“Exactly! Exactly, my dear Director. Unfortunately, due to the past unethical and government-supported subsidization of various multilaterals in New Oisin by the Revenants, DIS was in danger of collapse. So, in order to strengthen the economic structure of the Republic, the Ministry of Economic Security used its powers to effect a number of consolidations, and the terms of the consolidations, of course, will ensure that the revenue flows out of the Republic will be reduced to a more…reasonable level.”
“Despite contractual agreements?”
“Contractual laws are set by the system governments. That is a principle that dates back to Old Earth. And while such legal…differences…have occasionally caused disagreements, at this time, it would seem unlikely that the Coalition would wish to extend itself around Revenant territory over such a trifling matter.” Roberts smiled again.
Van returned the smile. “It is an interesting proposition, but you are obviously quite politically astute. I do have a question. Did anyone consider the ethics of a legal maneuver that is designed to confiscate the assets of anyone whose business is deemed so vital that it receives this kind of attention?”
“Ethics, now, Director? The first ethic is survival, and the Republic, make no mark about it, is in a conflict that will determine its survival.”
“There is survival and survival.”
“You sound like that old moralist—what was his name…Exton something or other. I had him for a professor. That was before your time, I fear. He harbored this illusion that there was an absolute morality to any situation. Of course, he couldn’t ever define it, and what good was that? In the end those with the power define the ethics.”
Van wasn’t about to argue with Roberts. “And the Republic has defined them.” He nodded and stood. “I appreciate the clarifications and explanations, and I wish you both well.” He looked to Addams.
Neither man replied or spoke until they thought Van was out of hearing distance.
“…not happy…”
“…can’t do anything…have to live with it, like everyone else…”
Van and IIS might indeed, but he wanted to find out more about what Morgan Henry had been up to before he left Korkenny, and he still had six hours before the shuttle to orbit control.
Although it was still before noon when Van returned to the local IIS office, it was closed, and Morgan Henry and his aide had left. Van walked in, used his passcodes for access, and reset all the security features so that only he—or Trystin—had access to the accounts and the data.
The moment he looked at Henry’s office, and saw that all personal items had vanished, he knew that he had locked the doors far too late. Still, he needed to find out just what had happened. After a deep breath, he accessed the files, half-wondering why Henry hadn’t just blanked them. Then he shook his head. That would have alerted IIS headquarters even sooner, and it wouldn’t have done any good, because the files were automatically duplicated and stored through Cambrian Holdings. Any attempt to change that might have been successful in destroying part of the files, but it would have triggered an immediate alert.
Van got to work.
The AmalGS takeover had occurred three months earlier, but there was no record of any message or notification to the IIS main office on Perdya. Nor was there any record of any communication to either Van or Trystin.
Van began to search, going through all the IIS clients on Korkenny.
The three largest had been acquired by larger New Oisin–based multilaterals, and all in the last few months.
Then Van began to study the office accounts themselves. There was also a pattern there. Large sums had been charged to the office operating accounts, and all to a company that had not appeared on the books before nine months previous—H. Morgan Company—clearly a sham front set up by Henry. That certainly confirmed Van’s initial impression of the man. The invoices were for proprietary information research.
Van kept digging. There were no deliverables from H. Morgan, and no records of anything except the invoices themselves. He tried the contact links, but those simply led to a simmie receptionist who delivered a perfunctory request to leave a message.
While there was no way that Henry could have diverted the revenues from the clients, because those were paid directly to the transfer account of Cambrian Holdings, with only a percentage coming back to the local office, in the short run, no one would have objected to invoices for research. That was the IIS business. But Henry must have known that someone would check, and that meant he hadn’t expected to be around that long.
Van leaned back in Henry’s chair.
What could he do? IIS had effectively lost the majority of revenue from the larger clients, except what it might receive in dividends—if any of the merged multilaterals even paid such. The way the revenue streams were being diluted, within a year, seventy percent of all revenues from IIS investments in Korkenny would vanish—legally under the new Republic law. Without IIS support and information, AmalGS would be far less profitable, but that didn’t seem to matter to Sub-minister Roberts.
Van had felt like murdering Roberts, but killing one snake in the pit wouldn’t solve the problem. In fact, it would probably make matters worse, because the politicians would quickly seize on such a murder as vindication of their charge that the Republic’s economy was under siege.
For the moment, Van’s best bet was to transfer all assets of the office to the accounts in Cambrian Holdings and arrange for the office to be closed. He doubted that even Sub-minister Roberts would take on Cambrian Holdings—not as the largest Coalition financial institution and one of the largest, if not the largest, in the Arm.
And then he needed to leave Watford and Korkenny.
Chapter 60
Van sat in the cockpit, trying to use his implant to find out what was wrong with the jump generators, but the diagnostic stated, Jump generator is normal. No deficiencies
