Brothers in Arms (14 page)

The return memo was handwritten in the crabbed scrawl of a thick-fingered man for whom all pens were too tiny, a handwriting achingly familiar to Miles. " . . . guilt? Perhaps. I had a little tour of that damned gym, soon after, before the thickest blood had quite dried. Pudding-like. Some details burn themselves permanently in the memory. But I happen to remember Rebecca Galen particularly because of the way she'd been shot. She was one of the few who died facing her murderers. I doubt very much if it will ever be my back that's in danger from 'Duv Galeni.'

"The involvement of his father in the later Resistance worries me rather less. It wasn't just for us that the boy altered his name to the Barrayaran form.

"But if we can capture this one's true allegiance, it will be something like what I'd had in mind for Komarr in the first place. A generation late, true, and after a long and bloody detour, but—since you bring up these theological terms—a sort of redemption. Of course he has political ambitions, but I beg to suggest they are both more complex and more constructive than mere assassination.

"Put him back on the list, Simon, and leave him there this time. This issue tires me, and I don't want to be dragged over it again. Let him run, and prove himself—if he can."

The closing signature was the usual hasty scribble.

After that, Cadet Galeni became the concern of officers much lower in the Imperial hierarchy, his record the public and accessible one Miles had viewed earlier.

"The trouble with all this," Miles spoke aloud into the thick, ticking silence that had enveloped the room for the last thirty minutes, "fascinating as it all is, is that it doesn't narrow the possibilities. It multiplies them. Dammit."

Including, Miles reflected, his own pet theory of embezzlement and desertion. There was nothing here that actually disproved it, just rendered it more painful if true. And the shuttleport assassination idea took on new and sinister overtones.

"He might also," Ivan Vorpatril put in, "just be the victim of some perfectly ordinary accident."

The ambassador grunted, and pushed to his feet, shaking his head. "Most ambiguous. They were right to seal it. It could be very prejudicial to the man's career. I think, Lieutenant Vorpatril, I will have you go ahead and file a missing person report now with the local authorities. Seal that back up, Vorkosigan." Ivan followed the ambassador out.

Before he closed the console, Miles traced through the documents pertinent to the tantalizing reference to Galeni's father. After his sister was killed in the Solstice Massacre, the senior Galen had apparently become an active leader in the Komarran underground. What wealth the Barrayaran conquest had left to the once-proud family evaporated entirely at the time of the violent Revolt six years later. Old Barrayaran Security records explicitly traced some of it, transformed into smuggled weapons, payroll, and expenses of the terrorist army; later, bribes for exit visas and transport off-planet for the survivors. No transport off Komarr for Galeni's father, though; he'd been blown up with one of his own bombs during the last, futile, exhausted attack on a Barrayaran Security HQ. Along with Galeni's older brother, incidentally.

Thoughtfully, Miles ran a cross-check. Rather to his relief there were no more stray Galen relations among the Earthbound refugees listed in the embassy's Security files.

Of course, Galeni had had plenty of opportunity to edit those files, in the last two years.

Miles rubbed his aching head. Galeni had been fifteen when the last spasm of the Revolt had petered out. Was stamped out. Too young, Miles hoped, to have been actively involved. And whatever his involvement, Simon Illyan had apparently known of it and been willing to let it pass into history. A closed book. Miles resealed the file.

* * *

Miles permitted Ivan to do all the dealing with the local police. True, with the clone story now afloat he was in part protected from the chance of meeting the same people in both his personas, but there was no point in pushing it. The police could be expected to be more alert and suspicious than most others, and he hadn't counted on being a two-headed crime wave.

At least the police seemed to take the military attaché's disappearance with proper seriousness, promising cooperation even to the extent of honoring the ambassador's request that the matter not be given to the news media. The police, manned and equipped for such things, could take over the routine legwork such as checking the identities of any unexplained human body parts found in trash receptacles, etc. Miles appointed himself official detective for all matters inside the embassy walls. Ivan, as senior man now, suddenly found all of Galeni's normal routine dumped in his lap; Miles heartlessly left it there.

Twenty-four hours passed, for Miles mostly in a console station chair cross-checking embassy records on Komarran refugees. Unfortunately, the embassy had amassed huge quantities of such information. If there was something significant, it was well camouflaged in the tons of irrelevencies. It simply wasn't a one-man job.

At two in the morning, cross-eyed, Miles gave it up, called Elli Quinn, and dumped the whole problem on the Dendarii Mercenaries' Intelligence Department.

Dumped
was the word for it: mass data transfer via comm link from the embassy's secured computers to the
Triumph
in orbit. Galeni would have had convulsions; screw Galeni, it was all his fault for disappearing in the first place. Miles thoughtfully didn't ask Ivan, either. Miles's legal position, if it came to that, was that the Dendarii were de facto Barrayaran troops and the data transfer therefore internal to the Imperial military. Technically. Miles included all of Galeni's personnel files too, in fully accessed form. Miles's legal position there was that the seal was only to protect Galeni from the prejudice of Barrayaran patriots, which the Dendarii clearly were not. One argument or the other had to work.

"Tell the spooks that finding Galeni is a contract," Miles told Elli, "part of the fleet-wide fund-raising drive. We only get paid for producing the man. That could actually be true, come to think of it."

He fell into bed hoping his subconscious would work it out during what was left of the night, but woke blank and bleary as before. He set Barth and a couple of the other non-coms to rechecking the movements of the courier officer, the other possible weak link in the chain. He sat tight, waiting for the police to call, his imagination weaving daisy chains of ever more gaudy and bizarre explanatory scenarios. Sat still as stone in a darkened room, one foot tapping uncontrollably, feeling as if the top of his head was about to blow off.

On the third day Elli Quinn called in.

He snapped the comm link into place in the holovid, hungry for the pleasure of seeing her face. It bore a most peculiar smirk.

"I thought this might interest you," she purred. "Captain Thorne was just contacted with a
fascinating
contract offer for the Dendarii."

"Does it have a fascinating price?" Miles inquired. The gears in his head seemed to grind as he tried to switch back to Admiral Naismith's problems, which had been overwhelmed and forgotten in the past two days' uncertain tensions.

"A hundred thousand Betan dollars. In untraceable cash."

"Ah . . ." That came to close to half a million Imperial marks. "I thought I'd made it clear we weren't going to touch anything illegal this time. We're in enough trouble as it is."

"How does a kidnapping grab you?" She giggled inexplicably.

"Absolutely not!"

"Oh, you're going to make an exception in this case," she predicted with confidence, even verve.

"Elli . . ." he growled in warning.

She controlled her humor with a deep breath, though her eyes remained alight. "But Miles—our mysterious and wealthy strangers want to hire Admiral Naismith to kidnap Lord Miles Vorkosigan from the Barrayaran embassy."

* * *

"It's got to be a trap," Ivan jittered nervously, guiding the groundcar Elli had rented through the levels of the city. Midnight was scarcely less well lit than daytime, though the shadows of their faces shifted as the sources of illumination flitted by outside the bubble canopy.

The gray Dendarii sergeant's uniform Ivan wore flattered him no less than his Barrayaran dress greens, Miles noted glumly. The man just looked good in uniform, any uniform. Elli, sitting on Miles's other side, seemed Ivan's female twin. She simulated ease, lithe body stretched out, one arm flung carelessly and protectively across the back of the seat above Miles's head. But she had taken to biting her nails again, Miles noted. Miles sat between them in Lord Vorkosigan's Barrayaran dress greens, feeling like a piece of wilted watercress between two slices of moldy bread. Too damned tired for these late-night parties.

"Of course it's a trap," said Miles. "Who set it and why, is what we want to find out. And how much they know. Have they set this up because they believe Admiral Naismith and Lord Vorkosigan to be two separate people—or because they don't? If the latter, will it compromise Barrayar's covert connection with the Dendarii Mercenaries in future operations?"

Elli's sideways glance met Miles's. Indeed. And if the Naismith game were over, what future had they?

"Or maybe," said Ivan helpfully, "it's something totally unrelated, like local criminals looking for a spot of ransom. Or something really tortuous, like the Cetagandans trying to get Admiral Naismith in deep trouble with Barrayar, in hopes that we'd have better luck killing the little spook than they have. Or maybe—"

"Maybe you're the evil genius behind it all, Ivan," Miles suggested affably, "clearing the chain of command of competition so you can have the embassy all to yourself."

Elli glanced at him sharply, to be sure he was joking. Ivan just grinned. "Ooh, I like that one."

"The only thing we can be sure of is that it's not a Cetagandan assassination attempt." Miles sighed.

"I wish I was as sure as you seem to be," muttered Elli. It was late evening of the fourth day since Galeni's disappearance. The thirty-six hours since the Dendarii had been offered their peculiar contract had given Elli time for reflection; the initial charm had worn off for her even as Miles had become increasingly drawn in by the possibilities.

"Look at the logic of it," argued Miles. "The Cetagandans either still think I'm two separate people, or they don't. It's Admiral Naismith they want to kill, not the Barrayaran prime minister's son. Killing Lord Vorkosigan could restart a bloody war. In fact, we'll know my cover's been blown the day they stop trying to assassinate Naismith—and start making a great and embarrassing public flap about Dendarii operations against them instead. They wouldn't miss that diplomatic opportunity for anything. Particularly now, with the right-of-passage treaty through Tau Ceti up in the air. They could cripple our galactic trade in one move."

"They could be trying to prove your connection, as step one of just that plan," said Ivan, looking thoughtful.

"I didn't say it wasn't the Cetagandans," said Miles mildly. "I just said that if it was, this isn't an assassination."

Elli groaned.

Miles looked at his chrono. "Time for the last check."

Elli activated her wrist comm. "Are you still up there, Bel?"

Captain Thorne's alto voice lilted back, signalling from the aircar that followed with its troop of Dendarii soldiers. "I have you in my sights."

"All right, keep us that way. You watch the back from above, we'll watch the front. This will be the last voice contact till we invite you to drop in."

"We'll be waiting. Bel out."

Miles rubbed the back of his neck nervously. Quinn, watching the gesture, remarked, "I'm really not crazy about springing the trap by letting them take you."

"I have no intention of letting them take me. The moment they show their hand, Bel drops in and we take them instead. But if it doesn't look like they want to kill me outright, we could learn a lot by letting their operation run on a few steps further. In view of the, ah, Situation at the embassy, it could be worth a little risk."

She shook her head in mute disapproval.

The next few minutes passed in silence. Miles was about halfway through a mental review of all the branching possibilities they had hammered out for this evening's action when they pulled up in front of a row of ancient, three-story houses crammed together along a crescent street. They seemed very dark and quiet, unoccupied, apparently in process of condemnation or renovation.

Elli glanced at the numbers on the doors and swung up the bubble canopy. Miles slid out to stand beside her. From the groundcar, Ivan ran the scanners. "There's nobody home," he reported, squinting at his readouts.

"What? Not possible," said Elli.

"We could be early."

"Rats," said Elli. "As Miles is so fond of saying, look at the logic. The people who want to buy Lord Vorkosigan didn't give us this rendezvous till the last second. Why? So we couldn't get here first and check it out. They have to be set up and waiting." She leaned back into the car's cockpit, reaching over Ivan's shoulder. He turned his hands palm-out in acquiescence as she ran the scan again. "You're right," she admitted, "but it still feels wrong."

Was it chance vandalism that a couple of streetlights were broken out, just here? Miles peered into the night. "Don't like it," Elli murmured. "Let's not tie your hands."

"Can you handle me, all by yourself?"

"You're drugged to the eyeballs."

Miles shrugged, and let his jaw hang slack and his eyes track randomly and not quite in unison. He shambled beside her as her hand pinched his upper arm, guiding him up the steps. She tried the door, an old-fashioned one hung on hinges. "It's open." It swung wide squeaking, revealing blackness.

Elli reluctantly reholstered her stunner and unhooked a handlight from her belt, flashing it into the darkness. An entry hall; rickety-looking stairs ascended to the left. Twin archways on either side led into empty, dirty front rooms. She sighed and stepped cautiously across the threshold. "Anybody here?" she called softly. Silence. They entered the left-hand room, the beam of the handlight darting from corner to corner.