Shadow of Freedom

“But what’s even more interesting to me is that Hongbo, who apparently had been carrying water for Manpower, at least to judge from the memos he was sending Verrocchio, put the brakes on big-time after Monica.” The blonde-haired chief of staff shrugged, still twirling her spoon. “Nothing too surprising about that, I suppose, but then, just before Josef Byng and Sandra Crandall got sent out here, the tone of this correspondence shifts again. All of a sudden he’s subtly encouraging Verrocchio to ‘cooperate’ with Byng. And if you read the official minutes of the meetings between Verrocchio, Hongbo, and Byng before New Tuscany—and between those two and Crandall, before she set off for Spindle—there’s a definite subtext.”

“Subtext?” Michelle repeated.

“Yes, Ma’am.” Lecter nodded. “We’ve both been around enough bureaucrats, civilian and Navy alike, to know how it’s done. The two of them—Verrocchio’s the one taking point, but from my reading, Hongbo was probably the one who was actually steering—double-teamed Byng and probably Crandall into doing exactly what they did. Not only that, they maneuvered Byng and Crandall into making their decisions against Verrocchio’s official recommendations.”

She paused, and silence hovered for the better part of two minutes.

“You know any court of law would chuck that straight out the airlock,” Michelle said at last, her tone mild. “I haven’t looked at the memos myself, of course, but from what you’ve just said, it sounds like Mr. Verrocchio and Mr. Hongbo must be pretty good at the bureaucratic fan dance.”

“I’m inclined to agree, Ma’am. Both of them covered themselves pretty well, at least in terms of ever coming right out in any official setting and saying anything someone could nail them for. And given what they did say, if I hadn’t already been suspicious about Hongbo for other reasons, I probably would have simply accepted that Verrocchio, as Hongbo’s boss, had to be making the decisions. And he clearly was the one making the final decisions. But it’s increasingly apparent to me that he was dancing to Hongbo’s piping. And there’s another thing, too. There’s a Mesan diplomat—a fairly senior trade attaché by the name of Ottweiler, Valery Ottweiler—whose name appears on Hongbo’s calendar of appointments with an interesting frequency. There’s no record of Ottweiler ever having had a private meeting with Verrocchio, but I’ve found over a dozen between him and Hongbo.”

Lecter paused again, and Michelle considered her expression.

“You want to go ahead and let that other shoe drop now, Cindy?” she inquired.

“What other shoe?” Lecter asked innocently.

“The one that doesn’t have anything to do with memos between Hongbo and Verrocchio. The one you found by following some kind of wild, totally illogical hunch.” Michelle snorted. “I’ve known you a long time, you know, and that talent for being…creatively erratic is one reason I wanted you for my chief of staff. So spill it.”

“Yes, Ma’am.” Lecter grinned, but then she sobered. “Although, to be fair, it wasn’t really following a hunch in this case. I just took all the names I’d come up with and threw them into the filters for all the records we’ve been breaking into. Including the Gendarmerie’s.”

“Oh?” Michelle cocked her head. “That sounds interesting.”

“Oh, it was, Ma’am. It was! Because it would appear Brigadier Yucel didn’t believe in keeping her nominal superiors fully apprised of her surveillance activities. In fact, she was bugging both Hongbo and Verrocchio. We haven’t turned up anything especially incriminating in the official surveillance files on them—not yet, anyway—but we’re getting into her more secure files now. The ones she kept for herself, not the official record. And yesterday evening, my cyber forensics team turned up at least two meetings that never officially happened—meetings between Verrocchio, Hongbo, Yucel herself, Ottweiler, Volkhart Kalokainos, Izrok Levakonic, Aldona Anisimovna, and Isabel Bardasano. And both of which happened here in Meyers, a couple of T-months before Technodyne offered all those battlecruisers to President Tyler.”

Michelle straightened abruptly in her chair, her eyes very narrow, as those names registered. Volkhart Kalokainos was the eldest son of Heinrich Kalokainos, the CEO and majority stockholder of Kalokainos Shipping, one of the largest—and most violently anti-Manticoran—Solarian shipping houses. The late (and not particularly lamented) Izrok Levakonic had been the Technodyne executive who’d served as that transstellar’s contact with President Roberto Tyler and the Monican Navy. Aldona Anisimovna had been the Mesan Alignment’s contact in New Tuscany before Admiral Byng’s disastrous confrontation with the Royal Manticoran Navy. And last but not least, as the pièce de résistance, there was Isabel Bardasano—the woman Jack McBryde had identified as the second in command of all of the Mesan Alignment’s intelligence operations.