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# Chapter 48

"Don't even try feeding me that crap, Kevin," hissed the President of the Republic of Haven. Eloise Pritchart leaned so far forward in her chair that she was almost standing in a half-crouch. The palms of hands were planted flat on the desk, supporting much of her weight. Her eyes were slitted, her face pale with anger.

"You planned this from the very start! Don't try telling me that Cachat just—what did you call it?—'accidentally stumbled into an unforeseen situation.' Bullshit!"

Kevin Usher tried to snort derisively. The sound was . . . feeble.

"C'mon, Eloise! You're an experienced op yourself. You know damn good and well nobody could have 'planned' something like—"

"Cut it out, damn you!" Now, Pritchart was fully on her feet, leaning still farther over the desk. "I know you didn't 'plan' it that way. So what? I also know that you told Cachat from the get-go to see what he could stir up on Erewhon—and then run with it."

She glanced angrily at Ginny Usher, who was seated on a chair next to her husband. "That's why you wanted Cachat. All that stuff about Ginny was a smokescreen. Cachat is your gunslinger—your damn shoot-from-hip specialist. I know his record, Kevin! That lunatic can and will improvise anything on his feet. This stunt he pulled on Erewhon was even hairier than what he did in La Martine!"

Her eyes fell on the now-empty display screen on her desk, where she'd spent several hours studying the report Virginia Usher had brought back from Erewhon the day before. "Hairy?" she demanded. "Say better—'furry,' as in grizzly bear. For God's sake, he deliberately set up the killing of an entire unit of the Queen's Own Regiment!"

"That's not true!" burst out Ginny.

Pritchart glared at her, but Ginny stood her ground. Sat up straight, at least.

"Well, it isn't," she insisted. "The attack was launched by Templeton and his fanatics. Victor had nothing to do with it."

Pritchart's snort wasn't feeble in the least. "Oh, splendid. But he knew about it, before it happened. Didn't he? He could have warned them—in which case dozens of people wouldn't have been slaughtered, half of them completely innocent civilians."

Ginny's expression was mulish, but she said nothing. Eloise continued her tirade.

"Not to mention the possible murder of a member of the Star Kingdom's royal house—whom he left right smack in the middle of a gunfight! Do you—either of you—have any idea what an unholy mess you'd have landed me in if it ever became known to the Manticorans that a Havenite agent . . . "

Her words trailed off, ending in a groan. She slumped back into her chair.

"Oh, I forgot that, didn't I? The Manticorans do know about it. Cachat—that maniac!—dragged the princess herself into the scheme afterward."

"He didn't drag her," Ginny muttered. "It'd be better to say, she jumped at the chance."

Before Pritchart could respond, the fourth person in the room cleared his throat and said: "You're really not being fair, Ms. President."

She swiveled her head and stared at Wilhelm Trajan, the director of the Federal Intelligence System. Her lips quirked into a half-grimace.

"Et tu, Wilhelm? I'd think you—of all people—would be even more pissed than I am. Among other things, this whole shaggy operation was a complete slap in the face to you."

Trajan shifted uncomfortably in his chair, his shoulders moving in a little shrug. "Yes. On the other hand, who's to say it wasn't a deserved one?" He gave Usher, seated across from him in the President's office, a none-too-friendly glance. "I can't say I appreciate it personally, of course. But the truth is—"

He planted his hands on his knees and leaned forward. "Madam President, let's start from what is in fact the key point. However he did it, Victor Cachat seems to have laid the basis—helped it along, anyway—for a break between Erewhon and Manticore. And, possibly, the beginning of an alliance between them and us."

He paused, cocking his head, waiting to see if she chose to dispute the point. Pritchart's expression was sour, but . . . she said nothing.

"Right," Trajan continued. "And I'd point out that, if push comes to shove, I'm a lot more impressed by the possibly tens of thousands of Republican soldiers' lives which may be saved as a result of what he did, than I am with the death of some Erewhonese civilians and some Manticoran soldiers. With whom, by the way, we are still officially at war. Sorry, I know that's ruthless, but it's a cold universe."

Pritchart's face was very sour. But, still, she said nothing.

"Right," repeated the FIS Director. "So I think that before we climb all over Cachat, we at least need to give the devil his due."

" 'Devil's' the word, too," hissed Eloise. "Or demon."

Trajan smiled thinly. "Well . . . what's that old saying? 'He's a bastard, sure—but he's our bastard.' Face it, Ms. President. Cachat is brilliant at this kind of thing. The real problem we've got here—the reason, being blunt, that he had to use what you call 'furry tactics'—is because FIS is still such a shuffling mess. If I'd been able to get this outfit turned around fast enough . . . if we hadn't had such an incompetent FIS staff on Erewhon . . ."

The FIS Director's face sagged wearily, and he lapsed from his usual formality. "Look, Eloise, face it. I'm not really cut out for this. You know—I know—Kevin knows—that Kevin would be ten times better at it. And, on the flip side, if we didn't face such a delicate political situation, I'd do a lot better as the head of the police force. I'm just not cut out for this work. I'm not incompetent, and I'm honest. But, other than that . . ."

He shrugged. "I don't have what it takes to give a foreign intelligence service the kind of panache and self-confidence it needs. It's as simple as that. And with so many of the real experts from the old Saint-Just regime now tossed out, that means I'm left with a cadre that's prone to sluggishness and excessive caution. And I just can't turn it around."

Eloise rubbed her face, which, in that moment, looked as tired as Trajan's. "Wilhelm, I can't afford to lose Kevin as the head of the FIS. Whatever else, I've got to make sure there aren't any more coup d'etats. And I don't know anyone except him who'd really do any better than you running the FIS."

Trajan smiled crookedly. "Of course you do. It ought to be blindingly obvious by now."

She frowned with puzzlement, for a moment. Then, when his meaning penetrated, gasped. Partly with shock, partly from outrage.

"You can't be serious! Cachat?"

Trajan's smile remained on his face. And his gaze remained level. "Yes, Eloise. The 'demon' himself. Again—start with the key point. He's loyal. Whatever else about him irritates you, I know you don't have any doubts about that. And he is a wizard at this work."

"He's a maniac!"

Ginny shot to her feet. "He is not!" Then, as if realizing who she was talking to, she flushed a little. "Okay, maybe a little. But he's not a 'maniac.' That just isn't fair." She plopped back into her chair. "It isn't," she insisted.

"I'm not proposing to replace me with Cachat immediately, Madam President," Trajan said softly. "I agree with Ms. Usher that he's not a 'maniac,' but . . . ah . . . there's no question he could use some . . . ah . . ."

"Civilization?" Eloise demanded sarcastically. "Massive anti-testosterone treatments?"

Hearing a suspicious choking sound from Usher, she moved her eyes to him. "What are you trying not to laugh about?"

Usher waved a large hand. "Ah, never mind. Someday, after you've calmed down, Ginny can fill you in on some of the more private details of Cachat's, ah, operation on Erewhon."

Pritchart rolled her eyes. "Oh, marvelous. I had a hunch there was more to that renegade Solarian Marine officer than the reports said."

"She's not a renegade," Ginny growled.

Kevin sat up, discarding any traces of his previous—and very atypical—abashment. "No, she isn't. And cut the crap yourself, Eloise. You know the reality of the Solarian League. The woman's from Ndebele, for Pete's sake. Even if she were a 'renegade' from the SLN, so what? More power to her."

Pritchart rubbed her face again. "All right, all right," she grumbled. "Forget I said it. So Cachat's finally got a girlfriend, huh? Yes, yes—I'm sure she's a paragon of virtue."

Finally, the President's underlying sense of humor surfaced. Her shoulders rippled with a little laugh. "Figures, though. Who else but an Mfecane superwoman wouldn't be intimidated by the maniac? Ah, sorry, Ginny. 'Excessively irrepressible agent of, God help us, the Republic of Haven.' How's that?"

Ginny chuckled. "I can live with that."

Eloise studied Trajan. "Are you really serious about this? And, if you are, how do you propose to train him properly? I warn you, there is no way—no way, Wilhelm—that I'd agree to promoting Cachat to that extent until I'm satisfied he's under some kind of control. Self-control or otherwise."

Trajan looked at Usher, his eyes not quite hard, but . . . close.

After a moment, Kevin nodded. "I'll give him up, Wilhelm. And no tricks. I'll make clear to him you're his boss from now on."

"Good enough." Trajan looked back at Eloise. "This doesn't have to be done all that quickly, Madam President. For the moment, I think what's probably needed most is to give Cachat a major and important assignment. An official one. I'll go out there myself, as soon as possible, to spend some time with him. But let's give the young man a chance—for once—to show what he can do when he isn't being forced to circumvent authority at the same time. He'll be the authority."

Eloise frowned. "Go out there yourself? What 'there' are you talking—oh."

Her eyes widened. Then, a cool smile came to her face. "Hm. Hm. You know, I think I like that idea. Victor Cachat, chief of station on . . . Erewhon? Or Torch?"

"Both, I think," replied Wilhelm. He cocked his head at Usher, soliciting his opinion.

Kevin nodded. "Yes, both. We'd be crazy—I'm just being blunt, Eloise—to yank him out of Erewhon now. From everything I can tell, he's got an inside track with the Erewhonese. If we yanked him, that would certainly send them exactly the wrong message."

"True," agreed Eloise. "But why add Torch to the mix?"

Ginny started to say something, but choked off the words. Pritchart glanced at her. "Should I take it that he'd be visiting Torch every chance he got anyway?"

Ginny nodded. Pritchart's smile remained cool, but spread a little. "Not a casual girlfriend then, I gather. Well . . . who knows? That might help things, too."

"Besides," Kevin interjected, "Victor's got the inside track with the Torches also. If you send anybody else out there, he'll just—ah—"

"Run rings around them?" Eloise jibed. "Leave them lying flat on their back in a cloud of dust?"

"Something like that."

The President of the Republic of Haven moved her eyes to a blank spot on the far wall, which she examined for a minute or so. Then, leaning forward, she planted her hands on the desk again and spread her fingers.

"All right, we'll do it. And since we need to send someone official to attend the coronation of the new Queen of Torch in a few weeks—Kevin, you're it. I'll let you break the news to your protégé that he's now an Official Maniac. Which means if he pulls a stunt like this again, I'll flay him alive."

Usher nodded, looking as innocent as a lamb.

"You're not fooling me, Kevin," growled Pritchart. "Your lamb imitation wouldn't fool Little Red Riding Hood."

But she was laughing softly when she said it. And then added: "I'd love to be there myself, actually. Just to watch you and Ginny having to act like a respectable married couple, for a change."

It was Ginny's turn to look innocent. She managed it about as well as Kevin. "You mean I can't wear that sari I bought on The Wages of Sin, the day before I left?"

* * *

As they got up to leave, Pritchart said: "You stay behind, Kevin."

Once Ginny and Trajan had left the room, Pritchart gestured at the display screen. "I didn't see any reason to bring this up in front of Wilhelm, since I'm sure he missed it. There's still a loose end here, Kevin. A big one."

"Stein's killing?" Usher shrugged. "Yeah, sure. But I'm also sure it's being taken care of."

The President of Haven rolled her eyes. "Oh, wonderful. Cachat's Hairy Ride of Death and Destruction is about to get underway again."

Usher shook his head. "It won't be Victor's operation. I'm sure of that."

"Who's, then?"

"How am I supposed to know?" complained Kevin. "I'm umpteen light-years away! But it won't be Victor. No reason for it to be, really."

Eloise stared at the empty screen, bringing up in her mind various tantalizing bits and scraps of the reports. Reports which had been, she was quite certain, carefully edited in some respects.

But there was no great anger in the thought. She was experienced in black ops herself, and knew perfectly well that Victor Cachat had been careful to provide her with "plausible deniability." Now that her fury had faded, Eloise was willing to admit—to herself alone—that Trajan had been right. Cachat was brilliant at this kind of work. If he could be brought under some kind of control . . .

She leaned back in her chair, mollified at the thought—the possibility, at least—that in a few years Haven might have an excellent foreign intelligence service again. One with a different ethos than Saint-Just's, but every bit as capable. Not even in her angriest moments did Eloise think Cachat was cut from the same cloth as Saint-Just. Every bit as ruthless, yes. But she didn't misunderstand the moral code that lay beneath that ruthlessness. That was as different from Saint Just's as a grizzly bear from a cobra.

"I guess I can live with 'furry,' " she said, half-smiling. "So what's your guess, Kevin?"

"The girlfriend," he said promptly.

Eloise had come to the same tentative conclusion herself. Again, she rolled her eyes. "Too much to ask, I suppose, that Victor Cachat would get the hots for a prim and proper debutante."

* * *

The impulse came as a surprise, but Rozsak wasn't in the habit of arguing with himself. He too, he realized, had come a bit under the spell of a teenaged queen-about-to-be. So, he turned toward Berry just at the moment when he estimated Thandi would strike.

One of her Amazons, rather. Thandi herself was standing next to Cassetti, as he addressed the crowd gathered in the closest thing Torch's main city had to a central square, with Rozsak and Berry a meter or so away on Cassetti's other side.

There was no one behind Cassetti now, who might get hit by a dart passing through his body. Rozsak had no idea how Thandi had managed that. He suspected Anton Zilwicki's hand was involved, somehow—Berry's father was also standing on the administration center's terrace. Which, if so, underscored Watanapongse's warning that the whole operation was no longer "covert" to at least some people outside their own ranks.

No one standing behind Cassetti . . . It would happen now. Rozsak wouldn't have bothered with that curlicue, but he was more ruthless than Palane.

The Solarian captain turned to face Berry, his back toward Cassetti, shielding the girl, as Thandi reached out and touched the lieutenant governor on the upper arm.

"So, Ms. Zilwicki," Rozsak said, and smiled, even as he felt a shiver of respect for Palane. He knew what she was doing . . . even though Cassetti himself didn't. "When should I start calling you . . . what did you decide upon, anyway, for a suitable cognomen?"

Her smile was almost a grin. "We're still arguing about it. It doesn't look as if I'll be able to get away with 'Your Modesty,' so now I'm angling for—"

Rozsak heard the pulse rifle dart's impact. From the solid WHAP! of it, a good center impact shot. He had Berry by the shoulders and was pulling her down to the terrace a split-second later. It was not quite a "tackle," but . . . close.

Only then did he turn his head and actually look at the lieutenant governor. Not that he'd really needed the confirmation.

The marksman had hit the sniper's triangle dead center, and the hyper-velocity dart had smashed squarely into the man's spinal column on its way through him. The transfer of kinetic energy had been, quite literally, explosive, blasting a twenty-centimeter chunk of Cassetti's neck and shoulders into a finely divided spray of blood, tissue, and pulverized bone even as it flung the instantly dead body back and out of Palane's iron-fingered grip.

No one, Rozsak knew—not even the newsies, some of them standing less than fifty meters away—would ever realize just what Palane had done. They might remark on the freak coincidence which had led the major to tap the lieutenant governor on the arm, undoubtedly to remind him of something, in the very instant before the shot was fired. But none of them would realize that her touching him had been the signal to the person behind that pulser dart. That she had deliberately stood less than a meter from him, holding him motionless to guarantee her chosen shooter a perfect shot and eliminate the possibility that a moving target might change her carefully planned trajectory and put someone else in the line of fire.

Which was a pity, in many ways, he reflected. Because since no one would ever guess, none of them would appreciate the steel-nerved courage—and total confidence in her chosen marksman—required for someone to do what she had just done.

Even as the thought flashed through his mind and the corpse catapulted away, Palane dove to the floor of the terrace herself. Her com was in her hand before she landed, already barking out orders.

Rozsak's eyes ranged the terrace. Everybody was now on the floor, shielded by the terrace's low retaining wall, except for one particularly determined holorecorder crew. His eyes met the hard gaze of Anton Zilwicki.

Rozsak didn't have any trouble at all interpreting that gaze. That's it, Rozsak. Don't even THINK about taking it any further.

The Solarian Captain gave Zilwicki a minute little nod. Then, a second later, found himself matching gazes with Jeremy X. The head of the Ballroom was on the terrace floor not far from Zilwicki, his hand pulser gripped in his hand.

To the holorecorder viewers, it would simply look like the natural reaction of an experienced gunman. But Rozsak didn't misunderstand the meaning of that flat-eyed stare—nor the fact that while Jeremy's weapon wasn't directly pointed at him, it wasn't pointed all that far away, either.

He gave Jeremy the same tiny nod. Yes, yes, yes. That's it. This black op is over.

In truth, he was glad of it himself. As cold-blooded as he was, even Rozsak would have found it difficult to order Palane's murder. But it was all a moot point, anyway. Watanapongse had been correct: Palane was by no means the only person who had figured out the truth behind Stein's killing. Only a lunatic would start a private war with the likes of Anton Zilwicki and Jeremy X—even leaving aside Victor Cachat.

Cachat wasn't there. Rozsak hadn't expected him to be, since the Havenite agent was doing his best to keep his own involvement in the affair as much of a secret as possible.

He was startled to hear Berry speak calmly. He'd expected the girl to be in something of a state of shock. He was even more startled by the half-whispered words themselves. They carried to his ear quite clearly, even under the shouts of the crowd and the cries of alarm rising from the media crews.

"Victor's keeping guard over the former Mesans who decided to stay. Not the settlement—they're safe enough—but the ones who came in to surrender individually. For the moment, they're all being kept in the old barracks."

Half-propped on an elbow, Rozsak looked down at her. The back of Berry's head was resting on the terrace floor, her eyes fixed on him. It was a gaze far more hostile than he'd ever have expected to encounter from the girl.

"Didn't think of that, did you?" she whispered, icily. "The retaliation that angry ex-slaves might visit, after the killing of someone they think is a liberator of sorts."

He hadn't thought of it. Startled, he glanced at Palane, still on the floor barking commands into her com. It was an act, he knew—by now, the Scrags would be dead and the cover-up well under way—but it was a very good one. He had no doubt at all that the media would be fooled. To all appearances, Palane was organizing a manhunt.

"Thandi thought of it, though," Berry whispered. The underlying contempt in her tone was not disguised at all.

And even the girl knows. Rozsak realized in that moment that a teenaged queen-to-be already had what amounted to a staff as good as his own—and probably even more trusting. Odd, really, given the disparate elements it was made of.

He sighed softly. "I'm glad to be done with it," he whispered, trusting in his scrambling equipment to keep the words from being recorded by anyone. Half-protesting: "Damnation, Your Highness, somebody had to pay for Stein."

She said nothing. He forced himself to meet her eyes again. Berry's gaze was no longer hostile so much as . . .

Royal. Imperious, even.

"You and Thandi Palane are quits, Captain Rozsak," she commanded.

* * *

"—got them, kaja. They put up a fight, so there's not much left. Scrags, by the look of the remains. Two of them."

"Don't touch anything," Palane snapped into the com. "We don't have much of a forensic capability, but I want the media to get recordings while the scene of the crime is still undisturbed by investigators."

She rose to her feet, glanced down at Cassetti's corpse, and stalked toward the crowd of reporters.

"It's over," she announced.

"Who was it?" cried out one of them. "Mesan agents?"

"Don't know. I doubt if we ever will. There were two assassins and they put up a fight. The unit who took them out are special commandos, not cops. They didn't leave much, it seems." Thandi shook her head. "You'll be allowed to record whatever there is. The unit commander tells me she thinks they were holdovers from Templeton's gang. Whether they were operating on orders or just trying to get revenge . . . who knows?"

And nobody ever will, Rozsak thought with satisfaction. The Erewhonese, he was quite sure, had already erased any evidence that two Scrags had been captured on the space station. The same two Scrags that Thandi's Amazons had just blown away, after one of the Amazons shot Cassetti. It was a nicely planned, well-executed operation.

Nobody? Well . . . except for the ones who mattered.

"Quits, Captain," Berry repeated.

"Yes. My word on it."

He meant it too. Very, very sincerely. Everybody on the terrace was rising to their feet, holstering whatever weapons they might have drawn. Everybody except Jeremy X, who was still prone on the floor and still had his hand pulser in his grip.

True, it was not pointed at Rozsak. Not exactly. But the Ballroom leader's gaze was pinpointed on the captain. That flat-eyed, empty, killer's stare.

"My word on it," he said again.

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