Tathagata sat back, eyes hooded for a long moment. “I presume that your wife has been the recipient of the fairly substantial weapons shipments our labs have sold to your purchasing agent, during the past few years?”
Simon inclined his head.
“How are they paying for it?”
Simon’s smile was a predatory grin that bared his teeth. “They aren’t. Vittori Santorini is.”
“Come again?”
“POPPA’s been sheltering assets off-world for a couple of decades, using the Tayari Trade Consortium to transfer large sums of money to the mercantile markets on Vishnu and Mali. They’ve made heavy investments in Mali’s Imari Consortium, in particular. Vittori and Nassiona Santorini are the children of a Tayari Trade Consortium executive. They foresaw very clearly that Imari’s profits and stock prices would soar, with a steady flow of money from the Concordiat fueling expansion. They invested in Imari and other off-world boom markets well before POPPA won its first big election.”
“When Gifre Zeloc defeated John Andrews for the presidency?”
Simon nodded. “That money has funded their military machine, at the same time their political programs have bankrupted Jefferson’s economy, destroyed one industry after another, thrown millions of people out of work — placing them in a position of total dependency on government handouts — and gutted agriculture to the point that food rationing has become a serious crisis. Just to give you perspective, the average citizen receiving government food subsidies is allotted one thousand calories a day.”
“My God!”
“Oh, it gets better. Political prisoners in POPPA’s so-called work camps are restricted to five hundred calories or less. My wife,” his voice caught for just a moment. “My wife has managed to rescue some of them. Circumstances have forced her to fight an attrition campaign, trying to destroy more of Sonny’s sensors and small-arms weapon systems than POPPA can repair with on-hand replacements. Guerilla fighters get close enough to toss octocellulose bombs at him, from point-blank range. Most of the volunteers who’ve gone up against my Bolo’s guns were rescued work-camp prisoners. And they knew damned well those attacks were suicide missions. They went, anyway.”
Sahir Tathagata’s jaw muscle jumped in a convulsive tic. “Things are worse than we realized. Substantially worse.”
“I assume that you have people on the ground, out there?”
Tathagata grimaced. “We do. In fact, one of them is coming in, tonight, with an up-to-date report. Unfortunately, rigorous inspections at the space station and the spaceport have prevented any of our people from bringing in SWIFT transmitters. The ones that tried were arrested. Most of the agents who slipped through without SWIFT transmitters weren’t able to learn much, I’m afraid. Freighter crews are restricted to the spaceport these days and tourism, even from Mali, has all but ceased. Getting a tourist visa is virtually impossible for most off-worlders. Besides which, Jefferson has closed its best resorts for reconversion to a natural state.” The scathing tone told Simon exactly what Sahir Tathagata thought about the greener side of POPPA’s leadership. “Frankly, I’d like to know how you’ve smuggled in heavy equipment, with that kind of security to bypass.”
“We borrowed the technique from POPPA. They’ve been smuggling high-value cargoes out of Jefferson — particularly high-quality cuts of meat for trade to Malinese miners — for years and they’re smuggling just as many luxury goods back in, to satisfy their expensive tastes with goods Jefferson can’t manufacture, itself, any longer. They use special routing chips that alert POPPA inspectors to avoid opening or probing specific freight boxes. So we helped ourselves to some of their cargo boxes. We helped ourselves to some of POPPA’s profits, as well, using some sophisticated hacking to break into Jefferson’s financial institutions. We’ve been diverting some of their ill-gotten gains into our weapons-procurement fund.”
“I see,” the deputy minister said quietly. “You do realize, you’ve just admitted to several very serious crimes?”
Simon held his gaze steadily. “If you want me to go back into Jefferson, you need to know what’s already been done, don’t you?”
Tathagata leaned back against the sofa cushions. “Colonel, I think you and I understand one another very well, indeed. When can you go?”
“That depends on how soon I can make arrangements for Yalena. She’s nineteen, more than self-sufficient enough to leave her here. But I’ll have to arrange finances for her, make sure she has enough money for college. She’s enrolled at Copper Town University and the bills for next semester’s classes will come due in a couple of weeks.”
“What are you going to tell her?” Tathagata asked.
“I don’t know,” he admitted.
“She could stay with me, Simon,” Sheila offered.
“That’s very generous of you. I’ll let you know. Meanwhile, I suggest we map this thing out, as best we can, so everyone is thoroughly briefed on what we’re trying to accomplish.”
Tathagata nodded. “Fair enough.” The deputy minister’s wrist-comm beeped. “Pardon me,” he apologized, checking the message.
Whatever it was, his face drained of color. He touched controls. “Understood. On the way.” Then he glanced at Simon. “Trouble at the port. It might be useful if you and Captain Brisbane accompanied me.”
Simon nodded. “Very well. I’ll get my coat.”
They set out in a dark and worrisome silence.
III
Copper Town’s port-side jail was a filthy place to spend the evening. The holding cell was crammed to capacity, mostly with detainees from the riot. Yalena wasn’t talking to any of them. Her name was too well known on Jefferson to risk letting them know who she was. It wouldn’t take much to turn them into a lynch mob. At the moment, they just thought she was a street-walker picked up in the dragnet Vishnu’s port police had thrown around the riot.
The police had already processed her through the booking procedures; now she was just waiting for whatever came next and wondering what on earth she could say to her father, to explain why she hadn’t come home, tonight. She’d been in the cell for almost an hour when the door at the end of the corridor clanged open. One of the guards was escorting a newcomer past the row of holding cells. Yalena’s breath caught sharply.
“Daddy…”
He halted in front of the bars, catching and holding her gaze. He didn’t say a word. She bit her lip and tried not to cry.
“That’s her,” he said to the guard.
“All right, then. Out, girl. Stand back, now, the rest of you.”
The door rattled open. Yalena squeezed through. Her father turned on his heel and left her to follow or not, at her choice. Her heart constricted with a painful lurch. Then she lifted her chin and followed him out. It was better than standing in that horrid cell with refugees who would have killed her without remorse, had anyone spoken her name aloud.
When they reached the administrative portion of the jail, her father and the guard stepped into an office where several people waited. She blinked in surprise when she saw who they were. Her cousin, Estevao Soteris, was talking to Sheila Brisbane, of all people, the commander of Vishnu’s Bolo. There were a couple of men in suits, who looked like bureaucrats, and a uniformed police officer, who sat at a big desk piled high with reports and files. Seated in a chair beside that desk was a teen-aged girl who turned to watch them enter the room.
Yalena rocked to a halt. She had to gulp back nausea. No wonder the refugees aboard that freighter had tried to kill those POPPA brats. Yalena’s father had also halted, so abruptly it looked like he’d run into a plate-glass wall. Sudden rage ignited in his eyes. Yalena realized he hadn’t seen the girl, before, either.