The Shadow of Saganami

frankly, and as completely as I can. What will come of that, I don't know, but I suggest that it behooves all of President Tonkovic's friends to convince her that there are matters here on Kornati which require her urgent attention.'

* * *

'Sir? Do you have a minute?'

'What is it, Lajos?' Aivars Terekhov replied, glancing up from the paperwork on his computer display to find Surgeon Commander Orban looking in through the open hatch of his bridge briefing room.

'Sir, I don't know if this is important, but I thought I should mention it to you.'

'Mention what to me?' Terekhov raised one eyebrow and half-turned towards the hatch with his elbow on the briefing room table.

'Well, Sir,' Orban said slowly, 'normally, under the Beowulf Code, what a patient says under heavy medication is privileged doctor-patient information.'

Terekhov felt his muscles freeze. The Star Kingdom subscribed firmly to the bioethics of the Beowulf Code. Most physicians would have been prepared to face prison themselves rather than violate it.

'I believe, Doctor,' he said slowly, 'that your responsibilities as a Queen's officer supersede that particular privilege under certain circumstances.'

'Yes, Sir, they do,' Orban said, his eyes even darker than usual. 'I don't like it, but they do. For that matter, under the circumstances, I suspect the old Hippocratic Oath would, even though it was hardly written for a case like this.'

'Like what?' Terekhov made his voice remain calm and patient.

'One of my patients, one of the terrorists, is under some fairly heavy pain medication, Sir,' the surgeon commander said slowly. 'I'd say he's got no more than a seventy percent chance, even with quick heal.' He frowned, then waved one hand impatiently. 'Whatever. The important thing is that he's fairly delusional at the moment. He thinks the SBAs and I are someone called 'Drazen' or 'Brother Dagger,' and he keeps trying to make some kind of report to us.'

'What sort of report, Doctor?' Terekhov asked very intently.

'I don't know, Sir. We're recording it, but his voice is pretty much gone and it's all fairly garbled. In fact, most of it seems to be so much gibberish. But there's one name he keeps saying over and over again. It seems to have something to do with all the weapons they had down there. I think this fellow's been thrown back to before the attack, because he keeps telling this 'Drazen' fellow that 'the shipment has been delivered.''

''The shipment'?' Terekhov repeated sharply, and Orban nodded. 'And you said he keeps repeating a name?'

'Yes, Sir.' The physician shrugged. 'I guess it must be a code name of some sort. I mean, 'Firebrand' could hardly be someone's real name, could it?'

* * *

' 'Firebrand'? Is Dr. Orban sure about that, Aivars?' Van Dort demanded.

'Whether he is or not, the recorder is,' Terekhov said harshly. 'I played it back myself. And then I had Guthrie Bagwell digitally enhance it. That's the name he keeps saying. And he's telling this 'Drazen' that he-our wounded terrorist-personally took delivery of 'Firebrand's guns.' I don't think there can be any reasonable doubt. This 'Firebrand' character is how Nordbrandt got her hands on at least— at least , Bernardus-a thousand tons of modern weapons. Do you think it's just a coincidence that your friend Westman's been having some sort of contact with someone using the same name?'

'No. No, of course it isn't.' Van Dort rubbed his face with his palms, then drew a deep breath and laid his hands flat on the tabletop in front of him and stared at their backs.

'Then maybe Mr. Westman has just been stringing us along,' Terekhov suggested, his tone even harsher.

'Maybe,' Van Dort said. Then he shook his head. 'Of course it's possible. Anything's possible-especially in a situation like this! But why? The one thing about Westman, from the very beginning, was how determined he's been to minimize casualties. Minimize them. There couldn't be a bigger difference between his attitude and Nordbrandt's! Why would he be dealing with someone who's connected with her ?'

'I can think of only two reasons.' If Terekhov's voice was less harsh, it was much colder. 'First, we've been wrong about Westman from the start. Maybe he's just smarter than Nordbrandt, not less bloodthirsty. He could simply've decided to start out more slowly, so he'd be able to make a stronger case to the Montanan public for having been forced to it by the reactionary forces of a corrupt regime when he unleashes his own bloodbath.

'Second— and, to be honest, the one I would infinitely -prefer-this 'Firebrand' is simply that rogue arms dealer I mentioned to you once before. Somebody peddling arms wherever he can find a buyer, who's managed to contact both Westman and Nordbrandt. In that case, Westman really may be as different from Nordbrandt as we always thought he was.'

'But how could a single arms dealer make contact in such a relatively short period with two such totally different people? Neither of whom were on some directory of would-be freedom fighters or terrorists before they went underground, and that wasn't all that long ago. So how did he find both of them so promptly?' Van Dort objected. 'Especially when the two people in question live on planets over a light-century apart?'

'That, Bernardus, may be the one ray of sunlight in this entire thing,' Terekhov said grimly. 'I've been worried-for that matter, the Office of Naval Intelligence and Gregor O'Shaughnessy have been worried-that certain... outside interests might be interested in destabilizing the Cluster to prevent the annexation from succeeding. It might just be that this 'Firebrand' is the front man for somebody trying to do just that.'

'By feeding weapons to local terrorists, or possible terrorists,' Van Dort said.

'Absolutely. And, if that's the case, and if your estimate of Mr. Westman is accurate, we may finally have caught a break.'

Van Dort looked up at him, trying to understand how the probable confirmation that the Solarian League was actively -working against the annexation effort could possibly be construed as 'a break,' and Terekhov smiled slowly. It wasn't an excessively pleasant smile.

'We're going back to Montana, Bernardus. I'll leave one platoon of Marines, with battle armor, one pinnace, and orbital sensor arrays, to support the Kornatians until Baroness Medusa's reinforcements get here. But you and I, and the Kitty , are returning immediately to Montana. Where we're going to confront Mr. Westman with the media coverage, and the government reports, and our own records, of what Agnes Nordbrandt's been doing here in Split. We're going to ask him if he really wants to be associated with a murderous bitch like her, and then, when he denies he ever could be, we're going to hit him squarely between the eyes with the fact that he's been buying guns from the same supplier she has and see how he likes that.'

Chapter Forty-Six

Aleksandra Tonkovic sat in the golden sunlight spilling through the windows of her office on the planet Flax and glared at the neat, formal words before her. The entire Constitutional Convention had received precisely the same report on the FAK raid, and at least that bastard Rajkovic had been careful to keep any of his poisonous, scarcely veiled anticipation out of a document he knew so many other star system's political representatives were going to see.

Her personal correspondence had been another matter, of course.

No doubt he would insist he was merely doing his duty as Planetary Vice President. As the dutiful servant of Parliament. But she knew Vuk Rajkovic. Knew he'd never shared her vision of Kornati's future. No wonder he and that rabble rouser Nordbrandt had been such bosom buddies for so long! His Reconciliation Party might as well have publicly acknowledged that Nordbrandt's National Reformation Party was no more than an auxiliary adjunct of its own!

She gritted her teeth, inhaled deeply, and forced herself to step back-a little, at least-from her rage.