Honor Bound

O’Keefe shrugged. “Whatever it would take. I would step down, let Dominguez take power peacefully.”

“He’ll start the forced emigration again,” Valerie reminded him. “Worse than before, since he’s in the multicorps’ pockets. And I doubt he’ll be willing to sit back and let the voters decide if he stays in office when the elections come up. You’ll be dooming the whole world… and many others… to dictatorship, Daddy.”

“And if the choice is between that and death, chaos, starvation and possibly the end of our civilization, honey? What do you think those who are forced to go to the colonies would choose, death or exile?”

“They should have the right to choose that for themselves!” She insisted, leaning over the desk towards him.

“Yes they should, sweetheart,” he agreed. “But if I can’t keep them safe any other way…”

“Mr. President,” Shannon interrupted, “I think we’re getting ahead of ourselves here. We don’t know that Antonov and his forces are not involved, and if they are, there really is no choice of stepping aside. Antonov will smash the Republic and install a dictatorship with him at the head and I think we both agree that is not something that is preferable to war, don’t we?”

“Yes,” O’Keefe nodded reluctantly. “If it is Antonov, we have no choice but to fight.”

“Well, sir,” she pointed out gently, “you’ve told us we can’t interrogate the Vice President. I’m not sure D’Annique would know even if we did grab her. So, we won’t know if it’s Antonov or not until after the conspirators make their move, will we?”

O’Keefe shook his head, grinning ruefully in admiration. “McKay always reminds me that you’re the brains of the operation, Major Stark. So, my noble sacrifice is put on hold. It seems we don’t have a choice but to wait this out.”

“Hold on,” Valerie said, eyes narrowing in thought. “You know, Daddy, maybe you should talk to Dominguez after all.”

“Val?” Shannon shot the other woman a questioning look.

“You were right, Shannon, we can’t surrender. And daddy, you’re right, we can’t kidnap and interrogate the Vice President.” Val grinned the grin of a shark that had just smelled blood. “But there’s no reason that Dominguez needs to know he’s being interrogated…”

* * *

Xavier Dominguez cut quite a figure, Roza Kovach admitted to herself as she watched the man step out of the flyer flanked by security agents. He was tall and trim with a look of whipcord strength beneath his perfectly tailored Italian suit, and his face was lean and sculpted, his dark eyes showing just the right touch of compassion and sympathy for a politician… or a salesman. Not that there was much difference between the two professions, she reflected cynically.

Right now, though, she could see in those salesman’s eyes a hint of the annoyance he must feel at being called away from Capital City out to President O’Keefe’s family home outside Calgary. The estate was large and well-tended, the house a multistory Tudor built over a century ago and pretty in a quaint sort of way. Roza had never been there before, of course, but she’d become very familiar with it in the last two days of preparation. She still felt hideously out of place, however, in the expensive designer business suit that Major Stark had insisted she wear.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Vice President,” she greeted him as he approached the back patio of the house, the security agents taking up their positions at its edge. “I’m Rachel Kosar from President O’Keefe’s Calgary office. He’s waiting for you in his office, if you’ll follow me.”

“He’s inside,” Ari told Shannon, watching Dominguez over a security monitor in a small office in a far corner of the house. It had been previously used as a guest room, but two days of frantic effort had filled it with monitoring equipment and various other high-tech gadgets brought in from the Special Operations training center by Tom Crossman.

“Get a baseline on his biometric readings,” she told him, pacing the small room behind him. She seemed, Ari thought, as nervous as he had ever seen her, and he couldn’t blame her. This was extremely risky, not only to their lives and careers but to the future of… hell, of humanity, he realized.

“I’m recording his bio readings,” Ari confirmed. He worked his mouth after he said the words… his face was still sore. He’d taken advantage of the time it had taken to get the equipment in place to see a restruct surgeon and get his old face back and it was still healing.

Watching Roza lead the Vice President through the house, he thought of how she had reacted when he’d returned from the surgery. “We have a strange relationship, my love,” she’d remarked. “I feel like I’m cheating on you… with you!”

He could see a reflection of himself in an inactive monitor at the edge of the display and it almost seemed to strange to him to have his own face back. But he’d decided that if they were facing imminent disaster, he’d rather go out with his own face than a borrowed one.

“Mr. President,” he could hear Roza saying as she knocked on the office door. It was real wood, with a brass knob, no intercom or any other electronics.

“Come in,” O’Keefe said in a subdued voice that barely carried through the door.

Roza pushed the door open and gestured to Dominguez to enter, then quickly retreated and closed the door behind her. O’Keefe was sitting at his antique oak desk, leaning back in a comfortable chair, his cowboy boots propped up on the desktop, hands folded across his chest. He made no move to get up.

“Have a seat, Xavier,” O’Keefe told his Vice President, waving at the very expensive leather-upholstered chair on the other side of the desk.

“Daniel,” Dominguez began, sinking into the chair and looking decidedly uncomfortable, “things are not good right now. You shouldn’t be all the way out here in Calgary, much less both of us. What the hell is going on?”

O’Keefe swung his legs off the desk and reached behind it to a low shelf, grabbing a half-empty bottle of bourbon and two glasses. He poured two fingers into each of them and set one in front of Dominguez.

“Have a drink with me Xavier,” he said, picking up one of them.

“Daniel, I don’t want a drink,” the other man insisted, shaking his head. “I want to know why you’re hiding here in Canada and I definitely want to know why you dragged me out here. The press is eating this up, you know that, right? I know you’re worried about your daughter, but the police are doing everything they can to find her… I’m sure she’s going to be all right.”

“Xavier, I’m asking you as a friend… have a drink with me in memory of my son-in-law.”

Dominguez sighed, then picked up the glass. “All right, Daniel,” he gave in, matching the other man’s toast and downing the bourbon with a barely-concealed look of distaste.

“Are we looping the bio readouts?” Shannon asked Ari back in the spare office, her eyes locked on a monitor that was showing Dominguez’s vital signs, a spectroanalysis of his breathing and skin temperature.

“We’ve jammed the signal from his implant,” Ari confirmed. “I’m rebroadcasting the loop from earlier.”

The President and Vice President and the Senate Majority Leader, uniquely among all Republic officials, were outfitted with health monitor implants that broadcast their biological readouts to the Security Service so that they could be treated immediately in the event of a health emergency. Circumventing this was the reason for all the equipment that packed the little office. More was hidden in the house’s attic and basement… and Ari hoped to God that none of the Security agents stumbled onto it…

“All right, Daniel,” Xavier said firmly, setting his glass on the desk. “Tell me why I’m here or I’m leaving right now.”

“I promise I will,” O’Keefe told him. “And I promise you, Xavier, it is important. There have been things happening lately, things I never would have believed could happen. Like Glen’s murder.”

“Yes,” Dominguez said slowly. O’Keefe looked at the other man closely, saw that he was blinking his eyes irregularly, leaning back in his chair a bit more heavily… “Yes, I understand that, Daniel,” Xavier said, voice a bit softer and slower than it had been. “But we have the whole Republic to think about. God,” he rubbed his eyes, “I didn’t realize how tired I was. Shouldn’t have had that drink.”

“Xavier,” O’Keefe continued, “I’ve had an investigation going on. I’ve found out who killed Glen Mulrooney, and why.”

Xavier’s head snapped up and his eyes tried to focus on O’Keefe but failed. “I thought… I thought the target was the journalist.”