He seemed to brace himself. "She was my sister."
He stopped. Luke frowned at Mara, caught her own suspicious puzzlement. "And?" he prompted.
"What do you mean, and?" Jinzler asked.
"So your sister died with Outbound Flight, and you wanted to go pay your respects to her memory," Luke said. "So what was so dark and personal that you couldn't tell us earlier?"
Jinzler lowered his eyes, his hands wrapping tightly together in his lap. "We didn't part on... very good terms," he said at last. "I'd rather not say any more if you don't mind."
Luke felt his lip twist. More evasion, which seemed to be an integral part of this man.
But at the same time there was the sense of truth to his pattern of thought and emotion. He glanced a question at Mara, caught her reluctant agreement. "All right," he said. "We'll let that part sit for now. But."
He let the word hang in the air a moment like a threatening sandstorm in the distance. "We may need to hear more before we're done here," he continued. "If and when that time comes, you will tell us everything. Clear?"
Jinzler straightened up. "Clear," he agreed. "And thank you."
"Don't thank us yet," Luke warned, nodding toward the door. "The Chiss are waiting. Go back to your quarters."
"And the next time you think you hear something suspicious, use one of the corridor comm panels to call it in," Mara added. "If you'd done that, we might have caught him."
"I understand," Jinzler said. "I'll see you in the morning."
He crossed the lounge and disappeared into the corridor. "Well?" Luke asked as the door slid shut behind him. "What do you think?"
"For starters, I'm getting tired of this piecemeal approach," Mara growled, stalking over to the viewport and leaning against it as she stared out at the stars. "I'd like nothing better than to sit him down and drag the whole story out of him. With hydrogrips, if necessary."
"You really think that's the best way to approach it?" Luke asked, crossing to the viewport to stand beside her.
"No, of course not," she said with a sigh. "I just wish we could, that's all."
"At least we've got a few new puzzle pieces to work with," Luke pointed out. "Let's start with Jorj Car'das. You think this is the same man Karrde asked you and Lando to try to track down ten years ago?"
"Who else could it be?" Mara countered. "Contacting someone working for Karrde's organization and flying a ship that wasn't a New Republic design? No, it's got to be him."
"What makes you think his ship wasn't a New Republic design?"
"Jinzler has a certificate in hyperdrive tech," Mara reminded him. "If he didn't recognize the ship, it had to be something pretty exotic."
"Mm," Luke said. "I don't suppose you ever got Karrde to open up about who Car'das actually was."
"Karrde, no," Mara said. "But I was able to coax a bit out of Shada a couple of years ago. Apparently sometime in or around the Clone Wars era Car'das started up a smuggling operation, building it up into something that rivaled even the Hutts' organizations. A few years after that, he suddenly and mysteriously disappeared, and one of his lieutenants took over for him."
"Karrde?"
"Right," Mara said. "No one apparently heard anything of or from Car'das until you found that beckon call on Dagobah after Thrawn's return and Karrde sent Lando and me out hunting for him. When the Caamas Document crisis hit three years ago and the New Republic started to tear itself apart over what to do about the Bothans, Karrde and Shada took the Wild Karrde and went out hunting for him themselves."
"Did they find him?"
"Shada was rather evasive on that point, but it seems clear that they did," Mara said. "Reading between the lines, I'd also guess Car'das had something to do with the dramatic collapse of that Return-of-Thrawn hysteria that happened while we were out on Nirauan. She also mentioned a huge data card library that she said rivaled the official New Republic archives on Coruscant."
"Karrde's former mentor," Luke murmured thoughtfully. "And Karrde with his deep and abiding interest in gathering information. It fits, I suppose."
"What fits?" Mara asked. "The bit about Car'das knowing something was in the works and pointing Jinzler to exactly the right place at the right time to intercept an incoming message?"
"Guessing the right place, at least, wouldn't have taken anything special," Luke pointed out. "Comra's the logical spot to pick up a transmission coming from Nirauan or Chiss space. If Car'das knew or guessed Formbi would be contacting us, that's where the message would come through."
"That assumes he knew the message was on its way," Mara pointed out.
"Right," Luke agreed. "And that part would have taken something special. Though even there you'll notice he seemed to be a bit off on his timing. Jinzler was at the station a good seven weeks before the message came through."
"Maybe Formbi had to argue with the Nine Families longer than he expected before he got permission to contact us," Mara suggested. "You can't dock Car'das points for someone else's bureaucracy."
"I suppose not," Luke conceded. "There's also the question of how he could have found out about Jinzler and his sister."
"Yes—Jinzler's sister," Mara growled. "I presume you've noticed that up until a couple of days ago there would have been a perfect way to check out that part of his story."
Luke nodded. "Fel's Outbound Flight operational manual and its personnel lists."
"Except that it was stolen," Mara said. "And now all of a sudden he comes up with a sister. Convenient timing, wouldn't you say?"
"I might," Luke had to admit. "But that's not proof that he took the manual."
"We're not exactly rolling in proof on any part of this," Mara pointed out. "Still, if Jinzler didn't take the cards, who did? And why?"
"I don't know," Luke said, half turning to look back toward the lounge exit. "Right now, I'm more intrigued by the question of what someone was doing lurking in the dark up here. Unless you think Jinzler made that part up to try to deflect suspicion from himself."
"Oddly enough, I don't," Mara said slowly. "He strikes me as being too smart to trot out such a lame story without dressing it up a bit."
Luke frowned. "Dressing it up how?"
"Suppose he wanted to do some mischief in the shield generator room," Mara said. "Say, someplace over at the starboard end. The first thing a real professional would do when he got inside would be to go to the portside end and open one of the storage cabinets there. Not too obviously, but enough to see if you were looking for it. Then, if he gets caught, he still spins his story about chasing down an intruder, but adds that he got a glimpse of someone over by the portside cabinets before he took off."
"The investigators go to look, and they find the open cabinet," Luke said, nodding his understanding.
"Right," Mara said. "Not only does it make his story play better, but it also automatically shirts attention away from his real target."
Luke nodded. "Simple, but effective."
"All the best tricks are," Mara agreed. "It's basically the same thing we assumed our saboteur was doing right from the start: drawing attention to the engines, then going and hitting something in the bow."
"Right," Luke said. "Assuming the engine thing was a diversion."
"Also true," Mara admitted. "It could just as well be that that was a genuine accident, and that Jinzler or someone else simply took advantage of it to do some late-night skulking."
Luke shook his head. "This is starting to make my head hurt," he said. "If Jinzler set the fire to steal Fel's Outbound Flight data, shouldn't that have been the end of it? What would he have needed to do up here?"
"Who knows?" Mara said. "He may be on some special mission, either for Car'das or someone else, and had to steal the operational manual first so that we couldn't crack his story."