Star Trek: Fall 02: The Crimson Shadow

by Una McCormack

  “You know that I’d like to believe that,” said Picard. “But you’re not that persuasive, Ambassador Garak.”

  * * *

  Arati Mhevet, watching Ambassador Garak leave Fry’s office, stepped out of the shadows and followed him a little way down the corridor. He soon turned to face her.

  “Did you want something, Investigator?”

  Slowly, she walked up to him. “I was listening, just now.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “I heard everything you said about the Obsidian Order and its origins.”

  “I wondered if you might find that of interest.”

  “I did. . . .” She struggled to say what was on her mind.

  “Take your time,” he suggested. “What you want to say will be difficult to express, I suspect. I only found a way to say it very recently.”

  She looked down the corridor. “All my life,” she said, “despite everything that happened to our people, despite everything we did, I knew there was something about us that was good. Something worthwhile.”

  “I agree. Not least that we’re almost indestructible. Fortunate, really. But we do take a terribly long time to learn.” Garak touched her arm. “Go on.”

  “And I sensed . . . that at the same time there was something pernicious, something bad, something that was always struggling to dominate. Was that the True Way?”

  “The True Way is one form that it takes.”

  “And the Obsidian Order?”

  His eyes were pained. “Came to resemble its enemy, sadly.”

  “I don’t want to be Obsidian Order.”

  “None of us do.” Folding his hands around hers, he gave her a steady, sky-blue look. “But you understand, don’t you, that the institutions don’t matter? The Obsidian Order, Central Command, the True Way, Starfleet, empires, unions, federations—these are names and names only. They are tools. They count for nothing if the purpose is flawed. That was my mistake for a long time—confusing the purpose with the instrument. It took me a long time to learn the truth.”

  “What is the truth?”

  “The truth?” Garak laughed, softly, as if he had never imagined that he would be asked such a question. “The truth is that the institution flourishes only when the people who comprise it flourish. And if the people are sick, the institution will be sick.” He squeezed her hand. “If there’s anything I could teach you, I’d teach you that.”

  “I think I knew that. But I became complacent, or frightened, or something. . . . Whatever it was, I held myself back from what was going on.”

  “Yes,” he said, nodding, “that was your mistake, Arati. But it doesn’t stop, you understand? It doesn’t ever stop. We can never hold ourselves back.”

  “The True Way. I don’t want these people in power.”

  “Of course you don’t. Nobody in their right mind would. The question is now: What are you prepared to do about it?”

  Mhevet considered that. “I don’t know,” she said. “What would you do, sir?”

  He let go of her hands. “Young lady, in my case, the more troubling question is: What wouldn’t I do?”

  * * *

  The castellan was still sitting in the empty meeting room. Outside, the rain was easing up, merely pattering now against the window. The night was passing.

  “Rakena,” Garak said.

  She looked up. She was less angry now, more thoughtful. He knew he had been right to give her some time to think, as he had known that, in her case, honesty was the best policy. Odo he had dominated, and Parmak he had silenced. But he had destroyed this woman with nothing more than the truth.

  “It’s over, isn’t it?” she asked. “I’ve lost, haven’t I?”

  Garak sat down, sighing at the hard-backed chair. “I’m afraid so.”

  Her hands clenched into fists. “Evek Temet! Of all people to become castellan.”

  “Well,” said Garak quietly, “he hasn’t won yet.”

  “But he will if I don’t resign?”

  “Yes. Either you go now, or you go in a few weeks’ time, after Temet and his allies have pulled you to shreds and ensured that they will be your successors. You’ve given good service, but the best service you can perform for the Union now is to resign. I know it’s hard—”

  “It’s getting less hard.” She wiped her hands across her face. “I don’t think you can imagine how I felt when I learned who had killed Bacco. Can you imagine?”

  “Yes,” he murmured, so she couldn’t hear. “I can.”

  “I’d only just been with her. She was coming here to set a seal upon our alliance, to celebrate better days for both our civilizations. Then I heard she was dead, and then I heard how. . . .”

  The castellan covered her eyes. Garak leaned forward in his seat and—gently, consolingly—rested his hand upon her arm. “When do we stop being the guilty ones?”

  “That’s it, isn’t it?” she asked. “We seem to exist in a state of perpetual culpability. Sometimes I despair.” She finally looked up at him.

  “We all want that to end,” Garak said. “But it won’t end with Evek Temet. It will only continue. And that’s no longer good enough for Cardassia. We’ve suffered a great deal. We deserve something else, and we will get it, if we commit ourselves to achieving it.”

  “Temet won’t stop, will he? He and those who support him? They’re taking the constabularies, they’re taking the CIB, soon they’ll take the Assembly—” Tears were forming in her eyes.

  “They won’t,” Garak said. “I’ll make sure of that.”

  “I tried to stand in their way, Garak. If I go, who will stand in their way?”

  Garak closed his eyes for a second to block out what little there was of the light. “I’m working on that.”

  * * *

  Garak returned to Fry’s office and found only the Enterprise’s captain there. He walked wearily over to a cabinet where some bottles and glasses stood. His gray hand hovered over the kanar, and then he chose the whiskey and poured himself a liberal measure. “Something for you too, Captain?”

  “I believe I’ll have the kanar.”

  Garak brought over his drink and then stood looking out of the window into the night, cradling his tumbler in both hands. Picard, coming to stand beside him, lifted his glass close to his face and breathed in deeply the rich floral scent of the alien drink. He sipped. It was not unpleasant, and he could imagine acquiring the taste.

  “Has she capitulated?”

  “Oh, yes. The way’s clear now.”

  They stood for a while in silence. The rain had stopped and one could even imagine that the sky was brightening. Through the window, Picard could hear the unmistakable sounds of dawn: the steady rise in the hum of traffic—even birdsong, he thought. Some rhythms and patterns to life remain the same, whatever the world.

  “You’ve done me so many favors that I’m ashamed to ask for another,” Garak said softly. “But I believe I need to ask one more.”

  “Naturally. Anything that will aid your world during this crisis—”

  “This is more in the way of a personal favor. I need to see my doctor.”

  Picard turned to him, concerned. “Are you ill, Ambassador?”

  “No. But Parmak is . . . Parmak is my conscience, and I am in dire need of absolution. I wonder if you could arrange for him to be brought here.”

  Picard finished his kanar and spoke briefly into his combadge. The matter was quickly arranged. Less than a quarter of an hour passed before Kelas Parmak arrived.

  The two men embraced. Parmak, when he could speak, did so with a tragic mixture of relief and reproach.

  “How could you do this to me?”

  “I’m sorry,” Garak said, his voice thick. “Will you forgive me?”

  “Forgive you? Oh, Elim. When have I ever not forgiven you?”

  Eleven

  Mhevet woke suddenly, bright morning light upon her. Her head throbbed with the dull ache caused by too little sleep, and her back was out of shap
e from lying twisted on a camp bed for the night. Stretching out and sitting up, she tried to piece together all that had happened the previous day: the shock of learning about Fereny; the grim drive with Fhret to hide with Coranis and Irian; the dash through the rain; the sudden transportation here, to the compound. And then there was the surreal series of scenes that had unfolded the previous night and the epiphany that had come in the early hours while listening to the ambassador . . .

  She heard, out in the corridor, the little girl’s voice. “Yes, I want some breakfast, but I want the nice old man to come with me.” She heard the human lieutenant, Šmrhová, stifling a laugh and the Klingon officer rumbling in reply, and she assumed the child meant their captain. Mhevet smiled. She would record the girl’s statement later, here at HARF, and deposit that evidence with the magistrates.

  She got out of bed and went out into the corridor. Someone called after her.

  “Investigator!”

  Ambassador Garak was standing at the far end of the corridor. He could not, surely, have gone to sleep before her, yet he was managing to look annoyingly alert. Even his clothes still looked tidy, although he was running one finger under his collar, as if something was irritating him. He was holding a cup from which came the distinctive aroma of rokassa juice. Good for the nerves.

  “I wonder,” Garak said, “if we might have a word.”

  Mhevet nodded and followed him along the corridor. Up close, in the morning light, he did look tired—wrung out, perhaps, was closer to the mark. That, she supposed, was the cost of toppling governments.

  “Is the castellan still here?” she asked.

  “No. She has a great deal to do this morning.” Garak led her into the small meeting room where she and Dygan had met the castellan the previous evening. Dygan was already there, cradling a cup of raktajino. Mhevet took the chair beside him. Garak looked at the chairs, sighed, and perched himself instead on the desk.

  Garak didn’t waste time. “You are of course aware that apart from myself, the castellan, Captain Picard, and a few members of the CIB, you two are the only other people to know who is responsible for the murder of Nan Bacco. As I’m sure you’re already aware”—he raised an eye-ridge—“this knowledge puts you in danger.”

  Mhevet and Dygan swapped a look. No, neither of them would forget that brief, terrified time beneath the bridge with the child in their care and the rain lashing down and no certainty of where they could turn.

  “However,” the ambassador went on, “it also puts you in a position of power, particularly given what you know about the castellan’s unfortunate hesitation in informing our allies. May I ask, therefore, what you intend to do with this information?”

  Mhevet stared at him. Dygan, too, gaped. “What do you mean?” he asked.

  Garak stretched and rubbed his back. “I mean, Dygan, do you intend to splash the story over the nearest ’cast?”

  “Of course not!” Dygan said, hotly.

  “I hoped that wasn’t in the cards.”

  “What do you think I’m going to do?” Dygan asked. “I’m not going to say a word to anyone.”

  “No?”

  “No! Besides, I’m not staying. I want to go back to the Enterprise.” Dygan stared down into his cup. “I don’t have the taste for undercover work.”

  “Taste or not,” said Garak, “you’ll probably get a medal for what you’ve done. For unspecified services, of course.”

  “I don’t want a medal,” Dygan said quickly, his voice coming out rough. “I don’t deserve one. I . . . I did a terrible thing, an unforgivable thing. . . . There was a man, outside a shop, and we went there, and—”

  “No, don’t tell me this!” Mhevet put her hands over her ears. Garak too spoke quickly and loudly. “Glinn Dygan, have some thought for others! If you must confess to a crime, do it to someone who won’t be obliged to arrest you!”

  “But I did wrong—”

  “You’ll be compounding that sin further if you make the two of us accessories after the fact!” Garak shot back.

  “You did whatever you had to do to conceal your identity,” Mhevet said. “I’m prepared to accept that.”

  “But I need to—”

  “Right now, you need not to put Investigator Mhevet in an impossible position,” Garak said, in a voice like steel. “Speak to a counselor, Dygan, or a spiritual adviser, if you’re that way inclined. But not to the police and not to me!” Garak sighed and reached for his cup. “I know it’s an impossible position to be in,” he said softly. “The real fault is mine, putting you there.”

  “We couldn’t have done this without you,” Mhevet said.

  “Exactly,” Garak said. “You kept your nerve when Tret Fereny was hammering at the door, and everything you’ve done on the Enterprise to earn the trust of your fellow officers saved not only your life, but hers”—he nodded at Mhevet—“and the life of that noisy child currently making Captain Picard’s breakfast very unrestful.”

  Dygan didn’t look comforted. “I won’t be saying anything,” he said at last. “I want to put this whole thing behind me.”

  Garak studied him carefully for a moment, and then he sighed. He turned his attention toward Mhevet.

  “Oh, you can rely on me to keep quiet,” she said. “I think you know that already. I’m assuming Fereny and Colat are going to be brought to justice?”

  “Naturally. And I’m assuming you want to be the one to arrest Fereny?”

  “Oh, yes. . . .” she said. “Tell me, sir—do you think whoever murdered Bacco is going to be found?”

  “I sincerely hope that’s going to be the case.”

  “Then I can’t see what would be gained from making this public.”

  Garak slumped suddenly, his shoulders sagging down. He closed his eyes. “Well, that is a great relief. It’s vital that the castellan’s reputation is not destroyed.”

  “What’s going to happen to her?” asked Mhevet.

  He opened his eyes. “Watch,” he said, “and learn.”

  “What would you have done,” Dygan asked, suddenly, “if one of us had said we were going public with all we knew?”

  Garak touched his forehead with one fingertip. “What, really, could I have done?”

  “That’s not an answer, sir.”

  “Then, if you require an answer, I would have begged you not to.”

  “But what if I’d insisted?”

  Garak looked at him sadly. “Glinn Dygan, I am a very persuasive man. Believe me—you would have been persuaded. Eventually.”

  * * *

  The Cardassian people, watching their media that day, might have been forgiven for losing track of who was where and who did what and who was back in favor and who was now in trouble. Round about mid-morning, the news began to hit the ’casts that Prynok Crell, the head of the Cardassian Intelligence Bureau, had offered his resignation. The cause of this, it seemed, was some messages that had somehow been obtained from the office of the late ambassador to the Federation, in which the ambassador indicated that he was concerned about threats to his life. Crell was not able to offer evidence of having taken the threats sufficiently seriously.

  “Well done, Akret,” Garak murmured. He was standing in the small command center at HARF, clutching his fifth cup of rokassa juice, and watching the ’cast on the wall viewer. Mhevet, standing beside him, was on her third coffee—her own poison.

  “What’s going to happen at the CIB?” Mhevet asked.

  “An inquiry. Internal reorganization. A new director.”

  “Do you think that Crell will be implicated?” She refrained from mentioning Bacco’s name out loud. “In everything that has happened?”

  “Far be it from me to second-guess the inquiry, but I don’t believe that Crell is involved in that. What I do believe is that he was already hostile toward the castellan and that certain elements were able to exploit that.” Garak frowned. “The Fire looms large in all our minds, of course. But those are not the only losses suffered. Th
e war with the Klingons, the deaths at the hands of the Bajoran Resistance . . . We’ve fought too many enemies. We’ve lost too many people—and not only at the hands of the Jem’Hadar. How terrible is it that so many have died that we can all too easily forget those people?” His expression hardened. “Cardassia must never go back to that. Still, I’m not sure that Prynok Crell has been well rewarded for his service and his sacrifice. That is surely fertile ground for resentment.” He frowned. “I’ll have to keep an eye on that.”

  “Who is lined up to replace him?” asked Mhevet. “If it’s just one of his cronies, we’re no better off than we were before.”

  “The deputy seems reliable enough,” Garak said. “At least, he was the one to inform the castellan about the True Way, which suggests that he’s not under their influence. But the real power will be whoever is brought in to oversee the internal reorganization. And we have someone particular in mind for that.”

  “Of course I’m delighted that our department has been vindicated,” said Reta Kalanis. “Our officers do a first-rate job under difficult conditions. To find ourselves blamed for something outside our jurisdiction has been tremendously frustrating.”

  “Will you be returning to your position as director of the city constabularies, ma’am?”

  “In fact, this morning I received an offer of a new position, which I think is going to prove a real challenge—”

  “I think,” said Garak, “that it will do the CIB good to have an outside person brought in to see what’s been going on there. Reta Kalanis is a person of rare courage. I’ve no doubt she can transform the CIB in the way that she transformed the constabulary.” He glanced at his unexpected protégée. “I trust her judgment absolutely.”

  “I’m glad she’s back,” Mhevet said. “Very glad. But I still wish she hadn’t put me on the Aleyni case. It’s only by chance I found out that one of Dekreny’s men was involved, and that could have put Dygan’s life in danger. If I’d been closer to the ground, I might have discovered that much sooner.”