“So.” One of the most soothing things about Martin was that he could tell when not to push her. This was one of those times: instead of shoving, he stretched his arm along the back of the sofa, offering her a shoulder. After a moment, she leaned against him. “Thanks.”
“It’s all right.” He waited while she shifted to a more comfortable position. “What are we going to do, then? When we arrive? Dresden, did you say?”
“Well.” She considered her words carefully. “I’m on the Ents budget listed as a cultural attache. So I’m going to do some cultural attache things. There’s a memorial ceremony to attend, meetings, probably the usual bunch of diplomatic parties to organize. Luckily Dresden’s relatively developed, socially and industrially, not like New Prague.” She pulled a face. “You’re probably going to have the wonderful, unmissable, once-in-a-lifetime chance to be my diplomatic wife for a few weeks. Once-in-a-lifetime’s all you’ll take before you flee screaming back to a shipyard, I promise you.”
“Ten ecus says you’re wrong.” He hugged her.
“And fifty says you won’t make it. Sucker.” She kissed him, then pulled back to arm’s length, smiling. Then her smile slipped. “I’ve got some other stuff to do,” she said quietly, “and maybe a side trip. But I can’t talk about it.”
“Can’t, or don’t want to?”
“Can’t.” She emptied her glass and put it down. “It’s the other I told you about. Sorry.”
“I’m not pushing,” he said slyly. “I just want to know everything you get up to when I’m not around!” He continued in a more serious tone of voice: “Promise me if it’s anything like, uh, last week, you’ll try to let me know in advance?”
“I—” She nodded. “I’ll try,” she said softly. “If it’s remotely possible.” Which was entirely true, and she hated herself for it — he meant well, and the idea that he might think she was lying to him stung her — but there were things she wasn’t at liberty to talk about, just as there were topics Martin wouldn’t raise within earshot of her coworkers. Serious, frightening, things. And if she didn’t cooperate with Cho’s covert agenda, she’d be gambling with other people’s lives. Because, when she thought about it, she couldn’t see any sane alternative to what George was proposing to do.
“Here’s the Honorable Maurice Pendelton, ambassador of the Republic of Moscow to the court of Ayse Bayar, Empress of al-Turku.”
George Cho stood up and fiddled with a control ring. The wall behind him flickered to a view of an office — ornately paneled in wood, gas-lit and velvet-draped, richly carpeted and dominated by a ponderous desk bearing an antique workstation. There was something else on the desk; for a moment Rachel couldn’t quite work out what she was looking at, then she realized that it was a man, slumped across the green leather blotter. A timer counted down seconds in the top left corner of the display. In his back -
“Murder?” asked Jane, tight-lipped. Rachel hadn’t seen much of her since the events back on New Prague, when Jane had uncomplainingly shouldered the burden of Rachel’s research work inside the diplomatic compound. She wondered idly how Jane would cope with a field assignment if she couldn’t even figure out a scene like this for herself.
“The inquisitor’s report was very clear about the fact that his arms weren’t long enough for him to stab himself in the back — at least, not with a sword,” Tranh said drily. “Especially not with enough force to nail the torso to the table-top. Proximate cause of death was a severed dorsal aorta and damage to the pericardium — he bled out and died within seconds, but most of the mess is behind the desk.”
George fidgeted with his rings and the camera viewpoint slewed dizzyingly around the room. The scene behind the ambassador’s desk was a mess. Blood had gouted from the wound in his back and splattered across his chair, pooling in viscid puddles beneath his desk. Footprints congealed in the rich carpet, an obscene trail leading toward the door.
“I take it this is important to our mission,” said Rachel. “Do we have a full crime scene report? Was the killer apprehended?”
“No and no,” Cho said with gloomy satisfaction. “The Office of the Vizier of Morning took control of the investigation outside the embassy, and while the Turku authorities have been polite and helpful to us, they have declined to give us full details of the killing, other than this diorama shot. Note, if you will, the theatrical red nose and bushy moustache a party or parties unknown applied to the Ambassador’s face — after he was dead, according to the Vizier’s Office. Oh, in case you were wondering, the killer wasn’t apprehended. For the sake of face the Vizier’s Office rounded up a couple of petty thieves, forced them to confess, then beheaded them in front of the public newsfeeds, but our confidential sources assure us that the real investigation is still continuing. Which brings me to incident number two.”
Another wall-sized photograph of chaos. This time it was a roadside disaster — the wreckage of a large vehicle, obviously some sort of luxury people mover, lay scattered across a road, uniformed emergency crews and rescue vehicles all around it. Blue sheets covered misshapen mounds to either side. Much of the debris was scorched; some of it was still smoking.
“This was an embassy limousine, taking her excellency Simonette Black to a conference on resettlement policy for refugee populations in Bonn, the capital of the Frisian Foundation, a confederation of independent states on Eiger’s World. Which, unlike al-Turku, is a Deutsch McWorld with no real history of political violence other than a couple of wars fought over oil fields and states’ rights a century or two ago.”
George pointed at some bushes to one side of the road, and the screen obligingly zoomed. Something gleamed: “That is a reflector post for an infrared beam. If we look at the source” — the viewpoint flipped dizzyingly into the sky then back down, 180 degrees away from the post — “we find this.” A green box, with a round hole in its front, above a complex optical sight and some kind of rubber mat. The box, too, looked scorched. “I’m told that’s a disposable anti-armor missile launcher, hypervelocity, with a two-stage penetrator jet designed to punch through ceramic armor or high-Tesla fields. The poor people in the limousine — Black, her wife, their driver, the charge d’immigration, and two bodyguards — didn’t stand a chance. It was stolen from an army depot one week before the incident. It was armed by remote control and rigged to fire when the beam was interrupted. I’m told that the plastic object underneath the missile launcher is an, ah, whoopee cushion. A rubber bladder that emits a flatulent sound when sat upon.”
Rachel looked down at her pad. To her surprise, she realized she’d begun to doodle on it with her stylus in ink transfer mode. Pictures of mushroom clouds and Mach waves knocking over groundscrapers and arcologies. She glanced up. “Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence,” she said. “Any more?”
George’s shoulders fell. He looked very old for a moment, even though Rachel knew he was seven years her junior. “Yes,” he said. Another diorama filled the wall. “I’ve been saving this until last. This is the Honorable Maureen Davis, ambassador to the United Nations of Earth in Geneva.” Gail looked away, visibly upset, and Rachel wondered distantly if she was going to cry. Violent death didn’t just strip the victims of their dignity, it insulted the survivors. And it was a personal insult to Rachel. We were supposed to protect her! An attack on a visiting diplomat reflected on the honor of the nation or coalition that played host to them. And this -