The Scorpion Jar

by Jason M. Hardy

  Enough of a debt to shape his political beliefs? That was the question.

  Rereading the most recent page for the sixth time, Jonah grew increasingly uncomfortable with Morten’s last line—“they keep using me.” Both Mallowes and Sinclair had claimed to have distanced themselves from Morten, and now Morten claimed he was still working for them?

  Luckily, Horn caught that line, too. The next page brought an answer to Jonah’s question.

  HORN: Are you saying you still work for Mallowes and Sinclair? That’s not what I’ve heard.

  MORTEN: I suppose it’s been a while since I’ve done something for the Senator. I don’t know what happened—he just stopped sending work my way. I’ve been busy enough, though, that it took me a while to realize he wasn’t sending me any projects, and when I did, I didn’t have time to track him down and ask him why. If he’s got reasons, he’s got reasons. Maybe I’ll ask him when we’re both in the Senate.

  HORN: You think you’re going to the Senate? After what you’ve told me?

  MORTEN: By the time you get around to telling anyone about this, I’ll make sure you have zero credibility.

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  HORN: Press down, it’ll stop in a minute. You say you’re still doing some work for Gareth Sinclair?

  MORTEN: Right up to the day he became Paladin. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a liar.

  Jonah knew what he had to do. It was as clear as any battlefield tactic, and he’d never had trouble carrying through with those. But this, he didn’t want to do.

  He trusted Sinclair far more than he trusted Morten. If the two fed him different stories, he was far more likely to believe the former. There was no reason to expect Morten to tell the truth and Sinclair to lie.

  Actually, there was, Jonah thought. There were fifty-two million reasons.

  He didn’t want to have to do this. On Kurragin, he hadn’t wanted to charge the ammo dump. But the line needed to be held.

  He made a few calls. Within an hour, Gareth Sinclair would be placed under surveillance, his every move watched. Any communication he had sent through government channels would be examined. A report on his use of government finances would be sent to Jonah.

  It didn’t take long to give the orders. It wasn’t official—Jonah was going to keep to back channels as long as possible—but as far as his investigation was concerned, Gareth Sinclair had just been made the chief suspect in the death of Victor Steiner-Davion.

  There was one more call to make. Heather GioAvanti needed to hear about this.

  45

  Bank du Nord Central Branch, Geneva

  Terra, Prefecture X

  18 December 3134

  Heather was of the firm belief that one of the greatest benefits of command was the freedom from legwork. All the drudge work—scouting locations, reviewing public records, staring at endless piles of paper or computer files—could be assigned to someone else. Staffers would disappear for a few hours, or days, or weeks, and when they returned, instead of having this vast pile of information to sort through, you’d have a compact digest of salient points, all of the truly important information compacted into a small datafile. It was a true blessing.

  Unfortunately, on rare occasions, there was some drudge work that couldn’t be parceled out. Some flows of information could only be uncorked by the right person, and most often that person was not some junior government staffer. Often, even a Knight of the Sphere wouldn’t suffice. Some streams of data could only be opened by a Paladin, who would then have to sort through the data only she could access.

  This was one of those times.

  “As I told your assistant, Paladin GioAvanti, the principal problem is that we have no clear evidence of criminal activity tied to your request. Without such evidence, we cannot violate the privacy of our clients.”

  The tradition of secrecy tied to Geneva-based banks was rooted in tens of centuries, and they took it as seriously today as they ever had. When she was examining government files—campaign finances, Senatorial accounts and the like—she’d had free access. Now, though, she was trying to plunge into personal accounts, and that was a whole different battlefield.

  Heather had four inches in height and at least twenty pounds in weight over the slight, bespectacled man in front of her, but he stood firm as a vault door.

  “Yes, I understand that,” Heather said. “Did they explain to you the extraordinary nature of this request?”

  The bank official had three strands of hair running across the bald expanse of his scalp. He carefully patted them into place. “They attempted to. That is to say, your assistant made quite vociferous claims about this being an extraordinary matter, but he would not specify just what made it so unusual.”

  “Mr. Confrere, if you know my reputation you should know I’m not prone to exaggerate. But this matter could shape the future of the whole Republic.”

  “Yes, Paladin. What I need to understand is, how?”

  “I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to share the details at this time.”

  “Then we clearly have a problem.”

  Heather took another look at her opponent, sizing up the exact nature of this obstacle. Neither intimidation nor charm would work—this man had most likely been placed in his position primarily because of his extraordinary resistance to both forces. Yet, despite his formal manner, part of him seemed to want to help her. He hadn’t dismissed her entirely, and was willing to talk. If there was just something she could offer him . . .

  It came to her in a flash. The gift most appreciated by all bureaucrats—deniability.

  “Mr. Confrere, I appreciate—even applaud—your discretion on your clients’ behalf, especially because I am one of them. I can assure you that the activities I’m investigating are of the deepest criminal nature, but I know I can’t convince you with the information I have available at the moment. But here is what I propose: let me look at the data I need. Let me find what I want, and you and your bank will become heroes through the role you play in this investigation.”

  The banker started to speak, but Heather raised her hand. “Wait. Let’s say I’m wrong. Let’s say you give me access, and it leads nowhere, and our investigation never turns up a thing. Then, my friend, point to me. Say that a Paladin marched into your bank, making claims that sounded believable but turned out not to be true. You were not wrong for opening your files—I was wrong for using your patriotism to convince you to give me access. Do you understand?”

  The banker smiled slightly, which was probably his equivalent of a broad laugh. “Yes. I do. You understand, of course, that your access to our data will be quite limited, and you will have to stay on our premises while conducting your investigation?”

  She flashed a smile that in no way reflected her feelings. “Of course.”

  “Then please follow me.”

  It ended up being a simple story. Dishearteningly simple.

  Following the thread had been quite tricky. It wound through dummy corporations, holding companies, and a private account or two held by people who probably didn’t exist. But Heather kept tugging, sending and receiving a constant stream of messages to her office (and ignoring each and every one from Duncan) that pierced through the thick financial fog gathered around this transaction. Eventually, the whole thing unraveled, and Heather had the entire story lying in front of her.

  A new office tower was being constructed in Geneva, developed by a former senior aide to Governor David Guliani. The former aide received a healthy subsidy from the government for helping renovate downtown Geneva. In return, the aide made two contributions. One was a direct contribution to the Guliani Family Museum and Visitor’s Center. The other was a bit more complex.

  After being disguised as various payments to nonexistent companies, the money ended up in the hands of a Knight of the Sphere. But it didn’t stay there for long. A few more transfers, including a brief
stay in a still-active account of a man who died in 3103, brought it to rest in an account belonging to Tres Vite Cleaners. The final transfer had occurred on the day of the riot in Plateau de St. Georges, using a machine at a branch right by the flash point of the riot. The bank where Henrik Morten had been caught on camera.

  Heather knew Tres Vite, and not because she often took clothes there. It had come up earlier in the week. The address listed for the company was an empty storefront, and by all evidence Tres Vite no longer did business anywhere. The people listed as officers of the company did not exist.

  Geneva police had received numerous complaints about illegal activities in the abandoned storefront, but never found anything to act on. Some of those complaints, though, identified certain people entering the store, people who were of significant interest to Heather GioAvanti. These reports had found their way to her desk.

  Ever since Otto Mandela identified the woman called Norah in the footage from Plateau de St. Georges, Rick Santangelo had been tracking her movements. He’d managed to find a witness who swore a woman matching Norah’s description had entered the shop and never come out.

  Santangelo had secured the proper warrants and torn the shop apart, top to bottom. He found a series of tunnels beneath the shop, all of them leading to other abandoned stores. And some of them did not appear to have been empty very long.

  Tres Vite, Heather was all but certain, was a cover for the Kittery Renaissance. That cover was blown, and Kittery had moved on to other locations, other dummy accounts. While they had used Tres Vite, though, they had received money that had passed through the hands of a Knight of the Sphere.

  Gareth Sinclair.

  46

  Counterinsurgency Task Force

  Temporary Headquarters, Geneva

  Terra, Prefecture X

  18 December 3134

  Jonah had called Heather that night to say they needed to meet, about three minutes before she was going to call him to say the same thing. Figuring her temporary offices had a better collection of information, he traveled there.

  The broad hallways of the office building hummed with the sound of fluorescent lights and distant carpet cleaners. Other than that, they were quiet. The election was two days away, and it seemed that half of the citizens of Geneva had political meetings to attend, while the other half had fled to their homes to avoid the whole affair. Government rules forbade the use of offices for activist purposes, so the Paladins’ building was perhaps the most peaceful place in the city.

  Half of the lights in the hallway leading to Heather’s office were off, making her suite glow by contrast. The light at the end of the tunnel, Jonah thought, wishing it were true.

  Heather was in her office, sitting stiffly in her chair, looking at nothing. Jonah had just decided to wave a hand in front of her face when she blinked.

  “Hi, Jonah,” she said in the flattest tones he had ever heard from her. “Why do I think neither of us is about to tell the other good news?”

  “Because we’re not. You want to go first?”

  “Not particularly. But I will.”

  She reviewed her day at the bank. Jonah knew he should be dismayed, but he had already hit his absorption limit of bad news for the day. Her words just sank into a numb spot in his mind.

  “I don’t know if Morten is anything more than a hired gun,” Heather said. “He probably doesn’t have any particular ideological loyalty. If he was helping the Kittery Renaissance, it’s because people told him to. And right now it looks like one of those people is Gareth Sinclair.”

  Jonah nodded ruefully. Before he threw his evidence on the fire, though, he wanted to at least glance in another direction.

  “What about Senator Derius? She had contact info for Morten, something very few people knew. He’s practically a fugitive. So how does she get this info?”

  Heather pounced, seeming happy to move in another direction. “That’s a question worth asking,” she said. “She closed down on me, hard, when I was talking to her, and all I really wanted to know, at least right then, was the depth of her connection to Morten. It’s worth probing more in that direction.”

  She paused. “But as far as what’s happening with Kittery Renaissance, I don’t think she was involved. We have no direct connection from them to her. Morten was at the riot finishing the tail end of a transfer that involved Gareth, not her. And I hate to say it, but she wasn’t covering up her connection to Morten, not like Gareth.”

  “I know. Morten’s interrogation is supporting that connection.” He passed the printouts to her.

  She read them, then closed her eyes. “We have to bring him in.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you think he knew? Was this his plan all along, to get Victor out of the way and take his place? If so . . . God, how long must he have been jockeying for position? How much effort did he put into impressing the Exarch to get this nomination? How deep does this plan go?”

  These were the same questions Jonah had been asking himself for the past couple days. He answered with his gut. “I don’t think he knew he was going to become Paladin. I don’t think he planned any of this to happen this way. I don’t even want to think he’s involved, but the evidence keeps pointing to him. I hope he just got mixed up in something over his head and he hasn’t been able to pull out of it. I hope.”

  “Me too. So what do we do? Bring up official charges?”

  “No,” Jonah said. He saw it now. He’d been worrying about how to do this all day, and he suddenly saw exactly how it should happen, where his line should be. “No, we bring him in, you and me. We make sure he knows its serious, that things look bad. We bring him in and tell him to help us clear his name. Help us explain how this might all make sense.”

  “Can we still assume he’s innocent? With all this?”

  “Yes.” The firmest image of Gareth Sinclair in Jonah’s mind was from their days on Ryde. The meteor strike had shattered the entire ecology of the planet, causing stable fault lines to shift and dormant volcanoes to erupt. One such volcano had sent a river of lava streaming toward a refugee camp full of people who had already been pushed out of three other locations. Gareth was with them, darting around in his Black Hawk, blasting rock to divert the flow, digging trenches to slow it enough to allow the refugees to get clear, and staying behind until the last person was away. At the end, he was trapped in the middle of a lava plain. He attempted to jump away, and almost made it. His ’Mech’s feet landed in molten rock, but Sinclair churned forward, metal legs melting beneath him as he rocked forward. At least three times, Jonah thought the ’Mech was going to pitch backward, plunging Sinclair into the red stream. Each time, Sinclair steadied it. Finally, as the knees dissolved, he stumbled, rocked back again, then lunged forward. He no longer had any support beneath him, so his cockpit kept moving until it smashed into the ground ahead—firm, rocky ground. The body of the ’Mech made it clear of the lava.

  Sinclair had saved hundreds of people that day, almost losing his life. The next day, he was in a trench, a bandage over his right eye, trying to divert the lava away from a chemical plant. When the Legate of Ryde sought him out to reward him, Sinclair was honestly surprised that anyone thought what he had done was special.

  Jonah couldn’t see this same man plotting assassination and insurrection. He owed him a chance.

  “We’ll lay all our cards on the table,” Jonah said. “Maybe he can explain to us where we went wrong.”

  “And if he can’t?”

  There was only one answer to that question. “Then we arrest him.”

  47

  Hotel Duquesne, Geneva

  Terra, Prefecture X

  18 December 3134

  This is it, Jonah thought to himself sourly. I’ve really become a politician now.

  One of the things he had always hated about politics was the game played through interpreting carefully chosen words, minor gestures and mundane actions. In this game, a mere tilt of the head by the right Pa
ladin during an important speech by the Exarch could indicate agreement or displeasure, sending the whole city of Geneva into a spasm of rumor and shifting alliances. Every word, every move, every step people took carried the burden of potentially being a political message.

  Jonah hated it when people tried to read him that way. His gestures were never calculated—if he scratched his nose during a speech, it was because it itched. He preferred that people, if they wanted to know what he thought, ask him, and then believe what he said. He treated others the same way, believing the Sphere to be big and complicated enough already without his taking part in this strange political dance.

  But now, as he walked down the softly carpeted hallway leading to Gareth Sinclair’s room, he found himself practically assigning points to Sinclair’s every move, trying to find any evidence at all that could convince him who to believe, Sinclair or Morten. Sinclair, according to the desk clerk, was in his room. He hadn’t fled, wasn’t in hiding. That was good; he wasn’t acting like he had anything to hide. But he had hesitated before agreeing to let Jonah and Heather come see him, which might be an indication that he knew what was coming, which would count against him. Or it might just indicate that he was not looking forward to this particular conversation. Jonah could sympathize with that sentiment.

  He knocked firmly at Sinclair’s door. He watched Heather’s hand flutter toward a weapon on her belt, before she remembered that they’d agreed to meet their fellow Paladin unarmed. It wasn’t an arrest, they’d reminded each other repeatedly, even though both knew that’s exactly what it felt like.

  “One moment,” Sinclair called promptly. Another point in his favor, Jonah thought. He’s not scurrying away from us.

  The door opened, revealing Sinclair casually dressed, framed by a room in which stacks of paper covered every available horizontal surface of a room at least three times as large as Jonah’s quarters at Pension Flambard.