Fire With Fire

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.”

Chapter Nineteen

MENTOR

On his way out the door, Caine added, “Find me when you’re done here.”

“I will.” Nolan pushed a glass of Metaxa toward Richard.

Caine nodded, closed the door behind him.

Nolan picked up his glass. “Do you think he suspects?”

“That we used him as bait? Not yet-maybe never, given how close we came to cocking up the whole op.”

“What the hell happened out there?”

“Damned if I know-but for some reason, he and Opal stopped in the only blind spot on that side of the mountain.”

“Thank God the overwatch team adapted quickly.”

Downing nodded. “Your son trained them well.”

“And he’s been kept in the dark about us tapping his former team for this op?”

“Trevor doesn’t know a thing. But how long that will last is hard to say.”

Nolan sighed. “I know: SEALS are rough, tough commandos, but they gossip like wrinkled church ladies among themselves. Still, they did a good job.”

“No slight intended, but we may owe more to good luck. Things could have worked out very differently. Almost did.”

“Well, we still drew the opposition out, forced them to make their move in a time and a place of our choosing, and trumped their hand. And we manufactured the bonding crisis that the psych folks insist will bring Caine and