“Well done.”
She leaned against him for a moment, tilting her head back on his shoulder, then straightened up and stepped away, turning to smile.
“That was scary.” She laughed. “It’s weird being the target of a demonstration—I feel I should be out there helping to organise it.”
Jason’s eyes narrowed. “That,” he said, “might become an option.”
“Ah, fuck off, you Machiavellian spook!” She caught his hand, swept an encircling arm at Nurup and Mustafa. “Come on, guys, let’s sort out this mess.”
They held the emergency meeting in Myra’s office whose broad window overlooked the square. Denis Gubanov had suggested using the Sovnarkom room, but Myra had dismissed the security man’s idea. No way did she want to be in a windowless room.
Everybody was sitting on or lounging against inappropriate furniture—desks and filing cabinets and comms junctions. Myra perched herself on the highest convenient surface, the top of a book-case full of unread yellowing hardcopy. She cradled her Glock in her lap. Somehow sitting in a chair seemed frivolous. Two militia guards stood watchfully at the sides of the windows, using their eyebands to sample camcopter views from the news services. Andrei Mukhartov, Valentina Kozlova and Denis Gubanov all looked sleepless and unkempt: the men unshaven, Val’s collar and tie loosened, her uniform rumpled.
Myra introduced the two mujahedin and Jason. Denis raised his eyebrows, but made no comment. Myra unobtrusively made sure that her three men were in a position to protect her—she wasn’t at all sure who, if any, of those present were leaving the room alive, whether or not the room was stormed by an angry mob. She’d once interviewed an unrepentant old Stalinist who’d been in the Budapest Party offices in October 1956…
“OK, comrades,” she began. “First things first. You know the Western powers have refused our offers. I’ve just today been on the shortest diplomatic mission ever, and I can tell you the Sheenisov aren’t interested in a deal either. So it’s only a question of time before they’re rolling down the road from Semey. But that’s just background. We have some urgent matters to discuss.
“I’m going to start with something that may not seem like the first item on the agenda, but bear with me.” She waved a hand at the window. “These people can wait. It’s about Georgi’s death. Jason Nikolaides here has told me the results of a CIA investigation—murder, using a spacer nanotech weapon. Hard to detect traces, but Jason says they’ve done it, and I believe him. What I don’t believe is that the spacist bastards did it. Whoever did it wanted two things—one, that Georgi’s offer didn’t get through to the Kazakhstanis before the coup. Two, that we wouldn’t co-operate with the space movement in the coup. Now, seeing as nobody except Georgi knew he was planning to make that offer, our range of suspects is a bit narrow. Basically, it has to be someone that Georgi would run the idea past, someone outside the government information loop—maybe in the Sovnarkom, maybe not.”
She looked down, playing with the Glock’s slide for a moment, then looked up. She’d been thinking aloud, she hadn’t had time yet to go through all the possibilities.
“Val!” she shouted. Everybody jumped. “If I thought it was you, I’d slam you against the wall till your teeth rattled to get the truth out of you. You and Georgi were both in the Party, unlike anyone else here.”
She smiled, pleased to see her colleagues off balance. “But as it happens, I trust you. Same with Andrei, who’s never been into that sort of shit anyway. Denis, now—”
The secret policeman looked up and moistened his lips.
T swear, Myra—”
Tt’s all right,” Jason interrupted. “The Company checked him out. He’s clear.” He glanced at Myra, then grinned at Denis Gubanov. “Bit of a commie son-of-a-bitch, but he’s on your side.”
“Good,” said Myra, winging it. “I’m going through this to confirm that nobody here is a suspect. That leaves only one possibility. Georgi must have shared his idea with somebody, and it can only have been the FI Mil Org. The General.”
She let them think about that while she explained to Jason, Nurup and Mustafa about the nukes and the AI.
“It has its own agenda,” she concluded, addressing everyone again. “And it’s working through the Sheenisov. It wants those nukes, very badly. So do the spacers. Whether they used each other—the information on one side, the weapon from the other—knowingly or not, Georgi’s murder was a move in that rivalry. Whoever controls these weapons has a gun at the head of everyone and everything in Earth orbit and at Lagrange—which adds up to about ninety-five percent of the human space presence. And I would remind you that, thanks to the coup and counter-coup, the General controls most of the Space Defense battlesats. Now, this has a bearing on what we do about the UN ultimatum. Which is—” she grinned ferally “—the second item on the agenda.”
“Excuse me,” said Jason, standing up. “Just who does control these nukes, at the moment?”
“We do,” said Valentina and Myra, at the same time. Myra gave Val an especially warm smile, hoping that her apparent—and partly paranoically real—earlier suspicion hadn’t wounded their friendship beyond repair.
“It’s dual key,” Valentina explained. “Defence Minister and Prime Minister have to go into the command-center workspace at the same time.”
“And, well, it’s not hardcoded in, but right now obviously we have a treaty commitment to give the President of Kazakhstan the final say,” Myra added. “And his strategy, at the moment, is to stonewall until the last minute, to try and get some military aid concessions out of the Western powers and/or the UN against the Sheenisov.”
“So he intends to turn them over eventually?” Jason asked.
Myra hesitated. “OK,” she said at last. “This doesn’t go beyond this room, and that goes for everyone here. You guys at the window, too—military discipline, death penalty under the Freedom of Information Law if you breathe a word of it. Everybody clear?”
They all were.
“All right then—yes, he does intend for us to turn them over, eventually. What else can we do?”
“We can use the weapons,” said Denis. “In space.”
Val’s lips set in a thin line. Myra shook her head.
“Massacre,” she said. “I won’t do it, except as a last resort.”
“You’re all missing the point,” said Jason. He looked around at all of them, as though unsure whether he had a right to speak.
“Go on,” said Myra.
“OK,” said Jason, “I’m just speaking for myself here, not for the CIA or East America. I don’t know if I’ll ever get back to either of them. Anyway… the point you’re all missing is: who are you going to surrender your weapons to? Formally, no doubt, it’ll be the UN. But physically, somebody’s gonna have to dock with them, bring them in, disarm them. Space Defense, and maybe some of the space settlers, have the equipment and expertise to do that. There must be ways of getting past the software of your controls—there always are. Believe me, there are no uncrackable codes any more. Your cooperation would be useful, but it’s not essential.”
Myra lit a cigarette. “OK,” she said. “So?”
Jason paced over to the window, peered out. “Still quiet,” he said. He glanced at his watch. “We’ve been in here, what? Half an hour? Soon be time to talk to the people, Myra.”
“That’s cool,” Denis said. “We’ve got agitators out there, they’re keeping people more or less up to speed. The line is that the President is negotiating.”
“As I’m sure he is,” said Jason. “But what does either side have to negotiate? Both sides have hit the bottom of the tank. You have nothing to offer, and the West has nothing to offer you. They will not save you from the Sheenisov. So if I were any of the other players—in particular, the spacers and your FI Mil Org, rogue AI or not—I’d be working very fast right now on two objectives. One is taking you guys and your wonderful dual-key command-centre out physically. The other is lining up rendezvous with the nukes in space. You can bet that while you think you’re smart, stringing them along, they are stringing you along, and they’re both going after the same things.”