Katrina Steiner was limitlessly impressed by her own restraint, which is much akin to erecting a billboard to praise one's own humility. She could have very easily let slip the leash on her emotions and have trashed her office. She was also very tempted to order an air strike to destroy the chateau Victor had used during the Whitting Conference. It would serve him right.
Two pieces of news had reached her that filled her with a torrent of conflicting emotions. The first was a hint of Victor's injuries at Luthien. It infuriated her that her brother had not had the decency to die. His death would have eliminated whole levels of complication in the Inner Sphere. She also found it frustrating in the extreme that the report was nothing more than hearsay, and that no solid evidence of his wounding could be obtained. And the most recent report from the fighting in the Combine indicated that Victor had acquitted himself valiantly on the battlefield, but had suffered a slight injury that would leave him some scars— neatly explaining away the scars resulting from having a katana shoved through his chest!
She sat down at her desk and leaned back against the white leather chair. Clearly, if I want him dead, I'll have to order the job done myself.
Her experience in that realm formed the foundation for worry over the second item that had been brought to her attention. Frances Jeschke had vanished without a trace. There was no son named Tommy, no husband lost on Coventry, no record of her adoption or of Galen Cox's father having sired a child out of wedlock. The woman who had so convincingly come asking for help last November had dropped from sight, and all computer records previously confirming her existence had been destroyed.
The only fact that remained from the whole curious incident was the match between the DNA of Galen Cox and Jerrard Cranston. And it was identical. The chances of another such match was one in four billion. If that weren't enough, superimposition of pictures of one man over another showed multiple points of correspondence. Voiceprints even matched.
The implications of all that were inescapable for Katrina and made her hearken back to her confrontation with Victor at their mother's grave. He has learned a great deal. He sent the woman to me, then made her vanish to let me know he knows of my role in our mother's death. He may even have proof of it, but he didn't use it sooner because it would have shattered the Star League before we could revive it. He sent Jeschke to me for precisely the same reason I would have sent her to him were our roles reversed. He wants to torture me and make me fear his return.
She allowed herself a sharp laugh. "Your problem, Victor, is that you have given me something to worry about and time to deal with it."
Ryan Steiner was dead, eliminating one third of the group of people who might know of her role in Melissa's death. The second was a man named David Hanau. She dimly recalled the portly man. He had been her agent in Ryan's camp and had served her faithfully. Now he resided on Poulsbo with his wife, on an estate, enjoying a lifestyle paid for by the Archon. She did not feel endangered because of him, but he was a loose end. I can make the loss up to his widow.
The only other person who could possibly know anything had been Ryan's personal secretary at the time of his death. Sven Newmark, a refugee from Rasalhague, had been present in the room at the time of Ryan's death. Various and sundry crackpot conspiracy theorists had decided, based on a tissue of coincidences spawned by ignorance, error, and wishful thinking, that Sven had actually murdered Ryan. Newmark, who had been cleared by authorities of any involvement, had endured infamy for a couple of months, then had disappeared.
I cannot afford to take the chance that he might reappear. I must find him and make sure he can tell no tales. Katrina smiled to herself. Fortunately I have the resources of an entire government at my disposal to accomplish this end. Once he is gone, so is the axe Victor holds poised over my neck. Once that artificial restraint is lifted, only I will be able to restrain myself.
She pressed her hands together. "And then, dear brother, when you come home, we will settle our differences once and for all."
Helspring Resort, Crescent Harbor
New Exford
Arc-Royal Defense Cordon
The large dark sunglasses Francesca Jenkins wore allowed her to study Sven Newmark as she walked along, while making it appear as if she were reading the document in her hand-held E-reader. Long and lean, Newmark had stretched himself out on a towel-draped lounge chair beside the pool. He had dyed both his hair and his eyebrows a deep black, but his pale body hair kept its true color. She would have considered it an error that he had not dyed all of his hair, as she had, to disguise himself, but Newmark had established an identity as Reginald Starling, disaffected artist. As such, the contrasting hair color, as well as the two earrings in his right ear, marked him as a social rebel.
Francesca admired his audacity in choosing an identity that put him into something of the public spotlight, but that provided him just one more layer of armor between him and discovery. Most people looking to hide become virtual hermits, digging a hole and pulling it in after themselves. By becoming something of a public person—one with a reputation for being volatile, for being pathologically incapable of telling the truth, and for constantly reinventing himself—he became a caricature. Even if he had stood up and claimed to be Sven Newmark, no one would have taken him seriously.
Francesca would have rejected Starling as Newmark's new identity except for the very fact of his art. In researching Newmark she had caught a piece of an article from a gossip-diskzine on Solaris. Newmark's name was buried amid a list of people who had donated original works of art for a charity auction. After a week-long hunt she was able to find a copy of the catalog for the auction that included a digitized picture of Newmark's painting. Having nothing else to go on in her search for him, she had used a computer to analyze every aspect of the painting, and then started searching through news and art databases for any work that seemed similar.
She had plenty of hits in the area of color selection, subject, medium, and even name—a forger did a series of Newmark pieces showing Ryan Steiner's head exploding from an assassin's bullet—but only one was a good hit. The "S" he had used in signing his name on the charity piece and the "S" in Starling matched. This made her zero in on Reginald Starling—"Star" to his fawning admirers, "Reggie" to the critics who hated his work.
Those critics were few and far between. His art had a dark element that seemed to appeal to people who found living so close to the border with the Clans oppressive. His popularity had skyrocketed with the Jade Falcon advance to Coventry, and several of his pieces had been sold for tidy sums. Reginald Starling had become the toast of New Exford, which spoke more to its lacking anything above the most basic level of culture than it did his personal appeal or talent. He certainly was a good painter, but Starling could be abrasive and rude, so inviting him to a social gathering was an adventure in and of itself.
Everything she learned about Starling had some dim parallel to something having to do with Newmark, so she and Curaitis traveled to New Exford and closed in.
Francesca allowed her right foot to slip in a puddle of water at the foot of his chair. She fell backward, letting her thick, terry-cloth robe fall open as she went down. The E-reader slipped from her right hand and dashed itself to pieces right beside Newmark, tiny plastic fragments bouncing up to hit him along the flank. "Ouch!"
Newmark sat up, his attention initially riveted on her bare breasts, then he blinked and swung his legs over the edge of the chair. "Are you hurt?"
"No, not really, but be careful. There's sharp plastic there under your feet."
"Right. Thanks." Newmark shifted around so he knelt on the chair and started to gather up the pieces of the shattered disk reader. He picked up the ejected disk and looked at it. "Breyers Refugee's Folly."
"Right. A little light reading." Francesca came up onto her knees and pulled the robe partially closed. "I'm very sorry about this. It's been a bad year."
Newmark brandished the disk. "It must have been horrible if you f
ind Folly to be light reading."
She sat back on her haunches and gently adjusted the waistband of her bathing suit, brushing her fingers over a puckered scar on her left hip. "People in the Placement Agency said Breyer's book talked about the emotional problems displaced people have with trust and readjustments. I used to live on Zurich, but got caught in the fighting there and barely survived." She pointed to the scar beneath her breastbone and the one on her hip.
"After I got out of the hospital, I returned to my parents' home on Coventry. The Clans hit there, so I moved again." She gave him a warm smile. "I let my computer pick my new home at random, so I'm here."
Newmark handed her the disk. "How long?"
"Six months. I kept telling myself that if I could just get through the first six months I'd treat myself to a weekend at this spa. You know, time off for good behavior."
Newmark lay back in his chair and laughed. "Yes! Someone else who feels as if living here is a sentence!"
Francesca sighed. "Yes, well, now I've lost my E-reader, so it looks like the psych ward for me. Books have been the only thing keeping me sane."
He frowned. "You must have friends. From work, at least."
She shook her head, letting her white-blond hair lash her shoulders. "No, I'm a freelance researcher. I do bibliographical research. If an author or scientist wants to start a research project, I hunt down all the relevant material, then rank, cross-reference, and annotate a bibliography for her. It's interesting work, and pays pretty well. This is especially true since I've learned how to work old Star League-era search engines to check for new data from the Star League memory cores the Gray Death Legion keeps tripping over. Still it's very solitary work."
"If it pays well, you can buy another reader."
Francesca winced. "It's not like a real job. I get a small advance to begin my work, but I get the pay-off when I deliver. I'm in the middle of three projects right now and not close to finishing any of them. No product, no money."
Newmark nodded. "I understand. It's the same way with me."
"Oh, what do you do?"
"I'm a painter."
"Really?" Francesca gave him a friendly smile. "Maybe I could hire you to repaint my apartment. Cream, eggshell, and goldenrod just aren't my colors."
"I apologize for not making myself clear. I'm an artist." Newmark sat up again and extended his hand to her. "I'm Reginald Starling."
"Oh. I'm Fiona Jensen." She shook his hand, then ducked her head down. "Should I have heard of you?"
That question seemed to take Newmark back for a moment, then he smiled and shook his head. "Perhaps not."
Francesca injected enthusiasm into her voice. "Are your pictures on display somewhere? Could I go see them?" She frowned for a second. "I mean, I assume there are galleries here in Crescent Harbor. I like art, I really do, but I haven't..."
Newmark reached out and silenced her protests by touching an index finger to her lips. "You've been working too hard, so you've said." He watched her closely, his blue eyes holding her gaze steadily. "I tell you what, Fiona, I'm going to take you to one of the galleries. I have an opening tonight, and I wasn't going to show up—piqued patrons always buy so they can possess a piece of the artist who snubbed them. It's terribly feudal, with the unworthy and untalented thinking they can actually own the product of genius. We'll go and have fun."
Francesca hesitated. "A gallery opening? I'd like to go, but I don't know if I have anything to wear."
Newmark smiled carefully. "You'll be with me, sweet thing. Whatever you choose to wear will be suitable and you'll be praised for it." He slipped a hand past her left ear and swept her hair up and over to bare it. "Yes, perhaps a new 'do and some color just to make you outrageous, and you'll do wonderfully."
Francesca gently slipped her hair free of his grasp. "Am I going as your latest work, or a friend?"
Newmark pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes, then nodded. "Touche, Miss Jensen. Like you, I don't think I have a single friend on this rock. Perhaps it's time to make a change."
"A change for the better, I think." Francesca smiled up at him. "I can be a very good friend, but to be a good friend I need three things: trust, support, and honesty. With my friends there are no secrets from each other, only those we share between us. If you can't handle that..."
Newmark laughed lightly, and Francesca caught a hint of relief in the sound. "I have secrets you won't want to know."
"Let me be the judge of that, my friend." She touched the scar between her breasts. "Once you've survived what I have, there's not much that can surprise you."
"You keep thinking that, Fiona." Newmark gave her a broad grin. "If we become good friends, we'll test that hypothesis, sorely test it. Your new life in Crescent Harbor begins today, Fiona Jensen, and I promise you it won't be anything like whatever you have known before."
About the Author
Michael A. Stackpole, who has written over twenty-two novels and numerous short stories and articles, is one of Roc Books' bestselling authors. Among his BattleTech® books are the Blood ofKerensky Trilogy and the Warrior Trilogy. Due to popular demand, the Blood ofKerensky has recently been republished, as will the Warrior Trilogy. Other Stackpole novels, Natural Selection, Assumption of Risk, Bred for War, and Malicious Intent, also set in the BattleTech® universe, continue his chronicles of the turmoil in the Inner Sphere.
Michael A. Stackpole is also the author of Dementia, the third volume in Roc's Mutant Chronicles series. In 1994, Bantam Books published Once a Hero, an epic fantasy. The Bacta War, the last of Stackpole's four Star Wars® X-wing® novels, was recently published.
In addition to writing, Stackpole is an innovative game designer. A number of his designs have won awards, and in 1994 he was inducted into the Academy of Gaming Arts and Design's Hall of Fame.
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