So why didn’t you guys come looking for Mark? A bothersome question, and one to which he had no answer. He punched through the consulate’s code. Let the circus begin.
They were down on him in half an hour, a tense ImpSec lieutenant named Iverson with a rented squad of local muscle from House Dyne in paramilitary uniforms and with decent military equipment. They’d dropped straight from orbit in a shuttle; heat wavered off its skin in the watery morning light. Miles sat on a rock outside the pedestrian entrance, or more properly speaking, emergency exit he’d found, and watched sardonically as they all galloped out, weapons at the ready, and spread out as if to take the installation by assault.
The officer hurried up to him, and half-saluted. “Admiral Naismith?”
Iverson was no one he knew; at this level of the echelon the man must take him for a valued, but non-Barrayaran, ImpSec hireling. “The one and only. You can tell your men to relax. The installation is secured.”
“You secured it yourself?” Iverson asked in faint disbelief.
“More or less.”
“We’ve been looking for this place for two years!”
Miles suppressed an irate remark about people who couldn’t find their own prick with a map and a hand-light. “Where is, ah, Mark? The other clone. My double.”
“We don’t know, sir. Acting on a tip from an informant, we were about to make an assault on a House Bharaputra location to retrieve you, when you called.”
“I was there last night. Your informant did not know I was moved.” Had to be Rowan—she’d got out, hooray! “You would have been embarrassingly late.”
Iverson’s lips thinned. “This has been an incredibly fouled-up operation from first to last. The orders kept changing.”
“Tell me,” Miles sighed. “Have you heard anything from the Den-darii Mercenaries?”
“A covert ops team from your outfit is supposed to be on its way, sir.” Iverson’s “sirs” were tinged with uncertainty, the dubious regard of a Barrayaran regular for a self-promoted mercenary. “I … wish to ascertain for myself if the installation is fully secure, if you don’t mind.”
“Go ahead,” Miles said. “You’ll find it an interesting tour. If you have a strong stomach.” Iverson marched his troopers indoors. Miles would have laughed, if he weren’t screaming inside. He sighed, slipped from his perch, and followed them.
Miles’s people came in a small personnel shuttle, swooping right into the concealed garage. He watched them on the monitor from Ryoval’s study, and gave them directions how to find him. Quinn, Elena, Taura and Bel, all in half-armor. They came clanking into the study double-time, almost as impressively useless as the ImpSec crowd.
“Why the party clothes?” was his first weary question as they heaved into view. He should stand, and receive and return salutes and things, but Ryoval’s station chair was incredibly comfortable and he was incredibly tired.
“Miles!” Quinn cried passionately.
With the sight of her concerned face he realized just how very angry he was, and guilty for it. Furiously angry because furiously afraid. Where is Mark, damn you all? “Captain Quinn,” he put her on notice that this was duty-time before she could fling herself on him. She skidded to a halt in mid-fling, and came to a species of attention. The others piled up behind her.
“We were just coordinating with ImpSec for a raid on House Bharaputra,” Quinn said breathlessly. “You’ve come back to yourself! You were cryo-amnesic—have you recovered? That Durona doctor said you would—”
“About ninety percent, I think. I’m still finding holes in my memory. Quinn—what happened?”
She looked slightly overwhelmed. “Since when? When you were killed—”
“Start from five days ago. When you came to the Durona Group.”
“We came looking for you. Found you, after nearly four bleeding months!”
“You were stunned, Mark was taken, and Lilly Durona hustled me and my surgeon off to what she thought was going to be safety,” Miles cued her to the focus he wanted.
“Oh, she was your doctor. I thought—never mind.” Quinn bit back her emotions, pulled off her helmet and pushed back her hood, raked red-tipped fingers through her smashed curls, and began organizing the information into its essentials, combat-style. “We lost hours at the start. By the time Elena and Taura got another aircar, the snatchers were long gone. They searched, but no luck. When they got back to the Durona Group, Bel and I were just waking up. Lilly Durona insisted you were safe. I didn’t believe her. We pulled out, and I contacted ImpSec. They started to pull in their people, who were scattered all over the planet looking for clues as to your whereabouts, and sent them to focus on Mark. More delays, while they worked through their pet theory that the kidnappers were Cetagandan bounty-hunters. And House Ryoval had about fifty different sites and facilities to check on, not including this one, which really was secret.
“Then Lilly Durona decided you were missing after all. Since it seemed more important to find you, we diverted all available forces to that. But we had fewer leads. We didn’t even find the abandoned lightflyer for two days. And it yielded up no clues.”
“Right. But you suspected Ryoval had Mark.”
“But Ryoval wanted Admiral Naismith. We thought Ryoval would figure out he had the wrong man.”
He ran his hands over his face. His head was aching. And so was his stomach. “Did you ever figure that Ryoval wouldn’t care? In a few minutes, I want you to go down the corridor and look at the cell they kept him in. And smell it. I want you to look closely. In fact, go now. Sergeant Taura, stay.” ,
Reluctantly, Quinn led Elena and Bel out. Miles leaned forward; Taura bent to hear.
“Taura, what happened? You’re a Jacksonian. You know what Ryoval is, what this place is. How did you all lose sight of that?”
She shook her big head. “Captain Quinn thought Mark was a complete screw-up. After your death, she was so angry she could barely give him the time of day. And at first I agreed with her. But … I don’t know. He tried so hard. The creche raid only failed by a hair. If we’d been faster, or if the shuttle defense perimeter had done their job, we would have brought it off, I think.”
He grimaced in agreement. “There’s no mercy for failures of timing in no-margin operations like that one was. Commanders can have no mercy either, or you might as well stay in orbit and feed your troops directly into the ship’s waste disintegrators, and save steps.” He paused. “Quinn will be a good commander someday.”
“I think so, sir.” Taura pulled off her helmet and hood, and stared around. “I kind of came to like the little schmuck, though. He tried. He tried and failed, but no one else tried at all. And he was so alone.”
“Alone. Yes. Here. For five days.”
“We really did think Ryoval would figure out he wasn’t you.”
“Maybe … maybe so.” Some part of his mind clung to that hope himself. Maybe it hadn’t been as bad as it looked, as bad as his galloping imagination supplied.
Quinn and company returned, looking universally grim.
“So,” he said, “you’ve found me. Now maybe we can all focus on Mark. I’ve been all over this place in the last hours, and I haven’t found a clue. Did the absconding staff take him along? Is he out wandering around in the desert somewhere, freezing? I’ve got six of Iverson’s men looking outside with ’scopes, and another one checking the facility’s disintegration records for fifty-plus kilo lumps of protein. And other bright ideas, folks?”