‘Do you have any theories?’
‘I’m inclined to think it’s just noise: either noise that came out of Anthony Theobald, which Gaffney assumed was significant, or noise that came out of Gaffney. I ran a search on the word. Lots of priors, but nothing that raised any flags.’
‘There wouldn’t have been any,’ Aumonier said.
Dreyfus heard something in her tone of voice that he hadn’t been expecting. ‘Because it’s meaningless?’
‘No. It’s anything but. Firebrand has a very specific meaning, especially in a Panoply context.’
Dreyfus shook his head emphatically. ‘Nothing came up, Jane.’
‘That’s because we’re talking about an operational secret so highly classified that even Gaffney wouldn’t have known about it. It’s superblack, screened from all possible scrutiny even within the organisation.’
‘Are you going to enlighten me?’
‘Firebrand was a cell within Panoply,’ Aumonier said. ‘It was created eleven years ago to study and exploit any remaining artefacts connected with the Clockmaker affair.’
‘You mean the clocks, the musical boxes?’
She answered with superhuman calm, taking no pleasure in contradicting him. ‘More than that. The Clockmaker created other things during its spree. The public record holds that none of these artefacts survived, but in reality a handful of them were recovered. They were small things, of unknown purpose, but because they had been made by the Clockmaker, they were considered too unique to destroy. At least not until we’d studied them, worked out what they were and how we could apply that data to the future security of the Glitter Band.’ Before he could get a word in, she said: ‘Don’t hate us for doing that, Tom. We had a duty to learn everything we could. We didn’t know where the Clockmaker had come from. Because we didn’t understand it, we couldn’t rule out the possibility of another one arising. If that ever happened, we owed it to the citizenry to be prepared.’
‘And?’ he asked. ‘Are we?’
‘I instigated Firebrand. The cell was answerable only to me, and for a couple of years I permitted it to operate in absolute secrecy within Panoply.’
‘How come Gaffney didn’t know about it?’
‘Gaffney’s predecessor knew — we couldn’t have set it up without
‘What happened then?’
‘There was an accident: one of the seemingly dead artefacts reactivated itself. It killed half the cell before the rest brought it under control. When the news reached me, I took the decision to shut down Firebrand. I realised then that no benefits could outweigh the risks of allowing those artefacts to remain in existence. I ordered all the remains to be destroyed, all the records to be deleted and the cell itself to be disbanded. Those involved were dispersed back to normal duties, resuming the jobs they’d never officially left.’
‘And?’ Dreyfus asked.
‘Shortly after, I received confirmation that my orders had been implemented. The cell was no more. The artefacts had been destroyed.’
‘But that was nine years ago. Why would Firebrand come up again now?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Someone’s stirring up old ghosts, Jane. If Firebrand is really connected with Panoply, how did Anthony Theobald know about it?’
‘We don’t know for sure that he did. That could be a rogue inference from the trawl.’
‘Or it could explain why Gaffney was so interested in the Ruskin-Sartorious family,’ Dreyfus said. ‘You shut down that cell, Jane. But what if the cell had other ideas?’
Her eyes flashed nervously. ‘I’m not with you.’
‘Try this on for size. The people running that cell decided their work was too important to be closed down, no matter what you thought. They told you it was all over for Firebrand. But what if they just relocated their efforts?’
‘I’d have known.’
‘You already told me this cell was damn near untraceable,’ Dreyfus said. ‘Can you really be sure they couldn’t have kept it running without your knowledge?’
‘They’d never have done such a thing.’
‘But what if they believed they were acting in the right? You clearly thought there was a justification for Firebrand when you started it. What if the people inside thought those reasons were still valid, even after you tried to kill it?’
‘They were loyal to me,’ Aumonier said.
‘I don’t doubt it. But you’d already set a bad example, Jane. You’d shown them that deception was acceptable, in the interests of the common good. What if they decided that they had to deceive
For a long moment Aumonier said nothing, as if Dreyfus’s words had not just stunned her, but undermined her every certainty. ‘I told them to put a stop to it,’ she said, so quietly that Dreyfus would not have caught the words had he not already attuned himself to her voice. ‘I ordered them to end Firebrand.’
‘It appears they thought differently.’
‘But why would all this surface now, Tom? What does any of this have to do with Anthony Theobald, or Gaffney, or Aurora?’
‘There was something in the Ruskin-Sartorious Bubble that had to be destroyed,’ Dreyfus said. ‘Something that even we didn’t realise was there, but which Aurora considered an impediment to her plans, something that had to be removed before she could begin the takeover.’
‘You think Firebrand relocated to the Ruskin-Sartorious Bubble nine years ago.’
‘If you’d pulled the plug on the cell, it would have been too difficult for them to remain operational inside Panoply, especially if something went wrong again. Too risky to relocate elsewhere in the system, either, since that would have involved travel they couldn’t easily explain away as routine Panoply business. So why not another habitat? Somewhere close enough to be easily reachable, but still discreet enough to contain something so secret even we didn’t know about it?’
‘What would Anthony Theobald’s involvement have been?’
‘I don’t know,’ Dreyfus said, still getting things straight in his head. ‘Did he have any prior connection with Firebrand?’
‘Not to my knowledge.’
‘Then he was probably just told to keep his mouth shut in return for certain favours. Whatever those favours were, it looks as if he was prepared to screw his own family to safeguard them. He was the only one who bailed out, just before the Bubble was destroyed. I’m assuming your cell had ready access to funds, without going through the usual channels?’
‘Like I said, it was superblack. If they needed something — resources, equipment, expertise — they got it, no questions asked.’
‘Then I imagine they could have made someone like Anthony Theobald very comfortable indeed.’
‘He must have had advance warning that the Bubble was going to be hit,’ Aumonier said.
‘Or he was good at putting two and two together. According to Gaffney’s trawl, Firebrand moved out of the Bubble at the last minute. They must have received intelligence that someone was closing in on them, trying to hunt down the Clockmaker artefacts.’
‘Aurora,’ Aumonier said.
‘Almost certainly. Whatever it was was enough to scare them out of hiding. Maybe they tipped off Anthony Theobald: get your family out of here now, while you can, that kind of thing. Then change your identities and lie low for a couple of centuries, until the trail goes cold. But Anthony Theobald obviously decided to prioritise the saving of his own neck instead.’
‘Except Gaffney was cleverer.’
‘We need to find out who’s still running Firebrand, Jane. Something they were holding in that Bubble scared
