"With your permission, Madam President, I'll have Admiral Lewis go ahead and begin the briefing," Secretary of War Thomas Theisman said.

Eloise Pritchart looked at him, then glanced at the two empty chairs at the conference table.

"I realize the situation is serious," she said, after a moment. "But I think we might give the Secretary of State a few more minutes."

There might have been just the tiniest hint of a reprimand in her voice, although only someone who knew her well would have recognized it as such. Theisman did, and he bobbed his head very slightly in acknowledgment. One or two of the other people seated around the table seemed to have some difficulty suppressing smiles as they observed the byplay. But Secretary of Technology Henrietta Barloi, one of Giancola's staunchest allies in the Cabinet, was not among them.

"I certainly agree, Madam President," she said frostily. "In fact-"

"Excuse me, Ma'am."

Pritchart turned her head, eyebrows rising in mild surprise at the interruption. Sheila Thiessen, the senior member of her security detachment, was a past mistress at being totally unobtrusive at high level, sensitive meetings. She also possessed a formidable degree of self-control-what Kevin Usher called a "poker face"-which made her present stunned expression almost frightening.

"Yes, Sheila?" Pritchart's voice was sharper than usual, sharper than she'd intended it to be. "What is it?"

"There's been an accident, Madam President. Secretary Giancola's limousine's been involved in a mid-air."

"What?" Pritchart stared at Thiessen. Shock seemed to paralyze her vocal cords for a moment, then she shook herself. "How bad is it? Was the Secretary injured?"

"I... don't have the details yet," Thiessen said, brushing her unobtrusive earbug with a fingertip as if to indicate the source of what she did know. "But it doesn't sound good." She cleared her throat. "The preliminary message said there appear to have been no survivors, Ma'am."

"Jesus. I did not need this on top of everything else."

Thomas Theisman leaned back in his chair, rubbing both eyes with the heels of his hands. The emergency meeting had been hastily adjourned while the President dealt with the stunning news that her Secretary of State and his brother were both dead. Theisman couldn't fault her priorities, especially not in light of the inevitable time delays in the transmission of any messages or orders over interstellar distances. It wasn't as if responding to what had prompted the meeting in the first place was as time-critical as dealing with the immediate consequences of what promised to be a fundamental shift in the Republic's domestic politics.

But now that everyone who needed to be informed had been told and Pritchart had released her official statement (which dutifully expressed her profound regrets over the unexpected demise of her valued colleague and longtime friend), the President and her closest advisers and allies-Theisman himself, Denis LePic, Rachel Hanriot, Kevin Usher, and Wilhelm Trajan-had assembled in the Secretary of War's Octagon office.

"Oh, we didn't need it in more ways than you know, Tom," Pritchart said wearily. The last three hours had been a hectic whirl, and even she looked a little frazzled around the edges.

"Especially not combined with the news of the Manties' raids," Hanriot said sourly. "What's that old saying about when it rains it pours?"

"I expect public opinion isn't going to take kindly to the news the Manties just bloodied our nose," Theisman agreed. "On the other hand, it's possible what happened to Giancola will actually distract the newsies. And let's be honest here-I don't think anyone in this room is especially going to miss him."

"You might be surprised." Pritchart's tone was bleak, and Theisman frowned at her.

"What do you mean, Eloise? You've been sounding semi-cryptic all evening."

"I know. I know!"

The President shook her head. But instead of explaining immediately, she looked at Usher.

"Have you heard from Abrioux, Kevin?"

"Yes, I have." Usher's voice was deeper than usual. "All the preliminary indications are that it was a genuine accident."

Theisman looked back and forth between the President and the FIA Director.

"And just why shouldn't it have been a 'genuine accident'?" he asked. "I admit I detested the man, but I promise I didn't have been killed!"

Nobody smiled, and his frown deepened.

"How did it happen?" Pritchart asked Usher. "I mean, a traffic accident less than five minutes from the Octagon!"

"According to the forensics team's preliminary, the other driver-an Axel Lacroix," Usher said, consulting his memo pad's display"-was well over the legal limit for blood-alcohol. Basically, he was simply flying on manual, rather than under traffic control, and he failed to yield and broadsided Giancola's limo at a high rate of speed."

"Flying on manual?" LePic repeated. "If his blood-alcohol was so high, why was he on manual?"

"We'll have to wait for the tech teams to complete their examination of the wreckage, but Lacroix was driving an older model runabout. Right off the top of my head, I'd guess the internal sensors weren't working properly. Hell, I suppose it's even possible he deliberately disconnected the safety overrides. It's against the law, of course, but a lot of people used to do it simply because traffic control was so spotty they didn't trust it in an emergency. At any rate, for some reason the overrides which should have locked someone in his condition out of manual control didn't do it."

"Oh, how perfectly fucking wonderful," Pritchart said bitterly, and Theisman leaned forward, both palms flat on his desk.

"All right," he said, his voice the flat, no-nonsense one of a flag officer accustomed to command, "suppose you just explain to me what the hell is going on here?"

If anyone in that room-with the possible exception of Hanriot-found his tone an inappropriate one in which to address the President of the Republic, they didn't say so.

"Tom," Pritchart said instead, her voice very serious, "this is going to open an incredible can of worms."

Theisman looked like a man in serious danger of spontaneously exploding, and she went on in the same flat, hard tone.

"Kevin's been conducting a black investigation of Giancola for almost a month now. Denis has known about it from the beginning, but I didn't tell you about it because, frankly, you're an even worse actor than Denis. You already hated Giancola, and I was afraid you'd have a hard time not making him suspicious that something was going on. I'd intended to bring you fully on board as soon as Kevin's team had anything concrete to report."

"Investigating him over what?" Theisman's eyes were intent, as were Trajan's. Hanriot's expression still showed more puzzlement than anything else, but alarm was beginning to show, as well.

"Investigating the possibility that he falsified our diplomatic correspondence, not the Manties," Pritchart sighed.

"That he what?" Theisman erupted to his feet. Trajan didn't even move, as if astonishment had frozen him, and Hanriot jerked back as if Pritchart had slapped her.

"Kevin," Pritchart said harshly. "Tell them."

All eyes swivelled to the FIA chief, and he sighed.

"It all started when I began asking myself a few questions I couldn't answer," he said. "And when I started trying to find the answers, it turned out that-"

"-so we finally hacked into Grosclaude's attorney's files six days ago," Usher concluded, several minutes later. "And when we did, we found Grosclaude had apparently tucked away evidence which incontrovertibly proved Giancola was responsible for altering both our own outgoing diplomatic correspondence and the incoming notes from the Manties."