“I won’t say I’ve enjoyed hearing what you and Captain Gweon had to say,” Kolokoltsov continued. “I do, however, appreciate the clarity with which you both said it.”
* * *
“So how did it go?”
Captain Caswell Gweon looked up from his martini with a smile as the extremely attractive red-haired woman slid into the chair on the other side of the small, private table.
“Fine, dear. And how was your day?” he asked with a smile.
“Boring, as usual,” she replied. “And don’t change the subject.”
“It’s known as small talk, dear,” Gweon pointed out. “The sort of thing people who are seeing one another seriously or, oh, I don’t know, engaged to each other, tend to do when they meet.”
“Point taken,” she admitted with a smile, then leaned across the table, cupped the side of his face in the palm of her right hand, and kissed him with a thoroughness which drew at least one laugh of approval from the bar’s other patrons.
“Much better!” he told her with an even broader smile of his own. He looked around the dimly lit bar, as if seeking the person who’d laughed. Nobody confessed, but several people smiled at him, and he shook his head, then waved one of the waiters over.
“Yes, Captain?”
“Would it be possible for us to get one of the private booths?” Gweon produced a credit chip which somehow magically teleported into the waiter’s hand.
“Oh, I think we can probably arrange something, Sir,” the waiter assured him with a brilliant smile. “If you and the lady would follow me, please?”
Gweon stood and pulled back his companion’s chair, then offered her his arm as they followed along in the waiter’s wake. He showed them to a large, comfortable booth in the rear of the attached restaurant — one with first rate privacy equipment.
“Will this do, Captain?”
“It looks perfect,” Gweon said approvingly. “If you could, please let us have a few minutes before sending someone to take our order? We’ll signal”—he indicated the panel on the table—“when we’re ready.”
“Of course, Sir.”
The waiter bowed with another smile and departed.
Gweon watched him go, then ushered his companion into the booth, seated himself opposite her, and activated the privacy equipment. They were instantly enclosed in a bubble which allowed them to see the restaurant around them clearly, but prevented anyone else from seeing in. That bubble was also supposed to be impervious to any known eavesdropping equipment, but Gweon pulled a small device from his pocket, laid it on the table between them, and activated it.
“And how wise is that?” his companion asked a bit sharply, and he shrugged.
“I’m the head of one of ONI’s main sections, Erzi, and I’ll be a flag officer in another couple of weeks. Rank hath its privileges in the SLN, including the use of officially assigned anti-snooping equipment while necking with my fiancée. Trust me, nobody’s going to find this remotely suspicious unless they’re already suspicious for some reason. In which case, we’re already screwed and might as well not worry about it.”
“I hate it when you get logical this way,” she complained with a pout, and he chuckled.
He sat back, surveying her, and reflected that he could have done far worse for a control. Erzébet Pelletier was every bit as smart as she was attractive. She was also athletic, and a pleasant armful in bed. Not only that, they got along well, and he knew she genuinely liked him. In fact, it might even go a little further than that, although both of them had to remember the risks of getting overly emotionally involved in their roles.
“All right,” Erzébet went on after a moment. “You told that nice young man we’d order in a few minutes, so why don’t we go ahead and get the dreary details out of the way?”
“Suits me,” he agreed.
He wished they ocould have held this conversation in their comfortable apartment, but it was a given that the apartment was bugged. Not very effectively — Rear Admiral Yau’s Office of Counterintelligence was pretty inept, and its bugs were no more than pro forma, since it was extraordinarily unlikely anyone in OCI cherished any suspicions where Gweon was concerned. Unfortunately, there was no good excuse for using his anti-eavesdropping equipment at home, whereas there were plenty of reasons someone might do that in public. So it actually made more sense for the two of them to exchange critical information in a “public” venue.
“First,” he told her, “there’s no sign anyone thinks there’s anything suspicious about Rajampet’s suicide.” He shrugged. “Given all that’s happened and the grilling he could expect from Kolokoltsov and the others, it’s easy to figure he had more than enough reasons to kill himself.”
“So it went off cleanly?” she asked.
“Evidently. It was his pulser, after all.” He grinned suddenly; he’d never much liked Rajampet. “It was a thoughtful of him to keep the damned thing in the same place for so many years. It was a lot cleaner and neater to have him shoot himself with a gun we knew how to find. God knows what kind of mess it would’ve made if we’d had to jump him out of a window that high, instead!”
“True.” Erzébet’s tone carried a certain delicate distaste. She hadn’t been much fonder of Rajampet than Gweon, and she was pleased by how neatly his demise tied off that particular loose end, but she didn’t share her companion’s amusement at the circumstances of the ex-CNO’s death.
Gweon sensed her reaction and grimaced an apology.
“Sorry, Erzi. Maybe I shouldn’t be so flip about it, but if you’d had to put up with that arrogant little prick as long as all of us who had the joy of working for him did, you’d probably feel like hoisting a few, too.”
“You may be right about that, and I guess I’m glad I didn’t have to put up with him. Either way, we’ve got other things to think about, and the courier’s leaving for Mesa tomorrow evening, so let’s go ahead and get the rest of your report out of the way.”
“Fine.” He nodded. “First, I’m pretty sure I’m in the process of cementing my credentials with Kolokoltsov. I’m giving him good analysis, and he knows it. Same for Kingsford, although I’ve revised my opinion of his IQ upward. I always knew he was smarter than Rajampet; I’m beginning to think he may be smarter even than I’d allowed for, and I’d a lot rather be more cautious than I have to than not cautious enough.
“I wasn’t present when Kingsford pitched his new strategy to Kolokoltsov, but judging from the additional analysis he asked for after leaving Kolokoltsov’s office, it sounds to me as if—”
Chapter Thirty-Two
“So we’re agreed?” Kolokoltsov asked, and looked around the faces of his fellows.
“I’m still not sure this is the best policy,” Agatá Wodoslawski said unhappily.
“I’m not wildly enamored of it myself,” Malachai Abruzzi told her, “but we’ve damned well got to do something. Something that looks at least moderately aggressive, I mean. And after what happened to Filareta, I don’t see a lot of other options.”
“And at least Kingsford’s being more realistic than Rajani was,” Nathan MacArtney put in. The permanent senior undersecretary of the interior was unwontedly subdued. Rajampet’s suicide had hit him particularly hard. It wasn’t so much that he’d liked the CNO, but they’d worked together for far too many years in policing the Protectorates, and they’d had far too many shared priorities, for MacArtney to take his sudden demise — and its circumstances — in stride.
“Yes, that does seem to be the case,” Kolokoltsov agreed in a tone of deliberate understatement, and MacArtney flushed. He looked as if he might be about to say something, but then he bit his lip. Kolokoltsov gazed at him for a moment longer, then sighed.