Justine gave her e-butler an instruction. The walls and roof dissolved into a grainy curtain of gray light, like a hologram projector showing a drab autumn sky. No hint of the external world remained, an effect that produced a near-claustrophobic feeling. “It is now,” Justine said lightly. “And the array is completely independent; it doesn’t even have a node, so nobody can hack in. We’re as isolated as it’s possible to be in the modern world.” She took the memory crystal from a slim metal case and stood in front of the array. The single light turned from scarlet to emerald as she pressed her hand on the top. “I want you to scan this, and tell me what data it contains.”
“Yes, Senator,” the RI replied. A small circle on top of the cylinder dilated, and Justine dropped the memory crystal in.
“It’s a quantum scanner,” she told Paula. “So it should be able to locate any hardwired ambush in the molecular structure.”
The two of them sat on one of the couches. Its brown leather was so parched from the strong sunlight it was cracking open; Justine enjoyed it for that as much as the softness that came from age. A tatty piece of furniture in a trillionaire’s immaculate household also made the chamber more appealing to her, a little stamp of personal identity.
“What happened at the autopsy?” Justine asked.
“It was all very ordinary,” Paula said. “They confirmed a lack of any memorycell insert. The rest of his inserts were all relatively common. Navy intelligence will track down the manufacturer, and from that we should get the clinic which gave them to Kazimir. I expect the operation will have been paid for either with cash or from a onetime account; Adam Elvin doesn’t make elementary mistakes, but they could get lucky.”
“Is that it?” Justine wasn’t sure what she’d expected, something that made him stand out at least, an aspect that proved how exceptional he was.
“Essentially, yes. Cause of death confirmed as the ion shot. He wasn’t taking any narcotics, although there was evidence of heavy steroid and hormone infusions over the last couple of years, which is understandable for someone born on a low-gravity world. You should know he hadn’t undergone any cellular reprofiling.”
Justine gave the Investigator a frown.
“It really was him,” Paula explained. “They weren’t trying to push a ringer on you.”
“Ah.” She could have told the Investigator that. He was Kazimir, nobody could fake that. “What about his hotel room? Any leads there?”
“It doesn’t look like it. I’m receiving the reports directly from navy intelligence as soon as they’re filed in their database. Of course, if there’s anything they’re not filing, that they’re keeping to themselves, then we have a problem.”
“Is that likely?”
“It’s a remote possibility. Legally, they have to put everything on file, and therefore Senate Security has complete access as we are higher up the security service food chain. However, you and I both know that the navy is compromised. One of the Starflyer’s people could be holding things back.”
“Assuming they’re not, will the hotel room tell us much?”
“Not really. The Guardians seem to be as thorough with their tradecraft in their own homes as they are everywhere else. The only report I really value is Kazimir’s financial record. That should give us a nice breakdown of his movements before you alerted the navy to his presence.”
A fresh burst of guilt at the reminder made Justine tighten her jaw muscles. “When will that be ready?”
“A couple of days. The navy intelligence office in Paris will correlate the data. I’ll review it after that.”
“Paris: that’s your old office, isn’t it?”
“Yes, Senator.”
“Do you think that’s where the Starflyer’s agent is?”
“It’s a very high probability that one of them is there, yes. I was running several entrapment operations before I was dismissed.”
“And I went and told them about Kazimir,” Justine said bitterly.
Paula Myo stared straight ahead at the cylinder containing the array. “I will expose the Starflyer, Senator. That is what the Guardians are fighting for; the one thing Kazimir McFoster believed in above all else.”
“Yes,” Justine said with a nod.
“I have completed an analysis of the memory crystal,” the RI announced. “It holds three hundred and seventy-two files of encrypted data. There are some software safeguards against unauthorized access, but they can easily be circumvented.”
“Good,” Justine said. Given the capacity of the array she would have been very surprised if it couldn’t gain access to whatever was stored on the crystal.
“Can you decrypt the files?”
“They are encrypted with one thousand two hundred eighty dimension– geometry. I do not have the processing capacity to decrypt that level.”
“Bugger,” Justine muttered. For a moment her hopes had actually risen; she had expected slightly more help from a piece of hardware that had just cost her over five million Earth dollars. “Who does?”
“The SI,” Paula said. “And the Guardians, of course.”
Justine asked the question that she found very difficult. “Do you trust the SI?”
