“Despite the fact that it was handed down by a court? The judge wouldn’t have been too happy.”
“Let’s just say that she is a friend of ours,” Jaruzelska said. “We owe her big time.”
“You didn’t stop there, though, did you?” Michael said. “You spread the idea around that the government pushed for the death penalty only because that was what the Hammers wanted. Am I right?”
“Ferrero the puppet having her strings pulled by Polk the puppet master,” Jaruzelska said. “You know what? I think we’ll make you a psyops man of you yet,” she added with a smile.
“I don’t have your sneaky, devious mind, sir. Niccolo Machiavelli would have been proud of you, though. So what came next?”
“The final step was persuading President Diouf to-”
“Whoa, hold on, sir! The president is in on this?”
“No, she’s not. All you need to know is that a mutual friend, a man whose advice and guidance Diouf has relied on for most of her adult life, convinced her that the Federated Worlds would be at grave risk if she did not turn down your request for clemency. The president was told only as much as she needed to understand why she was being asked to do something … so extraordinary. In the end she agreed to go along with us, but only when we convinced her that you would not actually be executed.”
Relief flooded through Michael; he had not been wrong to trust Diouf.
“And that was when things got very dirty,” Jaruzelska went on. “When Diouf turned you down, we had to convince the Worlds that you had been unfairly treated. The Hammers helped us there. We have holovid of the dumb bastards trying to bribe Diouf to let your execution go ahead. Twenty million FedMarks they offered her. She refused it, of course, but we slipped a story to the trashpress saying that she had taken the money. To muddy the waters a bit more, we concocted another story that the Hammers were so pissed by Diouf’s refusal that Polk forced Moderator Ferrero to blackmail Diouf into turning down your appeal for clemency.”
“Diouf’s the closest thing I know to a saint,” Michael said; he looked incredulous. “How do you blackmail a saint?”
“Easy. You cook up a story, backed by lots of seemingly credible evidence, that Diouf financed a child slavery racket operating out of the Rogue Planets in the ’50s, and then …”
Michael grimaced; that would have hurt Diouf.
“… you give it to the trashpress and tell them that Ferrero was using it to blackmail the president. The story was so juicy, so hot, they just couldn’t resist the temptation. They went public with it the day you were executed. The timing could not have been better.”
“Then what?”
“The story’s already been retracted-needless to say, that’s seen by some as part of the government’s cover-up-and Ferrero and Diouf are going to sue for defamation. But that still leaves people wondering if they’ll ever get the truth. Was the president bribed by the Hammers? Did Ferrero blackmail her into abandoning all her principles? And if Diouf wasn’t bribed or blackmailed, then why did she go against all her principles and allow your execution to go ahead? Not that it matters, not now. We’ve got what we need. We’ve turned you from villain to victim, and the process has seriously undermined Ferrero’s credibility, so much so that the average Fed now thinks her appeasement of the Hammers will come back and bite the Federated Worlds in the ass. They don’t know how, they don’t know when, but they think it will. And that’s the environment we need to support what we’re trying to do here.”
Michael shook his head. “That’s really … I was about to say clever, but maybe evil would be a better word.”
“I prefer to call it a work of genius,” Jaruzelska said with a touch of smugness.
“Maybe it was,” Michael snapped. Jaruzelska’s conceit angered him, and it showed. “I understand why it had to be done, but from where I’m sitting, it looks much more like a work of bloody-minded torture. I thought I was about to be executed. You could have told me it was all an elaborate hoax. You should have!”
“But we did,” Jaruzelska protested. “We made sure Colonel Kallewi told you.”
“Hah!” Michael snorted with derision. “That was way too late. By then I wanted to believe what she was saying, but I couldn’t. When they strapped me down, I knew for a fact that I was about to die. Didn’t matter what anyone had said. I thought they were just trying to make things easier.”
“I’m sorry,” Jaruzelska said, her voice soft, “really I am.”
“You damn well ought to be. You should have told me sooner. And there’s one more thing you should know.”
“Oh?”
“I got a message from Chief Councillor Polk.”
“From Polk?” Jaruzelska’s stared at Michael, eyes wide with disbelief. “How could you?”
“One of the guards smuggled it in. I wish I could show it to you, but it was one of those damn one-time messages.”
“What did it say?”
“That Polk had authorized my old friend Colonel Hartspring to set up a team to snatch Anna; Team Victor he’s called it, and that’s a v for ‘vengeance’ in case you’re wondering.”
“I remember Hartspring,” Jaruzelska said, “but why would they do that?”
“Polk was happy that I was to be executed, but not that happy. If he couldn’t have me killed his way, then he wanted to me to die knowing that Hartspring was going after Anna, knowing what would happen to her once Hartspring got his hands on her, and-” Michael broke off, unable to speak anymore.
“Oh, Michael,” Jaruzelska whispered; she stretched out her hand to take his. “We had no idea. Why didn’t you tell us?”
“What difference would it have made?” Michael said. “I’ll tell you: none. After all, what was I? Just another pawn in the game.”
“We should have told you earlier,” Jaruzelska conceded, “but the group was concerned it would take the edge off what had to be the performance of your life. I’m sorry, but there was a lot at stake, and before you ask, your parents-”
“Shit! I’d forgotten. They think I’m dead! Anna too.”
“I’m sorry about Anna. There’s no way we can tell her what’s really going on, but your folks are both in on the conspiracy, have been for a while now, so don’t worry.”
Michael’s head went down; he was quiet for good minute. “I don’t think there’s much to be gained in going over this anymore,” he said at last, looking up. “What’s done is done. All that matters to me now is making sure Anna is alive and stays that way. Well, that and hunting down Polk and Hartspring and killing them when I find them. And I will,” he added, his voice raw with anger. “But do me a favor, please. All that Team Victor stuff-can you keep it to yourself? Hartspring is my problem, and I’ll deal with him. And I don’t want Anna to find out. She has enough to worry about.”
“I won’t tell anyone. Now, any more questions before we move on?”
“Yes, one. You said there weren’t many spacers who agreed with what I did … not to start off with, I mean.”
“Yes. Most of Fleet thought you were nothing more than a criminal.”
“But what about you? Did you agree with that?”
“Initially, yes, of course I did. Mutiny is mutiny, and we needed those three dreadnoughts you smashed into Commitment planet. But as I read and reread your message telling me what you were doing and why, I began to understand. Then it became obvious that Ferrero would form the next government sooner than anyone thought. When I worked out what that meant, I realized that you and your people had been right and I had been wrong.”
“So when you came to Asthana looking like you wanted to tear my head off, that was all an act?”
“Yes.”
Michael shook his head. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said.
“You will be, almost certainly,” Jaruzelska said with a faint smile. “Now, here’s how we’re going to do this. Juggernaut, we call it, and it starts with …”
Michael sat tucked out of the way, a welcome cup of scalding hot coffee in hand, content to let the fear-induced stress of the past months leach out of his abused psyche. It felt good to know that the controlled chaos around him marked the beginning of the end for the Hammer of Kraa, that soon he would be on his way back to rejoin Anna, that the time when he would stand over Polk and Hartspring and see the terror in their eyes before he killed them both was coming.