“Riordan is not as easy to kill as he might seem to an unprofessional observer. He may lack training, but he reasons quickly and has almost infallible instincts in a crisis.”
“So you consider today’s outcome less than disastrous?”
The tall, sun-glassed man leaned back in his seat with a sigh. “I find it interesting how many of you, when watching a plan go awry, are so blinded by your frustration that you are unable to learn from what you have witnessed.”
The liaison mastered his annoyance at the man’s customary, languid arrogance, in part because it was his job to do so, and in part because the man was usually—and infuriatingly—accurate in his observations. “And what was to be learned from what we witnessed today?”
“Why, that it was good fortune that today’s attempts were failures. Your superior’s ill-advised machinations to encumber Riordan by focusing the interest of the press upon him has produced troublesome results—precisely as I warned. Riordan is now an item of journalistic attention and scrutiny. Kill him, and inquiry will follow. And that inquiry would result in closer investigation of a variety of phenomena which you—and I—wish to remain merely puzzling anomalies in the minds of our adversaries.”
“Such as Tarasenko’s and Corcoran’s heart attacks?”
“Those too, yes, but the failed attempt to assassinate Riordan in Alexandria is of greater concern to me. There, we left them with too many unsolvable puzzles. If your news services, or intelligence communities, are repeatedly agitated by such mysteries and ‘baffling coincidences,’ they will eventually begin to consider explanations that they now dismiss as not merely improbable, but impossible. This would be a grave development for us. We wish our opponents to remain complacent, content to follow the forensic pathways to which they are accustomed, which their science deems ‘rational.’”
“If Riordan were to die because of a very conventional knife in his chest, that would not raise any such suspicions.”
The tall man shook his head, took a green olive from a small bowl located at arm’s length. “All of you think too linearly. To you, the universe is comprised of infinite rows of dominoes, each ready to be tapped and set in motion. Yet you assume that each row is almost entirely independent from the others.” He chewed into the olive as if he had never tasted one before, and sighed. “But a few of you do see the truth of it: that the dominoes are arranged in sweeping curves that intersect, spread, double back, terminate each other, or engender new vectors, new events. So, if you eliminate Riordan in a place where the press is present or has ready access, there is an excellent chance that you may set other, deleterious events in motion.”
The tall man evidently noticed the uncertainty creasing his liaison’s brow. He deigned to explicate. “A society’s entrenched attitudes and predilections are balanced upon a broad cultural fulcrum: they are robust and stable, but if pushed and stressed far enough, they tip and change—often becoming the opposite of what they just were. If you kill Riordan in an inexplicable accident—the kind you persistently pressure me to create through my Reifications of quantum entanglement and uncertainty—our adversaries are likely to detect that pattern. Their present tolerance for unconnected coincidences could convert into a fierce resolve to get answers, no matter the cost, and no matter how strange those answers might be.
“And they just might succeed. Not all of our opponents see the universe in the simplistic one-cause, one-effect paradigm that most of you are trapped within.” The man nodded at the frozen image of Caine, fleeing the platform, looking over his shoulder. “He is one who sees more expansively, more completely. Nolan Corcoran, his companion’s father, was another.”
The liaison folded his arms. “Let us presume all you have said is true. It is also true that you yourself have asserted that Riordan may now be able detect the onset of your Reifications—which must be why he detected today’s attacker. He felt you ‘push’ our man. Add all this to your observations that Riordan is particularly hard to predict, and that now, he is likely to depart for Earth before we do. Taken together, these things put us on the brink of failure. Riordan might soon slip beyond our collective grasp.”
The tall man stopped chewing an olive and smiled—an expression which reminded his assistant of a tiger baring its teeth. “Riordan might slip beyond your grasp. But not mine.”
The first thing Caine saw when the door to the secure debrief room opened was Admiral Martina Perduro sitting at the other end, her body as still as a graven idol’s, her face as pale and immobile as a slab of sun-weathered oak. Caine snapped his best salute a second after Trevor did.
Perduro waved them to chairs. As soon as they crossed the threshold, she touched her dataslate. The doors sealed and the breathy whirr of a white-noise generator rose up from the peripheries of the room. Then she indicated the screens around her. “I’ve got all the technical reports on today’s nonsense with the maglev cars. None of which can explain the failures in the system. But I’m guessing you two have heard similarly ‘impossible’ reports on prior occasions. You particularly, Commander Riordan.”
“Ma’am?”
“The assessments are very reminiscent of those Mr. Downing shared with me regarding the after-action reports from the assassination attempts you dodged at Alexandria and the Convocation Station: circuits uncoupling, polarities reversing, breakers tripping, computer controls being overridden without any evidence of hacking.” She tossed down her dataslate and passed a hand across her brow. “It doesn’t make a damn bit of sense.”
Caine shrugged. “It never does, ma’am. And we never even have leads as to who’s behind these incidents.”
Perduro arched forward. “Well, at least we’ve got a lead this time.”
“You mean, the attacker?”
The admiral scoffed, surprised. “No, Heather Kirkwood—who, if rumors hold any truth, may have had both personal and professional motives to set you up, Caine.”
Caine made sure that his differing opinion did not come out as a contradiction. “Admiral, I know it might seem that way, but I think Heather may have been a patsy as well.”
“Why? Because whoever she was working for was willing to kill her, too? Commander Riordan, after a mission, covert operators frequently prevent security leaks by eliminating any free-lancer they hired to carry it out. ‘Burning assets,’ it’s called.”
“Yes, ma’am, I am familiar with that concept.”
“And according to your report, Kirkwood was attempting to extort highly classified information.”
“Absolutely.”
“So how does that not add up to the following scenario: she tries to extort information from you, she fails, and her handlers kills both of you to cover up their identity and interest in those particular secrets?”
Caine nodded. “I agree it looks that way, Admiral, but I’ve got information that problematizes the hypothesis.”
“Which is?”
“Personal knowledge of Heather Kirkwood. Would she take a tip from a shady source in order to get what she wants? She wouldn’t bat a lash, doing that. Would she actually, or at least threaten to, endanger old friends of mine if she thought it might get me to cooperate? Sadly, yes. And would she selectively reveal the time and place I was going to emerge from the Pearl to ensure that the local press and activist groups would be there to generate a more provocative scenario and story? Unquestionably. But here’s where the hypothesis breaks down: Heather wasn’t a killer.”