Grantville made a face. Not of disagreement, so much as of painful memory. The Manpower Scandal had splattered on the previous Prime Minister, for whom Grantville had never had anything but contempt, but the fallout had still been extreme... and Anton Zilwicki could not have cared less. The entire government could have fallen, and he still wouldn't have cared-just as he hadn't cared if he himself ended up in prison for his actions. The father who'd orchestrated that particular exercise in mayhem was unlikely to take the events on Torch lightly.
"No, you don't have to remind me," he said. "For that matter, you don't have to remind me what happened to the mercenaries who tried to kill Catherine Montaigne when they tangled with Zilwicki. I'll happily concede the man's competence and the fact that he's dangerous. I'll even concede that he has the ear of the Queen-or, at least, of her niece-where certain questions are concerned.
"But what you're asking me to believe now is that some hypothetical third party is responsible for what happened on Torch. And, probably, for murdering Jim Webster. For that matter, probably for trying to kill you, since the technique was so similar in all three cases. And whenever you ask me to believe that, I come back again and again to the question of who had the most motive? And, for that matter, who has an established national track record of employing assassination as a routine technique?"
"I realize that," Honor said patiently. "But anyone with the proper resources can stage an assassination, and everyone has to know the Star Kingdom's had painful experience with previous Havenite r‚gimes' use of assassination. So just what would you have done differently if you were a 'hypothetical third party' and wanted us to automatically assume the Havenites were attempting to sabotage their own peace conference?"
"Nothing," Grantville conceded after a moment. He leaned back in his chair, regarding Honor intently. "On the other hand, Honor, I've known you a long time. There's more to this than just Zilwicki's unsupported word, isn't there?"
Honor returned his gaze, and he chuckled harshly.
"You've gotten much better at high-stakes politics, but you still have to work on maintaining your expression of total candor while you conceal your hole cards."
"There is more to it," she admitted. "I didn't bring it up because I was pretty sure it wouldn't do your blood pressure any good if I did. Are you sure you want to hear about what I've been up to?"
"As my sister-in-law, or as a Queen's officer?" he asked bit warily.
"Either-both," she said with a crooked smile.
"If it's that bad, you'd better go ahead and tell me," he said, bracing himself visibly.
"Anton Zilwicki didn't come to visit me by himself," she said. "He brought a Mr. Cachat with him."
"Cachat," Grantville repeated. It was apparent the name was ringing bells, but that he hadn't quite put his mental hand on the memory.
"Victor Cachat," Honor said helpfully. "As in the same Victor Cachat who engineered the entire Torch gambit in the first place."
"A Peep spy?" If Grantville's expression had been incredulous before, it was dumbfounded now. "You had a Peep spy aboard your flagship?"
"Not just any old spy." Honor couldn't help it. Despite the anger beginning to bubble under the shock in Grantville's mind-glow, she felt a certain manic glee in the admission. "As a matter of fact, he's now the Havenite chief of station for their entire Erewhon-based intelligence net."
The Prime Minister stared at her. Then he shook himself.
"This isn't funny," he said coldly. "It's entirely possible someone could make a case for treason out of what you've just admitted to me."
"How?" she challenged.
"You had a known senior secret agent of a star nation with whom we're at war aboard your flagship in a restricted military area, and from what you're saying, I feel quite confident he's not still there in a cell. Is he?"
"No, he isn't," she said, meeting his cold anger with a hard eye.
"And just what information did you allow him to take away from this completely unauthorized meeting, Admiral?"
"None he didn't bring with him."
"And you're prepared to prove that before a court-martial, if necessary?"
"No, Prime Minister, I'm not," she said in a voice of matching ice. "If my word isn't sufficient for you, then file charges and be damned to you."
Grantville's nostrils flared, but then he closed his eyes. His right hand clenched into a fist where it lay on the table before him, and Honor tasted the enormous effort he made to pull his icy fury back under control.
Interesting, she thought. So Willie has the Alexander temper, too.
"Your word is good enough for me," he said finally, opening his eyes once more, "but it may not be good enough for everyone if word of this... meeting ever gets out. My God, Honor! What were you thinking of?"
"I was thinking of the fact that a man who'd never met me was willing to come aboard my ship, knowing exactly what could happen to him. That he came with a suicide device in his pocket, which he was fully prepared to use. That, in fact, he expected to use it, and he came anyway. And that he told me the truth, Willie. You know I know that everything I just told you is true."
His eyes narrowed, because he did know.
"You say he expected to use his suicide device," the Prime Minister said after a moment, and she nodded. "Then I presume you also know-or think you do-why he was willing to come anyway?"
"Because he's a patriot," Honor said simply. "He's probably one of the most dangerous men I've ever met, and not just because of how competent he is, either. But the bottom line is that he takes his beliefs and responsibilities seriously. He knows the attempt to kill Berry and Ruth didn't go through his operatives, nor did he pick up on any effort by someone in Nouveau Paris to do an end run around him. And now that I've met the man, I don't doubt for a moment that he has his entire area of responsibility so tightly wired he would have known if something like that had happened. So since he knows he didn't do it, and he's virtually certain no one else in the Havenite government did it, he has to assume whoever did do it did it for reasons inimical to the Republic of Haven's foreign-policy and security. So he put his life on the line, in the full expectation that he was going to lose it, to tell us. Not because he loves us, but because he's trying to protect his own star nation. Because he believes his President is trying to stop a war and someone else is trying to sabotage her effort."
"And you... know," Grantville waved one hand, "all of this is true?"
"I know he wasn't lying to me, and that everything he told me was the complete truth in so far as he knows the truth. Of course it's possible he's wrong. Even the best intelligence people screw up. But what he told me was the best information he had."
"I see."
Grantville rocked his chair slightly back and forth, his brain working hard while he gazed at her.
"Have you discussed this with Hamish?" he asked after a moment.
"No." Honor looked away. "I wanted to. But, as I said, the fact that I'm married to him puts me in a peculiar position. I... chose not to involve him."
"You chose not to involve him because you didn't want anything to splash on him if this little meeting blew up in your face as spectacularly as it could have. That's what you mean, isn't it?"
"Maybe. To some extent. But also because it's almost impossible for our personal relationship not to have an impact on any conversation or debate we have. To be perfectly honest," she looked back at Grantville, "I didn't want to take the chance he might agree with me simply because it was me saying it."