The bunk bed frame was bolted to the wall with the kind of nonreversible screws that required a special tool to remove. The mattress itself was soft and floppy, filled with some kind of foam chips, with no internal springs or anything else he could adapt as a weapon. The table was fastened to the floor, while the comfort chair was far too large and heavy to be of any use as a weapon—he could throw it once and probably flatten whomever it landed on, but he would never get a second shot with it before the rest of the guards piled on top of him. The bunk's two blankets, while thick enough to be effective at their task, were composed of a flimsy cloth that would tear with very little effort, making them useless as bonds or choke cords. The large bathroom towel was made of a similar material.
The room's single door ran all the way to the ceiling, preventing him from suspending himself out of sight above it in the classic jungle-cat-drop position so beloved by action melodramas. There was likewise no room to hide beneath the lower bunk, and the shower enclosure was completely transparent.
There was a click of the lock, and he turned as one of his guards opened the door, a thick sheaf of paper in his hands. "Here," he said, watching Caine warily as he crouched down and set the stack on the floor just inside the door. "Prefect Galway's compliments."
"What is it?" Caine asked, frowning at the papers.
"You asked for a book," the guard said. "There it is." His eyes still on Caine, he grabbed the edge of the door and pulled it closed again.
Caine crossed to the papers and picked them up, mentally chalking up one more to Galway's credit. An electronic book would have required an electronic reader, whose inner workings Caine might have been able to jury-rig into a weapon against the surveillance cameras. A standard bound book, on the other hand, could have been used as a throwing weapon. Instead, Galway had given him five hundred individual pages that couldn't be used for anything except reading material.
Or so he apparently thought.
Setting the rest of the sheaf of papers on the floor beside the comfort chair, he took the first page and tore off the upper two corners. Going to the shower enclosure, he moistened them with drops of liquid soap from the dispenser, then took them to the two obvious cameras and carefully pasted one over each of the lenses.
That left the third camera still intact, of course. But he was willing to play the game for now and pretend he hadn't spotted that one. If and when he was ready to make his move, its presence shouldn't matter.
He took the rest of the page and meticulously folded and refolded it until he had a narrow, stiff, rulershaped probe. Then, lugging the comfort chair over to the door, he sat down and began prodding carefully at the crack between the door and the frame. It was late and he was tired, but it would look odd if he didn't put at least a little effort into freeing himself.
There was no way such a flimsy probe could actually spring the lock, of course, and he could imagine the secret watchers having a good laugh at the would-be blackcollar's pathetic would-be escape attempt.
They were welcome to their amusement. Playing with the lock this way gave him a perfect excuse to press his ear against the metal wall and to listen to the noises conducted through it. The first step, Lathe always said, was to scout out the territory and to learn the unique rhythms of people and movement and equipment.
Working industriously with his folded paper, Caine settled in to begin learning the rhythms of his new home.
"General?" the officer at the Novak's comm station called. "Passenger section reports the shuttle has returned."
"Acknowledged," Lepkowski said, turning away from the bridge canopy and his contemplation of the darkened world turning beneath him. "What's current status on Security communications down there?"
"Still low-level, sir," the officer said. "Aside from that one thirty-minute spike, it's all been very quiet down there."
That spike most likely being when Security realized that the drop pods had carried only hang-gliding dummies. If things had gone according to plan, Lathe and the others should have been safely to Inkosi City by then, possibly even at Shaw's place and under the Khala blackcollars' protection.
If things hadn't gone according to plan, they might already be dead.
With an effort, he shook away the thought. They were in danger, certainly. Every military operation, no matter how carefully planned, carried risks. But he'd known these men a long time. If anyone could pull this off, it was them.
And meanwhile, he had more important things to do than worry. Squaring his shoulders, he stepped up behind the helmsman. "Change of plans, Lieutenant," he said, pulling a magnecoded card from his tunic pocket. "Here's our new course setting."
"Yes, sir," the other said, frowning slightly as he took the card and plugged it into the reader. "It'll take us about three days," he said, peering at the display. "That'll run us nearly a week off schedule, plus whatever time we spend there."
"The passengers will get over it," Lepkowski assured him.
The other smiled faintly. "Yes, sir. Helm stands ready."
"On our way, then," Lepkowski said. "Full power; flank speed as soon as she'll take it."
"Yes, sir."
Ponderously, the Novak began to pull itself out of orbit; and as it did so, Lepkowski gave the planet below one final look. Everything was going well down there, he told himself firmly. Of course it was.
CHAPTER 5
"Silcox's building is just around the corner," Reger said, pointing through the windshield at the next intersecting street. "Second from the corner on the right. You can see it over the row of houses here."
"I see it," Skyler said, leaning forward to look past Kanai's shoulder as he adjusted his goggles over his battle-hood. The building was relatively short, four stories tall, with only the top visible above the twostory duplexes lining the street they were driving on.
He shifted his attention back to the street itself, searching for other traffic. But aside from rows of parked cars along both curbs, no other vehicles were in sight. "Hawking?"
"All set," Hawking confirmed, sealing the last fastener at the neck of his borrowed general's uniform.
"Did you want us to do a drive-by first?"
"Better not," Skyler said, getting a grip on the door handle. "A Security general shouldn't have to search for his stakeouts. Kanai?"
"Ready," the other blackcollar said.
"Okay, Reger, slow down," Skyler ordered. There were a pair of parked vans coming up that would be ideal. "Kanai ... go."
Together, they wrenched open their doors and jumped from the slowly moving car, hitting the ground jogging. Kanai ducked between the vans, with Skyler right behind him. They waited there until Reger had made a leisurely turn around the corner, then stole across the lawn between the two duplexes, coming to a halt in the shadow of a stubby tree a dozen meters from the side of Anne's building.
Besides being short, the building was also relatively narrow, at least compared to the other apartment houses in the neighborhood. There were only two apartments per floor, Kanai had told them, with Anne's on the third floor east, the opposite side from their current position. The building had interior hallways, a staircase at each end of the building, and a single door front and rear on the first floor.
Security's observers would probably be watching both those doors, of course.
Unfortunately for them, there were other ways into a building besides the doors. Especially a building like this one, whose exterior walls were composed of an alternating pattern of brick and rough-cut stone.
It took thirty seconds to fasten their plastic crampons onto their gloves and boots. Through the decorative bushes in the building's front yard Skyler could see Reger's car pulled alongside one of the other parked cars, with the newly minted General Hawking conversing inaudibly with the driver. The Security car's other occupant had gotten out and was standing by the curb, watching the conversation across the car's roof with his back to the building he was supposed to be guarding.