Rob was eighteen stories up, on a roof looking down.
He liked out-thinking his opponents. Made things way more interesting, when you could get them to do most of the work for you.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t going to be much of an option here. He had a blank canvas and a full spectrum of paint, plus an unknown number of potential witnesses.
So he was back to kinetic solutions. Physical force instead of elegance. Good thing Miguel had sent an expert.
His target was Carlota’s publisher on Borlait. They’d considered the literary agent, but Rob assumed that the woman was smart enough to hide the manuscript someplace safe, rather than carrying it around with her, legal niceties notwithstanding. Too easy for someone to steal it from a one-lawyer office, or break into her flat for it.
The publisher, on the other hand, would have the tools to make a hundred copies and stash them wherever. Plus, Alicia had assured him that security around the office was poor. Almost negligible, but he had to account for the fact that it was probably meant to keep the merely mortal out.
Not Alicia.
Rob studied the building from the top of the taller building across the alley.
Office tower. Fourteen stories tall. Lower middle kind of place, filled with lawyers, shippers, salespeople. And one publishing house.
Folks not normally important enough to really bother with, when there were a few towers in sight where a single corporation might fill all thirty or fifty stories with folks. Usually the ones handling back-office tasks for a resort, from HR to PR to kitchen supplies.
Logistics was a complicated skill set. Without a full planet to draw on, a lot of things had to be shipped in from elsewhere, but that just meant that much of Borlait was a game preserve for rich tourists to explore.
Bennan was the heart and soul of the planet, but even a rich place like this had a few wrong neighborhoods.
The city had street lights, but most of them were ground-level for pedestrians and vehicles. Rob had circled the building four times over the course of the day, another tourist going from A to B and a little lost.
He was pretty sure nobody had recognized him for what he was, but the two people he had seen that stood out were both looking for a woman in her early fifties.
Why they might think that Carlota would come to the publisher directly was anybody’s guess, but Rob supposed that if you had pulled in every single body you could, including local law enforcement, then you could afford to just watch the building. And maybe they were watching for folks like him, latecomers to the party that they could watch or maybe arrest.
Which was why he was on the roof. Too easy to be spotted on the ground, if he tried to enter a dark office tower after hours. Alarms would sound, but more importantly, eyeballs would notice and he’d have other issues.
Once upon a time, Nigel Phipps had been a cowboy with Aquitaine’s Fourth Saxon Legion, before they’d gotten famous. Hussars in the galactic age, except that Keller had shown just how dangerous such a concept could be.
Nigel had retired before then, though, hooking up with Jorge and the Can’t Shoot Straight Gang as their armorer and weapons specialist. He’d come up with some really weird ideas for low-tech toys, and made sure that Rob carried them in the field.
He’d also saved Rob’s ass with such requirements, that one morning somebody had tried to kick in Rob’s front door to shoot him, back on Ramsey.
Tonight, a climbing harness. You could do this with repulsers, but they made noise and tended to flash lights downward, which would be exactly wrong, since the folks he wanted to avoid were all below him.
Nigel would be pleased, next time Rob saw him and could describe this situation.
The roof over there was almost certainly locked and alarmed. Maybe something he could disable, but maybe not. Alicia had gotten inside the building’s wiring, and assured him that it was a mechanical system, rather than centrally controlled from a single switch she could commandeer.
Funny that something could be so cheap and simple that it defeated the most powerful computer hackers out there. Doubly so when it was accidental, rather than someone making conscious decisions.
Cutting the power to the building would also cut the alarms, but that might set off alarms downtown at the power company, who would send someone to investigate. Probably police but maybe fire as well, just in case.
Instead, Rob had sat in a nearby coffee shop that afternoon and noted that the building didn’t have central cooling. The climate of Bennan was as close to perfect as you could get, so they might not have ever bothered.
That meant windows open, sometimes facing out onto fire escapes. Sometimes, patios. Sometimes just open.
Not everyone had closed them before they went home tonight.
Rob nodded and pulled out a nightvision rig that he hooked over his head, ocular still up, but available when he needed it. Next, he pulled a crossbow and a thing Nigel had invented in his spare time.
Two electric pulley wheels. Rob peeled the backing off one and stuck it right to the side of the building he was on. He pulled a cord out of the bag and attached it to the pulley.
The bolt he loaded into the crossbow held the other end of the rope, with a warhead that would hit, rupture, and then goop itself against the wall over there in the blink of an eye. Both ends were rated for over one thousand kilograms, as long as the walls they were attached to didn’t rupture.
He turned back and spied his target, a window second floor down from the top, where they had a patio about twelve feet wide with a charcoal grill, a fern in a pot, and a chair.
Rob lined up the shot and fired with a dull thwap as the rope uncoiled.
Thud. Squish.
He counted to three and set the crossbow down, picking up the line and drawing it tight before clamping it off. Now, he had a loop that connected both buildings. About a thirty degree slant, but he’d climbed with worse.
Patiently, Rob broke down the crossbow and other gear and put it all away. He slung the backpack and attached his climbing harness to the loop, checked everything by pulling as hard as he could, then climbed over the coping and lowered himself.
Hanging from the pullies, he set the electric motor to slowly lower him across the alley like a gondola, watching below where anybody might happen to be looking at the night sky as he crossed, and ahead, in case somebody suddenly appeared at a nearby window, where he would no doubt look silly as he came towards them, a giant black owl hunting.
Nothing.
The watchers he thought were plainclothes cops were almost diagonal away from him, and the pair he’d marked as stringers for some other agency were busy not being seen by the cops.
Rob crossed until he was above the patio and stopped the motor. He’d gotten the spacing just about perfect, so he was able to stand on the rail and hold the loop with one hand as he unhooked everything.
Rather than jump down and make any noise, he let patience be his byword and squatted, shifting his hands and moving like warm molasses.
The window was open. The space inside dark, but that dark you got in offices, where there were always minimal lights and emergency markers. Not enough to read by, but more than enough to make out empty desks, filing cabinets, and office doors open like mouths.
Rob reached into a pocket and pulled out one of Alicia’s hand scanners, pointing it at the open sill first and making sure there weren’t any defensive lasers or something. Satisfied, he pointed it deeper inside. This was an insurance processing company, where they got claims for workers comp and sent out investigators to handle things. Not a government agency, but a government contract, because the biggest employers around here were the resorts, and they were forever dealing with injuries on the job.
Nature of the business, he’d been given to understand.
And the resorts didn’t want to pay out any more than they had to, so this place had enough funding to really investigate. However, not enough to be a problem that might bite the hand that fed it.
Couldn’t have that.
He looked around once. He didn’t see anybody in the alley below or looking over the roof two stories above him, so Rob folded himself in half and climbed in.
Inside, relatively wide corridors between clusters of desks crammed together. He supposed field operatives would carry clamshells with them everywhere, so they just needed a flat surface to work and a comm to chat on.
Not a lot of equipment overhead. Spares tucked in a storage room somewhere with proper security, but he didn’t need any of that.
Instead, he lowered the nightvision and pulled a stunner from his pocket. Just enough to knock somebody down without hurting them, because if he had to use it, this part of the mission was blown and he’d be in flight mode away from enemy agents desperately interested in identifying him, same as he was trying to do to them.
Hopefully, Alicia had been able to break into some of the street cameras around here, so he could point to specific places and she could pull images of those faces for Miguel.
Rob made it to the front door. Outside, he could see a spot for a keycard to be held up on the sidewall and the glass doors would unlock. Inside, he presumed a radar sensor would spot him approaching and unlock things with a click. That was pretty standard design.
He also noted the gap between the double doors. Not much. Maybe a centimeter clearance. Sufficient that you could stick your pinky through, but not much more.
He didn’t need more.
With the ocular down, his face was hidden and his gloves would prevent fingerprints. Someone might notice the door opening late at night, but they might not. At least not for a while if he was lucky. And any cameras that might see him would only see a faceless figure in black.
He approached the door sensors slowly and heard the click.
Rob smiled and pushed them open, heading out into the hallway and looking right and left for the stairwell as the doors clicked again and swung shut to lock.
For now.
He took the stairs down to his target slowly, moving on silent feet. The stairwells had sensors that registered movement and lit up, so he left the ocular in place and just turned it all the way down.
Exiting the stairs, he was again in dimness, so he dialed up the night vision. No guards in this building that might need to move around, so he shouldn’t run into anybody, and all of the offices windows had been dark before he started this.
The publisher had a wooden door with a glass window that was frosted over and painted with the corporate name. Worse, they had mechanical locks. As in, metal keys with teeth that turned.
Rob grinned as he knelt and started to work. Nothing fancy, as with the rest of the building. Four pins and it took him less than twenty seconds to have it open. He slipped inside and closed the door behind him, setting the lock just in case somebody came along while he was inside and maybe giving him that much warning.
Receptionist’s office. Two couches and a chair. Low counter with workspace behind it. Potted plants in two corners. Cheap reproduction artwork framed on two walls. Door behind him. Door deeper in.
Rob opened the far door and entered what he could only classify as a maze.
Fortunately, Alicia had gotten her hands on the original blueprints, as well as the as-built results, so he knew which office belonged to Jan Constanz, Publisher, Constanz Books.
Rob was certain he’d have never found it otherwise. The spaces were crammed with boxes that narrowed things down to the point the fire marshal must have been taking bribes under the table. Or just never came and inspected the place. There was always that.
Small offices. Lots of them, all crammed with books and boxes. It was almost like a college, with all the professors lined up in their little kingdoms.
Rob counted down and found his target. Constanz didn’t have a window, which was weird, but Rob supposed that not everybody wanted a view. And all you would see would be another building nearby, as this was the shortest building in the area.
Not much sun.
He paused at the door and looked slowly around with the ocular cranked, but nothing moved. Satisfied, he turned it off and lifted it to his forehead, moving to the desk and turning on a lamp.
The usual mess. Stacks of manuscripts, files, and detritus semi-organized. One coffee mug that might be growing a new civilization in the bottom from the smell of the sludge.
Next to it, Rob couldn’t help but whistle to himself as his brain engaged on the letters his eyes had picked up.
Emil Yankov. Imperial Intelligence. And a number to call.
Rob really wanted to steal the card. It might even have a fingerprint on it that he could lift, which would do wonders. Nobody, however, needed to know that he’d been here.
Pity. Maybe Nigel needed to invent some sort of tool that could secretly lift fingerprints? Cops might have such a thing, but why would they need it to be fast and secret? Why would anybody?
Other than someone like him, committing breaking and entering.
He pulled a camera and snapped a picture, front and back, before replacing the card exactly as it had been.
Nearby, he found a folder marked Rojas. Rob was careful to pull it, open it, and take images of each page before returning it to the pile. Sure enough, Chapter Three.
He wondered if there was a way he could get on Carlota’s mailing list. Breaking in here every few weeks would get silly. And risky. This Yankov fellow had obviously just walked in the front door and requested copies, but Rob didn’t feel like tangling with big time players.
Not without a damned good reason, anyway. More than he had at present.
Looking around briefly, nothing else seemed important. Rob checked the usual places where somebody might hide something, but Constanz didn’t have any interesting secrets. Nothing blackmailable, at least.
Everybody had secrets. Most of them just weren’t worth enough to matter.
He did check the paper calendar on the desk and noted that dates with Carlota Rojas’s name written down had been originally marked in pen, and then crossed out, though he wasn’t sure why.
He went back to the most recent cover letter, rather than waiting until he got safely away to look at his images.
Shit. Speeding up the game? Every two weeks now, then weekly after seven? That certainly put a hard timer on the end of the game. Other players had just lost more than half the time they’d probably originally expected to have, in order to find Carlota.
Was she feeling the pinch? Or putting the pinch on?
He’d have to ask his two experts when he got back to the hotel. This felt important, but Rob was pretty certain that his gender would get in the way of guessing the correct answer.
He put everything away. Triple checked that it looked normal. Withdrew.
Back in the reception room, he set the front door lock and slipped out, then into the stairwell and up, getting back to the floor where he’d originally entered the building
This was when a crazy-ass redneck like Nigel had gotten inside Rob’s head. When Rob had actually started to think like Nigel, and how that man would solve certain problems.
From his pack, he pulled a telescoping piece of metal and attached an unfolded piece of card stock, like a flag. Both slipped between the glass doors easily enough, then Rob lifted them up and turned them ninety degrees.
The inside door sensors were dumb. They registered all this as a person approaching the door from deeper in, and unlocked. Rob pulled the door open and slipped in, disassembling everything as he walked with a smile.
You’d have to watch the footage to make sense of the door opening twice from the inside sensors. Both times, a man in black with no face; once going, once returning.
He made it to the window, clearing everything inside, then outside. Out onto the patio without opening the secured door off to one side, he inspected his rope. Everything good.
Rob climbed up on the wall and attached himself to the rope. Settled, then winched himself back up to the other roof, the electric motors making a little more noise as they had to lift his weight.
Once across the alley, he reached up and caught the coping, pulling himself up and onto the roof as quietly as possible, alert for someone hiding and waiting, but nobody jumped out. He detached himself, then unhooked the rope clamp, pulling it back.
Finally, he detached this pulley with a liquid that broke the adhesive. Nothing he could do at the other end but leave it there and hope nobody figured out what it was for a while. Not that it would be obvious. Folks might think it was part of the building hardware they’d missed previously.
Nobody should connect it with someone breaking into a publisher’s office to look around.
Rob packed everything up and went to the stairs going down. He would descend, pop out a fire escape on the far side, and vanish into the night.
The game was speeding up.
Did he have enough time to make all this effort worth it?