“They put us under pressure and bugged the place,” Jordan said, “and we all knew it. Iwas innocent of what sent me there–in deed, if not in thought. And that put me pretty well on the outs, finally, because everybody but Thieu eventually knew I wasn’t guilty–but they courted me for their various causes and tried to put on sympathy for my plight. God, it was a bloody comedy. ReseuneSec should have put me on payroll. I’d go to venues that supposedly weren’t bugged. I was damned sure they were. And I talked, and they recorded, and sometimes certain particularly obnoxious people just went away.” A small, bitter laugh. “I tell you, I was a valuable resource. ReseuneSec wouldn’t have wanted to give me up. But when Giraud Nye died–after that happened, I really watched what I ate and drank. I figured there might be orders floating in the system, maybe posthumous ones from him–maybe current ones from Denys, who knows? I didn’t trust it when the little dear declared bygones were bygones and shoved Paul and me onto a plane…”
BOOK THREE Section 2 Chapter iv
JUNE 12, 2424
0321H
“Interesting comment,” Florian said somberly, when he and Catlin reviewed the record, with Marco and Wes in the room. “If it’s true about the card, possibly someone in ReseuneSec was trying to draw a wrong action out of Warrick. Or maybe it had, as he said, completely different motives, and came from some source that ought not to be inside these walls.”
“Pursue it,” Catlin said. She looked tired. None of them had gotten a great deal of sleep this night.
But they had gotten Justin and Grant home uncontaminated, at least in the sense of poison and deepteach drugs. Justin and Grant were, by now, sleeping it off, sera herself had managed to get some late sleep, after a two in the morning call to Yanni, and by now Rafael and their outward apparatus, within ReseuneSec, were instructed to haul in information and sort it: security assignments, who was in what hall, in the restaurants in question, everything, not to mention who had access to Thieu, and who had come and gone in Patil’s condominium complex.
It was, to all appearances, death by catastrophic heart failure, in Thieu’s case–autopsy had yet to determine more specifics. It was even possible it was naturaldeath, a body which had ceased to renew itself, arteries and veins and cardiac tissue losing their prolonged youthful character, in the sort of fairly rapid decline that attended rejuv failure. It didn’t take much to tip a fragile body off the edge. Somebody might have applied that pressure.
The force, however, that had torn a sealed window out of its mount and sent Sandur Patil ten stories to the roof of an adjacent cooling tower–that was a plainly hostile action, on the shockwave of a grenade hand‑launcher. Sniffers, applied within the hour in the corridor and lifts, had turned up molecular evidence that had yet to match up with anyone in files, which meant the perpetrator had either confounded the scene with a puffer, available, some sophisticated ones quite expensively so, in Novgorod’s CIT underworld. That, or whoever had so spectacularly done in Patil was a novice with a hitherto clean record, and thus not on file. They could run the sniffer data and get an ID of everybody who’d been near that apartment…but on the grounds of the heavy firepower involved, beyond most novices, Florian personally bet on a puffer in use, specifically designed to foil a sniffer and confuse the scene. That was going to take the chemists time to sort out. The launcher, however–that wasn’t a short‑range weapon. It wasn’t the sort of thing a professional took to a quiet assassination. Whoever had done this was making a statement.
In the meanwhile–their whole staff lost sleep.
“No shortage of Paxer talent to produce a bogus card,” Wes said. “Somebody could have done it off any letter she sent with her letterhead.”
“ReseuneSec calls it clean,” Catlin said. “Electronically speaking clean, nanistically clean. No microprint in the typeface, so it was a private printer, but definitely with Planys microtags. That indicates only that the paper was produced to be used in Planys. Not that it was. The printer site could be anywhere.”
“And the card was planted eight weeks before two of the principals die,” Marco said. “The card was planted on the day the Council voted on a black budget for Eversnow. It could be coincidence: it could be connected, but somebody had all the pieces ready–the file, the card stock, the access to Jordan Warrick.”
“News reports,” Florian said, “still say publicly only that there’s new construction for Fargone. Patil’s name wasn’t publicly connected with either the real facts or the published cover. But she wasn’t at all reticent about the fact that she was taking an appointment with Reseune at Fargone. They didn’t forbid her to talk about it, and she talked to colleagues. The University was making adjustments in her teaching schedule for September. It’s possible she wasn’t totally discreet. All it takes is one slip.”
“Defense was still managing her,” Wes said, “even if she was publicly switching to Reseune payroll. She remained under Defense rules.”
“Seems so,” Florian said. “If they’d wanted her silenced, they could have done that with a phone call. So they didn’t object at all to the farewell parties, or she didn’t listen. Maybe it leaked to the Paxers–maybe through office staff, someone she confided in.”
“Defense is in elections,” Wes said. “Jacques is in office, Spurlin and Khalid are running. There are two strong factions in Defense. Only Jacques has the say, Spurlin is generally with Jacques; Khalid–Khalid is a problem. What his feelings are on the Eversnow project, we have no idea.”
“Somebody certainly silenced Patil for good,” Catlin said. “That’s one. And also assured she won’t take that appointment, which Yanni offered her, which at least half of Defense wanted, which Citizens, Information, and Trade all wanted, and which Reseune was funding. She was evidently the most universally acceptable candidate. Her death doesn’t need a card from Planys to threaten Yanni’s interests. One who might, on the surface, have motive, is sera herself. It slows a program she doesn’t favor. But that’s nowhere in question, and we know she didn’t.”
“Suppose someone inside Reseune opposes Yanni, or Eversnow, or the agreement Yanni made,” Florian said. “They could pose a danger. Someone violently opposes Yanni’s program.”
“A problem,” Marco said, “an outsider, can come into Reseune Township on a barge out of Novgorod, with a load of fertilizer. Can live there, if he’s good at blending in. There’s a lot of people in town that don’t need a keycard to survive.”
Wes said, “I don’t think sera is in imminent danger. Taking out Yanni or Hicks would be a safer move, to stop Eversnow…unless they have extraordinary penetration. Sera’s become too hard a target.”
“And the elder Warrick said he knew about Eversnow,” Catlin said. “If that’s true, where did he get his information?”
“I remain worried about sera’s safety,” Marco said. “Certain people might like to have her gone, and Warrick to blame. Again. Even if supporting Jordan Warrick against Reseune Admin is part of the Paxer cause. It’s good cover–to support the innocence of the man they’ve framed.”
“Or maybe,” Wes said, “they want confusion. Patil’s double‑crossed them, in their view. They kill her. And they set up something to stir up trouble and make Warrick an issue again–by getting him arrested for his connection to her assassination. But that requires that card be found in his possession, and it wasn’t…because he wouldn’t have it; he’d given it to Justin. He’s smart; he saw the chance of something aimed at him. He didn’t want to be tagged with it. He got rid of it as fast as he could, in a way that has ReseuneSec and sera’s staff quarreling over it.”
“That part makes sense,” Florian said. The rest of the world didn’t know that sera herself had begun to move on Yanni, and that everything was bound to change soon; and if that leaked and became public, it was going to cause agitation in many quarters. It wasn’t even to be mentioned to Wes and Marco, yet. “We’ve got a safe copy of the code on the card. It didn’t contain anything but Patil’s academic vita…on the surface, no slink or ferret. Hicks’ office has sent the card over to the experts. They’re having their own go at it, just to see if there’s a code in the apparent content. ReseuneSec has their report coming. I want our own done, with a copy of the analysis, directly to us.”