The Puppet Master
John Dalmas
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2001 by John Dalmas. 'A Most Singular Murder' was first published in
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.
A Baen Books Original
Baen Publishing Enterprises
P.O. Box 1403
Riverdale, NY 10471
www.baen.com
ISBN: 0-671-31842-X
Cover art by Gary Ruddell
First printing, October 2001
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
Production by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH
Printed in the United States of America
This book is dedicated to Herbert D. Clough, 30 years with the FBI who, with the collaboration of the originator, Leslie
Charteris, resurrected the fabled SAINT magazine. Distribution problems shot her down, but for three wonderful months in 1984, she flew. A lovely project.
BAEN BOOKS by JOHN DALMAS
FOREWORD
These stories are set in a time line that branched from yours and mine sometime after the close of World War Two. Much in it remains familiar; some things are very similar. But major differences have developed. The geogravitic power converter has energized economies while greatly easing energy, water, and pollution problems.
But the blessing is mixed. The GPC has brought more than cheap, clean, abundant energy and the new physics: The resulting flood of scientific and technological innovations is accelerating changes in society, with outgrowths positive and negative, attractive and ugly, exciting and fearsome.
A MOST SINGULAR MURDER
a novella
1
My name is Martti Seppanen, and I work for Prudential Investigations and Security, Inc. Things had been slow, and I'd had nothing much to do for a day and a half—since I'd finished rounding up the collusion evidence against Funsch, Carillo, and Wallace. So I stood there in my two-by-four office—ten by ten feet, actually—looking westward across the L.A. basin toward the higher rises of Lower Wilshire. While drilling Spanish.
I don't mind days like that. But there was the nagging worry that if business didn't pick up, Joe might have to lay people off. Me for example. Times like that you can wonder whether it had been a good idea when Joe leased the whole ninth floor of this high-rent high rise. Of course, the old building got sold out from under him and knocked down. The old buildings are disappearing.
Besides, when I don't have a case, I get the munchies worse than usual, and I gain weight too easily.
I kept drilling, using a question and answer program on intermediate spoken Spanish. The computer would voice a question in fairly simple Spanish, and I'd answer it. Or it would tell me to discuss some simple thing. Then it would critique my diction, grammar, and pronunciation, and we'd repeat it till the program was satisfied with my performance.
That's where things stood when Carlos looked in on me. 'Come in my office,' he said. 'We've got something for you.'
'We' meant himself and Joe Keneely. Joe's the founder, principal shareholder, and CEO of Prudential. Carlos is the senior investigator, and I was his protege, top of the list of junior investigators. And the something would be an assignment.
I followed Carlos down the hall. His office was big enough for a small conference without people sitting in each other's laps. He sat down behind his desk, and I took the chair across from him. Fingering his computer, he turned on the wall screen. A picture formed and stopped. It showed Joe Keneely's office, with Joe and Carlos, and some guy I'd never seen before.
'The client is Donald C. Pasco,' Carlos said. 'All the way down from Sacramento. Joe just signed a contract with him.' He said it as if it tasted bad. I'd heard of Pasco. He was director of the Anti-Fraud Division of the California Department of Commerce, and had a reputation as an aye-aitch.
The picture came to life, and I watched their conference. Actually I watched Pasco bitch and snarl. About three weeks earlier, an astronomer named Arthur Ashkenazi had read a paper to the California Section of the Astronomical Society of America, at the section's annual meeting. The paper was what had gotten Pasco upset. Pasco didn't have much presence, but he had rank and venom. After playing back the meeting with Pasco, Carlos ran Ashkenazi's talk for me. I'd been aware of it before, just barely. It had been written up in the papers, but I hadn't read it. I read fast, but the
