Shadow of the Hegemon, the - Book 2 (Ender) Read Online Free PDF Page A

military would, of course, put them in hiding and protect them carefully. But no matter what they did, the one thing they could not do was conceal the knowledge of his location from the Greek government itself. And the Greek government had been part of the Russia-dominated Warsaw Pact for generations now, since before the Formic War. Therefore Achilles -- if it was Achilles, if it was Russia he worked for, if, if -- would be able to find out where they were. Bean knew that it was not enough for him to be in protection. He had to be in true concealment, where no government could find him, where no one but himself would know who he was.
    The trouble was, he was not only still a child, he was a famous child. Between his youth and his celebrity, it would be almost impossible for him to move unnoticed through the world. He would have to have help. So for the time being, he had to remain in military custody and simply hope that it would take him less time to get away than it would take Achilles to get to him.
    If it was Achilles.
    Message in a Bottle
    To: Carlotta%[email protected]/orders/sisters/ind
    From: Graff%[email protected]
    Re: Danger
    I have no idea where you are and that's good, because I believe you are in grave danger, and the harder it is to find you, the better.
    Since I'm no longer with the IF, I'm not kept abreast of things there. But the news is full of the kidnaping of most of the children who served with Ender in Command School. That could have been done by anybody, there is no shortage of nations or groups that might conceive and carry out such a project. What you may not know is that there was no attempt to kidnap one of them. From a friend of mine I have learned that the beach house in Ithaca where Bean and his family were vacationing was simply blown up -- with so much force that the neighboring houses were also flattened and everyone in them killed. Bean and his family had already escaped and are under the protection of the Greek military. Supposedly this is a secret, in hopes that the assassins will think they succeeded, but in fact, like most governments, Greece leaks like a colander, and the assassins probably already know more than I do about where Bean is.
    There is only one person on Earth who would prefer Bean dead.
    That means that the people who got Achilles out of that mental hospital are not just using him -- he is making, or at least influencing, their decisions to fit his private agenda. The danger to you is grave. The danger to Bean, more so. He must go into deep hiding, and he cannot go alone. To save his life and yours, the only thing I can think of is to get both of you off planet. We are within months of launching our first colony ships. If I am the only one to know your real identities, we can keep you safe until launch. But we must get Bean out of Greece as quickly as possible. Are you with me?
    Do not tell me where you are. We will work out how to meet.
    How stupid did they think she was?
    It took Petra only about half an hour to realize that these people weren't Turkish. Not that she was some kind of expert on language, but they'd be babbling along and every now and then out would pop a word of Russian. She didn't understand Russian either, except for a few loan words in Armenian, and Azerbaijani had loan words like that, too, but the thing is, when you say a Russian loan word in Armenian, you give it an Armenian pronunciation. These clowns would switch to an easy, native-sounding Russian accent when they hit those words. She would have to have been a gibbon in the slow-learner class not to realize that the Turkish pose was just that, a pose.
    So when she decided she'd learned all she could with her eyes closed, listening, she spoke up in Fleet Common. "Aren't we across the Caucasus yet? When do I get to pee?"
    Someone said an expletive.
    "No, pee," she answered. She opened her eyes and blinked. She was on the floor of some ground vehicle. She started to sit up.
    A man pushed her