Eve In Utopia

Chapter Four

Carson and Fiona parked their rented pick-up outside the freight office of the ferry company and went inside. Carson showed his ID to the bald clerk behind the counter, "I believe you have a package for me."

"I don't have anything under that name," replied the clerk as he checked his computer screen.

"Can you check again please," replied Carson spelling his name. "We came to pick it up in person instead of having it sent on to the hotel in order to avoid Imperial entanglements."

The clerk looked up at this and smiled then went back to looking at his screen and typing on the keyboard. "Oh yeah, here it is, some idiot filed it using Carson as your last name, sorry about that. It's a pretty big item,"

"We were expecting that and brought a hand dolly with us," said Fiona. "I'll go to the truck and get it."

"Jeez, what's in this thing?" asked the clerk as he helped shift the crate onto the hand dolly.

"It's the stuff for our Star Wars theme honeymoon party," replied Carson who knew there were cameras recording everything. "We weren't sure it was going to clear customs in time, but we seem to have lucked out."

"Well, I liked the original trilogy," said the clerk, "but it was all downhill after that and I lost interest."

"Yeah, that's sort of what I think too," agreed Carson "Thanks for your help," he called back as he and Fiona wheeled the crate out to the truck where a chunk of plywood served as a makeshift ramp to get the crate into the back of the truck. This had been a major sticking point in their plan, trying to get the weapons and equipment needed for the strike onto the island past security. The crate had custom seals all over it and it had undoubtedly been opened and inspected at the border, but that had been planned for. All a nosy customs inspector would see would be a lot of Star Wars paraphernalia including Storm Trooper uniforms and plastic "laser" guns. With the stuff all bound for a Star Wars themed party, no one would inspect anything too closely, or so it had been hoped and reasoned. The Storm Trooper outfits were actually body armour made of a new lightweight material which could stop hand guns, though not anything more high powered. The laser guns were made of break away plastic to conceal the very real guns hidden inside them. A casual scan of the crate would have revealed it contained something metal, but the Storm Trooper outfits had all kinds of prominent metal buckles and clasps to account for their presence. It would have all fallen apart if someone had bothered to scan individual items, but they had counted on human laziness to keep that from happening. Still, security at the resort might have taken another and closer look at the crate and its contents with the President and the other leaders soon to arrive, but the clerk in the freight facility was a sympathiser who had deliberately held back the crate and waited for the code phrase to release it. That clerk was probably in for a world of hurt when the aftermath of the strike came, but sacrifices had to be made to advance the greater good.

*

By the end of her shift, Eve had made up her mind to take Paul's invitation for supper and had texted him to let him know. She had asked if she could bring a friend to which he had readily agreed and then Eve had talked Joy into coming with her. They had looked for Annie after work, but there was no sign of her and Eve suspected the woman was deliberately avoiding them. That further strengthened her suspicions about Annie, but there was no proof of anything wrong. The world leaders would start arriving tomorrow and Eve suspected things would quickly come to a head after that if her employers were right about who her target was.

Eve signed out a jeep from the pool the resort maintained for visitor and employee use and they even gave her an employee discount of a whole ten percent. Never let it be said that the resort owners didn't value their employee units. The road across the island to the "authentic" Indigenous community was not paved and rather rough which Eve supposed was to try and enhance the authenticity, though it struck her as just being cheap on the part of the resort owners. It was only a twenty minute drive and as their jeep pulled into the small village, Eve and Joy saw a tourist bus leaving. Eve caught a glimpse of the Taylor family on board the bus and gave them a wave, wondering if they would recognize her out of her waitress uniform. Unlike with Moore, Eve had been mainly amused at Jake's ogling her at lunch. The boy was obviously starting into puberty and hardly to be blamed for his hormones, unlike Moore who was more than old enough to know better. She had caught Mr. Taylor checking her out too, but after that first time he had looked embarrassed and made an effort to look her in the eyes when talking to her, so Eve wasn't going to hold his initial mistake against him.