Tara pushed away an inexplicable feeling of disappointment. She was aware of Captain Bishop at her shoulder, trying very hard not to appear impressed by the surroundings. She didn’t think her aide would be cheered by the information that the Countess of Northwind had paused to mourn the loss of another bit of her younger self.
“Countess!” The concierge was beaming at her over the sweep of his mustache. “It’s an honor to have you with us again! Will you be staying here long?”
“I’m sorry, Emil. I’m just here for a conference. I’m in Belgorod, with the rest of the Northwind Highlanders.” She saw his face start to fall, and couldn’t help herself. “Though if things run late, my aide and I may need rooms for the night.”
“It would be our pleasure, Countess,” Emil assured her. “Alas, your mother’s usual suite is currently occupied.”
“That’s all right. Whatever you have will do if we end up staying. For now, if you could let Mr. Bannson know that I’m coming up—”
“Of course.” Emil bustled off.
Captain Bishop, in the wake of his going, murmured, “If you don’t mind me asking, ma’am, just what was your mother’s usual suite?”
Tara felt her face reddening, and was grateful for the dim lighting of the Duquesne’s lobby. “The penthouse,” she admitted. “Captain, the way things look, whatever’s going down may well be above even my rank, let alone yours. But I’m in it already, and you’re not. Go buy yourself a drink in the hotel bar and keep yourself safe from guilt by association. I’ll call for you if I need you.”
She headed on up to the penthouse suite where Jacob Bannson was waiting. The business tycoon rose from the couch to greet her. She’d seen his image often enough in magazines and on the tri-vids, but this marked the first time she had ever met him in person. She’d thought he would be taller—another disappointment, like the sadly shrunken Emil.
“Welcome, Countess,” he said. “We’ve got lots to talk about, so let’s get down to business.”
“Not yet.” She sat down in the armchair beside the couch. It had been big enough once to hold her younger self and her father both, but as with everything else, it was smaller now. “There’s a third party I want to see involved in this discussion. Not the person we spoke of, but someone else.”
Bannson’s face hardened. “Tell me who. If I don’t like him or her, the whole deal is off.”
Tara reminded herself that behind the outward appearance of the nouveau riche poseur was a ruthless entrepreneur and hardened negotiator, rumored to have more than just metaphorical blood on his hands. “Fair enough,” she said. “Paladin Jonah Levin.”
She waited for several long moments while Bannson played with the hairs of his full orange beard, his eyes squinted half closed in contemplation of something invisible. Finally, he said, “All right. Levin’s no particular friend of mine, but he’s honest. Better yet, everybody in the whole Republic knows that he’s honest. This business can use somebody like that.”
Tara said, miffed, “And I’m not honest enough for you?”
“Countess, you’ve got problems of your own or you wouldn’t be standing here now.”
She couldn’t come up with a counterargument, and was spared the need to think of a reply by the sound of a knock on the penthouse door. Bannson went to the door and admitted Jonah Levin. The Paladin took the second of the room’s two armchairs, leaving Bannson with the couch as before.
“I see that Mr. Horn found you in time,” Tara said to Levin.
“Just in time, as it happened.”
Levin didn’t explain the remark any further, but Tara received the impression that the Paladin, while still maintaining his sober demeanor, was faintly amused about something.
“Mr. Bannson,” he continued. “I understand you have some information that you’re interested in sharing.”
“That’s right.”
Bannson moved over to the antique secretary in one corner of the suite—Tara remembered her mother drafting speeches at it, years ago—and took out a bulky paper envelope. He emptied the contents out onto the inlaid ebony and mother-of-pearl surface of the low table in front of the couch: papers, photographs, letters, and a battered paperback book with a slip of paper marking one page.
“All of these are copies, of course. The originals are kept safe elsewhere.”
“Of course,” Levin said.
I get the point, Tara thought. Jacob Bannson would have brought a copy of that data disc with him on his private DropShip, instead of giving one to poor Lieutenant Jones and leaving the other one in a safe back at The Fort on Northwind. And Paladin Levin would have hand carried the disc all the way from Northwind.
She swallowed her irritation and joined Levin in going through the stuff on the table. Within minutes, her awareness of being the youngest and most inexperienced person in the room had faded away entirely, replaced by a profound sense of shock.
“This is—”
She stopped, words failing her. Even the pain of Ezekiel Crow’s first betrayal on Northwind hadn’t felt like this. Here was evidence not of one single act, but of an entire life and a career of public service based on the most heinous treason imaginable.
“Despicable,” said Levin. “If the evidence is genuine.”
Bannson said, “It’s the real deal, all right. Crow pulled off a first-class cover-up, but once you’ve got hold of the first loose end”—he indicated the paperback book, a popular war memoir by a Capellan novelist who’d been a CapCon intelligence officer in his youth, with its reference to a young man named Daniel Peterson who had betrayed his homeworld of Liao to the Capellans—“you can track down independent confirmation for everything else without much trouble. Name any set of events you care to. They’ll verify.”
“I think somebody else did track them down,” Tara said. “I can’t imagine anything besides blackmail that would make him turn traitor again after all this time. And with so much to lose.”
Bannson shrugged. “What can I say? Once the information is out there, it’s out there. He probably never expected this guy to start telling war stories.”
“And I never expected to be presented with all of this,” she said. “What’s your stake, Mr. Bannson?”
“I’ll be honest with you,” he said. “Ezekiel Crow’s been standing in the way of my business plans for quite a while, and when I heard rumors about what he did on Northwind, I decided that the two of us had a problem in common—for now, at least. Just so we’re clear, I’m not talking about making any long-term alliances.”
“I think we all understand that,” Jonah Levin said. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a data disc. So his man Horn recovered it after all, Tara thought. He certainly was taking his time about letting me know. “In the interests of sharing information—I assume there’s a data reader in the room somewhere?”
“In the armoire, along with the tri-vid screen,” Tara said absently, before Bannson could reply.
Bannson didn’t say anything, only took the data disc from Levin and set it up to play. Tara knew a moment’s panicky fear that bad luck had struck her again and it would turn out to be nothing but popular music or children’s cartoons—but it was the Northwind file, with all the information intact, exactly as she’d sent it with Owain Jones. By the time it had finished playing, Jacob Bannson was grinning through his beard.
“Oh, yeah.” For a moment, his voice lost all its expensive polish and was pure low-class St. Andre. “Between the old stuff and this, we have got the man laid out on toast for breakfast.”