Ambassador 4: Coming Home Read online

  “Nothing at all?” I couldn’t believe that.

  She shook her head. “But it’s interesting to see where this whole bug network goes. It links up with bugs in the council chamber and the Exchange.

  “Why? What does she have to do with the Barresh council?”

  Thayu shrugged. Sheydu shrugged, too, but clearly the idea worried her. This was Delegate Ayanu Azimi, who had put her name forward for the position of Chief Delegate and had been voted down in what had had been, all things considered, a fairly tame election.

  Interesting, if not what we were looking for. We considered going to the Aghyrian compound, although we would probably need a more solid reason to get a reply out of them.

  “We should check the airport,” Thayu said. I could hit myself in the head for not having thought to do that yet.

  It was only a short walk down Market Street, across the main square where the stately, beautifully restored building of the Exchange looked out over a large public space dotted with trees and eateries. A good number of people were going in and out of the glass-fronted airport building, and I could see them going up and down the moving stairways inside.

  We entered through the commercial foyer down the side into an airy hall where merchants and Traders were using check-in and goods declaration processes on the workstations scattered throughout the hall.

  The far side of the foyer also consisted of a glass wall. It provided a view over the wide expanse of the tarmac. The public area was to the right, where I could just see a small piece of the modern terminal building, but all of the space directly ahead was taken up by private craft, most of them commercial.

  I looked over the sea of varied aircraft, glittering in the bright sunlight. “Does anyone know which is Federza’s?”

  “The one over there.” Sheydu pointed.

  The craft in question was a solid, Asto-built model commonly used by private businesses. It stood at the far end of the private parking area.

  When I held up my reader and magnified the view through the lens, I could make out the symbol of the Trader Guild on the side, together with the number I’d seen many times on the golden medallion that Federza wore: 8953.

  Sheydu had gone to one of the workstations in the hall. I went to stand next to her. “What are you doing?”

  “The craft is in location 743. I’m looking up how long it has been there.” She pointed at the screen. “This one here.”

  The craft had arrived at the spot more than four weeks ago, before the day that Federza had been shot at. It hadn’t moved since. Moreover, Federza also hadn’t accessed his refuelling or cargo account.

  I let out an exclamation. “Shit.”

  We exchanged worried glances.

  “Does Federza have any friends?”

  “One would think so,” Sheydu said, although she sounded doubtful.

  “None that have missed him or could have reported him missing?”

  Thayu spread her hands. “I don’t like him. You don’t like him. I don’t know that all that many people like him outside the Aghyrian compound, and if he’s fallen out with them . . .”

  “So what are we supposed to do about it? Do we ask the Aghyrians?”

  Sheydu snorted. “They would be the first ones to know where he is. If they haven’t been asking around for him, they probably know where he is, and I doubt they want to share it.”

  “True.” But damn it, how could someone just vanish like that in a city as closely watched as Barresh? “What would happen if we went to the town guards and reported him missing?”

  She spread her hands. “They’re pretty incompetent but I don’t know that it would do any harm as such.”

  “There might already be a record for the case. Otherwise we create one by reporting it. If the guards have a record, it will be someone’s responsibility to do something about it.”

  “Don’t hold your breath,” Sheydu said.

  Thayu, however, agreed with me. “I don’t think they’ll solve the problem, but once the record exists there is a case until he turns up. If nothing else, it provides proof that he’s missing of the type that bureaucrats like.”

  We were not far from the guard station in Market Street.

  It was in the same building as the jail, a place with which I was disturbingly familiar, but the main entrance was around the corner.

  The waiting room was just as low-ceilinged as the jail office in the less upmarket part of the building around the corner. An officer in council black, with the silver five-pointed star on his chest, sat behind a counter that was wide enough to allow at least three people to work at the same time, but he was the only one serving people.

  He was speaking to a keihu woman, who, from behind, displayed the typical keihu build: very broad in the hips and an enormous butt. She spoke with a broad local accent that would be considered uneducated. From the snatches of the conversation that I understood, I deduced that her house had been broken into and she was describing items that had been damaged or stolen. She was agitated, because she suspected the neighbour’s son. The officer tried to calm her down. I had the feeling that there was some history involved.

  A few people occupied the seats in the waiting area. They were all local keihu, giving us strange looks while we stood there just inside the door. A second officer appeared at the counter, probably alerted by the first. A woman gestured for me to go first, but I declined.

  She went up to the counter. Meanwhile, the other woman had been palmed off to a junior guard who left the room with her.

  The next in line, an old man, also gestured for me to go first. I also declined. He moved to the counter, but kept casting me nervous looks. Maybe he was afraid that I’d changed my mind?

  That was typical keihu behaviour: they were highly aware of each individual’s place in society. While Coldi had superiors and inferiors and their structure was rigid, if a group of Coldi was waiting for something and Ezhya walked in, none of them would give up their place in line for him. They knew their position, but they also knew their rights. Because position in society was determined through hormones, they did not crawl on the ground in order to appease a leader so that they might move up in the hierarchy. It had taken me a long time to understand that Coldi didn’t work like that.

  These types of differences in behaviour never ceased to fascinate me.

  Eventually both the woman and the old man were done and it was our turn.

  I moved to the counter and said, “I want to report a missing person.”

  His eyes widened when we gave him all the details, but he took everything down and promised to get back to me when they knew more. There was no prior record that Federza was missing, he said.

  He seemed sincere enough that I believed him, but of course he was only an office worker. I couldn’t believe that no one had any knowledge of Federza’s disappearance.

  I signed the report and he said that they’d contact me if there was any news. We left no wiser than we had come.

  It was highly unsatisfactory and contributed to the seed of unrest inside me. A pan was going to boil over soon, and I was still looking for the kitchen.

  It was only when we were outside that I realised where we should have gone to ask about Federza in the first place. I stopped walking and said, “The Trader Guild office.” Damn, how could I have forgotten about that shadow society that all Traders considered their first home?

  The building of the Trader Guild was a brand new affair right next to the airport terminal. The considerable funding advantage the Traders possessed over the Barresh guards was not evident just in the glass-fronted exterior. The air was cool and fresh. The floor was lined with soft rubbery material that dampened all sounds. There was a counter on the far side where just one man—dressed in the Trader Guild’s distinctive carmine red—sat at a luxurious desk with new and modern equipment. No one waited at the couch in the corner which looked so comfortable that I would happily go to sleep there.

  The man gestured for us to c
ome over, and we crossed the soft floor, making little sound.

  I explained, for the second time in a few minutes, what had happened.

  When I finished speaking, the man rose and said, “Wait here. I’ll get a supervisor.”

  He left through a door in the back of the room behind the counter and came back a moment later with another man in red. This man was Kedrasi, like the typical Trader Guild employees, small of stature, with flaming red hair and large pigment spots around his eyes.

  He took us through the security door behind the counter. There was a corridor on the other side of this door, also with soft material on the floor, and newly painted walls. All along the walls hung heavy picture frames which contained manifestos, honour rolls and such things. The Barresh Chapter of the Trader Guild was very young in comparison with the Guild itself, but the building breathed a sense of stately history.

  We entered a door about halfway down the hallway, into a small meeting room with a couple of armchairs around a low table. He bade us to sit down and did the same himself, facing us, holding a reader on his lap.

  He nodded at me. “Delegate, it’s an honour that you come to visit us.”

  It was amazing where the gamra uniform could get you in as honoured visitor, especially if you wore the all-blue. Even his pronouns were formal.

  I explained the situation with Federza. How he had come to me, been shot at, how I hadn’t seen him since.

  He nodded all the way through. Clearly he knew what I was talking about. When I finished, he let a short silence lapse. Then he said, “It is a delicate situation. We are well aware that there is a problem, and that no one wants to talk about it. Most of it is taking place outside our authority.” To an unfamiliar ear, Trader Coldi sounded like it had been stuck in the past for at least a hundred years, until you realised that they had a good number of native words and a highly simplified tense structure.

  “What do you know?” I used professional pronouns. Even Coldi people rarely used those extremely formal ones that he used, and I wasn’t about to change that.

  He folded his hands on his knees. “Trader Federza has always been part of many groups and that makes him hard to trace. His membership in the Trader Guild should by rights have been his priority. He became gamra representative for the Trader Guild, but as the Aghyrians have no official entity, they never had more than casual representation. Trader Federza annexed that representation when occupying the position through the Trader Guild. The Trader Assembly was not happy about his divided loyalties.”

  “I heard that Delegate Namion has granted the Aghyrians the right to occupy a seat in the assembly.” That was one of the decisions he had pushed through in my absence. Not that I would have voted against it. If the Trader Guild—dubbed a nation without land—could hold a position, then the Aghyrians—a nation whose homeworld was no longer habitable to them—should have one, too.

  “They did. Feylin Herza was the first one to take the position.”

  “Then Marin Federza could have dedicated himself to representing the Trader Guild.”

  He nodded and pressed his lips together. “Don’t make this widely known, but I have to be honest and say that the Traders in charge of the Barresh Chapter weren’t highly impressed with Trader Federza’s efforts as their representative. At times he seemed to be representing the Aghyrians over the Guild. Deposing a representative is not something the Guild does lightly, but they were considering it. I’ve heard stories that whenever they mentioned his lack of performance in the position to him, he made evasive replies. As we heard later, he was in trouble with the Aghyrians as well. He might have acted like their representative, but he was not their leader. He challenged the authority. He was aware that when the Aghyrians were talking to the ship, they should notify gamra and that the Aghyrians alone did not have the authority to negotiate with the ship on behalf of gamra as a whole. He objected to the state of affairs, but was shouted down within the group. He was going to raise it with you, but that was when he was shot at. The next day they replaced him as representative of the Barresh Aghyrians at your negotiations.”

  “That is what I suspected, but where did he go, and why did Tamerians shoot at him?”

  “They were hired guns.”

  “Did the other Aghyrians hire them?”

  He held up his hands. “No one knows.”

  He looked a bit too innocent for my liking. Not that I thought he knew an awful lot, but I did think he knew more than he told us. “Have you attempted to find him?”

  “Not as much as we should, also being hampered by the fact that we don’t have authority to make formal investigations.”

  “Neither do I, yet here I am. Sometimes informal investigations will do just as well as formal ones.”

  “It’s different for you, because people accept that sometimes you need to step outside your authority to do something that you believe in.”

  Nice try, but sappiness wasn’t going to work on me. “Any reasons you don’t feel like this about Federza? After all, he’s one of yours. The Trader Guild is said to be one of the strongest communities. Don’t you all take the pledge of loyalty to the Guild above all others?” The precise wording of the pledge escaped me. If Trader Coldi still used a lot of formal expressions, the pledge was written in even more formal language. It was ancient.

  “We’re employees, Delegate. We don’t take the pledge.”

  “But the other Traders in the Chapter did. There are at least—what?—seven other Traders here. None of them wondered where he was?”

  “When that issue with the Aghyrian ship blew up, we assumed he was with his fellows. We understood the animosity between them only later. The issue didn’t get as much attention as we should have given it.”

  “You forgot about him.”

  “If you want to put it that way.”

  I did want to put it that way, having spent far too much time with blunt Coldi people. I still felt he was holding back information, even if not about where Federza was.

  He rose, signalling the end of the conversation.

  I was about to do the same when I decided to be rude anyway, since that appeared to be my lot in life. “If you have nothing to tell us, then why did you call me in here?”

  He gave me a startled look. “You’re an esteemed Delegate. Should I have left you waiting at the counter?”

  “The Barresh guards don’t have a problem with seeing me at a counter.”

  His mouth twitched. “That’s not how we do business.”

  “But you’ve not told me any business. I’m serious: If there is a problem, tell me, so that we can sort out where he is and why he disappeared. As you know, I can pull some strings if necessary.” Like, Ezhya.

  He hesitated. “What about . . . we don’t want those strings?”

  Now we were getting somewhere. “You don’t have to use them.” I glanced at Thayu and she made a hand signal to Sheydu, who rose and went to the door.

  “Don’t be mistaken that you can intimidate me with your fighting machines,” he said, but he glanced at Sheydu’s back nevertheless. Clearly nervous.

  “There is no need to feel intimidated. I only want one thing: tell me what is going on. Federza was in my office when shots were fired. They were fired at me as much as at him. I have the right to take the perpetrators to court.”

  “Yes, but investigating that part is the task of the Barresh Council. Nothing we can do.”

  “I agree, but then tell us what was going on. Why Federza was shot at.”

  “I told you.”

  “Poorly doing a job does not justify shooting.”

  But whatever I did or said, he would not budge, even if he remained polite. At this point, Coldi would have found ways to issue a writ, or find out through networks what was going on, but I had no chance here. Federza appeared to have been without friends.

  He led us back to the foyer. We met one of the Barresh Traders on the way. She was dressed in her turquoise and light blue outfit, carrying the cl
oak over her arm. She also carried a bag and a protective case that probably contained some kind of reader. She moved with the grace of a hunting cat, swaying her hip and tossing her hair carelessly over her should. The hint of leopard-spotted skin protruded from under her uniform sleeves. She nodded a polite greeting to us and then used her tail to open the door.

  “That was Yrrid Tiringga,” Sheydu said as we walked across the square.

  I’d heard that name before. Owner of one of the Pengali Trading licences, who came from a proud family that passed the licences from mother to daughter.

  “What did you think of what he told us?” I asked.

  “Mostly rubbish,” Thayu said.

  “Do you think he knows where Federza is?”

  “Yes.” She didn’t even hesitate.

  Sheydu was nodding.

  “Then who is he protecting?” I asked

  Sheydu pursed her lips. “With this vehemence? Delegate Namion.”

  “Nah,” Thayu said. “Delegate Namion is too stupid to hush things up. My bet is on the Aghyrian leadership.”

  “You think so, huh?” Sheydu answered. “Traders are funny with who they’ll pick to support. I think Delegate Namion, because the Aghyrians don’t have any control over laws or rules that they might want changed.”

  “The Traders will support the people they think will win. When something blows up, Namion is the first one to go. He’s weak, clueless. He’s a stand-in for those who don’t yet want to put themselves forward.”

  They argued over my head.

  If I had to choose between who I thought was the most likely to have anything to do with Federza’s whereabouts, I would pick the Aghyrians a hundred times over Namion.

  But then. . . against this wealth of spying experience, what could I say? I was going to ask them how they were even certain that the Trader Guild was covering up for someone when Thayu said, “Stop.”