Cassandra Kresnov 5: Operation Shield

by Joel Shepherd

  “Sir, our orders are specific, straight from OID.”

  “They may be specific to you, soldier, but they are not specific to me. OID has no authority to give this order, and I am under no obligation to follow it.”

  The security man straightened. “I'm sorry, sir. She cannot be allowed to enter the Grand Council. You are free to enter without her.”

  “Unacceptable,” said Ibrahim. “Agent Teo, please communicate this impasse to Ambassador Ballan, and tell him I refuse to proceed without my security. I will be in the vehicle awaiting his reply.”

  “Sir,” Teo acknowledged, and turned away to concentrate on his uplink. Togales stood at easy guard by the car as Ibrahim climbed back into the passenger seat and worked various data links, as new vehicles came in and their occupants entered the elevators, with concerned looks at the FSA Director sitting in his car with the door open.

  After a few minutes, Teo leaned in. “Sir, we're clear.”

  Ibrahim got out, and he, Teo, and Togales walked to the nearest elevator. Security said and did nothing. A short ride up, and they got out in a main hallway, heading for Ballan's office.

  “Sir?” asked Togales as they walked. “Are you really that concerned for your safety?”

  “Yes,” said Ibrahim, as activity hurried past them, aides running, others standing in conversation, the occasional ambassador or other VIP striding quickly amidst an entourage on their way somewhere important. “But that's not the main point. The main point is that OID is attempting to exceed its authority, as powerful institutions will do in crises. If surrounding institutions do not push back, they will be swamped. We must hold our ground at all costs, Ms Togales, the balance of Federal powers depends on it.”

  “I understand.”

  “And,” Ibrahim added, “I sense a potentially nasty anti-GI trend in OID's current actions. Naturally they fear GIs as their most capable potential opponents, but the politics lines up too neatly with the anti-emancipation people, who in turn attract the support of bigots and fearmongers. I do not wish this to become an anti-synthetics pogrom. A stand must be taken.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Togales, striding perhaps a little taller. “Thank you, sir.”

  “No thanks required. I stand on principle or not at all.”

  Togales smiled. “Sure. But thank you anyway.” Ibrahim's lips twisted, just a little.

  Ambassador Ballan's front office was crowded, people talking loudly, working uplinks and slates, watching screens. Several were clearly waiting their turn to enter the main office. Ibrahim walked straight past them all and opened the door to the main office, neither guards nor secretaries moving to stop him. Teo went with him, and Togales took up guard outside the door.

  The several people in Ballan's office finished up quickly when they saw him and quietly retreated. Beyond the windows, a view of the GC building's central bowl, gardens about a glass roof at the base, offices arrayed in the surrounding walls, like an arena. Typically at night it would not look so impressive, but tonight all the lights were ablaze.

  Ballan rose from behind his desk, harried but looking not at all tired despite the hour. Too much adrenaline, no doubt. “Shan, I'm so sorry for the circumstances. I'm as shocked by this as you are, I'm sure.”

  Ibrahim shook the offered hand and sat, offering no comment. Crossed his legs, adjusted the suit jacket, meticulously, and settled his gaze upon the head of the Grand Council's Office of Intelligence Directorate. Ballan looked a little concerned at that, taking his own seat. Good.

  “I'd like to see your evidence,” said Ibrahim.

  Ballan sighed. “Shan, the FSA is under investigation. Its Callayan headquarters anyhow. That includes you. I'm afraid our operating procedures won't allow it.”

  “Who has seen the evidence?”

  “I have. President Singh has. The Council Chair has. That's all.” So Li Shifu, head of the Federation's central committee, had seen the evidence before signing off on it. Was Li just playing along, or was this in fact a conspiracy that went all the way to the very top?

  “When did President Singh see this evidence?”

  “I'm sorry, Shan, that's above your level.”

  “Mr Ambassador, there's no such thing.”

  Ballan's expression hardened. “Shan, he's the President of Callay. I'm head of OID. And your agency is under investigation.”

  “And by what authority, and upon what evidence, my agency is under investigation shall remain firmly suspect in my mind until I have seen that evidence. I am an Intelligence Director, Mr Ambassador. I believe nothing unless proven. If one does not understand that, one should not investigate my agency without being prepared to show me the evidence.”

  “My rank and office are authority enough,” Ballan retorted.

  Ibrahim barely blinked. “Not while I'm Director of the FSA they aren't.”

  Ballan took a deep breath and readjusted his jacket. Looked unsettled. Ibrahim watched him, mercilessly curious. “Shan, I'm sorry to have to do this to you, but you're not leaving me much choice. Either you cooperate with this operation, or I'll have you removed as Director. I can do that too, you know.”

  “I'll be happy to cooperate fully with this operation,” Ibrahim replied. “Just as soon as I am presented with evidence of its legality.”

  “Its legality?” Ballan looked incredulous. “For God's sake, Shan, you speak of legality? Just who do you think you are?”

  “Failing such evidence,” Ibrahim continued, “I shall be forced to keep a very open mind on the matter. Furthermore, if you move to have me removed, I will file appeal to the High Court. That is my constitutional recourse. The High Court could take weeks to decide. Those weeks’ delay shall not serve the purposes of Federal security at this time.”

  “Shan,” Ballan said firmly, recovering his balance somewhat. This was not an inconsiderable man to be pushed around even by the likes of Shan Ibrahim. “There is a reason beyond rank and procedure why you are not being presented with the evidence. Some of that evidence speaks to your own complicity. Now, there are wheels turning here. I don't need to explain to you.”

  “No,” said Ibrahim with faint amusement. “You don't.”

  “It would not be in your interest, or anyone's interest, for you to be furthering that impression now. We need your cooperation to find several of your agents, Commander Rice and Captain Chu in particular. They shall not be harmed, merely detained, for the duration of independent investigations.”

  “Why was this arrangement not considered for Commander Kresnov?”

  A faint evasion in Ballan's eyes. A sideways flick. “My latest reports are unclear on Commander Kresnov's status. I don't know what our operatives did when they tried to detain her.”

  “They appear to have shot her down,” said Ibrahim. “With no attempt at detention. This appears rather the targeted assassination of one my most valuable people, on evidence that you refuse to share. In such circumstances, I would be failing in any professional duty were I not intensely skeptical of this action.”

  Ballan held up his hands, placating. “Shan, I'll look into it. I assure you that whatever happened to Cassandra, it wasn't my idea and I never authorised it. The woman saved my life.”

  “And is there any particular reason you have not asked me to help with Kresnov's detention? Only with Commander Rice and Captain Chu?” Ballan blinked, not understanding. Or pretending not to. “Kresnov is surely more valuable to you if she still lives, and indications are that she does, given the combat flyer that fired upon her was itself destroyed shortly thereafter. If there was a coup attempt, surely she would be the ringleader? Yet you do not ask for my assistance in finding and detaining her, just her friends?”

  “We're hearing reports that she may be dead. Information is very sketchy right now, I'm sure you can guess. If she's still alive, certainly we'd like your help to find her.”

  “With evidence of her complicity in a coup attempt, I would be happy to do that.”

  Ballan's stare w
as very hard. “You'd shelter her? As a fugitive?”

  “A fugitive from what, exactly?” Ibrahim very rarely injected aggressive sarcasm into his tone. This was calculated. Ballan looked increasingly wary.

  “Shan, I'm warning you. You have been an exemplary public servant for Callay and the Federation. But this could end very badly for you.”

  “I'm quite sure,” Ibrahim agreed. “The difference between you and me, Ambassador, is that I don't care. You know how to gain my cooperation with this operation. Failing that, you shall not have it. Further, the FSA shall retain full operational independence and conduct operations of its own according to the best interests of the Federation as I see them. If some external power attempts to close down those operations in a manner that I perceive to be unconstitutional, I will resist that external power with every weapon at hand. Even if it should cost me my job. Even if it should cost me my life. Or your life. Do you understand?”

  The Grand Council hallways were not safe to speak in, so Ibrahim waited until they were back in the car.

  “Spec ops remains suspended,” he told Teo, opening an uplink channel so the other FSA Chiefs could hear. “Half our people are arrested anyway, more than half if you count those who were at SWAT when the CSA locked them down. That's a command authority, if I ignored it they really could come in shooting.

  “The rest of the FSA's technical suspension I'm ignoring. If anyone is sent to arrest me for that decision, I told Ballan I'll have them shot. All FSA personnel shall be armed from this moment, and no one will return home. We'll sleep on floors and sofas, all of us.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Teo, adrenaline obvious in his voice. The situation was intense. Any young agent would feel both fear and excitement. And older agents might wonder why they hadn't brought forward their retirement.

  “I do not discount the possibility of a genuine coup plot against the Grand Council,” Ibrahim continued. “But given the OID's behaviour, I have no choice but to treat such claims with great suspicion. I'm seeing the systematic elimination by arrest or assassination of individuals potentially embarrassing to the cause of 2389 and the constitutional amendments. The FSA will regard these actions as illegal until proven otherwise.”

  “Sir, begging your pardon,” came Hando's voice on uplink, broadcast through the car, “but spec ops are suspended, CSA SWAT is suspended, and something like half the serving combat GIs in Tanusha are in detention. We've lost most of our shooters, while OID has brought in combat teams from 2389-friendly worlds, we're guessing at least a thousand individuals from what we've seen, plus A-12s, we're seeing recon and combat drones, all operating under the authorisation of the President of Callay. We can regard them as illegal all we like, what can we actually do about it?”

  “Answering that question is our next step,” said Ibrahim, as Teo steered the car onto the offramp, tunnel lights flashing by. “Let's finish this step first.

  “Mr Hando, I would like our legal experts to investigate the possibility of approaching the High Court. And I would like a secure communication arranged with Director Chandrasekar of the CSA ASAP.”

  “Sir, we've already heard from Chandi, or from his assistant…he said President Singh has ordered him directly to have no contact with the FSA. He intends to obey the order.”

  Ibrahim recalled Agent Ruben's jokes about Chandrasekar's perfect hair. The humour had not been superficial; Ruben had been making fun of precisely this—the instincts of a man for whom appearances mattered sometimes more than substance, and who thus obeyed the chain of command above his institution's constitutional requirement to serve and protect all the people of Callay. A good Director should know that they were not always the same thing.

  “Sir, Council Chair Li is making his announcement.”

  Li Shifu appeared on car displays, projected before the windows. Grey-streaked, a serious, pale-faced man, though capable of kindly expression.

  “This morning at 1:16am,” he said to the array of waiting reporters and cameras, hands upon his podium, “I received confirmation of previous disturbing reports, that senior members of the Federal Security Agency's Special Operations Group were preparing the final stages of an armed coup against the Federation Grand Council. Acting upon advice from senior intelligence and military personnel, I have ordered preventative security action to eliminate the threat, and to protect the security and integrity of the people's representative body of the entire Federation.”

  A slight pause, perhaps caused by a dry mouth or a racing heart. Ibrahim could hear the reporters shuffling, scribbling, straining to hear each syllable, desperate for question time that they would surely not be granted.

  “Central in these intelligence reports was the discovery of a secret base of combat GIs, down in the Maldari Islands, thirteen thousand kilometers from Tanusha. These reports conclusively established that this group of several hundred GIs was being secretly armed and equipped to assist in the coup. Such a force of GIs would have proven formidable for even the brave Tanushan security forces. To eliminate this danger, at slightly after 2am this morning, I ordered the elimination of this base by means of an orbital artillery strike from a Fleet warship. Surveillance indicates there were no survivors.”

  The gasp from Togales in the backseat was clearly audible above the thrum of tires on tarmac. Then the faint squeal that might be tears. Ibrahim stared stony-faced at the approaching guard post between Grand Council and CSA HQ.

  “That little cunt Ballan!” Hando seethed over the rest of Chairman Li's announcement. “Secret base my ass, he put them there! He set the whole thing up, then he uses them as proof of a coup and kills them all!”

  “And so the game changes again,” Ibrahim said quietly, as the car pulled to a stop before the security gate. “A ‘secret’ base of League GIs will convince many of the public that the coup threat was real.”

  “Yeah, but we know what Ballan did. We could leak it.”

  “The FSA does not play petty games through the media,” Ibrahim said firmly. The security search heading back the other way to HQ was nowhere near as thorough, just a brief skim. “We would cheapen our image, and thus our authority to our detriment, and we would also harm any genuine public dissidents, providing their enemies with ammunition to discredit them as FSA stooges. We may consider the use of that information later, but not now.”

  “And,” came the cool consideration of Chief Shin, “the coup may still be very real. Those accused of it certainly have motive, those now withholding the evidence of it have solid reason for doing so if they believe Director Ibrahim somehow involved, and if it were being planned, two hundred battle-hardened combat GIs based in a remote location would be the logical way to do it. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and I would counsel that we do not treat it as such.”

  “Quite so, Mr Shin. However, OID's refusal to share evidence with the FSA is a procedural breach, perhaps explainable in extraordinary circumstances, but a breach nonetheless. I am confident that of our two institutions, my actions are the more procedurally correct.”

  Going head to head against the Grand Council itself, they'd need to be.

  “The Owl” was an old-fashioned bar on Ramprakash Road that never closed. Sinta had loved coming to places like this in her teenage theatre days, when she'd still harboured some dreams of stage and lights. Her younger sister Lakshmi continued to live in and out of places like this, up and down the Big R, a solid two kilometers of theatres, concert halls, and other stages, plus all the diners, bars, and fancy restaurants that catered to audiences, performers, and stagehands at all hours, dawn to dusk and round again. But this very early morning, the Big R's lights still ablaze before the sun, she was not here to meet Lakshmi and friends after an encore performance. This morning, she was looking for someone else.

  She walked the bar, looking at booths by the windows. Only one in three were occupied. Some dancing girls with painted hands and faces under off-duty clothes, sharing coffee and complaining about their choreography.
A couple of drunk young men in tuxedos, all that remained of a wedding party, sprawled and giggling into their coffees as they reminisced about events just hours old. A man alone, slumped in a dark corner, shades on, face twitching as the VR kicked in.

  Around the bar corner, beneath signed photographs on the wall of famous performers, sat another man, watching the booth's holo. News, images of recent events, Chairman Li speaking at the podium, scrums of journalists, other important people making announcements. An Indian man, but with a gold ring on the fourth finger, like a Christian wedding ring.

  Sinta slipped into the seat opposite, with an easy smile and clasp of the hand, like she was meeting an old friend. “Sinta,” she introduced herself quietly. “We can talk. This place is clean, I scoped it just a week ago tailing someone.”

  The man deactivated the holo, giving her a clear look at him. The beard was probably fake, but good work. Solidly built with thick arms, he worked out, was possibly a fighter. An old scar on one cheek.

  “How the hell did you find me?” he asked. Clearly he was surprised, and unhappy. She could see the tension, the sideways dart of the eyes.

  “I'm a detective,” she said. “I detect. I know you've something to tell me.”

  “I've something to tell someone,” the man replied edgily.

  “You don't have the luxury of waiting any longer. Half your contacts have gone to ground, there's at least two I think the Feds have grabbed…”

  “They're dead.” Sinta stared at him. “If we're talking about the same two. I found one in his apartment two hours ago, looked like a VR assistant overdose. I was supposed to meet him.”

  “Ravi Das sent you from the League?” He nodded. “To meet Idi Aba?”

  “Him too. Only I get here, find everyone dead or missing. And now you've come to me, and we're probably going to die too.”

  “I wasn't tailed,” said Sinta.