“Remember,” Saint-Just said firmly, unwittingly echoing Fontein’s own thoughts, “this is only a preliminary. Rob hasn’t authorized me to do a thing, and that means you’re not authorized to do anything except gather information and begin assembling a file. I don’t want any mistakes or unauthorized enthusiasm that gets out of hand, Erasmus!”
“Of course not, Oscar,” Fontein replied just a bit cooly. Saint-Just gave a small nod in response, one with a hint of apology. One reason (among many) Fontein had been chosen for his position was that he would no more act against McQueen without Saint-Just’s specific order to do so, except in a case of dire emergency, than Saint-Just would have had her arrested or shot without clearance from Pierre.
“I know I can rely on you, Erasmus,” he said, “and that’s more important to me and to Rob right now than ever before. It’s just that waiting for the coin to drop with McQueen has stretched my patience a lot thinner than I ought to have let it. I have to keep reining myself in where she’s concerned, and some of it just spilled over onto you.”
“I understand, Oscar. Don’t worry. Cleary and I will put together exactly the sort of file you need, and that’s all we’ll do until you tell us otherwise.”
“Good,” Saint-Just said more cheerfully, and shoved up out of his chair with a smile. He walked around his desk to escort his visitor out and, in a rare physical show of affection, draped one arm around Fontein’s narrow shoulders.
“Rob and I won’t forget this, Erasmus,” he said as the door from his private office to its waiting room opened and Caminetti looked up from his own desk. The secretary started to rise, but Saint-Just waved him back into his chair and personally escorted Fontein to the door.
“Remember,” he said, pausing for one last word before Fontein left the waiting room for the public corridor beyond. “It has to be solid, Erasmus. When we shoot someone like McQueen, we can’t leave any loose ends. Not this time. Especially not when we’re going to have to make such a clean sweep at the Octagon along with her.”
“I understand, Oscar,” Fontein replied quietly. “Don’t worry. I’ll get it done.”
Esther McQueen was working late—again—when the door chime sounded.
She glanced at the date-time display on her desk and grinned wryly. This late at night, it had to be Bukato. No one else worked quite the hours she did, and of those who might work this late, anyone else would go through her appointments yeoman. Now what, she wondered, would Ivan have to discuss with her tonight? Something about Bagration, no doubt. Or perhaps about Tom Theisman’s impending arrival to take over the reorganized Capital Fleet.
She pressed the admittance button, and her eyebrows rose as the door opened. It wasn’t Bukato. In fact, it was her junior com officer, a mere citizen lieutenant. Citizen commodores and citizen admirals were a centicredit a dozen around the Octagon. No one paid all that much attention to the gold braid and stars walking past them in the halls, and a mere citizen lieutenant was literally invisible.
“Excuse me, Citizen Secretary,” the young man said. “I just finished those signals Citizen Commodore Justin gave me this afternoon. I was on my way to his office with them when I realized you were still here, and it occurred to me that you might want to take a look at them before I hand them to his yeoman.”
“Why, thank you, Kevin.” McQueen’s voice was completely calm, without even a trace of surprise, but her green eyes sharpened as she held out her hand for the citizen lieutenant’s memo board. Despite his own conversational tone, the young man’s features were drawn for just a moment as their eyes met, and McQueen’s breathing faltered for the briefest instant as she saw the flimsy strip of paper he passed her with the board.
She nodded to him, laid the board on her desk, keyed its display, and bent over it. Had anyone happened to walk into her office at that moment, all they would have seen was the Citizen Secretary of War scanning the message traffic her staffer had brought her. They would never have noticed the strip of paper which slipped from the memo board’s touchpad to her blotter and lay hidden beyond the holo of its display. And because they would not have noticed it, they would never have read the brief, terse words it bore.
“S says EF authorized to move by SJ,” it said. Only that much, but Esther McQueen felt as if a pulser dart had just hit her in the belly.
She’d known it was coming. It had been obvious for months that Saint-Just’s suspicion had overcome his belief that they needed her skills, but she’d believed Pierre was wiser than that… at least where the military situation was concerned.
But maybe I only needed to believe that because I wasn’t ready. The thought was unnaturally calm. I needed more time, because we’re still not ready. Just a couple of more weeks—a month at the outside—would have done it. But it looks like waiting is a luxury I’ve just run out of.
She drew a deep breath as she hit the advance button and her eyes appeared to scan the display. Her free hand gathered up the thin paper, crushing it into a tiny pellet, and she reached up to rub her chin… and popped the pellet into her mouth. She swallowed the evidence and hit the advance button again.
Thirty percent. That was her current estimate of the chance of success. A one-third chance was hardly something she would willingly have risked her life upon, or asked others to risk their lives on with her, if she’d had an option. But if Saint-Just had authorized Fontein to move, she didn’t have an option, and thirty percent was one hell of a lot better than no chance at all. Which was what she’d have if she waited until they pulled the trigger.
She paged through to the final message in the board, then nodded and held it out to the citizen lieutenant. Incomplete though her plans were, she’d been careful to craft each layer independently of the layers to follow it. And she could activate her entire strategy—such as it was and what there was of it at this stage—with a single com call. She wouldn’t even have to say anything, for the combination she would punch into her com differed from Ivan Bukato’s voice mail number only in the transposition of two digits. It was a combination she’d never used before and would never use again, but the person at the other end of it would recognize her face. All she had to do was apologize for mistakenly screening a stranger so late at night, and the activation order would be passed.
“Thank you, Kevin,” she said again. “Those all look fine. I’m sure Citizen Commodore Justin will want to look them over as well, of course, but they seem to cover everything I was concerned about. I appreciate it.” Her voice was still casual, but the glow in her green eyes was anything but as they met the com officer’s squarely.
“You’re welcome, Ma’am,” Citizen Lieutenant Kevin Caminetti said, and the younger brother of Oscar Saint-Just’s personal secretary tucked the memo board under his arm, saluted sharply, and marched out of Esther McQueen’s office.
Behind him, she reached for her com’s touchpad with a rock-steady hand.
* * *
Citizen Lieutenant Mikis Tsakakis sighed mentally as he followed Citizen Secretary Saint-Just down the hallway from the lift shaft. By tradition, the night security assignment for any public figure was supposed to be less demanding than the task of protecting the same individual during normal business hours. And Tsakakis supposed that there had to be some basis for that traditional belief, even though his own experience scarcely supported it.
All of Oscar Saint-Just’s personal security team knew that the Citizen Secretary for State Security liked to work late. Unfortunately, he also liked to work early. In fact, he had an uncomfortable habit of going in to his office at utterly unpredictable hours, especially when some particular crisis or concern hovered in the background.