That was the sum of Amy’s report, except to ask how they were, and Ari said they were all fine.
But late on August 23, a barge came up from Moreyville, and fourteen people got off at Reseune docks, fourteen very tired, dirty, and hungry people, among them Ludmilla deFranco, far less than the immaculate person she ordinarily was. Her blonde hair was dyed dark, her customary couturier dress traded for a dockworker’s blues.
All the same, a spark of triumph glistened in deFranco’s eyes when Ari came down to the docks to meet her.
“A pleasure,” deFranco said, and startled her and Florian with an unexpected embrace. “God, you look like her, don’t you?”
“I should,” Ari said, but she didn’t actually mind the hug, she was just startled by it. “I’m glad you’re safe. Did you come up all the way by barge?”
“To Moreyville by plane,” DeFranco said. “Then the barge.” DeFranco had to be past her hundreds, and it was still a long, hard pull, deFranco and this crowd of people, some of whom must be younger relatives. “Has Yanni been in touch? You’re Lao’s Proxy.”
“How?” she asked.
“Filed and legal,” deFranco said, and sank onto a convenient counter edge. “Yanni got it from Lao in person. Filed it in chambers, all of us to witness. You’re the new Proxy for Information. Council’s to meet here on the twelfth of September.”
“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’tseated.”
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 hadto 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 andtheirs, 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 wonthe 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.