“But it screwed me out of my access,” Nelly grumbled.
“Too true, girl,” Grampa said. “Worse, they’ve got flags that go up whenever anyone tries to access the system without a certificate or starts to apply for one and drops out. Did they leave a tag with you?”
“They did not!” Nelly sniffed. “No one tags me.”
“But just the certificates that you tried would be enough to raise a red flag,” the colonel said as he turned left on a new road that kept them headed away from the Roost. “Your old certificates would tell them Kris was back in town.”
“I imagine so,” Nelly said. “I couldn’t get in even enough to erase that I’d tried to get in. It was a stone wall.”
Kris couldn’t stay out of the conversation any longer. She broke from her clinch with Jack, and said, “So Nelly’s effort to attach to the net alerted them we were here, and when we used an Eden gift credit chit, it was enough to get them after us?”
“That’s why I paid cash for our drinks,” Grampa Trouble said. “Your trail stops dead at the Roost.”
“Won’t the barkeep remember you?” Penny asked.
“We lucked out there. New hire. Never saw him in my life,” Trouble said. “And from the surly service we got, he definitely doesn’t know me.”
“Maybe he did recognize you and gave you the service he thought you deserved,” the colonel said as he headed up the on-ramp to a crosstown expressway.
“Can I ask where we’re headed?” Kris said.
“Yes. A rental place by a lake,” Grampa Trouble said. “I saw it advertised on the net. Used a Wardhaven gift card I bought with cash to rent it for the next couple of days. If anyone can trace us to it, they’re better bloodhounds than I’ve heard of.”
Jack raised an eyebrow at that.
A little place by a lake. Maybe even a beach.
Maybe they could have a few days to themselves. Time to talk.
Maybe.
22
Senior Chief Agent in Charge Foile didn’t much care for what he saw. He and his team, along with a small contingent from SWAT, had charged into the Smuggler’s Roost ready to kick butts and take names. The local denizens had looked up from their drinks, taken their measure, and gone back to their conversations.
Leslie and Mahomet had come in the rear, checked the bathrooms, and found them empty as well.
Of two little old ladies, there was neither hide nor hair.
“Stand down,” Foile ordered the SWAT boys, and they put their weapons back on safety, but they didn’t show any interest in leaving.
Good.
Foile sauntered up to the barkeep and produced a picture of Lieutenant Commander, Her Royal Highness, Kris Longknife. “Have you seen that woman?”
“Naw.”
“Are you sure?”
“Listen, if a looker like her came in here, I and everyone here would have noticed. We may be drunk, but we ain’t blind.”
“How about her?” Foile asked, offering the best take they had from the security cameras.
“Nope, never saw her,” was his answer.
“Sure.”
The bartender shrugged. “Would you give her a second look? Bother remembering her?” The guy had a point.
Foile had to give the princess points for her disguise. The agent chose a different approach. “Did anyone leave suddenly just before we got here?”
“Come to think of it, that table kind of emptied out when no one was looking,” he said, pointing at one of the back booths.
“How many were there?”
“Three, no five. Two old ladies came in, one with a cane. They joined the other three.”
“You got their tab?”
“Nope, old geezer paid cash.”
At some point in this unproductive interrogation, Leslie had joined them.
“May I, sir?” she asked.
“Go ahead. I’m not getting anywhere.” Foile took a step back.
“Was one of the first three fellows this guy?” she said, offering a picture of a Marine in full dress uniform.
“Yeah, that could have been the young one. He was kind of down, didn’t say much, just kind of hunkered down in the back and let his elders do all the talking. That guy’s in a bad way if you ask me.”
“Who is he?” Foile asked.
“Jack Montoya, the head of the princess’s security team, or at least he was until her whole team was busted up after the last cruise. All us girls in the princess’s fan club were just dying for him to kiss her. I mean, what kind of girl spends all her time around a guy like this and just argues with him?”
Foile found himself looking at a handsome man in a crisp uniform. “Arguing all the time. Marriages have been built on worse,” he muttered.
Leslie gave him one of those faces she reserved for when men were being Men!
“What do you have on this Jack Marine?”
“Not much. I know he was a Secret Service agent before Kris drafted him. Boy, was that a blowup. But he doesn’t give interviews.”
Foile turned to his boss, who had just entered the Roost. “I’m going to need information from our client.”
“You’ve got the number on your commlink.”
Foile wasn’t really surprised that he now did have a number for the Prime Minister’s office. He punched it.
“What can I do for you?” came immediately.
“I need full information on Jack Montoya, Marine,” Foile said crisply.
From the background came an, “Oh, Christ, are those two together again?” in what sounded like the Prime Minister’s voice.
“Tell him that we aren’t sure, but we need that information,” Foile said.
“It’s already coming your way,” was his answer.
The data streamed at him. He arranged for a copy to go directly to Leslie’s computer. Her eyes lit up with delight.
Then she got serious. “Boss, we need to talk.” Leslie led the way, and Foile quickly found himself in a staff meeting with all three of his team.
“Jack was reassigned to HellFrozeOver.”
That drew a whistle. You didn’t have to be Navy to know what that meant. Rumor had it that the Bureau had a small office on the place. Maybe it did, but no one admitted to ever having been assigned there.
“If he’s there,” Foile pointed out, “why do we have this report that he’s here?”
“Just a second, boss. Right. God, this new computer is good. He’s TDY to Wardhaven for a training course. Uh-oh. It’s on the new computer security system.”
“Has he finished it?” Mahomet asked.
“Three-day course, done today. His commanding officer came with him. A Colonel Hancock?”
“Not that Hancock,” Foile said. Then he thought again. Hancock was the CO of HellFrozeOver.
“What Hancock?” Rick asked.
“Never mind. He’s the Marines’ problem, not ours,” Foile said. “Where are those two supposed to be now?”
“They’ve got rooms at the Army Navy Club. They’re heading back tomorrow.”
“That should identify two of the three soldier types the bartender mentions.” Foile turned to his boss. “Could you have their rooms at the Army Navy Club checked? They’re likely empty, but . . .”
She was on the horn immediately.
“I think I know who the third guy is,” Leslie said, and offered a picture of a balding officer, also in Marine dress blue and reds. “This is General Tordon, otherwise known as Trouble. That’s darn near officially his name. You can ask his friends, enemies, superiors: He’s trouble.”
“And if we’ve got trouble brewing here,” Foile said, “he’s likely close to the bottom of it.”
“That’s a good bet,” his boss said, joining the circle. “He’s a legend.”
“And how does he figure into this case?” Rick asked.
“Trouble is the princess’s great-grandfather,” Leslie supplied.