Shadow of Victory - eARC (26 page)

“I see.”

Bolívar gazed up at the tree canopy for several seconds, his lips pursed in thought, then he looked back down at MacFadzean.

“I appreciate your honesty, but unless and until you’re in a position to specifically tell us you will be planning on calling in naval support, we can’t absolutely commit to provide it,” he said. “We only have so many ships, and I’m afraid we’re going to have to allocate them on what you might call a first-come-first-served basis. I’m sorry, but that’s just the way it is. Having said that, I think we’d probably be able to peel off at least a couple of destroyers or a light cruiser or two on fairly short notice, which ought to be enough to discourage Frontier Fleet from anything too blatant in the way of support for MacCrimmon and Zagorski. And in the meantime, we could definitely provide small arms and even some crew-served weapons if you’d be interested in building up a stockpile.”

“I’d be very interested in that.” MacFadzean’s eyes glowed, but then she frowned. “Getting them here, though—that might be a problem.”

“We’re talking about setting up a regular freight shuttle for seafood from Thurso,” Bolívar pointed out. “From what I’ve seen of transstellars in general and SEIU in particular, nobody’s going to turn up his nose or make any difficulties for somebody willing to buy the amount of fish we’re talking about buying. And it’s always been Hauptman policy to carry at least some small cargoes on spec for other destinations. When you couple that with the fact that we’ll be buying silver oak from Ms. MacLean, I don’t think there’ll be much trouble about getting cargo shuttles down to the planet—particularly given how accustomed most of the local customs inspectors are to looking the other way for MacCrimmon’s cronies and SEIU. I’m pretty sure we could get just about anything past them, as long as it’s not full of fissionables or anything that…obvious, for the right baksheesh. And once we do get it down, I imagine all this lovely timberland—” he waved one hand at the surrounding silver oak “—would provide lots of places to hide any new toys you might acquire.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

“So what do we really know about this guy?” Mackenzie Graham asked a bit nervously. No, not really nervously, her brother thought. It was more a case of adrenaline lightly seasoned with apprehension.

“Only what I’ve already told you,” he replied patiently.

“Which isn’t one heck of a lot,” she pointed out.

“Actually, it’s less than that,” he acknowledged. “But it’s still time we—I—talk to him, Kenzie, and you know it.”

“I just don’t like the thought of your meeting with him in such a public place, Indy.”

“What?” He cocked his head with a quizzical smile. “You think I should bring him here?” A small wave took in the crowded restaurant around them. The Soup Spoon always did well during lunch hour, given the quality of the food and the reasonable prices.

“No, of course not,” Mackenzie shook her head quickly.

The Soup Spoon was their favorite restaurant, and had been for a long time. In fact, the Graham family had been eating in Tanawat Saowaluk’s establishment since long before Bruce Graham had fallen afoul of the Seraphim System authorities. Long enough, in fact, that Tanawat was “Thai Grandpa” to Indy and Mackenzie. Because that relationship had been so long-standing, they could go on eating there regularly without arousing suspicion—and “just happen” to meet with any number of interesting people. They had to hold down the total numbers of such “chance encounters,” but it was a public eatery, after all. And the fact that its proprietor, his wife, their surviving son, their older biological daughter, and their adopted daughter and her husband—plus two more of their servers—were all members of the Seraphim Independence Movement made it a perfect message drop. Almost anyone could come by for a bite to eat, which meant Indy and Mackenzie could get those messages to that same almost anyone without any personal contact at all.

And without saying a single word over any com when unfriendly ears might be listening.

“Bringing him here would be unusually dumb even for you,” Indiana’s loving sister continued. “But I’m not sure meeting him in a public library is a whole lot smarter.”

“I have to meet him somewhere,” Indy pointed out. “And sneaking off to meet in some dark corner somewhere is a whole lot more likely to point the scags in our direction. The odds might be pretty good they’d never notice, but if they did notice, they’d probably be inclined to wonder just why a Cherubim street hand’s hiding in the shadows for a routine meet with an off-worlder.” He shrugged. “Frankly, I think the library’s the best combination of privacy and ‘here I am in the open doing my day job’ I could find.”

Mackenzie nodded, more in acknowledgment than agreement, yet he had a point. From the beginning, he’d transacted a lot of his “graymarket” deals in the capital’s library branches. They were a public space which still operated on a pretty close to round-the-clock schedule and they fitted well with the fact that he was a voracious reader. Indy spent hours parked in various library reading rooms, actually using the readers or hard copy books from the stacks, and neither of them doubted that the Seraphim System Security Police had a complete copy of his reading list, given what had happened to their father. That was why there were no “subversive” titles on it. But the library also offered a street hand like Indy a handy, cost-free place to meet clients, and it made a lot of sense to conceal the upcoming meeting as a regular business deal. It was just that every library was under twenty-three-hour-a-day surveillance by the SSSP.

Of course, every public place is pretty much under scag surveillance, she reminded herself. And if this guy actually is what you’re afraid he might be, it won’t matter where Indy meets with him.

“I think I should at least come with you,” she said out loud, but Indiana’s headshake was instant and firm.

“That’s the last thing you should do, Kenzie,” he said flatly. “You’re a respectable cyber geek. We’ve been very careful about that, haven’t we? You don’t have anything to do with your disreputable brother’s quasilegal transactions, except—maybe—to help with his bookkeeping. If the two of us turn up together anywhere for anything except a purely social moment—like, oh, lunch at the Soup Spoon—we’re a lot more likely to start drawing the scags’ attention, and you know it.”

“But I don’t like the thought of your—”

“I know what you don’t like the thought of, Kenzie.” His voice was much gentler, and he reached across the checkered tablecloth to squeeze her hand. “This is the way it needs to be, though. And if it should happen this guy really is a scag plant, you know what you have to do when they bust me, too.”

She nodded unhappily, biting her lower lip. It might not do much good in the end, but they’d agreed long since that if Indy was arrested, Mackenzie must immediately denounce him to the authorities. It wouldn’t make much difference to what happened to Indy; anyone O’Sullivan’s scags arrested was automatically guilty unless he could come up with something sufficiently valuable to buy himself a get-out-of-jail card. But if she talked fast enough and loud enough it was at least remotely possible she could convince the authorities she hadn’t been involved in any subversive activities on his part. It wasn’t likely, but it was possible.

“Well, in that case, finish your tam kha kai and head on back to your office.” He pushed back his chair and stood, bending over to kiss her cheek. “I’ll screen you later this evening to discuss lunch plans for Wednesday.”

“Sure.” She reached up to touch the side of his face. “Just be careful, okay?”

“Always am,” he assured her with a smile, and she watched him walk away, humming, with his hands in his pockets.

* * *

Indiana Graham sauntered past the information desk at the Cherubim Public Library’s Sinkler Street branch and nodded to the junior librarian stationed to keep an eye on things. The librarian nodded back without ever looking up from her own book reader. Indy spent enough time in her reading room to be a familiar face, although they’d never really spoken to each other.

He took the old-fashioned escalator up to the third floor and wandered down the hall to the main reading room. His eyes flicked to the left as he walked through the doorway and noticed the copy of a rather boring action novel on the reader at an unoccupied desk two cubicles over from the entrance.

He kept walking until he reached “his” cubicle—the one with four reader displays, from which he’d transacted so much street hand business. None of the other displays were in use, so he parked himself at the one farthest from the door and propped his feet inelegantly on one of the unoccupied chairs. From that position, he could watch the entrance without being especially obtrusive about it, and he punched the index key at the reader in front of him to call up the book he’d been reading during his last visit.

Seventeen minutes later, a tall fellow, with broad shoulders, fair hair, and gray eyes walked through the door and glanced around. He wore an off-worlder’s clothing and he crossed straight to Indy’s cubicle, smiled down at the chair whose seat was occupied by Indy’s feet, then pulled out the chair across from him and sat with his back to the doorway.

“Come here often?” he asked.

“Fairly often,” Indy acknowledged.

“You wouldn’t happen to know where I might be able to find any reasonably priced glühen Nussbutter, would you?”

“Depends on what you mean by ‘reasonably,’ I guess.”

“Well,” the newcomer regarded him levelly, “if it’s too cheap, I’d probably esteem it too lightly.”

“Actually,” Indy lowered his feet from the chair and leaning forward as he spoke in a voice which wasn’t especially loud but was also far from a whisper, “I could make you a pretty good deal on the Nussbutter if you really want it.”

“Then I should probably buy some just to keep the scags happy, I suppose.” The other man snorted. “I don’t really expect to be using it here, you understand. I don’t have any friends quite that close in Seraphim. Yet, at least.”

Indy chuckled. The paste made from the Liebenden Nußbaum tree possessed a natural bioluminescence which made it glow in the dark. It was also a powerful contact aphrodisiac, and it was often blended with a smorgasbord of euphorics. It was legal but regulated, and businesses had to be licensed to sell it. Given the amount of kickback it took to acquire one of those licenses, it carried a hefty price. By the same token, it was one of the items obtainable—for far less—on the graymarket and one which the authorities didn’t try very hard to suppress.

“I’ll give you my supplier’s name,” he said. “Try to buy enough to net me a decent commission.”

“Of course,” the other man said dryly. “On the other hand, that’s not the real reason I’m here.”

“No. So why don’t you tell me why you are here? Oh, and while we’re at it, why don’t you tell me what I can call you?”

“For now, you can call me Clambake. And I’m pretty sure you already have a fair idea of why I’m here, given your people’s choice of recognition phrases. And assuming I’m not wasting my time talking to you, of course.”

“I don’t know you…Clambake. For that matter, I don’t know whoever you initially contacted. So I hope you’ll forgive me if I don’t fall all over myself to say anything which might be construed as…indiscreet.”

It wasn’t quite true that Indy didn’t know who “Clambake’s” first SIM contact had been. Which wasn’t to say he knew that contact well…or wanted to. Richard Bledsoe was a low-level Mendoza of Cordoba freight supervisor at Tobolinski Field, Cherubim primary spaceport, and he wasn’t a savory sort of fellow. Like most of his ilk, he dabbled in smuggling, and in his case that sometimes included drugs and other prohibited substances which—in Indiana Graham’s opinion—damned well ought to be prohibited. He was, however, in a position to be useful, and so he’d been recruited for a special SIM cell, a parking place for potentially useful contacts who were…less than fully vetted or trusted. That was one reason Mackenzie had been so uneasy over this meeting in the first place, because it had originated in a message passed up the chain from Bledsoe rather than resulting from a request sent down the chain to him.

“I can understand why you might hesitate to do anything ‘indiscreet,’” Clambake conceded. “On the other hand, I’m sure you can understand why I’d be a little nervous about indiscretions myself. After all, I’m a stranger in town. I don’t have any friends t if the scags decide they don’t like my face.”

“There’s a lot of that going around,” Indy replied.

“All right,” Clambake said after several long, dragging moments of silence. “I’m going to assume that since your people set up the meeting place we can talk here. Or do we need to go somewhere else?”

“As long as that display’s up,” Indy twitched his head in the direction of the reader to the left of the door, “the security system in this reading room’s developed a glitch. It’s still getting good imagery, but the audio pickup’s on the fritz. It’s a minor fault, but a real one. The kind of thing that happens when maintenance gets skimpy.” He smiled thinly. “That happens a lot to the SSSP’s equipment even without anyone’s outside assistance, actually.”

“What about lip readers?” Clambake’s tone was more amused than challenging, and Indy snorted.

“Let’s just say the image quality’s not very good. In fact, it sucks.” He shrugged. “Trying to run surveillance on an entire planet gets expensive, in both financial terms and manpower. One reason I like using libraries for my actual business meetings is that they don’t get real high priority when the scags are handing out top-flight equipment or manpower allocations. Stupid of them, given how much fuel for subversion libraries hold.”

“I see.” There might have been a flicker of respect in Clambake’s gray eyes, and he sat back in his own chair. “In that case, I suppose I should lay my cards on the table…to some extent, at least.”

“That would probably be a good place to start,” Indy agreed.

“All right, I will. I won’t ask at this point whether or not you’re sufficiently senior in whatever organization you people have to give me any commitments at this point. But I am going to assume they wouldn’t have sent you if you weren’t at least senior enough to hear me out and report back. So, for starters—”

* * *

“Hi, Indy!” Mackenzie Graham said, smiling as her brother appeared on the com display.

“You free for lunch Wednesday?” he asked cheerfully, and her smile grew a bit broader—this time with relief—as the code phrase told her the library meeting had gone well. As far as he knew, at any rate.

“I guess I could fit you into my schedule,” she replied. “I’m not positive, though.” She frowned thoughtfully for a moment, then shrugged. “I know we just had lunch together, but if you haven’t eaten dinner yet, I’ve still got some of that spaghetti Mom brought over the last time she was in town. Want to come by and I’ll heat it up?”

“We could do that,” Indy replied. “In fact, why don’t we do this? You heat up the spaghetti, I’ll grab a bottle of Chianti on my way, and there’s still time for us to take in the sunset if we eat on the roof.”

“Sounds like a deal to me. Thirty minutes?”

“Make it forty-five. The queues at the tram stops are running a little long.”

* * *

“You know, Uncle Thad does make good spaghetti,” Indy said, sitting back from the table in the small dining area atop Mackenzie’s apartment building.

Like much of Cherubim’s architecture, Mackenzie’s building had been erected long ago. It was barely ten stories tall, and while the neighborhood was considerably better than the one in which Indiana currently lived, it still wasn’t exactly on the good side of town. Despite her “respectability,” she remained the daughter of an enemy of the people, after all. Despite that, its occupants did their best to maintain at least some of the amenities, including the rooftop tables where they frequently dined.

This evening, as Indy had known would be the case, Mackenzie’s neighbors most likely to eat up here were otherwise occupied. He wondered, sometimes, how those neighbors would feel if they knew how intensively he’d studied them, figuring out who they worked for, mapping their normal movement patterns. Digging that deeply into other people’s made him a little queasy, as if he were becoming too much like Tillman O’Sullivan’s scags. Unfortunately, he didn’t have a lot of choice. Not if he meant to keep himself and his sister alive, anyway.