"You're going to find it hard to convince the stick-in-the-muds to accept Lady Thorold as acting director of intelligence," remarked Carl, his arms crossed.
"They'll like my second-choice candidate even less." Riordan bared his teeth. "Are you questioning her fitness for the role, or merely her sex?"
Carl shook his head, his expression shuttered. "Just saying," he muttered.
Riordan glanced round the table as Olga closed her file and leaned back, trying to keep all expression off her face.
"I've worked with her for the past six years and I would not propose her for this position if I doubted her capability," Riordan said sharply. "The empty pots in the conservative club can rattle as much as they please; it's as good an issue as any to remind them that this is not business as usual."
There was a general rumble of agreement. "You're in the saddle now," Olga murmured in Riordan's ear. "Just try not to fall off."
Riordan flushed slightly. "Right. Next item." He glanced up. "Rudi. Your flying machine. You are hereby ordered to prepare a report on the feasibility of equipping, supplying, training, and operating a squadron of no fewer than six and no more than twelve aircraft, within the Gruinmarkt. Tasks will be scouting and surveillance, and-if you can work out how to do it medical evacuation. Your initial corvée budget is twelve tons. I want it on my desk, with costing, in three days' time. I understand that training pilots and observers takes time, so I want a list of candidate names-outer families for preference, we can't routinely divert world-walkers to a hazardous auxiliary duty. Any problems?"
Rudi looked awestruck. "I can do it! Sir."
"That's what I like to hear." Riordan didn't smile. "Kiril, Rudi's got priority over everything except first-class post; even ammunition resupply. We need an airborne capability; I've discussed it with Count Julius already, and it's going to happen. So. Next item, the Hjalmar Palace. Carl. What can you tell us?"
The heavyset man shrugged lazily, almost indolently. Riordan took no offense; he'd worked with him long enough to know better than to think it an insult. "The palace is gone. Sorry, but that's all there is to say about it. Snurri and Ray took samples and we had them analyzed, and they found fallout. Cesium-131, strontium-90, lots of carbon-14. Snurri and Ray indented for new boots and fatigues and I've sent them to the clinic, just in case."
"Scheisse." Nobody but Olga really noticed Riordan's one-word curse, because nobody but Olga was listening to anything but the sound of their own voices. Clan Security, though a highly disciplined organization in the field, tended to operate more like a bickering extended family behind closed doors. "Silence!" Riordan whacked the tabletop. "Let him finish, damn you!"
"Thank you, cuz." Carl's face twisted in something horribly close to a smile. "They couldn't measure the crater because there isn't one. The keep was blown out, completely shattered, but the inner walls of the sunken moat caught the blast, and the foundations are solid stone, all the way down. But we got a good estimate of how big it was from the remains the pretender's men left on the field. Half a kiloton, and it probably went off in the vicinity of the treason room we used for the assault. Sir, do you know what's going on? Because if so, an announcement might quell some of the crazier rumors that are floating around…
Riordan sighed. "Unfortunately, the rumors hold more than a grain of truth." This time around he didn't try to maintain order. Instead, he leaned back and waited, arms crossed, for the inevitable flood of questions to die down to a trickle. "Are we ready now?" His cheek twitched. "Milady, I believe you have a summary."
Olga glanced around the table. Twelve pairs of eyes looked back at her with expressions ranging from disbelief to disgust. "Eighteen years ago the Council, sitting in camera with the duke present, discussed the question of our long-term relationship with the United States. Of particular concern was the matter of leverage, if and when the American rulers discovered us."
She picked up a glass and filled it from the jug on the table. Nobody spoke; curiosity was, it seemed, a more valuable currency than outrage. "A variety of strategies were discussed. Our predecessors' reliance on access to the special files of the American investigator Hoover was clearly coming to an end-Hoover's death, and the subsequent reorganization of the American secret police, along with their adoption of computerized files, rendered that particular channel obsolete. Computers in general have proven to be a major obstacle: We can't just raid the locked filing cabinets at night. So a couple of new plans were set up."
She saw a couple of heads nodding along at the far end of the table and tried to suppress a smile. "I believe Piotr has just put two and two together and worked out why the duke took it upon himself to issue certain career advice. Piotr spent six years in the USAF, not as an aerial knight but as a black-handed munitions officer. Unfortunately he did not enter precisely the speciality the duke had in mind… but others did." More of her audience were clearly putting two and two together. Finally, Rudi raised a hand. "Yes?"
"I looked into this. Nukes-they're not light! You couldn't world-walk one across. At the least, you'd have to disassemble it first, wouldn't you?"
"Normally, yes." She nodded. "But. Back in the sixties, the Americans developed small demolition devices, the SADM, for engineers to use in demolishing bridges in enemy territory. Small is a figure of speech-a strong man could carry one on his back for short distances-but it was ideal for our purposes. Then, in the seventies, they created a storable type, the FADM, to leave in the custody of their allies, to use in resistance operations. The friends they picked were not trustworthy"-an understatement: The Italian fascists who'd blown up the Bologna railway station in the 1970s had nearly sparked a civil war-"and the FADMs were returned to their stores, but they weren't all scrapped. A decade ago we finally placed a man in the nuclear inspectorate, with access. He surveyed the storage site, organized the doppelganger revetment, and we were in. Reverse-engineering the permissive action locks took less than two years. Then we had our own nuclear stockpile."
She raised her glass, drank deeply. "The matter rested with his grace until the last year. It appears that the traitor Matthias had access to the procedures, and to his grace's seal. He ordered one of the devices removed from storage and transported to Boston." She waited as the shocked muttering subsided. "More recently, we learned that the Americans had learned of this weapon. Our traitor had apparently threatened them with it. They indicated their displeasure and demanded our cooperation in retrieving it. I think"-her gaze flickered towards Carl-"that most likely they found it and, by doing so, decided to send us a message. Either that, or our traitor has struck at us-but he is no world-walker. Meanwhile, we know the American secret police hold some of ours prisoner."
"But how-"
"What are we going to-
"Silence!" The word having had its desired effect, Riordan continued, quietly. "They can hurt us, as they've demonstrated. They could have picked the Summer Palace in Niejwein. They could have picked the Thorold castle. We know they've captured couriers and forced them to carry spies over, but this is a new threat. We don't know what they can do. All we know for certain is that our strongholds are not only undoppelgangered, they may very well be traps."
He fell silent. Carl cleared his throat. Deceptively mildly, he asked, "Can we get our hands on some more?"
Olga, who had been rolling the empty water glass between her hands, put it down. "That's already taken care of," she said.
"In any event, it's not a solution," Riordan said dismissively. "At best it's a minimal deterrent. We can hurt them-we can kill tens of thousands-but you know how the Americans respond to an attack. They are relentless, and they will slaughter millions without remorse to avenge a pinprick, should it embarrass them. Worse, their councils and congresses are so contrived that they cannot surrender. Any leader who advocates surrender is ridiculed and risks removal from office. And this leader-" She shook her head. "They haven't felt the tread of conquering boots on their land in more than a lifetime, and for most of a lifetime they have been an empire, mighty and powerful; there is a level at which they do not believe it is possible for them to be beaten. So if we're going to confront them, the last thing we should do is fight them openly, on ground of their own choosing."