Fire with Fire

Chapter Eighteen

ODYSSEUS

At the villa-a burnt-ochre mission-style home with a tiled roof and innumerable perimeter cameras-Downing held the door for Opal while two guards stood at either flank of the broad entry. Caine, awaiting the conclusion of the chivalric ritual, saw himself in the glass doors, his image cut into irregular pieces by the black wrought-iron framing. The tinted glass muted the colors of whatever it reflected, so the bloodstains on his shirt and pants and forehead were rendered as brown-mauve patches and spatterings. The three seconds he waited, staring at the stains and himself, seemed unusually long, as though minutes, even hours, were passing-

“Christ, Caine-come in. Come on in.”

Nolan’s voice, then his face, were coming out of the now-vacated doorway at him. Caine nodded, entered as bid.

The interior, he noticed calmly, was quite beautiful: beyond the high-ceilinged entry hall, dark wood raftering lent a stately antiquity to the wide, bright interior. He was also aware that Nolan was studying him with a frown, the jocularity of his first exhortation quite gone.

But that convivial demeanor returned-with astonishing, almost disgusting rapidity-as the retired admiral turned quickly to Opal. He scooped a glass from a waiting tray, and stuck a drink in her hand. Caine noted, with a queasy irony, that it was a Bloody Mary.

Caine heard Nolan’s voice grow loud behind him, as though the rising volume were trying to fill up an empty space, or trying to push everything else out: “Captain, it’s a pleasure to finally meet you. I just wish it was under happier circumstances. But you are intact and in a safe place, so let’s drink to that. You know, this whole thing was my fault, really. I shouldn’t have cleared Caine-and you-for unescorted travel. I am becoming an optimistic old man, I guess. Now you just enjoy your drink; I’ve got to hijack Caine for a few minutes. Some unfinished business. Excuse us?”

Her mouth puckering, full of drink, she nodded them out, waving them on with her free hand.

Nolan crinkled his avuncular eyes at her, waved for Caine to follow him.

Which Caine did at a measured pace: if I was a betting man, I’d lay odds we’ll wind up in a windowless conference room.

Nolan led Caine into the room he’d envisioned. Downing closed the door behind them. Caine remained on his feet.

Nolan looked at him. “Caine, will you have a seat?”

“No, not until I get some answers.”

Nolan stared. “Very well: what do you want to know?”

“What the hell happened out there? I thought you said-”

Nolan held up a hand. “Caine, as I was telling Captain Patrone, that was my fault, all of it. I got lazy, overconfident, and jeopardized not only you, but also a crucial opportunity for international cooperation. There is no excuse for my laxity; I can only ask your forgiveness and forbearance.”

Nolan, and the apology, seemed sincere-but still, it seemed to come too easy, was too facile. Of course, he’s probably been in this position a dozen times, so he’s had ample opportunities to rehearse this little scene of genuine self-abnegation. “I’ll assume that’s true-for now. But who the hell is trying to kill me? Do you have any better idea now than when you retrieved my lifepod in Junction?”

Downing shook his head. “’Fraid not. There’s a long list of possible suspects, but we have no way of knowing which one-or several-might be responsible. On the Tyne, the only lead was the second engineer, and his identity, and prior assignment at Epsilon Indi, were fabrications. The assassins at Alexandria either escaped or were vaporized by personal failsafe devices-”

“By what?”

“The five strikers we neutralized on adjacent rooftops were burned beyond analysis. Our after-action forensics indicate that each one was equipped with a biomonitor deadman switch rigged to a medley of thermite and white phosphorous charges. If the heart stops-poof: the body and most of the equipment are vaporized by warheads that explode and then burn at twenty-two hundred to twenty-eight hundred degrees Celsius.”

Caine stared at the tabletop. “Wonderful.”

“Almost as wonderful as the cleanup you and I had to perform less than an hour ago. But here, we had to abandon and burn the evidence ourselves because we have only limited influence over the local authorities.”

Nolan shrugged. “I don’t think we’d have learned much from the bodies, anyway.”

Caine looked hard at Corcoran. “Why not?”

“Because they were amateurs, local freelancers. They came after you without any backup plan, their equipment was second-rate, and they were already here.”

“Waiting for me?”

“No: if our adversaries had had any lead time, if they knew you’d be arriving here, they’d have shipped in an A-team. Real professionals. They’d have done the job right: sure, clean, and with absolute plausible deniability. This bunch-they were local muscle, quickly rustled together with phone calls and a few hundred thousand euros, because someone saw you in this area and got the word back to whoever wants you dead. Our opponents probably had only an hour or two to set something up-and by ambushing you with amateurs and failing, they’ve revealed that they don’t yet have an A-team on site. Meaning that they won’t get another shot at you, because by this time tomorrow, you will have told the last of your secrets. After that, there will be no reason left to kill you. Now: will you sit and join us?”

Caine felt the instinct to remain standing: sitting implied a trust, or acceptance, that he did not feel. But to remain standing was to signal hostility. No middle course. So he sat.

Downing hunched forward. “So-what’s the news from Day One, Nolan?”

“Bottom line: there’s general agreement to create a global confederation. When the five blocs were presented with irrefutable evidence of exosapience, there was a unanimous decision to create a central organization with practical political, economic, and military authority.”

Caine cleared his throat; Nolan paused, nodded. “Just cut in whenever you want. No Robert’s Rules, here.”

“What you’re talking about-sounds to me like it makes the U.N. redundant.”

Downing nodded. “Hardly a surprise: the U.N. was never able to put into practice more than a handful of the edicts that it promulgated or the ideals that it espoused. It’s little more than a symbolic memorial.”

“Whereas now the big powers really want to work together?”

Nolan waved away that notion. “Oh, ‘want’ has never achieved anything. But the threat of exosapience means that they need to work together. Of course, that didn’t keep some of the bigger bulls from locking horns for a while.”

Downing looked up from scribbling on his dataslate. “Beijing and Moscow?”

Nolan nodded. “The predictable axes were ground.”

“But they’re going to play nice?”

“So they say.”

Caine frowned. “This all sounds surprisingly civilized.”

“We knew that there would be a baseline of sanity from some of the blocs. Of course, there were still a few cranky gadflies in the ointment-even from the EU.”

Downing grunted. “Oh? Who?”

“Well…Gaspard.”

“But of course. Parisian diplomat of the old school. Wanker.”

“C’mon, Rich, cut him some slack. He’s fighting to maintain some shred of France’s past preeminence-”

Downing tapped his pencil. “Well, he-and the rest of his ilk-will just have to bloody well get used to the fact that France hasn’t been an empire since Napoleon left Moscow.”

“That’s a hard thing for a country to accept.”

“Rot. Look at England: we’ve faced facts and moved on.”

Nolan’s left eyebrow arched. “Oh? Really?” Downing’s mouth was open to begin a rebuttal, but Nolan held up his hand. “For now, let’s just get through the day’s news. Which boils down to this: the Confederation government will be a council of five blocs, two voting members per bloc, and one proconsul with a two-year term.”

Downing tapped his stylus on his slate. “Military authority?”

“Separate forces and R amp;D within each bloc. However, each bloc structures its forces and production to meet the defense responsibilities assigned to it by the Confederation Council.”

Downing seemed pensive. “And-what about intelligence operations?”

“The same model; separate national agencies, coordinated at the bloc level. Each bloc then contributes some assets to a centralized Confederation bureau.”

“With which IRIS can augment its own data gathering and spread its influence.”

Caine looked from Downing to Nolan and back to Downing: the same shrewd, satisfied smile on both faces. “You’re not going to tell them about IRIS? I mean, isn’t this the logical moment?”

Downing studied his fingers. “No: revealing IRIS now would destroy this infant Confederation in its crib.”

“Why?”

“For twenty years, strings have been pulled, policies have been massaged-almost exclusively by agents of the Commonwealth bloc-to bring delegates of the world’s most powerful nations to this very place. If they were to learn that they are here because they have been played like puppets, they would utterly renounce this summit. But if we wait until the Confederation is a fait accompli, then we’ll be able to stand down safely and quietly.”

Caine shook his head. “I wonder how many times a misguided international involvement has been prolonged with that kind of rhetoric: ‘We will leave once the situation has been stabilized.’”

Nolan shrugged. “Historical precedent is on your side, so I won’t argue. I can only say that the alternative seems worse to me.”

Caine silently conceded that Nolan also had a good-maybe superior-point. “So, what now?”

Nolan produced a bottle from the credenza, glanced at Richard. “Metaxa?”

“A double, if you please.”

Nolan turned to Caine. “Want to join us? Just our little evening ritual.”

“Thanks, I’ll pass. I’ve got a big day tomorrow.”

Nolan nodded. “We all do. But I could use some exercise to clear my head: want to take a walk up to the temple before dinner?”

Already halfway out, Caine turned. Not really. But he said: “Sure. I’ll come along.”