Peter Hamilton - Judas Unchained

“Are there any further leads on Isabella?” Hogan asked.

Renne took another drink of her green cherry fizz, enjoying its cold burn down the back of her throat. “Not direct ones. I thought I’d try and go through her activities on Daroca before she vanished, see if I can find any clues about where she might go. Then there’s Kantil, I could go see her.”

“All right, enough.” Hogan’s hand came down on her wrist, preventing her from lifting her glass. “I don’t want you wasting any more time over this girl. You made your long shot and it didn’t come off. I don’t mind you going out on a limb every now and then, but you have to know when to cut your losses. Understand me, this is that time.”

“There’s something wrong about her.”

“Maybe so, and because of that the warrant still stands. The police will find her eventually, and when they do I’ll authorize you to handle her interrogation yourself. But until that happens, I want you working on our priority cases.”

Renne stared resentfully at his hand; deep inside, the little sensible part of her brain was telling her this wasn’t the issue to make a stand on. “Yeah, okay, Chief.”

“And I certainly don’t want you bothering people like Christabel Halgarth again. If you want to talk to someone that senior in the Grand Families and Dynasties you clear it with me first. There are a lot of political angles in our investigations, not to mention protocols, which should be followed.”

“She was happy to see me.”

“You don’t know what she was thinking. I don’t want a repeat of that incident, understand?”

“Right.” His hand withdrew, and she lifted her glass to her lips. The barkeeper delivered the water and the beer, putting a small bowl of cashew nuts in front of Hogan.

“Our trip produced some very decent results,” Tarlo said. “The forensic guys managed to crack the program routines in the Reynolds arrays. We know what was being encrypted now.”

“What?” Renne asked automatically.

“Every scrap of data from meteorological sensors all over the planet.”

With Hogan distracted by Tarlo, Renne’s finger rose slowly above the rim of her glass, remaining stiff for a couple of seconds. Tarlo saw it, and pressed down on a grin.

“That makes no sense,” she said. “Why would the Guardians be interested in Martian weather? I don’t understand.”

Tarlo gave her his full bright smile. “Me neither.”

“But it’s the kind of solid result we can run with,” Hogan said, glancing back at Renne. “I want the two of you working together to find out what you can. Admiral Kime has given this a very high priority.”

“Figures, with his background,” she grunted, and snatched some of the cashews.

“Okay then,” Hogan said. He drained his mineral water in one. “Have your lunch, Renne, then when you get back to the office this afternoon, I want the two of you heading up this new angle on the Mars investigation. Call in some experts, find out every conceivable application for the meteorological data.”

“Yes, sir.”

Hogan nodded happily, and left them with a wave.

Renne watched him walk out of the restaurant. “What an asshole.”

“To be expected right now,” Tarlo said with a grin. “He had some bad news waiting for him when we got back.”

“Oh?”

“Thought that would cheer you up. Get this, Senate Security has officially requested we begin a covert observation of Alessandra Baron.”

“The celeb?”

“None other.”

“Why?”

“The official reason is that they suspect her of involvement with quote ‘detrimental individuals.’ How about that for covering a multitude of sins. But guess whose name was on the request file.”

Renne’s grin brightened to match Tarlo’s. “The boss.”

“Now do you see why our Great Leader is walking about like he’s got a bug up his ass?”

“Yeah. But that’s no reason for taking it out on me.”

“You’re the easiest, closest target. I warned you about chasing the Halgarth girl. He was never going to like that. And visiting Christabel was a big risk. He was bound to find out.”

“Yeah, yeah. But you’ve got to admit it’s odd. Why should Isabella vanish like this?”

“No,” he said, and held his hands up. “I refuse to get involved; it’s not just hanging on to the uniform, I need the money my job brings in. And I’m making the kind of progress which Hogan approves of.”

“You’ve got to look at the whole picture, Tarlo.”

“Sure you do. Just remember what happened to the last person who took that view. Oh, hey, here’s Vic.”

Renne twisted around on the stool to see Vic Russell walking through the restaurant. He held up a hand. “Better get a table,” she said.

They chose one along the wall, where a high partition veiled them from casual view. “Some good news for you,” Vic said as Renne’s burger was delivered. He took a couple of fries from her plate.

“I could do with some,” she admitted. “It’s been a long shitty day.”

“I’ve backtracked eighteen items from Edmund Li’s interception on Boongate.”

Renne paused in examining her burger for signs of mayonnaise. “Their entire routes?”

“Yep.” Vic’s big round face produced a smug expression. “You think you haven’t had much sleep. This has taken me weeks, they were so bloody complicated. It helps that we had the manufacturer and the final smuggling disguise; I could work the route from both ends, fill in all the gaps, and believe me, there were some massive gaps. Each route is a chain of courier companies playing the shell game between warehouses—some of the components were in transit for ten months. And all the finance used to pay the shipment costs came from onetime accounts. There was a hell of a lot of organization went into this operation. We may have underestimated how many Guardians are active inside the Commonwealth. Shipping the items like that had to triple the cost of each piece by the time they reached Far Away. Whatever they’re building, it’s costing them a fortune.”

Tarlo and Renne exchanged a glance. “They can afford it,” she said. “Remember, the Great Wormhole Heist is paying for this.”

“Even so,” Vic insisted. “This is true paranoia. Effective, mind, I’ve got to hand them that.”

“It won’t be all Guardians,” Tarlo said. “Elvin will recruit from any unsavory source; remember that agent Cufflin put us onto.”

“Thanks, Vic,” Renne said. “This is really good work. We’ll get the RI set up to cross-reference with our existing Guardian database, and the team can review the strongest leads for direct follow-ups.”

Vic settled back in his seat, and stole another fistful of fries from Renne’s plate. “You know, I was thinking about this when I filed the report. We’ve already got a ton of information, so many names and smuggling operations, and black market arms deals; it goes back decades.”

“I know,” Tarlo said, swirling beer around his glass. “Renne and I loaded half of it in there ourselves.”

“All right,” Vic said, suddenly earnest. “So how come we never managed to nail the bastards?”

“Sore point,” Renne said.

“Because it’s all peripheral information,” Tarlo said. “One day we’ll reach critical data mass, and the whole case will fall into place. We’re going to make a thousand arrests that day.”

Vic shook his head. “If you say so. I’ll see you back in the office, yes?”

Renne nodded. “Half an hour.” She eyed her nearly empty glass, wondering if she should order another.

“Give me a second,” Tarlo said to Vic, “I’ll come with you.” He waited until the big man was standing by the door. “You going to be okay?”