The women were leaving also, wrapped in their own world. Adele dropped the pistol into her pocket and resumed her task.
“Mr. Markos noticed you weren’t in the Grand Salon,” the aide said. “He wanted to be sure that you were all right.”
Adele continued working. “Please thank Mr. Markos for his concern,” she said, “but assure him that I’m quite capable of looking after myself.”
“I warned him that you were,” the aide said with catlike humor, “but he didn’t believe me.”
Adele finished the modification. Portions of the console’s software and memory could now be accessed only through her handheld unit. They no longer existed so far as an operator at the unit’s integral controls were concerned.
“Good night, mistress,” the aide said in her expressionless voice. “I’m sure we’ll have other dealings in time.”
She left the library. Her absence was like the coming of spring.
Adele got up from the console and checked to be sure her personal data unit was settled in its pocket. There was still winter in her heart.
Hogg returned from the truck’s cab. Something bulged when his loose jacket hung against his beltline the wrong way. Beside them a man was hammering on a jitney’s splashboard while screaming at the driver; she screamed back.
“I handed one through the panel into the back,” Hogg said. “I figured the guys there, they can’t see out and they’re going to feel like canned meat unless they’ve got, you know, a good luck charm. Do you want the other one, sir?”
“No,” said Daniel. He leaned against the back of the truck, trying to look as though he belonged here. His eyes scanned the broad, arched doorway into the palace. “A gun would look wrong without the proper belt and holster. You’re probably better with it anyway.”
Besides, he wasn’t sure he’d want the weapon. If he carried a pistol he’d be wondering whether or not to use it every time there was a crisis. Lt. Daniel Leary had to think as a commander, not a gunman, if his detachment was to survive.
Alliance troops had begun to sort out the traffic jam, starting at the street entrance. They weren’t trained for the job, but their brute force approach—a gun in the face and a curt order—was beginning to have an effect. Soon it might be possible to pull the van back onto the pavement and leave the gardens.
Adele had left them just under twenty-five minutes ago. Daniel didn’t need to check the time: his mental clock was accurate even now when he was waiting for something that was out of his control.
Adele would need a minimum of ten minutes to reach the third-floor library without the sort of haste that would arouse attention. Ten minutes more to return. Five minutes wasn’t much for whatever it was she needed to do when she got there, not really.
“Didn’t sound to me like any of the shooting came from up there,” Hogg said morosely, nodding his chin in the direction of the north wing of the palace. They couldn’t see the end windows that served the library because the van was parked so close to the main building. “Of course, with so much shit going on it’s hard to tell.”
Gunfire was omnipresent in Kostroma City tonight, like the cries of nightbirds at Bantry. The sharpness of light weapons didn’t travel very far, but neither was it possible even for a poacher like Hogg to be absolutely sure of the direction it came from.
“I’ve got everything,” Adele Mundy said from Daniel’s side. “We can leave now so far as I’m concerned.”
“Christ Jesus son of God our savior!” Hogg snarled. “Where did you come from, woman?”
“Adele, sit beside Hogg in the cab,” Daniel said. “He’ll be driving. I’ll hang on the running board so people see my uniform.”
“I’m a librarian,” Adele said to Hogg. She walked around the side of the truck toward the cab. “For an answer to that you’ll have to ask a priest or a philosopher.”
Daniel blinked when he realized she was joking. His eyes hadn’t picked up Adele’s drab brown clothing as she left the building and strode toward them at a measured pace. In this confusion of light and noise, she’d been merely part of the background.