Oracle's Diplomacy

by A. Claire Everward

  “He was in the field, where they were testing Sirion, and later he saw that someone accessed the project through his account. He didn’t know who.” Berman spoke quietly, haltingly, the investigator’s description of what happened unsettling him. How did he know so much? “He knew it had to be someone high enough, to do that, and he was afraid to trust anyone, so he called me.”

  “He trusted you, ARPA’s director.”

  Bourne put his hands on the table before him. They shook, and he wrung them. “I told him I’ll take care of it, I told him not to tell anyone so that whoever did it won’t know we knew about the breach, and to stay there until they finished Sirion’s testing, but he came back.”

  Donovan thought fast. “He was supposed to die there. Suicide?”

  Bourne shook his head slowly. “Mugging,” he said in a whisper.

  “But he left before your accomplices could carry out their plan. He didn’t tell anyone why, he gave Dr. Beinhart a reason and he returned. He went to his parents’ straight from the airport, as he did every single time he traveled, and early the next morning he met you, the man he trusted to find out who was endangering the sensitive project he was working in.”

  “I didn’t know. They called me, said he was back and that I had to take care of it.”

  “You had no choice. It was an order. It had to be done for the cause.”

  Bourne nodded and straightened up a bit, some weight off his shoulders with the deflection of guilt elsewhere, just as Donovan wanted. He needed to make sure the man would not fall apart.

  “Getting him to the subbasement was easy.”

  “We need more space, and he is . . . he was so good at organizing his projects, I said I wanted his opinion on renovating the subbasement, that I was already scheduled to meet there the person in charge of these things at ARPA, that we would talk immediately afterward. That he shouldn’t worry because I was already taking steps to find out if in fact the project had been breached and to secure it.”

  “The radio was to make us think he was working with an accomplice on the outside. An attempt to make sure we won’t look inside ARPA. To point us away from you.”

  “There was no time, I needed something . . . I remembered the radios, my predecessor tinkered with them, he left several in his . . . my office when he retired, and I had them stored down there. He never asked for them.” He stopped, hesitant.

  “Well, I suppose it was clever.” Donovan needed him to focus, and he got what he wanted.

  The arrogance surfaced again. “I’ve been at ARPA for many years. People only assume I have no technological knowledge. You learn quite a bit there.”

  “Obviously. You did steal Sirion without being discovered.” Donovan didn’t tell him that it didn’t take Sidney long to find out that the radio hadn’t been used other than to try to make it work sometime during the night before Berman was killed, try to make it look as if it had been in use.

  “You killed him the same way the people on the ambassador’s jet were killed. You did that unintentionally.” Donovan changed direction unexpectedly. He had grappled with that one. There was no real reason to kill Berman in that exact way. “You already knew how they died, and it stuck in your mind, didn’t it?”

  Bourne shook his head, and Donovan frowned. “I didn’t want to see his face. I did it . . .”

  “Before you could change your mind.”

  Bourne nodded, his gaze on his hands.

  Donovan had now confirmed his assumptions about Berman’s death and the Sirion theft, and he had a confession. But that wasn’t all he needed. He let out a long sigh. “Too bad. A good man. A true patriot,” he said sadly.

  “I am a patriot!” Bourne was offended. He had served his country his entire life. Everything he had done was to ensure that things would go back to the way they once were.

  “Sirion was ours. The whole world is blaming us,” Donovan said. And got what he needed.

  “Sirion was also the Internationals’! And they are behind the treaty, not us, and George Sendor was their ambassador, not ours! The world is laying more blame on them than on us, and if we, if the United States wasn’t so intent on standing beside them, we could easily shift the blame and get out of it clean. We keep doing that, making the same mistake. That’s why Yahna was forced to—” He stopped, his eyes widening in shock as he realized he had said too much. “You bastard,” he blurted out, then collected himself, breathed in, calmed down. It didn’t matter. The goal he had done everything for had already been attained.

  “Yahna?” Donovan’s eyes narrowed. He thought fast. “Yahna would never go along with this. Unless you’re working from the inside.”

  The slightest flinch.

  Donovan leaned forward. “You still have people inside Yahna. Does it know, are you some kind of an only seemingly unsanctioned spin off? Or, what, you’re manipulating it from inside, using it to pressure the United States to distance itself from the Internationals and to break apart the alliance?”

  Bourne didn’t answer. Donovan didn’t care, he had said that for Emero’s sake. Perhaps Yahna, too, was not as harmless as everyone thought, whether it knew what was going on among its ranks or not.

  “So was killing the ambassador also something you people were ‘forced’ to do?” He pressed on.

  Bourne’s brow furrowed for just a split second, with just the slightest tilt of his head, and Donovan’s focus heightened, although he didn’t show it. Was that an admission of death or a proof of life?

  He leaned forward, his tone now low and dangerous in an intentional show of intimidation. “It’ll never work, you know. What you’re trying to do. And when this is over, what do you think is going to happen to you?”

  The response was the one he’d hoped for. Despite having been rattled, Bourne still believed in his ideology, in the group he was serving, in the victory he was sure he had helped them attain with everything that he had done. He laughed. “It doesn’t matter. You can do whatever you want. Imprison me, whatever. We’ve already won.”

  “Have you?” This time there was the slightest sneer in Donovan’s smile, and he turned his eyes to the screen laying on the table before him, feigning interest in it rather than in Bourne. He wanted the man to talk, brag. With what he’d now learned, he wanted Bourne’s obviously overinflated ego at work.

  Bourne misread him, just as Donovan had hoped he would. He had the need to show just how successful the destruction of the Internationals and the alliance at whose helm it was would be, and how important his role was in this, and in the group he was a part of.

  “You will never find him,” he said. “He will remain hidden for as long as we need him to be and there is nothing, nothing at all you can do about it. And if we want, whenever we want, the order will be given for the Internationals’ precious ambassador to die. His body will be handed over to the Russians, with a little present from us. A bullet from an IDSD-issued gun in the back of his head.” He straightened up arrogantly. “We have had a few of those lying around for that very purpose.”

  “So Ambassador Sendor is still alive.” Donovan finally raised his eyes to Bourne.

  “Not for long! He—”

  But Donovan was already standing up. “That’s all I needed.”

  “What? Wait! What do you mean? You have nothing!” Fear lanced through Bourne again. It can’t be, he can’t know. What could he know?

  Donovan took his screen and walked to the door.

  “Hey, wait!” The realization was dawning on Bourne. The investigator was behaving as if he knew enough to what, find, who, the ambassador? His peers? Could he find them? Had he given up too much information?

  “Wait, you can’t just leave me here! What’s going to happen to me?” he shouted.

  Donovan turned back to him. “IDSD will take you. You’ll be flown to Brussels.”

  “What? You can’t do that! I’m a US citizen!” Here, at least, in the hands of the United States, he knew his contacts would have enough influence to m
ake sure he would not face an embarrassing trial, perhaps he could even escape a trial altogether if interest in the murder died down and they would help him get away.

  Donovan shrugged, indifferent. “The way I see it, the Internationals have every right to do whatever they want with you. You’ve done everything you could to get in their way and endanger their people in the process, along with many, many other innocents. And just look at the deaths you’ve already caused. Don’t worry, they’ll work with us to make sure you face justice for Major Berman’s murder, they have an interest in seeing you punished for that, too.” He turned away again and was almost out of the interrogation room when Bourne shouted behind him.

  “They will kill me!”

  His suddenly frantic tone had Donovan turn back to him. He was pale, trembling. Only a moment earlier confident, ARPA’s director was now terrified.

  “No. Unlike you, they do things the right way,” Donovan said.

  “Not them!”

  Donovan’s interest piqued. “Who then?”

  “No, I can’t, they will kill me! They will know I gave them up!”

  “You mean your accomplices? They won’t know of your arrest, we’re making sure it doesn’t come out just yet. By the time it does you’ll be safe.”

  “No, I won’t, you don’t know them. They will find me. I know too much, they will kill me.” There was despair in Bourne’s voice now.

  Donovan considered him. “Because once you’re in the Internationals’ hands you’ll be out of their reach. They won’t be able to influence what you do. Right. So much for their loyalty to you.”

  Bourne didn’t answer.

  “Nothing? Okay, good luck then,” he said and turned to the door.

  “No, fine, I will tell you what you want to know. But you have to make me disappear. You have to. You need me! You will never find them without me!”

  “Where is the ambassador?” Donovan turned to him.

  “I . . . I don’t know,” Bourne stammered.

  Donovan turned to leave.

  “I really don’t! Only the ones who have him do! But I can give you names, locations, I can!”

  Donovan believed him. Agawin had described a highly compartmentalized group that would certainly not risk one of theirs being caught by those they considered the enemy and giving up sensitive information. Bourne might well have no idea where the ambassador was. As for what he did know and was now willing to provide, it was valuable, but it could wait. He couldn’t give them Sendor, and there wasn’t enough time to go about picking up and interrogating his peers to see which one of them had the information they needed. They had to focus on finding the ambassador, who, if Bourne was right, might still be alive somewhere.

  “I’m sure IDSD will make sure you’re protected in return for that information,” he said. “For now, you’re safe here.”

  And he left.

  “You heard him,” Donovan said to Emero, on-screen in the next room.

  “We need to stop these people. I’ll pass this on to all the needs to know here and to Vice Admiral Scholes, and we’ll prepare to move on Yahna and on Pohnpei. We’ll use what Agawin and Southern Territories know. Bourne’s knowledge can help with their prosecution later, and maybe with names we will have missed.” Emero shook his head in frustration. “Problem is, we still don’t know where Sendor is, and without him we can bring all the logical proof we want, we can even run this entire interrogation on all media outlets, but it still won’t stop anything. No one will listen, sentiments are too heated over here.”

  Donovan concurred. Even with the headway they had made, the very heart of the investigation, the one critical unknown that could determine the fate of Europe, was still missing.

  Ambassador Sendor.

  “Where do we stand?” the leader asked.

  “We are safe. There is no way they can find us.”

  They had initially been surprised when, contrary to the strict agreement between them and Russia, the latter’s Foreign Intelligence Service had initiated a frantic search for them, despite the fact that, as far as Russia was concerned, they had fulfilled their end of the deal. Luckily, since they had long learned to trust no one, their designated team of hackers had been monitoring the Russians’ communications since they had first been contacted, which was how the hunt had become known.

  It had been Yahna the Russians had originally thought to approach, but they had felt their way to it carefully, unsure of what the dormant organization would agree to do and if it would betray their plans. It was pure luck that had them stumble instead upon an operative of what Yahna had years before termed its rogue elements, just before they had concluded that Yahna would not agree to do what they needed done and had withdrawn. By then the Russians themselves seemed to realize what they had been about to ask Yahna to do, that the stakes, for Russia more than anyone, were huge. That if what they wanted ever became known, the consequences for them would be disastrous. But the operative in question had coaxed, explained, lured, and the Russians had ended up hiring him and the group behind him and agreeing to the plan eventually brought to them, which included killing the ambassador.

  But of course, the ambassador was not dead, a small detail that had intentionally been kept hidden from the Russians. Which was, of course, why they were so frantically searching for the group now. Interesting that the Russians knew the ambassador had not been among the dead. Interesting and troubling. It had been pure luck that the Russians had been so shocked that enough communications had gone around between them before someone had been clever enough to clamp down on all unnecessary talk. But not before the group had learned it was now being targeted by Russian intelligence, and why.

  Which begged the question. Just why would the United States provide the information about the ambassador’s disappearance to Russia so readily? There was no trust between the two administrations, and there should have been even less, a complete disconnect even, once Russia had openly blamed the United States and its cooperation with the Internationals and had moved substantial forces as it had to borders the alliance had laid claim to. And there was no doubt in the leader’s mind that the United States would have surmised that Russia was somehow involved in the ambassador’s disappearance. And yet it had chosen to approach Russia directly.

  The group and select senior Russian officials were, or at least were supposed to be, the only ones who knew the truth about the group’s part in the current game of power and control taking place in the European arena. And the leader was certain that, with the most to lose from its exposure, the Russians would never risk saying anything to either of their sworn enemies. And yet this move by the United States, letting the Russian president know it did not have the ambassador’s body, showed that it, and therefore the Internationals, too, had somehow come to suspect there was someone else behind the downing of the jet, someone other than Russia, and that Russia hadn’t been told the entire truth about the incident either.

  How could that be?

  The leader had known that the Internationals would search for the ambassador, and that the United States would help, if not immediately then as soon as it learned that it was a technology it too was responsible for that had downed his jet, and that this was publicly known. But he had never imagined that the United States itself would communicate the ambassador’s absence to Russia, and had instead expected it to attempt to find him first and use this to take down its old opponent once and for all, resolving the problem in Republika Srpska and Bosnia in the process. Thus, of course, giving him and his group time to proceed with their own plans.

  At least it had no hope of finding the ambassador. No one did. That was the only thing the leader was absolutely confident of. Still, now Russia too was searching for him. And that was bad.

  If only they had killed the ambassador. If only his body had been left in the jet with the others. The United States would then have been helpless to do anything, would have had no alternative to turn to. Perhaps then it would have finally go a
gainst those damn Internationals, if only to save itself.

  Had it been a mistake to keep the ambassador alive?

  His man was still talking, detailing Russia’s failed attempts to locate those it now knew had betrayed it and had kept the ambassador alive and hidden. But the leader was no longer listening. He was gazing thoughtfully at the closed door of the room that held their strategic captive.

  It was time for a consult.

  Chapter Twenty

  Lara was in her office, in what seemed to Donovan to be a quiet moment in a day that, if the activity in the war room outside attested to anything, must have been quite hectic. She was leaning back in her chair, facing wall screens that showed real-time satellite images of the disputed region. From where he stood, Donovan could see there were multiple feeds, from inside the countries and all borders, the same ones he’d seen as he passed the teams working outside. A single screen on her left was running intelligence updates, flashing in and out as new data came in. Her eyes flickered to it, an eyebrow raised for a brief moment, and then her attention turned to a feed showing IDSD’s peacekeeping force in the safe zone in Brčko District. Something there, and she didn’t like it.

  He entered the office and sat on the opposite side of her desk. She turned her chair to face him and smiled, but there was a shadow in her eyes, something haunted. He stood up and skirted the desk to her side of it. A look at what was running on its embedded screen had his eyes widen. He turned his back to it.

  “Christ, Lara. Is that what you’re studying? Those horrific wars?” To get a better grasp of what was happening in the region, he’d read a bit about both wars, the one half a century before and the no less horrific one that had followed it, and the violence in the images running on Lara’s desk could only have come from them.