Miles Errant - Lois McMaster Bujold [125]
"So, what's next?" she asked.
"What's the traditional reward for a job well done in this man's army?"
Her dark eyes crinkled. "Another job."
"You got it. I've persuaded Captain Galeni to let the Dendarii Mercenaries find Galen, just as you found us. How did you find us, by the way?"
"Lotta damn work, that's how. We started by crunching through that awful pile of data you beamed up from the embassy files about Komarrans. We eliminated the well-documented ones, the young children, and so on. Then we put the Intelligence computer team downside to break into the economic net and pull out credit files, and into the Eurolaw net—that was tricky—and pull out criminal files, and started looking for anomalies. That's where we found the break. About a year ago, the Earth-born son of a Komarran expatriate was picked up by the Eurolaw cops on some minor misdemeanor and found to have an unregistered stunner in his possession. Not being a deadly weapon, it merely cost him a fine, and as far as Eurolaw was concerned, that was that. But the stunner wasn't of Earth manufacture. It was old Barrayaran military issue.
"We began following him, both physically and through the computer net, finding out who his friends were, people who weren't in the embassy's computer. We were following up several other leads at the same time that failed to pan out. But this is where I got a compelling hunch. One of this kid's frequent contacts, a man named Van der Poole, was registered as an immigrant to Earth from the planet Frost IV. Now, during that investigation I did a couple of years back involving the stolen genes, I passed through Jackson's Whole—"
Miles nodded in memory.
"So I knew you could buy documented pasts there—one of the little high-profit-margin services certain laboratories sell to go along with the new faces and voices and finger- and retina-prints they offer. One of the planets they frequently use for this is Frost IV, on account of the tectonic disaster having wrecked their computer net—not to mention the rest of the place—twenty-eight years ago. A lot of perfectly legitimate people who left Frost IV then have uncheckable documentation. If you're over twenty-eight years old, Jackson's Whole can fit you right in. So whenever I see somebody above a certain age who claims to be from Frost IV, I'm automatically suspicious. Van der Poole was Galen, of course."
"Of course. My clone was another fine product of Jackson's Whole, by the way."
"Ah. It all fits, how nice."
"My congratulations to you and the whole Intelligence department. Remind me to make that an official commendation, when I next make it back to the Triumph."
"Which is when?" She crunched a piece of ice from the bottom of her glass and swirled the remainder around, trying to look only professionally interested.
Her mouth would taste cool, and tangy. . . . Miles blinked back into professional mode himself, conscious of the curious eyes of embassy personnel upon them. "Dunno. We're sure not done here yet. We should certainly transfer all the new data the Dendarii collected back to embassy files. Ivan's working now on what we pulled from Galen's comconsole. It's going to be harder this time. Galen—Van der Poole—will be hiding. And he's had a lot of experience at serious disappearing. But if and when you do turn him up—ah—report directly to me. I'll report to the embassy."
"Report what to the embassy?" Elli inquired, alert to his undertones.
Miles shook his head. "I'm not sure yet. I may be too tired to think straight. I'll see if it seems to make any more sense in the morning."
Elli nodded and rose.
"Where are you going?" asked Miles in alarm.
"Back to the Triumph, to put the mass in motion, of course."
"But you can tight-beam— Who's on duty up there right now?"
"Bel Thorne."
"Right, all right. Let's go find Ivan, we can tight-beam the data