“Ricey, this is ridiculous.” Arvid had always had that knack of stating the obvious. “I’m not shooting at Sandy, Sandy’s not shooting at me, she’s sure as hell not shooting at you or Rhian, and you and Rhian both would rather resign and become pole dancers than shoot at Sandy. Is that about it?”
“Yeah,” Vanessa sighed. “That’s about it. ’Cept for your prejudiced assumption that I’d hate to pole dance.”
“You wouldn’t? ’Cause I could arrange that. Are we on the verge of mutiny here or what?”
Vanessa thought hard. Sandy had accused her in the past of getting too emotional, but now when the stakes were highest, she felt very calm. She’d always been like this—under pressure was when she thought clearest.
“No mutiny,” she said. “Ibrahim knows all of this. He won’t force the situation, he knows he can’t rely on us against Sandy.” Because I fucking will resign and spill it all to the media, she left unsaid. “He’ll use other assets. And he’ll keep us busy and occupied on alert so we can’t help Sandy, either.”
“Would you help Sandy?”
Damn, wasn’t that the question? As much as she loved Sandy and would sacrifice her career in an instant if that love demanded it, they were still somewhere short of that. And she was also a loyal servant of Callay, and believed wholeheartedly in duty and service, and putting aside personal concerns for the greater good. If Sandy had gone nuts and was trying to kill Ibrahim, or the president, or trying to harm Callay’s security in any serious way, that would be different. But this, currently, was just dumb. Sandy was still as loyal to Callay and dedicated to its security as she’d ever been, with an intensity that rivalled even Ibrahim’s. It was just that she and Ibrahim were having a very lively disagreement over how that security should best be maintained with respect to New Torah.
“Someone should grab them both by the ear and tell them to sort it out like grownups,” she muttered. “Just sit tight, Arvid, I’ve got some calls to make.”
She checked their location—circling somewhere over west-central Tanusha, at two thousand meters and well above the regular traffic.
She made a connection. “Ari,” she said without preamble, “I think Ibrahim’s going to have to use SIB to go after Sandy. Any movement there?”
“He’d be stupid to,” came Ari’s voice. “She’d never fire on CSA or FSA. I wouldn’t be so sure about that with SIB.”
“Any idea why he’s suddenly going after her, when he didn’t stop her leaving the building after she quit yesterday? I mean, he hasn’t even accepted her resignation yet.”
“I think she’s been in contact with Mustafa. That was her whole point—she’s still working with him on New Torah, and after Ibrahim’s forbidden it, that gives him his excuse.”
“And where are you on this?”
“You know, that’s a fucking stupid question.” Click, and he was gone. Well, that gave her a clear enough answer. It couldn’t be easy on Ari. He’d worked with Ibrahim longer than he’d known Sandy; Ibrahim was the only authority figure Ari truly trusted and respected. But evidently, that didn’t mean much when it was Sandy in question. And on the matter of New Torah, Ari probably thought that Sandy was right and Ibrahim wrong.
“Christ,” she muttered to herself. “This is like civil war without the shooting.”
Sandy sat cross-legged and barefoot in the Durga Temple, with a view past many rows of square columns to a city park. On the other side was downtown Patna—busy sidewalks, traffic and crowds, with a continual smattering of people coming up and down the stairs and into the forest of columns. Here on the park side it was quieter, just a few people sitting, talking, reading or working on mobile devices.
Weller sat nearby, in deep discussion with a local priest about the intersection between Hinduism and Sufi Islam. A dedicated Sufi, Weller was the only GI Sandy had known who was deeply religious. And like any good Sufi, she was very good at finding points of commonality between Islam and every other faith, particularly Hinduism. Both she and the Hindu priest seemed to be having a great time. Sandy wondered what it said about GIs that Weller, unlike most straights, got along far better with people on the question of religion than she did on most other topics. Han, Ogun and Khan sat nearby, waiting, as GIs did very well when required.
A woman in a dress suit came barefoot across the stone floor and greeted them, sitting cross-legged with a smile. “I heard you were here,” she said. “I thought I’d come and say hello.”
“Hi, Rashmi,” said Sandy. Rashmi was a friend of Swami Ananda Ghosh, still a member of the Callayan Parliament, capitalising on Tanusha’s proclivity to now and then elect eccentric spiritual oddballs to office. Sandy had become a friend of the Swami’s by accident shortly after her arrival on Callay, and had been introduced to Rashmi through him. Technically she was a Hindu priestess, one of Callay’s highest in the utterly unreliable way Callay’s Hindus rated such things. More specifically she was a priestess of Durga, the eight-armed lady standing watch from the temple’s far end with garlands about her stone carved neck, attended by a light but constant stream of worshippers. Rashmi’s religious significance entitled her to a significant stipend and free accommodation, but she was a wealthy market analyst with no need for such trifles. Priestess was her other job.
“I didn’t tell anyone you were here,” Rashmi assured the GIs.
“I didn’t ask,” Sandy replied. “We’ll be gone soon, it’s just that this is one of the least monitored spaces in all Tanusha.”
“I know, isn’t it wonderful? I’ve love to uplink-shield it completely so people have a space where there’s only one thing pressing on their mind, not a million like most of the time. But now we just have to settle for partial blocks.”
Rashmi was middle aged, attractive yet with a face that might be stern, were she not so often smiling. Her hair was streaked with grey and she wore no jewellery or makeup. Sandy thought she looked very fit. Lots of Tanushan spirituals were fitness enthusiasts, like the surfing priests at the Shiva temple on Kuvalam Beach.
“Your firm doesn’t mind you being away?” Han asked her.
“I’m a partner,” said Rashmi with a smile.
“That means she’s a part owner,” Sandy explained to Han. Han hadn’t been a civilian that long, so some of the terms escaped him. “She’s her own boss, she can do what she likes.”
“Plus of course it’s very prestigious and fortunate,” Rashmi added. “To have a priestess as a partner. The good publicity gets us lots of clients, so my fellow partners view my time off as an investment. You seem to be in some trouble.”
“I’ve been in far worse,” Sandy assured her.
“Durga Puja is next week, yes?” Weller asked Rashmi. Weller wore denim shorts and a T-shirt, hair tied in a short blonde ponytail. Han wore cargo shorts and a loud shirt, as did Ogun, though Khan’s shirt was more stylish, too much the dresser to stoop so low. They all carried small backpacks. The four of them looked like tourists, which was the intention. No one in Tanusha glanced twice at tourists.
“It is next week,” Rashmi confirmed. “Would you like to come? We should have as many as half a million people just around this temple.”
“If we’re still alive, I’d love to come,” said Weller.
Rashmi looked at Sandy with concern. “But you said it’s not too serious.”
“I never said that,” Sandy said calmly. “I said I’ve been in worse.”
“Cassandra, I cannot be a party to anything that may end in Callayan citizens being hurt. And you have made yourself my concern by sheltering in this temple.”
Sandy shook her head. “The only Callayan citizens who may conceivably get hurt here are us.” She nodded at the GIs. “We’ll not fight back. We know we are guests here, even me, and it would be no way to repay that hospitality. But neither does that mean we shall simply sit and watch as terrible things happen elsewhere that we might be able to prevent.”
Rashmi nodded slowly. “You won’t tell me what, precisely?
”
Sandy shook her head again. “I can’t. But you may guess.”
“I think so. Ibrahim is adamant it is none of Callay or the Federation’s business?”
“Ibrahim perceives that my preferred action would lead to turbulence that would upset the peace, and thus the security of the Federation. He’s almost certainly correct. But I maintain that if we abandon morality for security, we are eventually left with neither. Morality is the ultimate underpinning of security. Without it, we are none of us secure.”
Rashmi smiled. Then sighed, and shook her head faintly, at some private humour. “Very well,” she said. “What can I do to help?”
Han noticed someone familiar approaching. A young man, broad shouldered, dressed touristy like them all. “Poole!” he said with surprise. “You decided to come!”
Ibrahim was called from an important meeting. An aide followed in case of other orders, and Ibrahim leaned against the wall by the conference room doors and put on some shades to better access the uplink visuals.
“Ibrahim,” he formulated.
“Director, we have eyes on the target Poole,” came the operations coordinator. “We’ve traced him to the Durga Temple at Patna. We think it may be a rendezvous. CSA Director Chandrasekar has given his approval to go in, but he’d like a final clearance from you.”
It felt odd to only have a supervisory role in Callayan security affairs now. But in the meeting he’d just left, they were discussing the deployment of assets a hundred times larger than Chandrasekar had access to. It would take his brain a while to adjust to this new paradigm.
“I give you my final clearance,” he said. And hoped that Chandrasekar knew what the hell he was doing.
Ayako finalised tacnet alignment and moved, walking quickly along the downtown Patna pavement to the intersection opposite the Durga Temple. MoB walked with her, slower strides on longer legs.
“No guns Moby,” she told him, watching as tacnet changed the traffic lights, and gave them a pedestrian green signal. “Keep your hands visible.”
“We’re supposed to bring them in unarmed?” MoB asked in disbelief. MoB didn’t like being called Moby, but it was a department rule that in a city with this many Mohammeds, alternatives were preferable, even nicknames. And so Mohammed Bilal became MoB which—face it, Ayako had told him—was cooler than the original. He was a big guy, tall enough for basketball, with angled sideburns and a diamond earstud.
“Use your brain,” Ayako told him. “If they want to shoot, we’re dead. I’m good, but two hundred of me couldn’t take Kresnov, trust me. With her friends, even less chance.”
“So what are we doing here?” MoB asked as they strode across the intersection, past rows of waiting traffic. “Committing suicide?”
“Asking them to surrender.”
“We can’t do that remotely?”
“The way these guys backward-hack transmissions? It’s too risky with the new construct still so young. They could find a loose code thread and unravel the whole thing. Besides, this is about psychological pressure. they’re already defying Ibrahim and Chandi simply by not coming to work. Directly evading arrest is another step up.”
They trotted up the steps to the temple, its huge trapezoid tower soaring overhead, replete with rows of carved statues and decoration. Then up to the main floor, which was open to anyone, like most Tanushan temples. A forest of square pillars, endless rows above a smooth marble floor. Ayako and MoB moved quickly on the diagonal, peering down each long avenue between pillars. Down the far end there were quite a few people, offering garlands and incense to the main statue. Here to one side was a shrine to Lakshmi, surrounded by offerings, and a small queue of worshipers. Tanushan temples were more democratic than old world temples, with their inner sanctums where only Hindus could venture. Old timers and recent immigrants complained of the missing authenticity, while long time Tanushans retorted that the success of Hinduism across the human galaxy was down to its flexibility.
Ayako was a Kresnov fan, and always had been. What she was being asked to do now did not make her happy. But she was also a professional, and knew that Kresnov would not respect her if she refused these orders. Plus, she’d always loved the adrenaline. Despite her serious doubts that any of the GIs would use force against their employers, the mere possibility had her heart thumping, eyes darting to every movement. Kresnov was not only deadly, she was smart. What was she thinking?
“We’re sure she came in here?” someone asked on tacnet. Ayako could see the other figures, marked on a temple layout. Ten in all, all CSA Investigations. Not much firepower against GIs, but like she’d said, if they’d all been SWAT in full armour, it wouldn’t have made much difference.
“Keep your eyes open,” she replied. The circle on tacnet was closing. “We know Poole came in here, and he didn’t leave. Poole hardly ever goes anywhere away from his piano.”
She passed another statue, trailing fingers upon the cool stone as she peered about a corner. Nothing down the next avenue between pillars, just some wandering locals, clearly not GIs. At the next corner were two more agents, she could see them on tacnet, so there wasn’t much space left in between. Would the GIs really be hiding? If so, it spoke of ambush. Were their intentions really peaceful? What if they were more desperate than anyone realised?
She leaned around the next corner to gesture to the two agents . . . and found a couple of old folks instead, arranging garlands and incense sticks. Ayako blinked. Tacnet showed two agents here, and ten in total, but what the hell was this . . . ?
“Mark One!” she announced, the agency code no one ever wanted to hear. “Mark One, we have been compromised! Tacnet is compromised, reform in temple center for a headcount!”
But she hadn’t seen any of the icons shift or disappear, she thought as she ran through the pillars to the central, open space. Here was a water feature in a square pool, the space surrounding filled with people relaxing, old folks retired on this workday, some parents with kids splashing in the pool. CSA Agents ran in . . . ten agents, but only five dots. Even now, as they watched, on tacnet the other five dots not gathered in the temple’s center disappeared. They stared at each other.
“How the fuck did they do that?” one exclaimed. “Did anyone see the shift?”
“We’re missing five markers,” MoB observed, “and we’re chasing five GIs. That’s just great.”
Ayako couldn’t restrain a smile. “That’s incredible. Has to be Kresnov. She’s amazing.”
“So let’s get after them!” another agent pressed. “Where did they go?”
“We’re not going to find them,” Ayako sighed. “I don’t know how she broke through tacnet barriers so quickly, but once she can do that, we can’t trust any of our systems. She could pretend to be anyone, tell us anything . . .”
She didn’t need to say more. This was why Ibrahim had rebooted the entire CSA and FSA constructs in the first place, because Kresnov and friends knew every code and could make fools of them. This shouldn’t have been possible. Ibrahim had been assured the new system was water tight, unseen by anyone save a few elite network techs. And even then, much of the code had been randomised, changing itself unpredictably until the moment of propagation. How the hell had she done it?
“If I were you,” said a female voice behind them, “I’d let her go.” They turned to look, and found an Indian woman in a business suit leaning against a nearby pillar.
“Who are you?” Ayako asked, snap-freezing an image of her face and sending it to network scans.
“Rashmi Chakraborty,” said the woman, a moment before the network replied to Ayako’s query, telling her just the same thing. “I’m the priestess here.”
“You’re a friend of hers?”
Rashmi smiled, and walked closer. “Let me tell you this,” she said, as though she were doing Ayako a favour. “Only fools and demons pick fights with Durgaji. You would be wise to be neither.”
“She’s not a Goddess,” MoB snorted. “She’s
an artificial person, and a self important bitch.”
“Durgaji is described the same way by her enemies,” said Rashmi. “You may not see it, but I swear she is the avatar herself. Pray that you do not meet her darker face.”
Hindus and Buddhists had always had fewer problems with GIs than the monotheistic faiths, believing that eternal souls could change vessels and that the vessel’s composition was not especially important. The avatar, Rashmi said? A manifestation of Durga then, if not the real thing. Ayako could see how some Hindus might see that in Kresnov.
And her “darker face” would be Kali. Most frequently seen adorned with a necklace of skulls, blades dripping blood in each of her eight hands. Ayako could see how some might see that in Kresnov, too.
Ibrahim strode to the landing platform on the HQ rooftop in the darkening evening. “Reschedule my late appointments,” he told the aide following him. “And tell the technical staff that I want plans B and C before my eyes as soon as they have them.”
“Yes Director. Do you want me to call your wife and say you won’t be home?”
“No,” said Ibrahim as the cruiser appeared in the near sky, growing larger against the orange glow of sunset and the silhouettes of a hundred near and distant towers. “That I always do myself.”
President Singh demanded to see him. Normally the head of a Federal agency could refuse the Callayan president anything, but this time, as so many times of late, local Callayan security and Federal security were overlapping. With the CSA leading, the FSA were dragged into it whether they liked it or not, and after a day of stalling, President Singh had finally twisted Chandi’s arm hard enough to force Ibrahim’s compliance as well, if just to keep Chandi’s arm in its socket.
The cruiser landed and Ibrahim got in. Immediately it lifted, heading for the Callayan Parliament, some ten minutes flight time through heavy evening traffic. Lost in thought, he barely noticed the agent alongside, in the backseat, turn to look at him. He returned a glance . . . and was almost unsurprised to find Cassandra Kresnov barely an arm’s breadth away. Almost.
Cassandra Kresnov 04: 23 Years on Fire Page 25