“I- no!” She shook her head. “I can’t! Please!”
“Who do you work for in the DP?” Watanabe asked again, growing stern, pressing hard. His voice became harsh, demanding. Under the drug’s influence, Urban could not withstand the questioning.
“Auer Group!” she exclaimed, then slumped in the chair.
“Who in the Auer Group?”
“Gunther Auer!” Tears began to trickle down her cheeks.
“Where is he located?”
“Gandon City, Gandon planet, Gandon District.”
She watched, helpless, as Watanabe rolled his eyes in disgust at the implied hubris. “Wonder who this Gandon fellow was,” he remarked.
“D-don’t know,” was forced from her. “His… history?”
“No, that wasn’t a question for you,” he told her, holding up a hand. “Did you communicate directly with Gunther Auer?”
“No.”
“Who did you communicate with?”
“E-Erik Weibel.”
“Directly?”
“No. Two go-betweens. George Schwarz and Sofie Lang.”
“Who are they?”
“He’s a m-minor bur-bureaucrat in the Auer Group. She’s one of-of Weibel’s a-assistants.”
“Do you know any of the others in that group? The group who employed you to spy on Sintar?”
“Y-yes…”
“Name them, please. All of them.”
“Um, uh, Hans Kunstler…”
Good, Ashton thought, as he watched in remote VR through the QE radio network. The strategy he had worked out with Browning of surrounding the consul’s office suite had had the precise effect he had wanted – it frightened their quarry into fleeing right into the waiting officers’ arms, quite literally, as it had turned out.
And now he watched as she spilled her guts under the influence of the weakest of the drugs they had available to use. He wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or disgusted. Granted, it saved them the trauma of driving her insane with stronger medications, just to get the information pried out of her head. But it spoke poorly of her willpower, he decided. Though maybe her neurochemistry just didn’t do well with that particular drug. It wasn’t like the medications in question were intended to play nice with the neurochemistry of the perps, after all. If those drugs got used, it was because the subject was already convicted of treason and sentenced to death; the Emperor and his staff just needed as much information as could be pulled from him – or her – first.
At any rate, he thought, the list of names she’s spouting sure sounds like a nice subset of the list of names I pulled together yesterday. With a few exceptions from my list, which was what I expected, and what David confirmed. She’s not that good as a spy if she knows who all the players are. Then again, maybe it’s the players who don’t really know how to play this game. If they let her know who they were, that’s on them. Which maybe we need to know.
“Major Watanabe,” he contacted the Imperial Guardsman on Carolina, “how does she come to know so many names?”
As Urban wound up the fairly long list of names – perhaps as many as thirty or forty – Watanabe paused, then asked, “Ms. Urban, how do you know all these people?”
“Work,” came the answer.
“Consulate work, or spy work?”
“Consulate work.”
Watanabe sat back in surprise.
“Consulate work?”
“Yes.”
“You got it from the consul?”
“Yes.”
“Is he part of the conspiracy?”
“No.”
“Did he know about your espionage work?”
“No.”
“Then how does he know…?”
“Still running DP. Orders come down to him.”
“Aha. Why do you know them all?”
“I’m secretary. Businessmen not espionage.”
“What do you mean by that?”
Her face twisted in disgust.
“They talk too much. They use names. Consul an idiot. I’m not.”
“So the consul told you enough for you to figure it out, without realizing what he was doing?”
“Yes.”
Finally the interrogation was over. She had given them everything they wanted to know, and had survived with her body and mind intact… for the time.
“That’ll do it,” Watanabe decreed. “Doctor, if you will be so kind as to administer the antagonist, we can have her taken to a cell and duly incarcerated until the Emperor renders judgement and delivers sentence.”
The IPD staff physician did as he was told, and as Urban regained control of her mouth and mind, she paled at the realization that they had just wrung her dry of knowledge, and tried to put her face in her hands.
But her arms were still strapped to the lie detector chair, so she just stared at Watanabe’s satisfied face in horror and dread.
“Holy shit, Nick,” Carter said the next morning, when Ashton confessed to him what he had done. “That’s risking your neck, son.”
“Neck, head, ass, hide…” Ashton sighed. “I know. I still haven’t heard back from the Imperial Guard about whether or not I’m gonna be called on the carpet before the Throne myself.”
“Well, given your full explanation, I think I’d have to back you to the Emperor on that,” Carter admitted. “You caught a major flaw in our plan, and plugged it before a drop could escape, let alone the dam break.”
“That was the intent, at least.”
“Looks to me like it’s working. I haven’t heard anything outta the DP boys so far, at least in the news media. And I pinged General Daggert first thing this morning, right before you came in, and he said everything is going just fine.”
“But he didn’t say anything about my going forward to take Urban into custody?”
“No, he didn’t.”
“Oh.”
“Well, look at it like this, son. He didn’t read me the riot act about leaving you in charge while I was gone, either.”
Carol Urban had been taken into custody and interrogated on Friday. She spent the next four days in the secure lockup in IPD headquarters on Carolina, with no access to VR or anything else except food, delivered at prescribed meal times. The food was, at least, good, and she did have a tiny video screen with speakers, which
