An Airless Storm: Cochrane's Company: Book Two

by Peter Grant

  “That’s a question I plan to ask Sejdiu’s mother as soon as possible,” Cochrane replied, frowning. “There are so many wheels within wheels here that I’m not sure I’ve got it all straight, even now. What do you think, Tom?”

  “Sir, I reckon the only thing that might break open the logjam, and find out exactly what we’ve got, is to let the different parties confront each other. Let’s arrange a meeting between Sub-Lieutenant Sejdiu, his mother, and that female agent.”

  “What if one or the other of them tries to harm themselves, or each other?” Hui asked. “Don’t forget, the younger agent is still under orders to kill both the others.”

  “That’s a good point, ma’am. I’ll divide a room into three holding areas with plasglass partitions between them, plus a fourth area for the interrogator.”

  “That’ll be me,” Cochrane informed him. “It’s time I got involved. Make sure both agents, Sejdiu’s mother and the younger woman, are physically restrained as well. They’re too well trained to take any chances with them. The officer is probably also willing to fight, but he won’t be nearly so well trained. I think I’ll have him restrained as well, at least at first, just to be on the safe side.”

  “Aye aye, sir. When do you want to do this?”

  “As soon as you can arrange it. Let’s take down Sejdiu’s mother as she leaves for work in a few hours’ time. Your flitterbugs can do that without causing too much of a fuss. Take her out to the farm, and set up that interrogation room as you described. While you’re doing that, have one of your teams go through her apartment with a fine-tooth comb. I’ll be interested to see what they find. We’ll excuse her absence to Grigorescu. I’ll come out to the farm after work. Let’s play the cards, and let them fall where they may.”

  “May I come too?” Hui asked, her eyes flashing as if to say, You’d better not try to keep me out of this!

  He sighed. “Could I stop you?”

  “No, not really.”

  “Then you can come. It’s not going to be pretty, love. I’m probably going to have to get tough with them, and display my ruthless side.”

  “Since you’re my husband-to-be, and they wanted to kill us both, I’m feeling a little ruthless toward them myself – so you go right ahead!”

  Tom got to his feet. “All right, sir. I’ll be ready for you by tonight.”

  “Thanks, Tom. Meanwhile, I’m going to consider very carefully what we’d like the Albanians to think. If we can feed them misinformation, using these agents’ channels of communication, it might pay dividends later. I’ll think about that, and put my head together with Dave and Hui, and we’ll see what might work.”

  25

  Confrontation

  CONSTANTA

  For what seemed like the hundredth time, Jehona wriggled and twisted on her bed, but could not dislodge the hook-and-loop bands that held her wrists and forearms together, as well as her calves and ankles. The straps securing her to the bed would not allow her to roll onto the floor, to move about in search of anything that might cut or loosen her bonds. She had been bound by experts. What’s more, they had almost shaved her skull, leaving only a thin fuzz of hair. She tried to ignore the dull despair she felt at having been captured, and focus her entire being on remaining alert to any opportunity her captors might allow.

  She heard footsteps coming down a passage outside her room. The door opened, and two men entered. One said, “Ma’am, we’re moving you down the passage to an interview room. This isn’t a forced interrogation. You’re going to learn why you’re here, and what we know. We think a lot of it is going to surprise you.”

  “What’s the meaning of this?” she blazed indignantly. “How dare you kidnap me? Mr. Grigorescu will have informed the police by now! He’ll –”

  “Stow it, ma’am,” the second man said bluntly. We know you’re really Jehona Sejdiu, and why you’re here. Now it’s time for you to learn the rest of the story.”

  Shock silenced her as she heard her real name spoken aloud for the first time in months. She remained silent as the two men lifted her, placed her gently in a wheelchair, and pushed her down a long passage. Doors to either side were closed, offering no clue as to what they contained.

  She was wheeled into a room at the end of the corridor. The rear half had been divided into three narrow sections by vertical plasglass sheets, thick and tough, fastened to wooden frames in the floor and the ceiling. Each of the first two sections contained a wooden chair with arms and a padded seat, fastened securely to the floor with brackets. Her escort wheeled her to the center section and lifted her into the wooden chair, securing her to it with hook-and-loop straps.

  “Just wait here, ma’am,” one advised her. “We’ll be bringing in one more person, then someone who’ll explain to you what’s going on. There’ll be a fourth visitor soon – and that’s going to be the nicest surprise you’ve had for a long time.” He was smiling as he said it, but not maliciously, she thought.

  “What do you mean?”

  “All in good time, ma’am.”

  The two men went out. A few minutes later, they wheeled in a much younger woman, secured in the same way as herself, also with her hair trimmed to a thin fuzz. She stared in astonishment at Jehona, clearly recognizing her. “Traitor!” she blurted out furiously in Albanian. “Did you betray them, as well as us? Is that why you are tied?”

  “What are you talking about?” Jehona asked in astonishment, then forced herself to stop. Her enemies would do anything they thought might persuade her to talk, just as she would have done if their positions were reversed. Silence was the best response. It betrayed nothing. Her instructors had re-emphasized that, time and time again.

  Her accuser appeared to have learned a similar lesson. She pressed her lips tightly together, and refused to look at Jehona as the men fastened her to the chair in the leftmost cubicle. That left the one on Jehona’s right. She wondered for a moment who was to occupy it, then pushed the thought from her mind. Focus! she commanded herself. This may be the end for you. If it is, sacrifice your life proudly for our cause, just as Grandfather did. For a moment, she allowed herself one despairing thought about her husband and surviving children… then she shook her head, and straightened, and put them out of her mind.

  The two men separated. Each took a neural net out of his pocket, and placed it securely on the head of one of the women; then they plugged thin cables into sockets at the rear of the nets. They led the cables to the back of the room, and plugged their other ends into sockets attached to the wall. Wires ran from them along the baseboard, exiting at one side of the room.

  “These are truth-testers,” one of the men explained to both women as he moved back into their view. “We need them to know when you’re being truthful. You’ll see in due course that they’ll help you understand each other better, too.”

  As the men walked out, Jehona tried to figure out what they could possibly mean. She failed.

  Cochrane looked up as the young officer was led into the living-room of the farmhouse. He rose to meet him. “Good evening, Sub-Lieutenant.”

  The young man instinctively stiffened to attention at the sight of the single broad ring on the black sleeves of Cochrane’s winter uniform. “Good evening, sir.”

  “I had you brought here because I have to solve a problem tonight. You see, some of your own people have come here, to this planet, under orders to kill you, because you’re a traitor to their cause.”

  Alban’s eyes widened in shock. “You – you can’t be serious, sir!”

  “I’m in deadly earnest. I’m prepared to prove that to you. However, there’s a condition. To introduce you to some of those involved, and let you satisfy yourself that I’ve told you the truth, I need to be certain that none of you can harm any of the others. That means you’ll have to be secured hand and foot, and brought into the room in a wheelchair.” He held up his hand to stifle the younger man’s instinctive protest. “That’s not because I distrust you. You’ve behaved honorab
ly as our prisoner, and earned our respect. I’m doing this because the situation is so volatile, and the dangers so real, that I don’t want to leave the slightest opening for anything to go wrong. I won’t force this on you. If you refuse to be bound, I’ll return you to your room, and conduct the rest of this evening’s proceedings on my own. I’ll play you a recording of them later. If you accept being bound, I promise that, as soon as I’m satisfied any danger is past, I’ll have you released. It’s your choice.”

  “I… I don’t understand, sir.”

  “I know you don’t. I’m sorry to put you in such a quandary. However, please accept my word that this is necessary. I don’t know how tonight is going to go down. I’m trying to make it as safe as possible for everyone. There’s only enough space for two guards in that room, along with three prisoners, including you if you choose to participate, plus myself. Bonds are necessary to keep things under control.”

  Alban thought for a moment, then stiffened to attention. “Sir, we are enemies, but you’ve treated me with respect, and never tried to force me to disclose anything. I must believe that you’re being honorable in this, too. Even though I resent it, I will submit to being bound, sir.”

  “Thank you. I don’t think you’ll regret it when this is all over. I’ll have these two men secure you, then they’ll stand by until I call them to bring you in.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Cochrane left them to it, and walked down the corridor. He paused outside the makeshift interrogation room, and took a deep breath. Tonight’s events might save lives… or destroy them. He devoutly hoped to avoid that. There had been too many lives ruined already.

  He pushed the door open and walked in. The two women looked at him warily, clearly expecting trouble. Their faces were determined, pushing away fear as they confronted what might well be a short and painful future.

  “Ladies, my name is Commodore Andrew Cochrane. I’m the head of Hawkwood Security, against which both of you have been spying. Allow me to introduce you to each other.

  “Mrs. Jehona Sejdiu, you are a spy in the pay of the Albanian Brotherhood. You were sent here by Agim Nushi to find out all you could about Hawkwood and myself, including identifying ways in which we might be attacked. Mr. Nushi did not lie to you at the time, but he has lied to you since, largely by omission. He has also actively lied to your family.

  “Ms. Aferdita Tahiri, Agim Nushi sent you and four others to Constanta to kill Mrs. Sejdiu’s son, Alban, a Sub-Lieutenant in your forces whom we had captured. He –”

  “You captured Alban?” Jehona burst out, unable to control her astonishment and sudden, wild hope. “I –”

  Cochrane held up his hand. “All in good time, Mrs. Sejdiu. Ms. Tahiri, Mr. Nushi told you that Alban had turned traitor, that he was helping us by providing information and producing propaganda against the Brotherhood. He lied. Sub-Lieutenant Sejdiu did nothing of the kind. He –”

  “Of course you would say that!” the young woman burst out. “You are trying to deceive me, to turn me against our leader!” She spoke in lightly accented Galactic Standard English. Her face was twisted in anger and hatred.

  “I hope to prove to you tonight that you’re wrong. Let me finish, please. You were also ordered to spy on Mrs. Sejdiu. Mr. Nushi told you he was afraid she might have turned against the Brotherhood after finding out that her son was our prisoner. He told you to find out the truth, and if she had been turned, to kill her too.”

  Jehona twisted her head to stare at the woman alongside her. Her face showed anger, bewilderment and shock.

  “Finally,” Cochrane continued, “your team was ordered to locate me and Hawkwood’s senior officers, and attack us if possible, but as a secondary objective to Sub-Lieutenant Sejdiu and his mother. Last night, you tried to accomplish all three objectives. You failed. We killed two out of three attackers at this farm, and captured the leader of your team, Flamar Hajdari. We killed another member of your team, Gentian Gashi, when he tried to drive a van loaded with explosives into the parking garage of the apartment block where I and most of my staff live. Finally, we captured you as you walked toward Mrs. Sejdiu’s apartment, carrying a parcel that you were going to deliver to her. You were wearing an explosive vest, that you planned to detonate as soon as she opened the door to sign for it.”

  Jehona’s face was a study in mingled outrage and incredulity. “What – why – I –”

  “If you’ll wait a very short while, ma’am, I think you’ll understand,” Cochrane said to her, not unkindly. “Ms. Tahiri, have I summed up the situation truthfully?”

  “I’m not telling you anything! Why not ask Flamar?”

  “Oh, we did. We interrogated him last night, using the same drugs and techniques your people had used against us in the past. That’s how we learned about them.” Both women visibly flinched. “You’ll understand that he has since died, but we recorded everything he told us. I’ll be playing you excerpts from that in a short while. Right now, though, I want to bring in the third actor in tonight’s little drama. Mrs. Sejdiu, I understand you’ve been informed that your son was killed in action. We found a message from your husband to that effect in your apartment.”

  “Y – yes.”

  “He was not killed. He was gravely injured, and knocked unconscious. Some spacers from Keda, hired by your people, escaped from the damaged compartment where he was, and took him with them when they boarded a lifeboat. We rescued them, then operated on him to relieve a compression fracture in his skull. He’s made a full recovery, although he’s still undergoing therapy.”

  Tears were pouring down Jehona’s face. “You – you’re lying! This cannot be! Agim would not have lied to my entire family about this!”

  “He did, ma’am – and he knew it was a lie, too, because I’d been in contact with him, to tell him your son and the Kedan spacers were our prisoners. I’m going to prove it to you, by bringing your son into this room.” He turned, put his head out of the door, and called, “Bring in the Sub-Lieutenant, please.”

  Cochrane had anticipated an emotional scene, but even he was surprised by the outburst when Alban was wheeled in. Jehona, already in tears, shouted his name aloud, and struggled desperately to free herself so that she could run to her son. Alban did the same, turning to Cochrane with tears in his eyes. “Release me, damn you! She is my mother!”

  Cochrane had to raise his voice in a powerful shout. “Silence!” He waited until the two, shocked, were staring at him. “Sub-Lieutenant Sejdiu, I cannot release your mother, because she’s a very highly trained agent. Her unarmed combat skills are exceptional, as we’ve learned through watching her exercise them. These two men are equally skilled, but I’m not. I can’t take the risk that she might injure any of us once she was free, or force us to injure her to keep the rest of us safe. Whether or not she’s ever free again will depend on what happens here tonight.” He turned to the two guards. “Please wheel Sub-Lieutenant Sejdiu into the third partitioned space.”

  They did so, then took up positions in the front corners of the room, from where they could reach any of the pinioned prisoners quickly. Cochrane waited until movement had ceased, then went on, “Mrs. Sejdiu, I said I’d prove you’d been lied to by Mr. Nushi. This is the first evidence of that. There’s more. I’m going to play selected excerpts from the interrogation of Mr. Hajdari last night.”

  He turned to a player on a table behind him, and started it running. For several minutes, they all listened to Flamar’s voice, soft and dreamy under the influence of the interrogation drug, confirm the orders that Agim had issued to the team, what they had done since arriving on Constanta, and what they had planned to do the previous evening.

  “Who was that?” Alban demanded when the playback had finished.

  “That was the late Flamar Hajdari, leader of the team of agents. He died last night, after we interrogated him.”

  “You mean you killed him!”

  “Yes, we did.” The young officer appeared shocked by Cochran
e’s calm admission. “We killed him because the interrogation drug we used on him had by then irreparably scrambled his brain, leaving him a vegetable.” His voice became icy cold. “We learned about that drug from your Brotherhood, Sub-Lieutenant. They used it against our people. The lethal injection we used to kill him in the end came out of a hypodermic syringe carried into a nursing home on this planet by another of your agents. I seem to recall his name was Vadil.”

  “It was Vadil Berisha,” Jehona said hoarsely. “I did not know him, but I was informed of his mission during my refresher training.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Sejdiu. He tried to murder another of your people, a survivor of an asteroid-gathering ship that was destroyed by an orbital mine in the Mycenae system. We’d brought him here to receive long-term medical care that we couldn’t provide in space. We hoped he would recover one day. Vadil intended to make sure he didn’t, by injecting him with a fast-acting lethal poison. We shot him before he could do so, and recovered three syringes of the poison from his body. We used one of them last night to end Mr. Hajdari’s life, after interrogating him.”

  Alban was staring at Cochrane as if he were some horrifying, disgusting insect. “And you admit to cold-blooded murder?” he almost spat. “So much for your honor as an officer!”

  Cochrane’s voice was frosted steel. “Didn’t you hear me mention that your mother is also a trained agent? How many people has she interrogated, then murdered, in the same fashion? How many people has Ms. Tahiri killed like that?”

  Jehona’s voice was soft, but the pain in it was clearly audible. “I… I have never killed anyone like that, Commodore. I was always involved with intelligence-gathering, not interrogation. However, I know the methods and poisons of which you speak.” She turned her head to look at her son. “The Commodore is telling the truth, my son. We do use such techniques, and I know of several occasions on which they were used. I… I am sorry, Alban. You never knew who and what I was before I married your father.”