Final Inquiries (38 page)

That
woke him up. Things had to be plenty hairy for anyone to send a message that rated bioscan status. The bioscan locks were automatically inserted by the embassy's own communications system on any message flagged with appropriate and sufficient security tags. He swung his legs out of bed and stood up. He was in his boxer shorts and nothing else, but that didn't matter. "Gimme," he said, holding his hand out blindly, not really seeing anything. Something big had gone wrong. That was for sure. Singh handed him the retinal-scanner-equipped datapad. He was about to put the scanner up to his eye when he hesitated.

"Wait a second," he said. "Didn't anyone reprogram the comm system? Why is this on me? Wasn't I relieved of duty?"

"Would have been," said Farrell.

"Maybe should have been," Singh put in. "But it's on you. Wolfson stood up for you. And Mendez too. They thought you still had something left."

Do I?
he asked himself. Almost without thinking, he put his eye to the scanner. A heartbeat later, the unit beeped approvingly, and the decrypted message appeared on the datapad's main screen.

He read it, allowing the others to read over his shoulder. Shock gave way to fear as he read--but then anger shoved them both out of the way. "They're hanging us out to dry," he said. "Setting it up so it's nice and legal to kill us all, if they feel like it."

And suddenly, somehow, in that moment, the anger dropped away too. Anger and fear would be what distracted them, got them killed. What this situation needed was coldhearted, clearheaded thinking. Organization. Quick, sharp decision-making.

Frank sat back down on the bed and worked it through. Suddenly he realized that he did have something left--or more likely that he had, in that moment, just gotten it back. He knew exactly what needed to happen.

"All right," he said in a voice that was deeper, stronger, more sure than it had been in a long time. "This is what we're going to do."

The aircar had come to a halt in midair, maybe ten meters away from the dome portal. Everyone held their breath, not sure what they would do--or could do--if it stayed buttoned up. But then it irised open, and Frau Groppe piloted them smoothly through it--and, a minute or two later, the main city dome portal as well.

"We are clear of the city," said the ambassador. "Speed and heading at your discretion, Frau Groppe."

She immediately started accelerating, up to and beyond all the local speed limits. Jamie was just about to breathe a sigh of relief when Frau Groppe shouted. "Ambassador! I'm tracking an aircar right behind us. Same course, same heading, same altitude--and speed. And we're at emergency."

"
Now
what the devil?"

Jamie scrambled back into the aft compartment and took a look through the viewport. "It's a Kendari aircar! It must be Flexdal and Brox--"

"Something coming through on comm channel seven!" Groppe shouted. "Putting it on the overhead!"

"--o hostile intent. Repeat. This is Kendari embassy aircar, Brox 231 speaking. We are not in pursuit. Repeat, we are not in pursuit, but performing emergency return to our own embassy. We have no hostile intent. Do you copy?"

Hannah scrambled over to the middeck comm center and patched herself in. "This is human embassy aircar. We copy and acknowledge no hostile intent. What happened?"

"No comment on this feed. Brox out."

Three alert buttons on the comm system picked that moment to flash. "Ambassador!" Hannah called out. "We're getting your-eyes-only traffic from the embassy."

"The hell with that," said the ambassador, standing up and making his way over to her. "We don't have time to play around with procedure. Open the message file yourself. Groppe! How far out are we?"

"Twenty kilometers. Estimate four minutes to landing. Higher speed might cause Vixa security or the embassies we have to overfly to activate their defenses."

"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.