Payback

92

“Hey, Princess, how’s it going?” yelled Tommy Karr as Lia climbed out of the boat at the Nevas dock.

“I thought you were over your juvenile phase.”

“Nah, I’m just starting it. I was accelerated through school, remember?”

“This isn’t Russia, Karr. You better watch what you’re doing. You can’t even speak Spanish.”

“Por las buenas o por las malais,” he said, starting to say that, whether she liked it or not, they were working together.

“Just peachy. You have the gender wrong, and the tense, and you sound like an American hick. Why didn’t they send you to language school?”

“Wasn’t time. But better a hick than a stuck-up princess.”

Karr smiled at her and, knowing how much this annoyed her, started to laugh.

“I’m glad you’re so amused.”

“What’s the sense of living if you can’t have a few laughs? Come on, let’s go grab some grub. Election center opens in an hour. I have the place scoped out. Oughta be as easy as falling off a log.”

The voter cards were kept in a small room on the second floor of a local school building. As the Art Room had predicted, security here was considerably looser than it had been at Lima or even La Oroya. There was a metal detector at the main entrance, with two guards and a local election official, along with the deputy mayor. There was one guard on the top floor, stationed in the hallway in front of the room. There were no electronic security devices, and Karr had already concluded that most of the doors to the building were not locked.

“I put the video bugs in right before you got here. We’re all ready to go,” Karr told Lia as they finished eating. He pulled a small briefcase onto the table. “Even got you a new case and laptop.”

“I have my own, thank you,” Lia said.

“Yeah, but does yours have Zoo Tycoon on it?”

Lia rolled her eyes. “Be serious for once, OK?”

“I’m always serious.”

The deputy mayor and another man were sitting at a table near the front door when Lia went in. The UN committee had contacted the local election people the night before and again in the morning, but if the deputy mayor was impressed by Lia’s hardships, he didn’t act like it. She greeted him in Spanish, but he made a face as if her pronunciation was bad. He addressed her in English — it was as good as her Spanish, which was excellent — and asked to see her credentials. After she showed them he claimed he had to call Lima for instructions.

Lia shrugged. “Go ahead and call them,” she said.

“I will do that.” He got up and began ambling down the hallway.

“We’ll intercept the call; don’t worry,” said Rockman.

Lia wasn’t worried. Annoyed but not worried. One more hurdle, she told herself, and the job was done.

“Back already,” she muttered when she spotted him coming back down the hall.

“He didn’t call anyone,” said Rockman.

Gee, no kidding, she thought.

“Your belongings must be searched, going and coming,” said the man.

“Of course,” said Lia. She handed him the battered briefcase, even though it had already been checked at the door a few feet away. The deputy mayor eyed the laptop and its accessories suspiciously before handing everything back.

“The tests will only take a few minutes,” she said as he led her up the stairs. “You can help if you want.”

“I have better things to do. The guard will watch you.”

He told the man in Spanish that she was a foreigner and bore very close watching. The guard nodded and followed her inside the room, which was an airless storeroom the size of a closet. The only furniture was a long table where the two boxes of cards were kept, and a simple folding chair against the wall.

Lia unpacked slowly, remembering how claustrophobic she had become in the Lima vault. She needed a ruse to get the guard away; she certainly didn’t want him hanging over her shoulder — he smelled like a rat fresh from the nearby jungle.

There was an electrical outlet right next to the table, so she couldn’t use her old standby of needing an extension cord.

“Are you in the army?” Lia asked the guard, in Spanish, trying to make conversation.

He shook his head.

“The army — and the police — helped me yesterday. They saved me from the rebels,” she said.

There was no reaction from the guard. Lia booted up her computer and fussed with the equipment.

“It’s kind of stuffy in here,” she said. “Could you get me a drink of water?”

“I cannot leave my post,” said the guard.

Heaven forbid, Lia thought.

She had the replacement envelope with its voter cards in the lining of the briefcase. She thought of just going ahead and pulling it out; the guard wouldn’t know what she was doing anyway. But she worried that he might have some reason to tell the deputy mayor.

And the stench was really starting to get to her. She fingered the top of her computer, trying to think.

“Do you want water or not?” said the guard.

“Yes, I do.”

“You can get it down the steps at the back of the hall. There is a machine there.”

“I can’t leave my laptop,” she told him. “It’s against the rules.”

“So take it.”

Lia was about to tell him that she had changed her mind, but then realized that if she had the card in her hand when she did the check, it would be easy to make the switch while she worked, even with him nearby. She could go downstairs and take the cards from the envelope, returning with them in her hand or even her briefcase. The only problem was that she wouldn’t know in advance which card was which; she’d have to test them all.

“Hallway at the back?” she asked, packing up. “Are you going to show me?”

“I have to guard this room.”

“That’s what you should do,” said Lia. “Don’t be offended, but I have to take my laptop with me. Those are the rules that I have.”

“Of course.”

“Tommy’s moving to the back of the room to cover you,” Rockman told her. “Are you really that thirsty?”

“Oh, parched,” she whispered as she walked down the hall.