Regenesis (85 page)

“Here. On the twelfth. Why are they waiting that long?”

“There’s preparation to make. Contacts. People to be felt out…some of them inside Defense. Those still there are working that angle, making contacts as best they can, pulling every string they’ve got—of which I don’t have enough left to matter. I’m getting too old for this, nearly as old as Lao, and she’s dead. We’re in a war, sera. We’re in an outright war for control of the government. Khalid can’t call Council to get a declaration of martial law; he needs eight Councillors, and I, my dear, and now you, are sitting here preventing that from happening, no matter how he threatens us. He can haul in every Councillor left in Novgorod and without us, he won’t have sufficient votes either to get seated or to declare martial law.”

“And if he comes here?”

“There’s a practical limit to what he can order the military at large to do. Individual units, individual arrests, yes, he’s got his people. But he can’t move divisions. Not what it would take to get in here. Some things he doesn’t dare order, because he
isn’t
seated.”

Yet, Ari thought, chilled by the thought. What Khalid would and wouldn’t dare once he had enough power and legitimacy was another matter—but she didn’t say that. DeFranco, an old ally of her predecessor, deserved accommodation in Wing One, too, along with her relatives or staff or whoever they were. “I’m very sorry we’re so tight on space,” she said. “It’s not adequate. But we can settle you up the hill. Close to Mikhail Corain’s family.”

“It will be absolutely adequate,” deFranco said, “if we can all get warm showers and beds that don’t bob up and down. Beds with sheets. That would be wonderful.”

“Come with me,” she said, and gave? orders and personally took them all back up the hill on the bus, giving other orders via Florian and Catlin on com. “We’re going to have visitors,” she said, “the whole Council, eventually, maybe their families and relations. More worrisome, we may have the military making a move on us. Tell Wes to go down to the green barracks. He’s going to be liaison down there for the next few days. Tell ReseuneSec to put the bots on a hair trigger. Tell Tommy—hell, tell Tommy do something about the logistics in Wing One. We can’t put part of these people in luxury and part of them in rooms with scaffolding. They’re Councillors. They need beds, sheets, towels, ID, and a charge tab for the restaurants, everything you can think of.”

Tommy acknowledged. That would happen and she didn’t have to worry about it. She did have to worry about Yanni—Yanni was still in Novgorod risking his neck. So was the rest of the Council. And Amy. And there wasn’t a thing she could do for them—except keep the media down at the airport as informed as she could; so she sent the reporters a message; there would be a news conference at 1800h sharp, and she’d be down there to fill them in on the arrivals from Novgorod and what they’d had to say.

She chose to host the media at the airport. That meant keeping them happy—in all senses. They were an asset. They were also apt, as Catlin put it, to become an issue with the opposition—possibly a target, if certain forces decided they didn’t like the news reports coming out of Reseune. And there were a great many innocent people at risk if that happened. Khalid couldn’t order large units…didn’t dare; that was what deFranco assured her. But the military at large could be lied to. Khalid, with unopposed control of the Bureau, firm control of Intelligence, and sole control of the military information network could tell them anything—if he controlled all the sources of information. And she had one of those sources. She had one and she had to protect it and use it to keep Khalid from shading the truth. The rest of the military
had
to learn what Khalid was doing.

There were storm tunnels under the town. There were, for that matter, defenses on the cliffs, near the precip towers. Khalid had shown what he could do up at Strassenberg. He’d launched that maybe to signal something—but it signaled them, too, to take precautions.

She reached her desk and said, “Base One. Defense of the precip towers. Specifics.”

Base One delivered information. She mined it at deeper and deeper levels and stored the result. She called Catlin in and then called Rafael.

“Review this,” she said. “You and Florian both. Rafael, you too. See what they’ve got, what we’ve got. Tell me how bad it could get.”

She didn’t have people tapped into the military, to know what they had. From orbit—Defense had everything, including warships. They could turn Reseune into a smoking ruin if they wanted to, and nothing could stop it, no shelter withstand it. But deFranco said Khalid didn’t dare…politically speaking. DeFranco believed some people wouldn’t take his orders.

Bet on it? She didn’t dare. Not with all they had at risk.

And finally—pause for breath in a day in which she’d skipped lunch, and now remembered she hadn’t had breakfast—she ordered up a sandwich and a tea, and sat there thinking, and thinking—about Amy, up there in the middle of something Amy didn’t understand and was having to learn fast; and Yanni, trying to use the influence he did have, to keep Khalid from taking the whole board… Khalid was a man who’d use what he had, but, possibly, Khalid’s asset
and
theirs, he was too smart and too cautious to try to use even thing. He’d move what he could rely on. That was Intelligence, maybe isolate special operations, some elements of the Fleet…the latter especially if he could con them.

She didn’t truly understand the inner workings of Defense, or how they made decisions, or who had the ultimate say in the various services. She’d heard the first Ari’s advice. But it was limited, and dated. And current politics mattered inside that Bureau, but she didn’t have good ins into its workings.

Giraud had been upset when she’d gone after Khalid.

Maybe she had, in some way, brought this on. She’d certainly made an enemy that day.

Maybe. Nothing proved Khalid was more of an enemy than he’d ever been, just that Khalid, for some reason, was moving before he had full support inside his own Bureau—that argued he was in a hurry for some reason. Mainly Khalid hadn’t
won
the election. That would have given him a tougher position. And people still defied him. Corain had outright called on elements of Defense to defy him.

Right now, deFranco might be right. She hoped so.

God, she’d done everything she could think to do, and if she hyped up on stayawakes to try to keep thinking, she’d be increasingly crazier, especially after all the deepstudy she’d done on the AK-36 case. It was time to let bodily chemistry do what it had to do for a few hours. It was time to get some rest. If they were lucky, they had a few days before Khalid got really upset or really desperate.

There
was
Hicks, who’d dealt with Defense. She could let him loose, dust him off, reinstate him, give him a chance to be a hero, and hope that resentment didn’t make him a highly irrational personal enemy.

There was Yanni, whom she couldn’t reach. There was deFranco, whom she could. DeFranco—if she knew how to read deFranco—was a resource she could use freely; except it was one without a crosscheck: she either believed deFranco’s assessment wholesale or she didn’t. She could ask department heads like Wendy Peterson and John Edwards, and Ivanov, who’d at least been around as long as Yanni.

But people that really knew what had been going on with Defense, long-term—that was Hicks; and Kyle, who wasn’t on Reseune’s side at the moment.

And…there was Jordan Warrick.

She ought to go to bed. She ought to fall in and go to sleep and stay there pending the next alarm. But the brain was going to stay active.

And she had enough energy left to get up, leave the apartment, and walk across the hall—Catlin and Florian were both on errands, she didn’t even alert Theo or Jory, and it was one of a few times in her life she’d left where she lived without one or the other of them.

She knocked at Justin’s door. And Justin answered it.

“Ari.” Eyes flicked to the hall. The missing escort.

“I need Jordan,” she said. “I need to talk to him. I need what he knows. I need you to go with me. Khalid’s not attacking us yet, but the whole Council’s coming here on the twelfth, deFranco’s just come in for refuge, and there’s Kyle downstairs, who I’m afraid I’ll kill if I try to deal with him. I don’t even know if it will do any good, but it’s what we
can
do, while we’re sitting here being a target. I want to know what Jordan knows. I want his help with the case I handed both of you.”

Grant had showed up, at Justin’s shoulder.

Justin started to say something. And then seemed to change his mind. “Come in,” he said somberly. “I’ll get my coat.”

“You said he’s not speaking to you.”

“You’re likely to get the door opened. I want to be there to give him an alternate target. Where’s Florian and Catlin?”

“On an errand,” she said, and that had echoes, way, way back, to the day her predecessor had died. “I can get your Mark and Gerry to come. It’ll be all right. Your father’s not the danger. I think—I don’t know—possibly—possibly Kyle AK is supposed to come after
me
.”

“God.”

“It’s dead serious, Justin. That’s why I wanted you both on it.”

“And what I read says he’s able to kill, if you want the short summation.” He pulled his coat on. Grant did the same, and Grant took his pocket com and called the downstairs security office, by the sound of it. “Gerry BG,” he said, “Mark. Meet us downstairs.”

She’d been too tired to function. She’d planned to talk to Jordan in the morning. Maybe. If she could talk Justin into it. But now that Justin was in motion, she thought—just do it. Just do it the best way possible, and she went with them, down the hall, down the lift, thinking, How odd, just to walk with somebody, in a safe building. How odd, to trust two people that aren’t staff, that don’t have all safe connections—because Jordan really wasn’t safe.

She did take out her pocket com and call Theo. “If my security asks, I’m with Justin and Grant. I’m going downstairs and over to Wing One. It’s quiet, all’s well, no problems.”

She wasn’t totally surprised when, as they picked up Mark and Gerry, Jory showed up from the lift, out of breath, and added herself to the group; and before they’d reached the security desk at the exit, Florian showed up from the other direction, sweating a little, but perfectly composed.

Then she felt guilty, and touched Florian’s shoulder, and said, “It wasn’t going to be this long or this far.” He was as tired as she was. And it hadn’t been fair.

“Yes, sera,” he said, a little out of breath. And they went on through to Wing One, herself, Florian, Justin, Grant, Mark and Gerry, and Jory, all of them into the dim storm tunnel of Wing One, and into the lift, and up again.

“Let me,” Ari said, and went and pressed the button at Jordan’s door. “Ser. Jordan Warrick.”

There was some delay about it. Then the door opened. Paul was there.

“He says he’s going to take a shower, sera, I’m sorry. Justin—” Seeing Justin and Grant just behind her, and the security, he hesitated.

“He can wait about the shower,” Justin said. “Paul. Now.”

“Come in, sera,” Paul said, and she walked in and all of them walked in. It might not be the best thing to do. It likely wasn’t. But she wasn’t going to tell Florian to stay outside. Ari felt his presence right at her back. And Jory’s. Mark and Gerry were there, the whole lot of them.

They waited. Paul came back again, and this time Jordan walked out, in his bathrobe.

“So?” Jordan said.

“That file I sent you,” Ari said. “I know you’ve got an opinion.”

Jordan drew himself up and folded his arms, staring at her. “This isn’t the way I do consultation. Try tomorrow. Without them.”

“You read the file. You recognized it.”

“I recognize the type.” His voice was edged with anger. But restrained, and he shot a glance past her, full of fury. Then back. “What, did you think I wouldn’t?”

“That set’s older than I am by a bit.” She cast a nod over her shoulder. “Older than Justin is, or Grant. They’ve never worked with the military sets. But you have.”

“I studied the mess the War sent us back. We all did. As I’m sure you know, since you get into every damned thing you like.”

“If I had everything you know, I wouldn’t have to ask. You worked with the Defense sets.”

“As a student. You’re talking about ancient history.”

“You consulted with them. You talked with them. You wrote one very good paper.”

“Several.”

She thought about the next question. Florian and Jory were there, if anything untoward happened. Mark and Gerry were. She didn’t think Justin would side with Jordan if he went for her.

She said, “Did you know an azi named Kyle, who worked with Giraud?”

Brows lilted slightly. “Alpha. Is that who this file is about?”

“Yes. Did you think he’d been axed?”

A little delay. She wasn’t dealing with the son of a bitch Jordan, the opaque stare. Calculation was quick and sharp. “You’re saying he
wasn’t
. He’s still alive?”

“He was, according to records, a Fleet Alpha Supervisor. And no, the code didn’t take. After which he had access to Abban, among others Giraud had in his office. He was still working for Defense. Defense was talking to you about breaking with Reseune. Ari found out and pulled you home. Defense knew that my existence was a possibility—knew that from you
and
from Giraud’s office. Knew that Ari didn’t have that long anyway.
You
were there with a grudge that was provable. Perfect vector for suspicion. Giraud had been in Novgorod, talking with Defense. So had Abban. So had Kyle, just one of the aides.”

“Bloody hell. This is a fucking setup. Get out of here.” He waved an arm toward Justin. “Get
him
out of here. Get away from me!”

“No,” Paul said, from over by the bar counter. “
No
.”

“The
hell
” Jordan said, and turned and walked out of the room.

Paul still stood there, facing them, Paul immaculately dressed, very steady. “Sera,” he said, “Justin, Grant.” A little dip of the head, “Jordan and I need to talk. We are
going
to talk. If you’d please call him in the morning.”