At All Costs

"I think it's possible," Usher agreed. "But there are still way too many unanswered questions for me to suggest exactly why someone might want that. Did they have enough information on Bolthole to expect to us to roll right over the Manties for them? In that case, presumably Manticore is the primary target, and we're simply the blunt instrument. Or did they expect the Manties to roll over us, which would make us the primary target? Or do they, for some reason I can't currently envision, simply want the two of us shooting at one another again, which would make both of us the target of some third party with a completely unknown agenda of his own?"

"Jesus Christ, Kevin!" Pritchart stared at him in something very like horror. "That's so... so... so twisty just thinking about it makes my head hurt! What good could sending us back to war with Manticore do any hypothetical third party?"

"I just said I couldn't envision what their motives might be. If I could, I could make a pretty fair stab at figuring out who they were, as well. And it's entirely possible I'm totally out to lunch with the whole theory. It could be no more than my 'spook' experience making me see things because Da

Chapter Forty-Five

"Good morning, everyone," Eloise Pritchart said as she walked briskly into the sunlit chamber.

The Cabinet Room was on the eastern side of the President's official residence, and the tide of morning light which flooded in through the extensive windows on the room's outer wall gleamed on the expensive, polished conference table, inlaid with half a dozen exotic species of wood. The thick, natural fiber carpet was like a deep pool of cobalt water, with the Presidential Seal floating on it like a golden reflection. All of the chairs, except for Pritchart's own, were upholstered in black; hers was the same blue as the carpet, with the seal of her office emblazoned on its back. Glasses and expensive crystal carafes of ice water sat at each place, and optical pickups on the roof of the building fed the chamber's interior smart walls, which were configured to give a panoramic view of the city of Nouveau Paris and its morning traffic.

"Good morning, Madam President," Thomas Theisman, as her Cabinet's acknowledged senior member, replied for all of them.

According to the presidential succession established by the Constitution, Leslie Montreau, Arnold Giancola's successor as Secretary of State, was technically senior to Theisman, but no one in this room was under any misapprehensions. Theisman's devotion to the Constitution, and his personal determination to avoid the office of President, had been accepted by even the most cynical cabinet secretaries. In a way, however, that only enhanced his powerbase. They knew he had absolutely no personal ambitions and that he stood squarely behind Elizabeth Pritchart, the Republic's first elected president in three centuries.

And that the Republic's military stood squarely behind him.

Pritchart crossed to her chair, drew it out from the table, sat, and waited a moment while it adjusted to her body. Then she leaned forward very slightly and swept the members of her Cabinet with her eyes.

"I know you're all wondering what this unscheduled meeting is about," she began. "You're about to find out. You're also about to discover some things which only a few people in this room already knew. Those things are going to be shocking, and probably more than a little upsetting, to most of you. Despite that, I believe you'll understand why the details have been kept confidential, but I have a policy initiative in mind that's going to require the full-and fully informed-cooperation of every senior member of this Administration. I hope you'll give me that cooperation."

She had their full attention, she observed, and smiled almost whimsically.

"Denis," she looked at her Attorney General, "would you ask Kevin and Wilhelm to join us?"

"Of course, Madam President."

Denis LePic pressed a key on his terminal. A moment later, a door opened in the western wall, like a gap ripped from the heart of the living, breathing image of Nouveau Paris. Pritchart always found that particular image rather disturbing, and today it seemed more ominous than usual.

She nodded in greeting to them, then indicated the empty chairs provided to either side of LePic. They settled into them, and she returned her attention to her Cabinet, several of whose members were clearly perplexed... and not a little apprehensive.

"Kevin and Wilhelm are here to help explain things," she said. "In particular, Kevin is going to be briefing you on something which he brought to my attention almost six T-months ago. The short version of it, Ladies and Gentlemen, is that the High Ridge Government did not falsify our diplomatic correspondence."

The handful of people who'd already known that, like Rachel Hanriot, took it fairly calmly. The rest only stared at her, as if their minds simply weren't up to understanding what she'd said, for the first several seconds. After that, it was hard to say whether consternation, disbelief, or anger was the most predominant emotion. Whatever the emotional mix might have been, however, what it produced was something very like pandemonium.

She let them sputter and wave their hands for fifteen or twenty seconds, then rapped sharply on the table top. The crisp sound penetrated the upheaval, and people sank back in their chairs once again, still stu

"I don't blame you for being surprised," the President said into the renewed silence with generous understatement. "My own reaction when Kevin brought me his hypothesis was very similar. I'm going to ask him to brief you on a black investigation which I authorized. It was off the books, and, frankly, probably not particularly constitutional. Under the circumstances, however, I felt I had no choice but to green-light his efforts, just as I now have no choice but to bring all of you into it."

She looked at Usher.

"Kevin, if you would," she invited.

"So that's about the size of it," Pritchart said thirty minutes later.

Usher's actual briefing had taken less than ten minutes; the rest of the time had been occupied in answering questions-some incredulous, some hostile, most angry, and all worried-from the rest of the Cabinet.

"But it's all still just speculation," Tony Nesbitt, the Secretary of Commerce, objected. As one of Arnold Giancola's strongest allies in the Cabinet, he still seemed much inclined towards incredulity. "I mean, Director Usher just told us there's no proof."

"No, he didn't, Tony," Rachel Hanriot said.

Nesbitt looked at her, and she returned his gaze with one that was almost compassionate, although they'd generally found themselves on opposite sides of the power struggle between Pritchart and Giancola.

"What he said," she continued, "is that there's no way to prove who on our side did it, although given Arnold's position at State, it's impossible for me to believe he wasn't the prime mover. But even if the Grosclaude documents are forgeries, they're very convincing proof that somebody in the Republic's government falsified the correspondence. At any rate, they seem to me to clearly demonstrate that the Manties have been telling the exact, literal truth about their correspondence. Which strongly suggests they're also telling the truth about the correspondence they say they received from us. Which, again, points the finger squarely at Arnold."