Torch of Freedom

by David Weber

  They'd been meeting, as usual, in the deeply-buried operations chamber which now also served as Berry and Ruth's living quarters. Looking at his adopted daughter, Anton had to suppress an urge to grin for perhaps the tenth time since the meeting had started. There was something just plain comical about the very young Queen of Torch officially presiding over a meeting . . . while sitting in a lotus position on top of her bed.

  There wasn't much choice, though. The addition of Saburo and now Yana to the inner circle had crowded the seats at the conference table to the point where both Ruth and Berry found it more comfortable to perch on their beds—which wasn't hard, of course, since the beds were jammed up against the table.

  As the operations center for which it had been designed, the buried chamber had seemed perfectly roomy. Now that it had to double much of the time as the effective seat of a planet's government, it no longer did.

  "What he means," said Anton, "is that we have to assume that even given the incredibly low profile Victor's maintained over the years, Manpower—or whoever's really running the show on Mesa—will by now have gotten enough to be able to identify him. If one of their own top agents spots him. But the odds that they've spread that information widely, even among their own ranks, is low."

  "Why?" asked Ruth. "I'd think that's the first thing they'd do."

  Thandi Palane smiled, and shook her head. "That's because you've been an individualist your whole life, Ruth—even when your membership in the Winton dynasty enabled you to shoehorn yourself into a central position as an official spy."

  Ruth frowned. "Which means . . . what?"

  "It means you've had no experience with bureaucracies from the inside out," said Jeremy. "Neither had I, of course"—here he gave Web Du Havel a sour look—"until this inveterate paper-pusher finagled me into accepting a position in his administration. But I know the dynamic, since I often manipulated it myself to good effect. Any bureaucrat, especially a bureaucrat in a security or espionage agency, has what amounts to an automatic reflex to keep things a secret. That's because 'being in the know' is the currency by which such stalwarts trade favors and influence—and thereby their own advancement."

  Ruth looked dubious. So did Berry. But both Anton and Victor were nodding their agreement.

  "He's right, Ruth. Trust me on this—since I'm the one risking my life, after all."

  "And mine," piped up Yana. "But I trust you completely. Sweetheart."

  Thandi seemed to choke. The look she gave Yana was one part warning, and ten parts simple amusement.

  Even the one part warning, Anton knew, was just a sort of subconscious reflex. He was sure that Palane wasn't really worried about Victor "straying" while he spent weeks or possibly even months in Yana's close company, even sharing a bed with her.

  With another man, she might have worried. But one of Victor's cover stories for years had been the pretense he and Ginny Usher had put up of being secret lovers, cuckolding Ginny's older and foolish husband Kevin. They'd used that disguise often and sometimes for long stretches, and almost always shared the same bed.

  Yana was an attractive enough woman, to be sure. But she wasn't remotely close to Ginny Usher, when it came to sheer beauty and sexiness. That was hardly surprising, since Yana's genome had been designed to be that of a soldier and Ginny's had been manipulated to be that of a pleasure slave. If Victor could manage to spend months in bed with Ginny Usher and do nothing, Thandi would be quite confident he could manage the same with Yana. The man's self-control bordered on the inhuman.

  Except when it came to being teased by women. In that quirky area of the human psyche, Victor was often still as vulnerable as he'd been at the age of fourteen or fifteen. Anton had to suppress another urge to grin, seeing the way Victor actually flushed at Yana's wisecrack.

  Hastily, Cachat pressed on. "The very fact that it's so hard to dig up anything on me means that if Mesa managed it—and we have to assume they did—the information will be kept tightly restricted to the upper echelons of their security forces. At least, until such time as they have reason to think I belong on their front burner—and I can't see any reason they'd do so. Not yet, anyway. Beyond that . . ."

  He and Zilwicki exchanged glances. "This is something I've discussed extensively with Anton. Mesan society, no matter how tightly organized and no matter what secret cabal might actually be running the show, has got to have a huge and filthy underbelly. There's simply no way a society can operate on such brutal and elitist premises for so many centuries without creating such an underbelly—which it's very likely even Mesa's elite doesn't really know that much about. Partly because they can't, and partly because they don't want to."

  Ruth still looked dubious. Berry, on the other hand, looked to Du Havel. She understood, better than Ruth did, that the truth when it came to such matters was more often found in historical patterns than in the minutiae of intelligence work.

  "I agree with them," said Web. "In fact, if we had the time and you knew the math involved, I could demonstrate that Victor and Anton's assessment is certainly correct. The only real variable, in fact, is simply how correct it is. To put it another way, how big and how filthy is that underbelly? But that the underbelly will exist at all, is a given."

  Seeing Ruth's still-skeptical expression, he added: "And I could positively bury you under a mountain of historical analogies. As an example, one of the two societies in history which originally produced the term 'totalitarian' was the ancient Soviet Union. When it collapsed, not much more than a century before the Diaspora, it didn't take long at all for a highly-developed and very powerful gangster sub-culture to emerge. For a time, in fact, many analysts referred to the new government as a kleptocracy. The point being, that beneath the apparent surface—as hard and tightly policed as any in history—a very thuggish society had been gestating and developing."

  He looked now at Victor and Anton, who were seated next to each other. "And that's what they're counting on. Anton as well as Victor, although his chosen entry route is a lot less flamboyant." Here, he smiled. "As you might expect. But both of them are counting on finding plenty of rot and corruption once they arrive on Mesa."

  "In my case, simple greed," said Anton. He gestured with a thumb at Victor. "In his case, he's counting on the fact—fine, the assumption—that while Manpower has been using a lot of mercenaries, including StateSec renegades, they will almost certainly be keeping an arm's distance from them. They'll especially be keeping an arm's distance from the StateSec renegades, even the ones on Mesa itself. Which they can do because they're using the mercenary outfits as their 'cut-outs.' "

  "Especially the ones on Mesa," said Victor. "We already discussed, yesterday, the information Rozsak's intelligence officer Watanapongse passed onto us. They're almost certain—and we agreed with that assessment—that Mesa is planning to launch a massive attack on Torch in the near future using mostly StateSec renegades as the shock troops. And that they're most likely planning to violate the Eridani Edict."

  "Ah." The frown on Ruth's forehead cleared away. "Which means Mesa is going to want as much plausible deniability as possible when it comes to those StateSec renegades—including the ones on their own planet."

  Victor nodded. "My guess, in fact, is that shortly before the attack happens, Mesa will launch a major purge of those StateSec people still on the planet. A few will be rounded up in case show trials are needed, but most of them—and certainly any who know anything—will be shot while resisting arrest or shot while attempting to escape or accidentally killed by a freak meteor strike."

  "Don't forget lightning bolts and—a perennial favorite—air car accidents," added Anton cynically. "There'll be a rash of suicides, too, driven by remorse, and a statistically improbable number of drownings and accidental drug overdoses."

  "In short," resumed Victor, "all Yana and I have to do is get past Mesan customs—easy enough, with our cover story—and then we can disappear into the mercenary underworld on Mesa. We'll have to get out befo
re the hammer comes down, of course, but that's a given anyway."

  "I'll be using more conventional means," said Anton. "A shady trade delegation, basically, whom everyone will assume is really there to develop some contacts with seccy sutlers. Which is another murky underworld, and one which"—he nodded to Saburo—"the Ballroom can provide me entry into."

  He looked around the table. "And . . . that's the gist of it. I'm not going into the specific details, of course. There's no reason to."

  "How soon do you plan to leave?" asked Ruth.

  "I'll be leaving tomorrow," said Cachat. "Anton, in about a week."

  Palane's face got pinched. This was probably the first she'd heard of Victor's specific timetable. The man could take "need to know" to extreme lengths, sometimes. That might be excellent secret agent practice—but it was also guaranteed to cause some harsh words being spoken once Thandi got him in private.

  "How will you arrange to meet each other after you've gotten there?" asked Du Havel. Then he held up his hand. "Sorry, I don't really need to know that. I'm just curious."

  Anton shrugged. "We couldn't tell you anyway, since we haven't figured it out ourselves. And won't. I'm just leaving it to Victor to find me. That's because while his cover story is riskier than mine, it has the advantage of giving him greater freedom of movement if it works. A lot of this is stuff we'll jury-rig as we go along."

  A number of frowns appeared.

  "Relax," said Victor. "We really are very good at this."

  * * *

  The next morning, after discussing a few last moment details, Victor said: "You'll let Harrington know, I assume."

  "Yes. But not until I leave."

  Victor nodded. "All right, then. I'll see you on Mesa, Anton. Yana, let's be off."

  And off they went. As unsentimental partings went, this one couldn't have been improved upon by any creatures on their side of a spinal cord. It would have done crustaceans proud.

  "Damn. You guys really are good," said Ruth.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  "You wanted to see me, Albrecht?"

  Albrecht Detweiler turned from his contemplation of the familiar, sugar-white beaches beyond his luxurious office's windows as the dark-haired, boldly tattooed woman stepped through its door.

  "Yes, I believe I did," he observed, and tilted one hand to indicate one of the chairs in front of his desk.

  Isabel Bardasano obeyed the wordless command, sitting with a certain almost dangerous grace and crossing her legs as he walked back from the windows to his own chair. Her expression was attentive, and he reflected once again upon the lethality behind her . . . ornamented façade and toyed once more with the notion of telling her that a cross between the Bardasano and Detweiler genotypes was even then being evaluated by the Long-Range Planning Board. And, as he had before, he decided against sharing that particular tidbit. For now, at least.

  "Well," he said, tipping back slightly in his chair, "I'd have to say that so far, at least, removing Webster—and, of course, Operation Rat Poison—seems to be working out quite well. Aside from whatever new weapons goody the Manties seem to have come up with."

  "So far," she agreed, but there was the merest hint of a reservation in her tone, and his eyebrows arched.

  "Something about it concerns you?"

  "Yes, and no," she replied.

  He waggled his fingers in a silent command to continue, and she shrugged.

  "So far, and in the short term, it's had exactly the effect we wanted," she said. "I'm not talking about whatever they did at Lovat, you understand. That's outside my area of expertise, and I'm sure Benjamin and Daniel already have their people working on that full time. If either of them needs my help, I'm sure they'll tell me so, as well. But leaving that aside, it does look like we got what we wanted out of the assassinations. The Manties—or, at least, a sufficient majority of them—are convinced Haven was behind it; the summit's been derailed; and it looks as if we've managed to deepen Elizabeth's distrust of Pritchart even further. I'm just not entirely happy with the fact that we had to mount both operations in such a relatively tight time frame. I don't like improvisation, Albrecht. Careful analysis and thorough preparation have served us entirely too well for entirely too long for me to be happy flying by the seat of my pants, whatever the others on the Strategy Council may think."

  "Point taken," Detweiler acknowledged. "Benjamin, Collin, and I have been discussing very much the same considerations. Unfortunately, we've come to the conclusion that we're going to have to do more and more of it, not less, as we move into the end game phase. You know that's always been part of our projections."

  "Of course. That doesn't make me any happier when it's forced upon us, though. And I really don't want us to get into a make-it-up-as-we-go-along mindset just because we're moving into the end game. The two laws I try hardest to bear in mind are the law of unintended consequences and Murphy's, Albrecht. And, let's face it, there are some fairly significant potential unintended consequences to eliminating Webster and attacking 'Queen Berry.' "

  "There usually are at least some of those," Detweiler pointed out. "Are there specific concerns in this case?"

  "Actually, there are a couple of things that worry me," she admitted, and his eyes narrowed. He'd learned, over the years, to trust Bardasano's internal radar. She was wrong sometimes, but at least whenever she had reservations she was willing to go out on a limb and admit it, rather than pretending she thought everything was just fine. And if she was sometimes wrong, she was right far more often.

  "Tell me."

  "First and foremost," she responded, "I'm still worried about someone's figuring out how we're doing it and tracing it back to us. I know no one's come close to finding the proverbial smoking gun yet . . . so far as we know, at any rate. But the Manties are a lot better at bioscience than the Andermani or Haven. Worse, they've got ready access to Beowulf."

  Detweiler's jaw tightened in an involuntary, almost Pavlovian response to that name. The automatic spike of anger it provoked was the next best thing to instinctual, and he reminded himself yet again of the dangers of allowing it to affect his thinking.

  "I doubt even Beowulf will be able to put it together quickly," he said after a moment. "I don't doubt they could eventually, with enough data. They certainly have the capability, at any rate, but given how quickly the nanites break down, it's extremely unlikely they're going to have access to any of the cadavers in a short enough time frame to determine anything definitive. All of Everett's and Kyprianou's studies and simulations point in that direction. Obviously, it's a concern we have to bear in mind, but we can't allow that possibility to scare us into refusing to use a capability we need."

  "I'm not saying we should, only pointing out a potential danger. And, to be frank, I'm less worried about some medical examiner's figuring it out forensically than I am about someone reaching the same conclusion—that it's a bioweapon and that we're the ones who developed it—by following up other avenues."

  "What sort of 'other avenues'?" he asked, eyes narrowing once again.

  "According to our current reports, Elizabeth herself and most of Grantville's government, not to mention the Manty in the street, are absolutely convinced it was Haven. Most of them seem to share Elizabeth's theory that for some unknown reason Pritchart decided her initial proposal for a summit had been a mistake. None of them have any convincing explanation for what that 'unknown reason' might have been, however. And some of them—particularly White Haven and Harrington—don't seem very convinced it was Haven at all. Since the High Ridge collapse, we no longer have enough penetration to absolutely confirm something like that, unfortunately, but the sources we still do have all point in that direction. Please bear in mind, of course, that it takes time for information from our best surviving sources to reach us. It's not like we can ask the newsies about these things the way we can clip stories about military operations like Lovat, for example. At this point, and even using dispatch boats with streak capability
on the Beowulf conduit, we're still talking about very preliminary reports."

  "Understood. Go on."

  "What concerns me most," she continued with a slight shrug, "is that once Elizabeth's immediate response has had a little time to cool, White Haven and Harrington are still two of the people whose judgment she most trusts. I think both of them are too smart to push her too hard on this particular issue at this moment, but neither of them is especially susceptible to spouting the party line if they don't actually share it, either. And despite the way her political opponents sometimes caricature Elizabeth, she's a very smart woman in her own right. So if two people whose judgment she trusts are quietly but stubbornly convinced that there's more going on here than everyone else has assumed, she's just likely to be more open-minded where that possibility is concerned than even she realizes she is.

  "What else concerns me is that there are two possible alternative scenarios for who was actually responsible for both attacks. One, of course, is that it was us—or, at least, Manpower. The second is that it was, in fact, a Havenite operation, but not one sanctioned by Pritchart or anyone in her administration. In other words, that it was mounted by a rogue element within the Republic which is opposed to ending the war.

  "Of the two, the second is probably the more likely . . . and the less dangerous from our perspective. Mind you, it would be bad enough if someone could convince Elizabeth and Grantville that Pritchart's offer had been genuine and that sinister and evil elements—possibly throwbacks to the bad old days of State Security—decided to sabotage it. Even if that turned around Elizabeth's position on a summit, it wouldn't lead anyone directly to us, though. And it's not going to happen overnight, either. My best guess is that even if someone suggested that theory to Elizabeth today—for that matter, someone may already have done just that—it would still take weeks, probably months, for it to reach the point of changing her mind. And now that they've resumed operations, the momentum of fresh casualties and infrastructure damage is going to be strongly against any effort to resurrect the original summit agreement even if she does change her mind.