Rath's Gambit (The Janus Group Book 2) by Piers Platt

Author:Piers Platt
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw, epub
Published: 2015-12-01T05:00:00+00:00

* * *

“This is a real pain in the ass,” Rath told Beauceron, when he walked back into the meeting room.

“A lot of police work is,” Beauceron told him. “But it’s what solves crimes.”

“What did you find?” Rath asked.

“A dead male contractor, but no females,” Beauceron reported.

Rath blew out a long sigh. “Good. She’s alive.”

“No,” Beauceron wagged a finger at Rath. “All we know for sure is that no bodies matching her description have been found since you last saw her. That doesn’t prove she’s alive. What do you have?”

Rath sighed again. “Three doctors that all disappeared for at least six months, all supposedly on charity work, but I can’t find much evidence that they went where they said they went. Most doctors post photos of themselves in action – you know, cosmetic surgery on a kid who was injured and couldn’t afford it, helping to build a new hospital wing in some rural area, that kind of thing. Two of them don’t have much in the way of social profiles, so I couldn’t find any of that. The third does post pretty regularly on social networks, but he only posted a handful of photos, way down from his usual posting activity.”

“Could just be bad data connectivity where he was,” Beauceron said. “But let me see.”

Rath pulled up the third doctor’s website, and scrolled through the timeline of updates. “Here he is. Dr. Soukhin, from Islabadan Memorial Clinic. He went about three years ago, to Xheshuan, in the Territories.” Rath reached the photos and stopped, letting Beauceron flip through them. “This is a field hospital they set up, then here he is at a real hospital … that’s some tribal ceremony.”

“He’s wearing the same shirt,” Beauceron said.

“Huh?” Rath took another look at the photos. “Yeah, he is – in a few of the photos. Different one in these photos, though.”

“But these,” Beauceron pointed to the screen. “They were posted nearly two months apart. The shirt is the same, and so is his beard – like he skipped shaving and wore the same shirt each day, exactly two months apart.”

“You think the photos were staged?” Rath asked.

“Let’s see,” Beauceron told him. He selected the photos and downloaded them, then opened them up in a photo management program. “The dates on the photos show they were taken a month apart. But hold on.” He opened up several advanced settings, scrolling through. “This is not the original version of the photo. Someone did some basic clean-up work on the photos, adjusting balance and saturation, typical post-production stuff. But the log shows the dates have been edited, too. On seven out of the eight files.”

“What does that mean?”

Beauceron sat back, rubbing his chin. “There could be a reasonable explanation. But I think there’s a good chance the Guild flies people to somewhere like Xheshuan for a week, poses them in photos with all the other medical personnel, so they can plausibly claim they went there for a while, then ships them on to your training planet.

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