Chapter 4
June 17, Year 214 NPrE
Al-Haiyan, the capital of the Sultanate of Er-Rummal's colonies on Tar-Mariat
"Gemma, I need your ears!" His Highness declared decisively, the moment Nightbird crossed the threshold of the office. "I think better when I reason out loud, and for that I need a listener."
"Whatever you say, Effendi," Gemma replied phlegmatically. AlNilam was working alone today—the Yakzan had dropped him off at the center and immediately driven off somewhere. And without him, the Wad-Prince was apparently bored.
"Sit down," he patted the sofa opposite the display panel. Gemma carefully perched on the very edge, as far away as possible to maintain a proper distance between herself and a person of royal blood.
"So, look," AlNilam pointed the remote at the panel, which was displaying multiple video recordings. "I requested footage from the police cameras on the streets around the perinatal center. Here are all the recordings from that night. What do you see?"
Gemma looked at the panel somewhat uncertainly. There were a great many recordings, but even when she focused on one—the top left corner—she still couldn't discern what was supposed to alarm her.
"Let someone from MT try getting footage from the local police in a couple of days," Nightbird thought. "They'd give it, of course... after about two months of bureaucratic red tape."
"I'm not entirely sure what I'm supposed to be looking for, Effendi," Gemma admitted.
"What do you mean? Here, here, and here, for example," AlNilam clicked the remote and enlarged three recordings. "Look, in all of them, a large black van appears—six passenger seats and a cargo compartment. It's a locally produced Airat."
"But why that one specifically?" Nightbird asked, puzzled.
"Because, firstly, it's big enough for both the terrorists and the hostages; secondly, it arrived near the center at ten to twelve on the night of the robbery. Thirdly... well, more on that later. Look, first it parked near a little shop a block from the center," the prince showed her the video of the van pulling into a small parking lot. "It sat there for about half an hour, then moved closer to the center. And then, at twelve-oh-three, people emerged from it."
The panel displayed a full-size recording showing five people jumping out of the van. They were dressed in dark clothing, their heads hidden under hoods, their faces concealed by kaitas[1].
"Why didn't they check where the cameras were located?"
"They did check, but these aren't ordinary cameras installed by shop or café owners. It's a covert police surveillance system."
Gemma flinched. She'd already grown accustomed to the Sultanate being somewhat cavalier with the Convention, but a covert surveillance system was a violation of the right to privacy!
"They might have liked to get their hands on the camera layout," AlNilam continued, ignoring her indignation, "but they couldn't. So, as we see, five people broke into the center. Doesn't anything about that bother you?"
"They should have been detected not only by the surveillance cameras but also by the access card system. Or there would have been an alarm from a broken door," said Gemma. "I mean, if Fialkovskaya had used her pass to open the door, the SS would have known immediately."
"Correct. But there was no alarm, and no record of Madame showing up for work at an ungodly hour. Ever wonder why?"
A dozen hypotheses flashed through Gemma's mind—from an accomplice among the IT department to some fantasy about invisibility cloaks.
"I don't know, Effendi," she admitted defeat.
"Come on, you can figure it out! Who, or more precisely what, can roam around offices and corridors, opening all the doors without arousing suspicion?"
Nightbird thought hard.
"The food service trolleys and delivery robots?" she ventured timidly.
"Almost! The cleaning robots! Your Dawud most likely took advantage of having access to the utility areas as service personnel. I think if we check the cleaning robots, we'll find evidence of tampering or something along those lines. Murad is better at this sort of thing, but that's not the point."
The Wad-Prince picked up his laptop, rustled through some files, and showed Gemma a long list with certain lines highlighted in yellow.
"See? This is the activity log for the cleaning robots on the night of the robbery. I've marked the entries related to the entrance doors, the offices of Shufrir, Fialkovskaya, Anger, and the door to the cryo-storage with the embryos."
"So they made fake key cards so the system would mistake them for cleaners?!" Gemma gasped.
"No, why make it so complicated? Dawud hacked several cleaning robots, and they simply opened the doors for the terrorists. The surveillance was down for two hours, and the access control system only recorded the locks being opened by the robots. Clever, isn't it?"
"Uh-huh," Gemma muttered gloomily. She never would have thought of that.
"The main thing was not to be seen by the security guards on duty, but Fialkovskaya or Dawud could have learned their schedule. With three robots, they pulled off the heist in less than an hour. I think Fialkovskaya headed for the cryo-chambers and took the embryos while the other two terrorists worked on Shufrir's terminal, and another two kidnapped Anger."
"But there's no sign of tampering on Shufrir's terminal!"
"No. Because Fialkovskaya lured the director to the center under some pretext, and a gun to the head did the rest. Look," the Wad-Prince scrolled the recording to the 00:54 mark. The five people returned to the van, now escorting two more. The terrorists put the hostages in the cargo compartment, and two of the kidnappers climbed in with them. The rest took the passenger seats, and the van drove off.
"Why didn't your police notice that?" Gemma asked indignantly. "It's clearly a kidnapping!"
"Actually, no," the prince frowned displeasedly. "They hid their weapons, so the cameras didn't catch them. No handcuffs, no paralytic nets, no blood on Shufrir and Anger. Neither of them is screaming or resisting. So no automatic alarm was triggered; a human would have had to review the footage."
"But... but... wait, every car has a tracker! Why didn't the police..."
"Because this car doesn't have a tracker, and its plates are fake. I've already requested data from the transport department. The car was worked over by a cutter—a criminal element specializing in tracker removal. If you run the plates, you'll find that this very vehicle spent the night in a garage in a quiet suburb. That's the 'thirdly' I mentioned."
"So we won't find the car?" Gemma asked, disappointed.
"Why wouldn't we? We'll run an image search and find it. Well, I won't—I've tasked the transport department with that. We should have the results by tomorrow morning. In the meantime, we'll work on something else."
"Where does he get all this energy so early in the morning?" Nightbird thought enviously. She'd felt like a zombie since waking, and if not for Eric, she'd probably show up for work in mismatched shoes and an office blouse over her pajamas.
AlNilam turned off the panel and declared:
"We can identify the car not only by video. That'll give us a chance to learn where it came from and where it went. But there's another equally important question—how the car ended up with the terrorists. Would you like to come with me to the Airat factory and intimidate the management there to find out?"
Gemma wanted sleep, coffee, a cream puff chased with salted shrimp, and a long nap. But refusing His Highness was probably not an option, even when he demanded action at an ungodly hour.
"Yes, Effendi," she said resignedly. "I'll call a taxi."
"No need. We'll take Shufrir's company car. I want to attract as much attention as possible."
***
Rajaf, where Murad suspected Silverberg had built a temporary nest, was a small, inexpensive bedroom community. Driving through the streets, the Yakzan concluded there was nothing particularly criminal about it. Rajaf was mainly home to families with children and retirees of modest means, spending their old age in a fairly well-appointed district with parks, hospitals, and entertainment centers.
Al-Fayyaz parked near a residential complex and pulled up a map on his tablet. According to his estimates, based on the rental car's routes and the places where Silverberg had made purchases, he must have been renting an apartment somewhere in this neighborhood. Sensibly, the terrorist had never ordered home delivery, but he needed to eat every day and therefore had to buy groceries and prepared food. He mostly did this at small shops and cafés near two residential complexes.
Murad got out of the car and headed for the first of them, a cluster of six towers surrounding a courtyard with children's playgrounds and sports facilities. Usually, in the Sultanate, the management office for a residential complex was located on the first floor of the first building, and there one could obtain all the information about the residents—especially by flashing the medallion engraved with the Sultan's Toi.
Murad brought grief and suffering into the manager's life. As in most such complexes, tenants were forbidden to give their key cards to third parties, which was precisely what the man renting a small apartment in building three, on the thirteenth floor, had done. The manager discovered this when, at the Yakzan's request, he ran Silverberg's photo through the simple facial recognition program installed for the surveillance system.
"Yusuf ibn-Hadi Al-Bikchi," Murad recorded in his phone. He'd need to check who this person was and why he was giving key cards to his apartment to the likes of Silverberg. Over several months, the surveillance cameras had never once recorded Al-Bikchi appearing at the residential complex, but Silverberg had come and gone from his apartment as if it were his own.
The Yakzan's mood was excellent, despite the nightmare. Firstly, it was gratifying to know he'd been right; secondly, this morning Effendi had demanded he join him in the shower, and such orders Murad always obeyed without question and with great diligence. Why else would his prince, at sixteen, have undergone the operation delicately referred to as the "Silk Road"[2]?
Murad would have hummed, if he could sing, as he rode up to Al-Bikchi's apartment. In the elevator, he sent a request to the police and Al-Shadiyar about Al-Bikchi (those poor souls were probably cursing the day Effendi and his Yakzan had arrived in Al-Haiyan). Al-Fayyaz opened the apartment door with the manager's key, entered, and looked around.
It was a small apartment, consisting of an entrance hall with a closet and a toilet, a kitchen-living room, and a bedroom with a tiny bathroom. Nowhere was there any trace of a frantic attempt to destroy evidence. Murad had seen plenty of dwellings from which terrorists had fled, having first tried to eliminate all traces of their presence. Al-Bikchi's apartment looked nothing like that—it was more as if Silverberg had left calmly, intending to return in the evening.
Soup simmered in the multi-cooker, which had started heating when Murad got too close; cutlets were defrosting in the refrigerator; a reminder on the panel's screensaver noted that the terrorist had missed three episodes of the new season of Crystal House. The Yakzan took a bio-material trace scanner from his case, swept it randomly over the kitchen cabinets, and found hundreds of fingerprints that no one had even tried to wipe away.
"Hmm," Murad scratched his beard thoughtfully. He and Effendi had assumed Silverberg learned of Dawud's death and panicked, rushing to Fialkovskaya's apartment, but apparently that wasn't the case. So why had he gone there?
"Maybe he was ordered to retrieve something? But Effendi turned the whole apartment upside down and found nothing suspicious."
In fact, the terrorists' actions puzzled Murad somewhat, and he pondered this as he combed through Silverberg's apartment. Obviously, they understood they couldn't sneak the embryos, the archive, and a couple of hostages out of the perinatal center unnoticed, and that it would be discovered the very next morning. But why compound their problems? Yet Dawud and Silverberg, as if on purpose, did everything to attract as much attention as possible.
"The boy probably panicked," Murad mused, emptying kitchen drawers. "It's unlikely a sensible group leader would order the murder of a Wad-Prince. That would guarantee the arrival of Al-Shadiyar, foreign intelligence, the guard, and the devil himself."
But then, Dawud hadn't called Silverberg—otherwise, the latter would have been at Fialkovskaya's the same day they came to the center, not sitting calmly at home.
"Or perhaps the boy was forbidden to call his accomplice, which is also possible, since calls are easily traced, and Dawud only had his work phone in his pocket."
Again, an experienced terrorist would have found a way, but Dawud Kamal was not that. Nevertheless, Silverberg went to Fialkovskaya's. Why?
He found neither an answer to this question, nor any hidden stashes of phones or fake documents. After six hours of searching, after which Silverberg's tidy apartment looked worse than Dawud's campus room, Al-Fayyaz sat despondently in the kitchen, eating soup and cutlets, waiting for the decryptor to crack the password on the tablet.
At first glance, the tablet seemed like an ordinary young man's device—and it belonged to Yusuf Al-Bikchi. That was already suspicious. Al-Bikchi could be a front—or floating face-down in a local river by now. Finishing the soup and cutlets, Murad began rifling through the tablet's contents, searching for hidden profiles, encrypted folders or files, shadow documents, and other terrorist delights. Nothing suspicious turned up, but then the Yakzan discovered a document buried deep in the system folders containing a link to a little-known cloud service.
"Allah bless the carelessness of youth," Murad thought, astonished to see a login and password beneath the link. He clicked the link, logged into the account, and found a single notes page. Al-Fayyaz opened it and saw three entries.
Yesterday at 8:09, a phrase appeared: "Go to her apartment and make sure everything's in order." Then, at 8:36 – "Damn! That idiot forgot the vial! Get the lilac vial from the bathroom cabinet under the sink." At 8:51, Silverberg replied: "Got it."
Murad copied everything to his own device just in case, turned off the tablet, scanned it for bugs, and tucked it into his case. Effendi was probably still terrorizing the staff at the car factory, so there was time to swing by Fialkovskaya's and look for a lilac vial.
***
The factory that stamped vans like the Airat was located outside the city limits, but still formally within the urban district. Gemma climbed out of Shufrir's luxurious car and looked around curiously. She'd never been here before.
Naturally, the Wad-Prince immediately flashed the Sultan's Toi, so the car stopped inside the gates, opposite the entrance to the administration building. It occupied three floors, and across a wide courtyard stretched long rows of workshops. Their shadows fell across the yard, almost reaching the porch of the admin building.
"How are we two going to search a place this huge?" Gemma thought. AlNilam headed for the admin building, and the girl hurried after him.
On the first floor, an entire delegation was already waiting for them—at least a dozen people, all of whom, as if on command, knelt before the person of royal blood. The Wad-Prince grimaced beneath his headscarf—creases appeared between his brows and at the corners of his eyes. He gestured for them to rise and asked:
"Which of you is responsible for the chips installed in the Airat vans?"
A large man with a black beard and a look of fear on his face stepped forward. Nightbird couldn't understand why they were all so afraid—the Wad-Prince didn't look at all dangerous.
"I am, Effendi. I am the senior engineer, Selim ibn-Mahmud Tagheri."
"Excellent. Where is your office?"
The chief engineer bowed and indicated a long corridor.
"I will speak with the others later," the Wad-Prince announced. "Have them prepare the meeting rooms," and he followed Tagheri, without a doubt that his will would be immediately obeyed. Gemma looked back—indeed, a female administrator was already running somewhere, exclaiming into her phone.
In Tagheri's office, His Highness took the most comfortable chair, gestured for Gemma to take another, and nodded to the engineer:
"Have a seat. We won't take much of your time. I'm interested in only one question—is it possible to steal an Airat van from your factory before the tracking chip is installed?"
Tagheri choked. His eyes bulged, and he rasped:
"Steal? Allah have mercy, how could that happen?!"
"Well, I don't know… haul it out with a forklift?"
"No, Effendi, how could we! Besides, the tracker chip is installed before the engine, so the van simply wouldn't go anywhere, even if someone got such an idea."
"Alright, what if someone removed the tracker? When would you find out?"
"Immediately, Effendi. Although," Tagheri added hastily, "there are some rather clever criminals who manage to extract the chip carefully, disconnecting the monitoring circuits."
"Hmm. And in recent months, have you received any signal about a chip being removed?"
"No, Effendi."
"What if it was removed not on Tar-Mariat, but on another planet?"
"That wouldn't help clumsy thieves. The signal is transmitted immediately to a cloud server in the Intergalact, and from there it comes to us—or to any other factory."
"I see. And have you received any notifications from other factories about a tracker chip being removed from a van?"
"No," Tagheri replied, surprised. "Why would we need to know about that? A signal about chip removal is sent by us (or our colleagues) to the police."
"And could they choose not to send it?"
Tagheri paled slightly.
"What are you suggesting, Effendi? Concealing such information is a crime!"
"A violation of job duties, you mean?" Gemma clarified.
"No, Saida, a crime—since a tracker chip is almost always removed for criminal purposes, so if we didn't report it, we'd become accomplices to criminals!"
"Well, aren't these some strict rules!" Nightbird thought indignantly. "How does anyone manage to fight the authorities under such surveillance?"
"I'd like to speak with those responsible for notifying the police about removed chips."
"One moment, Effendi. I'll arrange it immediately."
The chief engineer hurriedly left the office, and AlNilam hissed:
"Are we going to waste our time here too? How did they manage to remove that damn chip?"
"I could look through the documentation," said Gemma.
"What kind?"
"They might not have removed a chip somewhere at all, but installed a defective one in one of the vans from the start. I mean, a chip that worked just long enough for the van to pass performance tests, and then, as soon as it left the gates, it shut down."
"What an interesting idea!" the Wad-Prince exclaimed admiringly. "How do you know about such things?"
"My husband designs chip control systems. He," Gemma added with a smile, "works at this factory on contract. Mostly remotely, and fortunately, today is one of those days. Otherwise, he'd be very surprised to see us here."
AlNilam laughed merrily.
"You see how useful you are! So, if someone installed a deliberately defective chip, then we need to look for the saboteur among the factory employees," His Highness's eyes lit up. "Well, let's see! Maybe we'll spend the day here productively after all!"
[1] A mask similar to a balaclava
[2] A procedure ensuring the safety of anal intercourse and the prevention of hemorrhoids.