The Reticuli Deception (Adventures of Hannibal Carson Book 2) by Alastair Mayer

Author:Alastair Mayer [Mayer, Alastair]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Mabash Books
Published: 2013-05-01T04:00:00+00:00

27: Blue Book

“What do you mean, missing?” Hubble demanded over the phone.

“What I said,” replied Reid. “I’ve gone through all twenty seven boxes. There’s no Hill file, there are almost no photographs in any of the files, and what is there is just blurs in the sky or empty scenery on the ground. Okay, I haven’t gone through page by page—” that would take a lot longer “— but photos tend to stand out, they’re on a different kind of paper. The ones that are there are easy to find.”

“So there’s nothing there that isn’t already on microfilm and digitized?”

“It doesn’t look that way. Do you suppose this stuff was removed a long time ago?”

“We haven’t heard any suggestion of that. It might be possible. Is there any way Lee could have arranged to have that stuff removed?”

Reid didn’t think so, but if he gave it some thought he might come up with some possible scenarios. “But why go through with the heist? If he had what he wanted, why bother?”

“I don’t know. To keep us distracted?”

The pieces started to fall into place. Shit! He wondered if Lee had made him back at that first meeting at the maglev station. “Is Lee still in Denver? What about Brown?”

Reid heard Hubble relaying the question to someone else, then he came back with: “So far. In fact they haven’t left the hotel since yesterday. Maybe waiting for your call.”

“Or waiting for something else.” Reid was sure of it. “Keep them under surveillance, I’m heading for Denver.”

“And if they move?”

“Stop them.”

∞ ∞ ∞

Brown clicked off his omni. “The package is here,” he told Rico, “we can come and collect it.”

“Where’s ‘here’? The Federal Center?” Rico asked, referring to the aging campus of federal government buildings on the west side of the city. The trick would be showing ID to get into and out of the campus, but that shouldn’t be too hard. They tended to worry more about what got in—concern about bombs and the like—than what got out.

“No, even better. A BOR building that’s off the main campus.”

“BOR?”

“Bureau of Reclamation. These files supposedly relate to dam construction in the 1930s.” Brown smiled. “Nobody cares about that anymore. I just came up with a reason to need the originals rather than digital scans.”

Rico shook his head in disbelief. “Whatever works, I guess.”

“Then let’s be on our way. We can pick up the files on the way to the spaceport.”

“Wait a moment, Doc.” Rico hadn’t survived this long by being careless. “They know what I look like. We’ll take two vehicles, me trailing you. You get the boxes. If it looks like you’ve picked up a tag or run into trouble I’ll intercept. If I pick up a tail I’ll lead them on a chase. Stay in touch, I’ll meet you at the spaceport.” While saying this, Rico had checked his pistol and slid it into a shoulder holster.

“I hope all that is unnecessary, but all right. Do you think you’ll need that?” He gestured at the gun.

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