"It's just that you're best for the job, Raymond. . . ." Becki coaxed.
"I am not as familiar with this city as I am with Paris," Raymond Bordeaux objected. "In fact, I'm even less familiar with it than any of you are, as, you'll remember, I spent all of yesterday on this ship while most of you were in Jerusalem itself."
"Right. So you should want to take a turn outside the ship now, shouldn't you?" Vickie grinned.
"This isn't exactly the relaxing outing I might have had in mind. . . ."
"At least you'll be seeing some action," Josh Cochran said. "The rest of us are stuck here until the investigations of the explosion yesterday blow over."
Lenka Leannan shot a reproving glance towards the mission's leader. "Perhaps Raymond's had enough of action for the present. You can't expect someone who's worked with you people so short a time to have quite the fondness for destruction that you've developed."
"I doubt destruction will be much of an issue," Becki interceded. "All we need you to do is tail them and see what they do next. I'm sure you can handle it--you tailed us back in Paris, remember?"
"And," Mike pointed out, "it's your own bugs we're using on them, anyway."
"So who better than you to track said bugs?" said Vickie.
"And to make sure those girls don't go passing them off on dangerous strangers in a bar and putting us off their trail," Mike winked.
Raymond fixed the tall Brit with an appraising stare for a moment, then said: "Well . . . I suppose . . ."
Naira finally resorted to the use of force. That is, she had to forcefully drag Eti out of the crowded streets, into the quiet, dim interior of one of the less tourist-crowded churches, before she could get her sister to be quiet long enough to hear reason. Whether she would ever see reason was anybody's guess.
"Etidorhpa Neris, stop half a moment and think!" Naira hissed, holding onto her sister's shoulders and trying to look the part of the responsible and authoritative firstborn, trying not to let panic sound through her whisper. Eti could smell fear easily enough; panic she would scorn, and then she'd never hear her sister out.
Eti scowled at her sister but relented. "All right, then. What's the matter, Naira?"
"Look at us, sister. This has gone completely out of hand. What are we going to do, on our own in a strange city? And whatever is going on to bring Terra Group here--I don't think it's something we ought to be mixed up in. That explosion yesterday was just the start of their mission, Eti! What might happen next?"
"Hm . . . Now, there's an interesting question," said Eti, a cunning look coming into her eyes.
"No! I mean, Eti . . . Whatever happens, I really don't think we should be there."
"Oh don't worry," Eti said. "We won't get in their way, I'm sure."
"More to the point," Naira said, "is the question of what we're to do with ourselves now. We didn't plan on coming here. We're not prepared. You used up all the American money I had with me yesterday. All I've got left is a couple Dars, and even if we can find someone to take those outside of Mendellia--"
"So we exchange them for sheqels," Eti shrugged.
"--even so," Naira continued, "I doubt they'll cover even the price of our next meal today--and my stomach's being very annoying in reminding me I've not had anything since that falafel yesterday--let alone a hotel room if we have to spend the night here. I don't suppose you thought to bring a credit card along on this little excursion, sister?"
"Oh . . . well . . ." Eti, for the first time since leaving Mendellia, looked nonplussed. "I wasn't really expecting to do any shopping. . . ."
"I thought as much," Naira sighed. "Well, then. You see what I mean? We won't last a day here on our own. We have to go home."
"How?" Eti said calmly.
"What?"
"Not that I'm entirely convinced we're all that helpless, sister. But even if I did want to go home, how do you think we'd do it? No money for food means no money for tickets home, either."
Naira suddenly lost her hold on the panic. Wide-eyed, she tightened her grip on Eti till her sister had to wriggle free, rubbing at her shoulders and saying, "Really, Naira dear . . ."
"Can't go home," Naira whimpered. "Oh, Eti! What shall we do?"
"We'll manage."
"But we won't, you always say that, but--Oh! Couldn't we call the Queen Mother? Even if we didn't get here by her transport, she could get us home by it."
"Do you really want to be the one to call Llessur Atner and explain to her just how we ended up in Jerusalem?" Eti smirked. And once again Naira had to fight against panic--so much so that her little sister at last took pity. "Don't worry, Naira," she soothed, taking her sister's hand and squeezing reassuringly. "We'll be just fine. Anyway, I have an idea."
"How to get home?" Naira asked hopefully.
"Well, maybe not quite yet. No, I just thought we might go back to the street where we met the Terra Group agents yesterday. After all, they never did tell us what was happening there, did they? So can they blame us," she grinned, "if we decide to go find out for ourselves?"
It was a sight to make a mother fear for the safety of her child.
Especially when the mother had last seen the child in the care of the people she suspected were responsible for the destruction before her.
Whatever else Terra Group is up to in Jerusalem, Cheriss ke Hanadi wished, wondering briefly whether this city's status as a focal point of at least three Terran religions might lend any greater weight to her anxious hope, let it not include babysitting.
She knew, at least, that they had spent some time in their island headquarters before following her to Jerusalem. With any luck, the baby was safe back on that island.
Cheriss tried not to think about what her briefings months ago had indicated about the usual nature of luck where Terra Group was concerned.
With difficulty, she put the baby's welfare to the back of her mind so that she might focus on her present objective. She wasn't sure if she was glad or regretful that she had been prevented from attending the auction of the shield components yesterday, considering its rather dramatic conclusion. But that conclusion did indicate that she had been closer on the trail than she had realized--so now she must take up the trail again, try to reconstruct what had happened here on Ben Yehuda Street yesterday, and try to determine where the shield had gone from here.
Eti screwed her pretty face up into such a strange arrangement as made Naira nearly laugh, seeing in it the child her sister had once been. "Not much to see here, is there?" the younger Neris sister commented.
"I suppose there's plenty to see, if we knew what we were looking for," Naira mumbled.
"And if we could get close enough," Eti nodded at the Israel Defense Force soldier standing guard at one corner of the yellow tape outlining the edge of the disaster area that had yesterday morning been just another one of the shops lining the pedestrian mall of Ben Yehuda Street.
"Well, they'll certainly be expecting gawkers. So let's just gawk until they tell us to move along, then we can move along and start figuring out how we get home from here," Naira shrugged. Eti, to her surprise, offered no argument or counterplan, but simply nodded and started walking slowly along beside the tape, glancing curiously first at the building with its shattered upper-story windows, then at the ground outside the shop.
And there really was nothing else they could do, so, in a few minutes, they turned their backs on the scene of the explosion and started to cross the road toward the café where they'd met the Terra Group agents yesterday morning.
"Oh look," said Naira just as they reached the café, bending down to pick something up from the ground.
"What is it?"
"A coin of some sort--I believe it's a sheqel."
Eti took the coin and looked it over. "Better than that," she declared. "A ten-sheqel coin. That's . . ." she paused and stared off to space, working it out quickly, "something like half a Dar. No, a little less than that. I think it's something like twenty-eight or thirty sheqels to a Dar. So this is about a third-Dar."
"How do you know this, Eti?" asked Naira, impressed.
"You're not the only one who paid attention in Economics, Dohrnaira."
Naira only grinned.
"Well, some of the time," Eti amended.
Enthused by their third-Dar enrichment, the sisters didn't stop at the café but moved on down the street, scanning the ground at their feet in hopes of further finds. Heading west they turned up three more sheqels and a couple of little agorots, which Naira kept because they were interesting looking even though Eti insisted they weren't worth the metal they were made of, as small a portion of a sheqel as they represented.
They turned back east toward the café and the crime scene. Not far past the yellow tape, they found something else. Eti had taken its gleam for that of a coin and picked it up only to find that it was something else entirely. Neither of the sisters could quite determine what. Reluctant nonetheless to part with it in case it would turn out to be something useful in their present distress, Eti pocketed the thing and the girls moved on.
Raymond's handheld tracker once again led him a merry chase in search of the targets on whom his tracking devices had been planted. It was slower going--Jerusalem's streets were both less familiar to him and more crowded than Paris's had been--but he made his way steadily westward. Just when he thought he'd nearly caught up with the Neris sisters, and started to slow down so as to keep a suitable distance and out of sight from them, he finally glanced up and took stock of his surroundings.
Ben Yehuda Street. They'd come back here? Back where Terra Group had seen them first? It was the first place in the city he had recognized on this chase, since it was the last place he'd seen yesterday, as he had helped Mike and Zee hastily evacuate the team from the chaos that had resulted from their first sortie into this city.
Raymond frowned as he glanced from the tracker to the street and back again. It didn't look good for their innocence, that they should come back here so soon after leaving the Red Home. He looked around the crowded street, hoping he would be able to recognize the girls.
He very nearly forgot all about that part of the mission when he recognized someone else.
It couldn't be her! Although--she was supposed to be in Jerusalem, wasn't she? They had followed her here; in fact, half of their mission was tracking her down, and then the shield, since that was what she was tracking. The uniform gave him pause, but he knew her to be quite adept at disguise, so why shouldn't she disguise herself as a member of the local military?
He was trying to think how he should approach her when she started walking away, heading for a side street. She seemed to be following someone, a couple of well-dressed, fair-haired pedestrians, though keeping a subtle distance.
Not until they had turned the corner out of sight did Raymond realize that he had recognized the pedestrians as well. Cheriss and the Neris sisters--all his eggs in one basket. Not pausing to ponder how odd a circumstance that was, he broke out first into a boyish smile and then into as unobtrusive a jog as he could manage, heading for the street the women had taken.
Eti's confidence in her ability to handle the situation she'd gotten her sister and herself into was finally beginning to waver.
They must have taken a wrong turn--though that was silly, wasn't it? How can one take a wrong turn in a city where one doesn't know any of the turns at all?
"I think we took a wrong turn," Naira whispered, annoying Eti with this echoing of her own thoughts, especially such unpleasant thoughts. Reflexively, she chided her sister for worrying, glancing around cautiously at the narrow, crowded streets they were walking now.
It was when the streets ceased to be crowded that Eti knew they truly were in trouble.
Cheriss thought the girls were on to her; otherwise, it was difficult to explain the course they were taking through the city. Even if they were just tourists out for a stroll, she would have expected them to stick to the main streets, shop the bazaars, at least follow the crowds. They might be locals, familiar with these less-traveled streets, but intuition told her otherwise. And if they were truly as naïve as they seemed to her, they were headed for trouble.
Trouble caught up with them before Cheriss did. She had turned down the wrong street and had to backtrack to find the correct turning, and when she finally got there, she found the new street all but deserted. All but her targets, and the men who were targeting them.
Four men--briefly she noted that they didn't strike her as locals, any more than the girls did--had cornered her targets in a blind alley and were advancing on them at a leisurely pace that spoke of their confidence in their victims' helplessness.
Oddest of all: one of the girls didn't seem to have been informed of her helplessness, or perhaps not of her attackers' intentions. With a proud fierceness that would have done her great honor back on Adumar, she stood her ground, stepped out in front of her companion as if to shield her, thrust her shapely chin towards the assailants as if daring them to impale themselves upon it, balled up her fists on arms held stiffly out to her sides, and shouted at the men, "You might's well go away! We haven't any money anyway."
"Except just a few sheqels," the other girl corrected nervously, looking ready to cry at any moment. "Which you can have, if you'll just leave us alone."
"Hush, Naira," Cheriss thought she heard the first girl hiss. "I'll handle this."
"Ladies," one of the men interrupted, shifting a knife from one hand to the other, "I don't think you understand. It ain't your money we're after."
"Well, good," the first girl said haughtily, "because you shan't have it in any case. I declare, coming up on us so sudden and then blocking our path like this, anyone would think--"
"As I said," the man interrupted again, his expression darkening, "I don't think you understand. You do got something we want, but it ain't your money. And it sure ain't your talk. And don't play dumb, we know you're carryin' it, Cale here's got a tracker what says it's with you if it's anywhere. Now, the Boss might be wantin' to have words with you, so it behooves us not to leave you in such a condition as you can't be answerin' his questions--" he flipped the knife back to the other hand again, and Cheriss suppressed a gasp of recognition: it wasn't just a knife, but a vibroblade--"but if you two don't play nice and cooperate, well, I don't think the Boss'll be blamin' us if you happen to get in the way--"
Cheriss's stun shots dropped the talkative leader and the one he'd named as Cale before any of the others realized what was happening. She aimed for the third man but the shot missed as she had to duck a blaster bolt from the fourth, pulling her head and shoulder back out of view around the corner of the building behind which she'd been waiting. She peeked back out a second later to aim for the man who'd shot at her, but found that he was now preoccupied with dislodging the feisty little girl from a death grip of sorts around his chest-- while her more timid companion shouted for her to let go while they still had a chance of escape.
Deciding that this fourth man was busy enough with the girls, Cheriss turned her attention back to the third man, exchanging a few shots before hers finally dropped him. Then she had to deal with the last of the attackers, but his would-be victim was still clinging to him, and the duo spun about in the alleyway in such a frenzy that Cheriss couldn't get off a shot for fear of hitting the girl.
"Get back!" she shouted, but the girl showed no sign of hearing. "I said--" Cheriss began again; but then the man finally gained the upper hand, freeing himself from the girl's grasp and then spinning around, reaching out to pull her into his own grasp, vibroblade at the ready. Cheriss's shot reached him first.
She paused a moment to catch her breath and survey the damage, while her original targets regrouped somewhat, glancing around in a dazed manner (though Cheriss had the impression that the one who'd grabbed the fourth man was showing a little less dazement and a little more excitement than the other).
"Grace . . ." the timid one said, drawing the single word out on a long breath, while the bold one was chuckling, "Sink me if that wasn't an adventure! Wasn't it something, Naira?"
"Something," Naira agreed reluctantly. Then, catching Cheriss's eye, she nodded and said, "Thank you, m'lady. You saved us."
"Perhaps," Cheriss said, taking a few steps toward them, not yet holstering her blaster.
"Oh! By Darwin's beard--" the bold one said. "I know you! Well, I mean I recognize you. You were the guard at the scene of--at Ben Yehuda Street, where the explosion was yesterday. Weren't you?"
"I was," Cheriss said. "I saw you there."
"Er . . ." the girl frowned in thought. "What are you doing here, then? It was quite good of you to help us out here, but shouldn't you . . ."
"By coincidence," Cheriss smiled, "or perhaps not, it seems I'm looking for you for the same reason these boys were. You found something on Ben Yehuda Street, and I think it's something I've been looking for."
The girls exchanged a glance, and then the bold one turned back to Cheriss, raising her chin in a slightly less adrenaline-driven gesture than the one she'd directed against her attackers a few minutes ago. "I see. And if it is?"
Cheriss sighed. "I'll have to ask you to hand it over. It isn't any use to you, but might be very important to me."
"I'm sorry . . . um . . . Officer, but I don't see why we ought to give it up to you," the girl said haughtily. "Perhaps it's of more use to us than you know."
Cheriss took a closer look at the girls: had she misjudged them? Was their finding the--whatever it was, she'd still have to see it up close before she could make any guesses at that--was their finding it more than coincidence? For the first time, she wondered whose side they were on, if they weren't just innocents caught in the crossfire.
If they weren't innocents, the timid one was still doing a pretty good job at looking like one. "Eti!" she whispered anxiously. "Can't you just give it to her so we can go?"
"Quiet, Naira," Eti whispered back. "Now," she said, haughtily again, to Cheriss, "if this thing is so important to you, tell me, what would you give us for it?"
Cheriss smiled. Perhaps it wasn't a matter of sides after all--but then, perhaps they still weren't so much innocents. "I see. You mean to bargain for it. All right--I'll play your game. But let's go somewhere we can talk a little more freely; I can't say for sure how soon these boys will wake up." The girls nodded, only a little hesitantly. "First, though," Cheriss said, holstering her blaster at last, "if you don't mind, I'd like to check . . ." She pulled a scanner from a pocket.
"Check what?" Eti asked, recoiling slightly as Cheriss stepped forward to run the scanner up and down the girl's sides.
"For weapons, other tech, that sort of thing--a girl can't be too--" Cheriss began, breaking off at a low beep from the scanner. "Now what's this?" she mused, glancing at its screen. Eti leaned close, curious to see as well, and then frowned in surprise at the Aurebesh characters.
"Bugged," Cheriss murmured. "Excuse me . . . do you mind?" Before Eti could protest, Cheriss reached out to delicately run a hand across the hemline that had set off the scanner, until she found the device that it had indicated, just a tiny speck of metal, pinned inside the hemline of the dress.
Half a minute later she'd isolated another such device pinned to Naira's dress, but she still hadn't gotten over the eerie feeling of recognition that came with them.
Raymond. For the first time in weeks she thought of him--and the mission she'd left with him. His supply of these little tracking devices had been meant to help him keep tabs on the Terra Group agents she knew would come looking for her until she was ready to make contact with them.
It had all gone wrong; with the tail she herself had been trying to shake at that time, she hadn't been able to make contact--unless one counted the baby. And one could only, technically, count that if they had figured out the lockets. That was one thing Cheriss couldn't know for sure, not yet, anyway. But Raymond's mission had to have ended days ago, so what were his bugs doing in these girls' clothes?
Cheriss glanced back the way they had come in sudden alarm, then pulled a tiny pin from her hair and used it to trigger the shutdown procedure on each of the bugs. And then, pocketing them--along with whatever ID she could find on the men she'd stunned and the scanner the man called Cale had been carrying--she took Eti and Naira by the elbows and steered them away. A safehouse nearby wouldn't do; if they'd been bugged, they would be followed, too. First order of business was to lose the pursuit. She hurried them through Jerusalem's busy streets, out beyond the Old City walls, back towards the newer part of town, to a spot where she could keep an eye both on her new acquaintances and on Ben Yehuda Street. At least until she figured out who the girls were and what they were up to. And just how she would get them to relinquish the clue they had found.
Without warning, the lights on his screen that represented Eti and Naira died. Didn't flicker. Didn't bleep or flash. Simply died, vanishing so suddenly that it took him a few seconds to realize they had gone.
Raymond shook the tracker, removed and replaced the power cell, turned it off and on five times before accepting the only conclusion that made sense: Something had happened to the tracking devices his handheld device was supposed to pick up.
He'd already fallen behind in his trailing of the sisters--and of their familiar pursuer. Jerusalem's streets were like a maze to him, narrow, twisted, climbing and turning every which way, and the tracker only showed him which direction the girls were from him. Only experience showed him which streets would take him that direction and which would lead him somewhere entirely unexpected. He had grown frustrated and frazzled with the endless backtracking. And now this!
For a moment he had to lean against a wall, close his eyes, catch his breath and gather his thoughts. But at the end of this little ritual, he knew just as certainly as he had known at the beginning: he'd lost them. There was no way around it. And there was no way he could find them now, not with the head start they already had, and definitely not in these insane streets.
Only then did it occur to him to wonder how he would even find his way back to the Red Home, in these insane streets. But, since there was only one certain way--staying put--that he would not find his way back, he indulged in a few choice oaths, gathered his courage and his wits, determined to be optimistic, and set out to retrace his steps as well as he could.