"You want us to be your conscience?" asked one of the Senators, a dark skinned ex-legionary turned farmer by the name of Robles.
"That among other things," Carrera answered.
"Duque, that will never work," Robles said. "We all know you and we all know you well. Listening to others is not your strong point. At least, it isn't if you don't have to. And you don't play well with others. I remember a certain bridge in Sumer."
Carrera smiled shyly at the memory. Once, during the invasion of Sumer, ten years prior, Carrera had bombed a bridge out of existence under the very noses of his allies, and for not much more reason that to avoid the difficulty of actually having to coordinate with those allies.
He forced the smile away and nodded. "I know. I'm just going to have to learn."
Robles looked very doubtful. Still, he shrugged his doubt off for the moment. Maybe, just maybe, Carrera could change. But—
"And what happens, Duque," Robles asked, "when you want to do something and we say, 'No'?"
In answer, Carrera took a folder from atop the table and opened it. Inside was a sheaf of white paper, stapled at one corner. He signed at the bottom of the first page, flipped that and signed the next, then the next, until he reached the last page which his signed in the middle. Wordlessly, he slid the packet over to Robles who began to read.
"Holy fucking shit!" the senator exclaimed before he was halfway through.
"What is it?" asked one of the legislators, Marissa Correa. The short and stout woman's light brown eyes flashed with curiosity.
Robles didn't answer immediately. He quickly scanned the rest of the package and then slid it in turn to Correa. "He's just turned over nearly everything—seventy or seventy-five percent anyway—to the Senate."
"Yes," Carrera said. "Everything but a quarter of the general fund, my family trust, which I have no right to give away, this house, Quarters One on the Isla Real—I think I want to retire there—and a discretionary fund sufficient to provide at least a few hundred, and possibly as much as five hundred, million a year. It's closer to seventy than seventy-five percent, once you take account of the exemptions."
Carrera's finger pointed at the agreement. "And now, Ms Correa, if you would turn to the last page and sign, as a witness and as a promise that you will not reveal anything of security interest to the country or the Legion, and then pass the thing around, we can get on with this."
"My God," Robles said, "you're really serious."
"Very," Carrera agreed. "If I don't listen, and can't convince you, you can now fire me. Or make it impossible to support the Legion unless I resign, which amounts to the same thing. Actually, you can fire me for any reason or no reason. My only job security is that I don't know that there's really anyone to replace me if you do. Jimenez, maybe, but he wouldn't take the job."
"Ah . . . and there is one caveat," Carrera added. "I will still track the money and if I find any of it going astray I will drop a word in the right ear and the people responsible will be killed. You can try me for murder afterwards, but they'll still be dead. Similarly, if any of the Senate don't voluntarily step down or fight for election or reelection when their time comes, they're toast."
"Don't worry about that, Duque," Robles said. "Just drop that word in my ear. I'll kill 'em myself."
Carrera's lips tightened even as his eyes turned Heavenward. I wish I could tell you about one other important thing. You see, we're already a small nuclear power. If you read that . . . that contract, carefully, you'll see that, in effect, I turned release authority over to the President. And I hope and pray we never have to use them. Again.
But I can't tell you because, even though you're all handpicked and vetted, that must be kept quiet or the Federated States will come down on us like a ton of bricks.
* * *
Back in their bedroom, after the select committees had left, Lourdes was still glowing from an altogether too long delayed session of serious lovemaking.
"You are looking awfully happy, Patricio," she said, "for a man who just gave away over seventy-five billion in Federated States Drachma."
"Closer to a hundred and fifty billion if you count the value of everything, land, equipment, buildings, and such," he corrected. "Not to mention the pension fund, and the value of trained men over untrained. Are you sorry I did?"
"No," she said without the slightest hesitation. "It's a small price if it makes you happy again."
Carrera leered, meaningfully. "You know what would really make me happy again?"
She leered right back. "I can think of a couple of possibilities," she said, while ostentatiously running her tongue over her lips. "Why don't you sit on the side of the bed and we'll try one of them?"
Prey Nokor, Cochin, Terra Nova
"Nokor," Sig said, as his eyes opened wide to the sun streaming in through the blind over the window. The mattress of the bed on which he lay was lumpy, but at least the linen was clean.
"Shit, still in Nokor."
A former colony of the Gauls, and then of the Red Tsars, Cochin had all the decay—physical, economic, and moral—that one might associate with either of those two bits of history, or with suffering a major civil war in recent memory. Because the Cochinese had endured all three, the decay was not just trebled but cubed.
Proof of that decay, over and above the lumpy mattress, occupied a fraction of that mattress in the form of a fifteen or sixteen year old Cochinese hooker who was effectively owned by the house. At least Sig hoped she was only fifteen or sixteen. This was not from any perverse preference for very young girls, but merely because a hooker of that age was most likely to be just a hooker, rather than a spy for either Cochinese Intelligence or the Secret Police.
The girl's name was Han. She'd told a more than half drunken Siegel, down in the hotel bar, that it meant 'moral.' She'd told him, moreover, in French and then laughed her cute little rear end off.
"Moral? Me? Isn't that just too funny?"
Sig had shrugged it off. "We all sell ourselves, Han," he'd said. "Some of us even get a fair price."
* * *
It had been an ugly scene, with Siegel's soon to be ex-wife, shortly before he'd departed Balboa. It was uglier still when he'd called Fernandez who had come immediately with an escort of military police. These had handcuffed her, forced her to sign some papers, and then escorted her to the airport with her passport stamped to prevent readmission to the country.
As Carrera had, Fernandez said, "I'm sorry, Sig."
"Don't be," Siegel had answered. "Right now I'm too pissed off to be hurt. Besides, I'm going to the land of the two drachma blow job. It could be worse.
"Would it have been better, do you think," Siegel inquired, "to have kept her on and fed her disinformation?"
Fernandez shrugged. "Close question. If we don't bust the occasional spy, the Tauros, who are not necessarily stupid, will assume we choose not to bust any. They might assume then that we know about all of them. This could make it problematic to feed disinformation when we want to. Then, too, busting one validates the perceived secrecy of the rest. We've even had it happen that we busted one—that one we shot—and fear from that caused two more to panic, do something dumb, and reveal themselves.