Benjamin looked at him for another moment, then began to smile himself.
“Do you think we can get away with its having been ‘porous’ enough for them to have gotten their hands on additional nukes?”
“Well, we know from our own interrogation of that seccy bastard who was working with Zilwicki and Cachat that it was the seccies who brought them the nuke that went off in the park,” Albrecht pointed out. “Assuming anyone on their side’s concerned with telling the truth — which, admittedly, I wouldn’t be in their place — that little fact may just become public knowledge. In fact, now that I think about it, if Cachat and Zilwicki are telling their side of what happened, they’ll probably want to stress that they certainly didn’t bring any nukes to Mesa with them. So, yes, I think it’s possible some of those deeply embittered fanatics, driven to new heights of violence by the Manties’ vicious lies, will inflict yet more terroristic nuclear attacks upon us. And if they’re going to do that, it’s only reasonable — if I can apply that term to such sociopathic butchers — that they’d be going after the upper echelons of Mesan society.”
“That could very well work,” Benjamin said, eyes distant as he nodded thoughtfully. Then those eyes refocused on his father, and his own smile disappeared. “If we go that way, though, it’s going to push the collateral damage way up. Houdini never visualized that, Father.”
“I know it didn’t.” Albrecht’s expression matched his son’s. “And I don’t like it, either. For that matter, a lot of the people on the Houdini list aren’t going to like it. But messy as it’s going to be, I don’t think we have any choice but to look at this option closely, Ben. We can’t afford to leave any kind of breadcrumb trail.
“McBryde had to know a lot about our military R&D, given his position, but he was never briefed in on Darius, and he was at least officially outside any of the compartments that knew anything about Mannerheim or the other members of the Factor. It’s possible he’d gotten some hint about the Factor, though, and he was obviously smart enough to’ve figured out we had to have something like Darius. For that matter, there are a hell of a lot of Manties who’re smart enough to realize we’d never have been able to build the units for Oyster Bay without it. So it’s going to be painfully evident to anyone inclined to believe the Manties’ claims that the Mesan Alignment they’re talking about would have to have a bolthole hidden away somewhere.” He shook his head. “We can’t afford to leave any evidence that might corroborate the notion that we simply dived down a convenient rabbit hole. If we have to inflict some ‘collateral damage’ to avoid that, then I’m afraid we’re just going to have to inflict the damage.”
Benjamin looked at him for several seconds, then nodded unhappily.
“All right,” Albrecht said again. “Obviously, we’re both responding off the cuff at the moment. Frankly, it’s going to take a while for me, at least, to get past the simple shock quotient and be sure my mind’s really working, and the last thing we need is to commit ourselves to anything we haven’t thought through as carefully as possible. We need to assume time’s limited, but I’m not about to start making panicked decisions that only make the situation worse. So we’re not making any decisions until we’ve had a chance to actually look at this. You say Collin’s on his way?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Then as soon as he gets here, the three of us need to go through everything we’ve got at this stage on a point by point basis. Should I assume that, with your usual efficiency, you’ve brought the actual dispatches about all of this with you?”
“I figured you’d want to see them yourself,” Benjamin said with a nod, and reached into his tunic to extract a chip folio.
“One of the joys of having competent subordinates,” Albrecht said in something closer to a normal tone. “In that case,” he went on, holding out one hand for the folio while his other hand activated his terminal, “let’s get started reviewing the damage now.”
Chapter Eighteen
“Welcome aboard, Chien-lu. It’s good to see you again.”
“And you, Honor,” Chien-lu Anderman, Herzog von Rabenstrange, said warmly as he shook the offered hand.
The Andermani admiral, who just happened to also be Emperor Gustav’s first cousin, was a smallish man, not much larger than Honor’s Uncle Jacques. And like Jacques Benton-Ramirez y Chou and Honor herself, he had dark, almond-shaped eyes. At the moment, as they stood in the admiral’s day cabin aboard HMS Imperator, those eyes were as warm with genuine pleasure as his tone, and he smiled broadly. Not that he and Honor had always been on such excellent terms.
“I’m glad — and surprised, actually — they managed to get you back here so quickly,” she went on, and he shrugged. It was six days by courier vessel from the Manticore Binary System to the Andermani capital in the New Potsdam System by way of the Junction’s Gregor Terminus. To get here this quickly — less than one full day after Benjamin Mayhew’s arrival — Rabenstrange must have departed within no more than twenty-four standard hours after the arrival of Elizabeth’s courier to Emperor Gustav.
“I won’t pretend travel aboard something as crowded and plebeian as a dispatch boat is truly suited to one of my towering aristocratic birth, but it does have the advantage of getting you where you’re going in a hurry. Although”—Rabenstrange’s smile faded slightly—“perhaps not as much of a hurry as certain other people can achieve, if this business about the ‘streak drive’ has any validity.”
His voice rose very slightly with the final sentence, almost (but not quite) turning it into a question, and it was Honor’s turn to shrug.
“All I can tell you about that is that as far as Nimitz and the other treecats are concerned, Simões is telling the truth to the best of his own knowledge. And as far as Admiral Hemphill and the rest of her tech people are concerned, what he’s told them so far seems to be holding together. The general feeling among our intelligence types is that all the technical information he’s provided so far appears to be both genuine and theoretically valid.”
Rabenstrange gazed into her eyes very steadily, then nodded, and Honor tasted his satisfaction. She couldn’t be positive, of course, but it seemed to her that he was satisfied on several levels. At least with her.
“That’s what I expected to hear,” he said after a moment.
“You expected to hear that I thought he was telling the truth, or you expected me to tell you he was telling the truth anyway, like a good, loyal Queen’s officer?” she asked with a smile that was a bit more crooked than usual.
“That you’d tell me what you personally believe to be the truth…and that you’d distinguish between what can be realistically evaluated and what can’t be,” he said.
Honor’s eyebrows rose a millimeter or so at the unusual candor — or un-diplomat-like directness, at least — of his response, and he snorted in amusement.