Fire With Fire-eARC

by Charles E Gannon

  “Go ahead; say it. Mr. Ching knows.”

  Caine shrugged. “No: the Commonwealth wants to be last. Needs to be. It has the most advanced space program, the best position in terms of interstellar expansion, military capability. If it took an early leadership position, the other nations would balk, might feel that they had become satrapies of the Commonwealth. And—”

  “It’s okay; don’t stop.”

  “And it makes it possible for the Commonwealth—and particularly the US—to let the other nations and blocs take the heat for any mistakes or inequities that persist through the early years. America has been resented for its inordinate wealth and power for so long that, if it started in a leadership position, there would be a reflex to blame any problems in the Confederation upon the US.”

  Nolan looked over at Ching, eyebrows raised—but both were surprised when Caine pressed on.

  “But there’s another advantage.”

  The gait of the two older men slowed. They thought the list was done. Maybe they haven’t seen it, since they are so focused on the political maneuvering.

  “Which is?” Ching sounded mystified, enthralled.

  “Optimal timing for logistical benefit.”

  Silence. Gravel ground and snapped under their shoes.

  It was Nolan who took the bait. “What?”

  Caine smiled at the two of them. “The US is still the leader in defense and aerospace technology. In some ways, it has too great a lead. Unless the US wants to bear the brunt of a potential interstellar war all by itself, it needs a greater diffusion of higher technological capabilities throughout the globe. Right now, there’s a good amount of that from the Federation and the Union, but—with all due respect, Mr. Ching—”

  “No, you are quite right. Continue.”

  “The largest populations, and therefore production potentials, are in the TOCIO and DWC blocs. If their general technological level can be upgraded in the first eight years, they can become integral participants in a truly global effort to establish an interstellar buffer zone. And, after eight years, those nations might be ready to follow the Commonwealth’s leadership in the energetic business of rapid expansion—which is, let’s be honest, a particularly strong trait among the nations of our bloc.”

  Nolan’s smile was surprised, a little baffled. Did I just give away some of his deeper game? Well, if I did, he should have stopped me…

  Ching was staring at Caine as though he was a rare antiquity that had turned up in his soup bowl. “Fascinating. And astute.” He smiled at the Sun, now accelerating in its plunge toward the horizon. “This is a day of much change.” They had arrived at the buffet tables—olives, wine, a few white-coated attendants—and he turned to Caine. “Perhaps you will advise me on the wines, Mr. Riordan? I seldom partake.”

  Caine shrugged, stole a fast sideways look at Nolan, who did not return his glance, but was smiling into the Sun himself. Eyes back upon Ching’s, Caine gestured to the tables. “I’ll try, but I’m not sure I’m any more of a connoisseur than you are, Mr. Ching.”

  He reached down, picked up a bottle, tilted it toward a glass—

  CIRCE

  He reached down, picked up the binoculars, tilted them to snap into the short tripod. He swung them around to aim up at the end of the Sounion headland, leaned over to check the view: the columns of the Temple of Poseidon were slightly off center to the left. He tapped the front right lens rim slightly, looked in: centered.

  He looked to his right: the false olive container was open, most of the sharp, acidic fumes carried away from him by the prevailing winds running in from the Aegean.

  MENTOR

  The breeze from the Aegean tore the cocktail napkin out of Downing’s hand. “High winds,” he commented, then looked back at the milling delegates. “And we’ll soon be heading into others, I wager.”

  Nolan kept looking out to sea. “It can’t be ‘we’ any more, Rich: you’ll have to steer the ship on your own from here on. We’ve got to make IRIS your organization now.”

  “Rubbish. Nolan, you are not so old that—”

  “Richard.”

  Downing stopped: Nolan had used his proper name.

  “Richard,” Nolan repeated, “it’s not just a matter of age. It’s a matter of policy. Caine isn’t the only one who’s going to be watched, now. For the last twenty years, I’ve operated under the media radar, but here at Parthenon I was running a public show, approved by the leadership of all five blocs. How do you rate my public profile now?”

  Downing looked out to sea, felt a sad, cold knot coalesce in his stomach. “You’re through. You’re a newsmaker, so they’re going to watch you.” It was going to be lonely without Nolan…but then there was a deeper reflex: you don’t want to be in charge. You are a good XO—but not a CO. Good God, how will I do this? He took a long drink of his wine to drown the anxiety. “So what now?”

  Nolan smiled. “Now, I eat an olive.”

  “Hilarious. And then?”

  “Then I eat another olive. And I take a vacation: a long one.”

  “With Pat?”

  “Yeah, and the kids too. Particularly Trev.”

  Downing felt Nolan’s pause, looked over, saw a pair of blue eyes that were suddenly old, tired, and very serious. “Richard, there’s something I need to tell you, something I—”

  “Admiral Corcoran—”

  Ching. Bloody hell.

  “Mr. Riordan seems to have good instincts for wine, as well.”

  Nolan looked at the returned pair. “I’m not surprised.”

  “And, Mr. Downing: which wine did you select?”

  Downing turned toward Ching, smiled as a prelude to his response, peripherally saw Nolan take Caine’s upper arm and steer him gently for a walk down toward the oceanside peristyle.

  Damn it, Nolan, what were you going to tell me? You’ve got to—

  But Ching was waiting and watching. Downing widened his smile and prepared to feign interest in their impending conversation.

  CIRCE

  He put his hand in his pocket, pulled out a small, featureless black cube, six centimeters per side. He rested the box on the weather wall to the left of the binoculars and stared at it for a moment. Then he brushed his finger over the side that was facing him.

  The side of the cube shivered slightly and fell open, as if hinged at the bottom. The man’s nose pinched as a carrion-scented musk diffused into the air around him. Then slowly, deliberately, he inserted his left index and middle fingers into the box.

  A moment later he grimaced. Then he breathed out slowly, as if following a yogic discipline, and lowered his eyes back to the lenses. With the temple now centered in his field of vision, he started counting across the columns…

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  ODYSSEUS

  Caine and Nolan exited the ruins of the Temple of Poseidon just to the right of the central column and looked out at the sea. “Ching likes you, you know.”

  “Seems to.”

  “He does. It’s not an act. When you pointed out the logistical advantages of having the Commonwealth take the last place in Proconsular rotation, you showed him something he hadn’t seen yet. That doesn’t happen to him very often. And you’re an articulate Westerner who is not a loudmouth, and who understands the value of listening instead of talking. You’re a rarity, for him—and he knows that you have a future.”

  “I’m glad he knows that.”

  “He can smell it. He’s been in this game a long time, and he is its consummate professional.”

  “Do I need to watch out for him? Be cautious?”

  Nolan chewed down an olive. “For now, you need to be prudent. As time goes on—well, I think you’ll have a friend in him. That’s only a hunch—but sometimes, that’s all you’ve got to go on.”

  “Which seems insane.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, maybe you’ve forgotten how the world of global statecraft looks to all us little people who never become a p
art of it. We presume it’s all a well-orchestrated dance, but in actuality…”

  “In actuality,” Nolan finished for him, “it’s just as haphazard an enterprise as any other. But the chaos can be managed if you understand a few basic rules.”

  “Which are?”

  “There are only three variables governing the outcome of any given situation. Power—political, economic, military, whatever. Intelligence—the information you have and how cleverly you use it. And chance.”

  “And that’s it?”

  “That’s it. Leaders get themselves too tangled up when they fail to break a situation—any situation—back down to those basics. Or when they forget the fundamental differences between the three variables.”

  “Huh. Any more sage advice?”

  Nolan smiled without looking over at Caine. “I hope that I can give you reason to move past the resentment fueling those little digs, Caine. Although it’s true enough that we—IRIS—have had to play pretty rough, sometimes.”

  “Like with the megacorporations?”

  “And with the desperate groups and states that they use as proxies, yes. One of the harshest lessons of intelligence work is that, to borrow your phrase, sometimes you have to fight fire with fire. It’s an unpleasant but inescapable fact—which, as you also remarked, was appreciated even by our primeval forebears when they bred domesticated wolves to hunt the wild ones. Sometimes adopting the methods of your adversaries is the only effective strategy—and I suspect you’re going to come face to face with just how true that is in the coming years.”

  “You mean that we have to keep fighting the megacorporations by using their own tactics against them?”

  Nolan stared off into the blue. “I mean that you’re going to have to think about how even the best-intentioned states and leaders occasionally have no choice but to fight fire with fire. I’ve lived that truth. Yet, having lived it, I just don’t know that our ends, no matter how worthy they are, can ever justify the means—the ‘fire’—we’ve used.”

  “Seems to me you had little enough choice, most of the time.”

  “Maybe, but we—Rich and I—could have chosen not to get involved.”

  “And then who would have achieved all this?”

  “Caine, there’s always someone else. No one is that indispensable.”

  “No? That’s what I used to tell myself—before the Tyne. Sometimes, we get to choose if we’re willing to be a link in the chain of history—but sometimes, history chooses us. Puts us in a position where we have no choice but to act.”

  Nolan looked over at Caine abruptly, as though his companion had, without warning, jabbed a needle into him. Caine looked closely at the seamed face and he suddenly realized how all Nolan’s secrets had started. “Because that’s what happened to you, isn’t it? You found yourself in a position where you had no choice but to act, because you knew—knew—that there are exosapients. You’ve known from the very start.”

  Nolan did not look at Caine, but turned his eyes back toward the blue-on-blue horizon where the Mediterranean met the cloudless sky.

  “When did you learn about them—and how?”

  A number of others—Ching and Downing among them—were approaching. Caine guessed he had about twenty seconds before they were in earshot. He put a hand on Nolan’s still-considerable shoulder, felt no startled flexure in the smooth expanse of trapezius. “When did you learn? And how?”

  Nolan turned, then smiled. The gentle curve of his lips and relaxed creases in his forehead and around his eyes suggested that he was not merely about to share a secret, but jettison it, cut it loose as he would a millstone. He opened his mouth—

  CIRCE

  He finished counting across the columns and found the silhouette he was looking for. His face relaxed, his shoulders almost slumped, as if he had lost awareness of himself. However, almost visible through his shirt, his heart began to quake, to race, gaining speed, like an engine building up to overload—

  ODYSSEUS

  Nolan’s lips and eyelids flicked open a little wider. His head went back slightly, as though someone had surprised him by poking a finger into his back. The olives went tumbling out of his hand.

  Caine grabbed toward him, but Nolan’s body was already in motion, falling backward, slamming down against the foot ramp and rolling off to one side.

  Caine was around the ramp and kneeling beside him while everyone else on the promontory stood immobile for a moment that seemed to stretch on and on and on—

  Caine roared: “Call a doctor! Now!”

  As if released from a trance, the gathering crowd burst into a criss-crossing rush of chattering and yelling activity. Caine propped Nolan up, felt and saw his chest spasming irregularly, the shocks centered on the sternum. Oh, Christ—

  Nolan, eyes wide, was trying to gasp out words.

  Downing half stumbled over the ramp, almost pushing Caine out of the way, desperate to ask a question: “What were you trying to tell me, Nolan? What? What?”

  For a split second, Caine could not make any sense of the question, then he shoved Downing back in disgust. Always business with you, isn’t it, asshole? Caine looked down. “We’re getting help. We’re—”

  Nolan swallowed, closed his eyes as his chest continued to buck irregularly. When he opened his eyes again, he was able to gasp words between the spasms. “Sorry, Trevor…Elena…” His eyes—uncertain—sought Caine. “You. Too. Sorry.”

  “It’s okay, Nolan. They’ve got doctors on the way. They—”

  Nolan interrupted with a smile that seemed more rictus. He lifted his hand toward Caine—who had the fleeting impression that the redoubtable warrior and canny statesman was attempting to touch his face. But no: his eyes were losing focus. He couldn’t see. He’s alone with the pain, with the approach of death.

  Caine reached up with his right hand, intercepted and held Nolan’s faltering one in a firm, and he hoped soothing, grip. “We—I’m here,” he said.

  Nolan’s eyes roved, then closed. He smiled faintly, nodded, tried to breathe, seemed unable to do more than gasp in a shallow breath. With which he said, “Trev.”

  The hand Caine was holding went limp. Nolan’s body was still; there was no sign of respiration. The surrounding din of frenetic activity either stopped or Caine became deaf to it.

  Caine choked back nausea, surprised by the rush of emotion that went through him: Why Nolan? Why now? Why not Downing, that bastard? Nolan—liked me. In a world where no one knows me anymore, he liked me.

  The circle around Caine and Nolan had grown still. Somewhere, beyond the ring of witnesses who would soon be mourners, clipped, urgent orders were being given by the security entourage in the ongoing attempt to save a life that was now beyond saving.

  Caine looked at the surrounding faces without seeing them. “He’s gone.”

  He laid Nolan’s hand down, and withdrew his own.

  CIRCE

  He withdrew his two fingers from the box, closed it, caught it up and dropped it in the open container of acid. A gout of steamy, acrid vapor shot straight up, accompanied by an agitated hissing and a short, rising squeal that clipped off abruptly—not unlike a small animal being killed sharply, painfully.

  Using the two fingers that had been in the box—which were now mottled red, as if they had been scalded—he produced a final olive from his shirt pocket and popped it in his mouth.

  His other hand had already uncoupled the binoculars from the tripod. Carefully, leaning away from the container, he dumped these two components—one after the other—into the jar. A slower, roiling bubbling and guttering brewed up out of the container. He waited for it to subside, making sure that there was not much more gas being produced by the reaction, and then recapped the jar. He looked out over the blue Aegean and, smiling broadly, spat out the olive pit in the direction of the Temple of Poseidon.

  He turned and headed for the stairway that led down and out of the duplex.

  MENTOR

  The rough
stairs that led down and away from the Temple of Poseidon were a writhing Brueghel tapestry of chaos, panic, and counterproductive activity. Emergency workers rushed up, rushed down again to get additional gear from their ambulances. Security types spiraled out, produced guns, stood uncertainly, called for further instructions, reholstered their weapons, cycled back inward. Several of the delegates were trying to get away quickly; several realized that help was no longer possible and were trying to stay out of the way; others who had held back from the first saw that the crisis had resolved and were now putting on the face-saving skit of attempting to offer assistance.

  Downing looked at Nolan and couldn’t move, could only think: How could this happen, here, now? Nolan, this was your triumph. This was what you had lived for and had put aside your loves in order to accomplish. And now this? This is the reward for good and true service, for the countless missed dinners, Christmas pageants, baseball games? For the smiles you were not there to receive, the hugs you were not there to elicit, the “I love you’s” that were not said because you were not there to hear them?

  “Downing.”

  Richard looked up, hearing hostility in the tone. Caine was facing him across Nolan’s body. But Riordan must have seen something in Richard’s face, because his own became less rigid, the eyes less accusing. “Richard,” he revised, more neutral.

  “Yes?”

  “This may not be a simple heart attack. But either way—orders?”

  At first, Downing didn’t understand. Then he realized that Riordan was already thinking again: Nolan’s death needed investigating—and quickly. And then the real blow hit him: he was in charge of IRIS, now.

  Whether he liked it or not.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  MENTOR

  The tilt-rotor banked steeply as it angled toward the city center vertipad. Downing turned his head, caught a glimpse of the Reflecting Pool as it swept behind them. The sun winked briefly off the dark bar of water; almost noon. Not enough time for the government car to get him to the Capitol Building on time. But Tarasenko would be running late, too—and after all, it was Downing who was in charge now, who was the unofficial heir-apparent to IRIS.