Backshot (6 page)

Paragussa laughed. “Yes, with the proper mixture of ammonium nitrate, explosives, fusing. But to make a bomb of any significance,” he held out his hands, “you’d need literally thousands and thousands of kilos of fertilizer and then how’d you transport something so huge to its target, and who’d resort to such a thing given the kinds of weapons we have today?” He shook his head. “No, we’re not building a bomb out there.” He laughed again.

“So what are you doing?”

“I have a theory.” Paragussa held up the chip and smiled.

“All right, Ronald, I’ll triple the figure if you can find out for me. But before I’ll give one more decicredit, you give me something, right now.”

“Very well,” Paragussa leaned across the table and whispered, “I believe we’re developing a fungoid strain that, once released, will have a devastating effect on all varieties of food crops, wipe them out.” He leaned back, a smug expression on his face. “You see,” he continued, “people can fight armies, resist invasions, win wars—but how do you fight starvation?”

“With food!” Gustafferson snapped back, sitting up straight in his chair. “With food! Destroy a society’s food production and the power that can feed the people rules the world! So that’s what Lavager is up to. Mohammed’s uncircumcised prick!” He slapped the table and heads turned in their direction. His eyes flicked around, and he leaned forward to whisper, “It’s brilliant! Hell, Atlas is already a breadbasket. If Lavager could destroy crop production on other worlds, they’d naturally turn to Atlas for relief. The next thing you know, he’s dictating their foreign policy, like the old Arab oil sheiks did to the North Americans back in the twenty-first century. And once they find out what’s going on, what are they going to do?

Bomb Atlas? Destroy their source of food? Ronald,” Gustafferson snapped his fingers, “I need confirmation. Can you get that for me? If you can, why GNN will gladly quadruple the figure on that chip.”

“I think so.”

“Good! How long will it take?”

“Umm, a week, maybe ten days? I’ll have to do some discreet snooping of my own.”

“We’ll meet back here in a week, then. Excuse me now, Ronald, I have a prelim to file.” Gustafferson went to the nearest communications terminal, chuckling to himself about the irony of the name of the Spondu facility, and placed the chip he’d used to surreptitiously record his conversation with Paragussa into the transmit slot. He punched in a number at the Confederation embassy. Now his controller would know what was up. Gustafferson almost laughed out loud. He’d scored two huge scoops in less than fifteen minutes, the vital intelligence the CIO needed, and a story that once it broke would earn him a Hillary, the most prestigious award an investigative reporter could hope for. Outside it was dark and raining slightly. Gustafferson hunched his shoulders against the drizzle. A damp wind sighed between the buildings. The street was empty and dimly lit. Off in the near distance the bright lights of the port glowed warmly. He started walking in that direction.

His badly beaten body was found in an alley several days later. Dr. Ronald Paragussa never got his money. He met with a fatal accident at the facility called the “Cabbage Patch,” something to do with breathing too much ammonia.

Somebody had just made a serious mistake.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Office of the President of the Confederation of Human Worlds, Fargo, Earth

“I always get sick to my stomach when we meet with those bastards,” Madam President Chang-Sturdevant complained to her Minister of War, who had heard it before.

“I presume you’re referring to our illustrious CIO director and his deputy? Steel yourself, Madam,”

Marcus Berentus said, grinning. “Actually, I knew Adams’s parents. Very decent people, I must say. Old money, blue blood. Did I ever tell you I once dated his younger sister? I was in pilot training at the time and our base was near their summer home on—”

“Well, Marcus,” Chang-Sturdevant interrupted him, “I’ve never trusted those two. Never. Thirty years ago, when I was on the intelligence oversight committee, they ran the CIO a lot differently. I should have removed Adams when I came into office. Not only is his intelligence faulty—how come they never knew what was going on on Kingdom, with this—what was his name?”

“De Tomas, Madam—”

“Dominic de Tomas, thank you. But I don’t trust them because they have their own agenda, Marcus. Take it from someone who’s spent her whole life in politics, private agendas lead to disaster.”

“I may not have been in politics my entire life, Suelee,” Berentus said softly, “but my time in the army taught me about private agendas.”

Cynthia Chang-Sturdevant stopped with her hand halfway to her head and stared at him for a moment. As long as they’d known each other, and as close and trusted an advisor as Berentus was, this was the first time he’d ever called her by the name used by her family and closest friends. She shook herself, and ran her hand along the single, thick lock of gray hair that lay at the center of her coiffure. That single gray lock had started a fashion craze among well-to-do ladies since Chang-Sturdevant had been in office.

“Private agendas are what’s given me this gray hair, Marcus,” she said with no acknowledgment of the slight intimacy of his use of her first name. She brushed her hair into place and adjusted her blouse. Despite her years, she was still a very handsome woman. And somewhat younger than Marcus. “Adams asked for a private interview with me, Marcus, but I’m not that stupid. I invited you, the Chairman of the Combined Chiefs, and the Attorney General. I’m not going into the snake pit without my charmers.”

“Umm. The AG will ensure a lively discussion; he despises the CIO people.” Hugyens Long, known as “Chief,” because of his long years as a policeman, was also known for his directness and acerbity and the fact that even though he was Attorney General for the Confederation of Human Worlds, he was not a lawyer. Chang-Sturdevant considered Long one of her wisest appointments, and along with Berentus, he was one of her most trusted advisers.

“Well, let’s go, Marcus.”

“Yes, Madam.”

They headed for the door leading from Chang-Sturdevant’s private office to the conference room where her cabinet usually met. Just before the door, she stopped and turned to Berentus. “Marcus, about Adams’s sister. What ever came of your date with her?”

“Nothing. I took her home well before the witching hour. Never saw her again. I shipped out the following week. I understand she married well, as all the Adamses did. But her parents were very decent to me.”

“Umpf. Well, let’s hear what J. Murchison Adams and Palmer Quincy Lowell have to tell us that’s so damned important. I tell you this, Marcus, when blood stains their hands it’s red, not blue.”

Chang-Sturdevant’s parents had run a laundry. The four men stood as the President entered the conference chamber. “Jay! Palmer!” Chang-Sturdevant greeted the CIO director and his deputy warmly, as if they were friends and welcome guests. Chang-Sturdevant was a consummate politician, after all. “Chief,” she nodded respectfully at Hugyens Long. “Admiral Porter,” she addressed the recently elevated Chairman of the Combined Chiefs, who stood at attention until she indicated everyone should be seated.

“Seems to me, Madam President,” Long said, easing his bulk into his chair, “that every goddamned time I come down here to see you it snows. Remember the last time? I came here with Nast about the Havanagas operation. Some sonofabitch tried to kill us downstairs in the plaza. It snowed so hard that day that—”

“Yaass,” J. Murchison Adams drawled, casting a disparaging glance at Long. “We actually had to take underground transport to get here, Madam President. I’d have asked for a postponement except that what we have to tell you is just too important to be delayed by the weather.”

“They’re saying it’s the worst storm in a century,” Admiral Porter said. “I had to call a starship to get over here.” Long grinned but nobody else seemed to have caught the joke.

“Well, let’s get down to business, gentlemen. I don’t want to sit around here until the snow melts.”

Chang-Sturdevant indicated Adams should proceed. An image of Atlas as seen from orbit flashed onto the screens in the consoles in front of each participant. Palmer Quincy Lowell explained the background of events on Atlas, emphasizing its strategic position along the spacelanes that connected many different worlds to the Confederation. He explained who Lavager was, what he had done, how under his influence the rival nations on Atlas had formed a League of Nations.

“Someone assassinated his wife?” Berentus interjected.

“Yes, very unfortunate accident. The assassin was after Lavager.” Adams shrugged; to him, Annie Lavager’s death was inconsequential. Long grimaced.

“That daughter, she’s his only child?” Chang-Sturdevant asked. Candace Lavager’s image floated on the screens. “Beautiful child,” she murmured. “So aside from conquering worlds, he’s raising this daughter on his own. I wouldn’t think he’d have time for conquests with a teenage girl on his hands.”

“Who tried to kill him?” Long asked.

“Well, there are many disaffected groups on Atlas,” Lowell answered, plainly annoyed by these questions, which he considered off the point. “Jorge Lavager is,” he rushed on, “by all accounts, an intelligent, capable, and ruthless opponent. One of our best analysts even knows him,” he concluded.

“Then why isn’t he here with us, if this guy, Lavager, is so dangerous?” Chang-Sturdevant asked.

“She, Madam,” Adams interjected. “What we have to discuss is, ah, a bit above her level, as good as she is. Um, she is an analyst, Madam President,” he concluded, as if that explained everything.

“Proceed, then.”

A satellite image of Spondu and the surrounding area flashed onto the screens, then shifted to a complex a few kilometers from the town.

“This is a former weapons lab Lavager contends he’s converted into an agricultural research laboratory. Agricultural research may in fact be going on in what they so quaintly call the ‘Cabbage Patch,’ but we believe it’s a cover for the real purpose, which is the development of a superweapon that will give Lavager complete control on Atlas and put him in a position to interfere with the economies of the different member worlds in his quadrant of Human Space.”

“ ‘Today Germany, tomorrow the world’?” Long interjected.

“What?”

“Nothing.” Long sank back into his chair, a sour expression on his face.

“It is very important, Madam President,” Adams said, “that the nation-states of Atlas not be unified under the leadership of this man. It is bad enough for the people of Atlas that they have differences of their own that have led to several wars, but if they are unified under the leadership of a man like Lavager, we see a prominent threat to other worlds of the Confederation and that cannot be permitted. Of course,” he added quickly, “what happens among the nation-states of Atlas is not our concern.”

“What evidence do you have that Lavager intends to extend his reach?” Berentus asked.

“His public statements, for one. You may read them on your consoles, but I would like to play only one of them for you now.” Lavager’s image flashed onto the consoles and his strong voice filled the room.

“A people must have room to expand. If we are to be a great people we must not confine ourselves to our cabbage patches and think that by doing so we are preparing this world for our children and their children. No. We must move outward, expand our horizons to other worlds yet unconquered and assure the continued propagation of our people for untold generations into the future.”

“The trailer on this speech says it was given before the Atlean Thirtieth Congress on Land Reform,”

Long said. “How do you get some kind of interplanetary invasion out of something like that?”

“Jay?” Chang-Sturdevant asked.

“We believe that is just what he’s announcing, a master plan for conquest,” Adams answered tartly.

“Dictators, swept up in the power of their own myths, have done that before. Look at Hitler, who laid out his plans in
Mein Kampf
years before he came to power.” He shot a disparaging glance at Long as he spoke. “Lavager is preparing the Atlean League of Nations for invasion, once he’s totally subjected them to his control. The term ‘Cabbage Patch’ is a cynical joke, Madam President, a reference to the weapon Lavager is developing at that facility.”

“I think you’re stretching it a bit, old boy,” Admiral Porter spoke for the first time. Adams did not bother to respond to Admiral Porter’s remark, but rushed on. “Here is a list of the staff at the Cabbage Patch. Note the explosives and delivery systems specialists on the list.”

“But there are also quite a few agronomists there too, Jay,” Chang-Sturdevant objected.

“That is part of the cover,” Adams responded. “We’ve had all those scientists tailed, and the agronomy specialists spend most of their time on the golf links.”

“So what do you recommend?”

Adams didn’t answer immediately but after a short pause, “Neutralize Lavager,” he answered.

“You mean kill him?” Long blurted, incredulous.

“I mean remove him, Mr. Attorney General.”

“No, you mean assassinate him,” Long shot back.

“I mean eliminate him as a threat to the Confederation.”

“You mean kill the poor bastard. Come out and say it, Adams,” Long thundered. “You’re not with the damned Diplomatic Service anymore, you’re in the dirty tricks business. Tell us what you mean in plain language.”

“You mean assassinate him, don’t you, Jay?” Chang-Sturdevant inquired gently.

“Yes, ma’am,” Adams answered at last.

“Hugyens?” Chang-Sturdevant turned to Long. Long blew out his cheeks and leaned forward. “If he has to be ‘removed,’ then why not let one of those supposed disaffected groups on Atlas do it for us? They’ve tried before—that’s how his wife was killed.”

He gave Adams a look that suggested he thought the CIO might have been involved. Adams sniffed, “They are not reliable. Yes, they’ve tried before and, as the attorney General pointed out, look what happened when one did try to kill Lavager. Our assets are much more efficient, I assure you. And they will not talk.”

“I suppose it wouldn’t have upset anybody out at Hunter if they had gotten Lavager’s whole family, as long as they got him, eh, Adams?” Admiral Porter said.

“Surely, Admiral, you as a military man understand the unfortunate incidence of collateral damage in certain operations,” the DCIO replied impatiently. He saw where this meeting was going and regretted the presence of the other councillors. He’d been very disappointed when he learned others besides the President would be in attendance.

Long leaned back. “Sanctioned assassinations have been done, ma’am. It’s not illegal if it’s done for the right reasons. Which, of course, is what the DCIO is saying, to protect the lives and interests of member worlds. But it can only be done via presidential authority. And if you’re asking for my advice,
no!
” He slammed a fist down on the table, making the image on his console jump crazily. “The DCIO hasn’t presented convincing evidence for an assassination operation against Lavager and if you agree to this, Madam President, you’ll be guilty of ordering a murder.”

“Mr. Long!” Berentus exclaimed.

“That’s my opinion, Madam President, and I don’t give a damn who knows it! I believe in the due process of the law.” Long shrugged but glared ominously at Adams and Lowell.

“Oh, yeah?” Lowell responded, his face reddening, “I suppose that’s what you mean, ‘due process,’

when you ship some poor bastard off to Darkside without a trial? Your hands are just as dirty as ours, Long.”

“Goddamnit, that’s different!” Long shouted back.

“Gentlemen! Gentlemen!” Chang-Sturdevant held up her hands. “Thank you, both of you, you’ve finally come straight to the point. Gentlemen,” she nodded at the Director of the CIO and his deputy, “the answer is ‘no.’ Come back when you have more concrete evidence than you’ve presented this morning. Admiral Porter? Confer with the service chiefs and prepare a plan for a military intervention on Atlas. Be prepared to present it when DCIO comes back here with more evidence. We very well may have to ‘neutralize’ Lavager, but as I see it now we’ll do it the old-fashioned way—legally and in full public view.” She stood up, indicating the meeting was at an end.

“Madam, may I just mention two other things?” Adams asked as he rose to his feet. “One, weapons research isn’t something new on Atlas. A few years ago one of the other nation-states, a South Solanum, developed a laser rifle for military use.”