“The Lorenzo place. Where else?”
—
There were still a few bored cops in the portalhome, waiting for their shift to end as they watched the forensic teams finishing up. Alik walked straight along the hubhall and into the cabin on the
“You think there’s a safe room here?” Salovitz asked.
“No.” He took his jacket off, ready for the heat outside, as they went onto the private deck. Sure enough, the temperature and humidity had both risen in the couple of hours they’d been away. When Alik peered out over the rail, the water was slipping easily along the side of the hull. That was deceptive, he knew. There would be strong currents created by the sheer speed with which the big ship was moving through the ocean. The wake would be even worse: long cyclonic swirls that would show only as choppy ripples, unless you got caught in one. You’d have to be crazy to jump. Or desperate.
“What are you looking for?” Salovitz asked.
“Something missing. Which is always harder to find.”
Both ends of the deck had big red-and-white cylinders fixed on the wall, containing life rafts. Alik flipped the clips on one and opened it, finding a fat package of orange fabric and five buoyancy jackets. The other one was empty.
“No fucking way,” Salovitz exclaimed.
“They were desperate,” Alik said slowly. “The kind of desperate that happens when two armed crews burst into your home.”
“Holy shit.”
“Find this ship’s coordinates for eleven o’clock Eastern Standard Time last night,” he told Shango, “then alert the South African Coast Guard. Ask them to get a boat out there, or a plane if they still use them.”
—
They both went back to the twentieth precinct house to wait. Alik got a call from the Bureau while he and Salovitz sat in the case office drinking vending machine coffee. Agency forensics had made some progress on the portalhome with the Antarctic room. It belonged to the Mendozas, an elderly married couple in Manila, with zero links to any kind of crime. The person coming through had wiped and crashed the security system. But that was when luck had failed them for the first time. Alik and Salovitz watched the image from Manila’s civic surveillance on the case office’s stage.
A fair-haired woman emerged from the Mendozas’ home on Makait Avenue, opposite the Ayala Park. A cabez pulled up, and she got into it. Less than thirty seconds later, the vehicle disappeared from Manila’s transport logs. It wasn’t the best image Alik had ever seen, but it clearly showed their suspect to be just over average height, and wiry with it—the kind of figure that only came from constant workouts. She wore a bulky parka-style coat to cover her armor—which must have helped in the Antarctic, but in Manila she would have swiftly roasted in that getup. The enhancement routines rectified her out-of-focus face, and the precinct’s G7Turing ran facial recognition.
“Nothing,” Salovitz exclaimed in disgust.
“Maybe,” Alik said. “She’s not part of Rayner’s organization, that’s for certain.”
“You know her?”
“No,” he lied. Admittedly it was only a partial lie, but he was pleased with himself for carrying it off through the deep unease that had just kicked his ass. No characteristics routine could ever grasp this particular suspect, because she changed her features after every job, which was easy now with the new Kcell cosmetics that had hit the market a few years back. Her height and build, however, remained constant to within five percent, as, bizarrely, did her hair color, which was always a sandy blond, no matter what style. Then there was the bloodbath in her wake. Not a visual characteristic, but the multiple murder was her signature sure as Ainsley Zangari had money.
He left Salovitz to crank out the usual alerts and requests for cooperation to various global agencies, providing them with the new picture, and called Tansan.
“It’s Cancer.”
“Shit,” Tansan snapped. “Are you sure?”
“The massacre at the portalhome is typical of her operation. That bitch would’ve made certain no one survived to tell us what actually happened, especially Koushick Flaviu, who was running the data break. I’m thinking the two teams didn’t kill each other quite as smoothly as it was laid out. Not that the theory matters, since I’ve just seen surveillance of a woman who fits her profile. But she vanished in Manila hours ago.”
“This is serious. Those files need to stay secure.”
“I’m sure the people she’s murdered will agree with you.”
“I’m sorry about them, I really am. But the people I represent have other issues.”
“And money.”
“Money isn’t actually part of it, this time. This is political.”
“Yeah. I accessed Nikolai Kristjánsson’s preliminary report. Those files she was trying to bust dealt with New York’s shields.”
“Which is why this is attracting so much attention here on the Hill.”
“Nikolai said he didn’t think they actually cracked the files.”