Mindflight

Chapter 2-1

Chapter 2

Despite being more than five minutes late for the briefing, Joby Karns entered the conference room the very embodiment of poise and elegance. Her lean, supple body was clad in a simple black and red dashiki. She didn’t need to dress up to make herself beautiful; she knew her copper red hair and unlined face made her look a good ten years younger than she really was. Her beauty could only be enhanced by the power that accompanied her position. A thorough knowledge of her assets and her influence gave her all the confidence she needed.

Her blue eyes scanned the room, noting that everyone else was here: Marina Shekova of Budget; Ho Li Wan, “Public Relations” (in essence, propaganda); Colonel Adaman Haiphez, Military Liaison; Karl Junger of Counterintelligence; Cohila Buturu of Technical Services; James Tennon of Cryptography; Romney Glazer of Internal Security; Phyllis Rokowsky, liaison to the Director; and, standing at the front of the room ready to conduct the meeting, Hakim Rajman, in charge of Assimilation and Correlation.

A council of equals, Joby thought wryly. But some of us are more equal than others.

She could tell they’d been waiting specifically for her to arrive before starting. She gave them a curt nod as she sat down.

“How good of you to come, Joby,” Romney Glazer commented acidly, as only he could.

“It’s nice to know I’m missed,” she replied. She saw no need to apologize to them, or even to explain that she’d been waiting for the long-overdue call from Dekker about the arrival of Alain Cheney. It still hadn’t come, and she was beginning to worry that something may have gone wrong. But she owed no explanations to anyone here—least of all to a putzer like Glazer.

“Joby already knows most of what we’re going to discuss,” Hakim Rajman said from the front of the room, cutting off the bitter exchange. “It was her agents who discovered the problem. Perhaps I should let her explain the initial stages.”

All heads turned once again to her. Joby remained in her seat as she said, “Three days ago, the Leonean Defense Ministry staged a complete shutdown of all our operations there. I mean one hundred percent. All our sources either evaporated, closed their mouths or ‘disappeared.’ All our monitoring devices were either ferreted out and destroyed, or neutralized in some other way. The logical inference is that something is happening inside there, something so monumental that they’re willing to tip their hand that they knew our sources, rather than let us get the faintest whiff of what it is.”

“There are other reasons for housecleaning,” Karl Junger said. “A change in administration sometimes wants to get off to a good start by making sure all the spies are out of its closets. Or some overeager junior assistant may want to please his boss—or he may be trying a power play to replace him by showing him up as inefficient.”

“Or perhaps,” Romney Glazer spoke up again, “perhaps Joby’s people were so clumsy that they were finally an embarrassment to the Leonean government itself, so it put them out of their misery.”

“A&C is aware of all those reasons and more,” Rajman said with a sharp glance at Glazer. He did not like playing the role of peacemaker, but he knew he had to if this meeting were to be kept under control. “We feel that none of them apply in this particular instance. The hierarchy in the Leonean administration—particularly Defense—has been stable for months, so they have no need to show off. And if this were a feint—if they wanted us to think something was happening there so we’d concentrate all our resources on it and ignore something else—they almost undoubtedly would have left us some little hole to peek through, giving us tantalizing glimpses of their supposed secret. My staff and I are convinced that this crackdown represents a genuine effort to keep something from us, something happening at Defense.”

Phyllis Rokowsky cleared her throat. She was a small but stately looking woman, approaching her middle years with just a trace of gray in her elegantly coiffured black hair. “The question now,” she said, “is what are they trying to keep from us, and why?” Though she spoke in gentle terms, everyone paid attention; Phyllis Rokowsky reported personally to the Director, who in turn reported to the Primus.

Rajman cleared his throat and shuffled some papers around in front of him. “Whatever it is, we can be reasonably certain it involves only Leone and none of its allies; all indications are that things are quiet along diplomatic channels. The immediate thought was that they’ve developed some startling new weapons system. While we can’t rule that possibility out entirely, our breakdown analysis shows less than a five percent probability. We’ve kept a careful monitor on all their ongoing projects, and none of them are close enough to completion. Even if they were, none of the new systems is advanced enough to justify a complete intelligence blackout of the sort they’re using.”

Rokowsky nodded and turned to Glazer. “Romney, as our expert on Internal Security, how long could we maintain such a blackout if we had something desperately important to protect?”

“Not all that long.” Glazer was all business now. “I’d say two months at the outside. Working under heavy secrecy like that puts a big psychological strain on everyone involved. Plus, there’s the fact that the opposition will be working triply hard to crack the outer shell. Entropy inevitably guarantees that little c****s will begin forming almost as soon as their screen is in place.”

“It will also be expensive,” added Marina Shekova, the Agency’s budget director. “The cost of their own internal security will have to rise two to four times to handle the increased workload.”

Rokowsky considered the input she was receiving from the department heads. “In other words,” she said slowly, “whatever they hope to gain by this tactic must be a short-range objective. They know they can’t keep us out forever. It would seem this is something that must be kept secret in the development stage if it’s going to exist at all; but once it’s set in motion it won’t matter whether we know or not. Is that a fair hypothesis?”

Rajman looked down at his notes, then back at Rokowsky. “A bit simplified, perhaps, but it coincides with my department’s diagnosis.”

“Good.” Rokowsky smiled. “Let me take my simplified theory a step further. What if they are planning a war, a surprise attack on us? That’s something they’d want to keep very secret right now, but it wouldn’t matter in two months because we’d know about it by then anyhow—the hard way.” She turned to the military liaison officer. “Comment, Colonel?”

Adaman Haiphez looked straight back at her. “From all the information available to me, Leone is not ready for a war.” He glanced over at Rajman and, getting a confirming nod, continued, “There are certain preparations that must be made if you’re planning a war. You have to make sure your troops are supplied—with arms, with fuel, with food, with clothing. You have to gear up domestic production so critical materials can be both manufactured and distributed. You have to redeploy manpower in key positions. There are a thousand small, telltale signs, none of which is apparent on Leone. Leone is not ready for a major war today, nor—in my opinion—could it gear up for one in a mere two months.”

Rokowsky nodded again. She was silent for a moment, then asked Haiphez, “What about us, colonel? Are we ready for a war?”

“We can easily defend ourselves against anything Leone can bring against us, now or in the foreseeable future.”

“That’s not what I asked,” Rokowsky said—so gently that it hardly sounded like a reprimand. “Visualize our alternatives, Colonel. The Leoneans have something so vital that they’re going to a lot of trouble to keep it from us. We, therefore, have to find out what it is. Suppose the Primus decides that this matter is so essential that all measures, including armed intervention, are justified. If we send a military expedition against Leone to crack their secrecy, all the independent planets will immediately resume hostilities against us. You know that as well as I do. My question, Colonel, is whether we are prepared to wage all-out war on so many fronts.”

Haiphez took a deep breath and looked away from her. “No, ma’am, we are not.”

Rokowsky smiled—a cold, triumphant expression. “Thank you, Colonel. That puts an upper limit on our possible response to this affair. Having thus eliminated the possibility of overt action, we are left with the covert methods. That is your responsibility, is it not, Ms. Karns?”

Joby looked the other woman squarely in the eye. She respected and admired Phyllis Rokowsky for the smooth, effortless way she wielded her power—but Joby refused to be cowed by her. “You’re absolutely right. Since it was my department that first called everyone’s attention to the situation, we have also been studying it more closely than anyone else—with the exception, of course, of Hakim’s staff.”

There was a slight chuckle throughout the room. Hakim Rajman’s Assimilation and Correlation Department was by far the largest bureau within the Terran Intelligence Agency, with four times the manpower and six times the budget of any other single department. With data coming in continuously from sixty-three other inhabited worlds, there was an enormous need to sift it, evaluate it, and pass it on to those other sections of the government that needed to act on it. With so many people working inside, Rajman’s department was also the least well organized. The joke in the other departments was that A&C stood for “Anarchy and Confusion.”

Joby waited for the undercurrent of humor to subside before continuing. “Unfortunately, the timing of this whole situation could not have been worse as far as we’re concerned. Our chief-of-station on Leone is a telepath whom we suspect is on the verge of going telepausal. One week ago—just a few days before this entire matter blew up in our faces—he boarded a ship to come back here for his routine biannual checkup. If he’d waited a few days longer, I’m sure he would have been capable of penetrating the Leoneans’ best screens. But as it is...” She placed both her hands on top of the table. “If we find what we expect to find, I suppose we’ll have to replace him. And that, on top of this new development, puts us at a great disadvantage.”

“Are you trying to build up a case for sympathy?” Glazer interrupted sharply.

Joby looked over at him. “What do you mean by that?”

Glazer gave one of his bitchy little smirks. While his eyes were fixed on Joby, his words were intended for the entire room. “I understand from your file that you attended the Academy with this agent and, in fact, had a very close relationship with him.”

The bastard does his homework, Joby thought in a cold fury. “Close or not,” she enunciated, “the rules governing telepausal agents are quite explicit and will be adhered to. One of my top assistants is handling the matter personally. I only express regret that a man of proven reputation—and I’m sure not even you could question Cheney’s service record—will not be available to us in solving this current and urgent problem.”

“I didn’t realize you would be so touchy,” Glazer said in mock apology. “If it would ease some of the burden from your mind, I could have some of my people take care of the Cheney problem for you.”

Joby bristled. “Operations has always taken care of its own lame horses, thank you. When we need help from the goon squad, we’ll ask for it.”

Phyllis Rokowsky had but to clear her throat again and all eyes went to her. “I think we have strayed from the primary subject under discussion,” she said in a soft voice. “Shall we return to the matter of Leone?”

Joby was furious at herself for letting Glazer ruffle her so badly—especially in front of Rokowsky. She tried to put the matter out of her mind, but it kept insinuating itself into her behavior, disrupting her train of thought and causing her to falter slightly in the wrong places.