‘And of course you can’t talk about it. Am I right?’
Luc shook his head ruefully. ‘I know you’re itching to find out the details, because all your stats indicators are saying something significant is up.’
‘Well, that much is obvious,’ the other man huffed. ‘A word of warning for you. Sometimes, when ordinary people get caught up in Council intrigue, their strings get yanked so hard their heads get pulled off.’
First Eleanor, and now Offenbach was taking the trouble to give him essentially the same warning. ‘Thank you,’ he said, ‘for that delightful image.’
‘Just an observation.’ Offenbach fidgeted for a moment, and Luc sensed he was leading up to something. ‘You know, a lot of the data recovered from your trip to Aeschere is still strictly embargoed, despite our department’s protests. It leaves us just as handicapped in the fight against Black Lotus as we were before, and I have no idea just how long it’s going to be before we can get our hands on that data – assuming the Sandoz ever let us have access to it.’
Luc nodded. Offenbach wanted something in return.
‘I think I can do something for you, Jared.’
Offenbach’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Such as?’
‘I still have special access privileges to Sandoz’s own archives.’ Those privileges had been hard-won on Luc’s part, and had fostered what Vincent Hetaera had hoped would become a new era of inter-agency cooperation. From what Luc had been hearing since his recovery, that era was already proving short-lived.
‘You can get hold of the Aeschere data?’
‘It’s the least I can do,’ said Luc. ‘Is there anything else you can think of that might be useful to me?’
Offenbach thought for a moment. ‘Perhaps. But it’s not something that can necessarily be corroborated. You’d just have to take it at face value, I’m afraid.’
‘Rumour, then.’
Offenbach moved his head from side to side. ‘More than rumour, less than verifiable fact.’
‘Listening at doors, in other words.’
Offenbach leaned forward, his voice dropping to a husky half-whisper. ‘It’s my understanding that over the past several decades, Vasili became isolated not only from Father Cheng, but from the rest of the Eighty-Five. A pariah within Cheng’s inner circle, essentially.’
Luc thought about it for a moment. ‘That doesn’t make sense,’ he said.
‘Why?’
‘If that were the case, Father Cheng would hardly have given him such a prestigious job as preparing the Tian Di for Reunification.’
‘But then again,’ said Offenbach, ‘who amongst his trusted advisors would Cheng have given the job to? None of them would have wanted the job. Recall that the Eighty-Five first came into existence as a pressure group within the original Temur Council, agitating for complete separation from the Coalition. And out of all of them, Vasili was easily the most vocal in that regard. Don’t you think it’s strange that one of the primary architects of the Schism wound up being given the job of rebuilding our links with the Coalition?’
‘So giving Vasili that job was a kind of punishment?’ asked Luc. And a very ironic one, if true. ‘That’s genuinely fascinating, but I can’t see the relevance.’
‘Wait,’ said Offenbach, still clearly enjoying the moment, ‘there’s more.’
He waved a hand, and the window behind him opaqued yet again, the room becoming dimmer.
‘What,’ asked Offenbach, peering from out of the shadows, ‘does the name Ariadna Placet mean to you?’
It took Luc a moment to place the name. ‘She was Director of Policy for Thorne at some point, wasn’t she?’ As, he recalled, had been Zelia de Almeida, although Placet had held the post first. ‘I seem to remember something about her suffering permanent death while she was there – an accident of some kind.’
‘But before that,’ Offenbach prompted. ‘What is it that links her to Antonov?’
‘I’m aware that she was in a relationship with him a long time ago,’ Luc replied, wondering just where Offenbach was leading him. ‘Starting from not long after the Abandonment. They were both engineers, and sided with the Tian Di Hui resistance fighters when they fought the Coalition occupying forces here on Temur.’
‘And?’
Luc sighed. He wished Offenbach would get to the point. ‘Their relationship ended long before the Schism. After Cheng took power, she enjoyed a long and fruitful career in the Temur Council until her death.’
Ariadna Placet had been one of the few Council members for whom the instantiation technology had failed. When she had died in a flier accident on Thorne, her backups proved to have been lost or corrupted.
Just like Vasili’s, Luc realized with a start.
‘What if I told you,’ Offenbach continued, ‘that there were accusations of foul play regarding her death?’
‘There was an inquest, wasn’t there?’ asked Luc, feeling a rush of adrenalin. ‘I don’t recall hearing about any such accusations.’
Offenbach grinned. ‘Then you might also be interested to know that not very long after her relationship with Antonov ended, Placet became Sevgeny Vasili’s lover.’
Luc thought of icebergs grinding together in a half-frozen sea, their vast bulks hidden in shadowy waters. ‘Tell me more.’
‘Vasili has a reputation for being a very private man,’ Offenbach continued. ‘Few people outside of the Temur Council knew about the relationship.’
‘Who made the accusation of foul play?’
‘Vasili did. He never accepted the inquest’s findings. He’s always insisted the flier Placet was in when she died must have been sabotaged or shot down on purpose, and her backups deliberately vandalized.’
Luc stared at him in amazement. ‘Why the hell have I never heard about any of this?’
‘Because it’s inner circle gossip,’ said Offenbach. ‘The kind of thing that rarely trickles down from the Eighty-Five to the likes of you and me. From what I gather, Vasili wasn’t the kind to keep quiet about his suspicions. He was absolutely convinced Placet had been murdered, along with a couple of other passengers unlucky enough to be on board the flier with her at the time. That, I think, is the reason Vasili became so isolated from Cheng and the rest of the Eighty-Five.‘
‘But if that were true, what would be the motive for murdering her?’
‘Assuming all this is true, and Vasili isn’t as crazy as the rest of the Council seem to think he is? I have no idea.’
Luc rubbed at his temple. Antonov, Vasili and Placet. ‘You’ve given me even more than you realize, Jared.’
‘That’s the beautiful thing about data,’ said Offenbach. ‘Things that only at first appear to be unconnected frequently prove, at a later date, to be intimately intertwined.’
I couldn’t have put it better, thought Luc, rising to his feet. ‘Thanks, Jared. I’ll get that Aeschere data through to you as soon as I can.’
‘I can only hope I’ve been able to help,’ replied Offenbach.
Luc headed for the door. ‘More than you can possibly imagine,’ he said as he departed.
SEVEN
In the three days since Jacob Moreland’s ship had crash-landed on Darwin, he had taken to hiding in a deep cave a few kilometres away from where that same craft had quickly set about destroying itself. He sustained himself by sucking brackish moisture from the pocket-like leaves of bushes that grew up the side of the hill below the cave, until it began to rain on the second day, an incessant downpour that continued well into the next evening. He passed the time huddled deep within the cave’s recesses, staring out towards the distant flicker of light that betrayed the presence of Coalition mechants still searching the nearby forest and shore.