Masterminds (27 page)

The moment you name the group
, Zorn had said,
it not only becomes traceable, it also becomes a legal entity. When people belong to that legal entity, their behavior becomes tainted with the association. When you say “group,” you could mean anything from a group of friends to an actual organization
.

Andre, who had become the leader early because she had more of a vision than anyone else had, took those words to heart.

She rested her forehead against the cool wall. Zorn had died more than a decade ago. There were people inside the group who hadn’t even known her or known of her involvement. She had been dead so long that she shouldn’t have been relevant to any investigation.

Unless one of the damn Peyti clones talked.

Andre closed her eyes for just a moment. Those damn alien screw-ups. They should have all died in the attack, but their attack fizzled—thwarted by that security chief on the Moon. Or maybe thwarted because the Peyti were not competent to pull off something that complex, even with all of the hand-holding her group had done.

It should have been as simple as getting a message on the links at the exact right moment, activating the mask bomb, and dying along with everyone else in the vicinity.

Instead, most of the damn clones had been
arrested
.

Then Andre had hoped that some good people in the Moon’s various law enforcement agencies would kill the Peyti clones out of anger, but that hadn’t happened either. Some goody-two-shoes law firm decided to work with the Government of Peyla to protect the stupid clones.

Alien and cloned. Why anyone would
ever
defend creatures like that was beyond her.

And Andre hoped, if the last attack went off without a hitch, she wouldn’t have to worry about it.

She let out a deep sigh. She didn’t like the fact that
someone
had found Zorn. Someone with Earth Alliance Security credentials.

That meant the investigation was closer to Andre than she had initially thought.

She made herself stand up, straighten her shoulders, and calm down.

Even if they caught her—even if they
killed
her—the last attack would happen.

Even if they caught her—even if they
blamed
her—the last attack would destroy every dome on the Moon. They would forget about her. The crisis would be too big.

And Hétique City had helped her. The Alliance now believed the attacks were moving away from the Moon.

The more distracted the authorities were, the greater the chance Andre had to escape.

If she needed to escape.

She swallowed hard, regained her composure, and decided she was done with her meeting. She would go back, let those panicked imbeciles worry about Hétique City and the end of the universe, and tell them she had to deal with a minor personal emergency.

Then she would track whoever was tracing her.

Maybe she could stop this new investigation in its tracks.

All she needed to do was try.

THIRTY-SEVEN

BERHANE THOUGHT SHE
and Kaspian were going to be stuck in the lobby of the United Domes of the Moon Security Office forever. What was Noelle DeRicci thinking, having only two human guards?

They seemed to be busy, too, ushering people to and fro, ignoring both Berhane and Kaspian as they stood inside the smaller-than-expected lobby, after they had been cleared by the first part of the system.

When Berhane used her links to try to contact Security Chief DeRicci directly, she got a user-not-authorized message. The link Berhane had tried to use wasn’t the standard entry-level messaging system for the Security Office. It had supposedly been DeRicci’s direct link.

But either DeRicci had shut down that link or too many people had been trying to contact her.

Berhane had already told several avatars that she and Kaspian were here on important business, business that couldn’t wait, but those avatars didn’t seem to care.

Which wasn’t entirely true: they had cared enough to let her into the main part of the lobby, just in time to see some mousy woman with out-of-place short orange hair be led into a back area.

Since then, Berhane and Kaspian had waited.

He’d paced around the lobby at least five times, touched the blank walls as if trying to see if there was some kind of entertainment screen, and peered over the guards’ station. The remaining guard, a man, studiously ignored both Kaspian and Berhane.

When Berhane tried to talk to the guard, he’d said,
I only do as I’m instructed. I have not yet received instructions concerning you
.

Well, she was thinking she’d issue some instructions concerning him. Two guards weren’t enough. This entire entry into the building was somewhat ridiculous. She and Kaspian had enough time to set off all kinds of bombs—although, to be honest, she wasn’t certain if the security that allowed them into the building had already checked them for things like weapons and explosives.

Kaspian finally stopped pacing, and stood just a bit too close to her.

“This is working well,” he said snidely.

She agreed. Her father would have been making a scene by now. Her father and Torkild both.

Maybe she should too.

Berhane walked over to the guard.

“Look,” she said. “We have some really important information that can’t wait. I don’t know what it’ll take to get in to see Chief DeRicci, but we need to talk to her now.”

“I know,” the guard said. “Your friend already told me that.”

She glanced over her shoulder at Kaspian. He had spoken to the guard briefly, but quietly. She had thought Kaspian had simply been checking to see how long they had to wait.

Apparently, Kaspian’s method marked the difference between a loud scene and a quiet scene.

“Do you know who I am?” Berhane asked.

“The system says you’re Berhane Magalhães, head of the Anniversary Day Victims’ Identification and Recovery Service,” the guard said.

She wasn’t sure how he managed to sound so very uninterested.

“Yes, I am,” she said, “and we’ve found some information in doing the recovery work that needs to get to the chief right away.”

The guard sighed. “I’ve already sent your information upstairs twice. They’re having a busy day.”

So was she, and she had just wasted an hour waiting in a
lobby
, for no good reason.

“I’m also the daughter of one of the richest men on the Moon,” she said, hating that she had to pull rank. “My father is putting billions into rebuilding the domes. If he were here—”

“If he were here, he’d have some kind of hissy fit that would impress the local politicians,” the guard said. “The thing is that Chief DeRicci doesn’t care about politics, and you can’t impress her, except with information.”

Berhane felt the frustration rise. She closed her hands into fists.

“Well, impress her with this,” Berhane said. “We think we’ve found the next clone attackers.”

The guard’s head snapped back. His gaze met hers directly for the very first time. “What?”

“We believe we know who the next attackers are. We’ve found evidence that points directly to them, and we need to talk with the Chief
now
.”

The guard looked momentarily confused. “We have no protocols for this,” he said. “You’ll have to give me a minute.”

“I’ve given you
sixty
minutes,” she said, clipping her words just like her father would. “You get a
maximum
of five more. After that, my partner and I will figure out another way to attract attention, even if it means setting off some alarms.”

The guard held out his hand in a “stop” gesture. “Oh, lady, you don’t want to do that. Believe me.”

“I will, if—”

“Just give me a minute. I’ll make sure someone talks to you, okay?” He looked panicked, even as his eyes glazed while he sent some message along his links.

Berhane held her ground. She wondered if he was saying he had a crazy woman here, who was making the wrong kinds of demands.

Then she shook off the thought. She was here on legitimate business with a legitimate concern.

Just because she wasn’t used to standing up for herself didn’t mean that her doing so offended others.

She glanced over her shoulder at Kaspian. His lips were turned up in a small smile.

He approved which, for some reason, she found reassuring.

She nodded back, then turned her attention to the guard and the elevators beyond him.

She hadn’t been bluffing. If someone didn’t talk to her in the next few minutes, she would go past this guard station and up a flight of stairs.

She was going to talk to Noelle DeRicci, no matter what it took.

THIRTY-EIGHT

IT TOOK ANOTHER
fifteen minutes of searching Jarvis’s finances before Flint found something really strange.

Jarvis had requisitioned millions for an operation shortly after Anniversary Day. Alliance protocols required the requisitioning employee to list what the money was for, and when or if it would be returned. On undercover operations, like this one was supposed to have been, the money (which was significant) had to be returned or accounted for within a week.

The money had been requisitioned months ago, but the operation was still marked as open.

Flint had almost missed that, because it seemed so standard. But the money had been requisitioned shortly after Anniversary Day, and the amount was a lot.

Flint couldn’t find exactly what kind of operation that Jarvis had requisitioned the money for. Flint wasn’t certain if he should have found it, or if the code for undercover operation was enough for the Earth Alliance.

That might become something to investigate.

At the moment, though, Flint was following the money. The money always told an interesting tale. And this money was no exception.

The amount had been backed by the Earth Alliance Currency Department, something Flint had initially overlooked when he first noticed the missing funds. He had continued searching for incriminating information on Jarvis, before his brain ordered him to circle back to the Currency Department.

The fact that the Currency Department was involved was unusual. Not the kind of unusual that a computer search would find or even flag.

Computer logic would figure this: Jarvis worked for Earth Alliance. He had been handling a vast sum of money. That vast sum of money had to be guaranteed by someone within the Earth Alliance.

Any search by a computer wouldn’t find the different divisions to be an anomaly. Which was probably how the transfer was designed. Nothing flagged it, except Flint’s unruly brain.

He had seen a name—Pearl Brooks—and had done a quick check, as he always did when he was searching, to see if the name belonged to a real person or was an alias of some kind.

Brooks was a real person who worked for the Currency Department. High up in the Currency Department, in fact.

Flint had glanced at that, glanced away, moved deeper in his search, and that was when the information hit his brain.

Currency Department? Why would the Currency Department be financing a Security Division op? The Security Division had an extensive budget. All operations, overt and covert, came from that budget.

Earth Alliance Treasury Division would give the Security Division its operating budget, but through the funds designated for that Division, not from Currency.

The Currency Department handled exchange rates and the money supply inside and outside of the Alliance. Handling exchange rates inside the Alliance was the most important part of the Currency Department’s job. Many of the alien governments maintained a local currency for use on their home worlds. That money had to be converted into Alliance credits for any purchases, travel, or businesses done outside of the home worlds.

And Flint didn’t even pretend to understand how the money supply was determined. He’d never had to know.

He felt a frisson of excitement. He had found an important link: Brooks and Jarvis. Flint had to check on procedures with Goudkins, but he knew in his gut that this was the thing he had been looking for.

He had known there was a conspiracy inside the Alliance, and it had covered its tracks. He had found hints of it before, but never something so blatant.

As Deshin had said to Flint, and as Flint had kept in mind ever since, operations like Anniversary Day cost a fortune to pull off. Add the Peyti Clones, Legal Fiction, and the entire second operation, and the expenses were off the chart.

No small group could fundraise its way into that kind of money. And Deshin had repeated that most criminal enterprises with Anniversary Day kind of money didn’t have the leadership at the top that could manage a plan conducted over decades. There was no guarantee that the leadership would remain in place that long.