Free The Commonwealth Saga 2-Book Bundle by Peter F. Hamilton Page B

and assigned room 5A5. Maggie was scanned again before the metal slab door slid aside to admit her. The interior was gloomy, occupied by three rows of consoles with tall holographic portals curving around the operator. Each one was alive with a grid of images and data ribbons. Laser light spilled out from them in a pale iridescent haze. A quick glance at the ones closest to the door showed Maggie the familiar pictures of the buildings that Rachael Lancier used to run her car dealership from, along with shots from the team’s two shadow cars showing Adam Elvin’s taxi as they followed him through midtown.
    Maggie requested an update, and quickly assimilated the overnight data. The one item that stood out was the encrypted message delivered to Elvin’s e-butler through the Westpool Hotel node. She saw Paula Myo sitting at her desk at the far end of the room. The Chief Investigator seemed to get by on a maximum of two hours’ sleep per day. She’d had a cot moved into her office, and never used it until an hour after both main targets had retired for the night. And she was always up an hour before the time they usually got out of bed. The night shift had standing orders to wake her if anything out of the ordinary happened.
    Maggie went over to ask about the message.
    “It came from a onetime address in the unisphere,” Paula said. “The Directorate’s software forensics have traced its load point to a public node in Dampier’s cybersphere. Tarlo is talking to the local police about running a check, but I’m not expecting miracles.”
    “You can track a onetime address?” Maggie asked. She’d always thought that was impossible.
    “To a limited degree. It doesn’t help. The message was sent on a delay. Whoever loaded it was well clear.”
    “Can the message encryption be cracked?” Maggie asked.
    “Not really, the sender used folded-geometry encryption. I logged a request with the SI, but it said it doesn’t have the resources available to decrypt it for me.”
    “You talked with the SI?” Maggie asked. That was impressive. The Sentient Intelligence didn’t normally interface with individuals.
    “Yes.”
    There was nothing else forthcoming.
    “Oh,” Maggie said. “Right.”
    “It was a short message,” Paula said. “Which limits what it could contain. My guess is it was either a warning, a go authorization, or a stop.”
    “We haven’t leaked,” Maggie said. “I’m sure of it. And they haven’t spotted us either.”
    “I know. The origin alone seems to rule out a mistake by any of your officers.”
    “The Socialist Party does have a number of quality cyberheads, they might have noticed our scrutineer programs shadowing Murphy’s e-butler.”
    Paula Myo rubbed a hand over her forehead, pressing hard enough to furrow up the skin. “Possible,” she conceded. “Although I have to take other factors into consideration.”
    “Yes?” Maggie prompted.
    “Classified, sorry,” Paula said. Even though she was tired, she wasn’t about to confide her concerns to anybody. Although if Maggie was any kind of detective she should be able to work it out.
    As Mares had said, a hundred thirty-four years without an arrest was an uncomfortably long time. In fact, it was impossible given the resources Paula had to deploy against Bradley Johansson. Somebody had been providing Johansson and his associates with a great deal of assistance down the decades. Few people knew what she was doing on a day-to-day basis, so logically it was someone outside the Directorate. Yet the executive administration had changed seventeen times since she had been assigned command of the case. They couldn’t all contain secret sympathizers of Johansson’s cause. That just left her with the altogether murkier field of Grand Families and Intersolar Dynasties, the kind of power dealers who were always around.
    She’d done everything she could, of course: set traps, run identification ambushes, deliberately leaked disinformation,