At All Costs

"Right," he said grimly, and waved one hand at Abrioux. "Da

"Madam President," Abrioux said, her expression more than a little nervous, "I wasn't too sure Kevin-the Director, I mean-hadn't stripped a gear when he sprang all of this on me. I've known him a long time, though, and he is my boss, so I had to take the possibility seriously. And the more I looked into it, the more I realized it really could have been done exactly the way he'd hypothesized. But the key element, as he and I both recognized from the begi

"And as soon as we'd come to that conclusion, it was obvious who his accomplice-if he'd had one-had to have been: Yves Grosclaude."

"Our 'Special Representative,'" Pritchart said, nodding her head grimly.

"Exactly." Abrioux nodded back. "The fact that he had an accomplice was, frankly, the one real chink I could see in his armor. I'm sure there has to be other physical evidence, but we're up against the need to show probable cause before we can go looking for it. If I could pull Grosclaude in and sweat him a little, put a little pressure on him, he might give Giancola up. Or, he might at least provide me with something concrete to lend at least some credence to the rather preposterous scenario the Director had come up with. On the other hand, I needed to approach him a bit cautiously, hopefully without Giancola figuring out I was interested in him at all.

"Unfortunately, either I wasn't cautious enough, or else Giancola's had his own plans for Grosclaude all along."

"Meaning what?" Pritchart demanded when she paused with a chagrined expression.

"Meaning Mr. Grosclaude was killed in a single-air car accident four nights ago," Usher said flatly.

"Oh, shit," Pritchart said with soft yet deadly feeling. "An air car accident?"

"I know. I know!" Usher shook his head. "It's like some sort of bad joke, isn't it? After all the inconvenient people StateSec disappeared in mysterious one-air car accidents, this is going to be just peachy keen when we have to go public, isn't it?"

"Unless we can prove it wasn't one," Pritchart said, eyes slitted in intense thought. "Before, it was always the state claiming it had been an accident. If we claim it wasn't an accident-and if we can prove it-we might actually turn that around and use it in our favor."

"If there is any way to turn this 'in our favor' you may have a point," Usher said. "Honestly, though, the more I've looked at this thing, the less sure I've become there is such a way. And even if there is, I'm afraid that so far it doesn't look as if we're going to be able to prove any such thing."

"Why not?"

"I've tapped very quietly into the investigation of his death, Madam President," Abrioux replied for Usher. "I've kept my interest in it entirely black, which has required calling in quite a few old markers. But the crash investigation team has been through the wreckage of his air car-which, by the way, was reduced to very small pieces-very, very carefully without finding any indication of any sort of mechanical or electronic sabotage. The black boxes came through more or less intact, and they all agree that for some unknown reason, Grosclaude suddenly disengaged his autopilot, put the throttle right through the gate, and flew straight into a near vertical cliff. He impacted at a speed somewhere around Mach one."

"He did what?" Pritchart sat up straight and frowned at the senior inspector.

"There's no question, Madam President. And there's also no explanation. That's one reason the Director and I didn't come to you sooner; we kept hoping we'd find something significantly bogus. But the weather was clear, visibility was good, and there was no other traffic on or near his flight path at the time; the crash team's pulled the air traffic satellite records to confirm that. There's no sign anyone tampered with his vehicle in any way, and there's absolutely no indication of any external factor which could have inspired him to do what he did. At the moment, to be perfectly honest, the crash team is leaning towards the theory that it was a suicide."

"Oh, that's just wonderful!" Pritchart snarled, fear and the sudden cold suspicion that she'd gone back to war because of a lie driving her into an uncharacteristically savage fury. "So now we're not even claiming it was an 'accident.' Now we're going to tell the galaxy our suspect fucking committed suicide! That's going to give us a lot more credibility when we try to pin anything on him!"

"I suppose it's possible it really was suicide," Usher pointed out. Pritchart glared at him, and he shrugged. "Just playing devil's advocate, Eloise. But it really is possible, you know. An awful lot of people have been killed since the shooting started again, and more are going to be killed, whatever else happens. If he was involved in anything with Giancola, he might well have been feeling a lot of guilt over all those deaths. Or, conversely, he may have wanted to come forward but been afraid Giancola would eliminate him if he tried. In that case, he might have seen this as his only way out."

"And if you believe that fairy tale for a moment, I've got some bottom land I want to sell you," Pritchart said caustically. "Just don't ask me what it's on the bottom of."

"I didn't say I believed it," Usher responded mildly. "I just said it's possible, and it is."

"Bullshit," Pritchart said bluntly. "Much as I'd like to believe you're completely off the beam with this one, Kevin, you're not. God knows it would be better if you were, but Grosclaude's death-especially this way, at this time-is just too damned coincidental. And too damned convenient for Giancola. No." She shook her head. "I don't know how he did it, but somehow he got to Grosclaude."

"So you believe he did alter the correspondence?"

"I don't want to," she admitted heavily, "but you said it would take big brass balls. Well, that's one thing Arnold has. And he's not overly burdened with scruples, either. Certainly not burdened enough to offset his ambition. I doubt he wanted it to go this far, but...."

She shook her head again.

"There is one odd thing about Grosclaude's death, Madam President," Abrioux said after a moment.

The President's topaz eyes swung back to the senior inspector, and she twitched the fingers of one hand in a "tell me" gesture.

"Given the... peculiar circumstances of the 'accident,'" Abrioux said, "the crash team's lead investigator requested a complete toxicity screen and blood workup as part of the autopsy. Given the nature of the impact, the doctors didn't have a whole lot to work with, you understand. There was more than enough to make a genetic identification of the remains they could find, but nowhere near what they needed for any sort of regular autopsy.

"The medical examiner, however, did note that there appeared to be 'unidentifiable organic traces and DNA markers' in one of the blood samples."

"Meaning what?" Pritchart's expression was intent.

"Meaning we don't know what the hell what," Usher replied. "When he says 'unidentifiable,' that's exactly what he means. All the organic elements he's picked up on could be explained away by a simple case of the flu, except that there's no indication of it in any of the other samples. If you really want to wade through his report, I can get you a copy of it, but I doubt it will mean anything more to you than it did to me. The key element, though, seems to be the DNA he turned up. There's been some speculation in Solarian medical literature for a while now about the possibility of viral nanotech."