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Dusserre glowered and opened his mouth, but then he closed it again, and the Prime Minister nodded.
"That's what I thought."
"Maybe telling Byng about Anisimovna isn't the best idea in the entire galaxy," Dusserre said stubbornly, "but sooner or later we're going to have to tell him and the newsiessomething, Max."
"Of course we are . . . sooner or later. But in the meantime, there are a couple of things I'd like you to consider. First, are you any closer to demonstrating how Anisimovna—or anyone else—might have done it?"
"No," Dusserre growled. "We're still looking, but however she did it, and whatever conduit she used for it, it's buried deep. Really deep. To be honest, given that we haven't found anything more than we have in the first ten days, I don't think we'll ever be able to prove any of it."
"All right, that brings me to my second point. Can you think of anyone besides Anisimovna who might have done it?"
"No," Dusserre said again, but there was less certainty in his tone this time, and Vézien chuckled harshly.
"No?" the Prime Minister shook his head. "Weren't you the one in here just a few months ago presenting that beautifully detailed briefing on our home grown 'liberation fronts' and general insurrectionary lunatics?"
"Yes, but—"
"Ah-ah!" Vézien waved an admonishing index finger. "I'm simply making the point that there are possible suspects other than Ms. Anisimovna. And, to be honest, the fact that you had all of her communications links tapped both before and during the Manties' visit actually gives her a better alibi."
"Maybe it does, but that still doesn't change the fact that I'm positive, and so are a solid majority of my top analysts, that she and Manpower did it to force exactly the response she actually got out of that idiot Byng."
"To be completely honest with you, I'm inclined to the same conclusion," Vézien admitted finally, his expression bleak.
"What?" Dusserre blinked at him, then shook himself angrily. "If that's what you think, then why the hell have you been putting me through this whole dog and pony show for the last three weeks?!"
"Because it doesn't matter," Vézien said heavily. Dusserre looked at him in disbelief, and the Prime Minister shrugged.
"Look, Damien," he said. "We can't bring back the people who are dead, and we can't undo the destruction of those three Manty warships. Those are the two ugly points we're stuck with and can't change, however hard we try. So whatever we do from this point on, it has to take those two things as givens.
"Now, we can push for a big, fancy investigation if we want to. In the end, it's going to have to conclude one of two things, though. EitherGiselle was blown up by 'parties unknown,' who we still haven't been able to identify, or else it was blown up on Anisimovna's orders. If we name some domestic group as the culprits, then we're also admitting a bunch of our home grown lunatics managed to blow up an entire space station and kill the next best thing to fifty thousand New Tuscans. Do you really want to give the lunatic fringe that kind of encouragement? Personally, I'd just as soon not have our own Nordbrandt ru
"But if we conclude it was Anisimovna, and if we go public with that, then we have to explain just why she might have wanted to do such a thing. I don't think we'd have a lot of success painting her as some sort of psychotic serial mass murderer who simply picked New Tuscany at random as the place to slaughter her next few thousand victims. In fact, the most likely scenario I can come up with would be that we wind up blowing the whistle on ourselves, expose all the sordid little details of our agreement with her and with Manpower, and end up becoming at least indirectly responsible for all of those deaths in the public's eye. And in Manticore's eyes, as well. Somehow, I don't think that would be conducive to domestic tranquility, either, and you know as well as I do what the standard Manty response to attacks on Manticoran warships has been for the last T-century. I don't think a visit from a squadron or two of Manty wallers would do a whole lot to help our system infrastructure recover from Giselle's loss, and it for damned sure wouldn't do anything for your career, or mine."
"So what are you suggesting, instead?" Dusserre was watching the Prime Minister very closely. He was pretty sure he already knew exactly where Vézien was going with this, but some things had to be explicitly spoken.
"I'm suggesting that from our perspective the best possible explanation is still that the Manties did it. We take the readings we got from the sensor platforms on their way in, and we go ahead and massage them to show a possible missile trace from one of the Manties to the station. We were already pla
Dusserre looked like a man who'd bitten into one of his favorite fruits, only to discover half a worm. He opened his mouth, obviously to protest, then closed it again.
"And if Manpower screws us over again somewhere down the road?" he asked sourly.
"Then we get screwed again. But at least this time we'll be looking for it, and I don't know about you, but considering the alternatives, my willingness to consider possible screwings by our Mesan friends just got enormously expanded. On the other hand, if we get Byng on board and the League comes in like it's supposed to, gives them what they've wanted out of this all along, I honestly don't see any reason for them to shaft us again."
Dusserre sat and chewed on that for a while, and the Prime Minister found himself wondering how much of the Security Minister's frustrated anger stemmed from the fact that they'd been out-thought (or at least out-betrayed) by Manpower, and how much stemmed from the massive loss of life aboard Giselle.
Personally, Vézien wanted nothing more than to strangle Anisimovna with his bare hands. He'd never signed on to have his own citizens slaughtered for mere political window dressing or to force the Sollies' hand, and he'd been dead serious about having her killed later. Indeed, he was rather looking forward to it as a simple act of justice. Yet at the moment, she had them well and truly over the proverbial barrel. They were almost certain they knew who'd done it, yet they couldn't charge her with the mass murder without disastrous political and military consequences, both domestic and foreign.
"I don't like it," Dusserre said finally, almost conversationally, admitting defeat, and Vézien barked a laugh.
"You don't like it? How d'you think I feel about it? If you'll recall, Nicholas and I were Anisimovna's strongest supporters in the Cabinet when she first brought this idea to us. I'll bet you she was thinking about doing something like this if it seemed advisable from the very begi