Cachat leaned forward over the kitchen table, leaning his weight on his arms. "He's putting them all at a considerable risk already, it seems to me. Once he leaves, there'll be hell to pay, even if there's no indication that any of them knew what he was planning. If this were Haven under Pierre and Saint-Just, his family would probably all be executed anyway. But from everything we've been able to determine, this Mesan Alignment doesn't operate that crudely."
Anton considered Victor's argument, in his slow and methodical way. Cachat, who knew him very well by now, simply waited patiently. In fact, he took advantage of the pause to make a fresh pot of coffee and find out what Yana had learned. As she did every morning, the Amazon had gone out to check the astrogation records. Entries and exits from the system by all merchant and passenger ships—most military craft, too—were kept up to date and publicly available.
Checking those records on a daily basis was a perfectly legal activity, but it was always possible that someone might be monitoring them. So, Yana used a different method every day to search the data. Sometimes a public library, and never the same one twice in a row; sometimes the commercial shipping offices—there were lots of those in the city; and once she'd even gone down to the Extrasolar Commerce Authority itself and used their computers.
"The Hali Sowle just entered the system again," she said quietly, not wanting to disturb Anton's train of thought. She didn't know Zilwicki as well as Victor did, but she had a near-superstitious respect for the man's fabled ability to work his through any problem.
Victor nodded. "Any word yet as to their permitted length of stay?"
She shook her head. "No, but it'll probably be on the records by tomorrow. No later than the day after that, for sure. I'll say this for Mesa. Their bureaucrats aren't slouches."
Victor chuckled. "And this is . . . praise?"
Hearing a slight noise behind them, Victor turned and saw that Anton had moved his chair back from the table a little.
"That didn't take as long as I thought." He held up the pot. "Fresh coffee?"
Zilwicki extended his cup. "There isn't really that much to figure. I think you're right, Victor—and I'm pretty sure McBryde will come out into the open with it at our next meeting. It'll be one more person that he wants us to smuggle out with him, and that person will be a scientist or technician of some kind who actually has the knowledge he's been hinting about."
"You don't think he's faking anything, in other words?"
"No." Slowly, Anton shook his blocky head. "Victor, unless I'm very badly mistaken, Jack McBryde is starting to get desperate and wants off the planet as soon as possible."
Victor frowned. "Why? He's essentially the head of security here. Well, one of them, anyway. But you'd be hard pressed to think of anyone who could disguise what he's doing as well as he could. Even if someone does spot him up to something questionable, he could almost certainly provide some sort of half-reasonable explanation. A good enough one, at least, to give him time to make his escape."
"I don't think it's his own situation that's pressing on him, Victor. I think—and I'll be the first to admit there's a lot of guesswork on my part—that it's this mysterious other person's situation that's driving most of the timetable here."
"Ah." Victor sat down and took a sip from his coffee. Then, thought about it for a couple of minutes, and then took another sip.
"I'm not about to second-guess you, Anton. So let's put everything on the table when we meet McBryde in two days. Tell him it's put-up-or-shut-up time, and offer the very big carrot of being able to get him and his Mysterious Other off the planet almost immediately."
He nodded toward Yana, who'd taken a seat at the table with her cup of coffee. "The Hali Sowle's back."
Anton drew in a breath. "In other words, you think we should make our exit at the same time. Once the Butres leave the system, none of our alternate means of escape is all that attractive."
" 'All that attractive'?" Victor chuckled. "Anton, unless I miss my guess, the moment the Mesan Powers-That-Be find out Jack McBryde has stabbed them in the back, all hell will break loose. There isn't a chance worth talking about that any of those 'alternate means of escape'—which I could also call the rickety ladders with which to exit a burning skyscraper—will be anything other than a death trap. If he goes, we have to go with him."
"Well . . . true. Besides, I can't imagine we could find out much more by staying."
"Oh, we could. Even before McBryde approached us, we'd already discovered a fair amount and started to develop some promising leads. But I agree there's nothing we could find out if we stayed that comes close to what McBryde will provide us. Besides . . ."
He took another sip. "I was about to tell you. Inez Cloutier just got back yesterday—and she's got a definite offer from whoever the top dog is. Probably Adrian Luff, if we're right."
"Good offer?"
"Better than I'd imagined. There must be somebody out there who knows more about the workings of Saint-Just's field operations than I figured there'd be. I guess my, ah, reputation has preceded me."
"Not as Victor Cachat, I hope?"
"No. Well . . . probably not. Almost certainly not. It's always theoretically possible that they've figured out exactly who I am and are laying a clever trap. But they work closely with the Alignment, obviously—so if they've figured out who I am, why not just report me and let the Mesans right here do the wet work?" He shook his head. "No, they're probably figuring me for another one of Saint-Just's young troubleshooters. I wasn't the only one, by any means. There were at least a dozen others I knew of, and probably two or three times that many. Who knows? Now that Saint-Just's dead, probably no one. If there was ever a man who kept his own counsel, it was Oscar Saint-Just."
"So that's the bottom line. Take it or leave it."
Jack McBryde returned Victor Cachat's flat gaze with what he hoped was an imperturbable gaze of his own.
The fact that Cachat had made what amounted to the ultimatum was a signal in itself, Jack knew. As their negotiations had progressed, Zilwicki and Cachat had fallen into the familiar roles of "good cop/bad cop." McBryde recognized the routine, of course—which Cachat and Zilwicki would know perfectly well—but that didn't really make much difference. The routine was ancient because it was so effective.
All the more effective here, Jack thought wryly, when your option as the "good cop" was Anton Zilwicki! As part of any other pairing except with Victor Cachat, Zilwicki would have been playing the "bad cop."
Cachat was . . . unsettling. And would have been, even if McBryde hadn't known his reputation. There were times when those dark eyes seemed as black as the stellar void, and every bit as cold.
"All right. Here's what I want: passage off the planet for myself and a friend of mine. The friend is male, close to my age, and one of Mesa's top physicists specializing in ship propulsion. More precisely, he's an expert on a new type of ship drive that is completely unknown to anyone else in the universe."
There might have been a slight expression that came to Zilwicki in response to that statement. Hard to tell, on that blocky face. There was no expression at all on Cachat's.
"Go on," said Victor. "And what do you provide us, beyond this physicist of yours?"
In for a penny, in for a pound. Jack had once even looked up the etymology of that old saw. "What I give you is the following: First, the nature and plans of the Mesan Alignment for both Manticore and Haven. Which are, ah, about as inimical as you can imagine."
"Generalities only go so far, McBryde."
"Let me finish. And, second, I can tell you how—in layman's terms; I don't have the background to understand the technical aspects of it myself—the Mesan Alignment asassinated Ambassador Webster, got Colonel Gregor Hofschulte to attempt to assassinate Crown Prince Huan, andgot a Lieutenant Mears to attempt to assasinate Honor Harrington and William Henry Tyler to attack your own step-daughter Berry, Anton. Among other attacks. Trust me, there are more of them—and more successful opss—than you people even guess yet. Including—" He looked squarely at Cachat—"the one which . . . inspired, shall we say, one Yves Grosclaude to kill himself, if that means anything to you."