Oracle's Diplomacy

by A. Claire Everward

  “Of course, somehow, God knows how, we’ll have to convince even our closest allies that we are not behind the ambassador’s disappearance and the unraveling of the peace treaty, and worse, the renewed risk of war,” Scholes said. “Considering that the technology is being created right here in this complex, and its testing, now that it is known, can be traced to both our air forces, that’s not likely to be simple.”

  “I’m just hoping it isn’t us,” Evans said, receiving stares from both Scholes and Donovan. “What I mean is,” he continued hurriedly, “it’s always possible that someone here, either ours or yours, or both, is or are responsible for what’s happening.” He shook his head and stood up. “Which means we’d better get to the bottom of this sooner than later.” His phone signaled an incoming message, and he glanced at it. “Well, looks like it’s time to deal with reality head on. Your High Council must have already updated my administration.” Another message arrived, and he looked at it. “And that’s Jeffries.” He turned to leave.

  “Why would they say he’s dead?” Donovan’s question had Evans turning back to him. He looked from Evans to Scholes and back. “You called it abduction. But the Russian broadcast claimed he was dead.”

  “Why wouldn’t they? Can we prove he isn’t?” Scholes spat out bitterly.

  “No. But I don’t think they can prove he is, either,” Donovan said.

  Scholes and Evans looked at him thoughtfully. But then Scholes shook his head. “They don’t need to,” he said somberly. “The damage is done. We are unable to show the world that Ambassador Sendor is alive and well, and so anything to the contrary holds. We need to be prepared for the fact that unless something happens to turn this in our favor, we may very well be unable to stop what’s about to happen.”

  Chapter Ten

  Donovan stopped outside the conference room, his brow furrowing as Aiden came out of Lara’s office and began to close the outer door. The aide stopped when he saw Scholes approach it, and waited where he was while Scholes walked inside. A few minutes later Scholes came out again, and waited until Aiden closed the door, which automatically led to the outer office’s transparent walls darkening, effectively isolating Lara inside. He then walked with Aiden back to the aide’s workstation, a thoughtful expression on his face, and the two spoke briefly as Aiden indicated his handheld screen. Finally, Scholes nodded, tapped the young man on the shoulder, obviously pleased, then walked over to Donovan.

  “What’s going on?” Donovan asked the vice admiral, who came to stand beside him.

  “That Russian news broadcast has changed Lara’s role in this, she knows she needs to prepare.”

  “So she’s being updated about what was said in the videoconference?”

  “No, she was listening in from her office. I wanted her to keep updated just in case, it seemed the smart thing to do after we learned this morning that it may have been our technology that brought down the Ambassador’s jet. But she can’t sit in on a meeting if anyone present doesn’t know about Oracle.”

  “Who in there didn’t?”

  “Major General Slaviek has so far had no reason to know. And even if the situation in the area he is in escalates, Lara is likely to speak not to him, but to the commander of the combatant forces we are deploying in Split to assist him. He’s worked with her before.”

  Donovan indicated the closed office. “So what’s that for?”

  “There are a number of people she wants to speak with. That’s what Aiden is doing, he’s setting up the calls.” Scholes’s tone was somber.

  Donovan looked at him questioningly.

  “IDSD officers,” Scholes said. “One is the head of our team at IDSD HQ Defense that knows all alliance military deployments at any given moment. He can give her data on what’s deployed at an increasing distance from the disputed region—what’s deployed now and what’s expected to roll out in the next hours—including what the alliance members in Europe don’t have available because of unchangeable deployments away from Europe. Then there’s his counterpart for the non-friendly deployments. Another is at our air base at Mons, two are in Split and are overseeing the defensive deployment to the Croatian and Montenegrin borders, and there’s the contact we’ve set up for her in the Joint Europe Military Command. All of them have worked with Oracle on several occasions, so it would be a seamless interaction.”

  “So for her it’s the same as preparing for a pending mission.”

  “Yes. These officers have been privy to everything that has happened since this started, while she was only brought into it this morning, and even then, only partially, and she’s been busy with her other pending missions. And she hasn’t had a hand in Srpska and Bosnia yet, so now she needs to understand them, too, and quickly.” Scholes’s eyes were on Lara’s office. “With this war room overseeing the region, she might be called in unexpectedly. She has to be prepared so that she would only need real-time on-site data.

  “When she’s done with them she’s scheduled to speak with a diplomatic negotiator from IDSD HQ Diplomacy. He has worked with Ambassador Sendor since the start of the negotiations. He heads the team that helped the ambassador understand the situation in the disputed region—past and present—and its implications, and later helped him plan the logistics of the peace treaty and its future. He’ll be taking over the negotiations for now, if that’s even possible. Anyway, Lara can’t speak to him as Oracle, so she’ll do that under her cover, the critical mission expert designation.”

  He sighed heavily. “The irony. If things had been different, this might have been a euphoric day, filled with preparations for the signing of the peace treaty. Instead, that entire region is on the verge of becoming pure chaos.” He turned to Donovan. “Anyway, she knows what to do. She’s getting this information so that from this moment on she’ll be able to react quickly enough to any emergency on the ground. Later she’ll call for whatever dry and background information she decides on, the surrounding context. And in the meantime, she’ll be kept updated throughout the incident. Just in case.”

  Donovan nodded.

  “Just in case,” Scholes repeated thoughtfully, all too aware that the eventuality of the situation had just become so much more of a certainty.

  Donovan was about to say he understood, after what he had heard in the videoconference, when Celia came over to tell him that Evans was calling from his car, and that she had put the call on-screen in the conference room. While Scholes turned to go to his office, Donovan returned to the empty room, to see that not only was Evans already on-screen, clearly in the back of his agency car with the aide who had waited outside during the videoconference, but that he had also added Emero to the call, on an adjacent screen.

  “So. Director Evans says there are good reasons why you’re being involved in this,” Emero began, somewhat more accepting of Donovan than he had been earlier, although he obviously hadn’t warmed yet to the idea of working with the US agent. “And you are heading the Sirion liaison’s murder investigation, so I suppose we’ll be cooperating on this.”

  So he wasn’t one to mince his words. But then, neither was Donovan. “Makes most sense,” he responded. “Both our nations are equally in hot water here. Best if we each work our familiar sector and bring this to an end faster.” His phone signaled an incoming message, and as he looked at it his brow furrowed. He addressed Evans. “Paul, does Bourne—ARPA’s director,” he added for Emero’s benefit, “know just how much access I have to information?”

  “All he knows is that you have an indeterminate high clearance and that he should give you what you ask for,” Evans answered, preoccupied with something on the mobile screen he was holding.

  “Good. I’d like to keep him and everyone else at ARPA who has anything to do with Berman and the projects he worked on thinking I only have what I or my investigators asked them for directly when we worked the crime scene.” Donovan made a mental note to make sure all information would in fact be obtained also otherwise, through his own resources
. Including a few more pieces of information he now thought he might require.

  “What are you thinking?” Emero recognized an investigator’s look.

  “I’ll let you know,” Donovan said thoughtfully.

  “I can wait,” Emero surprised Donovan by saying. A good investigator didn’t speak half-thoughts, half-theories. Certainly not with the stakes involved here.

  Donovan acknowledged the gesture with a nod. With the pressure on his IDSD counterpart, it couldn’t have been easy for him to place this confidence in a non-IDSD agent, and one he was being forced to work with, at that.

  “I understand you have full access to ARPA and its projects,” Emero said. “I can let you have similar investigative access to the IDSDATR personnel for the Sirion project, and I will trust you to share all your findings with me. However, we cannot allow them to be questioned outside the IDSD complex, nor can we allow your investigators access to them unless you can produce a good reason for me to request that such access be given—the status of all our IDSDATRs mandate that, you understand. Anything beyond what you yourself can get from them will have to be done by IDSD agents, if need be I’ll send one of my teams over to assist you.”

  “Access for me will be fine for now,” Donovan said, again acknowledging the gesture.

  “Good. Let me know if there’s any background information about them you need, I’ll see that you have it. Also, please note that any interaction with the project personnel will not—” Emero stopped and considered his words. “I guess you already know this, I understand that SIRT unit of yours has dealt with this type of sensitive investigations, and you’ll have the same issue with the ARPA side of the project, won’t you?” He sighed. “So. Any interaction with the Sirion personnel, both IDSDATR and ARPA, will not be easy. Neither side in the project will appreciate being looked upon with suspicion for the murder or for the theft of the technology. You’ll be dealing with brilliant people who take great pride in their work and what it is done for, both Sirion and previous projects they were part of, the good it does in the name of peace. And as far as our people in the project go, I suppose I don’t need to tell you that we would like to not lose any of them.”

  “No diplomatic incident. Got it.”

  Emero chuckled.

  “Since you don’t have the access I do to ARPA, I’ll let you know what we find on that end,” Donovan said. “Let me know if there’s anything else you need.”

  “Everyone involved in the project is now under increased protection,” Evans said, his eyes still on whatever it was that had his attention on the screen. “The Internationals can only leave the IDSD complex with a protective detail, although they’re being asked not to do so at all, and the Americans are in a similar situation. Their project meetings are currently conducted remotely by secure channel or at IDSDATR, where the heart of the project is. However, if one of them is involved in this, if an insider killed Berman, then any measure we take is futile. Ultimately, we can’t limit their access to each other.” A note of exasperation seeped into his voice as he finally handed the screen to his aide and looked up.

  “I doubt it matters. The technology is out there, and Berman is dead, so he can’t talk. At this point, and with the protective restrictions on everyone working on Sirion, another murder of one of them would only lead to the investigation being centered on them. So if it is an insider, he or she would do well to sit quietly and hope we’ll focus on an outside perpetrator. Even running is not an option.” Even as he spoke, Donovan thought about the message he’d received on his phone. He wanted to call SIRT.

  “I agree,” Emero said. “Also, while the research and development were done at IDSDATR and ARPA, field testing involved a range of air force teams working with aircraft of varying sizes and complexity. The Office of Special Investigations I’m in works under IDSD Intelligence, so we have a global reach. I already have teams looking into the testing sites, any people of interest there. If there’s anything you want with them, we’ll take care of it.”

  “Either way this has to be resolved quickly. We need to find who killed Major Berman, and we need to find whom Sirion was leaked to. Security implications aside, our priority is proving we had nothing to do with this. Especially if we can’t find what happened to Ambassador Sendor,” Evans concluded.

  “Well, you’re in now,” he said to Donovan once Emero signed off. “From here on, you and Agent Emero coordinate this directly between the two of you. Emero has better access to the global arena, and since he reports on this one directly to Jeffries, he’s got the authority to mobilize a lot of good people anywhere he needs to. You’re in charge of the investigation on our end, so you deal with the Berman murder and see what else you can find in our jurisdiction. Now that we know that the United States has been used here, we’re as responsible for finding out what happened and tracking down Ambassador Sendor as IDSD is.”

  His aide spoke in the background. Evans glanced outside the window, and Donovan caught a glimpse of the White House drawing near. “Looks like we’re here,” Evans said. “Keep me posted, Donovan.”

  And with this, he ended the call. Donovan didn’t envy him. The director of US Global Intelligence could expect to have his hands full until this incident came to an end, however that would be.

  Alone in the conference room, Donovan called SIRT. The message he had received was sent by Reilly Thomas, one of his two best techs. She had been looking at the dead man’s computer. ARPA didn’t want to let her take it, but Donovan’s mandate, with Evans’s order to Bourne supporting it, gave his team the authority to take everything related to the investigation and to the Sirion liaison, and that’s exactly what they did.

  Reilly’s initial check showed nothing out of the ordinary, but she had dug deeper. And her message had briefly told him what she had found.

  “Sir. Boss. Agent Pierce. Donovan,” she greeted him cheerfully. He couldn’t help but smile. She was pink again today, a pink outfit, pink hair, pink fingernails. Pink was good, it indicated a cheery, optimistic mood.

  “Hey, Reilly. So?”

  “So, like I said, the guy had been downloading data from the joint ARPA-IDSDATR secure Sirion database.

  “And?”

  “And he did that in the past seven months. Every month, twice a month. Like clockwork.”

  “What kind of data?”

  “Component designs. Protocols of development meetings. Test results. Lots of test results.”

  “Anything practical that could be used to replicate the technology.”

  “Exactly.”

  “I see.” Donovan thought for a moment. “Reilly, how difficult was it for you to find out what he did?”

  She looked pained. He corrected himself quickly. “I know it wasn’t difficult for you. I meant, how difficult would it be for anyone else? How careful was the effort to hide what he was doing?”

  “You mean, was it really meant to be hidden?”

  He nodded. She pursed her lips, thinking.

  The fact that she even needed to think gave him the answer he needed. “Go back to his computer. I want you to play out a scenario for me.”

  With a theory now forming in his mind, he explained what he wanted and then asked her to patch him through to her sister, in the same lab. It took him a moment to realize she had—Sidney was equally as pink as her twin. A cheerful and optimistic day for both, apparently.

  “Sidney, anything on the machine?” He had her working on the piece of equipment found uncovered, and apparently in regular use, not far from Berman’s body.

  “It’s old. Like, ancient,” she said wistfully. But since ancient for her might well have been technology six months old, the way she was gobbling up new gadgets, he asked her to be more specific.

  “Did you see the size of that thing?” She shuddered. “It’s a late twentieth century tactical radio.”

  “Tactical radio? Really?”

  “Totally. Military.”

  “Used?”

  “Looks lik
e it. But I haven’t finished checking it yet. It’s a bit difficult, this technology hasn’t been in use for a while. I had to call up some equipment from our off-site storage.”

  “So how could it have been used?”

  “Whoever he might have been communicating with had to have had the same radio. If you think about it, it’s brilliant. The technology used nowadays is far more advanced, no one would expect this type of communications, so no one would look for its signals. Plus, it’s pretty easy to hide the origin, destination and content of any data message sent or received on this thing or any voice transmission made. It’s rigged so it doesn’t save anything, you can’t go back later and trace what the user did. This guy was really paranoid with his messages. Anyway, I’ll need more time with it. I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

  “Could files of the sort Reilly has found our victim had downloaded from the Sirion database be sent using this communicator?”

  “No. I mean, I haven’t seen the file format, but I would imagine not even close. They would be incompatible on so many levels, not the least of all size and complexity. This thing is far too ancient.”

  Ending the call, Donovan sat quietly, thinking. Finally, he stood up and left the conference room. He had considered going to his office, but since he trusted his people to do their job and since there wasn’t enough, not yet, for the kind of in-depth analysis he wanted to do, he figured the next best thing was to understand what the technology was that someone had made such an effort to procure, kill for, and then use in such a way that—deliberately, it seemed—threatened to destabilize a significant portion of the world, or at least lead to a war between two nations.

  Chapter Eleven

  Donovan decided to make his way to IDSD Advanced Technologies Research’s new building on foot. Walking through the comfortably lit roads, he ran in his mind what he knew so far about the investigation. Around him the vast complex was calm, empty except for the occasional car passing by and for a mixed group of uniformed peacekeeping officers and civilian diplomacy personnel who stood on the sidewalk, raptly discussing the situation in some place whose name he didn’t catch, and who nodded to him as he walked by.