Honda fetched a specialized sewing kit from the disguise bag in his room, while Ashton got out all his work jackets and trousers.
They spent the rest of the evening modifying Ashton’s wardrobe.
As the Annalian consul had ordered, Ashton did indeed spend most of the rest of the week doing little but lazing around the apartment, taking naps, eating the healthy meals that Honda put in front of him – some home-cooked, others takeout or delivery – and taking the supplements proffered. He fully recognized that getting sick at this point would be disastrous, so he did all of it without complaint.
By Sunday he was starting to feel more energetic, as well as developing a case of cabin fever, so the two of them wandered down to a nearby park – holding hands, of course, in case anyone was surveilling them – and walked around for a couple of hours, getting some fresh air, sunshine, and exercise.
Sunday night, Ashton felt like his normal self again.
Ashton arrived bright and early, spry and energetic, at his new office in the Annalian consulate Monday morning. He was there and waiting, having tidied up his workspace and organized it the way he preferred, when His Excellency Abelson Niebecker entered.
“Hello, sir!” Ashton fairly sang out.
“Well, hello there, Nik! You look like you feel much better,” Niebecker decided.
“Yes, sir, I sure do! I think I slept for about two-thirds of the time I was off,” Ashton admitted. “Rikky kept me busy the rest of the time.”
“I’ll bet,” Niebecker said, failing to stifle the snort of amusement. “I think newlyweds are the same, the universe over. In case I haven’t mentioned it, your nicknames for each other – Nikky and Rikky – are adorably cute.”
Ashton flushed, then grinned sheepishly.
“It sort of… fell out,” he said.
“I’m sure, but it is cute, nevertheless. Now, are we ready to get down to work?”
“We are!”
“Very good! I have held up some correspondence until my valued assistant could personally courier it to the recipient…”
That week proceeded much more easily than the previous weeks had, and Niebecker was delighted at Ashton’s energy and efficiency.
“And now I am even more pleased,” he told Ashton. “You were good before, and very trustworthy, but now you are positively superhuman. You were exhausted.”
“Um, yes, sir, I was,” Ashton confessed. “Keeping an entire consulate clean is hard work. Especially with no days off.”
“And you were coming in at all hours during the move-in, also, as I recall. Well, I’ve already talked with the facilities manager, and ensured that he brings in at least one more janitor, so that our people can have some time off,” Niebecker determined. “It won’t do, it simply won’t. Serious accidents happen that way.”
“Yes, sir. They sure do. And I was just before being one, I think.”
“Yes. And now it is late Friday afternoon, I have little else for you, so you may leave for the week if you like, Nik. I’m sure Rikky would be happy to have you home an hour early, anyway.”
“Oh! Are you sure? Is there anything else I can do for you before I go?”
“Possibly one thing. You usually head north on your way home, right?”
“I do, yes, sir. My apartment is that way.”
“Right. And so is the DP consulate. I have a data storage device I’d like dropped off there, and possibly you could do that on your way?”
“I’d be happy to, Your Excellency.”
Well after midnight in Imperial City, a figure clad head-to-toe in black – even the face was covered – slipped out of an apartment building on Golden Avenue onto the street level of the city. It stuck to the shadows, looking around carefully to verify no one was about, then eased into an alley and vanished in the darkness.
Moments later, a shadowy figure emerged from the far end of the alley. Its sex was indiscriminate in the low lighting, but it wore trousers and a jacket. A glimmer of light on the left breast of the jacket depicted a round metal pin or badge. A closer look might have shown a large chair surrounded by laurel leaves on the badge.
The figure walked calmly down the street, then entered the escalator down to the people-movers on the arcade level.
“Hey, Lee,” Peabody said, coming to the door of the Director’s office on Friday afternoon. “We got a situation.”
“Hm?” Carter looked up from the VR paperwork he’d been doing in the lower half of his vision. “What, Win? A situation? What’s happened?”
“Can you pull up the latest street report for, um, it’ll be Golden Avenue?”
“Yeah. Hang on a minute, here.”
Carter dug through the virtual files in another channel, pulled up the requested report, and read it.
“Mm,” he hummed.
“Recognize the name? From a certain list we got sent from Carolina?”
“Oh shit!” Carter exclaimed. “One of the spies from Garland got offed. Do we know who did it?”
“Not yet; Pete Stone is over there with a team right now. But based on what he’s fed back to me, it’s looking like infighting between the spy networks. Another spy, from a different polity, did this.”
“Damnation,” Carter cursed. “And with Honda and Ashton both in harm’s way if this goes south.”
“Exactly. What do you want us to do? Pete’s asking for instructions.”
“Tell him to sit on the crime scene for a bit. I need to talk to some people.”
“Uh-oh,” Robert Dunham, the Emperor Trajan, said, when Carter reported the situation to him and General Daggert, in Dunham’s office simulacrum. “You’re right, Director, that is a situation.”
“One that could get our implanted investigators killed,” Daggert agreed.
“It sure could,” Carter confirmed.
“Do you have any recommendations, Director?”
“I do, Sire.”
“Let us hear them, please.”
“Well, I’m thinking we need to go ahead
