Inside, it was almost as dark as out in the passageway. And as bare. They were in what seemed to be a small foyer. It had a seat running along one wall, and a hole in the wall framing a reception desk opposite, with a door alongside. A pair of double doors led out at the rear. Scirio rapped on the door next to the desk, which was opened promptly from within. He entered, leaving Hunt, Cullen, and Murray with the two bodyguards, who lounged against the wall and stared into space. The sounds of several voices talking came through the opening above the desk.
“Did you say you knew this place?” Hunt asked Murray.
“I knew it was here—I’ve sent people to it. But I’ve never used it. I’ve got enough spooks in my head already. I don’t need this kinda shit.”
“Then why couldn’t you have brought us yourself, without all the performance?” Cullen asked.
Murray shook his head. “When you come here, nobody sees anything; nobody knows who you are. You wanna know if this guy you’re so anxious to find is in one of the booths? There’s no way you’d get to know without the boss’s say-so.”
Then Scirio came back out accompanied by a man in a dark jacket, whom Hunt took to be the manager. Scino spoke rapidly to Murray, indicating Hunt and Cullen with a nod and gesturing at the door that he had just come out of.
“Step inside,” Murray interpreted.
Hunt and Cullen followed the manager back through, while Murray and Scirio waited just inside the door. It was a small office, with another man sitting in an easy chair in a corner, and several screens above a console by one wall. The manager sat down at the console
and brought a picture up on one of the screens. It showed people sitting at tables and in seats set in alcoves, others at a bar, mostly alone, but several in pairs and one small group talking. The lighting was evidently quite low, for Hunt could tell from the quality that the image was being enhanced.
“See if you can spot him anywhere there,” Murray said.
Hunt studied the picture carefully, then shook his head. The manager operated a control on the console to single out each of the men present in turn for a close-up view. Then he shifted the view to bring different people into the field and repeated the process. Baumer wasn’t there.
The manager said something in Jevlenese, and Scirio answered. “They’re going to try the booths,” Murray supplied.
Another screen activated to show the figure of a woman reposing in a Thurien-style neurocoupling recliner situated in a small booth. The manager flipped to the next, which showed a man with a white beard. “No,” Hunt said. The next two tries were men again, negative, then another woman. Hunt ceased responding after the first half dozen or so, allowing the manager to simply step on through the list at his own pace, dwelling for a second or two when the subject was a man, and passing straight on to the next in the case of a woman.
They must have been somewhere up in the twenties when Hunt suddenly craned forward, beckoned Cullen closer with a finger, and exclaimed, “That’s him!”
The manager zoomed to a close-up of the face, but there was already no doubt about it. The figure in the coupler was Hans Baumer.
“How do we get him out?” Cullen asked. The manager was already saying something to Scirio.
“They’ll go get him, and we leave, okay?” Murray said. “We forget where we got him from.” Hunt nodded. Illicit couplers into JEVEX weren’t his concern. The manager called toward a room at the back, from which another man emerged, wearing a dark suit. The man in the easy chair got up, and the three of them went out into the foyer, their footsteps heading in the direction of the double doors at the rear. A moment later they appeared on the first screen, crossing the room containing the people and the bar.
In one of the booths off the corridors beyond, Baumer’s eyes opened suddenly. But the person looking out through those eyes was no longer completely Hans Baumer.