All in Good Time

by Mackey Chandler

  You could still see the assassin and as soon as the Ranger had his back fully to the camera the view opened up again. The assassin was somewhat obscured behind the Ranger, but he leaned a bit trying to look around him. April hadn’t remembered that clearly.

  When the Ranger slapped his badge on his chest it wasn’t visible in his hand at all. That was excellent. Enough of the assassin’s face was showing, however, to make his shock obvious. His gun hand was clearly visible and there could be no dispute he drew on the Ranger. The response was so fast nobody would doubt the Ranger was gene mod either. April knew that would make a lot of Earthies hate him automatically. There was nothing to be done about that. Indeed it was their obligation to not tie it to the Ranger.

  The actual firing of the Taser was almost anticlimactic. There was no bang, no wound or blood, and the spasm that launched the assassin on his back looked more like some a brief seizure or medical emergency that an act of violence. The action stopped there but then there was text detailing what they’d found out about the assassin.

  “I’m not going to read that word for word,” April said, “I’ll just hit the high spots and offer to trade him for Irwin.”

  “I’ll be watching,” Chen said. “If my people see any significant reaction I’ll let you know.”

  * * *

  April decided to narrate the video sitting down. When she got angry her body language said entirely too much and she didn’t trust herself to control it.

  “Good evening North America. I’m sure you know that your government has a policy of using assassination. It’s rare you ever get to actually see it done even as a drone strike. Rarer still that you see it fail as that looks much, much, worse than the successes.

  The day before yesterday my breakfast in the public cafeteria on Home was rudely interrupted. Watch this man because he is about to try to kill me. My own security might have stopped him or not, but it was through the intervention of a stranger to me that he was stopped. We are concealing that man’s identity for his protection.”

  April allowed the video to run without comment until the data about the assassin appeared on the screen.

  “The man was shocked unconscious with an Air Taser if you didn’t understand what you saw. He was then sedated by our clinic out of concern he might have instructions and the means to suicide. Home Security working with private contractors did an extensive word association brain scan to determine his identity and connections.

  I’m fully aware this has no legal standing in North America and is considered an invasive medical procedure. We don’t care. It is not being tried in a North American court, and we are just interested in the facts. If we are off in some small detail the bulk of the truth is as you see detailed on your screen.

  “The man is a North American agent, working for the CIA, and associated with some black subgroup called the TLA. You can see he was recruited from the military. The responses to his education, his direct supervisor, last known address and national identity number are yours to check before they are scrubbed from the system. I suspect his favorite ice cream and football team are included because my security has the same crazy sense of humor people in stressful environments like emergency rooms develop to deal with it.

  “You can guess he isn’t my favorite person right now, and I doubt he will be employee of the month in his own spy shop. It really wouldn’t bother me to flush him out the airlock without benefit of a p-suit, if they just let the drugs wear off a bit first so he can properly enjoy it. However, I propose we trade this fellow for Irwin Hall straight up. A better deal you aren’t going to get out of me. Now that you have introduced assassination to the game again I’ll feel free to use it too. Do you really want to do that? Just let me remind you, this isn’t the first time I’ve survived an assassination attempt. Are you feeling lucky?”

  She cut the feed and waited, expecting Chen to say something.

  Chen was smiling when she expanded his window to talk. He wasn’t given to that a lot.

  “I got it, but most of your Earthie audience is going to be oblivious to that old flat movie reference. Still, the few that get it will be amused and explain it to the others.”

  “Movie?” April asked, confused. “What reference?”

  Chen looked disbelieving, shocked, and then roared with laughter.

  “Are you feeling lucky?” he repeated. “I’ll send you the movie file. That’s far better than killing the joke by explaining it.”

  “If you say so,” April agreed. She had better things to do than watch old movies, but Chen was a valuable asset and she’d go out of her way to humor him.

  * * *

  The abbreviated Security Council watched the video and at the end, the list of information about the assassin remained on the screen.

  “This is your war ending single shot?” President Wiley asked, “It seems to have been a dud round, Gentlemen.”

  John Brandon, the head of Homeland Security and the CIA director sitting beside him looked straight ahead. Neither man wanted to be associated with the other today. If Brandon could have figured out how to throw his subordinate under the bus he’d have done so in a heartbeat, but he’d bragged on what they were going to deliver too much to try it.

  “I can’t believe she burned his supervisor too,” the CIA man, Hartug muttered. “He seemed unconcerned that confirmed at least some of the data was correct.

  “That’s the problem, right there,” Wiley said. “You think in terms of your agency and not the nation, as if we exist as an after-thought to serve the CIA. I want your resignation after the meeting and before you leave the building. You,” he said glaring at Brandon, “I’m not sure about. If you don’t say anything stupid like he just did, then maybe you will still work for me at the end of the day.”

  Brandon nodded and determined he wasn’t going to say anything, but alas that went right out the window when Wiley questioned him directly.

  “What the Devil is the TLA? And why did this agent work with them?”

  “Today is the first time I’ve ever heard the acronym, just like you. “What is the TLA?” he asked, turning to look at Hartug.

  “Screw you, I don’t work for you anymore,” Hartug said, waving his resignation letter he’d just scribbled out on his notepad. He slid it in front of his old boss.

  “So it exists,” Wiley said, visibly angry.

  Hartug just smirked and gave a shrug of his shoulders.

  Brandon scowled, but inside he was celebrating his good luck. The little creep had deflected all the blame and hostility away from him.

  “We’ll get to the bottom of this,” Brandon vowed.

  * * *

  Nick Naito invited some of his associates in for an informal meeting. Not just those he regarded as friends. Several were brothers in arms from their revolution and a couple had joined the government after independence. He was well aware only being a quarter Hawaiian, half Japanese, and a quarter Haole was a barrier to full acceptance and deep trust for some of them. He looked Japanese to many who couldn’t see the other influences. If he would never be their close friend they still needed people like him. The islands simply didn’t have enough pure Hawaiians to run things, not even as a ruling class, supposing people would put up with such an arrangement.

  If they didn’t respect him personally they could use him to further their goals by means of his agency. He wasn’t in the Finance and Treasury group but Business was what created the wealth they supposedly directed. They couldn’t sabotage his objectives without shooting themselves in the foot. Nick had always kept his personal business as private as possible. He always identified himself as a writer, a propagandist, and an amateur historian. He never revealed he had any investment skills or that he had been taking online courses about large scale planning for several years. He still took classes and found a continuing relationship with the University and having reasons to be on campus valuable. Still, small incidents and cross connections to others made the brighter of his revolutionary
associates aware there was more to him than surface appearances. That was exactly where he wanted to be.

  He and the people he invited were down in the third tier of the new government. He’d avoided putting himself out in public as a leader and thus a major target certain to be taken down if there were any setbacks or their movement failed. He was still too young to be seen as a post-revolution statesman and there was plenty of time to rise to a higher office when it became safer to do so. Better to be known for now as a handy facilitator.

  Since these people didn’t know his personal finances they were unaware he’d made intelligent choices in investments based on his inside knowledge of how the revolution would impact both company values and asset prices of things like real estate. Anyone who investigated him would probably conclude he shared a modest apartment with two other young men of mixed heritage. In fact, it was little more than a mail drop for him.

  On occasions, he crashed on their couch when it was too late to climb the long drive to April’s home on the ridge and he needed to stay in the city. Since he picked up a full third of the rent the other two were happy to have him crash there occasionally. If asked, they affirmed he lived there and suggested that if a single young man didn’t come home of an evening occasionally it wasn’t any of their business to investigate, inferring it wasn’t any business of the person inquiring either.

  Indeed his secretive nature was one reason several of them had accepted his invitation to meet with him. Especially when the address given didn’t match the address they were supplied to courier materials to him if necessary. If they didn’t have any clear idea of his economic status visiting him at April’s home would create the impression it was his and that would be very impressive indeed. The truth was his worth was somewhere in between needing to share an apartment and being able to afford a home like April’s.

  If a check of the land records showed it belonged to a Spacer woman they had no idea if that was true or a subterfuge like sharing the apartment now appeared to be. That the foreign woman was a notorious revolutionary in her own country and had been involved in the killing of a major North American official and his security team in Hawaii made it all the more plausible that it could be a cover. Sometimes it was fun being deliberately mysterious and the best way to lie, sometimes, was to tell a truth nobody would believe.

  April had to flee the island before she finished decorating. The house was very sparsely furnished but in very good quality wood furniture if of an odd style for the islands. There were some interior panels of stained glass and a couple of huge oriental rugs that would have been at home in a museum. It was an odd mix and didn’t have any of the island objects some displayed for political signaling. Neither was it a conspicuous display of wealth on top of the very expensive home and land. Nick added a few very modest objects of Japanese origins so it didn’t look quite so bare. There was a vase of indeterminate worth with a tasteful display of flowers and branches typical of Japanese taste. There was a scroll on the wall with brush calligraphy, and an unusually large and expensive telescope he’d borrowed left pointed out the window at the nature preserve.

  Where he didn’t stint was in having a buffet set up for his guests. It wasn’t a huge spread but the prawns alone set him back a week’s income. Nick wasn’t much of a drinker, and had been delighted to find a catering service that would set up a full bar and only charge him for what was consumed. He’d been dismayed at the sum of what it would cost to buy a few bottles of all the common drinks people expected a decent bar to have available.

  His guests all arrived within a half-hour of each other. Their cars were all parked around the loop that marked the end of the road on the ridge above the house. Two of them had drivers so there was someone watching the unattended cars. He’d warned Diana next door he’d have guests so she didn’t wonder about the sudden influx.

  Paul Kanoa was sitting in a chair that gave him a view of the forest downhill of them. He was staunchly separatist and had pushed hard for preferences to native Hawaiians, but Nick noticed he hadn’t abandoned his Christian name like some and he moderated his support of Hawaiian privileges enough to make Nick wonder if a gene scan would show some elements that weren’t Polynesian in his genome. He was nursing a glass of something amber and seemed comfortable. Paul was a clerk in the new Judiciary and a particular target of Nick this evening. Nick had a beer and sat within range of Paul to speak easily.

  “This is a magnificent home,” Paul allowed. “I particularly like the view and the way the other homes are set back on the ridge to each side, but the lease on it would ruin me.”

  “Ah, well the trick on that is it was a rare fee simple purchase for cash instead of the usual ninety-nine-year lease,” Nick said.

  “Is it your name on the title?” Paul asked a little too directly and rudely.

  “Oh no, that would be awkward for me. It is titled to April Lewis of Home. If you investigated closely you’d find I’m the authorized property manager and caretaker,” Nick said. “In fact, the position allows me to manage the property without committing personal funds and it even allows it to be used as a channel to pay me for tending it in Australian dollars.” All of which their veracity software would confirm.

  The lady from the New Department of the Census laughed disbelievingly at that. Nick silently thanked her. It implied it was all a setup to allow him the use of the home without personal exposure plus the benefits of access to preferred foreign funds. Hawaii didn’t have a currency yet and was struggling along with a mix of foreign notes of which the Australian dollars were preferred. The way he quickly disclaimed it was his when he obviously had free use of it made them disbelieve the truth of the matter. They had all presented false fronts, false names, and held hidden assets for years while pursuing their revolution. They just imagined he must be very clever indeed to have hidden his wealth so artfully.

  “It does seem exposed out here on the end of the ridge,” Paul said frowning.

  “I suppose it is vulnerable to attack by air,” Nick conceded, “though lower levels go down a long way and are bluntly a bunker it would be hard to breach. The long road uphill is a deterrent to that approach, and the security perimeter extends over the houses on both sides. The lady to the side here,” Nick said pointing, “just got back from Home where she has various business interests with Miss Lewis. I wouldn’t suggest wandering across her yard unannounced. The couple on the other side returned recently from a prolonged visit to Japan to take care of some family matters. They have an arrangement to have their place watched with Miss Lewis. She’s rather fond of them and checks in with their caretaker and has seen to their well being in a number of ways. Miss Lewis speaks Japanese and has many of their attitudes about valuing and caring for elders.”

  Paul looked a little surprised. “So you have a tight little arrangement out here perched on the end of the ridge. That’s well thought out.” That was a huge compliment from him.

  The fellow beyond Paul was Japanese in heritage though third-generation Hawaiian. He was the only one here from Hawaii’s tiny military. His new rank of Koa corresponded to the western title of Colonel and he came with previous experience.

  “Were you aware when Miss Lewis was involved in attacking a Chinese submarine while she was a guest on the island?” Ihara Soga asked. “I was serving North America back then and saw a lot of the communications real-time when that happened.”

  “I was already living here,” Nick said truthfully. “I heard of it after from a couple of cousins and an uncle who knew the host family and saw the weapons cross the sky.”

  Ihara gave a tilt of his head that seemed to indicate that satisfied him. Nick was happy because he really didn’t want to expose exactly how his family had been involved with Tetsuo Santos and still served his Earth network. He and his brother couldn’t be tightly connected to that family by blood, which was all to the good.

  “What exactly did you want to tell us this evening?” Ihara asked directly.

  �
��Only that I was privately told by some friends of hers that the Republic of Texas is quietly supportive of Miss Lewis. I was told there will be feelers made to our government from lower deniable levels of the Texan government to similar levels in ours for closer ties. Eventually even an embassy or a consulate. That’s all, just a heads up so you know you may be getting such a call. That you can have the advantage of some warning it is coming if you get such a communication, wonder if it is real, and want to present it up to your superiors. I haven’t received anything in Commerce but am watching for it.” Nick didn’t oversell it. That would be counterproductive and call his loyalties into question if he strongly promoted it.

  “Do you think that is a good thing?” Ihara asked.

  “I’m not sure. I’d have to see some actual proposals.”

  Any specific details had been withheld from Nick so they couldn’t be teased out by veracity software. He already knew too much.

  “Texas, in my opinion, is in the ascendancy,” Nick added. “It’s too easy to assume North America is our enemy in every matter. They have only cut off trade with us and not taken military action against us. On the other hand, a closer association with Texas might be a deterrent to keep them from doing so in the future.

  “We already have trade with Home even if neither of us has formally recognized the other. Texas and Home have pretty much the same relationship to Home. It is a complicated and fluid situation. What do you think about it?” Nick asked passing it back to Ihara.

  “I’m entirely like you. I’d have to see if it has merit without making us a target. I don’t see us offering much to Texas militarily, except location. I’d hate to see us trade one occupying force for another, so I’d rather see them propose more trade to your department than a military alliance to mine, especially if they wish a base here.”