Peter Hamilton - The Mandel Files

“I didn’t know that.” Somehow he wasn’t surprised.

André Dubaud walked over to them with the manager, a tall old man with thinning grey hair, who actually wore glasses, round lenses with silver rims. He must do that for effect, Greg thought. It worked too; he had the kind of old-world dignity anyone would trust.

He listened to Greg’s request, and beckoned one of the receptiomsts over. Greg was given Charlotte Fielder’s American Express number, which he squirted direct to Victor.

The porter who was on duty the night of the Newfields ball was summoned from the staff quarters. Greg didn’t learn much. Charlotte Fielder had phoned the hotel and told them to pack her bags, a car would be sent to collect them. The porter couldn’t remember any details, it was a limousine of some kind, black, maybe a Volvo or a Pontiac.

“Not a green Aston Martin?” Greg asked.

“No, sir,” said the porter.

“You seem very sure, considering you couldn’t remember the make.”

“We have a complementary fleet of Aston Martins at the disposal of our guests,” the manager explained. He consulted his cybofax. “One was booked by Miss Fielder to take her to the El Harhari for the Newfields ball. But that’s the only time she used one.”

“Right, can you show me the memory for the camera covering the front of the hotel please.”

The manager gave a short bow. “Of course.”

They viewed it in his office, sipping coffee from delicate china cups. Greg watched the porter put three matched crocodile-skin cases into the boot of a stretched Pontiac, a chauffeur helped him with the largest.

“Progress,” said Greg. He leant forward and read the licence plate number off to André Dubaud. “Can we have a make on the driver as well, please.”

“It’s a hire car,” the Commissaire said, as his cybofax printed out the vehicle registry data. “I’ll have my office check the hire company’s records. The chauffeur’s identity won’t take a minute.”

Greg and Suzi walked back out into the dome’s filtered tangerine light. One of the Celestious doormen was holding the Citroën’s door open for them. André Dubaud followed slowly.

“Problem?” Greg asked.

A muscle on the side of André Dubaud’s cheek twitched. “There seems to be a glitch in our characteristics recognition program.”

“Meaning what?” Suzi asked.

“It’s taking too long to identify the Pontiac’s chauffeur.” He gave the cybofax a code number, and began speaking urgently into it.

Greg met Suzi’s eyes as they sank down into the Citroën’s cushioning, they shared a sly smile. He knew André Dubaud wasn’t going to trace the chauffeur, it wouldn’t be a program glitch, that was too complicated. The simple method would be to wipe the chauffeur’s face from the police memory core, or make sure it was never entered in the first place. Either way, it would take a pro dealer to organize. His cybofax bleeped.

It was Julia. She appeared to be sitting in Wilholm’s study. The walls behind, her were covered with glass-fronted shelves, heavy with dark leatherbound books. The edge of a window showed sunny sky.

“How’s the speech day coming along?” Greg asked.

Julia smiled. “You’ll have to ask her when she gets back.”

“Right.” He was talking to an image one of the NN cores was simulating. He wondered how many of her business deals were made like this, flattering the smaller company directors with what they thought was a personal interview.

“Rachel was right about Charlotte Fielder,” Julia said. “She’s quite well known, at least to us. She’s one of Dmitri Baronski’s girls. Security keeps a fairly complete list of his stable in case any of my executives should stumble.”

“Who’s Dmitri Baronski?” Greg asked.

“A first-class pimp, although that doesn’t do him justice, he’s a lot more than that. Clever old boy, lives in Austria. Runs a stable of girls who aren’t quite as dumb as they like to make out to their clients. He’s made a fortune on the stock market based on loose talk they’ve picked up for him.”

“No messing?” For the first time, Greg began to feel a certain anticipation. “So this Fielder girl was a good choice as courier, then?”

“Yes. After all, would you know how to deliver a present to me, and be sure I’d see it?”

“Royan would,” Greg said. “But you’re right; method is one thing, carrying it off is another. Fielder must be bright enough to realize some of the implications of what she was doing.”

Rachel, Pearse Solomons, and Claude Murtand were sitting round the El Harhari security centre’s desk drinking tea. A plate of biscuits rested on top of the terminal. The monitor screens were dark.

“Got her,” Rachel said. “She left at five to eleven, and she was with someone.”

Greg didn’t like the dry amusement leaking into Rachel’s voice, it suggested a surprise.

Claude Murtand called up the memory, and Greg watched Charlotte Fielder walking out of the El Harhari with a young teenage boy. The kid kept sneaking daunted looks at Charlotte Fielder’s low-cut neckline, his smile flashing on and off.

Greg halted the memory and studied the boy’s eager, wonder-struck face. There was something not quite right about him. It was as if he was a model; everything about him, the awkwardness, the slight swagger, a designer’s idea of teenager.

“She’ll eat him alive,” Suzi snorted gleefully. “He won’t last the night.”

“Way to go.” Rachel said.

“André, can you get a make on that boy for me, please?” Even as he said it, Greg knew the boy would defy identification, just like the chauffeur. Judging by the apprehensive way André Dubaud was ordering the make, he thought so too.

“What car did they leave in?” Greg asked Claude Murtand. The hotel security manager tapped an order into his terminal’s keyboard, and played the outside camera memory on a monitor screen.

Greg and Suzi groaned together. It was the Pontiac.

He got Claude Murtand to run the outside camera memory, and watched the Pontiac rolling up to the El Harhari’s front door; the same chauffeur who’d driven it at the Celestious hopped out and opened the doors. Charlotte Fielder and her boy companion climbed in. Greg asked to see it again, a third time. His intuition had set up a feathery itch along his spine.

“Freeze it just before Fielder gets in,” Greg told Claude Murtand. “OK, now enlarge the rear of the car.”

The image jumped up, focusing on the open door and the boot. Charlotte Fielder’s raised foot hovered over the door ledge.

“More,” Greg said.

The image lost definition badly, black metal and darkened glass, fuzzy rectangular shadows stacked together. He peered forward.

“Suzi, look at the rear window, and tell me what you see.”

She sat in Claude Murtand’s seat right in front of the monitor screen, screwed up her eyes. “Shit yes!” she exclaimed.

“What?” Rachel demanded.

Greg tracked an outline down the left-hand side of the rear window, a ghost sliver of deeper darkness. “There’s someone else in there.”

Greg could sense André Dubaud’s growing anger; there was worry in there as well, churning his thought currents into severe agitation.

“It would seem that my office is unable to identify the boy at this time,” the Commissaire said.

Greg knew how much the admission hurt him. The Nice sacking was burned into the psyche of Monégasque nationals, everything they’d done since had been structured around safeguarding the principality. Now people were coming and going as they pleased. The wrong sort of people.

“No shit,” Suzi said, and there was too much insolence even for her.

“Madame, everyone who comes to Monaco is entered in the police memory core. Everyone. No exceptions.”