I stepped over to the stack and tugged experimentally on the top box. Ten kilos at least, I estimated, maybe as much as fifteen. With twenty boxes, that made for two to three hundred kilos of dead weight.
There were a dozen ways a ten-year-old girl could be smuggled past Customs and off the planet. Adding in a quarter metric ton worth of metal boxes instantly eliminated at least half of those options. "Can we maybe cut it down to two or three of them?" I suggested. "We can try to get the rest out later."
"No," Rebekah said, her voice leaving no room for argument. Her eyes flicked over my shoulder at the passageway. "Is the other one with you?"
"The other one?" I asked.
"The woman," she said.
"Oh—Bayta," I said. "Yes, she's just upstairs." I raised an eyebrow. "But you won't be able to talk her into this any easier than—"
"A moment," Karim cut me off, pulling out his comm and holding it to his ear. "Yes?"
He listened for a few seconds, and I saw his throat muscles tighten. "Understood," he said, and put the comm away. "We have to get back at once," he said, moving back toward the curtain. "Three police cars are on their way."
I glanced at Rebekah. Her face was tense, but under control. "Looking for Rebekah?" I asked.
"I doubt it," he said grimly. "I think, my friend, they're looking for you."
SIX :
Karim and I were back up the ladder in fifteen seconds flat. "What is it?" Bayta asked.
"Cops on the way," I told her, moving aside as Karim swung the trapdoor shut. "Possibly looking for us."
"We need to get out of here," Karim said as he put his desk chair back into position over the trapdoor. "Meet them out in the bar."
"Wait a second," I said. "Have the cops been in this office before?"
"Yes, several times," Karim said, still edging toward the door. "Quickly, now."
"And they obviously didn't find the secret entrance?" I asked, not moving.
"No, of course not."
"Then let's just sit tight," I told him, circling the desk and sitting down again.
He stared at me as if I were crazy. "But what if they're looking for you?"
"What if they are?" I countered as Bayta sat down as well. "We're honest, upright citizens of the Terran Confederation, here to see the sights of New Tigris."
"In here?" Karim asked.
"Okay, so we're also here to sample the drinks," I said. "Look, nothing ramps up a cop's personal radar like people under suspicion hurrying to meet him. All that's happened here is that you took pity on a pair of strangers and invited us in to discuss the best places for tourists to visit. What exactly would those places be?"
"Probably Janga's Point and the Gilcress Mountains," Karim said, reluctantly returning to his desk chair and sitting down.
"Scuba and climbing," I said, nodding as I took the kwi off my hand and slipped it back into my pocket. "Good. Now, where are the best places to buy or rent the necessary equipment?"
We were in the middle of a discussion of climbing styles when the police barged in.
They did barge in more or less politely, though, knocking before opening the office door. "Excuse me," their leader said, his eyes automatically checking out each of us before settling on me. "Are you Mr. Frank Donaldson?"
"I am," I confirmed. "Is there a problem?"
"Mr. Veldrick asked us to look for you, sir," the cop said. "Your autocab record showed you were here in Zumurrud District." He looked at Karim. "Mr. Karim will tell you this isn't a particularly safe place for strangers to be, especially with dusk coming on."
"I see," I said, passing over the fact that dusk was at least two hours away. "And who exactly is this Mr. Veldrick who has such interest in autocab records?"
The cop raised his eyebrows slightly. "You don't recognize the name of the man you came here to see?"
"I'm terrible with names," I said. "Remind me."
"Mr. Veldrick is the local administrator of Crown Rosette Electronics," the cop explained. "Which I believe Hardin Industries acquired a few months ago."
I looked at Karim. His expression was studiously neutral, but there was a hint of tension showing beneath the mask. "And one of Mr. Veldrick's duties is to keep track of autocab records?"
"Not all of them," the cop said, smiling. "Just yours. Would you come with us, please? Mr. Veldrick is most anxious to meet you."
"Then by all means let's relieve his anxiety," I said, standing up and gesturing Bayta to do likewise. Without knowing how the police were set up outside the bar, anything short of meek compliance would be potential suicide. Considerations of countermoves would have to wait until we could further assess the situation. "Thank you for your time, Mr. Karim. Perhaps we can pick up our conversation again some other time."
"Perhaps," Karim said, nodding gravely to me. "Good day to you, Mr. Donaldson."
There were five more cops waiting outside, three of them engaged in a sort of pickup staring contest with Karim's bar-door buddies. Three marked patrol cars were lined up at the curb, as well, and I wondered just what percentage of Imani City's police force was represented by this group. Either I was a VIP of the top rank, deserving of an official police escort, or else it was a quiet day down at the station.
Or else the cops preferred to run in convoy when they came to Zumurrud District.
Veldrick lived in one of the areas of the city we hadn't passed through on our way in, and it was clearly yet another neighborhood the doom-and-gloom reporters had ignored. The houses were larger and snootier than most of those Bayta and I had seen up to now, set back from the street across large, manicured lawns. Crown Rosette Electronics, apparently, was doing well for itself.
I half expected a neatly uniformed butler to answer the chime. But the man who opened the door was instead wearing a nicely tailored business suit. He was middle-aged and graying, starting to run a little overweight, but with the piercing eyes of a man accustomed to quick evaluation, analysis, and decision. Veldrick, without a doubt.
His eyes flicked once across my face, then dipped quickly up and down the rest of my body, rather like a laser scanner selecting the grading for a particular side of beef. "You must be Mr. Donaldson," he said in greeting. His eyes shifted to Bayta.
And paused there, taking a second and even a third look, his forehead creasing slightly. "And you are …?" he asked.
"This is Jasmine, my assistant," I told him. "You must be Mr. Veldrick."
He looked back at me, the frown clearing away. "That's right," he said. "Come in—I've been expecting you."
He ushered us inside, dismissing our police escort with a glance, and closed the door behind us. "So I hear," I said. "I must admit to being a bit surprised by that."
"Surprised by my interest in you?" he asked, gesturing us through the foyer toward a decorated archway. "Or surprised I even knew you were here?"
"Mostly the latter," I said. "I'd thought I was keeping a reasonably low profile."
"And so you were," he said as we stepped through the archway into an elegantly furnished great room, complete with an impressive half-wrap wood-burning fireplace. "But one of the necessities of corporate survival is to have as many ears to as much ground as possible. I received private word that Mr. Hardin was sending someone my way, and I've been watching for you ever since."
"With a little help from friends in the police and Customs?" I suggested as Bayta and I sat down on a very comfortable contour couch facing a low serving table.
"Ears to the ground, eyes to the horizon," Veldrick said with a smile as he sat down in a throne-like chair on the opposite side of the serving table from us. He tapped a button, and the table opened up to reveal a variety of drinks and small finger foods. "May I offer you some refreshment?"
"Thank you," I said, looking over the selection. It was a nice middle-of-the-road assortment, neither too extravagant nor too cheap. Just the sort of offering I'd expect from someone who wasn't sure whether the corporate visitor across the table was a potential ally or a potential adversary.