by thalasso

Harry stormed into Ferraday's office.

"Please have the courtesy to knock before …" he muttered, but Harry did not let him finish.

"It was you. I should have known from the start!"

"Hm, er …" Ferraday wasn't looking very comfortable. Slowly he rose from his chair.

"I can explain everything!"

"I bet you could!" Harry was furious.

"You have led my on wrong tracks, you made me even think, Vaslov was involved, but it was you all the time!"

"Excellent work, I must admit, Harriet! But what gave me away?"

Harry paused. He was feeling too comfortable again. Was this a trap? Carefully she explained.

"You description of the hoverboats. Ray could not possibly have shown you a picture with hoverboats. These vehicles where introduced only days after he died. You must have seen that yourself later, what you denied."

"Damn."

"You are far from being a computer illiterate. You don't even have a 10-year old nephew!"

"Well, true again. I thought that was the convincing part!" Ferraday smiled and move away from his desk towards his cupboard.

"But you have overdone it, when you tried to make this John Tarrant speak like Vaslov. That was not convincing at all!"

"Good! I was afraid, you would shoot Boris first and then come to my office! Tarrant is just a fake. We use him once in a while."

"Get away from that cupboard! No need for dirty tricks now. I have already informed Director Courtney!"

"Don't worry, Harry. I'm not foolish. My gun is in the drawer of the desk. I wasn't aware of you being a personal friend of Director Courtney, until I spoke to her today. You bailed her out of China 20 years ago?"

"Yes, but …", Harry felt insecure again. That was not what she had expected.

"Don't worry, Harriet. That was excellent work! Couldn't have done a better job myself. Director Courtney will be here in a minute."

He opened the cupboard and took out a bottle of champagne and a couple of glasses. Suddenly the door bursted open and all her colleagues came poring in: Nathan Muir, Roger Thornhill, Boris Vaslov, Fathom Harvill and Director Jean Courtney. Everybody smiling.

With a bang Ferraday opened the champagne bottle and filled the glasses. He gave Harry a glass and raised his voice.

"Here's to you, Harriet Tubman. For excellent work, a lifetime achievement and for brilliantly solving our little retirement riddle!"

---

When Harry was home from her retirement surprise party she didn't know what to think. She was happy the whole thing was over and she felt a bit betrayed, cause she had taken things too seriously. On the other hand she had really enjoyed herself the last two weeks.

Ferraday had told her, it had been Ray's idea. He had set up virtual jobs for people close to retirement, because he knew they were no getting good assignments anymore.

"There must be more than paperwork to a job, especially when you have devoted yourself for so many years to do the dirty work", Ferraday had quoted him.

Unfortunately Ray had died in that crash before the whole thing got started. In spite of that Ferraday decided to pull it off. And he was very pleased with the result.

"Just bring in the laptop tomorrow." He smiled when they finally parted.

After making a few phone calls Harry entered There for the last time. She wanted to say good bye to the friends she made and to give away all here possession. She had no use for virtual clothes anymore.

Out of idle curiosity she found, that she had not solved all the riddles. 'Thursdays, LT 2000' still was a mystery. She checked several locations in the Lower Tiki Area at the south east of Caldera without finding any surprises. Even the Leftover Temple in the southern Monkey Crater showed nothing of interest. She gave up.

Harry drove aimless through Monkey Crater, when she found out, she was lost. She changed the view to Aerial View to find out her exact position when she suddenly discovered a name tag passing by: Tarrant. He was heading for another temple nearby. She checked the Interactive maps and suddenly realized, she had been searching in the place. The temple Mica Tuma was now a funzone known as Lesser Tuma. She clicked on Lesser Tuma on the Map and teleported there.

Harry hopped on her hoverpack and went to the side of the roof. She hopped off inside the roof of the temple. The book was hidden in the top layer. She took out her paintgun and waited.

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