'Ever read any Shakespeare from Old Earth, Omar? Henry the Fifth, maybe?'
Fernandez shook his head in negation. 'I've heard of it; that's all.'
'No surprise, I suppose. It's a play; never underestimate the benefits of a classical education. There's a scene there… where the king insists that he is not to blame for the condition of his soldiers' souls should they be killed in battle for him.'
Carrera laughed, bitterly. 'Damn old Will. He answers the questions he wants to but not the one you want him to. Tell me, Omar, what do you think? If Henry's soldiers had sacked Harfleur, would he have been responsible for the sack? For the rape of the 'shrill shrieking maidens'? For the dashing of old men's heads to walls? For the 'naked infants spitted upon pikes?' Where would the blame lie then?'
'Patricio,' Fernandez began, 'I don't thi-'
Carrera cut him off. Nodding his head toward the hatch that led into the bowels of the ship, he asked, 'And where does the blame lie here? Who is to blame for that obscenity taking place below? If it's you, does that relieve me of anything? I don't think so.'
Sighing, Fernandez asked, 'Do you want me to shut the program down?'
Taking another hefty slug of the whiskey, Carrera coughed and then answered, 'That's the worst part: no.'
Ic (Intelligence Office), Camp Balboa, Ninewa, 29/1/462 AC
Thank God Patricio didn't succumb to the weaker part of his nature, thought Fernandez while sitting at his desk in Sumer. Bad enough he shows too light a hand with some of our adversaries. But we must have the information that comes out of that ship, whatever it costs.
The desk sat deep inside the Intel Office, which was the most secure building in the camp. It was built of a double wall of pressure formed adobe bricks with the interior space filled with earth as well. The office was surrounded by another wall, this one topped with barbed wire and with a tower at each corner of the compound. Guards manned the tower, the narrow gate, and the inside of the building continuously.
There was no air conditioning; Carrera simply forbade it on the theory that troops given air conditioning would never grow acclimated to the heat, which was, while drier, even worse than Balboa's. The four exceptions to this rule were the religious facilities, the field hospital, the troop messes and the small brothel quadrant full of Sumeri whores, most of them widows or orphans.
So instead of air conditioning, Fernandez sat under an overhead fan. Paperweights-generally of steel, glass, or fired clay-held the papers on the desk in place against the breeze of the fan.
It was better to be seated. After days on the Hildegard Mises Fernandez found himself still swaying when he walked on dry land. He hoped it would go away soon.
It had been worth it, though. Normally Fernandez was, while willing enough, not a man who enjoyed inflicting pain. This time had, obviously, been different.
They were still on the ship, the one named Ouled Nail and the other three who had survived. They'd be hanged when they'd healed from their surgery; be hanged, incinerated and their ashes dumped out with the garbage.
Big mistake to survive, Fernandez thought. Worse mistake to survive after killing my blood and then being captured. Bastards. Well, let's see what today brings.
What today brought were dispatches from Sada, received from Sachsen. These included a folder taken from the not-quite-packed bag of a woman. Most of the names in the folder were of no interest. Rather, they were of no obvious interest as they had no markings against them in the folder to indicate any importance beyond the merely personal. They would, of course, be investigated anyway.
Two names were interesting. One of them was a woman, this one living in the City of Akka in Bekaa. She appeared in the folder as Westplatz's main contact with the insurgency.
'Odd,' Fernandez said to himself, 'very odd that a Spanish name should appear among our adversaries, yet be living in Bekaa.' He decided to pass the name on to the research section.
When the name came back, a few days later, with a healthy file including pictures both before and after the plastic surgery, all Fernandez could say was, 'Ohhh,' before passing the file back to Sada's office.
Akka, Bekaa, 2/2/462 AC
Standing on a second floor, iron railed balcony overlooking the Tauranian Lakes, Layla Arguello shivered despite the warm night air. There was something going on that was monstrous in its implications. People, her people, good and trusted comrades of many years of struggle, were disappearing right and left. She was pretty sure they were disappearing right.
She'd been something of an icon in her youth, had Layla. Borderline pretty, with a simple, sincere face masking a devious mind, a photographer had once taken her picture with her hair covered by a man's keffiyah and a man's rifle slung over her shoulder with the muzzle projecting above her back. This photograph had rocketed around Terra Nova, propelling Layla into an unwanted, even unfortunate, stardom. Songs had been written about her in several tongues. The stardom, in turn, had made it nearly impossible for her to continue her mission, which was, by and large, the hijacking of aircraft.
Nothing deterred, Layla had undergone a series of plastic surgeries to hide her true face and make it possible for her to continue boarding aircraft in order to hijack them. The significant part of that was that she had endured the surgery without anesthesia, this being by way of a gesture of solidarity with the suffering People of the world.
Later in life, after many hijackings and many terms in prison, Layla had married a comrade from the struggles in Colombia Latina. Later still, she'd entered politics, winning office repeatedly based largely on her revolutionary past and her potential for continuing the revolution into the future. As a politician, her new face became even better known than had been her old. Likewise well known were her residence, office, domestic arrangements and family situation.
Is it time to go undercover again? she wondered, staring at the stars winking in the waves below. No… I can't. The cause needs me here, easy to find and with all my connections intact. But I think I ought to improve my security.
Camp Balboa Base, Ninewa,
Sumer, 3/2/462 AC
Sada, Fernandez and Carrera met in a conference room in the intelligence offices. The conference room was small; the idea of a large conference in the shadowy, dirty world of intelligence, counterintelligence and direct action was something of a contradiction in terms. A few flies buzzed-Fernandez had reason to believe they were the only bugs in the room-and the rotating fan whined despairingly overhead.
'There are a few people, very few,' Fernandez admitted, 'who won't break under torture. She's going to be one of them.'
'She has two sons,' Sada had pointed out. 'She might not talk over threats to a husband, or even her father and mother, but she's an Arab, an Arab mother; she'll talk to save her sons.'
'What do you think she's going to know to justify torturing and killing her sons?' Carrera had asked. 'Remember, we do not torture anybody we have not announced that we have killed and are not planning to kill. If you tell me she's part of a plot to set off a nuke in a major city, maybe that would justify it. Maybe. Or if you tell me that you know, not suspect but know, that her sons are in on the whole thing. Can you do that?'
Sada shook his head. 'No, we can't say that. Both of them are still in school. One's in college; the other in high school. They're likely to join the enemy at some point in time, yes, but for now? No, as far as we can tell they're innocent enough.'
Fernandez grew heated. 'If the sons will grow up to become terrorists, and they will, we should kill them now while we can. If we're willing to kill them then why not do the rest?'
'It just seems wrong.'
'Patricio,' Sada said, 'you heard me when we first began working together but I don't think you listened. We Arabs are not like you people, and it isn't just a matter of religion. After religion, and not far behind… maybe even ahead, family is what really matters to most of us. We stopped, or at least cut down on, the hangings because it was making enemies of entire clans. The same logic applies here. At least the clans and tribes here could be bought off. But unless you are willing to kill the sons who will avenge this woman-and the right or wrong of it matters not at all-you are better off not touching her. What's the sense of killing or taking one terrorist if, in the process, you
