Shadow of Freedom

There was a certain satisfaction in her tone, Albrecht noted. Evelina had always personally despised Massimo Filareta. She’d been willing to admit the man’s competence, but she’d never been able to detach herself properly from the less savory ways in which Manpower’s endless supply of disposable slaves could be used to manipulate individuals like him. Despite which, she had a point. Filareta’s defeat had been as complete, total, and humiliating as Albrecht could have desired. Unfortunately…

“You’re right, of course,” he replied. “The problem is it could have been a lot better, too. We always counted on Beowulf supporting Manticore—as long as the Manties lasted, anyway—and that was part of our calculus for the League’s disintegration. But we’d hoped the Sollies would be able to at least give the Manties a run for their money. In fact, they were supposed to weaken Manticore to a point that let the Havenites plow it under at last. Nouveau Paris certainly wasn’t supposed to end up deciding to help the Manties kick the crap out of the League, instead! And by the time Beowulf started to figure out what was going on and began actively looking for military allies against us, Manticore wasn’t supposed to be around for them to ally with, much less the damned Havenites! Which doesn’t even consider the fact that no one was supposed to know about the Alignment’s existence until we were well into Phase Three, and we’re not even out of Phase One yet.”

“I know.” She nodded. “But like you’ve always said, we’ve known from the beginning that we were going to have to adapt and improvise, and you and the boys are pretty good at that.” She smiled reflectively. “They were always good at improvising to get out of trouble as kids, anyway!”

“Yes they were,” he agreed fervently, smiling himself. But then his smile faded. “They were, and they still are. But I can’t say I’m happy about accelerating Houdini as much as we’re going to have to.” He shook his head. “Ben and Collin and I have looked at this from every angle we could come up with, and we really don’t see any alternative to the Ballroom Option.”

Evelina’s face tightened unhappily. She started to say something, then paused and looked back down at her crocheting, visibly rethinking before she opened her mouth again.

“That’s…likely to cause problems,” she said.

“Oh, don’t I just know it!” His own expression was grim. “And I don’t blame the people who’re going to have problems with it. I just don’t see another way to go, now that those bastards Simões and McBryde have blown the secret.”

“They still don’t have any proof,” Evelina pointed out. “If they did have any, I’m sure they’d have trotted it out by now.”

“In a way, that only restricts our options further,” Albrecht said gently. “If they don’t have proof, then they’re going to be under a lot more pressure to find proof. And there aren’t a lot of places they can go looking for evidence…except right here. Which is the reason I’m glad Gold Peak doesn’t know about this yet.”

He tapped the document reader, and she nodded unhappily.

“I suppose you’re right,” she sighed. “I can’t help thinking it’s likely to cost us some…collateral damage, though. Besides the obvious, I mean.”

“I know what you meant,” Albrecht agreed. “And that’s why Ben, Collin, and I have scheduled a meeting with all of the inner onion section heads tomorrow. Well, everyone but Daniel’s section, since he’s still stuck out at Darius. We’re going to tell them what we have in mind—and why we don’t have a choice—and ask them to be thinking about any weak spots we need to look at. I’m going to have Psych start a prescreen for potential trouble spots, too.” He shrugged. “Frankly, I think those sorts of problems will be handleable. I don’t expect to like it very much, but I think we can get through it. What worries me more from a pragmatic perspective is that the more we have to rush Houdini, the more likely our cleanup teams are to miss something. Which, when you come down to it, is another reason to consider the Ballroom Option. Nobody’s going to vacuum anything out of a computer that doesn’t exist anymore.”

Evelina nodded again, thoughtfully.

“All right, dear. I can see you’ve thought it through. And however little I may like the conclusion you’ve reached, I can’t really argue with it. Sometimes, though, I wish your father hadn’t put all of his eggs in one basket the way he did.”

“Oh?” Albrecht straightened in his chair and lowered his brows ferociously. “I happen to think he came up with a pretty damned good basket, myself!”