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Chapter Thirty-Three
"Well, what do you make of it, Andrieaux?" Samiha Lababibi asked.
"What do you mean, what do I make of it?"
The Spindle System President and New Tuscany's senior delegate sat in a private dining room at one of the most exclusive restaurants in Thimble. It was a very private dining room-one whose security against any known listening device was guaranteed, as was the discretion of the wait staff which served diners in it.
"Andrieaux, let's not play games, please," Lababibi said with a winsome smile. She picked up the wine bottle and poured fresh glasses for both of them. "The probability that Nordbrandt's dead is bound to affect everyone's calculations. What I'm asking for is your estimate of how it's going to affect Alquezar's, Aleksandra's... and ours."
"Surely it's much too early to be formulating new policies on the basis of something which hasn't even been confirmed yet," Andrieaux Yvernau protested gracefully, and Lababibi's smile took on a slightly set air. He sipped his wine appreciatively, then set down the glass with a sigh. "Personally, I find the entire matter extraordinarily tiresome," he said. "I'd like to think that if she really is dead-and I do devoutly hope she is-we might be allowed at least a few days, or weeks, of peace before we have to return to the fray with Alquezar's hooligans."
"It's extremely unlikely Joachim is going to give us that sort of vacation, Andrieaux," Lababibi pointed out. And , she didn't add aloud, if you want a little rest, you smug, self-satisfied ass, you might think about the fact that my own life was ever so much more restful before that crazed bitch drove me into your waiting arms-yours and Aleksandra's .
"Really, Samiha, what does it matter what Joachim's willing to give us? As long as we hold firm, he and that disgusting Krietzma
He shrugged, his smile turning into something remarkably like a smirk.
"They haven't shown any signs of breaking with him yet," Lababibi pointed out.
"Not openly, no. But you know there have to be fissures under the surface, Samiha. They can't possibly be comfortable siding with lower-class cretins like Krietzma
"And you don't see Nordbrandt's death affecting that equation in any way?"
"I didn't say that," Yvernau said with a patient sigh. "What I said is that it's too early to be formulating new policies when all we can do is speculate upon the effect her demise is likely to have. Although, if I had to guess, I'd be tempted to wager it will strengthen my position more than anyone else's. To some extent, of course, Aleksandra's contention that Nordbrandt never represented any serious threat will be validated. Insofar as that view is accepted, it will also tend to validate her stand in holding out for the most liberal possible protection of our existing legal codes and societies. However, it will also take some of the pressure off certain of her... less enthusiastic supporters, shall we say?"
He darted a look across the table at Lababibi, who returned it with an expression of complete tranquility. An expression, she knew, which fooled neither of them. She had, indeed, been driven into Tonkovic's camp by the wave of panic Nordbrandt's extremism had sent surging through the Spindle System oligarchs. If Nordbrandt truly was gone, and if her organization truly was crippled, some of that panic might begin to subside. In which case, the pressure being exerted on Lababibi to maintain a united front with Tonkovic might also ebb. It might even be possible to move back towards a position based on principle instead of other peoples' panic.
Not that Yvernau would be particularly happy if she managed that.
"If," he continued, "Aleksandra's bloc of votes begins to show signs of crumbling, Alquezar will scent blood. He and Krietzma
"And if he refuses to, anyway?"
"Then he loses his own oligarchs," Yvernau said simply. "Not even Van Dort will be able to hold them if Alquezar first throws away a chance for a compromise solution and, second, makes it clear the draft Constitution he favors will strip them of every single legal protection they've spent centuries acquiring. Which means, in the end, that I and those who think like me will get everything we've wanted all along. Effectively total local autonomy in return for a unified interstellar fiscal, trade, diplomatic, and military policy emanating from Manticore."
"And you believe this will take weeks. Even months."
"I think it's extremely likely to," Yvernau acknowledged.
"You're not concerned about Baroness Medusa's warnings that our time isn't unlimited? Nor worried that if things stretch out that long the Star Kingdom may simply decide to walk away? To take the position that if we can't put our own house into order well enough to report out a draft Constitution after all this time, then obviously we're not really serious about joining the Star Kingdom at all?"
"I think there will probably be some internal, domestic pressure for the Star Kingdom to do that," Yvernau said calmly. "In this instance, however, I think Aleksandra is correct. The Queen of Manticore herself has committed her crown and prestige to the a
"I see."
Lababibi nodded slowly, as if in agreement with her di
"Do you think she's actually dead?" Baroness Medusa asked as she gazed around a di
"I don't know, Milady," Gregor O'Shaughnessy admitted. "I wish we'd had some of our own forensics people on-site, although I'm not really sure even that would have helped a lot.
"From Colonel Basaricek's report, it certainly sounds as if she could be gone, but Basaricek herself points out that her evidence is extremely problematical. I've requested a copy of the KNP's low-light imagery. Once we have it, we may be able to enhance the quality sufficiently to make a more positive estimation of whether or not it really was Nordbrandt. Of course, even for a dispatch boat, the transit time between here and Split is over seven days one-way, so it'll be at least another week before it could possibly get here."
"Excuse me, Gregor," Commander Chandler said, "but if we're requesting copies of the imagery, why don't we simply offer our own forensic services to determine whether or not the remains are hers?"
"I considered that, Ambrose," O'Shaughnessy told Rear Admiral Khumalo's intelligence officer. "But then I read the full appendices Basaricek had appended to her basic report."
"I skimmed them myself," Chandler said. He grimaced. "I can't say I understood everything in them. Or even most of what was in them, for that matter."
Rear Admiral Khumalo frowned from his seat at the foot of the table as Chandler made that admission. Dame Estelle saw it and wondered whether Khumalo's problem was that he felt Chandler should have understood the technical material, or if he was just irritated with the ONI officer for admitting ignorance in the presence of civilians.
"I didn't understand them either." O'Shaughnessy didn't even glance at Khumalo, but the Provisional Governor suspected him of deliberately drawing a little fire away from his uniformed colleague. "But, because I didn't understand them, I went and asked Major Cateaux for her analysis."
Several people sat a bit straighter, listening more intently, at the mention of Major Cateaux. Sandra Cateaux was the senior Marine physician assigned to the understrength battalion stationed in Spindle.
"She reviewed the material," O'Shaughnessy told them. "And when she finished, she told me what I'd been afraid she was going to." He shrugged. "The short version is that if the remains the KNP recovered had been those of a Manticoran citizen, the Major could easily have identified the victim. But because they're the remains of a Kornatian citizen, she doesn't have the base information she requires for a genetic determination. Apparently Nordbrandt never had a genetic scan-they're rarely performed by the current Kornatian medical establishment-and, so far as the KNP's been able to determine, no samples of her blood or tissue were retained by her physicians. Or else, as I suspect was the case, she and her organization saw to it that any samples which had been retained were properly disappeared when she decided to go underground.