Getaway world, p.10
Getaway World, page 10
"Not too clever. She's got two people tailing her every move, and probably more electronic gadgetry in her house than a mad inventor."
"It could be she knows she's being watched and just has not had the need to shake her tails off vet."
Yvette shook her head. "Call it a hunch, but that's not the way I read the situation.
Remember, Helena's had all the training but not a lick of practical experience. She got involved in this business because she wanted to show us all that she could handle the job. I'm willing to bet she's so wrapped up in her own infallibility she hasn't even considered the possibility that she's been spotted. You said those tails were pretty good and, subconsciously, Helena doesn't want to see them there."
"She'll know they're there when she gets my note; I told her so quite explicitly."
"Poor girl, it'll probably be something of a blow to her ego. But she'll survive it, I think. I only wish we knew some way of getting off this planet again. We've been so busy looking for her that we haven't really had a chance to explore that situation."
"She may be able to help us there. She's been here for weeks, observing conditions. She must know something about the schedule of incoming and outgoing ships, how things are organized and guarded, and so on. With her knowledge and our diabolical cunning, we should be able to manage something."
"Overweening modesty certainly isn't one of your shortcomings, is it? Alors, we dine tonight at the Beechwood Cafe and hope to receive a com call at seven from a 'wrong number."
They were at the restaurant at six-thirty and ordered their meal. They specifically requested a booth towards the back, near the public corn unit. At five minutes before seven, Yvette got up from the table and stationed herself beside the instrument. She tried to remain casual and not look at her ringwatch as the minutes crept past toward the appointed hour.
At precisely seven o'clock, the unit began buzzing. Yvette let it buzz for several seconds, then-when she could stand the suspense no longer-she picked up the receiver, making sure the visual transmit button was off, and said, "Hello?"
"Oh, I'm terribly sorry," came Helena's welcome voice. "I must have dialed the wrong number." And, as instructed, she clicked off immediately.
Yvette went back to the table and reported to her brother. "Connections completed."
Jules gave a tiny nod. "We'd better finish our dinner then and get home to sleep. We've got an important meeting tomorrow."
The operation designed to shake off Helena's tails was scheduled to begin at noon the next day in the same shopping center where Jules had first spotted Helena. The Head's Girl Friday appeared promptly when she was supposed to and began walking into a certain restaurant, as though to have lunch before doing her shopping. The two shadows started to follow her inside, but their plans were interrupted by 'two timely "accidents."
Yvette d'Alembert, carrying an awkward armload of . packages, collided with the female follower, scattering boxes in all directions. "Now look what you've done, you clumsy oaf,"
Yvette shrieked. "I sure as hell hope nothing got broken in there. Did you hear anything break?"
"No," said the other woman, anxious to be away from this scene and back to following her target. "No, I don't think so. I'm in kind of a hurry..."
"Sure, I'll bet you are," Yvette said shrilly. She grabbed the woman's arm as the other tried to slip away from her. "That's what gives you the right to knock people down and scatter their packages from one end of the block to the other, isn't it? If you wouldn't be in so much of a hurry, maybe you could take the time to look where you're going. Maybe you wouldn't be running into total strangers like this."
Yvette's whining voice was beginning to draw a crowd, which was the last thing the other woman wanted. It is not good form for a shadow to draw attention. This whole business was becoming very embarrassing. "Listen, I'm very sorry, truly I am, but..."
"What good does 'sorry' do me, huh? Does it help me pick up my packages that are all over the sidewalk?" Yvette started limping exaggeratedly on one leg, while still holding onto the other woman's arm. "And on top of everything else, I think I sprained my ankle when you knocked me down."
"I didn't knock you down..."
"Then why are my packages all over the street? Do you think I just threw them there for my health? Why is my ankle throbbing with pain? It feels like it's going to fall off any second. It's all your fault."
"Look, I said I'm sorry, now let me go!" The woman pushed Yvette away and started off in the direction Helena had taken. Yvette could have tried to stall her some more, but it would have been too much. She didn't want to divert any more suspicion onto herself than was necessary. She had held up the tail long enough for Helena to do what was required; it was now up to the Girl Friday to see if she did indeed have what it took to be a secret agent.
The male follower, meanwhile-oblivious to the fate of his comrade-had actually gotten into the restaurant after Helena. Here, however, Jules was ready with a similar ploy. As the man walked quickly to keep up with Helena's increasing pace, Jules stepped in front of him with a tray full of food and cold drinks. The contents ended up being spilled all down the front of the shadow's clothing.
"Oh, I'm dreadfully sorry, I didn't see you," Jules said in an apologetic manner that would have won him the Galaxy Award for acting "Here, let me help you wipe some of that mess off."
"That really isn't necessary," the other man said hastily. His only thought was getting out of here quickly and after Helena.
"No, really, I insist." Jules took the man's wrist in an unbreakable grip and led him over to one table where there was a pile of napkins. His mien was so self-deprecating that the other man was not really aware that he had no choice in the matter. Jules was strong enough to drag a horse if he chose.
"Please, I have to meet someone," the man protested. "This will only take a second, relax," Jules assured the fellow in soothing tones. "And besides, we don't want to stain that nice outfit you're wearing, do we?" With exaggerated neatness he wiped and dabbed at the spots on the front of the other man's suit with his right hand while holding the man firmly in place with the left. He reached over and dipped the corner of one napkin in a glass of cold water that was standing nearby. "This will keep some of those spots from setting in permanently," he blathered on. "It's a trick my mother taught me."
"I don't give a dancing drap for your mother," the follower said furiously. He tried to tug gently away from Jules's grip and found that was impossible, so he gave a mighty heave with all his strength. Jules chose that instant to let go, with the result that the man tumbled heels over head backwards over the table, crashing into another pair of diners and spilling their food all over the floor.
Stunned, the man tried to pick himself up off the ground and Jules, ever helpful, went over to lend him assistance. The man had almost reached a standing position when Jules's foot "slipped." Actually, Jules used a smooth bit of judo to flip the man over, but the results were the same: the hapless shadow landed hard on the floor once more. This time he was even more stunned, and did not try to get up immediately.
"Don't help me!" he snarled as Jules approached him again. "I'm perfectly capable of handling this on my own, thank you."
"You haven't done too well so far," Jules commented quietly.
The man got slowly to his feet, muttering some very uncomplimentary things about Jules under his breath. At that moment the man's partner burst through the door. She looked around and saw her comrade in sorry disarray, with no sign of Helena. She knew the girl she was following had not gone out the front door, so she hurried around to the back, with her coworker hot on her heels.
The restaurant did have a back door, which led out onto an alley. Several other shops had back doors which also led out into the same alley, but there was no one in sight. The woman pointed for her friend to go to the right while she moved left. They each went to their respective ends, but there was no trace of Helena on either side. Trying the doors as they came back down the alley, they found them all locked from the inside.
By the time they returned to the inside of the restaurant; there was no sign of the two people whose "clumsiness" had delayed them. They had vanished as efficiently as Helena.
Fearfully, the two people went to the nearest vidicom booth to inform their boss that they had lost their target. Garst would not be pleased.
As soon as she saw Jules begin his act, Helena moved into action. Jules had told her in his note that he would have a cart waiting in the alley out back of the restaurant, and indeed there was one. He had fed it with plenty of coins and left its motor running so that it wouldn't be recalled to the local dispatching station. Now Helena hopped in quickly and drove off down the alley to the street. Its fifteen-kilometer-an-hour pace was infuriatingly slow in this situation, and Helena felt she could make better time on foot. She could have, at least as far as the end of the alley, but Jules had been thinking of long distance movement. Running would move her faster, but would wear her out and her pursuers might be able to catch up with her. The carts were slower but steadier, and could go indefinitely.
Helena drove her cart around the corner and merged with the general traffic. It being lunchtime, there were a good many other carts on the street as well, and it was easy for her to lose herself in the flow. After driving for twenty minutes in a most circuitous route, she came to the park Jules had designated as the rendezvous spot. She left the cart then and walked to the specific stand of trees Jules had mentioned in his note.
The d'Alemberts joined her within three minutes. Their descriptions were not as well known-the followers had seen them only for a couple of minutes, under harried circumstances--and so they did not need to take as much precaution getting here.
"Oh, it's so good to see the two of you again," Helena said, kissing Jules and Yvette in turn. "But what are you both doing here?"
"Looking after you," Jules said sternly. "A person with your responsibilities simply has no right to go gallivanting off into danger anytime she has a mind to. If the knowledge you're carrying in your head should reach the wrong people, all of SOTS would be in trouble."
"But..." Helena started to protest.
"Plus," Yvette added, cutting her off, "your father is worried to death about you. If you refuse to deal on a professional level, think on a personal level. Is it right for you to treat him this way?"
"You could have been killed at any time," Jules went on with the harangue. "You still could, even more now that you've slipped your tail. Is it worth it?"
Helena hung her head. "I'm sorry."
"Yes, and I'll bet you'll be sorrier by the time we get you home. I f we get you home,"
Yvette added ominously. "But right now, we're more concerned about getting you there; the spanking can come later. You've been here several weeks now at least. What have you learned about the place that might help us?"
"Not nearly as much as I would have liked," Helena admitted. "I've learned virtually nothing about whoever's running the show. The administration is performed very quietly and secretively here; they don't want much publicity. I have learned that things seem to be controlled from a complex over on the north side of town, less than a kilometer from the spaceport. There's a series of low, white buildings with no particularly solid looking defenses in front. But the guards seem to spend an awful lot of time in that section. The address is 666 Crowley Drive. I'm convinced something is going on inside there, but I haven't been able to get in yet to check up on it."
"No visible defenses may mean they've got some pretty sophisticated stuff," Jules mused. "Or it may mean there's nothing there worth guarding. It's hard to tell at this point. What about ships? We'll need some method of transportation if we're going to get away from here."
"There's always plenty of ships on the spaceport field. Sanctuary has no agriculture and no industry. It imports everything. That's why the prices are so scandalous."
Yvette gave a low whistle. "And they support 27,000 people here, day in and day out.
That must take an enormous organization."
"It would take a hundred ships a day to bring in all the food," Jules mused aloud.
"Yes, and that only scratches the surface. The luxury goods have to come from somewhere, too," Helena pointed out. "I've done a good deal of figuring on this myself-I can think, on occasion. All these shiploads of cargo have to be coordinated. They have to be diverted from elsewhere, since this planet is not officially on anyone's charts. The paperwork alone must be staggering, the way they juggle all the shipments without letting anyone suspect where they're going."
"We're talking about an Empire-wide conspiracy," Jules said. "It might even be related to the one that started the business with the robots."
"If I hadn't seen Garst fall into that recycling vat with my own eyes," Yvette said, "I would swear this had his style to it. First, to find people disappearing without a trace. Second, because the operation is organized with such terrific efficiency. Third-well, he was First Advisor to Marchioness Gindri of Vesa, an airless moon that had to import all its goods to feed a population much larger than this. If anyone would know how to establish a setup like this, it would be him."
"I'm sure he didn't have a monopoly on those talents," Jules said. "The coincidence is strange, though. Perhaps the boss of this endeavor is someone who worked with him at one time or who has read about his methods."
Jules could see that all this talk about Garst was up setting his sister. When the two of them had been conducting their investigation on Vesa, there'd been a man with whom Yvette had found some romantic attachment; but Dak Lehman had died, as had innumerable others, as a victim of Garst's murder and robbery ring, and Yvette still held bitter feelings about the man responsible. Garst had fallen into a vat of chemicals while Yvette was chasing him through Vesa's recycling plant, and even though that could not have been a pleasant death Yvette felt cheated of her revenge.
The talk of Garst, coming on top of the upsetting news about Pias Nav, was beginning to fray Yvette's nerves, so Jules decided to change the subject now before the conversation became even stickier. "It doesn't really matter, though, who is behind this operation at the moment. We have to get off Sanctuary so that we can report all of this to headquarters. The Service will be able to take care of the detail work."
Yvette nodded agreement. "The most obvious move is that we dare not go back to our respective apartments. The Boss will know by now, Helena, that you gave his people the slip, which means that you had some reason to do so. He only left you free because he thought he could keep a close eye on you; now that his game has been spoiled, he'd either have you killed or picked up for questioning the second you're spotted."
"Descriptions of us will be out, too," Jules added. "Those tails didn't get too good a look at us, but anyone who appears to resemble us even vaguely will probably be snatched."
Helena shrugged. "There's nothing worth going back for in my apartment. A few notes, perhaps, but I have them memorized. I suppose the only choice we have now is to run for the spaceport and hope to sneak aboard an outgoing ship before they think to stop us." "Exactly." Jules knew that everything that had gone before this moment-the burglaries, the chases by police, the arrival at Sanctuary under false identities hard though they may have been, would be child's play compared to this final stage of the assignment. The entire security force of this criminal's haven would he mustered to prevent them from getting away with the information they possessed. That information would spell doom for the leaders of Sanctuary.
The trio from SOTE would have to look carefully with each step they took-for each step might well be their last.
Chapter 9
Ambush and Ally
Garst slammed his fist down on his desktop in undiluted anger. "What do you mean, you lost her?" he bellowed. The woman who'd been assigned to follow Helena wilted visibly.
Even though she was reporting over the vidicom from the restaurant, her boss's rage was so vast that it came through full strength over the screen in front of her. "She had help," she explained weakly. "We weren't expecting it."
"That's right," added her male companion in defense. "Up until that moment, we'd had no indication she even knew we were there."
"And so you let yourselves be bummed into one of the simplest sucker games around, eh?" Garst's voice dripped cynicism. "Weren't you given special orders -that she was a high SOTE official? Didn't you realize that meant she would be unusually adept? Couldn't you have figured out that one reason why we were watching her was because she might have some confederates who would help her?" He switched off the corn unit in disgust, stood up, then walked once around the perimeter of his desk.
His temper only slightly cooler after this excursion, he sat down again and punched viciously at a button on his intercom. In a second, the screen lit up to show the visage of Jinda Rawling, his chief of security. "I suppose you were monitoring that last report,"
Garst said.
"Yes sir," the woman replied. "I have to apologize for the sheer ineptitude of my two people, I'd thought them better trained than that."
"Never mind the apologies, it's too late to do anything about that. What are you doing about picking the woman up again?"
"At your orders, six, we placed directional beepers in all her clothes while she was out of her apartment. The beepers had to be small to avoid their being noticed, which only gives them a broadcast range of under one kilometer. I've sent teams out to sweep the city in an orderly pattern. We can cover the entire metropolitan area in an hour; with any-luck, we'll relocate her in less time than that."
"Good. Keep me informed of all progress."
"Yes, sir. What do you want us to do when we find her?"
Garst weighed the various alternatives. "Maintain long distance trivision surveillance," he said after a slight pause. "Now that she thinks she's gotten away from us, she may tip her hand. I'm unhappy about that hour, though. An entire world can be lost in that time.
