Power Play - Anne McCaffrey [62]
“I never met Louchard,” Fiske said, his expression set and his tone distracted, like a man, Luzon recognized, who was thinking very fast about something else entirely.
“But didn’t you mention to me the fact that Louchard was involved in the smuggling of those miserable quantities of ore that were extracted from the planet?”
Actually both men knew that Fiske had mentioned no such thing: Louchard’s involvement was speculation. Still, that would account for the pirate being willing to kidnap that wretched trio in the hopes of being able to obtain concessions no one else had had from Shongili. Luzon would never believe it was the planet; therefore, the mind behind all his misfortunes on Petaybee had to be the very human one of the man who stood to lose most: Sean Shongili.
“He might just do something to protect that unborn bastard of his, at that,” Luzon mused. “Where are you going, Fiske? You bring me such interesting news.” But Luzon’s words did not pass the door that Torkel Fiske had slammed behind him.
It was a considerably more cheerful Luzon who began tapping out numbers on his comm link.
15
Aboard the pirate ship
“I don’t mean to pry or open a very sore subject, Namid,” Marmion said when they had all rehashed and argued over the latest visit from their captors, “but have you any more relevant information about your ex-wife that we might use to advantage?”
Namid pointed to the corner of their room where he thought the listening device was planted. Then he continued speaking in such ringing, dramatic tones that they understood he wanted every word to be overheard by their unseen monitor. It occurred to Marmion that perhaps since the man had been unable to effectively communicate directly with Dinah, he was using the opportunity of talking about her more or less publicly to try to make an impression on her.
“They say,” he said with a sigh, “that we never really know the people we love. When I first met Dinah, I thought I had never been so close to anyone. Not only was she attractive, intelligent, and interested in my work, but she had a great deal of drive, a lot of passion that I’m afraid I misconstrued at the time. Love blinds us, or something like that. We talked for hours. I told her about my work, and she was quite honest about her early years: the death of her parents when she was far too young to be alone; her first marriage at sixteen to a wealthy, ruthless man who left her an interest in certain enterprises—of which I suspect this is one. She was quite frank about her other marriages, most of them for convenience and empire building, until ours. I genuinely believe it was a love match on her side as well, at least at first.
“She so desperately wants connection, you know. Her family was among those scooped up by Intergal when they were buying up wars and other inconvenient impasses on Earth to populate their experimental colony planets. Your Petaybee was one of the early ones, of course. Since the ‘colonists’ were divided in the interest of breaking up political factions, many families were split and settled in different places. Dinah’s great-great-grandfather came from a long line of seafaring people and had worked with the paramilitaries. She seems to believe he was some sort of great patriot, but he apparently adapted well enough to spacing and became one of Intergal’s top cryptographers. At some point he married a fellow exile who had also chosen a company career over colony life.
“Dinah says that most of their progeny were prevented from advancing in the company because of Intergal’s nepotism, but I think she might be a bit prejudiced. Surely none of them became wealthy, and when her parents died, Dinah had a rough time supporting herself. She told me candidly that she used her looks at first. Then, when