Heather didn’t have to look for Duncan when she left Mandela’s office. He pounced when he saw her.
“We’re up to three bomb threats in the Hall of Government today,” he said. “Would you like to know who sent them?”
“No.”
“I should tell you a mysterious package was found on the eighth floor.”
“A bomb?”
“No. A misplaced data screen.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“To keep—”
“—me informed. Fine. How did your conversation with the receptionist go?”
Duncan’s eyes brightened. “Oh, right! Interesting!”
Heather fervently wished Duncan had learned something besides the woman’s phone number.
“It turns out she’s new here. She’d been working for a Senator for a while, but just got transferred out.”
“Okay.”
“She says she got transferred because she caught her boss sneaking a rendezvous with some guy from the diplomatic corps.”
“Sex?”
“Maybe. But something else, too,” Duncan said, attempting an air of careful sophistication. “Getting transferred doesn’t do anything, really, to keep her from talking. She’s free to spread rumors about them as much as she wants, like she did with me. But what she can’t do anymore is watch them. If they’re up to something else, she’s not in position anymore to find out what it is.”
“That’s good thinking,” Heather said, trying not to sound surprised. “Did she happen to mention any names?”
Duncan smiled. “She certainly did.”
35
St. Croix Office Equipment Warehouse, Geneva
Terra, Prefecture X
13 December 3134
At night, the warehouse compound of St. Croix Office Equipment and Consumables, located in Geneva’s industrial outer ring, resembled nothing so much as a large, empty shoebox. The site scarcely looked the same as the busy commercial depot that by day received and sent out crates and pallets of manufactured goods—desks, chairs, computers, short-run printing and binding equipment, cleaning equipment and supplies, and reams and reams of paper.
Geneva was the home of the largest bureaucracy in The Republic of the Sphere, and the city’s appetite for office supplies was insatiable. This particular St. Croix warehouse was only one of dozens of such ugly rectangular buildings located out of sight of the elegant and historic city center, but conveniently close to the main transit arteries required for making deliveries.
This last fact prompted the Kittery Renaissance leader, Cullen Roi, to settle on the warehouses of the St. Croix chain as the target for tonight’s work.
Cullen Roi had sent Hansel to supervise the job. Norah would have liked to come as well, but Cullen knew that she couldn’t be trusted with this kind of mission. She was an excellent agent provocateur, one of the best at stirring up trouble and being long gone by the time it came to a head, but she was neither patient nor quiet.
Hansel, on the other hand, was a realist, completely lacking in vanity. His focus was on getting the job done well and quickly, and getting out. Speed was of the essence, since Hansel had several stops to make before the night was over.
Hansel steered a delivery truck up to the warehouse compound’s security gate. The truck was a massive tandem special, two containers in line; the false St. Croix markings on its sides were indistinguishable from the real thing. The cargo inside the two containers, however, was not office equipment.
The night guard at the complex gate had been keeping himself awake in his glass-enclosed box by watching reruns of For Clan and Honor on a console-top tri-vid display. He didn’t look happy to see a big truck stopped at the barrier outside. He came out anyway, a disgusted expression on his face.
“You don’t get in without papers.”
“I’ve got papers,” Hansel said. He did indeed have papers; excellent forgeries, the best that Cullen Roi could provide. “Just wait a minute.”
He retrieved the forged papers from the truck cab’s under-dash compartment and made a show of looking through them before handing them out the window. “Here.”
“Not my job to let people in or out. Just my job to watch the gate.”
The guard took the papers anyway, and read through them, frowning. His lips didn’t move as he read, but Hansel suspected that it was a near thing. When he was done he raised his head and eyed Hansel with mistrust.
“It says here you were supposed to be delivering this stuff at five this afternoon.”
“Stuff happens,” said Hansel. “At five this afternoon I blew a flux circuit. I had to spend good money getting it fixed, too.”
The guard scowled like a teacher listening to an excuse for late homework. Hansel waited calmly.
The guard said, “You couldn’t have laid up somewhere for the night, could you?”
“Sorry,” Hansel said. “I’ve got things to do at home tomorrow. All I want to do is unload this stuff and be on my way.”
“Pass on through, then.”
“I need the papers back after you’ve signed them,” Hansel reminded him.
“Right.” The guard scrawled his name with a St. Croix giveaway pen and returned the papers. “Ramp’s around behind back. And don’t expect any help from me with the unloading.”
“Thank you,” said Hansel politely, but the man was already retreating into his lighted box.
The guard pressed a button on the security console, and the gate swung open. Hansel drove the big tandem truck into the warehouse compound and around to the rear of the main building. He stopped next to the loading dock, which was conveniently out of sight from the gate—yet another reason why this warehouse was one of the Kittery Renaissance’s chosen sites.
He got down from the cab, went over to the first container of the tandem pair, and knocked on the side panel.
“You guys can come out now.”
The panel slid open with a metallic groan, loud in the darkness. Hansel wasn’t unduly worried about the noise. Their presence inside the warehouse compound had been accepted and accounted for, and work sounds would be expected.
A half-dozen men climbed out of the first container. Like Hansel, they were dressed in workers’ coveralls with the St. Croix company logo embroidered across the shoulders in back. Maybe in storybooks and tri-vids the secret operatives made themselves invisible by dressing all in black, but Hansel knew better than that. Nobody in Geneva was as invisible as a manual laborer in his working attire.
“We don’t have much time,” he said as soon as the last man emerged from the container. “Get moving.”
The men swung a ramp down from the open side panel and began unloading boxes. The labels on the boxes identified them as containing preassembled metal filing cabinets and collapsible tri-vid reception tanks, manufactured by third parties and repackaged with the St. Croix logo.
Deceptive packaging, Hansel thought with amusement, in more ways than one. The boxes actually held an assortment of pistols—auto-pistols, lasers, and flamers—a few rifles and shotguns, and the ammunition to go with them, enough in this truck alone to outfit at least a company. Not all of them were likely to be needed, but there was no way to tell in advance which of the group’s weapons stockpiles would see the heaviest use on the day itself. It was necessary, therefore, to fully supply all of them.
The Kittery Renaissance had sunk a large percentage of its liquid funds into this project. If it failed, the movement would be toothless for a while, money depleted, members dead, or lost in the disappointment of failure. Those kinds of losses could spell the end of the whole organization.