“Yes, Ma’am. Never doubted it, Ma’am.”
“I think you’d better let this one go before you get into real trouble, Captain,” Michelle said repressively.
Lecter grinned at her, and Michelle shook her head. Then she continued.
“I’ve gotten pretty accustomed to working with Alfredo and Master Sergeant Cognasso,” she pointed out. “And it’s entirely possible that neither Hongbo nor Verrocchio have heard the reports about furry lie detectors yet. So if you happened to be able to prime me with the data you’ve pulled out of these hacked files of yours, and if I happened to invite those two estimable gentlemen in for a private chat—just me and my furry little pet, Alfredo, and possibly a Marine or two for security, like Cognasso—we could probably learn a lot.”
“You mean by not confronting him directly? By just asking leading questions and letting Alfredo monitor his responses?”
“Maybe, but probably not.” Michelle shook her head. “It’s not like Alfredo can tell us what he’s actually thinking; he can only tell us when he knows a two-leg is lying or telling the truth. I could probably nibble around the edges asking indirect questions, but if I’m really going to get confirmation, I’m going to have to go more directly to the heart of things. What I can do, though, is to let him think he’s getting away with lying to me when he’s not. I can probably pull a lot out of him that way—a lot more than we’d get voluntarily if he knew we were closing in on him.”
“That’s probably true, Ma’am,” Lecter said. “On the other hand, and with all due respect, you’re not really a trained interrogator.”
“No, I’m not. And your point is—?”
“Do you think it might be better to let someone who is a trained interrogator ask the questions and work with Alfredo? Someone who might pick up on some of the body cues you might miss and use what she picks up to guide her follow-on questions?”
Michelle considered thoughtfully for a moment, then shrugged.
“You may have a point. In fact, you do have one. But I’m the one who’s worked with Alfredo so far, and I’m not sure we’ve got anyone else in Tenth Fleet who can actually read treecat sign. Aside from me and Cognasso, at any rate, and I doubt he’s a trained interrogator, either.”
“No, that’s true enough,” Lecter acknowledged.
“I still think it’s a good idea, though,” Michelle said. “In fact, I think it’s an excellent one. And workable, too.”
“How, Ma’am?”
“Simple.” Michelle shrugged again, this time with an evil smile. “We bug my cabin. We put in an audiovisual pickup without mentioning it to our guests. We park a trained interrogator in front of the monitors, and we give me a miniature earbug. The interrogator watches their expressions and body language, and if she sees anything, she passes it on to me over the earbug. Meanwhile, I ask the questions, and Alfredo sits on his perch behind my current victim and signs anything he picks up to me. What do you think?”
Lecter considered her reply. Michelle’s suggestion did seem to cover most of the bases. And, possibly more to the point, Lecter knew her admiral. Michelle Henke was going to do this herself. That was already settled, cast in stone, as far as the Countess of Gold Peak was concerned. So—
“I’m not certain it’s the absolutely best way to go about it, Ma’am, but I think it should work. In fact, it should work one hell of a lot better than any conventional interrogation technique I can come up with. And I’d really, really like to be able to find some additional confirmation of this Alignment’s existence. A Solly confirmation, not just something manufactured out of our Manticoran paranoia.”
“Oh, don’t forget the part that’s manufactured out of our Machiavellian Manticoran imperialism, either,” Michelle said sourly. “Still, I take your point. And I agree.”
“And best of all,” Lecter’s smile was every bit as evil as Michelle’s had been, “if we do it right?” She chuckled. “The bastards won’t even realize we’re onto them until we hand them over for trial. I can hardly wait to see their expressions then.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
“Sit down, Mr. Hongbo.”
Junyan Hongbo obeyed the command and settled into the chair facing the ebony-skinned woman in the black and gold uniform. He wasn’t looking forward to this interview. In fact, he wasn’t looking forward to just about anything that was likely to happen for the foreseeable future, and he found himself fervently wishing—again—that Wanderlust had managed to make it across the hyper limit in time after all.
Probably unreasonable to expect anything of the sort, he thought glumly. After all, Herschel worked with Lorcan for years. Why should I have expected her to be any more competent than he was?
He knew that thought was unfair, to Verrocchio as well as Captain Herschel, but he didn’t much care at the moment.
The woman on the other side of the desk ignored him for several moments, letting him simmer in his own juices while she considered the data on her desk display. He could see its reflection in her eyes, and he wondered if it actually had anything at all to do with him or if it was simply window dressing. Whichever it might be, he told himself, it wasn’t going to have any real effect on what he expected to be a most unpleasant interrogation. The only reason for her to be looking at it at this particular moment was to tweak his nerves a little tighter. He’d used the same technique himself more times than he could remember, and he was actually a bit surprised to discover that it was working on him just as well as it had ever worked for him.
I wonder if they’ve managed to crack my files yet?Bardasano swore no one could do it, and that if it looked like anyone was going to, the security protocols would scrub them back to the bare mollycirc. And they really were better than anything OFS had on tap. But Manty-proof? He grimaced mentally. Not likely! They’re going to get at least something out of them. The question is how much.
At least he’d never been stupid enough to record anything likely to incriminate him. There was that handful of memos from Valery Ottweiler he’d tucked away as an insurance policy, but they only demonstrated what Ottweiler had asked him to pass on to Verrocchio on an official level. They didn’t include any of Ottweiler’s unofficial requests, and every one of them made it clear he himself had exercised no decision-making authority on the requests in question. He’d made damned sure there was nothing in his files that could link him to any of the more…questionable decisions he’d helped guide Verrocchio into making.
Unfortunately, there was no way he could know what Verrocchio had been foolish enough to record. The possibility that he’d kept something that could lead back to Hongbo was unpleasantly high, although the vice commissioner could at least hope that if he had it would turn into a case of one man’s word against another’s. In the end, though, he knew the Manties were going to find at least something he’d dearly love for them not to find, and the best he could realistically hope for was that it would be one of his more minor peccadilloes.
And, of course, that they’re willing to stop looking when they find it rather than turning over enough rocks to find something that isn’t minor, he thought glumly. And what do you think the odds of that are, Junyan? You’re not exactly one of their favorite people in the entire universe.