by Tom Kratman
Mendoza too was quiet. If things had been different, if I hadn't been hurt, I might have been able to find a girl like this someday. But if I hadn't been hurt, it would not have been this girl. And, when she is with me, it feels like it must be this girl, not some other. But it can't ever be this one. I wouldn't saddle her with a cripple.
Marqueli looked over at the boy. Can he tell when I stare at him, I wonder? If she were still alive, my mother would say I was crazy, if she thought I was beginning to fall in love with a cripple. Am I falling in love? I don't know, I've never been in love before. But it hurts, inside, when we're not together. And Jorge isn't crippled in any way that matters. We could have children. He could be a good husband and father. And he needs me. I like being needed... by him. But he's not going to ask me. I'd better tell him myself.
The waiter brought out two steaming trays and set them on the table. Marqueli assisted Jorge by cutting his first meat and then switching plates.
"You said you were a soldier's daughter, 'Queli?" he asked, while she cut.
"Yes." She sighed, sadly. "My father was killed by the gringos when I was very little. I don't remember much but broad shoulders and a big smile for me. A couple of years ago my mother died, too. I don't think she ever got over losing him."
"How did you . . . ?"
"Oh, we went to live with my uncle and my mother worked to support us until she died. If Legate Carrera had not begun supporting those of us who lost family in the invasion I don't know what I'd have done."
"He's a gringo, you know," Mendoza said. "He was even in on the invasion. It may have been him, or his men, who killed your father . . . or my brother."
"I know . . . but . . . if he did, he's gone a long way to make up for it."
"That's true," Mendoza admitted. "And he's done all right by me." Better than all right.
"In more ways than one, Jorge," she amended.
Now the only question is tell him or trap him. Marqueli turned to her dinner with a grin unseen by Mendoza.
Babel, Sumer, 28/8/461 AC
Her given name meant "assistant." It was fitting.
Senta Westplatz waited impatiently at the corner of two busy streets. Though Sachsen-born, Senta was a Muslim. Like virtually all of those around her, Westplatz wore the hijab. Since it was important that she also be recognizable, her outer covering was olive on the outside, with enough of a sky blue lining showing to mark her as distinctive. Between that, her light eyes and her Sachsen features, she hoped the freedom fighter coming to claim her would have no problem.
Though Sachsen-born, Senta had lived long in Sumer. She had friends there, many of them. Many of those friends were involved, deeply involved, in the resistance. It was a case of like attracting like.
She'd done odd work for the resistance from time to time, her cover as an aid worker giving her free access throughout most of the country, though the BZOR remained problematic. The mercenaries seemed to neither have, nor permit, any illusions about the humanitarian Kosmos.
Senta was a committed pacifist. Though willing to help, she had drawn the line at transporting weapons or explosives, instead acting as a courier, transporting fighters under cover of her humanitarian organization, providing medical supplies and occasionally spying. Then, too, some of the FSA's civil-military affairs personnel were more civil than military and gave away more information than they should have.
When some of her Sumeri friends suggested to Senta that she might help the resistance by voluntarily becoming a hostage for ransom, she'd jumped at the chance. She could think of no better way to help the cause.
Simply taking her off the street would have been easy, especially given her intention of helping in her own kidnapping. On the other hand, such a kidnapping might be inherently suspicious. To allay that suspicion, Westplatz had reported to the occupation authorities that she had received non-specific threats. That way, her side and her country – nominally, very nominally, allied to the FSC – could also blame the FSC for failing to provide security for her when she was taken.
The automobile, when it pulled up, proved to be a nondescript dirty white four door sedan made in Yamato. There were three men inside. Each pulled his keffiyah, the traditional checked Arab headdress, across his face and tucked it into the opposite side as the car slowed to a stop.
Once the car stopped, two of the men emerged waving pistols. They simply grabbed Senta as she stood there and bundled her into the car.
Potsdam, Sachsen, 31/8/461 AC
The old, gray, stone building rang with the sounds of workmen engaged in restoration. It was slow work but much had been accomplished already. The key officers of the cabinet of the Sachsen Republic, for example, all had habitable offices.
"They want five million Tauros and the release of Ali Mahmoudi," the Chancellor's greasy-looking assistant, Herr Hoyer, said, in the secure confines of his chief's centrally located suite of offices. Even to the Chancellor, Hoyer seemed to be something of a Schmierfink.
"Ali Mahmoudi . . . ?" The Chancellor groped for a memory. "Oh...him."
"Yes, him. The FSC seems to know some of the details of the offer," the assistant advised. "Well . . . after forty years of occupation and keeping us from liberation by the Volgan Empire, while preserving our own fascists, it's no surprise they have their friends in Sachsen, too. In any case, they're already pressuring us to turn Mahmoudi over to them before we can release him. Of course, we would have turned him over years ago except that two of our own people are being held hostage in Mahmoudi's old stomping ground in Bekaa. We were promised that they would be killed if we let the FS have him. This was obviously a political impossibility."
The Chancellor was no friend of the Federated States, less still a supporter of the war in Sumer. Deep down he wasn't even a supporter of the war in Pashtia, though he had had to send some forces. Even there, he'd made sure their rules of engagement were such as to make them as useless as possible, all under the guise of preserving Sachsen life.
Notwithstanding any of this, however, he had his domestic opponents who were sure to take advantage of his discomfiture whichever way he rolled. And roll he would; there was no doubt about that. The only question was the direction of the roll and the degree of spin that would be needed. And there really wasn't much question about the direction, either.
Majrit, Castilla, Terra Nova, 21/9/461 AC
Of course, the Sachsen Chancellor did release Mahmoudi. There really had never been much question about that. Whatever physical harm the terrorist might do in the future was unimportant compared to the damage that would be done to the Chancellor's domestic political power in the present were Westplatz to be killed. This release of the terrorist had to be made public though every effort was made, largely unsuccessfully, not to link the two as having been the subjects of a trade.
The trade couldn't be hidden, really. What could be, and was, hidden was the amount of ransom money paid over. This was the full five million Tauros that had been demanded. Even with the obvious linkage between Westplatz and Mahmoudi, the Chancellor was a believer in Abraham Lincoln's truth: you can fool all of the people some of the time.
Of course, thought the Chancellor, it's much easier when all of the people desperately want to be fooled.
The money went to a number of useful places. Some purchased influence in Sumer and elsewhere. Some went to arms inside the country and out. A fair amount went to explosives, detonators, the odd book bag and backpack, and living expenses for certain persons inhabiting in various parts of the continent of Taurus.
It was amazing how far a few million Tauros could go when overhead was low, arms and explosives cheap, and with most of Salafis within Taurus already being supported by the generous doles provided by the Tauran Union's member states and some lesser amounts from Yithrabi-funded madrassas and mosques.
Some small percentage went to fund a critically important operation in Castilla.
The operation had cost less, far less, than holding a Kosmo conference at a
five star hotel on the picturesque island of Melosia concerning the dreadful problem of forced assimilation of migrant widget pickers in Eastern Westfuckistan. (Or perhaps it was Western Eastfuckistan. No matter; the point was never really to solve the problem, so much as it was to have a lovely conference by a lovely beach at someone else's expense. Why, if the problems were actually to be solved the free luxury conferences might end. That would never do.)
In any case, Fadeel's organization was able to plant fewer than a dozen bombs, kill under two hundred Castillanos, and drive that country completely out of the coalition in Sumer. Rarely in history had such a significant strategic objective been achieved at so little cost, though the Salafis would remember when it had, if anyone would. Westplatz agreed that the lives lost, while regrettable, had been well spent. Even so, she slept poorly for three entire nights over it, she felt so badly, and felt very virtuous at her own suffering thereafter.
UEPF Spirit of Peace, Earth Date 19 September, 2515
"I've got to confess, my dear Captain, that your plan was brilliant, brilliant, I say!"
"Why thank you, Martin," Wallenstein answered, preening. "It gets better, too. Our collaborators down below have rounded up dozens of people willing to be "kidnapped." We've got news reporters, humanitarian aid workers, international lawyers, priests and ministers. There are even two rabbis and as many homosexuals as one could imagine. I never thought that would happen. I really don't see us ever running out of people, actually. And every one taken means five or ten million transferred to the resistance in Sumer and even in Pashtia. Of course, some of it will go to Taurus, too, and while I don't expect anyone to fold as readily as Castilla did, governments will fall, alliances will be weakened."
"I've been thinking a bit myself," the High Admiral said. "I think the best way to handle the success the Balboans have been having is to split the effort in the media, with half comparing them to the FSC to the latter's detriment and half insisting that the FSC boot them out of the country and arrest their leaders for war crimes."
Wallenstein sipped at her drink. "Not sure I follow."
"The people down below who support us engage in a very interesting form of double think," Robinson answered. "They seem to have these little mental compartments in which they store their hatreds. The compartments let in or reject evidence, but seem never to objectively analyze it. They accept anything they hear that fits their world view or supports the ends they believe in, and reject what does not, logical consistency be damned. Thus, they're perfectly capable of believing both things as true at the same time, provided they hear them from different sources.
"It's like those homosexuals you mentioned who are willing to be kidnapped as hostages. They're going to help people who would string them up by their necks in a heartbeat. Why? It can only be mental compartmentalization amounting to insanity."
Wallenstein thought that very witty. She added to the High Admiral's thought, "Well, our ancestors, the one's who took over Old Earth, didn't compartmentalize. Like us, however, they were very capable of using those who did."
"Quite," Robinson agreed. "In any case, I do intend to push their Cosmopolitan Criminal Court into having the Balboan leaders arrested, if possible, but it has to be at the right time. That time is not quite yet. I am, however, working on the Balboan government. Apparently the agreement under which they agreed to sponsor the forces in Sumer allowed them a total of one thousand FSD per man per month from the profits. This is about twice what an individual private in that force is paid, by the way. It's also become a substantial portion of the government's revenues, about seven percent and rising. The government, however, sees no reason anymore that they shouldn't be receiving all of it, which would increase their total funding several times over."
"So what stops them from simply issuing a decree and taking over?" Wallenstein asked, confused.
"Fear, I think. They've only got a few thousand under-equipped police in country. The mercenaries match that fully with their secondary formations of soldiers, damned well armed soldiers, too, being raised under the government's nose. Still, let's let the ambassador see what he can do. No need to tell him in advance how unlikely success is."
Embassy of United Earth, Ciudad Balboa, 1/10/461 AC
"What you ask is, sadly, impossible," President Rocaberti insisted. "Yes, Mr. Ambassador, I would very much like to see those two bastards out of the way. I lack the power even to get at the one that's in this country. If I tried, I'd soon find myself decorating a lamppost."
The Ambassador of United Earth to the Republic of Balboa was nonplussed. A small man, very dapper and precise, he found it hard to imagine a semi-private military force able to ignore a genuine government, though he understood that non-military non-governmental organizations did so with impunity all the time. That was different though.
"I really don't understand," the Ambassador admitted.
"It's like this," the president explained. "I have about eleven thousand police, most of them civil rather than military. Of the military police there are about four thousand, a quarter of which are brand new. They lack heavy weapons and training for combat. Moreover, those most suitable for combat were let go to join this "legion" Parilla and Carrera – that's not his real name, did you know that? – set up. We've since made up the numbers, but not the . . . oh, I suppose 'quality' is the best word. Worse, there are strong ties of affection between the Civil Force and the Legio del Cid. My police are, frankly, unreliable to me.
"In Balboa now, there is a second legion forming. My people tell me this legion is about half strength in the units – call it twenty-five hundred soldiers – and has about as many still in training. They are led by what are now rather experienced and rather good combat commanders; so I'm told. They're frighteningly well armed, too. They'd go through my skeleton of a military police force in days . . . maybe hours. If the police didn't just go ahead and join them.
"So you see, I can neither arrest them, not even the ones in country, nor do a damned thing to force them to pay a fair share of their revenues."
The ambassador almost asked whether it might not be possible to have the FSC, the ultimate guarantor of Balboan democracy, or what passed for it, force the change in receipts and likewise reinforce the police to make the arrests. He started, and then realized that there was no chance – zero, zip, zilch, nada – that the FSC would do a blessed thing to undermine their real allies in the conflict that currently mattered. Still, there was something, something just at the edge of conscious thought.
Rocaberti saw and understood the fleeting look that crossed the Ambassador's face. "Yes, that's exactly right. Under the circumstances of this war, with the Balboan legion being the third, soon to be second, largest contingent, there is no chance of any support from the gringos. My best hope is to keep the legion for the most part out of the country."
The ambassador half closed one eye, cocking his head and twisting it on his neck as he struggled for that something which seemed to be eluding him. Aha.
"Mr. President," he asked, "what if Tauran Union troops came to secure your government?"
UEPF Spirit of Peace, Earth Date 13 October, 2515
"Now isn't that an interesting idea?" muttered Robinson as he considered the ambassador's proposal. "It would never work on its own, of course. But if there were to be another attack on Balboa, then the legion they have overseas would have to be sent home or other security forces would have to be brought in."
"Which security forces, Martin?" the captain asked. "The FSC can't, they're already overstretched in the first place but in the second place, after a century of occupation and an invasion, the people there would not welcome their troops."
"After I looked over the file on this Hennessey or Carrera person, I also looked into the country he's recruiting from. I doubt their president could politically stand the uproar if he invited the FSC back."
"I know," Robinson agreed, genially. "That's why the ambassador suggested that Tauran Union or other coali
tion troops be used."
"You would have to be careful," she cautioned. "The Yamatans are notable for being dicks when overseas. The Sachsen Army, whatever its government might feel, is still at heart a staunch ally of the FS. The Anglians? I'm not sure why but the Balboans seem to not much like the Anglians. What's that leave? Gauls and Castilians?"
"Yes," Robinson agreed happily. "And some few others. Precisely those who are no friends of the FSC and those who are most friendly to us and our aspirations. But there will need to be an incident to justify calling for help. And if it kills some civilians down below, it's still better than people of our classes being killed, eventually, back home."
Ciudad Balboa, 25/10/461 AC
Not every asset available to Mustafa had been used in the attacks of two years prior. He still had his command and control team which had never been used and was perfectly capable of easing the arrival of other, operational, teams.