Read Perfiditas for Free Online Page A

the city centre.
    Back at my desk in the PGSF main office, I sorted through my messages and tried to tune out other voices: fourteen people insisting on being heard. Why did they have to shout across the room? I could hardly wait until the strategy room was equipped when I’d be able to sit quietly in front of my screen and think.
    I searched the internal and allied security bases for Martinus Caeco. To be honest, I didn’t expect anything so I wasn’t disappointed. I went to the secure room to search PopBase which contained every piece of known data about every citizen. After the double door scanner and the optical check, the sour-faced duty information officer grunted as she entered an access code for me. She pointed me to a cubicle with a keyboard and terminal. I knew PopBase was, and needed to be, well-guarded with secure protocols, but she acted like it was her personal property. And she could have tried turning the corners of her mouth up into a smile just to see if she was able to.
    I tapped away for an hour, entering different permutations, but the result was a big fat zero.
    Back in the general office, I distracted myself by looking through Fausta and Drusus’s shopping list. I smiled when I found a hard copy wedged between the second and third rows of my keyboard with “In confirmation” written across the envelope. It was ambitious, but well-argued. All it needed was another couple of arguments for the holographic simulator, so that the quaestor couldn’t find any excuse to refuse it. I messaged back to Drusus to finalise it for Friday morning.
    Writing up the morning’s events, I puzzled about who had sufficient resources to field a professional heavy plus minders, one as receptionist, the other at Aidan’s home. With reliefs, they would need at least six. That didn’t come cheap.
    And how was Tacita involved? As the new head of Intelligence, she could access everything. I closed my eyes and shuddered. Had Aidan asked Tacita for any information yet? And had she passed anything to him? We could have the biggest security breach for years on our hands.

V
    I arrived at Aidan’s office a little before eleven. Sextus was playing at receptionist again. I hadn’t used the “Cousin Catherine” character for several years, so it was unlikely anybody would recognise it. By anybody, I meant somebody with their eyes tuned, alert for something odd. Most people were preoccupied with their daily lives – children, job, taxes, sex, cat – and didn’t notice anybody or anything else. Unlike television cop shows would have you believe, trying to find useful witnesses was a nightmare: nobody saw anything because nobody was looking.
    Sextus was looking now, but trying hard not to. He had to be a player, but on whose side?
    I delivered my best nervous smile. ‘Good morning, dear, and how are you today?’
    ‘Good morning, Mrs Macarti,’ he said. He hadn’t used my name to me before. He couldn’t say the ‘th’, so he had to be Roma Novan. ‘I will tell Aidan Hirenses you are here.’
    Aidan greeted me as before and, as we sat down, he blinked twice.
    The pyramid on the table, I started. ‘What information was Tacita supposed to provide?’
    ‘About the new legate.’
    My turn to blink. ‘What precisely?’
    ‘His family, his contacts outside work, his current concerns, his vulnerability to corruption, and anything else she might find on the way.’
    ‘And did she?’
    He looked away.
    ‘I guess that’s a yes.’ I glanced at the little gold clock in Aidan’s cabinet. We had another five minutes if we were really lucky. ‘How much did she obtain?’
    ‘She gave me his contact details, what he was working on, but she doesn’t know him well enough to know the other information, but she was digging. She’s doing her best.’
    Doing her best to reserve a long-term stay in the central military prison.
    ‘Have you passed it on?’
    ‘What do you think?’ He sighed. ‘It was that or have my hands broken