M'allim Rouddim's home was clearly visible from Manger Square, as public a location as you could ask for in Bethlehem. Inconvenient, to say the least: if we ran into trouble, every tourist in town would have a front-row seat for it. Not to mention the locals, Rouddim's neighbors. Would they run to his aid?
Of course, the plan was to avoid making such a scene. But this is Terra Group, after all. Operating without making scenes has never been our strong point. SACUL might proscribe me from ever entering Bethlehem again in future; but for the present, we were on our way to make a house call to our target.
"Perhaps if we just agree to pay full price for that picture," Thayer mused as we watched the modest-looking house, "he'll tell us what we need to know." I elbowed him to be quiet.
It was already approaching evening; that was something, at least; fewer tourists, and whatever cover we could take from darkness. We approached the house swiftly and quietly. Its windows, many of them glassless, were dark. The lack of panes was nothing peculiar; I had seen many a home in Israel's Arabic settlements constructed in this fashion, a bit at a time, with the family living in one wing while the rest of the building was being finished. Glassless windows generally marked the not-yet-finished wings.
We crouched around the building's corner from the front entrance. "What now?" I whispered. "Do we just go up and knock?"
Cheriss shook her head. "Even if he is home, I wouldn't count on his welcoming us with open arms, especially if he is here when his employees told you he wasn't. Surprise is our best bet."
"What about the windows, then?" Thayer nodded to one of the glassless openings.
Cheriss looked wary. "We might try that, but . . ." Glancing around, she picked up a pebble from the street, aimed for the nearest of the open windows, and lightly tossed the rock through the opening, using only enough force to get it to its destination, not to do any real damage to whatever lay in its path.
Not that it could have done much damage anyway, after a flash of red light flared within the frame of the window, a burst of energy consuming the rock in a split second as it passed through that frame.
We all blinked. Except for Cheriss. "I thought as much," she murmured with grim satisfaction.
I whistled low in amazement. "Forcefields? In the windows? A little paranoid, you think?"
"He is not unprepared," Cheriss said.
Thayer frowned. "But his preparations cannot be for us, can they? Even if he had word from the shop that we were looking for him, even giving him the half hour it took us to drop the packages off at the speeder, he could not have set this up in that time."
"Then whom is he expecting?" I wondered.
Cheriss shrugged. "It makes no difference. Come on -- I think we shall have to try the front door now, after all."
I thought for a moment Cheriss really was going to just knock. We had reached the door without incident; there she paused, raising a hand.
It beeped. Her hand, I mean, not the door. Or rather, the miniscule scanner she held in her hand.
"Well. What has he got here, I wonder?" she wondered.
I wondered the same thing (needlessly, and redundantly, wondering it aloud) and Cheriss explained: "His paranoia continues. My scanner is picking up a fairly elaborate security device on the door."
"Um. A high tech padlock?"
"No, not high tech, really." Cheriss said casually, rearranging something or other on the scanner. "Imperial tech."
"Oh." I blinked.
"Where do you suppose he acquired such a thing?" Thayer wondered. "For Terra, Imperial is high tech."
"Doesn't matter," Cheriss grunted, timing her comment to the satisfying sound of a click from within the weathered wood of the door. "Just because he has access to such things, he still doesn't know the first thing about how to properly employ them."
"You're in?" Thayer asked.
"We're in."
Inside it was not so dark as the vacant windows had made it seem from outside. Moonlight filtered in from those same windows -- and from the glass-filled ones in the "livable" portion of the house, upon which the front door opened. It was a large home, for Bethlehem. Stairs to the right of the door led to a second floor; from outside we had seen that they would lead on up to a third as well. Furniture was scarce. So were signs of life. We went warily at first, going round corners with blasters leading, almost as paranoid as Rouddim must have been when securing his house. But we met no one, saw nothing out of the ordinary, no clue to Rouddim's whereabouts.
We traipsed up to the second, on to the third floor, and back down again, without result. "Out of town, after all," Thayer concluded as he followed me down the stairway.
I turned to answer him, and froze.
"Hey Cheriss," I whispered, "did we lock the door when we came in?"
"Better than before we unlocked it," she sniffed from below me. "Why?"
" `Cause that would mean," I said, slowly, deliberately -- and just as slowly and deliberately, all the while I was speaking, I was drawing my blaster, keeping it out of sight behind Thayer's body, "these gentlemen got here before us. Thayer, duck!"
He ducked aside, exhibiting a speed and grace -- and unquestioning trust in my order -- at which a part of my mind paused to marvel, even as I brought the blaster up to sight on the men I had seen, lurking in the shadows at the top of the stair, when I turned.
The rest of my mind was preoccupied with wondering why in all the worlds I was bringing a blaster up to sight on three men who already had their blasters confidently trained on me.
Seconds passed with the six of us frozen in this tableau. Gradually I realized that they were as frozen as we were -- they still hadn't shot at us, nor said a word, nor even seemed to move. Given that they outgunned us at present, and that they looked mean enough to need no more excuse than their advantage to make the first move, one had to wonder why they still had not made it.
One moment of insanity leads to another, perhaps. I cleared my throat. "Um. Hi."
The furthest of the three from us grunted in answer. "You may as well put that down, lady." He gestured with his gun towards mine.
"Sorry," I said before I could stop myself, "I'm gonna need a slightly better reason than `may as well.' I don't see you guys putting yours down, after all."
He retaliated with his idea of a slightly better reason: faster than thought he had snapped off a shot -- yes, I noted as the red bolt sizzled past, they were indeed wielding blasters, not Terran weapons -- in our direction. I don't think he was aiming for us. I'm not sure he was really aiming for not-us, though; I suspect aim wasn't really a consideration. The shot left the wall above our heads smoldering and the three of us in a sudden instinctive crouch there on the stairs.
"Three blasters against one," our enemy said, swaggering forward down the stairs a couple of steps. "We could shoot all of you before you have a chance to shoot back. At best, if you did get a shot off, there'd still be two of us left when you're all dead."
"Don't be so sure," I grumbled, wishing fervently it were Thayer rather than me aiming our side's one blaster. Or that there were some way for him or Cheriss -- both my superiors, by far, in a firefight -- to get to their weapons without drawing the fire of our trigger- happy friend five steps up.
Nothing came to mind.
Stalling seemed good, though. "Who are you?" I demanded.
"I don't think," the swaggerer laughed, "you are in a position to ask that. However, should you care to answer it yourself, we can spare the time. Who are you, and what are you doing here?"
Bluffing seemed good, too. "I can only think of one reason to visit this house -- can't you?"
A pause, a silence; then he demanded again, his voice as cold as the metal of his blaster now aimed squarely at me, "Who are you?"
"Clients," Thayer answered before I could speak.
The speaker for our opponents shifted just slightly to demand an explanation of Thayer. His blaster, still just slightly, shifted with him.
Thayer's knee was just against mine where he was crouched beside me. As he spoke he nudged me -- and I realized just in time that Thayer, without opportunity to draw his own weapon, had given me the opportunity I needed to put mine to use. Barely taking time to aim (but keeping my eyes open at least), I fired.
And the swaggerer's gun flew from his hand where my shot had hit him.
His two thus-far-silent allies were immediately firing back at me, but Thayer was moving, shoving me safely away from where I'd been when they aimed at me, even as he himself dove for the leader.
By the time I had regained my footing enough to return fire, Cheriss had her blaster in hand too and had already dispatched one of the silent ones. Thayer and the enemy leader, meanwhile, had locked into a claustrophobic sort of dance, each trying to subdue the other in the narrow space of the stairway. I contributed to this brawl by keeping the second speechless stranger occupied with trying to hit me (this is not so small a contribution as it may seem, really, when one's dodge is so much better than one's aim), until finally Cheriss's stun shot got to him. And by that time, Thayer had won his fight as well. The conquered enemy lay face-down on the stairs, his feet higher than his head, his arms twisted behind his back with Thayer keeping a tight hold on them.
"Now then," Thayer said pleasantly, "perhaps we can begin to negotiate. You have yet to answer my lady's first question: Who are you?"
The man groaned. "Nobody important. Just doing a job." Now that I wasn't preoccupied with waiting for him to shoot at me, I noted how out of place his accent seemed: his English was native, it seemed to me, not a second language, and his accent had nothing of the Middle East in it. But I couldn't place it, beyond that -- it was odd, somehow, not quite like any accent of English I was familiar with.
Thayer tugged at his arms in warning. "Mind you -- you shot at us first. If we knew who you were and why you did so, we might find it easier to forgive."
"Ajax," the man grumbled his name grudgingly.
Cheriss followed with the more important question: "And who are you working for, Ajax? Rouddim?"
Ajax spat out a laugh. "Rouddim? Are you crazy?"
"That's beside the point," I said, "but we are looking for him."
"Who isn't?" Ajax twisted his head to look up at me. "Boss wants him back. Or paid back. He's really in for it this time -- when we find him."
The Boss? We had heard that name before. I exchanged a glance with Cheriss, recalling what Achmed had said -- and not said -- about his mysterious employer.
"If you find him," Cheriss pointed out.
Ajax's lips pulled back in a devilish grin. "Don't worry. We will. No one hides from the Boss for long."
"Oh? How long have you been looking for Rouddim, then?" she returned.
Ajax frowned. "Well . . . nearly a year, I guess. But we had him, just a few days ago, only he gave us the slip. He won't do that again."
"Why did you look for him in Bethlehem?" Cheriss wondered.
"Why did you?" Ajax threw the question back at us.
Cheriss, undaunted, shrugged. "He does live here, after all. We didn't expect him to be so long away from home."
"Why are you guys looking for him, anyway?" Ajax asked. His glance fell to our blasters. "Owes you money?"
"We wish to buy a picture," Thayer said lightly -- while tightening his grip on the man's arms again. "And you're the one answering the questions, mind. Why does your Boss want him?"
"Business disagreement -- ow! No, really! Rouddim used to work for the Boss, see, but he took off a while back, stole . . . er . . . something the Boss wants back. So he sent us to teach 'im a thing or two."
I glanced at Cheriss again. Ajax's story seemed to agree with Achmed's -- and to confirm our guesses at what Achmed had left unsaid. What Rouddim had stolen must be the shield -- or rather, the varied parts of it that Cheriss had traced all over Terra before we found her. This Boss must still have the bulk of the thing, the part she had traced to Baghdad.
Then to find the shield, we had only to find the Boss. I was trying to formulate a question to get at his whereabouts -- I doubted Ajax would lightly part with that information -- when a noise came from the ground floor below us. "What's that?" I asked instead.
Cheriss looked alarmed. "Someone at the door, I think."
"How long will it take them to get through the lock?" Thayer wondered.
Ajax laughed. "Any second now. Rouddim got that lock from the Boss in the first place; does he really think it'll keep the Boss's men out?"
"There's more of them?" I complained to no one in particular.
"Time we were going," said Thayer, stepping back from his prisoner.
Cheriss nodded -- "That would be our cue" -- and swiftly drew her blaster and stunned our informant. The negotiations thus ended, we withdrew, heading farther up, escaping by the roof -- Cheriss deactivated the field on one of the attic windows to give us an exit -- and then traveling rooftop to rooftop, till we reached the edge of the city and our hidden speeder.