Huber didn’t see the blond assemblyman. He might be inside the building, of course. Aircars, mostly battered-looking private vehicles— the large trucks were garaged in an annex outside the walls—filled the grounds within the compound. They were parked so tightly that except for the path between the gate and the central building, anyone walking across the tract would have to worm his way through and sometimes over cars.
The people they’d flown into the city watched Orichos and her companions from the buildings and from the cars themselves. Everyone Huber saw was armed, and they were trying to look tough. For most of them, that didn’t require a great deal of effort.
“All right, madam snoop,” Grayle said to Orichos. “You’re here now. How do you intend to proceed?”
“We’ll go directly to the file room adjacent to your personal office on the fourth floor, Assemblyman Grayle,” Orichos said calmly. “If there’s no record of wrongdoing there, you’ll have my apologies and we’ll leave immediately.”
Grayle’s eyes narrowed; she looked angry but not, if Huber read her correctly, afraid. “I’ll have your apology and your resignation, Captain,” she said. “And you’ll be lucky if there’s not a libel suit as well!”
“Just as you please,” Orichos said. She didn’t look concerned either.
Grayle turned on her heel and strode into the building. Orichos followed immediately instead of waiting for the permission that wasn’t going to come. Huber gestured the recorders ahead of him and brought up the rear. He didn’t bother trying to watch behind him; he knew he’d see an armed mob, and it wasn’t going to make him feel any more comfortable.
The two girls now looked nervous. They were walking so close together so that they occasionally bumped elbows. They’d started to understand….
There were two elevators in the wall to the right of the doorway.
Grayle gestured to them with her left hand and said sardonically, “Take your pick, snooper.”
“We’ll take the one that goes to the fourth floor,” Orichos replied in a mild tone, stepping in front of Grayle and pressing the call button for the cage farther from the door.
Grayle’s face went carefully neutral, but the male assemblyman with her said, “Hey, how does she—”
“Shut up, Fewsett!” Grayle said. Her voice didn’t rise, but the snarl in it brought a look of surprise and anger to her subordinate’s face. He cocked his right hand back, then gaped in blank horror at what he’d been about to do.
Grayle ignored him, pushing past Orichos to enter the elevator before the delegation from the Assembly could do so. Fewsett followed; other Volunteers would have done so as well, but there simply wasn’t room on what was meant as a private car for the highest officials.
Huber grinned without humor. He didn’t doubt that there’d be a sufficiency of gunmen already waiting for them upstairs.
The elevator rose smoothly but with a repetitive squeak to which the plump recording technician winced in synchrony. The thinner girl took her hand and squeezed it tightly. The contact seemed to help; at any rate, the twitches immediately became less pronounced.
The elevator stopped. What had been the back of the cage opened into an office appointed like a throne room. A large stuffed chair with gilt upholstery stood on a dais behind an agate-topped desk. Behind it was a wood-framed triptych of heroic figures created not by an artist but by a technician using stock imagery. Highlights on the pictures’ glossy surface veiled them; a good result.
Even urban structures on Plattner’s World tended to be tall and narrow, slipped in among the trees that were the source of the planet’s considerable income. This high-ceilinged office was half the building’s top floor; even so, another dozen people besides the six waiting gunmen would’ve filled the space left over by the desk and throne. They’d have had to stand, because there was no other chair in the room.
Grayle and her henchman got out first as they had entered. Fewsett immediately began to talk in a guttural whisper to the leader of the waiting squad, a slender man with tattoos and a serpentine copper bracelet.
Captain Orichos led the way to the small door at the side of the throne room; Huber brought up the rear. Through it was a paneled hallway with a stairwell at the far end and a doorway on the left side. Another squad of guards waited in the hall.
“Back, if you please!” Orichos said, gesturing at the guards. She opened the side door and entered the file room beyond.
Huber gave the gunmen a wry smile. They didn’t know what was going on any better than he himself did. That didn’t make him and the Volunteers brothers, but it was a good enough illustration of a soldier’s life to amuse him.
There was no one in the file room; five-drawer cabinets circled the walls, leaving only an aisle in the middle. Though the Freedom Party was as technically advanced as the rest of Plattner’s World, hardcopy remained a necessary backup to electronic files and ultimately more secure than any form of information linked directly to the outside world.
“Assemblyman Grayle?” Orichos said to the woman watching from the doorway. “Would you or a deputy please join us before I begin examining your files? Although the whole nation is witness to the proceedings—”
The thin technician’s face was frozen, her mouth slightly open; she held her wand rigidly upright where it recorded events in a sphere around her. The other technician huddled against a back corner, leaning on her wand as though it were a cane. Huber supposed it was doing an adequate job of recording the parts of the file room that were blocked from her companion’s lenses.
“—I’d like someone in whom you have confidence to be present to ensure that I’m merely examining files, not adding anything to them.”
“By the Lord, you’d better not be adding stuff!” Fewsett growled. He added, presumably to some of the gunmen, “Come on, boys.”
Grayle stepped in herself. Huber squeezed against the cabinets behind him to allow her to get by if she wanted, but she merely gave him a sneer. “Go ahead!” she said. “You’ll find nothing because there’s nothing to find.”
Fewsett crowded in behind Grayle and touched her shoulder to move her back. She slapped his hand without looking around. More Volunteers stacked into the doorway; those in front pushed back against their fellows to the rear to keep from being shoved into Fewsett’s massive figure.
Orichos nodded, then turned to a cabinet midway down the row. “Let the record show that I am at a cabinet marked Finance,” she said, and opened the second drawer from the top.
Huber stood with his head cocked so that though he mainly faced the Freedom Party officials, he could still watch Orichos out of the corner of his eye. Grayle’s expression was one of iron disdain; Fewsett glared past her with a mixture of anger and frustration.
“Bring the wand closer,” Orichos snapped to the plump recorder. When there was no reaction, Orichos lifted the girl’s arm and placed the lens wand on the edge of the drawer. In a dry, mechanical voice Orichos continued, “I am removing a file marked Special.”
“What is this?” Grayle said on a rising note. She tried to look behind her but the way was filled with gunmen. “Where’s Patronus? Why isn’t he here?”
Orichos displayed her empty right hand to the lens wand, then reached into the drawer and brought out a folder with a red tab. She spread her left hand in plain sight also, then opened the folder.
Fewsett turned and bellowed, “Get that bastard Patronus here now! He’s the fucking party treasurer. We need him now!”
Huber didn’t move except to slide his finger into the trigger guard. He’d figured how the business was going to play out, but he didn’t know quite the exact time.