Into the Fire

^{CHAPTER SIXTEEN}

Sera Lane looked up from the stacks of papers she and Ky had been discussing when the call came in. “What was that about?”

“Aunt Grace. She’s out of the hospital and not surprisingly full of things for other people to do.” Ky grinned. “When I was little, she would visit our house and keep us all busy. We had a cook and a gardener, but she found things that she thought needed doing, and she was not tolerant of what she called ‘idle hands.’” Ky sat down at the table. “Actually, we did learn things from that—aside from hiding from grown-ups with agendas—and her suggestion today is good. She wants me to download my implant’s record of the interview I gave Spaceforce and make multiple copies in case of any other mishaps.”

“Excellent idea,” Sera Lane said. “I was going to suggest you continue writing out your memory of what transpired, but pulling data directly from your implant will be faster. Do you have the equipment here?”

“Yes,” Ky said. “It’ll take some time—”

“No matter. I have plenty to do and we can continue our meeting later. If I finish the petition to the court on the citizenship matter by 1500, I could get it filed today. I believe Sera Stella has spoken to our head of Legal and they’re supposed to call me with the names of the additional attorneys the entire project will require.”

“Will you be working from here, or going back to Vatta headquarters?”

“Here, unless you’d rather I left.” She smiled at Ky. “It’s not entirely because your cook is so skilled, but that does add a point in your favor.”

“Stay, by all means,” Ky said. “Can you function as a witness to validate the download?”

“As an officer of the court, yes,” Sera Lane said, pushing back her chair. “I will need to observe the hookup—does that other Vatta employee have certification in the procedure?”

“We’ll find out,” Ky said.

Downstairs, Rodney was busily working through something on one of the computers. Ky explained what they needed.

“Yes, Sera,” he said to Lane. He pulled out his identification and handed it to her. “I can access my personnel file for you and you can see it all, if you wish.”

“Not necessary,” Lane said. “Your certificate is high enough. I need to observe the hookup—any idea how long it will take?” She looked at Ky.

“No—I want to start with leaving my flagship, and then go all the way through. Hours. Maybe even another session tomorrow.”

“That’s too long for the storage on the media you’ve got,” Rodney said. “We’ll have to break it into chunks. These are two-hour backups.” He had pulled a carton of them from one of the cabinets.

“I’ll certify the hookup, and then when you break I’ll take custody of the backup until copies are made,” Lane said. “Perhaps break for lunch after the first session?”

“That works for me,” Rodney said.

He pulled out the necessary cables and plugged into Ky’s implant jack. Rafe appeared in the door. “Ky, Allie wants to know—what are you doing?”

“Downloading the record of that interview for Aunt Grace,” Ky said.

“Passive download?” Rafe turned to Rodney.

“Yeah—wait—is there another kind?”

“There is at ISC,” Rafe said. “It’s been known to cause brain damage.”

“No, it’s nothing like that. Cable to the backup, backup in the machine, client specifies the file location, and the machine just sucks that location.”

“Ah. Good.” Rafe turned to Ky again. “Allie wants to know if baked stuffed fish is all right for dinner tonight. Grocery has a special on crabs.”

“Fine with me,” Ky said. “And Stella likes fish.”

For the next two hours, Ky closed her eyes and watched the mental image of a glowing blue line stripping the interview file neatly into the backup cylinder. In the machine it would be broken into sound and image, separate output types for each.

It would have been restful but for her awareness that time was passing inexorably for the survivors still in custody. She had to find them, get them out of their torment, and keep them safe. Somehow. And all she had done so far was hide out in the house, accomplishing nothing. Her own and Rafe’s legal problems also bore in on her. Could Lane really get her citizenship back? And if she did, then the threat of a murder prosecution still loomed, with the evidence she’d so carefully collected on the entire trip lost—or rather intentionally hidden or destroyed. And Rafe—his visa extension now exceeded—could be deported anytime he left the house.

“Want to run another right away?” Rodney asked. “Or take a break?”

“A break,” Ky said. “I need to move around. Is Sera Lane still here?”

“I think so—I’ll call—”

“Never mind. I’ll run upstairs myself.”

Ky found Sera Lane up in Stella’s office, interviewing Inyatta about her statement. They both looked up as she entered. Inyatta looked tense.

“We’re in the middle of something,” Sera Lane said. She gave a slight nod toward the door.

“I had an idea,” Ky said.

“Later,” Lane said. “I need to finish with Corporal Inyatta and her statement so I can move forward on the murder charge.”

Ky shut the door and turned away, more than a little disgruntled. Rafe met her at the head of the stairs. “You look like you want to hit someone,” he said.

“I do. And I shouldn’t. I am so tired of being cooped up in this house!”

“Better than a cell,” Rafe said.

“Not enough better.” Ky pushed past him, down the passage to their room. He followed. “I can’t do the things I need to do to rescue my people.”

“They’re not really your people, Ky,” Rafe said. His reasonable tone grated on her nerves. “They’re Slotter Key’s problem—the military’s problem—and you don’t have the right. Let Grace deal with it, now she’s out of hospital.”

“I have every right. You don’t understand—” She stopped herself from what would have been insulting, and tried for a more measured response. “Rafe, even if I was wrong to take command after the crash—we can argue that later, if you want—once I did so, they became ‘my people.’ That’s how command works. That’s how I was trained; that’s how I think. And clearly, Slotter Key military is treating them not as valued members of the service, but as criminals.”

“I do understand your point, Ky, but be reasonable: you have no leverage. Your citizenship’s been revoked, you’re suspected of murder—if you involve yourself in their case, you could do them more harm.”

“Or I could get them out.”

“How? If you leave here you’ll be arrested. You have no resources—human or financial—to do the job. You’ve got to wait until you’re cleared of the murder charge and a citizen again, at least.”

“I’ve got to get serious about the mission,” Ky said. “It will help keep my mind off being housebound.”

Sergeant Major Morrison, in uniform, arrived at the door to her apartment building in the city to find additional security in place. The trip in, through cold rain, had not improved her mood, nor did standing in the dank breeze while someone looked down a list to find her name. Finally, he found it and let her by. Another guard was outside her door; she showed identification and he spoke into his comunit, a soft mumble. Morrison repressed an obvious sigh. She did not like this, even though she had suggested it. She should have sent someone else to pick up her clothes and move them to the other apartment, the one she hadn’t seen yet.

MacRobert opened the door. “Sergeant Major,” he said, with a short nod.

“Master Sergeant. I’m here to collect my clothes.”

He shut the door. “The Rector is waiting for you in the office.”

She went to the door of the office and stopped, startled by the change in the Rector’s appearance. Always before poised and erect, she now looked a little shrunken, as old people often did. Her gray hair was lusterless, her dark skin more wrinkled. She sat slumped in the chair, eyes closed.

“Excuse me, Rector,” Morrison said.

The Rector’s eyes snapped open, the same silver-gray as before, and just as alive and aware.

“Sergeant Major,” the Rector said. “Thank you for the loan of your apartment; I hope it will be a brief one.”

“Stay as long as you like,” Morrison said. “But—”

“But we have things to talk about.” The Rector pulled out a security cylinder and turned it on. “Try yours as well,” she added.

Morrison turned on her own. All the telltales were green.

“Have a seat.” The Rector pointed to the chair. “I’ve been told that your quarters and your office on base suffered intrusions and security breaches. And you believe these were related to your recent TDY when you observed what you considered ill treatment of other survivors of the shuttle crash just over a half year ago.”

“Yes, Rector. I’m certain of it.”

“I agree. I knew nothing until my great-niece Ky Vatta called in a fury supposing I must have known about and agreed to it. I believe you saw at least one of those who escaped confinement—is that correct?”

“Yes, Rector.”

“Do you also know that Ky’s citizenship has been revoked and she is about to be charged with murder, as a way to get her into custody?”

“No—I didn’t know that.”

“In addition, the materials that Ky preserved through that period—evidence that might be useful in finding out who sabotaged the shuttle and the survival suits that killed all officers aboard it but Ky and her aide—have disappeared. Ky turned them over to Spaceforce personnel upon her return to Port Major. Staff Sergeant Gossin held evidence of the investigation done after Ky shot Master Sergeant Marek. It has also disappeared; presumably it was taken from Gossin when she was in custody, after Ky left Miksland.”

Morrison had not known about the sabotaged suits, or the missing evidence, but all that came out of her mouth was “Why wasn’t the admiral with her troops?”

“Because, fearing for her life, I had asked Mackensee Military Assistance Corporation—the mercs we hired to intervene against the Black Torch, who’d been hired to kill everyone—to have her flown directly to meet me, and then she and I traveled together to Port Major. And she is not, after all, a member of Slotter Key’s military any longer.”

“I see.” Morrison kept her face calm with an effort. She still wanted to demand how the Rector could possibly have ignored the welfare of the other survivors, but she sensed that yelling at the Rector would not help her find out. “What did you think had happened to the others?”

“The other survivors? I was told that they were being interviewed and checked over medically after their ordeal and would be reunited with their families for thirty days’ leave. Initially I had no reason to doubt that report. I was faced with many other issues relating to the shuttle crash, including complaints from the Moscoe Confederation about the death of their citizen Commander Bentik. The legislature opened investigations—still ongoing—into the two mercenary companies—who hired them, who permitted them to land on Slotter Key soil—and I was called to Government House repeatedly to answer questions about that. At any rate, being assured the other survivors were being taken care of, I didn’t worry about them again until Ky called a few days ago. And the next night I was gassed when I came home and have been in the hospital until today.”

“I did wonder…”

“I’ll just bet you did.” For an instant those old eyes were sharp as spears and just as penetrating. “You wondered if I had deliberately let them be hauled off, drugged, and imprisoned for some reason—was it a Vatta reason or a military?”

“I didn’t know, ma’am.”

“Ah. Well. Natural that you would worry. Natural you’d want to snap my neck if you thought I’d done it.”

“And there’s something else I should tell you,” Morrison said. She opened her briefcase and pulled out the old file. “Someone left this in my quarters on base. It was found by the same security squad that investigated the break-in. Major Hong gave it to me with orders to keep it safe.”

“What—? Oh.” The Rector looked at the cover, then up at Morrison. “That’s my file? The one from the Unification War? They never let me see it.” She slipped the cover open. “Gods, I was young. And stupid.”

“I read some of it,” Morrison said. “It was not… reassuring.”

“No, it wouldn’t be.” The Rector leaned back a little, folding her hands on top of the file. “I don’t propose to read it myself; I have memories.”

“Implant memories?”

“No. They took my implant, stripped it, and put it back in with their edits. The only good memories of that period I have are the ones stored in the brain itself.”

“Which ‘they’?” Morrison asked, fascinated in spite of herself.

“The authorities. When I was brought back here and tried—surely you read that far.”

“Yes.”

“Well, then. Their intent was to make it impossible for me to forget the bad things I’d done—which, if they’d had any sense, they’d have known I couldn’t anyway—and make me miserable. I was already miserable. I was surprised when I finally got out of that place and back with the family, and more surprised when, after the attacks on Vatta, I was asked to become subrector and then Rector.”

“Because of your family’s contract?”

“Contract? No, not that I know of. Because there were still people who remembered enough to hate me. But really, it worked out fairly well. I don’t look like that anymore.” She glanced down at the page of images and tapped one. “Or that. And I’ve been functionally sane for decades.”

“Your father signed a contract in which you were released to family custody on the condition that the family would not permit you to be active politically in any way,” Morrison said. “You were to be kept safely confined, medicated as necessary, subject to regular inspection by a court-appointed psychiatrist until at least age fifty.”

The Rector’s eyes widened, then narrowed again. “Seriously? I knew nothing of that. Father told me he’d gotten me out and I should stay home, on Corleigh, in seclusion, for at least five years. Which I did. He said after that I could return to the mainland and he would provide a house and staff. Which he did. He said nothing about a permanent bar to any political involvement. I would never have taken the post otherwise, no matter what anyone said.”

Morrison tapped the file. “It’s in here, the official copy. The rules under which you could live outside the hospital, and the penalties if you committed any crime or became political.” She watched the Rector’s face, and saw nothing but astonishment and confusion.

The Rector paged through the file quickly, stopping when she found the reference, near the end. Her breath caught while she read, her eyes widened again. “He never told me. He should have told me.” She looked up at Morrison. “He was—he liked to keep family business in the family. And I was a disgrace, he said, when I asked why I couldn’t attend a family gathering. Then he died unexpectedly.” She looked down, read the next paragraph in silence. “So—this says my brother would be my guardian after my father died, but he never said anything about this contract, either. Things did change—my husband died—”

“You were married?”

“Oh, yes. For a few years. My father insisted; he arranged it all. It would make me seem normal, he said. My husband was older, a distant relative, a widower. My father trusted him to keep family secrets in the family. He was gentle and put up with my—my nightmares and things without complaint.”

Morrison tried to imagine what it had been like for the young girl, a survivor who if not convicted of war crimes would have been treated for combat trauma, not criminal insanity.

Morrison believed her. “Is your brother still alive?”

“No, he died… twenty years ago or so. The guardianship would have passed to either Gerry or Stavros, probably Stavros as the elder. Neither of them said anything about it. They kept me busy in the company, but that’s all.”

“What did you do in the company?”

“Security. Typical commercial stuff—competitors always want to know financial details they can use. Sabotage of products or production lines or other company infrastructure. We’re diversified—not just a transport service anymore, and not limited to one planet. Vatta Transport alone has land, sea, and air cargo service here, and we’re a major interplanetary shipper in this quadrant. We have both scheduled and chartered service. Then Gerry, Ky’s father, expanded the tik plantation on Corleigh, gradually buying out others, and we moved into other products, as well. I supervised security procedures, researched new markets for possible dangers—political instability, for instance.” She paused, shook her head, then went on. “They didn’t want me traveling offplanet, so I had to train others when we needed someone on the ground in another system.”

“Do you think your brother and your—nephews, would it be?—knew about the contract? Wouldn’t your father have passed it on?”

“If he’d lived longer; if he’d foreseen his death. But if he had, I’m fairly sure my brother would have told me, and his own heir.”

“Mmm.” Morrison thought about that. It seemed a risky approach, but after all the family was civilian. And yet this file existed, with all the data. Where had it come from? Who had left it at her house?

“I’m wondering where this file has been all these decades,” the Rector said, echoing her thought. “Someone’s had it, or known where it was. If they knew what was in it, why didn’t they protest when I was brought into the government? A protest would have succeeded—I’d have refused the appointment. It couldn’t have been kept at Vatta headquarters; that was utterly destroyed in the explosion, and so were the libraries on Corleigh.”

“I don’t know,” Morrison said. “But I’m willing to bet that whoever placed it in my quarters made a copy.”

“Oh, obviously,” the Rector said. “Of course they would. More than one. I wonder who they most wanted to get in trouble, me or you? If someone had found you reading it and told me—they might think I’d suspect you of something dire.”

“Meaning you don’t.”

“Meaning I don’t, that’s right. Why would I?”

“Rector, I’m from Esterance. I might have known something about you through the family—”

“Did you?”

“No. Well before my time. Even before my parents’ time. I knew very little of you at all, until you became Rector and intersected with my duties.”

“Well, then. You’ve read it, or some of it, and you know what I was charged with—and was guilty of—so let’s get to the meat. Will you work with me to get those people free of the mess they’re in and back with their families, beyond harm?”

“If that’s your intent, absolutely.”

“Good. I don’t know how long I’ll remain Rector, but we need to fix this quickly, before someone else with different… um… priorities takes over. Stella Vatta, who has reasons to visit me, and lives in the house where Ky and the three who escaped are staying, can carry word from here to there. You know where they’re held now, or soon will be held, I gather?”

“Yes. And we have at most ten—no, five days now—before the first of the dispersed groups is moved there. The place was full; it’s taken time to move the others out quietly and without notice to make room for them.” Morrison looked down at the Rector’s hands, folded now on the desk; she had pushed the file aside. One old, dry, wrinkled; the other smooth, obviously young. For a moment she wondered how it felt to live with one limb so obviously younger than the others.

“Do you have any information on what they’ll use for transportation or more details on the schedule?”

“My guess is they’ll use vehicles that look civilian, at least part of the way, if they’re worried about a rescue attempt,” Morrison said. “And the committee did not define a particular schedule, only an end point. Which they might well ignore. We must hope they don’t expect a rescue.”

“They tried turning off the vehicles’ tracking codes originally,” the Rector said. “Ky’s got a crew who managed to locate some of them, including Clemmander, that way. But they could use more information from you.”

“I’ll write them for you.” Morrison reached across to the pad of paper and quickly wrote down all the names, locations, and contact codes she had. “I don’t know many of the names. We were introduced to a Lieutenant Colonel Oriondo and a Doctor Hastile at Clemmander. Oriondo was supposed to be the military watchdog for all the rehab centers in that region; I haven’t enough access through my office to find out if he’s got a history of that assignment or not. I didn’t like Doctor Hastile, if that means anything. When I asked permission to meet with the survivors separately, he made it clear that if I did I’d have to be quarantined for ten days or more. I took it as a threat.”

“Wise,” the Rector said, nodding. “Do you know their first names?”

“Only the initials that were on their badges. M. T. Oriondo and R. J. Hastile.”

“That’s a big help, Sergeant Major.”

“Rector, I’d be careful doing deep searches on them. If they’re involved in some kind of conspiracy, they’ll be watching.”

The Rector grinned. “Grandmothers. Eggs.”

“Sorry, Rector.”

“Don’t be. I appreciate warnings. But as Rector I can decide we need to… oh… review all contracts related to military rehabilitation, starting way over on the other side of the planet and working our way back to this continent, where of course we don’t expect to find any irregularities because it’s the main one and the seat of HQ.”

“I worry—they’d be so easy to kill in the state they’re in now. And if the others move up the timing…”

The Rector’s expression sobered. “Yes. I know that. It’s my intention to probe only enough to come up with a feasible plan to get them out before that happens, and then go after the bad guys.”

“You’ll need some military personnel with valid IDs to help,” Morrison said. “But they must not be associated with anyone in the conspiracy—that will take time.”

“Will it?” The Rector leaned forward. “I suspect if we check with the three survivors who got out, we can get some names of those colleagues who would be reliable.”

“Unless they were assigned to that shuttle not as an honor but to get rid of them,” Morrison said.

“That… had not occurred to me.” The Rector scowled at the desktop. “I wonder what kind of mind would think that up. I suppose similar to the one that decided to destroy the Vatta family to… accomplish something I still haven’t quite figured out. Still, there’s got to be some high-level person who could help us with this. Someone other than me, that is. Or you, since you’ve already been targeted by someone involved.”

“There are the branch sergeant majors,” Morrison said. “We all know each other, and—it’s hard to think of any of them being involved in something like this.”

“Ky found it hard to believe Master Sergeant Marek was the traitor in Miksland,” the Rector said. “He nearly killed her.”

“I thought she killed him. Wondered what for.”

“For his second attempt to kill her. Briefly, he rewired her quarters to make using the outlets lethal. She discovered the problem. He realized she was suspicious; she anticipated that, and when he shot at her, she killed him. She can tell you more.”

“How did the others take it?”

“Shocked. Horrified. Ky ordered Gossin, as senior NCO, to make a full investigation for later judicial inquiry and gave her custody of the data. That, and the fact that Marek had clearly shot first, settled things down. If we had the evidence Ky had insisted be collected, we’d know whether the Cascadian woman was killed by a ricochet or a direct hit.”

“Marek wouldn’t have had a weapon on the shuttle—”

“No—this was after they were underground. There was an armory, and a former commander in that secret base had also left a weapon in his desk. Marek got a junior enlisted to change the code so it could be palm-locked to Marek.”

Morrison could scarcely believe a master sergeant would do that. But the Rector went on.

“Ky thinks he was threatened, sometime earlier, and that’s what pushed him to it. Says she knew he was conflicted, and figures he was trying to save the others from the people who had pressured him. He might talk them into keeping a secret, but Ky—well, you don’t know Ky, but—”

“I’ve met her,” Morrison said. “She wouldn’t lie.”

“Not even when it’s in her interest,” the Rector said. “We had the hardest time pounding manners into that girl. Said what she thought. I will say, she never shirked the consequences.” She shook her head, then looked at Morrison, those old gray eyes fierce. “We are going to get those people out. If you think of anything, any clue, any new bit of information, call me or come, day or night. We can’t do it without you; you have the current knowledge. And none of us can do it alone.”

Sera Lane was waiting outside when Ky finished the next two hours of downloading from her implant. “I’m making progress,” she said. “We aren’t there yet, but Immigration has at least agreed that your application for reconsideration of citizenship is not, as they originally insisted, two hundred days overdue. Also that you did not bring a warship here with intent to make war on Slotter Key, and did not keep it here for the length of time it stayed—that, on the contrary, you were unable to communicate with anyone until after it had already left, though on that I’m not entirely sure. When did you first contact someone off the continent?”

“When did the ship leave?” Ky asked. She didn’t intend to tell anyone exactly when, certainly not someone who might feel obligated to pass it on to Immigration. She could imagine them deciding that she could have found out about the deadlines from Rafe—though he hadn’t known—and then still insisting she should have applied sooner.

“You don’t know?”

“No. It was gone when I came back. I was told it had left sometime before, but the only contact I’ve had was one-way: a message from my—from Space Defense headquarters—informing me that due to my long absence, my death was assumed and a successor had taken command of Space Defense Force—”

“Your fleet? The one you created?”

“Yes. That message said SDF were intending to forward back pay up through the date of change of command to my next of kin, but the Moscoe Confederation put a lock on my funds banked within that system.”

“Because of their concern about your aide’s death, yes. That was in your first statement.” She paused. “You have no idea if you had any contact while your ship was still in Slotter Key nearspace?”

Ky tried to think back. “Just as we were going down I managed to contact them, but then communication cut off. I remember Rafe or Aunt Grace—don’t remember which—didn’t want the ship to know we were alive because if someone hacked that conversation they might move up their attack. But then the ship left; the next time I mentioned it they said it had gone. I know I didn’t talk directly to the ship at all.”

“You were, however, in contact with your great-aunt before you were rescued. She did not mention the change in law to you at any point?”

“I did not speak to her, but to Rafe; he arranged the special shielding for the skullphone link. He never said anything, but if she’d mentioned it to him, I’m sure he would have said something. I imagine she thought—”

“Please, Sera Ky, what you imagined is not useful in this context. What I need to know is exactly who said what to whom, and when. The law is very… practical.”

The law did not seem practical to Ky. It seemed—here and in every system where she’d had to deal with it—to be formed of the whims of the lawmakers who just wanted their own notions made into walls and bars. Best not to say that to an attorney.

Sera Lane tipped her head to one side. “You think it’s not practical, don’t you? Young people often do. But like my supposition about what you’re thinking right now, people are imperfect mind readers. What someone believes another person thinks is often wrong. That’s why the law—our system of law—relies on the closest thing we can get to a fact: observed behavior, acts, and words.”

Iskin Kvannis looked at the latest iteration of the plan to move the survivors into one facility—a facility cleared of all other prisoners—and then terminate them. Finally. It should have been over by now, the sealed coffins or urns distributed to the families with due ceremony and deepest apologies for the tragic deaths of their loved ones. With a careful hint that, though of course no charges could be filed, the fault if any lay with Ky Vatta for allowing their family members to come into contact with the dread infectious agent that had killed them.

Everything had taken too long. The debate over whether to call it a plague or a toxin. The debate over where to house the survivors in the first place. Calming the panicky shock of their civilian allies, for whom the notion of planning to kill innocent soldiers, victims of happenstance, rang oddly with the same civilians’ eagerness to start a civil war that would certainly kill even more innocents, civilian as well as soldiers. Trying to explain the realities of the situation, trying to persuade the media that there was no story there, just a sad aftermath. Trying to keep legislators pestered by families convinced that there was nothing else to be done but hold the personnel in quarantine. Three of the survivors had escaped before the plan was complete. True, nothing at all had been seen or heard of them since, and they might, as Stornaki kept insisting, have died of exposure. But what if they hadn’t?

And now this plan, once more, had holes in it that Kvannis could see easily. Granted, the chosen rehab facility was the easiest to clear out because it had the smallest inmate population. It was remote. The locals—not very local, in fact—had shown almost no interest in it since it was built. What happened there would stay there, as the saying went, and being so remote it had its own facilities for disposing of bodies. All that was good. What was not good was how long it would take, again because of the remote area, and the specific containment needs for its present occupants. The plan proposed a 120-day period for converting the existing cells into the milder captivity suitable to the survivors, who after all did not deserve the smaller, harsher cells. He scrawled UNNECESSARY across that. They wouldn’t be there long, and they’d be drugged. What difference did it make?

He marked changes on the rest of the plan, and called Stornaki in. “We need to go with this as marked,” he said. “If the Rector recovers enough, if Immigration doesn’t hold Ky Vatta, it will become much more difficult, if not impossible.”

“Yes, Commandant,” Stornaki said.

Later, on his regular afternoon drive, Kvannis stopped to buy a couple of stuffed pastries and a bottle of lemonade; the message to his co-conspirators and the receipt for the purchase both missed the trash can, but a helpful customer put the receipt in, pocketing the scrap of paper.