Something about this plan was nagging at Alma. Watching the young ones gleefully strip the green paint off the Paona Delma — the blue, white, and black police livery already showing through — she shared a look with Vince. He was watching too, a cigarette dangling from his lips, his expression grim. If it weren't for her own unease, Alma might have blamed it on her lousy condition (that damned arm just wouldn't heal right), but Vince looked like he felt the same.
"Remind me what your brilliant idea was again?" he asked, lighting his cigarette.
"Simple. Dead men aren't searched for," Hector replied patiently. "We need the Express's SS and the Corporation's hounds to believe we're all dead."
"And to do that, we have to hand over our last car."
"You make it sound like it's the only car we'll ever have," Alma interjected, feeling Hector needed backing up.
"Maybe it will be," Vince grumbled. "The container is on that train, and we can't get to it."
"We will," Hector said imperturbably. "We'll intercept the train at the next station, when its SS is convinced we're dead and the MT Inquiry Service has stopped buzzing around it."
"Great plan. Except our faces and documents," Vince nodded toward Alma, "are already compromised. Neither of us can get off Almonzis now; we don't have the money for new papers."
Hector pressed his lips together, silent. Alma knew this was the weakest part of his plan — he didn't want to leave her behind. They'd never been apart for long since she'd joined him.
"We can go illegally," Hector said. "We've done it a hundred times."
"Sure. Except she had two arms then and wasn't swallowing handfuls of pills."
"Alright, we both screwed up with the journalist," Hector admitted grudgingly. "But it's done. Alma can use Romana's passport, and you can use Daniel's. No one knows their faces; they'll be safer staying put."
"And what will they live on? You expect them to get jobs?"
"Nothing wrong with work," Hector snapped. He hated admitting mistakes, but Vince was right. If they hadn't tried to track down and interrogate that journalist...
"The MT agents would still be on our tail," Alma said, "even without him. If you want to complain, start with the shootout at the factory gate."
"Exactly," the ex-cop agreed. "That's where it all went sideways."
"Amazing you didn't just surrender to them right then and there," Hector retorted acidly. Vince flicked his cigarette away and ground it out on the concrete floor.
"Hector, stop," Alma said gently. "No one's to blame for what happened."
There had been twelve of them. The client hadn't wanted a large group involved; they'd wanted fresh faces, no one already on file. "This is our chance!" Hector had declared. A chance to step out of the anonymous mass of "radicals," as the press called them, to stand alongside names like Dominica da Luna, Enyas Anwar, maybe even Comandante Esme La Roja — a legend among those fighting the Corporation and its globalist enslavement.
Alma and Vince had chosen the youngest, most unknown kids, and Hector had secured the contract. They'd spent six months preparing, only to have to flee Maria Galante at the end because the client's contact got wind of an impending SAP raid. Hector wasn't bothered that the money came from drug trafficking — though Alma was still getting used to it. They took money wherever they could find it, unlike the Express's SS and the MT agents; they didn't have a steady stream of profit from monopolies and the slave trade.
Then they'd been delivered to Almonzis and provided with a fleet of cutter-stripped cars. No one knew where the cars came from or how they'd slipped past customs. No one knew the client's name either, except Hector, probably, and he wasn't telling. He hadn't even confirmed Alma's guess about Enrique Salvador's involvement, though he hadn't denied it either.
Hector rarely discussed his plans — maybe that was why they always managed to slip past SAP, anti-terror units, and the Corporation's hounds. "Tell no one more than they need to know," he'd once said. "No one can betray what they don't know."
"That's enough!" Hector called, and Daniel and Romana stepped away from the car. "It's supposed to look like a wreck, not fresh from the shop."
"Well, from that angle, it doesn't look half bad," Vince agreed. "Maybe change the plates? I've got a spare set."
"No. The police or the MT agents need to be able to link this car to the one they supplied."
"You think they already have a list?" Alma asked anxiously.
"I'm sure of it. So we keep the plates." Hector turned to the young man. "Daniel, get Kerim. We'll take turns driving around the city. He's first, until midnight. I've sent the route to the nav. Romana, start dinner."
"Where are we going to lead them?" Vince asked.
"Here," Hector said, and the ex-cop almost jumped.
"Here?! Are you insane?!"
"Vince!" Alma snapped. How had these two ever managed to work together for so long? Vince Savier argued with nearly everything Hector proposed, slammed doors, complained — but he always did what was needed. Their relationship remained a mystery to Alma. When she'd asked, Hector had said he owed Vince and trusted him enough, and that was all she needed to know.
"And her?" Vince jabbed a thumb at Alma. "If they find us, how's she supposed to get away with her arm — or rather, without it?"
"If necessary," Hector said coldly, "I will carry Alma out myself. Enough. We need this to look convincing, so they believe they've destroyed our hideout."
"So you want to hand over our actual hideout?"
"Yes."
"God..." Vince muttered. "What did I get myself into... what about bodies? They'll need at least one epsilon corpse."
"There won't be any bodies," Hector said placidly. "I still have a supply of F-48. After the explosion, all that will be left here is ash — and if we're lucky, two or three dozen MT agents as well."
Al-Haiyan, the capital of the Sultanate of Er-Rummal's colonies on Tar-Mariat
The narrow, high mountain range beyond Al-Haiyan was called Fanzil, and it was the perfect hiding place for terrorists. They valued any kind of underground shelter — ancient catacombs on Ayala, unused utility tunnels, abandoned mines like those in Fanzil.
Murad, AlNilam, and a team of twelve specialists from Al-Shadiyar landed their jet on a spur of the mountain that jutted into the dense forest like a spike. The florofauna tried to climb the slopes of Fanzil, but the rock was too hard.
They stood on a flat platform reached by a rickety metal ladder. Its lower section had been destroyed by the florofauna, and Murad noted fresh pitons hammered into the rock to provide access to what remained of the ladder.
The platform was ringed by a low wall made from the same stone that had been cleared to level the spur before descending into the mine. The Wad-Prince approached the yawning entrance and peered into the darkness. He was undoubtedly using echolocation, thermal sensors, amplifying his sight, hearing, and smell to their limits. The MT specialists who'd worked on the Sultan's special order had given AlNilam senses beyond anything an ordinary human possessed. Murad didn't know why — and the Sultan certainly wasn't about to tell them now.
"People have been here recently," the Wad-Prince announced, still gazing into the mine shaft. "One of them was wounded. There are bloodstains on the floor."
"Aftermath of the conflict that cost one of them their life?" Al-Fayyaz asked.
"Possibly. Take samples. There are spots there, there, and there," AlNilam pointed into the darkness. The Yakzan switched on his helmet lamp and stepped into the mine.
The first chamber was fairly spacious — the floor, walls, and ceiling still smooth. To the right of the entrance, Murad spotted a generator and examined it. It was an ancient model, running on xiolite, a fuel no longer in production. The terrorists couldn't have started it.
"And neither can we," the Yakzan sighed, crouching to carefully scrape several blood samples from the floor. As he finished, AlNilam led the Al-Shadiyar team into the shaft.
Across from the generator, a row of metal cabinets and shelves stood empty — the equipment had been removed when the mine closed. Opposite the entrance was a lift, and beside it, a staircase had been carved into the rock for emergency evacuation. The metal handrails were loose. On the first few steps, Al-Fayyaz saw faint, smeared bloodstains.
"Do you think the terrorists have already left the mine, Effendi?" asked Al-Shadiyar officer Usman ibn-Yusuf Al-Saghir.
"I believe so. But they may have left unpleasant surprises, so stay alert. Set up signal boosters; I don't want to lose contact with the surface."
Al-Saghir nodded and set to work. The Wad-Prince pulled a tablet from his backpack, opened the mine's schematic, and held it up.
"I think they took the upper tunnels. With the generator down, the ventilation system isn't working. They'd have suffocated on the lower levels."
"This route seems possible," Murad traced a line on the schematic with his finger, leading to a second exit closer to an abandoned highway that ran toward the industrial zone.
"Who knows if it's still passable. This schematic is forty years old. No one knows what the tunnels look like now. I guess we'll find out," AlNilam said briskly, turning to Al-Saghir. "Ready? Let's go down to the first level."
As soon as they descended to the first level, the air grew noticeably heavier. Murad was glad he'd brought respirators and oxygen canisters.
"There's blood here," Al-Saghir said, sweeping his light across the walls and floor. "Smudged, but it leads deeper into the tunnel."
They moved forward, deeper into the mountain. If the terrorists had made it through the mines under Fanzil, Murad wondered, where had they gone afterward? The florofauna left no chance for abandoned roads; the terrorists would have had to cut their way to a new one. From there, they could reach the industrial zone and... what? The industrial zone was still active; there was a plant there that made cryocases for transporting embryos. Hmm!
"Effendi," Al-Fayyaz said quietly, "there's a cryocase factory in the industrial zone. You can't transport embryos without them."
"Interesting," AlNilam's eyes glittered. "We'll check that when we get back. Though the footage shows one of the terrorists carrying a case, so they took a cryocase from the center — they entered without any luggage. Wait!"
The group stopped. The tunnel widened into a large artificial cavern. The Wad-Prince stepped forward, scanning it intently. He wasn't just looking.
"They camped here," the Wad-Prince said, his voice tense. "Search everything, but carefully."
Al-Saghir's team fanned out across the cavern. Effendi beckoned Murad to follow and led him to a spot where the bloodstains were thicker; nearby lay several syringes, the packaging from a regenerative bandage, a couple of vials of anesthetic, and antiseptic. The Yakzan picked up the packaging and the vials. They were expensive.
"Someone spent a lot on supplies. They might have provided oxygen canisters too. They could have gone deeper."
AlNilam shook his head and led the Yakzan further. A few meters from the makeshift "aid station," they found a pile of trash — a heap of empty ration packs against the cavern wall. The cans and tubes of protein-carb mixes were standard military issue, though stream-troopers ate better.
"Look how many," the Wad-Prince said quietly. "One of these would last a healthy man a day. Judging by the amount, there were fifty people hiding here. Or twenty-five, if they stayed two days." He sniffed the air. "And about forty meters that way, there's a side tunnel they used as a latrine. Eight people wouldn't leave such a... concentrated aroma."
"Why didn't they clean up?"
"Who knows. Maybe they were in a hurry. Maybe they thought no one would find them." Effendi met Al-Fayyaz's eyes. "This isn't a small cell, Murad. This isn't just a theft. Someone is building an army."
"Recruiting young people," the Yakzan said, frowning at the debris. He didn't like this at all. "The corpse we found in the forest, Diego Ramos, was only twenty-three."
"Young people aren't on file, or barely on file," AlNilam murmured. "Few connections to trace. It's easy to fill their heads with ideas, but... enough to make them kill themselves without hesitation?"
"Yes," Murad said. "Remember Federico Gallan, Effendi. A charismatic psychopath, and crowds flocked to him. Thousands followed him willingly, until he started killing them to save his own skin."
AlNilam was quiet for a long moment, watching Al-Saghir's team search the cavern.
"The last thing I want," the Wad-Prince said through gritted teeth, "is to be present at the birth of a new terrorist war. I'm not willing to pay that price for freedom."
Murad placed a hand on his shoulder. Gallan had been killed in 205; before that, Ayala and the colonies had been convulsed for six years by war with his army of terrorists, fanatics, and radicals. Gallan had taken anyone who came. Now, it seemed, someone wanted to follow in his footsteps. And that someone was very, very rich.
"Are you sure, Effendi, that giving Nightbird the Ramos analysis was wise? She's not Al-Shadiyar, not an SS analyst."
"She's smart enough to handle it. And if you're worried about her loyalty, I vetted her the first day."
"I'd rather do it myself," Murad grumbled. AlNilam patted his hand.
"I need you here. We still need to figure out how such a large group could vanish without a trace."
***
When they finally emerged into fresh air, it was well past noon. The trek through the Fanzil mines had been so long that Murad had begun to wonder if they would ever see the surface again. But following AlNilam's lead, they'd made it to another man-made cavern, just like the one where they'd started their descent. This one had doors too, recently used, freshly oiled, and in working order.
The exit brought them to a platform far larger than the one on the other side of the mountain. Here, a disused, half-ruined track for ore carts snaked down the mountainside; a stairway, carved into the rock as an emergency exit, was also present, along with three lifts. All three lifts were stuck halfway down their rails, so the terrorists couldn't have used them or the cart tracks to descend.
Murad walked to the railing and looked down at the stairs. They were in fair condition, though the handrails were mostly gone. But he saw no fresh pitons hammered into the rock to ease the descent, no other signs anyone had used them. The lower third of the staircase disappeared into a thicket of florofauna. And the florofauna here was far from harmless — it had been what injured the terrorist they'd found, judging by the torn-open packets of antidote to local plant toxins Al-Saghir had discovered.
What troubled Al-Fayyaz most, however, was the complete lack of any trail through the dense forest at the mountain's base. Even considering how quickly the florofauna reclaimed any cleared path, there should have been some sign. After all, that was how they'd found the terrorists' trail to Fanzil. And with at least twenty-five people, the trail would have been substantial.
"There's nothing," Murad told the Wad-Prince, who had joined him at the railing. "They must have flown out."
"Not 'must have' — they did," AlNilam said grimly. "There, an old jet landing pad. Someone cleared it thoroughly, and it still reeks of fuel. At least two jets landed here to pick up the group. Where they went, no one knows."
"Jets," Murad shook his head. "Effendi, that's expensive. I'm afraid we have to accept that someone is trying to start another terrorist war. And we've stumbled onto some operation whose purpose still escapes us."
"Indeed," AlNilam murmured. "Stealing archives, embryos, valuable specialists... that's not a terrorist attack. It looks more like preparation for a strike against the Corporation. But who could afford it? Who has that kind of money?"
"I'll see what I can squeeze from the files on Silverberg, Kamal, and Ramos, the one they killed here. They must have had contacts; someone gave them money and orders."
"Fialkovskaya, who vanished without a trace."
"She couldn't have acted alone. Someone hired her. Someone arranged for her to be hired by MT. Someone made sure she passed all the regular background checks — every year. For twelve years."
"Yes, but why?" A line creased the prince's brow. "Why leave the young ones here with no oversight? Why?"
***
Gemma leaned back in her chair, surveying her work with satisfaction. Deep down, she was proud that AlNilam had entrusted her with something more important than relaying orders to the center's outraged departments. Murad had explained what she needed to do, and she'd thrown herself into it. It had taken nearly the whole day, but it had been fascinating.
She fished a packet of shrimp chips from the dispenser and turned back to Diego Ramos Oroña's dossier. The prince and his Yakzan had found the body in the forest outside the city. Nightbird had no idea how the terrorist had ended up there, but the find must have been important, because Effendi had ordered her to trace all of the man's connections. Murad had given her access to all the necessary databases, though he'd looked rather unhappy about it.
"Why does he even allow himself to show it?" Gemma thought. Every bodyguard and SS specialist she'd ever seen tried to remain impassive, showing no emotion. Perhaps it was because Murad was mute, and his voice, filtered through his neuromodulator, was as emotionless as a robot's? But he could always order a different modulator, or even simpler, have reconstructive surgery. Donate genetic material, wait a week for the lab to grow what was needed, and have it implanted.
"Or maybe he doesn't because of religion?"
Her personal phone buzzed in her pocket, and she snatched it up, forgetting all about the Yakzan and his voice.
"What's wrong?!"
"Nothing, honey," Eric replied. "Just wanted to see how you are."
"You're not supposed to call me on my personal phone while I'm at work."
"But you're in a privileged position now, right? And you said no one can see you, because the prince turned off all the cameras."
"Better not risk it. If he notices, he won't like it."
"Oh, come on, from what you've told me, he's not that much of a tyrant. I told you you'd get along."
"Well... yes, in a way," Gemma admitted. "He's not as crazy as most religious types. He's actually quite reasonable. How are things with you?"
"Good, but they'd be better if those guards the prince assigned to us didn't stop our pizza delivery."
"That's for our safety."
Eric was silent for a moment; she could feel his concern.
"Listen," he said, "couldn't you... you know... leave all this? Request a transfer to another center?"
"Not yet. I doubt they'd transfer me in the middle of all this. Don't worry about me," she added quickly. "I'm safe here."
"Safe in the center, maybe, but what about when you come home?"
"I have an escort, don't worry. Oh!" Gemma heard the elevator. "The prince is back! I have to go. See you tonight!"
"Tonight. I ordered you salted nuts, crème brûlée ice cream, and a cheese pie."
"Thank you," Nightbird said with feeling. She was getting tired of the dispenser's food.
AlNilam and his Yakzan were covered head to toe in dirt and stone dust — they must have come straight to the center without going home. Gemma was dying to know what they'd found in the Fanzil mines, but of course she couldn't ask.
"So, how's our Ramos?" His Highness inquired, while Al-Fayyaz raided the food dispenser. The prince's voice was tired.
"I've finished and sent the results to your email, Effendi."
"Excellent. Once we've eaten and washed off this filth, you can tell us what you found."
"Yes, Effendi," Nightbird replied, with barely concealed envy. She couldn't complain about her working conditions, but the fact that Shufrir's office had a private lounge, a shower, and a couch the size of Gemma and Eric's balcony felt like a glaring class injustice.
An hour later, as darkness began to fall outside, the Wad-Prince called Gemma into the office. Nightbird entered, looking at the results of her work displayed on the panel with some trepidation — what if she'd made a mistake?!
"Report," His Highness ordered amiably. "Give us something to lift our spirits."
"Something went wrong in the mines?" Gemma thought. The Yakzan was sitting at Shufrir's terminal, looking as gloomy as an owl.
"Well, Diego Ramos Oroña had quite a detailed file with SAP," Nightbird began, clicking on a folder that contained the usual "born, studied, ran away from home at eighteen." "He was born in a slum in the suburbs of Estanta, to a very troubled family. He dropped out of school, ran away, got into petty theft, and ended up in prison a year later," Gemma clicked on an extract from his prison record. "He was in the same prison as Silverberg. They were in the same cell block."
"A momentous meeting," the Wad-Prince murmured, slipping a straw under his scarf to drink his fruit tea.
"They were released a few months apart, and a few weeks later, SAP caught them both at a meeting with small-time dealers working for one of Enrique Salvador's cartels."
Gemma pulled up surveillance footage.
"No one paid them much attention back then. Ramos and Silverberg were just two more small-time criminals and radicals. SAP was watching the meeting because he was supposed to be there," she clicked on a folder with a red "High Priority" tag. "Luther Magrinha, alias Papa."
Murad rose and walked to the panel. The prince leaned forward with interest.
"He's a fugitive being, class Bellatores," Gemma continued. "Fifty-two years old, on the run for twenty years."
"His brand was disabled," AlNilam said. "Even without a brand, that's impressive. Not every terrorist lasts that long."
The photos and videos showed a tall, powerfully built Black man with regular features, a short bristle of gray hair, and startlingly bright blue eyes. His mustache and goatee were still black, with just a hint of gray.
"He's not exactly a terrorist, Effendi," Gemma corrected. "Well, he's both."
"What do you mean?"
"He calls himself a follower of Esme La Roja, meaning he supports the fight against being slavery, but for the last ten years, he's been part of Enrique Salvador's circle."
"Half the radicals out there claim to be followers of the Comandante," the Wad-Prince snorted. "She'd turn in her grave if she knew how many scoundrels wave her 'Freedom Above All' banner."
"SAP never determined exactly what Magrinha does there," Nightbird said. "They suspect he trains Salvador's fighters and helps recruit new soldiers. But he's never been directly linked to the drug trade."
"So he brought Ramos and Silverberg to Salvador," Murad said. Gemma nodded, opening another file.
"Yes. But neither of them ever participated in any cartel operations. It seems Magrinha recruited them for the terrorist cell Salvador was supporting. Only I can't figure out why," Gemma admitted. "What use are terrorists to a drug lord?"
"Who knows," the prince said thoughtfully. "Salvador has nothing to lose; he's already one of the most notorious criminals in the Metropolis and colonies. Robbing the Corporation might be tempting. He could auction off what he stole for enough money to cover his costs."
"To the Corporation's competitors?" Nightbird asked, alarmed.
"To those who want to bring it down and carve up the spoils. Like Ars Mechana in '36."
"But that killed millions!" Gemma exclaimed indignantly. "The Corporation never did anything like that!"
AlNilam fixed her with a long, amused stare, and she felt uncomfortable.
"Or maybe the Corporation's rivals hired Salvador to do the dirty work, ready to blame him if things went wrong," Murad said. "In any case, he has enough money and resources to organize a heist and kidnapping."
"And even to buy them jets to pick them up when they crawled out of the mine," AlNilam added with disgust.
"Jets?!" Nightbird exclaimed, thoroughly bewildered. In her mind, terrorists were impoverished beggars who robbed gun shops to fund their senseless attacks. And now they had a whole jet! Or even two!
"Well, the trail from the mine ends there," the prince concluded. "I've sent out a couple of requests... we'll see. In the meantime, let's look into this Magrinha. Why is he called Papa, by the way?"
"Because he's an active recruiter, especially among the young. One SAP agent even managed to record one of his meetings in the slums," Gemma played a file, turning the volume down. "He's quite a rousing speaker."
"We'll listen to it tonight. Good work, Gemma," the Wad-Prince said. "Go home; it's late. Tomorrow morning, I want you to work on tracing calls from Silverberg's and Dawud Kamal's phones. The local operators seem to be dragging their feet. Give them a kick first thing."
Almonzeia, the capital of the MT Corporation's colonies on Almonzis
Anna Dmitrievna thoughtfully scrolled through the dossiers on Hector Aviles and Felicia Arellano that Phan had sent. The major was present, virtually, via video link.
"Why did you decide it was them?" Lavrova finally asked, glancing over her glasses with a look that was almost benevolent at the journalist. The youth swallowed and edged away from the desk, closer to the pastry chef.
"I didn't decide... ma'am."
"Madame," Axel corrected him sternly.
"Madame," the pup glanced again at Aguilar and, drawing courage from his presence, continued: "I didn't have any leads, and I wasn't hiding anything. The only thing I remembered about Donna was that she looked Averon. So I started looking among those..."
"But why these specifically?"
"I assumed preparing for the factory heist would take time, so I looked for terrorists no one had heard from in a while."
"And by stabbing in the dark, you hit the mark," the Express Chief murmured. Fontaine shifted uncomfortably. It was galling to think that the journalist pup, along with the pastry chef, had solved a problem that Phan's team, Ax, and all their subordinates had been struggling with.
"It's not certain yet, though a lot matches," said Phan. "It's a pity SAP couldn't determine who exactly trained on Maria Galante. One moment, sorry! What is it, Samvel?"
The major disappeared from the screen, and Lavrova turned back to Ross.
"Do you realize that Donna Edelman might have changed her appearance?"
"Yes," the journalist sighed. "But it was all I had. I didn't expect to find anyone, especially so quickly."
"People don't always change their appearance drastically, Madame," Aguilar said unexpectedly. "Sometimes they keep features considered common to their race or nation. Donna might have shown a plastic surgeon a photo of some Averon model or actress. Such similarity, incidentally, makes them harder to find."
"It's strange that both of them — Donna and this Aviles — are beings," Lavrova said. "As I understand it, the brands beings wear allow them to be tracked even after their service. Can a brand be erased?"
A strange, almost pained expression flickered across Aguilar's face, as if any reminder of the brand was unpleasant.
"They can't be erased or removed, but they can be hacked. It's very dangerous — a being could die — but those who want to escape the Corporation are willing to take the risk."
"Hacked?" Anna Dmitrievna repeated, surprised. "But isn't it... a device?"
"It's an implanted biomechanical mechanism," Aguilar replied, "and any mechanism can be hacked, even one that complex. Otherwise, neither Aviles nor Donna Edelman could have escaped MT."
Fontaine unconsciously shrugged. He'd been taught the basic principles of the brand, but he'd never thought about them. It was there, that was that...
"Sorry," Phan reappeared on the screen. "I've heard back from my colleagues in San-Tiago. We can rule out Felicia Arellano. SAP raided her group; she's now in a maximum-security prison in San-Tiago."
Lavrova closed Felicia Arellano's file. The panel was now filled with Hector Aviles.
"Could it be him?" Axel murmured. "It would be an incredible coincidence!"
"Why incredible?" Phan raised her eyebrows. "We didn't stumble on this in the middle of a forest. The search was targeted, and though the reasoning was, um... rather flimsy, why not check the result?"
"Aviles has two close associates," Anna Dmitrievna pulled up more files on the panel. "Alma Maria Philippa Barrera Estrada, a fugitive epsilon-class being, thirty-three years old, which matches Mr. Ross's description. The second is Vincent Savier, a human, fifty years old, a former police lieutenant from the Temeris colony. He quit the force eight years ago and vanished."
"That's probably the one Donna, that is Alma, was talking to at the hospital," Ross interjected.
"Donna Edelman and Victor van der Holden," Phan murmured. "Oh, if only we knew if those are their real faces! Why," she turned accusingly to Aguilar, "didn't you at least pull out a lock of her hair!"
"I can't predict the future. I had no idea how this would turn out."
"Why were you following Mr. Ross in the first place?" Fontaine asked.
The pastry chef shrugged.
"He looked like he was in danger. He looked very frightened when he stumbled into me at the hospital entrance."
"Hey!" the journalist yelped indignantly. Ax's eyes narrowed suspiciously.
"You decided to follow him just because of that?"
The pastry chef stared straight at Fontaine and replied, impassively but with a barely perceptible hint of mockery:
"Sometimes I'm seized with an overwhelming desire to do a good deed. Doesn't that ever happen to you?"
"That's irrelevant now," Lavrova interjected firmly. "What is relevant is whether Mr. Aguilar is willing to continue taking responsibility for Mr. Ross's safety."
"Yes, Madame."
"Excellent. Then return to your compartment and do so," Anna Dmitrievna said. "If you feel the urge to do more searching online, I trust you will share anything you find with us. Won't you?"
Under her gaze, the journalist almost disappeared behind Aguilar, squeaking from there:
"Yes, sir."
The Express Chief pressed a button on her terminal and said:
"Claude, have Mr. Ross and Mr. Aguilar escorted back to their compartment."
As soon as the pastry chef and his charge left Lavrova's office, she turned to Ax and asked:
"Now, what was that about using me as bait to catch terrorists?"