Seeker

SIX

Talent is important, perseverance good. But in the end there’s nothing quite like blind luck.

- Morita Kamalee,

Walking with Plato, 1388 When I got home, Alex had news for me. He’d been to see Fenn and had information about Hap’s father. “His name was Rilby Plotzky. Known to his associates as Rile.

Like his son, he was a burglar.”

“With a name like that, I can understand it.” Skills ran in the family, I guessed. “You say he was a burglar. Did he reform? Or die?”

“Mind-wiped.”

“Oh.”

“I asked whether we could talk to him.”

“Alex, you know they’d never let us do that. And it wouldn’t do any good anyhow.”

It was snowing again. We were sitting in the office watching big wet flakes come down, and it didn’t look as if it was ever going to stop. Snow was hip deep out to the landing pad. “Mind wipes aren’t always complete,” Alex said. “Sometimes it’s possible to reverse the effects.”

“They wouldn’t let you do that either.”

“I know. I’ve already inquired.”

“What did they say?”

“It didn’t get past the official filters.”

I was surprised that Alex would even consider going that far. If the elder Plotzky had established a new life under a new name, he had a complete set of false memories and the lifetime habits that came with them. He would be a solid citizen. Break through that wall and it was anybody’s guess what might happen.

He resented my disapproval. “We’re talking about objects of enormous value, Chase,” he said. “I can’t say I’d have all that much sympathy for him. If he was worth a damn, they wouldn’t have had to do the procedure in the first place. And, anyhow, they could put him under again.”

“Are we assuming he stole the cup?”

“You think he was likely to have been a lover of the finer things in life?”

The first Plotzky’s burglary career had ended almost twenty years before, in 1412, when he was convicted for the third time, on seventeen counts. That was when they imposed the wipe. His first arrest had been in 1389. The evidence indicated he’d been active in his chosen profession during most of the intervening twenty-three-year span.

“So,” I said, “how does any of this help us?”

“We try to pin down which burglary might have produced the cup.”

“How do we do that? Are there police reports?”

“Yes. Of all the unsolved burglaries in Plotzky’s area of operation. But they can’t be made available. Privacy laws.”

“So we have to go through the media.”

“I’d say so.”

“There’s no point. He must have taken it because it caught his eye. He obviously didn’t realize the value of the thing or it wouldn’t have sat on that shelf all those years.

If somebody had reported the theft of a nine-thousand-year-old cup, Plotzky would have known what he had.”

“That’s a good argument,” said Alex.

“Okay. Look, I hate to point this out, but we now have reason to suspect we’re aiding and abetting. We’re helping unload stolen property.”

“We don’t know that, Chase. It’s guesswork.”

“Right. This family of burglars, on the side, has a taste for antiques.”

He was getting uncomfortable. Frustrated. Outside, the wind was picking up, and the storm was growing worse. “Let’s do this,” he said. “We’ll set some parameters for Jacob and let him run a search through news reports covering the period. If we can’t find a break-in where the cup might have been taken, what have we lost?”

Actually, that wasn’t as unlikely a possibility as it sounded. Burglary’s a rare phenomenon. Most people have high-tech security. And criminal behavior itself is relatively unusual. We’re living in a golden age, although I doubt most people realize it.

It got me thinking about the Margolians, and the kind of world that would drive five thousand people to clear out, to jump on the Seeker and the Bremerhaven and make for an uncertain frontier. What had it really been like to live in the twenty-seventh century? Widespread criminal behavior. Intolerance. Political oppression.

Environmental problems. Religious crazies. You name it.

“Jacob,” said Alex, “check through the news stories relating to burglaries in the Andiquar region from 1389 to 1412. You’re looking for any reference to the Seeker or to a nine-thousand-year-old drinking cup.”

“Commencing search,” he said.

Alex was sitting in the big, soft, hand-tooled sofa facing the desk. He was wearing a frumpy gray sweater and looked distracted. He picked up a book, closed it, wandered over to the window, and stared out at the snowstorm. “I can call you,” I told him, “when he finishes.” I’d have liked to see him go upstairs to his office.

“It’s okay,” he said.

Ten minutes later Jacob was back. “Negative,” he said. “No matches.”

“All right.” Alex closed his eyes. “Try any thefts involving antiquities.”

Jacob’s lights went on and the electronic hum in the walls picked up.

I’d been going over the latest items coming onto the market, looking for objects that might be of interest to our clients. Someone had found an eighty-year-old handmade clock. None of our customers would care, but I liked the way it looked. It wouldn’t cost much, and it would give my living room a bit of cachet. I was trying to make up my mind about it when Jacob reported negative again.

“All right.” Alex sank back into the sofa and crossed his arms. “What we need to do is find thefts from homes whose occupants would have been likely to own antiques.”

“How do we do that?”

“Hang on a second.” He flipped open a notebook. “Jacob, would you see if you can get Inspector Redfield on the circuit for me?”

Fenn and a slice of his desk appeared in the middle of the office. “What can I do for you, Alex?” He sounded as if he were having a long morning.

“The case we were talking about yesterday-?”

His brow furrowed. “Yes?” He looked as if he’d already heard enough about that one.

“I wonder if you could tell me whether the burglaries were limited to a single area?”

“Wait one.” He made weary sounds. “What was the name again?”

“Plotzky.”

“Oh, yes. Plotzky.” He gave instructions to an AI, reminded Alex that that week’s card game would be at his place, and took a bite out of a sandwich. Then he looked up at a monitor. “Bulk of the cases were in Anslet and Sternbergen. There were a few elsewhere. Pretty well spread around, actually.”

“But all in the region immediately west of Andiquar?”

“Oh, yes. Plotzky didn’t travel much.”

“Okay, Fenn. Thanks.”

In his final trial, Plotzky had been charged with seventeen counts of theft by breaking and entering. We had the names of the property owners from the court records. The prosecutors had tagged him with more than a hundred over his career. “What we do is use the media to track down every burglary we can find in the target area while Plotzky was active.”

“That’s going to be a lot of burglaries.”

“Maybe not. The records don’t indicate that he had much competition.” He got up and went over to the window and looked out at the snow. “Jacob?”

“Yes, Alex?”

“How many burglaries were there during the period?”

More lights. “I count two hundred forty-seven reported instances.”

“I thought you said he didn’t have much competition.”

“Chase, we’re looking at twenty years.” He shook his head at the weather. “Doesn’t look as if it’ll ever quit snowing.” It was the kind of day that left me wanting to curl up in front of a fire and just go to sleep.

“Jacob,” he said, “we need the victims’ names.”

A list rolled out of the printer.

“Now what?” I asked.

“We check each of them. Try to find people likely to have owned antiques.”

Easy to say. “This is forty years ago. Some of these people won’t even be alive.”

“Do your best.”

What happened to the “we”? “Okay,” I said. “Who’s likely to own antiques?”

“Think what our clients have in common.”

“Money,” I suggested.

“I would have preferred exquisite taste. But yes, they will have to have money. Get the addresses. Look for people who live in the more exclusive areas.”

“Alex,” I said, “we’re talking about burglars. They’re going to favor the moreexclusive areas.”

“Not necessarily. Security systems are less effective elsewhere.”

Alex pitched in, and we spent the next few days making calls. Most of the people who’d been burglarized had since moved or died. Tracking down the survivors, or relatives, was another big job.

We did connect with some. Did your family ever own an antique cup with English symbols?

Actually, several thought they might have had one once. But nobody could describe it accurately. And nobody sounded serious.

“Alex,” I complained, “there have to be better things we could be doing.”

After a few days had passed without result, he was tired of it, too. By the fourth evening, we were near the end of the list. “It’s a wild-goose chase,” I told him. “I’d be willing to bet the majority of burglaries didn’t even make the news.”

He was chewing a piece of bread, looking as if his mind were somewhere outside in the night. The lights in the room had been dimmed, and Jacob was playing something from Sherpa. It was a quiet rhythm, adrift in the somber mood of the evening.

“Plotzky didn’t know what he had. Maybe the original owner didn’t either.”

“It’s possible,” I said.

“Maybe the victim wasn’t somebody who collected antiques. Maybe it was a guy who collected cups.”

“Cups. Somebody who collects cups.”

“Jacob,” said Alex, “let’s see the cup again. Close up.” It appeared in the center of the office, the image about my size. “Turn it, please.”

It began to rotate. We looked at the eagle, at the banners, at the registry number. At the ringed planet. “No way,” I said, “you could miss that it’s connected with interstellars.”

“My thought exactly. Jacob, let’s go back to the time period of the burglaries. Same geographical area. How many families can you find with a connection to the interstellar fleet?”

“Families on record as having been burglarized?”

“No,” he said. “Anybody with a connection to interstellars.”

We found nine families in the target area with fleet connections. Five had moved during the intervening years. Of the remaining four, two were military, and one was connected with a corporation that maintained orbitals. The fourth was the sole survivor of her family, a female who still owned the house but who was now married to a journalist and living in the eastern Archipelago. Her name was Delia Cable.

She’d been Delia Wescott at the time Plotzky was active. Her parents, and the owners of the property at the time of the burglary, were Adam and Margaret, who had lost their lives in an avalanche in 1398. Margaret had been a class-two pilot for Survey, and Adam had been a researcher who’d made a career of the long-range missions.

The connection with Survey caught Alex’s attention, and Delia Cable went directly to the top of the list. Jacob made the call, and she materialized in the office.

It’s difficult to determine qualities like height over the circuit. People have a tendency to adjust settings, so the projection may be considerably different from the reality. But you can’t do much with eyes other than change their color. Delia Cable’s eyes filled the room with their intensity. I suspected she was tall. She had chiseled cheekbones, and the kind of features that you associate with models. Her black hair swept down over her shoulders.

Alex introduced himself and explained that he represented Rainbow Enterprises. He had a few questions about an antique.

Her expression was polite although it let us know she had better things to do than talk to strangers, and she sincerely hoped Alex wasn’t trying to sell her something.

Her clothes, a soft gray Brandenberg blouse and matching skirt, with a white neckerchief-I couldn’t see the shoes-indicated she was not wanting for resources.

Her diction was perfect, the accent Kalubrian, that happy mix of detachment and cultural superiority that derives from the western universities.

“Did your family,” he asked, “ever own an antique cup?”

She frowned and shook her head. No. “I’ve no idea what we’re talking about.”

“Let me ask a different question, Ms. Cable. When you were a girl, you lived in Andiquar, is that correct?”

“In Sternbergen, yes. It’s a suburb. That was before my parents died.”

“Was your house ever robbed?”

Her expression changed. “Yes,” she said. “There was something about a burglar.

Why do you ask?”

“Did the items get returned?”

She considered the question. “I really don’t know. It was a long time ago. I was pretty young when it happened.”

“Do you recall an antique cup? An ordinary-sized drinking cup with odd symbols on it? And an eagle?”

She closed her eyes, and a smile touched those austere lips.

Bingo.

“I haven’t thought about that cup for more than thirty years. Don’t tell me you have it?”

“It has come to our attention, yes.”

“Really? Where was it? How did you connect it with me?”

“That’s a long story, Ms. Cable.”

“It would be nice to have it back,” she said. “Are you planning to return it?”

“I’m not sure what the legal ramifications are. We’ll check into it.”

She indicated he shouldn’t go to any trouble. “It’s not a major issue,” she said. “If it can be returned, fine. If not, don’t worry about it.”

“If I may ask,” he said, “were there other objects in the house like it? Other antiques?”

She thought it over. “Not that I recall. Why? Is it valuable?”

Alex would have liked to avoid getting the corporation into the middle of a legal dogfight. “It might be,” he said.

“Then I would most certainly like to have it back.”

“I understand.”

“How much is it worth?”

“I don’t know.” Market values on objects like that tended to fluctuate.

“So how do I get it returned?”

“Easiest way, I suppose, would be to get in touch with your local police. We’ll make a report on this end.”

“Thank you.”

I didn’t feel comfortable with the way this was playing out. “You’re sure there was nothing else around the house like the cup?”

“Of course I’m not sure. I was seven or eight years old.” She didn’t say idiot, but it was in her tone. “But I don’t recall anything else.”

“Okay.” Alex pushed back in his chair, trying to ease the tension. I didn’t especially like the woman and would have preferred to let Amy keep her prize. In fact I was already regretting that we’d stuck our noses into the business at all. “Your parents, I understand, died in an avalanche in 1398.”

“That’s correct.”

“Do you have any idea where they might have gotten the cup?”

“No,” she said. “It was always there. As far back as I can remember.”

“Where did they keep it? If you don’t mind my asking.”

“Their bedroom.”

“And you’re sure you don’t know where it came from originally?”

She bit her lower lip. “I had the impression,” she said, “that they brought it back from one of their trips.”

“What kind of trip?”

“One of their flights. They worked for Survey at one time. Used to go together on exploratory missions.”

“How sure are you? That it came back on one of the flights?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “I wouldn’t want to bet on it, Mr. Benedict. Keep in mind that was all pretty much before my time. I was about two years old when they left Survey.”

“That would have been-?”

“Around 1392, I guess. Why? What has any of this to do with anything?”

“Aside from the Survey missions, were there other flights?”

“Yes.” She smiled. “We traveled quite a lot.”

“Where did you go? If you don’t mind my asking?”

A love seat appeared, and she sat down in it. “I don’t know. Not anywhere special, I guess. Middle of nowhere. I don’t think we ever made landfall.”

“Really.”

“Yes. It always seemed odd. We’d go to a station. It was pretty exciting stuff for a kid.”

“A station.”

“Yes.”

“Do you know which one?”

She was getting annoyed again. “I have no idea.”

“You’re sure it was a station.”

“Yes. It was off-world. What else could it have been?”

“How big was the station? How busy was it?”

“Too long ago,” she said. “Anyhow, I don’t think I ever left the ship.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. I suspect my memory’s playing tricks on me. I wanted to leave the ship.

But they-” She stopped, trying to recall. “It’s odd. I never understood, to be honest.

They told me it wasn’t a good place for little girls.”

“You’re right. That is odd.”

“That’s the way I remember it. I’ve always thought it didn’t really happen that way.

Makes no sense.”

“Did you get a look at the station?”

“Oh, yes. I remember it. It was a big long cylinder.” She smiled. “It looked scary.”

“What else can you remember about it? Was there any unusual structure anywhere?”

“Not that I remember.”

“Did you dock in a bay?”

“I don’t know.”

“How about the lights? Could you see lights anywhere?” Some stations advertised hotels and other services on marquees that were visible on approach.

“It had lights, Mr. Benedict. Spots playing across the station.”

“Okay.”

While they were talking, Alex was looking through the family information that Jacob had made available. “You were with them at the time of the avalanche, isn’t that right?”

“Yes. I was lucky. We were at a ski resort, in the Karakas, when there was an earthquake and the mountain came down. Couple hundred dead.”

“Must have been a terrible experience for a little girl.”

She stared off to one side. “There were only a handful of people at the hotel who survived.” She took a deep breath. “The burglary you’re talking about happened about a year before we left on that trip.”

I looked at the data screen. After the accident, she’d gone to live with an aunt on St.

Simeon’s Island. “Ms. Cable,” Alex said, “what happened to your household possessions? The stuff your folks owned?”

“I have no idea,” she said. “I never saw any of it again.”

“Okay.”

“Maybe that’s not precisely true. My aunt Melisa, she took me in, salvaged some odds and ends. Not much, I don’t think.”

Alex leaned forward. “Can I persuade you to do me a favor?”

“What do you need?”

“When you have a chance, take a look at your older possessions and see whether you have anything else remotely like the cup. Anything with English characters. Or anything at all that doesn’t seem to belong.”

“All right.”

“Thank you.”

“Mr. Benedict, there’s something else.”

“Yes?”

“I remember my mother telling him, telling my dad, once when they were getting ready to go outside, over to the station, when they thought I was not close by, that she was scared.”

I ran a search on the Wescotts. Adam had earned a degree in mathematics at Turnbull, a small western college, then gotten his doctorate in astrophysics at Yulee. He declined going into academia and opted instead for a field career with Survey. A fair number of postdocs take that route. It means they’re less interested in making a reputation for themselves, or in doing serious work in their fields, than they are in simply getting up close to stars and visiting worlds that nobody has ever seen before.

You don’t usually think of scientific types as being romantics, but these guys seem to qualify. I spent two years piloting Survey ships, and I met a few of them. They are unbridled enthusiasts. Normally a mission is assigned a section of maybe eight to ten stars. You go into each system, do a profile of the central sun, get more information about it than anybody’s ever going to care to read, then run a survey of the planets if there are any. And you look especially close at worlds in the biozone.

I looked at Adam’s graduation picture from Turnbull. He was twenty-two, goodlooking, with brown hair, blue eyes, and a confident smile. This was a kid who might or might not have been bright, but he himself had no doubt he was going to be top of the class.

I dug out whatever else I could. Adam Wescott doing grunt work at Carmel Central Processing Lab. Wescott entering the Lumley, the first time he’d gone on board an interstellar. I found him as a thirteen-year-old accepting an award as an Explorer, smiling as if recognizing it would be only one of many. He looked good in the uniform, everything tucked neatly in place, beaming while an adult, also in uniform, handed him his plaque. He turned and I got a look at the audience, composed of about fifteen other boys, all brushed and sharp in their uniforms, and maybe three times as many adults. The proud parents of the little group of Explorers at, according to the banner strung across one wall, the Overlook Philosophical Society, which apparently sponsored the corps.

I even got to hear him speak. “Thank you, Harv,” he said, and immediately corrected himself: “Mr. Striker.” Smile for the audience. We all know he’s really good old Harv. He took a piece of paper out of his pocket, unfolded it, and made a face at it.

“The corps wants me to say thanks to all the parents, and to Mr. Striker, and the Society,” he said. “We’re grateful for your help. Without you, we wouldn’t be here.”

The kid was on his way.

And there was a middle-aged Adam as an observer at the table of Jay Bitterman when Bitterman received the Carfax Prize. And Adam again during a birthday celebration for a politician with whom he’d developed a passing relationship.

And Adam’s wedding. He’d shown good taste and married his pilot, Margaret Kolonik. Margaret looked gorgeous the way brides inevitably do because they are happy and emotional and celebrating a premier moment. In fact, though, she’d have looked good in an engine room. She had the same highlighted black hair I’d seen in her daughter, framing perfect features and a smile that lit up the room.

The routine at Survey is to interchange pilots and researchers after each mission. The average mission now lasts about eight or nine months, and I doubt things were much different forty years ago. It was done because the missions usually carried only the pilot and one or two researchers. People locked away like that for extended periods of time tend to get on each other’s nerves.

But the background information indicated the happy couple had been together ten consecutive flights. On the last two, their baby daughter Delia had been along. I assumed there was no problem arranging that if you wanted to do it.

I sat in my office and watched Margaret Kolonik stride purposefully up the aisle to take charge of her guy. No wilting flower, this one. The data prompt informed me that her father was dead, and she was given away by an uncle, an overweight man who kept looking around as if he wanted to escape. Not somebody she’d have been very close to, I thought.

It was a religious ceremony. A priest requested the blessings of the Almighty on the happy couple, and led them in their vows. The best man produced the ring, Adam slipped it on her finger, she waltzed into his arms, and they kissed.

I envied them that moment. I’ve had a good life and can’t complain. But I don’t think I’ve ever approached the sheer joy I saw in Margaret’s eyes as she let go of him, and they started back down the aisle.

The best man was described as a lifelong friend of Adam’s, Tolly Weinborn. I recognized him immediately and switched back to the Explorer ceremony. And there he was, about thirteen, standing at attention with his comrades, with all due intensity and innocence.

I found Tolly after a quick search. He was living in Barkessa, on the northern coast, where he was an administrator at a public service office, the kind of place people go to when they’re in trouble. He was not available at the moment, the AI told me. Could they have him return the call?

I found other tasks to occupy my time while I waited, among them looking for books that dealt with the Margolians and their flight from Earth. I came across The Golden Lamp, by Allie Omar. Omar looks at the causes of humanity’s long history of starting and stopping, taking three steps backward, turning left, going forward, and doing lots of pratfalls. Her basic question: What might have happened if, since the twentyseventh century, the human race had been able to avoid the infighting, the economic dislocations, the collapses? Had we sidestepped the three distinct sets of dark ages that set in during the Fourth, Seventh, and Ninth Millennia? Assume a straightforward dead-ahead unimpeded progress. Where would we be?

She doesn’t answer her own question, but is satisfied with speculating on what the result might have been had the Margolians succeeded. The bottom line: They would be technologically three or four thousand years ahead of us. They’d regard us, not as barbarians, but as distinct inferiors.

In the early years of interstellar travel, people worried about meeting aliens who would prove to be vastly superior. In technology. Perhaps ethically. Possibly both.

And the fear was that, faced by a hypercivilization, however benevolent its intentions might be, humans would simply lose heart. Similar effects had been observed time and again during the early years as man spread around his home world.

But, where the Margolians were concerned, the fears were, of course, unfounded.

After leaving Earth, they were never seen again. And, across thousands of years, the only aliens we’ve encountered are the telepathic Ashiyyur, the Mutes, sometime friends, sometime rivals, occasional enemies. We discovered to our surprise that we were their technological equals. And since they still engaged in war among themselves, and occasionally against us, we were further gratified to conclude they were no better than we were.

There was no one else. Visits to star systems over the millennia produced numerous living worlds, but none with anything you could call recognizable intelligence. Of course there were some species out there with potential. If you were prepared to wait around a few hundred thousand years, you might have someone to talk with. But the galaxy, as Art Bernson famously said, has a lot of empty rooms.

Tolly never called back, so I tried him at home that evening. When I mentioned Wescott’s name to his AI, he immediately agreed to talk to me. He still looked relatively young, despite the accumulation of years. The features, cherubic in the twelve-year-old, congenial in the best man, had assumed a kind of world-weariness.

He’d gained weight, and his face was lined, his once-red-blond hair gone mostly gray.

He wore a beard, and he had something of a haunted look. Too many years of public service, maybe. Too many sad stories.

I identified myself and explained that I was doing some historical research. “Did you keep in touch with Adam after he got married?” I asked.

He couldn’t suppress a grin. “It was impossible to stay in touch with him. He was away too much.”

“Did you see him at all?”

He bit his lip and pushed back in his chair. “A couple of times. During the early years.”

“What about after he left Survey? When his career was over?”

No hesitation this time: “His career never ended,” he said. “He might have left Survey, but he and Margaret kept making flights. Did it on their own.”

“You mean they paid the bills?”

“Yes.”

“Why did they do that?”

Shrug. “Don’t know. I always assumed they’d gotten hooked and just had to keep going. I asked him that question once.”

“What did he say?”

“ ‘The world is too small.’ ”

“But why wouldn’t they have stayed with Survey if that’s what they wanted to do?”

“He said Survey always gave him a prepared itinerary. He liked being able to go wherever he wanted.”

“That make sense to you?”

“Sure. They had plenty of money. They’d saved all those years, and Margaret had access to a trust of some sort.”

“Did you ever think about going along with them?”

“Who? Me?” The grin spread across his face. “I like to keep my feet on the ground.

Good old terra firma. Anyhow, I had a career to take care of. Such as it was.”

“Did they ever invite you?”

He rubbed his jaws. “I just can’t remember, Chase. It’s too long ago. I’m sure they’d have made room for me if I’d asked.”

“Do you know where they were going? On the private flights? Did they go to different places? Or was it the same destination all the time?”

He reached for a glass half-filled with a colorless liquid and ice cubes. He took a sip and put it back down. “I always assumed they went to different places.”

“But you didn’t ask?”

“What would be the point of going back to the same place all the time?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“You must have had something in mind when you asked the question.”

I let him see I was talking off the top of my head.

“Why does it matter?” he asked.

“We’re trying to put together a history of the missions during those years.” The answer seemed to satisfy him. “And he never said anything to you at all about those flights?”

“I didn’t see him that much, Chase. And no, I can’t really remember anything he might have said. Except probably, when he got back, that he was glad to be home.”

“Tolly, is there anybody else he might have spoken to? Anyone who might know what those later missions were about?”

He needed a minute or two to answer that one. He mentioned a couple of names.

Someone who might have known, maybe, but he died a few years back. And there was a friend of Margaret’s, they might have talked to her, but she’s dead, too.

“Let’s try a different approach, Tolly. Did Adam, or Margaret, either of them, ever tell you they’d found something out there? Something unusual?”

“Like what?”

“Like an old starship. Really old.”

“No, I don’t know about anything like that.” He shook his head. “Well, maybe he did say something once or twice.”

“What did he say?”

“He was kidding around. Said they’d found something that would blow the socks off everybody.”

“But he didn’t say what?”

“Wouldn’t tell me. Just smiled and said how they were going back out eventually and I was going to get the surprise of my life. But he kidded a lot. You know what I mean?”

I reported both conversations to Alex. “Good,” he said. “We’re making progress.” He rubbed his hands and told me I’d done brilliantly.

I couldn’t see it. “In what way?” I asked. “The only thing I can see that we’ve done is compromise the interests of our client.”

“We’ll find a way to make it up to her.”

“How are we going to do that?”

“Buy her a nice birthday present. Point out to her the possibility of a major find out there, and that if we can come up with it, she’ll get a generous share.”

“I don’t think she’s the type to let the cash go and settle for an outside chance.”

“I know.” He sucked in some air. “We bungled that part of things, I guess.”

“We?”

“Okay. I did. Look, Chase, we’ve been doing what we had to.”

“We could have just moved the merchandise, taken our commission, and made the lady happy. Now, if we’re lucky, maybe we’ll have to settle for some reward money.

And I don’t like the way this is working out for Amy.”

“I know.” He looked unhappy. “Ms. Cable appears to be generous. If nothing else develops from this, I’m sure she’ll compensate us for our trouble.”

“I’m sure.”

“Chase, we had an ethical responsibility here. We don’t market stolen goods.”

“I’d like not to be here when you explain it to Amy.”