Reed's face was a study in suspicion, his alertness multiplied. What's wrong, dammit? wondered Miles. This is supposed to be lulling him. . . .
Reed steepled his hands, leaned back, and cocked his head. "Lieutenant Vorkosigan left with a man who introduced himself as Captain Galeni an hour ago."
"Aaah …" said Miles. "An older man in civilian dress? Greying hair, heavyset?"
"Yes . . ."
Miles inhaled, smiling fixedly. "Thank you, Investigator Reed. We won't take any more of your valuable time."
Back in the foyer Ivan said, "Now what?"
"I think," said Captain Galeni, "it is time to return to the embassy. And send a full report to HQ."
The urge to confess, eh? "No, no, never send interim reports," said Miles. "Only final ones. Interim reports tend to elicit orders. Which you must then either obey, or spend valuable time and energy evading, which you could be using to solve the problem."
"An interesting command philosophy; I must keep it in mind. Do you share it, Commander Quinn?"
"Oh, yes."
"The Dendarii Mercenaries must be a fascinating outfit to work for."
Quinn smirked. "I find it so."
Chapter Twelve
They returned to the embassy nonetheless, Galeni to galvanize his staff into an all-out investigation of the now highly-suspect courier officer, Miles to change back into his Barrayaran dress greens and visit the embassy physician to have his hand properly set. If there was a lull in his life after this mess was cleared up, Miles reflected, perhaps he'd better take the time to go get the bones and joints in his arms and hands, not just the long bones of his legs, replaced with synthetics. Getting the legs done had been painful and tedious, but putting off the arms wasn't going to make it any better. And he certainly couldn't pretend he was going to do any more growing.
Somewhat morose with these thoughts, he left the embassy clinic and wandered down to Security's office sub-level. He found Galeni sitting alone at his comconsole desk, having generated a flurry of orders that dispatched subordinates in all directions. The lights in the office were dimmed. Galeni was leaning back with his feet on the desk, crossed at the ankles, and Miles had the impression that he would have preferred a bottle of something potently alcoholic in his hand to the light pen he now turned over and over.
Galeni smiled bleakly, sat up, and took to tapping the pen on the desk as Miles entered. "I've been thinking it over, Vorkosigan. I'm afraid we may not be able to avoid calling in the local authorities in this."
"I wish you wouldn't do that, sir." Miles pulled up a chair and sat astride it, arms athwart its back. "Involve them, and the consequences pass beyond our control."
"It will take a small army, to find those two on Earth now."
"I have a small army," Miles reminded him, "which had just demonstrated its effectiveness for this sort of thing, I think."
"Ha. True."
"Let the embassy hire the Dendarii Mercenaries to find our . . . missing persons."
"Hire? I thought Barrayar was already paying for them!"
Miles blinked innocently. "But sir, it's part of their covert status that that relationship is unknown even to the Dendarii themselves. If the embassy hires them in a formal contract for this job, it—covers the cover, so to speak."
Galeni raised his brows sardonically. "I see. And how do you propose to explain your clone to them?"
"If necessary, as a clone—of Admiral Naismith."
"Three of you, now?" said Galeni dubiously.
"Just set them to find your—find Ser Galen. Where he is, the clone will be too. It worked once."
"Hm," said Galeni.
"There's just one thing," Miles added. He ran one finger thoughtfully along the top of the chair back. "If we do succeed in catching them—just what is it that we plan to do with "em?"
The light pen tapped. "There are," said Galeni, "only two or three possibilities. One, they can be arrested, tried, and incarcerated for the crimes committed here on Earth."
"During the course of which," Miles observed seriously, "Admiral Naismith's cover as a supposedly independent operator will almost certainly be compromised, his true identity publicly revealed. I can't pretend the Barrayaran Empire will stand or fall on the Dendarii Mercenaries, but Security has found us useful in the past. Command may—I hope may—regard this as a poor trade. Besides, has my clone in fact committed any crimes he can be held for? I think he may even be a minor, by Eurolaw rules."
"Second alternative," Galeni recited. "Kidnap them and returned them secretly to Barrayar for trial, evading Earth's non-extradition status. If we had an order from on high, my guess is this would be it, the minimum proper paranoid Security response."
"For trial," said Miles, "or to be held indefinitely in some oubliette . . . For my—brother, that might not turn out as bad as he'd at first think. He has a friend in a very high place. If he can escape being secretly murdered by some—overexcited underling first, en route." Galeni and Miles exchanged glances. "But nobody's going to intercede for your father. Barrayar has always taken the killings in the Komarr Revolt to be civil crimes, not acts of war, and he never submitted to the loyalty oath and amnesty. He'll be up on capital charges. His execution will inevitably follow."
"Inevitably." Galeni pursed his lips, staring down at the toes of his boots. "The third possibility being—as you said—an order coming down for their secret assassination."
"Criminal orders can be successfully resisted," Miles observed, "if you have a strong enough stomach for it. High command isn't as free with that sort of thing as they were back in Emperor Ezar's day, fortunately. I submit a fourth possibility. It might be better not to catch these—awkward relatives—in the first place."
"Bluntly, Miles, if I fail to produce Ser Galen, my career will be smoke. I must already be suspect, for having failed to turn him up any time these last two years. Your suggestion skirts—not insubordination, that seems to be your normal mode of operation—but something worse."
"What about your predecessor here, who failed to discover him in five years? And if you do produce him now, will your career be any better off? You'll be suspect anyway, in the minds of those who are determined to be suspicious."
"I wish," Galeni's face had an inward look, deathly calm, his voice a reflective murmur, "I wish he had stayed dead in the first place. His first death was a much better one, glorious in the heat of battle. He had his place in history, and I was alone, past pain, without mother or father to torment me. How fortunate that science hasn't cracked human immortality. It's a great blessing that we can outlive old wars. And old warriors."
Miles mulled over the dilemma. In jail on Earth, Galen destroyed both Galeni's career and Admiral Naismith's, but lived. Shipped to Barrayar, he died; Galeni's career would be a little better off, but Galeni himself—would not be quite sane, Miles rather thought. The patricide would not have the rooted serenity to serve Komarr's complex future needs, certainly. But Naismith would live, his thought whispered temptingly. Left loose, the persistent Galen and Mark remained a threat of unknown, and so intolerable, proportion; if Miles and Galeni did nothing, high command would most certainly take the choice from them, issuing who-knew-what orders sealing the fate of their perceived enemies.
Miles loathed the thought of sacrificing Galeni's promising career to this crabbed old revolutionary who refused to give up. Yet Galen's destruction would also damage Galeni, just as certainly. Dammit, why couldn't the old man have pensioned himself off to some tropical paradise, instead of hanging around making trouble for the younger generation on the grounds, no doubt, that it was good for 'em? Mandatory retirement for revolutionaries, that's what they needed now.