"Do you have the feeling, Damien," he asked slowly after several seconds, "that Ms. Anisimovna is privy to information the rest of us haven't received yet?"
"I've always felt she was working to an agenda and a set of instructions we didn't know anything about—and that she wasn't about to tell us anything about, either." Dusserre sounded almost surprised by the question, as if its answer was so painfully self-evident he couldn't quite believe the Prime Minister had asked it.
"That's not what I asked." Vézien lowered his eyes from the skylight to gaze at the other man instead of the stars. "Of course we don't know what her real instructions are, and, of course, she's not going to tell us. We wouldn't tell her everything if our positions were reversed, either, would we? But what bothers me at the moment is that I have the oddest feeling that she knows more about a lot of things than we do." He frowned, seeking the words to more clearly explain what he was getting at. "I mean about things the rest of the galaxy is going to find out about in due time but doesn't know about yet," he said. "Things—news stories, events—that no one here on New Tuscany's even heard about yet that she's already factoring into her plans."
Dusserre looked back at him for several seconds, then snorted.
"I'll grant you the woman is fiendishly clever, Max. And I'll also point out that she's receiving regular messages via private dispatch boats from Mesa and God knows where else, whereas we're basically dependent on the news services—which don't exactly see us as one of their red-hot bureau depots—to find out what's going on anywhere else in the galaxy. So, yes, she probably does know quite a few things we haven't found out about yet. But let's not talk ourselves into thinking she's some kind of sorceress, all right? It's bad enough that we don't have much choice but to dance with her and let her lead without our deciding she somehow magically controls the orchestra's choice of music, as well!"
Vézien grimaced, but he also let the point drop. His initial question had been at least partly whimsical, after all. Still, though . . . Try as he might, he couldn't quite shake that feeling—that . . . intuition, perhaps—that Aldona Anisimovna was always at least a couple of jumps ahead of anyone else in the New Tuscany System, and he didn't much care for the sensation.
"Well, anyway," he said, waving aside his own question, "I suppose what really matters is whether or not we have the assets in place to actually do what she wants as quickly as she wants it done."
"That and the question of whether or not doing what she wants on this revised schedule of hers is also going to accomplish what we want," Dusserre replied. "And, while I'm perfectly ready to concede that you're right and we don't have much choice but to continue with this strategy, the timing on it really worries me, Max."
The security minister's tone was cold, sober, and—most worrisome of all—sincere, Vézien thought. And, as usual, he had a damnably good point.
"We weren't supposed to be doing this for months yet," Dusserre continued, "and I damned well wish I hadn't told Anisimovna we'd been able to complete our arrangements for it this early."
"It wouldn't have made that much difference in the end," Vézien said, offering what comfort he could. "The message turnaround time to Pequod is too short. Even if we hadn't done a single thing to get ready for it already, it wouldn't have taken more than a week or two to set it all up from scratch. And, frankly, a week or two either way isn't going to make that much difference."
"I know," Dusserre muttered, then puffed his cheeks out and sighed. "I know," he repeated more distinctly. "I suppose I'm just still looking for things to kick myself over because I'm scared enough to piss on my own shoes."
Despite himself, Vézien felt himself warming at least briefly towards the security minister as Dusserre admitted to the same trepidation Vézien felt.
"I know the Solly battlecruisers were supposed to already be here before we kicked off this phase of the operation," he said almost gently. "But we do have confirmation from other sources that Byng is in the Madras Sector. She's not lying to us about that. And hard as I've tried, I can't come up with any scenario where it would help Manpower in any conceivable way for her to have come clear out here and set us up to fall flat on our asses just so her people can get egg on their faces in all the Solly 'faxes all over again. There may be one, but I sure as hell can't figure out what it might be! And assuming she'd prefer for us all to succeed, I can't see why she'd lie to us about Manpower and Mesa's ability to bring Verrochio up to scratch and get Byng moving ahead of schedule. So we're just going to have to take her word that they can do that and act accordingly."
"Wonderful." Dusserre inhaled deeply. "Well, in that case we really need to be talking to Nicholas and Guédon. I know my people did most of the organizing and operational planning, and picking the merchant ship wasn't as difficult as I'd been afraid it would be. We've got all of that in place, but we didn't have the resources outside the home system to set something like this up at the other end, as well. We had to rely on the Navy for that, and we're pretty much completely outside the pipeline in that regard. We had to let them put it into place, and we're going to need their resources to actually pull the trigger, as well."
Vézien nodded. He was right, of course, and it wouldn't be all that hard to get hold of Admiral Josette Guédon, the New Tuscan Navy's chief of naval operations. Getting hold of the Minister of War was going to be a bit tougher, though, since Nicholas Pélisard had chosen this particularly inconvenient moment for a vacation trip to visit family in the Selkirk System. He wouldn't be back for at least another week, and his Deputy Minister of War hadn't been briefed in on the operation. There'd seemed no particular need to do that—or, rather, it had seemed they had plenty of time to do it, just as Pélisard should've had plenty of time to complete his vacation trip. Besides, his deputy was a . . . less than stellar choice for the coordination of any covert operation.
"I don't want to bring Challon in on this, not without discussing it with Nicholas first, at least," the Prime Minister said after moment. "I'm not confident enough in his ability to keep a secret to feel comfortable doing that. But Guédon already knows what's supposed to happen, right?"
"I discussed it with her myself," Dusserre agreed. "I left it up to Nicholas to organize the nuts and bolts and get the ship properly rigged. He's the one with the connections for that side of things, after all. But I do know that he personally spoke to her directly about it, so she has to have been in the loop. In fact, knowing her, she probably wouldn't have trusted anyone outside her own office to arrange it."
"All right, then I'll take care of bringing her up to speed on the changes," Vézien decided. "One of the nice things about being Prime Minister is that I can talk to anyone I need to just about any time I want to, and with Nicholas out of the system, I don't imagine anyone will be particularly surprised if I need to talk to the CNO directly."
"Which still brings you back to deciding what to do about Challon, doesn't it?" Dusserre asked. Vézien glanced at him, and the security minister grimaced sourly. "I'm not that fond of Challon, Max. I'll admit it. But if I do, then you have to admit he's given me ample reason to be unfond of him. If he finds out you've been talking to Guédon without involving him when he's at least temporarily perched on the top of his own dung heap during Nicholas' absence, his vanity is going to demand that he figure out whatever secret you were obviously trying to keep from him. And, unfortunately, he's not a complete idiot. There's a damned good chance he'll be able to dig up enough to present a real problem if he starts blathering about it. And he will blab about it if he figures it out. Probably to a newsy he figures could make him look good, although God knows that's a challenge few mortals would care to embrace!"