front of the chair, his nose ten centimeters from Zamprohna's. "Now then," he said. "Special Agent Wolfson and I are going to go find your daughter. I have a very good idea of where she must be. Then we're going to talk to her. We might have to talk to her for a long while. When--and if--we think we can let you see her, we will come back to this chair and tell you. But all hell is breaking loose around here, and we don't have time to cut people any slack--especially you. So if I come back, and I find that you aren't in this chair, that you've wandered off, or started to try and talk your way out of the compound, you won't get to see your daughter--because I will find you, and then I will shoot you. Is that clear?"

  Zamprohna looked at him angrily, but said nothing, made no gesture.

  "Okay," said Jamie. "One. I need a yes out of you right now. And two, you're not one of my favorite people, and I really wouldn't suggest trying to see if I'm bluffing. Talk to me. Is it clear? Do we have a deal?"

  "Yes. Yes! We have a deal. I'll stay right here until you come back."

  "We'll make it as fast as we can," Jamie said. "Hannah? Let's move
."

  They moved through the inner and outer doors in record time, Jamie growling and cursing at himself the whole time.

  "I'm starting to wonder if you weren't bluffing with Zamprohna," said Hannah.

  "I'm starting to wonder too," said Jamie. "But the one I'd really like to slap around is me. How could I miss that? Rule one in a locked-room problem--search the room. You'd think if anyone should have learned that by now, we should have."

  "Well, slap me around first," said Hannah as they came through the inner door. "We had plenty of hints. They mentioned interns that came and went. Her coffee mug was--is--still up on the shelf in the Snack Shack. There were plenty of clues, if we'd bothered to put them together. Here. Gimme that building plan." They bent their heads together and studied it. "In our defense, this place is bigger than it looks. Two underground levels that run the full length of the building. I had no idea." She tapped the most remote of the survival bunkers on the lowest level. "That one," she said. "Let's start there."

  They got lucky on the third try. It was locked from the inside, but they had the security codes. They went in quietly, with weapons drawn, not sure what they would find.

  The survival bunker was a mess. Mealpacks were everywhere, and the ventilation wasn't all it could have been. But she was there. She was unconscious. No. Just asleep, Hannah decided. So exhausted by her own fears that even two cops breaking into the place didn't wake her. They had gotten the whole story out of Zamprohna in three minutes, once they got him talking. And why couldn't we have gotten that three minutes a day sooner? Hannah asked herself. Just a few little scraps of information would have stopped them from chasing their own tails.

  She was Linda Weldon, the very determinedly apolitical daughter of Tancredo Zamprohna and his belligerent, highly political wife Helga Weldon-Zamprohna. And she had been an intern at the embassy for a month, doing routine filing, some data entry, running for coffee. Nothing classified or sensitive. Nothing that required clearance, or vetting. Probably she had taken the job for the express purpose of rebelling against her parents. Her own father hadn't known she worked there until after she had gone missing. And no one at the embassy, not even Ambassador Stabmacher, who had taken a particular liking to her, had known or thought to ask who her father was.

  Jamie knelt next to her, and cleared his throat. "Ah, Ms. Weldon? Linda Weldon?"

  It was a very tender moment, even a romantic one, Hannah decided. The brave, gentle, and handsome young police officer rescuing the terrified young woman from the underground bunker. And it lasted until the split second when Linda Weldon woke up, saw Jamie, and screamed.

  They should have had Brox there, but there had been no contact since Brox had called them from the Kendari aircar. They should have had Zhen Chi there, but it seemed she was, in spite of it all, still in the med lab in the Kendari embassy compound. The ambassador should have been there, but there could be no disturbing him--and they were very definitely on the clock, with the hours until the Vixa's evac deadline slipping away. They settled for setting up every sort of recorder they could find in the same conference room they had been using.

  "All right," said Jamie as he handed her a glass of water. "There's a lot going on around here, and there isn't much time. I'm not going to lie to you--I haven't the slightest doubt that you're going to have to go through all this again--quite possibly several times. But we need to get through the first time now."

  "It's--it's bad, isn't it?" she asked.

  "Yes," said Hannah. "Yes it is. The situation is complicated, and very serious."

  "My father--do you know--is he--is he all right?"

  "Your father is fine," said Hannah. "We'll let him know you're safe." She prayed that Jamie had the sense not to tell this semihysterical girl that her father was thirty meters away, just outside, waiting for her. Then they'd get into a bargaining session. Let me see my father first, and then I'll tell you everything. But the first sight of her father would make her feel safer, less vulnerable, less obliged to tell them what they needed. And Jamie might well give in.

  A glance at Jamie told Hannah her fears weren't misplaced. She gave him a quick, imperceptible shake of the head to warn him off, and he nodded back just as imperceptibly.

  The boy needed to get out more. He always did fall to pieces and get all overprotective when it came to interrogating young women. And this one would be pretty enough, if she got cleaned up and put in fresh clothes. She was just eighteen, according to what her father said, and she'd inherited his bright red hair, though little else of his appearance. Her face was streaked with tears, and a little grubby-looking. She was thin, pale, gangly and coltish, and even looked a little fretful--but many a lovely young swan grew out of an duckling uglier than this one. Hannah fought down a smile. Cool it, Wolfson, she told herself. Are you feeling maternal, or just a wee bit jealous? Face it. Our dear little baby agent is all grown-up and getting interested in girls.

  She was tempted to step in and take over. But it was too late for that already. Weldon had zeroed right in on Jamie. He had to take the lead on this one.

  "Look, let's just start with you telling us what happened, in your own words. How was it you started up at the embassy?"

  "There--there were a bunch of us. It was something to do instead of hanging around the residential compounds they had for us, listening to our parents argue the same politics over and over."

  "But, ah, no offense, pretty much every one of the groups that the Vixa brought in is considered radical in one direction or another. Why did the embassy let you work here?"

  "We weren't spies or anything like that. They never let us near anything confidential. Half of what I did was work in Zhen Chi's garden, or in the motor pool. Stuff like that. And the ambassador kept saying that if we saw what was really going on, what the embassy really did, what the Vixa and the Kendari and everybody were really like, got a different perspective, then maybe that would do us some good."

  "And did it?"

  She shrugged in classic teenage fashion as she stared fixedly at the water glass and fiddled with it. "I don't know. I guess."

  "But the joint ops center is nothing but sensitive material," Hannah objected. "What were you doing here?"

  "Finding an empty desk," she said. "Simple as that. Madame Mutambara, the political officer, had just finished up doing this big report on Vixan history and politics, and asked me to proofread it. There wasn't any room in the pol office, so she walked me in here, and said no one ever used half the space in the place. She told me to leave the work in the room when I was done for the day and that then I could come back to it in the morning. She showed me how to key myself out when I was done, and left me to it."

  "Where, exactly, were you working?" Hannah asked.

  Linda hooked her thumb out the door. "Down the end of this hall. Third or fourth door on the left. All the stuff I was working out still ought to be there if you want proof or something."

  "We'll check on that later," said Jamie. "When did all this happen? When did Madame Mutambara let you in?"

  Another teenage shrug. "They use a funny clock system around here. It was about 1500 hours."

  Nearly five hours before 1950, the best estimate on the time of the murder. And they had only done that fast-scan check of the surveillance video for the last four hours before.

  "So you sat down and got to work at about 1500," said Jamie. "Then what?"

  "I worked," she said, as if that was too obvious a question. "I thought it was going to be dull, dull, dull, but there was all sorts of cool, creepy, interesting stuff in the report about their biology and history and stuff. I sort of got hooked on it, and just kept going at it."

  "Until when?"

  "Maybe 2230 or so."

  "You worked through for six and half hours?"

  "Well, I went to the bathroom once or twice. It's right next to the office I was in. You can go look. And I brought my own dinner." She paused, and looked from one of them to the other. "I know that's a little wei
rd, staying alone checking a book for that long. But I don't get much time alone. The residential compounds are really crowded. Not much peace and quiet. Besides, the stuff in the book was really interesting."

  "Did anyone see you, or hear you while you were here? Did you see anyone, or hear anything?"

  "You mean, alibis and stuff?" She shook her head "no" very solemnly. "I didn't see anyone at all. I heard voices once or twice, from the big room in the middle, but just ordinary talking. No shouting or fights or anything. And I heard the outside doors opening and shutting. They make a lot of noise, big rattling booms. But that's just ordinary too. I didn't pay it any attention."

  And when they were shut, the doors made for superb soundproofing.

  "Okay, keep going."

  "Well, finally, I did check the time, and realized that I had been there way longer than I had planned, and that my dad would be getting worried."

  "When was that?"

  "Like I said, about 2230. Yeah. It was just about then, because I remember thinking I only had half an hour until my curfew--and that's at 2300."

  Hannah worked through the sequence of events in her head. By 2300, Emelza had probably been dead for more than three hours already. Brox and Milkowski had both been in and out of the building--some of those booming door noises Weldon had heard. By 2300, the lockdown was already well under way, and the joint ops center was sealed and locked from both human and Kendari sides.

  "So I straightened up the papers, and got my things together, and walked down the main hall--and--and--"

  "It's the tough part, Linda, but you have to go on."

  "And--and I saw him there."

  "Him? Who?" Hannah and Jamie exchanged sudden panicky looks. Another dead Kendari? A male? Was their case going to take another hairpin turn?

  "The Kendari. The dead Kendari. I don't know the name. Dad didn't like me talking to them, so I never really met any of the ones here. But he was dead! Slumped over on his side, dead!"