Give me patience! Captain Hussein glanced back at her display. The red bars weren’t getting any shorter, and every additional hour added to the critical path added sixteen thousand to her operating overhead. But the alternative … “Lieutenant Grace.” She watched Steffi straighten her back attentively. “Please convey my compliments to Commander Lewis, and inform her that she’s to provide you with any and all personnel and resources from her division that you deem necessary to requisition for, for Colonel—”
“Mansour,” offered the woman.
“—Colonel Mansour’s search. When you have a final suspect list I want to see it before any action is taken. File daily updates with Safety and Security, cc’d to my desk. I also want to know if you don’t find a murderer aboard my ship, of course.” She nodded at the spook. “Satisfied?”
Rachel looked surprised. “More than,” she admitted. This time her smile was genuine. “Thank you!”
“Don’t.” Nazma waved it away. “I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t take murderers running around my ship seriously.” She sniffed, nostrils flaring as if at the scent of skullduggery. “Just as long as you keep it low-key and don’t frighten the passengers. Now, I trust you will excuse me, but I have a ship to run.”
He looks like a gorilla, Martin thought apprehensively as he approached the warblogger across the half-empty lounge. The journalist was slouched in a sofa with a smile on his face, one arm around a pale-skinned young woman with a serious blackness habit — black hair, black boots, black leggings, black jacket — and a big baby blue dressing on her left temple. She was leaning against him in a manner that spelled more than casual affection. Isn’t that sweet, Martin thought cynically. The blogger must have been about two meters tall, but was built so broadly he looked squat, and it wasn’t flab. Close-cropped silver-speckled black hair, old-fashioned big horn-rimmed data glasses, and more black leather. The woman was talking to him quietly, occasionally leaning her chin on his shoulder. The gorilla was all ears, grunting agreement from time to time. They were so wrapped up in each other that they didn’t seem to have noticed Martin watching them. Here goes, he thought, and walked over.
“Hi there,” he said quietly. “Are you, um, Frank Johnson of the London Times?”
The gorilla glanced up at him sharply, one eyebrow rising. The young woman was also staring. Martin barely noticed her, fine-boned alarm and black nail paint. “Who’s asking?” said the big guy.
Martin sat down opposite them, sprawling inelegantly in the sofa’s overstuffed grip. “Name’s Springfield. I’m with the UN diplomatic service.” That’s odd, he realized distantly. Both of them had tensed, focusing on him. What’s up? “Are you Frank Johnson? Before I go any further—” He held up his diplomatic passport, and the big guy squinted at it dubiously.
“Yeah,” he rumbled. “And this isn’t a social call, is it?” He rubbed his left arm meditatively and winced slightly, and Martin put two and two together.
“Were you at the Muscovite embassy reception yesterday evening?” he asked. He glanced at the young woman. “Either of you?” She started, then leaned against the big guy, looking away, feigning boredom.
“I see a diplomatic passport,” Frank said defensively. He stared at Martin. “And I see some guy asking pointed questions, and I wonder whether the purser’s office will confirm if the passport is genuine when I ask them? No offense, but what you’re asking could be seen as a violation of journalistic privilege.”
Martin leaned back and watched the man. He didn’t look stupid: just big, thoughtful, and … Huh. Got to start somewhere, right? And he’s not top of the list by a long way. “Could be,” he said reflectively. “But I’m not asking for the random hell of it.”
“Okay. So why don’t you tell me what you want to know and why, and I’ll tell you if I can answer?”
“Um.” Martin’s eyes narrowed. The woman was staring at him with clear fascination. “If you were at the Moscow embassy in Sarajevo, you probably saw rather a lot of bodies.” The journalist winced. A palpable hit. “Maybe you weren’t aware that the same thing also happened before. We have reason to believe that the responsible party” — he paused, watching the implication sink in — “was probably aboard this ship. Now, I can’t compel you to talk to me. But if you know anything at all, and you don’t tell me, you’re helping whoever blew up all those people to get away with it.” Holed below the waterline: the journalist was nodding slightly, unconscious agreement nibbling away at his resolute dedication to the cause of journalistic impartiality. “I’m trying to put together a picture of what happened that night to aid the investigation, and if you’d like to make a statement, that would be very helpful.” He gave a small shrug. “I’m not a cop. It’s just a case of drafting every warm body who can hold a recorder.”
Frank leaned forward, frowning. “I’m going to check your passport, if you don’t mind,” he said. “Do you?” He held out a hand. Martin thought for a moment, then reluctantly handed the white-spined tablet over. Beside him the woman leaned over to look at it. Frank glanced at the passport then snapped his fingers for a privacy cone and said something muffled to the ship’s passenger liaison network. After a moment he nodded and snapped his fingers again. “Okay,” he said, and handed the passport back. “I’ll talk to you.”
Martin nodded, his initial apprehension subsiding. Frank was going to be reasonable — and having an experienced journalist’s view of affairs would be good. He pulled out a small voice recorder and put it on the low table between them. “This is an auditing recorder, write-once. Martin Springfield interviewing—”
“Wait. Your name is Martin Springfield?” It was the young woman, sitting straight up and staring at him.
“Wednesday—” The big guy started.
“Yeah. I’m Martin Springfield. Why?”
The girl licked her lips. “Are you a friend of Herman?”
Martin blanked for a moment. What the fuck? A myriad of memories churned up all at once, a hollow voice whispering by dead of night over illicit smuggled causal channels. “I’ve worked for him,” Martin heard himself admitting as his heart gave a lurch. “Where did you hear the name?”
“I do stuff for him, too.” She licked her lips.
“Wednesday.” Frank glared at Martin. “Shit. You don’t want to go telling everyone about—”
“It’s okay,” said Martin. He raised his recorder. “Recorder. Command delete. Execute.” He put it down. What the fuck is going on here? He had a hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach. This couldn’t be a coincidence, and if Herman was involved, it meant the whole diplomatic ball of string had just gotten a lot knottier. “Ship, can you put a privacy cone around this table? Key override red koala greenback.”
“Override acknowledged. Privacy cone in place.” All the sounds from outside the magic circle became faint and muffled.
“What are you doing here?” Wednesday asked, tensing. Martin glanced from her to Frank and back. He frowned; their body language told its own story. “Back downside—” she swallowed. “Were they after me?”
“You?” Martin blinked. “What makes you think you were the target of a bombing?”
“It wouldn’t be the first time,” rumbled Frank. He looked at Martin warningly. “She’s a refugee from Moscow, one of the survivors of the peripheral stations. She settled in Septagon, except someone murdered her family, apparently for something she’d taken, or left behind, or something. And they tried to follow her here.”