She wondered how many of her officers were as surprised by that as she was, but she allowed no sign of the thought to show itself.
'Under the circumstances, Admiral Khumalo felt he had no option but to request immediate reinforcement. Since it's possible Terekhov, or Khumalo, or both of them may find themselves in a shooting incident with Solarian units, the Admiralty felt it had no option but to dispatch a significant reinforcement from Home Fleet. Those units are already on their way to Monica.
'Obviously, all of these moves have implications for us. The most immediate one is that Home Fleet is now going to be understrength, and one of the functions of Eighth Fleet, like Third Fleet, is to serve as a ready reserve for Home Fleet. There's also the possibility that the Star Kingdom is about to find itself engaged against Solarian units, and no one is prepared to predict the possible ramifications of that.
'Because the entire strategic situation's suddenly been thrown into such a state of flux, Admiralty House has ordered the temporary stand down of Operation Sanskrit. For now, we're postponing the execution date by three weeks. That should give us time to receive dispatches from Terekhov or Khumalo from Monica. Hopefully, those dispatches will confirm that Terekhov was either wrong or that he and Khumalo have managed to defuse the situation. In either of those cases, Sanskrit will be reactivated, although we'll probably face some delay because of our need to factor in intelligence on any changes which may occur in the meantime.'
She sat very still, looking at her flag officers, and her face was grimmer than any of them remembered ever having seen it.
'People, in my judgment, the Star Kingdom is now facing the greatest danger we have ever faced,' she said quietly. 'It's entirely conceivable that we could find ourselves simultaneously at war with the Republic of Haven and the Solarian League. Should that occur, our strategic situation would be about as close to desperate as any I can conceive of. The next month to six weeks may very possibly determine the fate of our kingdom.'
'You wanted to see me, Kevin?' Eloise Pritchart asked warily.
'I wouldn't put it exactly that way,' Kevin Usher said almost whimsically. 'I'd say I needed to see you.'
'Which means you're about to tell me something I don't want to hear.'
'Which means I'm about to you something you don't want to hear,' Usher agreed. 'Actually, Senior Inspector Abrioux is about to tell you.'
'Senior Inspector?' the President turned to the petite FIA officer, and Danielle Abrioux returned her look with an unhappy expression.
'Madam President,' she said, 'I'm sorry, but the Director and I both feel we've hit a stone wall. We've tried everything we can think of, and we can't give you the smoking gun you need.'
'Why not?' Pritchart shook her head quickly. 'I'm sorry. That came out sounding almost accusatory, and I didn't mean it that way. What I meant was, why is it a stone wall?'
'Because both our original suspects are dead, and we haven't been able to identify a single additional damned accomplice,' Usher replied for Abrioux. 'Grosclaude still looks like a suicide, although Danny and I are both positive it was actually homicide. Giancola, damn his black soul to hell, was a genuine accident, but no one's going to believe it. And Grosclaude's so-called 'evidence' is an obvious, if fairly clever, forgery. Those, unfortunately, are the only hard facts we have. We've tried every avenue, short of opening a very public exhaustive investigation, without being able to move beyond those points. And, frankly, I don't think going public would let us turn up anything we haven't already found.
'My own theory, and I think Danny agrees with me,' he glanced at Abrioux, who nodded vigorously, 'is still that Giancola pulled the entire thing off basically on his own, and that he's responsible for the 'forgeries' in Grosclaude's personal files. He needed Grosclaude to make the substitutions, and I can't escape the suspicion that he had someone else helping him out at this end, as well-at least with the computer access he needed. Unfortunately, there's no clue as to who that someone may have been, assuming he actually existed at all and that he's not simply someone I desperately want to exist so I can find him and choke a confession out of him with my bare hands. But even if he existed, it was Giancola's show.'
'And you're convinced he never meant it to go as far as it did?'
'I'm... not as certain of that as I was,' Usher said slowly, and Pritchart straightened in her chair, looking at him intently.
'Why not? What's changed?'
'Danny pointed something out to me the other day,' Usher replied. 'The Manty lieutenant who tried to kill Harrington three months ago was apparently acting under some form of compulsion. From all the information available to us, he was very close to Harrington. He'd been with her for quite some time, and NavInt's dossier on her suggests that her inner circle is almost always intensely loyal and personally devoted to her. So whatever the compulsion was, it had to be powerful enough to overcome that sort of personal devotion and push him into committing what was ultimately a suicidal act. But the Manties-whose medical and forensic establishments, let's face it, are both better than our own-haven't been able to come up with any explanation for how he was compelled. Doesn't that sound like what happened to Grosclaude to you?'
'You think the same people who killed Grosclaude-or, at least, gave Arnold whatever he used to do the job- also tried to kill Harrington?''Let's just say I strongly suspect that whatever technique is being used came from the same source. Now, as the nasty and suspicious sort I am, it occurs to me that if it came from the same source, it's very possibly being used in support of some unified strategy. It's possible, I suppose, that it's simply a case of someone marketing the technology to whoever needs it and can afford it, but I'm beginning to doubt that's the case.' Usher shook his head. 'No, Eloise. There's a pattern here, I just haven't been able to figure out what it is yet. But what I have seen of it suggests that whoever is behind it doesn't much care for either us or the Manties.'
'So now you're saying Arnold may have been actively working for someone else to provoke fresh hostilities between us and the Manties?' Pritchart wished she'd been able to sound more incredulous than she did.
'I think it's possible,' Usher agreed. 'But there are still way too many unanswered questions for me to suggest exactly why someone might want that. Did they have enough information on Bolthole to expect to us to roll right over the Manties for them? In that case, presumably Manticore is the primary target, and we're simply the blunt instrument. Or did they expect the Manties to roll over us, which would make us the primary target? Or do they, for some reason I can't currently envision, simply want the two of us shooting at one another again, which would make both of us the target of some third party with a completely unknown agenda of his own?'
'Jesus Christ, Kevin!' Pritchart stared at him in something very like horror. 'That's so... so... so twisty just thinking about it makes my head hurt! What good could sending us back to war with Manticore do any hypothetical third party?'
'I just said I couldn't envision what their motives might be. If I could, I could make a pretty fair stab at figuring out who they were, as well. And it's entirely possible I'm totally out to lunch with the whole theory. It could be no more than my 'spook' experience making me see things because Danny and I have exhausted all of the potential domestic avenues we could see. I just don't know, Eloise. But I do know this-my instincts all tell me that so far all we've seen is the tip of an iceberg.'
Chapter Forty-Five
'Good morning, everyone,' Eloise Pritchart said as she walked briskly into the sunlit chamber.
The Cabinet Room was on the eastern side of the President's official residence, and the tide of morning light which flooded in through the extensive windows on the room's outer wall gleamed on the expensive, polished conference table, inlaid with half a dozen exotic species of wood. The thick, natural fiber carpet was like a deep pool of cobalt water, with the Presidential Seal floating on it like a golden reflection. All of the chairs, except for Pritchart's own, were upholstered in black; hers was the same blue as the carpet, with the seal of her office emblazoned on its back. Glasses and expensive crystal carafes of ice water sat at each place, and optical pickups on the roof of the building fed the chamber's interior smart walls, which were configured to give a panoramic view of the city of Nouveau Paris and its morning traffic.
'Good morning, Madam President,' Thomas Theisman, as her Cabinet's acknowledged senior member, replied for all of them.
According to the presidential succession established by the Constitution, Leslie Montreau, Arnold Giancola's
