The Administration Series (148 page)

Despite all that, George was pleasant enough company. However, the meal did nothing to alter Toreth's opinion that the man was as much use to I&I as a pair of chocolate handcuffs. What George knew about his section could be written on the back of a postcard, and what he knew about resisters would fit under the stamp. Worst of all, he seemed to rely entirely on Karteris, as the most senior of the senior paras, to run the section for him. When Toreth considered what
he
could get away with if Tillotson took that attitude, the possibilities for malfeasance in Athens Political Crimes seemed virtually limitless.

On the way back from lunch, Toreth bought a postcard with a picture of some ruined building or another on the front. On the back he wrote, 'Weather sunny. Food great. Missing you sucking my cock', and posted it to Warrick at SimTech.

Karteris had produced an active case from somewhere — a near miracle, Toreth realised now he'd had a better look at the section's records — and was absent from the office for most of Thursday. Just before lunch, Sara called.

"Problem?" Toreth asked when he saw her expression.

"Probably not. But I heard something and I thought you'd like to know. Mike Belkin was pissed off because you got the Athens job when he was supposed to be next in line for a cushy secondment. Davi — "

"Who?"

"His admin. New, again. Belkin's last new admin went on the sick. Stress,
again
. Anyway, Davi was chasing me, wanting to know how you swung it, so I told him you didn't do anything and to let me know if he found anything out. This morning at coffee he told me Belkin's dropped it because
he
heard that someone from outside the division insisted on you getting it and he didn't want to stir up trouble." She paused for breath. "Well?"

Toreth digested the tale for a moment, then asked, "Who from outside?"

"I've got no idea and neither does Davi or anyone else, which did make me wonder if there was anything in it after all. Might be complete crap — someone making it up to stop Belkin hassling them. You know how bloody-minded he is when he decides he's missed out on what he's due. But I thought you ought to know, in case there was something to it."

"Yeah . . . yeah, thanks." Just what he needed.

"Enjoying yourself?" she asked.

Toreth considered the question and decided there was no way of explaining it that made sense while sober. "Yeah. I'll tell you all about it when I get back. Actually, keep the comm open for a minute."

He called Nikoletta into the office for a brief consultation, making sure she passed in front of the comm.

"What do you think?" he asked Sara when Nikoletta had gone.

"I'd screw her," Sara said promptly. "And I don't do girls. Should I be looking for another job?"

"I lost a data entry this morning — turned out she'd misspelled it and then tagged it with the wrong section code anyway."

Sara chuckled. "I'll put my CV away. Have fun. Oh — and ask her what she puts on her hair."

Coincidentally, when the call came through on Friday, Toreth was standing by the window, looking out at the city below. He wasn't sure whether it was pleasant to have no building facing him, or whether it was unnervingly open and unprotected.

A fragment of his conscious awareness registered Karteris answering the comm. After a few sentences, the studiously casual tone made him pay closer attention.

"There's no need. Everything's fine. Okay. One-fifteen, if we have to."

A time? An address? A room number?

Toreth stayed where he was as the call finished.

"I'm afraid I've got to deal with something," Karteris said, already rising. "It won't take long."

"Sorry?" Toreth turned, smiled vaguely. "Sure, go ahead."

Karteris didn't pick up his jacket, and it was barely ten o'clock. One-fifteen must be a room number, Toreth decided as the door closed behind Karteris. Memories of the introductory tour suggested one of the ground floor meeting rooms.

Nikoletta was outside, and she'd probably report any departure to Karteris. The meeting would break up before he found it. The situation required a little lateral thinking, and the solution was right at hand.

Lucky thing that Karteris had a ground flooor office, and that there was no flowerbed outside to leave footprints in. Toreth eased open the window, swung himself over the sill — grinning at the ridiculousness of the situation — and set off along the side of the building.

The sloppy security proved a good thing. He quickly found an open fire door which let him back into the building only a few yards from his target. He checked the corridor both ways — clear. He'd decided to listen from the corridor if necessary, but luckily the next room along from the meeting room was empty and had a helpfully flimsy connecting door.

Toreth set his ear to the door.

" — not
my
fucking fault," Karteris said.

"So whose fault is it?" A voice Toreth didn't recognise. "You said you'd check him out."

"I did," Karteris said. "Maybe there's another Val Toreth at I&I and we got the quiet, serious one. What I heard was that he screws around, drinks, drugs, doesn't give a fuck about politics and likes a stress-free assignment with plenty of expenses and a good time. You know — normal."

There was muffled laughter, the edge of tension clearly audible.

"So who sent him? Who can
know
? Zavras?"

"I've no idea, sorry." One of the juniors. "I couldn't even find out where the report came from. One minute everything was okay, the next thing I&I HQ was asking questions."

"But that doesn't mean anyone knows anything concrete." Toreth tensed as he heard a creak, before deciding it was Karteris standing up from a table or chair. "Probably just bored statisticians with too much time on their hands."

"So what are we going to do about it? About him?" Grammatopoulos, another of the seniors.

"Nothing," Karteris said. "He's not asking any questions about Grant yet, and he won't start if people keep their mouths shut."

"What about the others, though?"

"They've got even more reason than us to keep quiet. The timing's bad, but we'll get through it. He'll go home in a couple of weeks. Besides, it's probably a whitewash job — if they knew anything for sure, we'd have Internal Investigations tearing the place apart."

"Can't you ask him?" That sounded like Manos, Karteris's junior.

Karteris laughed. "Oh, sure. 'Excuse me, Toreth, are you here to officially ignore the fact that it looks like we can't catch resisters if they walk up to reception wearing a sign round their necks?' What the fuck am I going to do if he says no, genius?" Silence, then he said, "Is that it? Anyone else losing their nerve? Good. Then let's get back to work. And try to look busy."

Movement in the room, and Toreth hastened to get back to his desk in time to appear suitably innocent for Karteris's reappearance.

To his surprise, Karteris didn't return at once. While he waited, Toreth considered what he'd overheard. Combined with Karteris's little meeting, Sara's call had become more alarming. Who had wanted Toreth assigned to the review? The idea of an unknown benefactor left him very uneasy. Was there something dangerous here that he'd be far safer not finding?

He had no objections to whitewashing I&I operational fuckups,
if
that was what was expected of him. It worried him that he didn't know. If there was a serious problem he was supposed to ignore, then standard practise was at least to drop a hint at the beginning of the investigation. Things didn't always work that way, of course. The mess with Psychoprogramming and Marian Tanit had practically given him white hairs — he didn't want to go through that again.

Then there was the other possibility, that the gift of an easy assignment been given to him by someone who expected him to skimp the investigation and miss the source of the low conviction rates. In that case, Toreth would look like a prize idiot when whatever problems the section had later exploded into the open.

A thorough digging into Political Crimes had to be the best idea, he decided. As long as he kept a tight rein on what entered official records, he could always rebury anything particularly putrid that surfaced.

Glad that he'd transferred the files to his own hand screen, Toreth ran a search for Grant. Only one hit — a Theodora Grant, an administrative officer at the main university of Athens, who'd been reported as a suspected resister. When Political Crimes investigators arrived at her flat, they had found her recently deceased body, but no other evidence. The post-mortem suggested suicide. Preliminary investigation of her family, friends and colleagues had been unproductive and the case had been closed soon afterwards.

Apart from the corpse, the case seemed no different to many of the others. However, if it was the right woman then there must be something here Karteris didn't want him to see.

Vigilante justice, being handed out to suspected resisters by paras who couldn't be bothered with proper investigations and paperwork? Possible, although in that case he'd expect more corpses in the files.

Toreth stared at the screen, biting his thumbnail. Should he run a few more detailed searches on the unfortunate Theodora? For that he would have to use the local systems, or put a high-security connection through to I&I Headquarters in New London. The latter option would put up a giant flag saying he was up to something, but it was better than anyone who was watching him knowing exactly what.

He connected to New London, then started by pulling Grant's security file. To his surprise, the request was denied. However, a five-second assessment of the message showed it was almost better than getting the file itself. The security-clearance rejection had a code which, from memory, belonged to Citizen Surveillance.

If the Political Crimes paras had been tangled up in the death of a Cit agent — or even a suspect that Citizen Surveillance had put a 'hands-off' notice on — it wasn't surprising they were nervous.

Why had Grant been here? To find out, he'd need the files from Cit. For that, while he was in Athens, he'd need to get authority from George and possibly even Vassilakis. In either case it would inevitably attract Karteris's attention.

Alternatively, he could investigate the lead more easily, faster and far more quietly from his own office. A weekend return to New London wouldn't raise too many suspicions, certainly not with the happy accident of his new-found abstemious reputation.

A trip home, with the justification of enquiries at I&I, had another benefit. He could catch an afternoon flight back and be in Warrick's flat by early evening.

Friday evening. Warrick in the cabinet would make a perfect setting to tell him about Toreth's week of virtue.

Still smiling, Toreth called through to Nikoletta and asked her to arrange a flight.

As he waited at the Athens airport, he called Sara. When she appeared on the screen, she looked at her watch at once.

"It's half past four there, isn't it?" she asked.

He grinned. "Yes."

"Great. Okay, I know what
you
want. How early?"

"I'll be in about lunchtime. But I'm sending you a list of things for you to do before I get there." He activated the encrypted transfer. "Should be on your screen any moment."

"Long list?" she asked gloomily, sighing when he nodded. "So you spend Saturday morning in bed screwing Warrick, and I spend it here on my own?"

"That's about the size of it. You know, if you're going to bitch about it maybe I
should
think about making Nikoletta an offer."

"Yeah, yeah. Not that she'll want the job once I've warned her that you're a sadistic bastard who gets off on ordering his poor bloody admin to ruin her weekend plans."

He grinned. "What kind of language is that to use to your boss?"

"Memo me." She glanced to the side. "The list's here and clear. See you tomorrow."

Toreth picked up an extravagant box of liqueur chocolates at the overpriced gift shop before he boarded the flight.