Judas Unchained

“Okay. That was my starting point, then I began checking references. There are a couple of things that are unusual to start with. Not illegal or suspicious, just odd. The charity’s funds come from a single private donation deposited thirty years ago in the Denman account. The sum was two million Earth dollars, which was transferred to the Denman bank from a onetime account. Secondly, there is no named founder. The firm of Bromley, Waterford, and Granku registered the Cox with the New York charity board, and opened an account with one dollar. The two million was transferred in a month later. It has only ever had three commissioners: Mr. Seaton, Ms. Daltra, and Mr. Pomanskie, all of whom are associates of Bromley, Waterford, and Granku. Your original Directorate investigation team never pursued that, which is something of a lapse if you ask me.”

“There are a lot of rich eccentrics out there giving their money away to strange causes.”

Hoshe raised an eyebrow. “I’m sure there are. But according to its own records, the Cox doesn’t support strange causes. So why keep the benefactor concealed? It’s not for tax purposes. By staying anonymous they don’t qualify for any tax credit at all.”

“Go on, what’s your answer?”

“There isn’t an answer. But it made me curious enough to start digging a little deeper. You see all these names? The ones who received money?”

“Yes.”

“The Directorate report doesn’t say how much was given. Also unusual. We know that Dudley Bose received just over one point three million dollars’ worth of funding; that doesn’t leave much for the rest of them. In total seventy-one and a half thousand dollars were distributed; that’s to over a hundred academic projects covering a period of twenty-one years. That financial data was made available to the Directorate investigators. The raw data was still sitting in the Paris array when I requested it. Someone obviously excluded it from the report.”

“Damn,” Paula said. “Who were they?”

“It was a team research effort. Renne Kampasa, Tarlo, and Jim Nwan all have their names attached. The Cox’s original finance file doesn’t have a named access log, just the team code. One or more of them did look at it.”

“It can’t be all of them,” she said. “It simply can’t.”

“There’s something else. Remember what you told me about our old friend Mellanie discovering this?”

“She said Alessandra Baron had tampered with the charity’s records.”

“She might be right. I requested a current financial report from the New York charity board. Legally, each registered charity has to file accounts with them every year. According to the filed accounts, the Cox stopped funding the Gralmond University astronomy department right after Bose made his discovery; however, they did continue to make their usual small donations to other academic projects. I started checking with the named recipients. None of them had ever heard of the Cox, let alone received their money. That is until two days after the Prime invasion; then the money transfers became real again. Those accounts are false, they’re there to satisfy any casual investigation.”

Paula sat back in her chair, and rubbed a finger against her chin. The faintest smile touched her lips. “Mellanie was right. Well, how about that.”

“Looks like it. Paula…the Starflyer funded the whole Bose observation. That means it knew what Bose would find.”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“Logically, it must have been there; or its species was aware of the Primes and their imprisonment within the force field.”

“Did it let them out?”

“That’s the obvious conclusion.”

“So the war was started deliberately. The Guardians were right.”

“Yes.” She grimaced, and gave him a sad smile.

“So what do we do now?”

“Firstly, I inform my political allies. Secondly, we arrest the Cox commissioners on fraud charges. They’re obviously Starflyer agents. If we can read their memories, we might gain a better understanding of its network inside the Commonwealth.”

“What about Alessandra Baron? She was the one Mellanie tipped us off about. She has to be a Starflyer agent.”

“It will be difficult to arrest such a public figure without having a good reason, and we can’t afford to go public with the knowledge of the Starflyer. Senate Security will make a formal request to navy intelligence to put her under covert observation.”

“What? But we know they’re compromised.”

“Yes. But it’s an excellent opportunity to see what the request kicks loose.”

***

The green and orange priority icon popped into Nigel’s virtual vision as he was reading The House at Pooh Corner to his youngest children before they went to sleep. He tried to read them a story each night, to be a proper father as he classified the ideal. His children would be dressed for bed by mothers and nannies, then they’d be herded into their playroom for the story. He always read from the classics, using a proper printed book, one you could open to find the place, and shut with finality when the evening’s chapter came to an end.