by Rick Partlow
“Valerie was meeting with a journalist colleague of the late Mr. Fuentes, trying to find out how high this plot went, when the same assassin tried to kill them both. Fortunately, she was being watched over by Major Shannon Stark and a team of military bodyguards and they managed to kill the man, a mercenary who had been discharged from the Marines for behavioral problems. He was being paid from blind accounts and contacted via anonymous ‘links, so it has proved difficult to trace who hired him, but investigations are ongoing.”
“I didn’t want to take the chance that a further attempt on my life might harm my daughter,” Valerie took over from her father, “so I went into hiding for a while to make sure there were no other would-be assassins who had possibly been working with the dead man. As our investigations have shown no indication that he had a partner, we decided that it was safe for me to come out of hiding.”
“The attempt to foment a mutiny has been squashed,” O’Keefe cut in, ”but the investigation is ongoing, so we can’t reveal any more details at this time. I will be making further announcements as we uncover more of the facts in this matter. Right now, I am just very happy that my daughter is safe.”
There was a hailstorm of questions from the press, but O’Keefe waved them off, signaling to his Media Advisor to intercede as he and Valerie made their way off the platform, surrounded by Klesko’s protection team. O’Keefe didn’t look back, but he could feel Riordan’s eyes boring into his back as he left. It wasn’t so much the upstaging of the announcement, although that had been a sweet side-benefit, and it wasn’t even that he’d revealed that he already knew about the Colonial Guard mutiny. No, what was spiking the pressure in the miniature volcano he knew as Brendan Riordan was the knowledge that, if O’Keefe was revealing to the press that he knew about the Colonial Guard, then it was pretty damn certain that he knew far more that he wasn’t revealing.
“That went well,” Ari commented as he watched the Newsnets start to flash one update after another on his tablet’s display.
He, Roza and Shannon were huddled in the Houston safe house, watching the President’s announcement on the tiny entertainment center in a corner of the living room. Roza was curled next to him on the couch, frowning. “Perhaps,” she said doubtfully. “Although now the Colonial Guard has a black eye in all this, something General Kage and I were trying to avoid.”
“Not the black eye they would have had if Colonel Lee had succeeded,” Shannon reminded her from where she paced across the room, restless as a caged tiger. “There will be plenty of black eyes to go around for all of us once the story of the Patton comes out.” She paused in her motion and speared Roza with a look. “By the way, Roza, have you been in contact with him since we found out about the Patton?”
The GIS agent looked uncomfortable with the question, but she nodded. “I report to him every few days via a secure connection, per his orders.”
“How…complete are your reports?” Ari asked her, a bit of alarm entering his expression.
“He is my commanding officer,” she told him, shaking her head. “And without him, you would know of none of this.”
“That’s true,” Shannon admitted. “However, given that he has undeniably been exposed to hypnoconditioning during the hijacking of the Patton, it could be risky to trust him. He may not be totally in control of his actions.”
“It’s possible,” Roza said, “but his response to the news of the hijacking was, and I quote, ‘I see. Well, I will have to get that taken care of.’”
Shannon snorted a laugh. “All right, that ship has sailed, for good or ill. If General Kage wants to betray us, there’s little we can do about it at this point, so we may as well trust him.” She paced back in front of the entertainment center’s holotank, staring for a moment at a frozen image of Brendan Riordan’s face. “Now comes the part that makes me nervous.” She nodded to Ari. “Send the message to President Jameson. It’s time.”
* * *
Gregory Jameson sometimes felt like a spoiled scion of the privileged class when he thought about his ranch in Oklahoma and the apartments he and his wife kept in Capital City and San Francisco. Sitting on the porch of Brendan Riordan’s summer mansion in Jackson Hole, watching the sun set over the Grand Tetons, he no longer felt like that. In fact, he felt very much like a poor cousin come calling with hat in hand.
He took a sip of the exquisitely-aged Scotch the actual human butler had brought to him and smiled to himself, realizing that the feeling was exactly what Riordan had intended when he’d selected this place for the meeting.
“Greg!” He heard the man before he saw him: Brendan Riordan was the only man he’d ever met whose voice made his own sound girlish by comparison. He rose to meet the Director, towering over him by a good twenty centimeters, though they were about equal in breadth and width. “Thanks so much for coming all the way out here!”
“I called you, Brendan,” Jameson said with a shrug as he shook the other man’s hand, trying to look him in the eye without looking down on him. Riordan was dressed casually, as was he, yet anyone looking on would have been able to guess that both men were more at home in a business suit than blue jeans.
“That you did,” Riordan acknowledged, waving him back into his chair and taking the seat across from him. “Dammit, Greg, it’s been too long. I don’t think I ever got the chance to tell you back then, but it was a travesty that you lost that election. That bastard O’Keefe really knifed you in the back, after prattling on about cooperation and rebuilding after the war.”
“Thanks, Brendan, I appreciate the thought.” He paused and took another drink as the butler silently served Riordan a cocktail of his own then moved swiftly and smoothly back into the house. “That’s kind of why I called you, to be honest.”
“How so?” Riordan asked casually, watching Jameson over the rim of the glass as he took a drink of single-malt Scotch.
“Things are going south pretty quick, Brendan. It’s partly the aftermath of the war, partly just the way things happened, but some of it is O’Keefe’s fault and he’s getting the blame for all of it either way.” He nodded outward away from the house. “You were there in Houston…I saw it. We’re looking at a civil war.”
“It won’t come to that,” Brendan said with a dismissive snort. “O’Keefe is just fear-mongering, trying to get public sympathy on his side.”
“Brendan, we’ve known each other since we were in college,” Jameson reminded him. “Don’t bullshit me. I didn’t come here to check out O’Keefe’s story, I came here because I already have checked it out and I know it’s true. And he wasn’t telling the best parts of it.”
Riordan set his glass on the table between them and regarded Jameson coldly. “Greg, you should be very cautious on how you proceed here. This is not a place to tread lightly.”
“Do you think I’m telling you things that aren’t known by other people, Brendan?” Jameson replied with calm confidence. “Do you think that threatening me is going to make them disappear? That didn’t work when you had Glen Mulrooney murdered, and it sure as hell won’t work now.”
“Goddammit, I did not have Mulrooney killed!” Riordan exploded, slamming his palm down on the table, knocking his drink to the ground. “That fucking moron Fourcade…” He bit back the rest of what he’d intended to say, hands clenching to fists in his lap as he tried to control himself. “All I told Kevin was to find out what Mulrooney knew and try to seal the leaks. I meant to erase any damaging information, but the fucking stupid son of a bitch went and hired that mercenary…”
“Finley. Good help is hard to find,” Jameson affected sympathy.
The executive considered his words for a moment before continuing.
“All right, so you know,” Riordan said, his face looking as if he had just bit into something sour. “But how much do you know, and how do you know it.”
“Beyond that…well, I know that you and Fourcade were working with the Colonial Guard mutineers through third-party cutouts, and I kno
w that you have Fleet personnel and former military working on this. But most importantly, Brendan, I know you have access to the wormholes and that you’re working with Antonov.”
Riordan’s face went pale and Jameson thought if the man hadn’t already been sitting down he would have passed out. “Where the fuck did you hear that?”
“You really shouldn’t have trusted Colonel Lee,” Jameson replied. “Or should I say, Fourcade shouldn’t have trusted Hellene D’Annique, who shouldn’t have trusted Colonel Lee.”
“Jesus Christ,” Riordan muttered, coming out of his chair and pacing across the porch, eyes glazing over in horror. “If you know, Greg, then…”
“Then O’Keefe knows,” Jameson confirmed, nodding. “And more important to your purposes, Shannon fucking Stark knows, Brendan. And you know what she’ll do if you she gets her hands on you.” He sighed. “I can really sympathize with your position: you know that I accepted the pragmatic reality that, as distasteful as I found the whole forced emigration process, we needed it to keep our society and our economy running on the colonies. O’Keefe means well, but he’s running the Republic into the ground and we might not recover.” He glared hard at Riordan. “But Jesus, Brendan…working with Antonov? He’s a Goddamned madman!”
“Dammit, Greg, I am not working with Antonov!” Riordan raged, fists clenching at his side. “I’m not fucking stupid! Antonov is working for me!”
“What?” Jameson blurted. “What the hell do you mean he’s working for you?”
The executive took a deep breath and shook himself as if trying to work the fury out of his system. “I’m afraid this conversation won’t be proceeding until and unless you can convince me why I should tell you more than you already know.”
Jameson shook his head. He levered himself out of his chair and stood to his full height, towering over Riordan. “Because, my old friend,” he enunciated every word with certainty and precision, “I am the only thing standing between you and utter disaster. However well you think you have this figured out, it is not going to go like you hoped it would.”
“You’re so sure of that, are you?” Riordan sneered. “I wouldn’t think you’d give O’Keefe that much credit.”
“It has nothing to do with O’Keefe…you think you have the military in your pocket, but you don’t. You don’t even have the Colonial Guard: Kage knew about your scheme all along and he wasn’t about to let it happen. But most importantly, whoever your wildcard is in the Fleet, whether it’s Patel or whoever, neither the Fleet nor the Marines will get behind Dominguez.”
Riordan looked very much like he wanted to ask Jameson how he knew about Dominguez, but he bit back the impulse.
“Who do you think they will get behind, Greg?” He asked instead.
“I’d think that’s pretty damned obvious,” Jameson said, grinning broadly. “They’ll get behind the same man who saw them through the last conflict with the Protectorate. That’s why I’m here, Brendan. I want you to make me President again.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“I think this is a mistake,” Kevin Fourcade repeated, arms folded across his chest sulkily. He kept glancing toward the plane’s blacked out window as if he could see through the plastic barrier.
“Yes, Kevin,” Riordan grated with strained patience. “So you keep saying. Pardon me if I don’t accept your judgment unreservedly, given your recent history of decision-making.”
“This is an incredibly complicated plan, Brendan,” Fourcade countered plaintively. “Things were bound to go wrong somewhere…you have to give some latitude.”
“Exactly, Kevin, and this is a prime example of latitude. We’ve been handed an opportunity to upgrade our position. Dominguez was never anything but a stop-gap anyway, a bone to throw the rank and file to make them think everything was on the up-and-up. With Greg on our side,” he jerked his head toward the door to their compartment---Jameson was on the other side of it, secured between two armed guards, “we can push for an immediate election and with Jameson as our figurehead, we get the military on our side. We might even get McKay and Stark to support him.” He shrugged. “If they survive.”
“I don’t oppose involving Jameson,” Fourcade clarified. “I just don’t see a reason to take him to the bunker.”
“It’s necessary,” Riordan told him. “He needs assurances that we have the Antonov situation under control.” He snorted ruefully. “Hell, I’d like to get some reassurance of that myself…”
Jameson emerged from the VTOL flyer into an enclosed chamber. He hesitated at the bottom of the boarding ramp and glanced up, seeing the now-closed hangar doors above him. He raised an eyebrow and chuckled at Brendan Riordan and Kevin Fourcade as they met him at the bottom of the ramp. The hangar was roomy and well-lit and mostly vacant. There was room for a dozen flitters or perhaps three more of the small VTOL jets like the one on which they’d flown, but their vehicle shared the large space with but one ducted-fan flitter, parked nearly a hundred yards away. The walls were bare, undecorated concrete and to Jameson they had the look of age.
“Thorough,” he commented, obviously impressed.
“It’s not something we want someone stumbling across by accident,” Fourcade said with a testy defensiveness.
“Follow me,” Riordan told him, leading the group out of the hangar, the two guards who had watched over Jameson during the flight trailing him silently, hands still filled with compact submachine guns.
Jameson eyed them with concealed amusement as they walked. “You know, Brendan, I guess I must look dangerous, but I swear, I’ve only ever killed three people in my whole life and only one of them was with my bare hands.”
“It may seem a bit paranoid,” Riordan admitted, “but then again, we are plotting the overthrow of the government, so perhaps paranoia is just good sense.”
“Touché,” Jameson admitted.
The exit to the hangar was a large double-door that led into a broad hallway, wide enough for power-loaders to haul pallets of supplies through it to storerooms, and at the end of that hallway was a freight elevator. Riordan pressed his palm against a biometric ID plate that seemed much newer than the elevator itself and the doors opened with a quiet creak of metal, confirming for Jameson his estimate of the facility’s age. Riordan hit the last button on a panel with more than two dozen floor selections and the car jerked into motion. The ride seemed to last forever and Jameson fought the urge to check the time on his ‘link; it had been taken from him before the flight, and then he’d had to submit to a complete scan to make sure he wasn’t carrying any implanted tracking devices.
“What level of hell are we getting off at?” he asked dryly. Riordan smirked but did not reply. In fact, he didn’t say a word even when the elevator stopped a few minutes later, disgorging them at the end of a bare hallway lined with unmarked doors; he merely stepped out and led them down it with a confident stride.
He’s spent a lot of time here, Jameson realized.
The corridor split into a T at the far end and Riordan took a right without hesitation. Jameson began to see people then: dressed in civilian business casual, without even an ID badge to betray their purpose, ignoring Riordan except for an occasional nod as they passed by to press palms to security plates next to the equally anonymous doors and entering those mysterious chambers for some unknowable purpose. Finally they reached a door that seemed much newer than the rest. It was wide enough to admit a power-loader and thick and featureless, without as much as an ID plate. Jameson wondered for a moment how Riordan would open it; but only moments after they arrived at the door, it slowly slid aside. Waiting beyond it in a small antechamber was a dowdy, middle-aged woman with mousy brown hair and clothes that looked as if they’d been slept in. She greeted him with a forced smile and shook his hand with feigned warmth.
“Director Riordan,” she said, “so nice to have you back so soon.”
“You’re a bad liar, Maggie,” Riordan accused, shaking his head in amusement. “Don’t worry; it
’s not another inspection, just a VIP tour. Dr. Cochrane, I assume you remember former President Jameson.”
The woman seemed to notice Jameson for the first time and surprise registered on her lumpy face. “Mr. President!” she exclaimed, holding out a hand. “It’s such an honor to meet you!” She glanced at Riordan doubtfully as Jameson shook her hand.
“President Jameson is a new recruit for our little enterprise,” Riordan told her. “He just wanted some assurance that we have things in hand when it comes to dealing with our Russian asset.”
“Ah,” she said with a nod of understanding. “Well, right this way then, Mr. President.”
The room was half a cell, half an apartment, enclosed behind a transparent, airtight wall from the three meter-high ceiling to floor. It seemed well-appointed as prisons went: besides a bed and a reclining chair, there was an exercise machine and a fully-equipped entertainment center. A partially open door in the corner led to a small, private bathroom---notionally private: Jameson was sure it was being monitored as well, though at the moment there was no one in the chamber other than their party and the doctor.
Standing at the center of the cell was a tall, broad-chested man with a face off a Roman coin: aquiline nose, deep-set dark eyes and cheekbones carved from the side of a mountain. A bushy mustache shot with grey completed the mental picture that Jameson remembered very well both from history lessons and the videos he had seen of the invasion.
“I remember you,” Sergei Pavlovitch Antonov said slowly, staring intently at Jameson, one hand resting lightly, palm out, against the transparent enclosure. His voice was being amplified by some system in the cell, because Jameson could hear him with no problem despite the intervening wall. “The hostage.”
