“Thank you, Hogg,” Daniel said. His tone, while perfectly polite, ended the discussion. “I’ll deal with the matter myself in the morning.”
Later in the morning. Sleep would be the best use for the next few hours.
* * *
Markos’s nameless aide drove the jitney from the open front seat; the Alliance agent sat with Adele in the enclosed rear. The coachlamps cast a little light into the compartment through oval opera windows; Markos’s eyes gleamed.
“The Alliance gave you sanctuary when your own nation would have killed you like a dog, mistress,” he said. “Fate has offered you an opportunity to repay that kindness.”
The jitney’s wheels were high and thin. The elastomer tires dulled but could not eliminate the pavement’s vibration.
“I’m not political,” Adele said. “I’m a librarian. And my service to the Academic Collections on Bryce was at least equivalent to the food and shelter I was given there by a private citizen.”
She deliberately turned and looked out the window. They were driving through a district where wealthy merchants lived. The houses were three stories high, shoulder to shoulder along the street frontage. Roof gardens draped fronds over cornices that were more lushly carved than the real foliage.
An armed guard stood watch in front of a house undergoing repairs. The facade was bullet-marked and the windows of both lower stories were boarded up. Presumably it had been the residence of a supporter of the old regime.
The guard’s lantern threw into shadowed relief the dedication on the keystone: I PETER CRIBELLI HAVE BUILT THIS FOR MYSELF AND MY DESCENDANTS.
Scaffolding already in place indicated that workmen planned to chisel out the dedication in the morning. Perhaps they would replace it with another brave hope for the future.
“Yes,” Markos said, his tone full of heavy menace. “Ms. Boileau. We’ll come back to her in a moment. What’s of interest to the Alliance now is that you already have a data console capable of accessing any material in the national system. That’s correct, isn’t it?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Adele lied. She turned to face Markos. “Tell me what you want and then let me go.”
“Your skill is not in question, Mistress Mundy,” the spy said. The teeth of his slum upbringing chewed into his cultured accent for a moment. “You can get any information you please with that unit. My determination and my power over you and your friends shouldn’t be in question either!”
“Tell me what you want,” Adele repeated.
“Take this,” Markos said, handing her a plug-in software module. “Your terminal’s linked to Kostroma’s satellite communications net. This will permit someone of your ability to decrypt any information passing through that net, even if it uses Cinnabar security forms.”
She took the module; it was no larger than the last joint of her little finger. “What do you want?”
“Information,” Markos said. There was a smile again in his voice. He was convinced that he’d won the battle of wills. “Whatever information I ask for, you’ll find and deliver to me. Then we don’t have to worry about a learned old woman coming to grief in her twilight years.”
He laughed.
“Why is the Fifth Bureau enlisting foreign librarians for donkey work, Markos?” Adele asked in measured tones. “There must be a score of Alliance agents in Kostroma City. The ship you came on has equipment at least equal to mine and personnel trained to use it. Why are you putting yourself in the hands of an amateur?”
Every department of the Alliance bureaucracy had its own intelligence section. It was more than a guess, though, that a man who’d been provided with his own dispatch vessel was a member of the organization which reported directly to Guarantor Porra.
Markos’s face tightened over his cheekbones. “My reasons are just that, mistress,” he said. “Mine. But don’t denigrate your own abilities. We could comb the Alliance without finding anyone better suited to our needs.”
Adele put the module in her belt purse and leaned against the back cushion with a sigh. “Take me home, Markos,” she said.
How had Peter Cribelli and his family envisaged the future? Adele’s parents talked of a day when the people ruled—guided, of course, by the wisest and most far-seeing members of the state.