Potboiler

“But they’re your allies.”

“My buttocks?”

“The U.S.”

“‘On paper,’ perhaps, but you know as well as I do how much that’s worth.”

“You just said they would support you in the event of an invasion.”

“Certainly.”

“Now you’re telling me they tried to kill you.”

“Yes.”

“That doesn’t strike you as contradictory?”

Thithyich shrugged. “Politics.”

“I don’t know why I should believe you.”

“What reason do I have to lie?”

“What reason did they have to lie?”

“Plenty. They were indoctrinating you. It wouldn’t have done to admit that they engage in covert acts of cold-blooded political murder, now, would it? They much prefer that people think of them as the ‘good guys.’ In any event, Lucian intercepted the code shortly before it came off, and I was able to escape with minor injuries. But the whole experience set me thinking. You lot have been meddling with our affairs for nigh on forty years. High time for a taste of your own medicine, don’t you reckon? Hence . . . what’s it again?”

“Blood Night,” Savory supplied.

“That’s the one,” Thithyich said. “Bang-on title.”

“Thank you,” Savory said.

“Let me get this straight,” Pfefferkorn said. “You got Savory to get me to get my publisher to get American secret operatives to kill Dragomir Zhulk.”

“Yes, yes, yes, and no.”

“No to which part.”

“The last bit. About killing Zhulk. I’m afraid you’ve been misinformed. Blood—damn it, I’m at sixes and sevens, here.”

“Night,” Savory said.

“Bang-on. Blood, et cetera, the second one—that contained a dummy code.”

Pfefferkorn stared. “A dummy code.”

“Well, we couldn’t possibly plant a real code. We don’t have the Workbench.”

“But why would you give me a dummy code?”

“To disrupt the pattern of transmission and create confusion.”

“Then who killed Zhulk?”

“Made to guess, I’d say it was your government as well. They’re not big fans of his.”

“But how? According to you, Blood Night was dummied.”

“My goodness, man, you’re not the only blockbuster novelist out there. The order to kill Dragomir could have been in any one of a dozen beach reads.”

Pfefferkorn massaged his temples.

“Take your time,” Thithyich said kindly. “It’s very complicated. More caviar?”

“No, thanks,” Pfefferkorn said. “Why did you have the May Twenty-sixers kidnap Carlotta?”

“Well, the idea was that getting ahold of the Workbench—or I should say, rather, a dummied version of the Workbench, because it should be obvious to anyone who gives it five seconds of thought that your government would never give them the real Workbench, although thankfully we can count on our friends across the border not to give it five seconds of thought—would give the May Twenty-sixer rank and file enough confidence to support a preemptive strike against me, and that’s all the excuse I need to steamroll them.”

“My understanding was that you could steamroll them right now,” Pfefferkorn said.

“True. But it’s better if they move first. Nobody likes a bully. And it’s nice to have the support of the international community. It’s very ‘in,’ geopolitically speaking. Anyway, so far, so good. I’ve had my intermediary suggest that a good time to invade would be right after their fifteen-hundredth anniversary festival. You know, swept along by a ‘tide’ of nationalist fervor and so forth. Fingers crossed, we should be able to get things into full swing by the first week of October.”

“I still don’t see why you have to kill me.”