Ashes Of Victory

Baird allowed it to play for several seconds, then switched it off once more and slipped it into his own pocket.

'You waited too long to murder him, My Lord. We have his recordings of every earlier meeting with you. I feel confident the Sword would be more than interested in proof of your illegal activities.'

'You wouldn't dare!' Mueller snapped, but his mind reeled. He had no idea who'd actually killed Hughes, and the enormity of the dead sergeant's betrayal was stunning, but the recording was obvious proof the armsman had really been working for Baird's organization from the very beginning.

'Why not?' Baird asked calmly.

'Because you're just as guilty of any crimes as I might be!'

'First, My Lord,' Baird said very precisely, 'that presupposes that these are the only crimes of which we have evidence. In fact, they're not, nor was Hughes the only agent we've planted in... strategic spots, shall we say?' Mueller swallowed, and Baird smiled faintly. 'We've been keeping an eye on you for quite some time. We're well aware of your activities and alliances — all of them, My Lord, from the beginning of your resistance to the `Mayhew Restoration.' I trust you'll forgive me if I don't provide matching documentation of them right this moment, however. In this case—' he tapped the pocket which held the projector '—you obviously already identified and murdered our agent. We have no intention of giving you anything which might suggest the identities of our other agents to you. But we would have no compunction about sharing that information with the Sword if you forced our hand.

'Secondly, you assume we'd be afraid to admit our own complicity in your illegal campaign financing schemes.' Baird allowed himself a small, cold smile. 'Those schemes are the least of your worries, My Lord... and the greatest of ours. We have far less to lose than you even if we're arrested right alongside you. Which, by the way, would be rather more difficult for the Sword to accomplish than you appear to think. Surely you must realize that Mr. Kennedy and I have constructed in-depth covers rather than meet you under our own names and identities! Moreover, neither of us has ever appeared in Planetary Security's files. We have no records, and Security has no place to start in hunting us down. You, on the other hand, are just a little too prominent to elude their net, I think. And, finally, My Lord, we, unlike you, are truly ready to face arrest, trial, even conviction. If that should be our Test for serving God's will, then so be it.'

Mueller swallowed again, harder. How long had they been spying on him? From Baird's total confidence, it had to have been a long time. Even — the steadholder shuddered — long enough for them to have picked up some scrap of evidence linking him to Burdette and the murder of Reverend Hanks. That certainly seemed to be what Baird was implying, and it would justify the other man's obvious assurance and confidence. If there was even the faintest possibility they could connect him to Burdette's treason...

'I did not have Hughes killed,' he said firmly. 'As for the rest of it, any `crimes' I may or may not have committed were in the name of all of Grayson and of God Himself.'

'I haven't said otherwise, My Lord,' Baird said mildly. 'Honesty requires me to say that I believe ambition has played a part in your actions, but only God can know what truly lies within any man's heart, and I might well be wrong. But the fact remains that however justified your actions may be in the Tester's eyes, in the eyes of the Sword, they remain crimes. Serious crimes, I fear, to which serious penalties attach.'

'You're mad,' Mueller said. 'Think about what you're doing, man! Are you really willing to throw away all we've already accomplished this way?'

'We have no desire to throw anything away,' Baird said in that same mild tone. 'We see no reason we can't continue to cooperate in the future as in the past, unless you foolishly force us to hand our information to the Sword. And before you ask, My Lord, yes. We do think securing proof of the Protector's annexation plans justifies the risk that you might force us to do just that. Besides—' Baird allowed himself a thin smile '—some of us believe the public furor which would be generated by going public with our evidence would actually give us the platform we require to force the steaders of Grayson to recognize what the Sword truly intends. In which case—' he shrugged '—we accomplish as much as we could hope to accomplish with the recordings we need your help to obtain.'

Mueller sat motionless, staring at the other man, and his heart was a stone. Baird meant it, he realized sickly. He and his allies were genuinely ready to throw away everything, including the life and future of Samuel Mueller, on the off chance that their recording devices could be smuggled past Planetary Security and the Manticorans, capture something incriminating, and be recovered in a deep-space interception afterward. And the fact that they were insane to even contemplate such an operation meant nothing. They had the blackmail evidence to force him to go along with them.

At least they're only recorders, he told himself, trying to pretend he didn't know he was grasping at straws. Even if they're found, and tied to me, all the Sword would have would be an attempt to obtain privileged information. That's serious, but nowhere near evidence of complicity in murder! And I am a steadholder. And the leader of the Opposition. Under the circumstances, they probably wouldn't even want to go public with the charges.

The man who called himself Anthony Baird gazed into Samuel Mueller's eyes and watched the defiance run out of them like water.

* * *

'Thank Tester, he actually fell for it.'

'Why, `Brian,' ' James Shackleton said, his voice gently mocking. 'How could you possibly have doubted me?'

'I didn't doubt you, Jim. I just had trouble believing he'd cave in with so little proof we had the goods on him.' Angus Stone, whom Samuel Mueller knew as Brian Kennedy, shook his head.

' `The guilty flee where no man pursueth,' ' Shackleton quoted. 'The only real question was whether or not Hughes was actually working for him. That was always a possibility... up until we got our hands on that camera button. Hughes must have been on his way to deliver it to someone else. If he'd been working for Mueller, he would've handed it over before he left Mueller House that night. And we were lucky there were several days worth of imagery stored on the chip. If Mueller'd insisted on more proof, we could have shown him some of that footage without starting him wondering why the only evidence we had was recorded the night Hughes died.' Shackleton shrugged. 'Once we convinced him we had any evidence, his reaction was completely predictable, Angus. After all, he had to be guilty of things we didn't know a thing about.'

'Um.' Stone leaned back in the passenger seat of the air car, gazing out at the night sky, and frowned. 'I wish we knew who Hughes had been working for.'

'If it wasn't us, and it wasn't Mueller, then it almost has to have been Planetary Security,' Baird said equably, 'though I suppose it might be one of his fellow Keys. From all I've heard, Harrington would certainly be capable of taking direct action against him if she suspected the sort of action he was contemplating against her or Benjamin. It doesn't really matter in either case, though. The man's been dead for months. If whoever he was working for felt they had sufficient evidence to nail Mueller, they would certainly have acted by now. And if they don't have sufficient evidence to charge him, then they have no choice but to pretend nothing's happened at all.'

'And do you really think this is going to work?' Stone asked much more quietly.

'Yes, I do,' Shackleton replied, his own eyes on the instrument panel. 'I wasn't especially confident to begin with. The whole thing seemed like such an outside shot that I was afraid to let myself hope for too much. But whatever anyone may suspect about Mueller, it would never cross Palace Security's mind that such a prominent member of the Keys would risk trying to plant electronic devices on the Protector's guests. If they do—' he shrugged '—all we lose is Mueller.'

'And the opportunity to strike.'

'And this opportunity to strike,' Shackleton corrected. 'And I don't think we will lose it. When Donizetti came through with the weapons, I began to think it might succeed. And when he came up with the molycircs for the memory stones as well—'

He shrugged once more.

'I only wish we weren't so reliant on Donizetti in the first place.' Stone sighed.

'He's an infidel and a mercenary,' Shackleton agreed, 'and I'm sure he's taken a bigger `commission' off