Oracle's Diplomacy

by A. Claire Everward

  “How far can we expect them to move?” Scholes turned to him.

  “Oracle says that for now they’ll only come in through this section of the border, the Brčko-Russia one, and stop before they interact with our people or with the Bosniaks and Serbs. They won’t risk either nation seeing them as the aggressors, they want to maintain the illusion that they are the saviors in this.” He listened on his earpiece. “Their plan is to, at some point, incite a more aggressive riot among the protesters, maybe let some of ours get hurt, jump in to heroically save them, and just happen to move them all the way along the Bosnia-Srpska border to the Croatian border, leaving their own ground forces deployed along the way, de facto taking over both Brčko District and the entire Bosnia-Srpska border. Oracle says we’ve got some time, though, they will move gradually so that the two nations won’t grasp what’s happening to them until it’s too late.”

  “And Oracle tends not to be wrong, so I’d say that’s our premise,” the other overseer pitched in.

  Donovan noticed that they were speaking about Oracle as if she were “it”, a thing, not a person. His first instinct was to react, but then he remembered what Scholes had explained to him back when he was first told what Oracle really was. That this was the instruction to all operational levels, to only refer to Oracle this way. That she was being hidden behind such a description, that her voice, when she spoke to those she guided from Mission Command, was disguised as that of a computer. An artificial intelligence. To protect her, limit the leakage of information about her very existence.

  Feeling uneasy at the reminder of the risks she faced just by being her, dangers he’d seen materialize first hand, he turned to leave Mission Command, go to her.

  And stopped in his tracks. Oracle stood just inside Mission Command’s open door, her headset on. Her eyes were fixed on the screen. He wondered how long she’d been there, choosing to look from afar, speak through others. She didn’t seem to see him watching her. Her eyes were intensely focused, her brow furrowed.

  Abruptly, she turned and left.

  Ambassador Sendor was exercising. Slowly. Deliberately. Like a man in captivity. He had been doing this twice a day, every day since he first woke up in this room, determined to remain alert, focused. To keep his morale high. He was not a man to give in to despair, no matter how dire the situation. And he was a patient man. The peace negotiations could attest to that—slowly, painstakingly, he had searched, turned every stone, no matter how blood-soaked, no matter how broken, until finally he had found a way to get through to two nations full of fear and hate, and had gotten them to listen.

  That was precisely what he was doing now. Searching, slowly and painstakingly. The exercising was a ruse this time. He knew he was being watched every minute, every second of the day. He did not want to let his captors know what he was doing, and these exercises, with the occasional feigned ache, which allowed him to stop and assess, were the perfect way to achieve that.

  He was scrutinizing every item in the room and every crevice in every wall. He now knew the door was in fact the only way out. There was no way to loosen a board or widen an opening in the small hours of the night, there were no weaknesses in the walls. The walls were also where the cameras watching him were installed, so disturbing them would alert whoever was behind them anyway.

  Then there were the various items in the room, which could, in theory, be used as weapons. But he was in his sixties, and not nearly as fit as he should be. He had never found the time, nor did he have the inclination, to exercise regularly. And he enjoyed food, wine, the company of people in a merry dinner. Dieting was not his choice.

  He sighed and sat down on the chair beside the desk. Then reconsidered and went into the bathroom, washed his face, checked the faucet. No, no good, it could not be taken apart, used as a sharp edge, perhaps. But then, again, he doubted he could overpower his captor, or the bulky young man who had replaced him in his absence. No, the only man he could perhaps overpower was the old man who was caring for him, but what good would that do? Surely it would alert others, and he could not hope to fight them. And in any case, he could not bring himself to harm the old man. He had been silent, kind. Sendor doubted he had any more choice in being there than he himself had.

  Still, he must try to escape, there had to be a way. What was the worst that could happen, they would kill him? They would do that anyway, at their convenience, his captor had already admitted that. No, he must find a way to leave. It would, he knew, be best to try to slip out at night, in the dark, but he wasn’t sure when that was. He had no idea what time it was, they had taken the vintage pocket watch his wife had given him for his sixtieth birthday. The first meal provided to him after he had woken up in this room had been breakfast, but he doubted he could rely on that to accurately assume it had been morning, although he had elected to treat it that way, creating his own timeline through his meals for his sanity. He could dim the light in the room if he wanted, to sleep at what for him was night, they had allowed him that. But that was it. No, he had no idea about anything, and no obvious way out.

  Still, he had to try.

  His eyes fell on the pen.

  Lara walked to her office, deep in thought. She passed the conference table in the outer office, the screens embedded in its multitouch top still active after her meeting with the extraction overseers and showing the same views as in Mission Command. She didn’t even glance at them. Instead, she walked into her inner office and sat on her chair, turned it around and leaned back, her eyes on the window, although she saw nothing of the view outside.

  She was already working, already stepping into that place in her mind where she would seek what she came here to find. She had been here before, just outside it, taking the occasional peek in, making initial attempts to find the end of a thread that would lead her where she needed to go. That was all she could do while she was needed elsewhere. This, finding one man who could be anywhere, was different. It required more of her and she needed to be able to focus as much as possible of her attention on it.

  By now she had so much in her mind. The events since the ambassador had vanished. The information she had received since from everyone, everywhere. And Donovan’s investigation, the details he had given her when he had updated her earlier on Bourne, Yahna, and the extremists. He had spoken to her as Oracle, knowing she would need to know everything if she was called on to act. She liked that, that he updated her as Oracle, yet had turned up in her office later with his eyes on her as his Lara.

  She began to shake it off. Him, off. Then realized with a bit of surprise that she didn’t need to. These thoughts, with him in them, weren’t in her way. They were walking by her side. Reminding her that she wasn’t alone, that no matter where she needed to go, he would be there when she returned. Giving her something new, even as Oracle. Something she had yet to define, in this context, but it was adding. That was it, it was adding to her, to what she was.

  She let him stay there, in the background. Where she could sense him if she needed, let him, perhaps, guide her back from where she was going, knowing she would have to go in deep this time. Because the fact was that even with everything she had, she still had nothing concrete to go on. Other than the image of George Sendor, whose smiling face she had etched in her mind, she simply had nothing useful to lock on to. He could be anywhere by now, there were a million and one places he could have been whisked to since he was taken. A million and one places where search and rescue teams and undercover agents and satellites and drones and security cameras and biometric seekers and all the people and technology in the world could not find him.

  Worse, time was a factor. Certainly now that the Russians were also looking for him, and for those who had taken him, and who just might know that they were being searched for. And then there were the raids on Pohnpei and on Yahna that had to take place, and that were waiting only for her go.

  George Sendor. Had he been killed already? Was she too late to save him? Had they been too la
te to begin with?

  No. He was alive. And where there was life it had to be saved.

  I’ll need to do this one differently, she thought. This was new. In missions, there was always something around the people she was there to guide that she knew about beforehand and could use to help her lock on to a spatial and temporal point in existence that she could then place herself in, see from, work from. Not this time. This time all she had to lock on to was a man, a life, with no other tangible context.

  I’ll find you, she thought, already deep in her mind. I promise I will find you.

  She gave the command, and the window disappeared, the glass-to-screen technology embedded in it turning it into smooth darkness. She then swiveled in her chair, slowly, thoughtfully, blanking every wall screen, utilizing the design of her office that could be made to imitate that place she went to in her mind, doing so with a pace that matched the strengthening of what she was awakening within her.

  Finally, she ordered the door closed and transformed it too and the glass divide it was set in into a seamless dark surface. Around her the room plunged into silent dimness. She settled back in her chair, her eyes open in the dark.

  And gave all she had to her search for George Sendor.

  Donovan signaled to Scholes that he was leaving and followed Lara. By the time he got to her office, the inner door was shut. He moved toward it but stopped when Aiden approached him.

  “Sir, you can’t go in,” the aide said. “When Ms. Holsworth closes the inner door, no one may disturb her.”

  Donovan didn’t insist, knowing Aiden wouldn’t stop him without a reason. He turned to Scholes, who came up beside him, peeked in, and, on seeing the closed office door, nodded.

  “Oracle is working,” he said.

  Donovan didn’t get it. He hadn’t had many opportunities to see Oracle at work, but when he did, she had worked in Mission Command, using its substantial capabilities to connect her to anyone, anywhere, and let her see any situation worldwide on command.

  “Her office has Mission Command capabilities,” Scholes said, “and it’s also designed to allow her to cut herself off from everything and everyone, to work alone. If she’s in there, then whatever she is doing is challenging.” He turned to leave. “That’s that then, let’s let her do what she does.”

  “Just how challenging?” Donovan asked, thinking back to his earlier conversation with the vice admiral.

  “I honestly have no idea,” Scholes said. “As I said, she’s never done anything like this before. Nothing this extreme with so little information, and so little time now that we’re moving on the people who took the ambassador. Think about it. How the hell do you find one man who can be anywhere in the world by now, and do so before the person who might have been sent to put a bullet in the back of his head gets to him?”

  Donovan frowned. “If he’s dead when she finds him . . .”

  “She’ll feel it. And take it on herself. That’s who she is.”

  Yes, Donovan knew that. He’d been there with her before and had seen what it did to her. He sent a concerned look at the closed door. “Why can’t we be in there with her?” he asked, and realized even as he did that he really had no idea how Oracle’s mind worked.

  “We would be a distraction that she doesn’t need. Oracle takes precedence here. If she hadn’t had to be alone, she wouldn’t have closed herself in her office.” Scholes frowned. “And, you know, I don’t think we can go with her where she goes anyway.” He waited for Donovan to join him, and the two men returned to Mission Command, each deep in his own thoughts.

  “Minister.”

  Rostovtsev’s eyes remained on the map. He had barely moved from it since he had set his plan in motion. This was his destiny, the ultimate achievement that would, he was sure, make him the next president, despite the hitches encountered on the way. The clever takeover of Bosnia and Republika Srpska right from under the hateful United States’ and Internationals’ noses, the beginning of the end of the alliance, finally checking the Internationals’ stubborn progress, and all this with little force. This was the ultimate win.

  Gone were the days of forceful invasions, the Internationals had changed all that. They had faced up to Russia’s acts of aggression—that was what they had called them—and those of its peers by fearlessly proclaiming that they would not stand by while aggressors took over nations, repressing them, killing and destroying where an attempt was made to resist. Enough death, enough fear, enough wars, they had said. Enough of any form of oppression. People had the right to live in dignity. They had the right to speak without fear, to walk the streets without harm coming to them because of their gender, their race, their beliefs and opinions, their nationality. They had the right to choose.

  It had sneered, Russia. Rostovtsev had been a teenage boy then, and he had seen his father laugh at this folly. They speak, his father had said, but they are but a scattered group, short-lived, powerless. The true powers, the countries that had governments and armies and weapons, they would continue to do nothing, just make empty threats and impose useless sanctions in the face of Russia’s bold acts. His Russia would be great again, his father had been so certain, together with its old allies and with new ones it had cleverly cultivated in every land where the West, with its empty promises of protecting its allies, had lowered its head instead of defending and had stepped back, leaving those who had believed in it to understand they were alone, to fall, and those who chose to defy peace and conquer, to prosper.

  But instead, the boy had grown up to see the Internationals achieve numbers, recognition, respect and widespread support, as governments understood that the newly formed nation was not threatening them nor the structure of the countries they headed, that while there were those who elected to take the international citizenship, chose the new global way of seeing the world as their home, others still needed their national identity, the ways they had always known, and that these two views coexisted well in a reality of patience that taught tolerance.

  He had grown up to see not his father’s Russia rise but the Internationals’ alliance form, as the world learned that the new nation stood adamantly behind its words. The Internationals acted. Not just talked, not just waited for others to do, not set conditions for their help. They had stepped in where needed, at times paying a price and yet never wavering in their resolve. In their actions they had changed the reality of a tired world, and governments and their constituents alike finally understood that they could work alongside this new global phenomenon to do better. Words had meaning once again, and confidence in the prospect of a better future was gained. The world really was changing.

  And throughout the years in which the hateful Internationals grew, Russia had stopped. Simply that, it stopped. Its excursion into Eastern and Southeastern Europe to regain hold of the lands it had lost when it had fallen from greatness the century before, initially made easy by the toothless response of the struggling union that had long failed those it had promised to make a part of a strong Europe, could no longer continue as the Internationals’ small but smart military positioned itself strategically behind their unrelenting diplomatic force, signaling tenacity and strength. And this made country after country in Europe, and then others across the globe, raise their heads and stand beside the Internationals, who stood strong in the lead. But worse, Russia itself, his father’s Russia, which his father and his grandfather had fought for, could no longer control its own people. Those who objected to the ways of its regime would no longer be easily silenced, they could now find refuge among the Internationals in friendly lands on the other side of the crumbling country’s borders.

  But this, this plan of his, it would bring his father’s Russia—now his Russia—back to power. The Internationals would finally be reduced to silence, and without them, without the driving force of their convictions, the alliance would be gone forever.

  “Minister,” the man at the door said again. The new director of the Foreign Intelligence Service, appoin
ted instead of the one who had been reassigned—at least that was the official word following his disappearance—after failing to find those who were supposed to kill the ambassador.

  “What is it?” Rostovtsev grumbled, his eyes still on the forces he was moving. Disturbances were not welcome.

  “We are picking up some movement.”

  Rostovtsev finally turned to him. “Who? IDSD? They were forced to take their people out of Brčko, they are mistrusted by everyone. They cannot do anything.”

  “No, sir, not the military, just . . . our spies report that the special forces of the alliance were asked to be ready in several locations that we know of. There are indications that the request came from IDSD.”

  “So?”

  “They have put their own special forces on alert, too, they are leading this, Minister.”

  “So?” Rostovtsev was becoming impatient with this man. He had more important things to do than to think about the Internationals’ desperate attempts to—

  “Wait,” he said, apprehension seeping into his voice before he could hide it. Could they have an idea where the ambassador was?

  Could they find him alive?

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Where are you?

  Her eyes were now closed, and in her mind she was suspended in nothing. She had no idea how long she’d been in here, didn’t dwell on it. It was she who had done that, cleared everything away. She needed it to be like this, didn’t want anything pulling her in any direction. At least anything that would stand in her way. With nothing to lock on, nothing pertinent that could be useful for what she needed to do, this was the best way to go.

  Patience was all she needed, patience and to let it be. It would come to her, what she was seeking, she would never allow herself to think otherwise. And so she waited in the silence, let herself know beyond doubt that it was, it existed, all she had to do was find it, be there with it.