Cerberus: A WOLF IN THE FOLD (18 page)

 
I got a little sleep, but not much, and showed up at Tooker about 6:00 a.m. Very early, but not totally unusual in these hard-pressed days. You either worked really late or you worked early. I'd established an irregular enough pattern so that the records wouldn't show anything particularly odd.

 
Once in the still mostly deserted building, I headed for my office and picked up the phone. No outside calls would be possible until eight, when the master building control computer came back on to normal, but the interoffice system worked regardless. I rang Sugal's office, letting it ring twice, then hanging up and dialing again.

 
"Qwin?"
I heard Dylan's anxious voice and felt some relief.

 
"Yeah.
Who else? How'd it go?"

 
"Hairy, you bastard.
I'd much rather hunt borks."

 
I laughed. "But you did it?"

 
"Yeah, it's done, although I still don't believe it.
Sanda?"

 
'I haven't called yet. I'll do that in a minute."

 
"Look, isn't somebody going to be coming in here shortly? When can I leave this mausoleum? I'm starving to death!"

 
"You know the routine. At seven-thirty the public function elevators will revert to normal, and you're on the office level. Just take the first car at seven-thirty down to the main level and use the emergency exit I told you about. No card needed."

 
That was true, for the fire code—but it
would
snap her picture along with day and time. That was no problem at all, though. As soon as they were both through, I'd use the handy little code Sugal supplied to erase the recording.

 
I gave her some encouraging words and rang the conference room with the same signal. The second time I called, Sanda answered, even more breathless than Dylan had been.

 
"How'd it go?"

 
She told me the whole story, of how the man had awakened and she had left the bottle there and, later, when the janitor had cleared the floor, it wasn't there any more. I calmed her, noting that he cleaned and polished the halls with that equipment, too. <

 
Calmed of that particular fear, she was otherwise gushing. "It was," she told me, "the most exciting time of my whole life. More, even, than my first babyl"

 
I had to laugh at that, then reminded her of the exit procedures, and made certain that she, too, would be out of the building by
seven forty-five
. That was when I was going to take care of that little security record.

 
I sat back, feeling satisfied. They'd both been right: the plan had been absurd and certain to fail, so many variables beyond our control, all that. But it
had
worked.
Worked perfectly.
And the two women and I all had wonderful alibis.

 
I'd had all sorts of fallback positions in case something had gone wrong, including convincing cover stories for both of them to use about being locked in the building and all that. But that would have caused a lot of suspicion and might have blown the whole thing even if they were believed by the night janitors and security people. Nothing had to be used. Free and clear.

 
At
seven forty-five
I cleared the security recording.

 
At eight the Chief of Security checked, found a blank recording, and was satisfied that nobody had passed. By that time I was actually doing a little work, although I planned to knock off by ten. I was tired, damn it.

 
The whole plan looked crazy on paper, and it was; yet it was also tailor-made for the weaknesses inherent in the system. The conviction that nothing save orders from legal judges could change you against your will had made it possible to do just that with the janitors, under the circumstances of the deserted, familiar halls of the building.

 
But the final item that made it all possible was the certainty in every Cerberan mind that even if you could electronically steal money you couldn't, get away with it, and that therefore nobody would bother to try. A few early and prominent examples sufficed.

 
The beauty of the plot was that nobody who did anything had any easily visible motive, and the man who did wouldn't have the slightest idea how the caper had been accomplished.

CHAPTER NINE - Aftermath and Reset

Sunday afternoon on the boat the three
of ,us
, with Sanda back in her own body, held something of a party to celebrate. I was particularly proud of Sanda, whose major reaction was that she wanted to do that kind of thing again. Dylan was more serious about it all; she knew the risks and the improbabilities of the thing as much as I did. We were a lot alike, Dylan and I, despite our very different backgrounds, except she was far more practical than I. Like those who would investigate this caper, she was fully capable of working out the details and dreaming it up, but she would never have gone through with it on her own. Had she not been in on it, she wouldn't have believed anybody would have. That, of course, was the ace in the hole for those investigative types.

 
"Look," I told her. 'The
people who run this world—the
corporation presidents, syndicate bosses, central admin-xistration—are the survivors. They are the ones who were audacious enough and smart enough to pull off their own operations and eliminate their competition—and lucky enough to get away wih it. There's a share of luck in all success stories, and only the unlucky ones make the headlines."

 
"Well, we were lucky this time," she responded, "and we did it. Your luck's bound to run out sometime, though. If it had last night,
your
mind wouldn't be going to the moons of Momrath—Sanda's and mine would. She can do what she wants, but is
it
for me. I'm not risking my neck on your harebrained schemes any more."

 
"You won't have to," I assured her as sincerely as possible. "Help, yes. We're all partners in this, we three. But this sort of thing you do once. From here on in it'll be something different—and only I can accomplish the final objective."

 
"You're still going after Wagant Laroo?"

 
I nodded. "I've got to, for many reasons."

 
"And if you get yourself blown away?"

 
I smiled. "Then I'll try again. They'll just send in another me, and another, until the job gets done."

 
That afternoon I also filled Sanda in on the rest of the truth about me. After what she'd gone through, I thought she had a right to know. I admit I was soothing Dylan with my promise of no more risk to her. I really didn't know what was going to happen next, and who or what I'd need, but it certainly would involve at least her boat. Concerning the promise that we three were partners as long as we were together, though, I was dead serious. I really did like and admire these two very different women, such a contrast to, say, those two I'd spent the evening with Friday night, with their shallow dreams and shallow fantasies about body-swapping clubs and office gossip.

 
The next few weeks were nerve-racking. I had depended on the system being efficiently and competently run by people who understood the criminal mind because they too each had one. But after the success of our mission I was beginning to fear that I had been too subtle.

 
However, late one afternoon Turgan Sugal came down to see me, looking like a man who had suddenly found eternal life and fortune. "They suspended Kham-girt today," he told me.

 
"Oh?" I tried to sound playfully ignorant, but inside I felt a rising sense of satisfaction.

 
"Seems he had a hidden gambling vice.
He was in hock up to his ass and still owed, so he had been siphoning off corporation money and spreading it thin in a lot of small bank accounts. A banking securities check a few days ago turned up the account pattern in the banking records, and they traced it to him."

 
"Well, what
do you
know about that!" I replied sarcastically. •

 
He stopped for a moment. "It
was
you, wasn't it?" he managed, as if struck Jby a sudden revelation. "You—
framed
him?
How?"

 
"Me? I didn't do any such thing," I replied with mock seriousness. "Hell, do you realize what it would take to fake something like that? Impossible!" And then I broke into loud laughter.

 
He laughed along with me for a moment, then stopped and stared at me strangely. "
lust
what the hell did you
do
to get sent here, anyway?"

 
"The usual.
Computer fraud."

 
"How the hell did they ever catch you?"

 
"The same way they caught Khamgirt," I told him. "That's what gave me the idea."

 
He whistled. "Well, I'll be damned. All right, I won't ask any more. Things are pretty turbulent right now, and there's an investigation of the whole thing, since Khamgirt has not only denied everything but has passed a truth scan."

 
"Sure. They
know
it's a frame. But that won't help him. Oh, don't worry—they won't kill him or send him to the mines or anything like that. They'll pasture him, with a slap on the wrist. Not for embezzlement. They'll know he was had. For getting framed. That means he is not only unable to protect himself and his .secrets but vulnerable. The syndicates don't allow you to make mistakes. Just remember that when you get on the high and mighty side."

 
He nodded.
"Makes sense.
But what if they figure it out and trace the whole thing back to us?"

 
"What do you mean, ms?" I shot back. "You weren't involved except" in supplying some
inf
ormation they can't specifically trace to anybody in upper management. And I really wouldn't worry about it in any event. They'll have some grudging respect for whoever pulled this off. It was a risky operation that took a lot of luck, but it worked. They might figure out
how
it was done, but never who did it.
Just felax and take advantage.
I assume you'll be moving up?"

 
"That's what I came to see you about. They've asked me to fill in as corporate comptroller while the comptroller assumes the acting presidency. I'm finally, leaving this place—and none too soon, either. We can't possibly make Khamgirt's artificially high quotas this quarter. Fortunately, as comptroller, I'll be able to adjust those to a more realistic figure on a temporary basis, maybe even show the board of directors that Khamgirt was conducting a vendetta against us. They'll be happy to believe anything of him now."

 
"And how soon am I paid?" I asked him slowly.

 
He paused a moment. "Give me a month to get a handle on the operation there. Then I can act—they won't find it surprising for me to reward several old associates. It's done all the time, to put our men into the underpositions. That's the earliest I dare move."

 
I nodded.
"Fine with me.
I have a lot of work to do here before I leave, anyway—
company
Work, don't get that stricken look. But there are two other things."

 
He started looking uneasy again. "What do you mean? We had a deal."

 
I nodded. "And I'll stick to it. The other two are in the form of favors. One is simply that I be able to get an appointment, maybe a business lunch, with the acting corporate comptroller once in a while. Just to keep my hand in and find out the latest company gossip."

 
He relaxed a bit. "That's easy enough."

 
"The second's a very different favor, and it's not a requirement or condition. If necessary I can handle it in an underhanded manner,
But
it would be easier if you could do it.normally."

 
"Go ahead."

 
"There's a young woman who did us both a real service, and she's stuck in the motherhood and doesn't want to be. That's bad enough, but she's extremely bright and talented and has a lot of guts. I'd like to get her out —I kind of owe it to her."

 
. He thought for a moment. "I can see your reasons, but it's pretty tough, you know. I don't know of anybody with the power to do it unless you could force a judgment—catching somebody committing a crime against her. And that'd be pretty rough on her."

 
I nodded.
"Just thought I'd ask in case there was some way out."

 
"Look, tell you what. -Give me some time on this, a couple of months at least, and I'll see if anything can be done.
Fair enough?"