Cassandra Kresnov 04: 23 Years on Fire (32 page)

Ibrahim sipped coffee and watched the sun rise from the Director’s office atop the primary building of the FSA compound. The skyline looked different from here, visible across only half of the sky, as Montoya District was on the present day perimeter of Tanusha, along with most of the new, Federal institutions. The CSA compound had been south-central, with towers on all sides.

Uplinks and his desk screen showed him the switchover nearly complete. It was a huge task, recalibrating the entire Federal Security Agency network to an emergency, alternate mode. For the few minutes while it was happening, nothing worked, communications were down, passcodes deactivated. And when it came back up again, everything would be new, and all the old codes and passes would need to be reissued. Right now, that was the least of his worries.

Tselide came in from the neighbouring room. “Done,” said the FSA’s network chief. “All done, it looks good.”

Ibrahim nodded, sipping coffee. “Do you think she can break back in?”

Tselide shrugged. “Technically I don’t think there’s much she can’t break into, not even this network. But there’s no way to do it quietly. She’ll give away her location, her status, everything. Normally that would be no advantage to us because we’d already know where she is—shooting her way into the complex, as she’s designed.”

Tselide’s expression was anxious. Ibrahim shook his head in reply to the unasked question. “No, we’re a long way from that, here.”

“Director, Commander Kresnov isn’t the only one with network access we have to worry about. And I don’t just mean the other GIs. I’m a lot more worried about Agent Ruben and Commander Rice, to name just two.”

“I know,” said Ibrahim. “We’re dealing with that.”

“They’re being arrested?”

“Only if they leave me no choice.”

“
The phrase isn’t arrest, it’s ‘watch and contain.
’”

“Arrest is too public,” said Vanessa, fully armoured, in the command seat of her flyer. “Sandy’s a public figure, Callay’s security is undermined by the scandal if she’s arrested. She’s the hair-trigger on a whole bunch of political landmines Ibrahim can’t afford to trip.”

Not the least of which was that she was the single most useful asset either the CSA or the FSA possessed. Behind her, SWAT One were watchful. The atmosphere was tense in a way Vanessa had only rarely seen before.

“
Ricey, tell me we’re not going after Sandy?
” Captain Arvid Singh sounded very worried.

“Only Ibrahim can tell you that,” Vanessa replied. “Right now, it’s a standoff. Ibrahim and Chandi have reconfigured the entire FSA and CSA networks, even I’m locked out right now. We’ve got independent tacnet, but all the encryptions are different. I can’t access anything off the main construct.”

“
Yeah, well he doesn’t trust you, does he?
”

Vanessa exhaled shortly, thankful the main network changes would also render this tacnet communication entirely silent. “I think there’s a lot of people he can’t trust right now. Han, Weller, Khan and Ogun didn’t show up to work today, for one thing.”

“
Well you could expect that with the GIs. What about Rhian?
”

“Rhian’s here. She’s on standby with SWAT Six.” She was a section leader in SWAT Six, technically second-in-command. “So I guess SWAT Six is out of the question, too.”

“
Ricey, this is ridiculous.
” Arvid had always had that knack of stating the obvious. “
I’m not shooting at Sandy, Sandy’s not shooting at me, she’s sure as hell not shooting at you or Rhian, and you and Rhian both would rather resign and become pole dancers than shoot at Sandy. Is that about it?
”

“Yeah,” Vanessa sighed. “That’s about it. ’Cept for your prejudiced assumption that I’d hate to pole dance.”

“
You wouldn’t? ’Cause I could arrange that. Are we on the verge of mutiny here or what?
”

Vanessa thought hard. Sandy had accused her in the past of getting too emotional, but now when the stakes were highest, she felt very calm. She’d always been like this—under pressure was when she thought clearest.

“No mutiny,” she said. “Ibrahim knows all of this. He won’t force the situation, he knows he can’t rely on us against Sandy.”
Because I fucking will resign and spill it all to the media
, she left unsaid. “He’ll use other assets. And he’ll keep us busy and occupied on alert so we can’t help Sandy, either.”

“
Would you help Sandy?
”

Damn, wasn’t that the question? As much as she loved Sandy and would sacrifice her career in an instant if that love demanded it, they were still somewhere short of that. And she was also a loyal servant of Callay, and believed wholeheartedly in duty and service, and putting aside personal concerns for the greater good. If Sandy had gone nuts and was trying to kill Ibrahim, or the president, or trying to harm Callay’s security in any serious way, that would be different. But this, currently, was just dumb. Sandy was still as loyal to Callay and dedicated to its security as she’d ever been, with an intensity that rivalled even Ibrahim’s. It was just that she and Ibrahim were having a very lively disagreement over how that security should best be maintained with respect to New Torah.

“Someone should grab them both by the ear and tell them to sort it out like grownups,” she muttered. “Just sit tight, Arvid, I’ve got some calls to make.”

She checked their location—circling somewhere over west-central Tanusha, at two thousand meters and well above the regular traffic.

She made a connection. “Ari,” she said without preamble, “I think Ibrahim’s going to have to use SIB to go after Sandy. Any movement there?”

“
He’d be stupid to,
” came Ari’s voice. “
She’d never fire on CSA or FSA. I wouldn’t be so sure about that with SIB.
”

“Any idea why he’s suddenly going after her, when he didn’t stop her leaving the building after she quit yesterday? I mean, he hasn’t even accepted her resignation yet.”

“
I think she’s been in contact with Mustafa. That was her whole point—she’s still working with him on New Torah, and after Ibrahim’s forbidden it, that gives him his excuse.
”

“And where are you on this?”

“
You know, that’s a fucking stupid question.
” Click, and he was gone. Well, that gave her a clear enough answer. It couldn’t be easy on Ari. He’d worked with Ibrahim longer than he’d known Sandy; Ibrahim was the only authority figure Ari truly trusted and respected. But evidently, that didn’t mean much when it was Sandy in question. And on the matter of New Torah, Ari probably thought that Sandy was right and Ibrahim wrong.

“Christ,” she muttered to herself. “This is like civil war without the shooting.”

Sandy sat cross-legged and barefoot in the Durga Temple, with a view past many rows of square columns to a city park. On the other side was downtown Patna—busy sidewalks, traffic and crowds, with a continual smattering of people coming up and down the stairs and into the forest of columns. Here on the park side it was quieter, just a few people sitting, talking, reading or working on mobile devices.

Weller sat nearby, in deep discussion with a local priest about the intersection between Hinduism and Sufi Islam. A dedicated Sufi, Weller was the only GI Sandy had known who was deeply religious. And like any good Sufi, she was very good at finding points of commonality between Islam and every other faith, particularly Hinduism. Both she and the Hindu priest seemed to be having a great time. Sandy wondered what it said about GIs that Weller, unlike most straights, got along far better with people on the question of religion than she did on most other topics. Han, Ogun and Khan sat nearby, waiting, as GIs did very well when required.

A woman in a dress suit came barefoot across the stone floor and greeted them, sitting cross-legged with a smile. “I heard you were here,” she said. “I thought I’d come and say hello.”

“Hi, Rashmi,” said Sandy. Rashmi was a friend of Swami Ananda Ghosh, still a member of the Callayan Parliament, capitalising on Tanusha’s proclivity to now and then elect eccentric spiritual oddballs to office. Sandy had become a friend of the Swami’s by accident shortly after her arrival on Callay, and had been introduced to Rashmi through him. Technically she was a Hindu priestess, one of Callay’s highest in the utterly unreliable way Callay’s Hindus rated such things. More specifically she was a priestess of Durga, the eight-armed lady standing watch from the temple’s far end with garlands about her stone carved neck, attended by a light but constant stream of worshippers. Rashmi’s religious significance entitled her to a significant stipend and free accommodation, but she was a wealthy market analyst with no need for such trifles. Priestess was her other job.

“I didn’t tell anyone you were here,” Rashmi assured the GIs.

“I didn’t ask,” Sandy replied. “We’ll be gone soon, it’s just that this is one of the least monitored spaces in all Tanusha.”

“I know, isn’t it wonderful? I’ve love to uplink-shield it completely so people have a space where there’s only one thing pressing on their mind, not a million like most of the time. But now we just have to settle for partial blocks.”

Rashmi was middle aged, attractive yet with a face that might be stern, were she not so often smiling. Her hair was streaked with grey and she wore no jewellery or makeup. Sandy thought she looked very fit. Lots of Tanushan spirituals were fitness enthusiasts, like the surfing priests at the Shiva temple on Kuvalam Beach.

“Your firm doesn’t mind you being away?” Han asked her.

“I’m a partner,” said Rashmi with a smile.

“That means she’s a part owner,” Sandy explained to Han. Han hadn’t been a civilian that long, so some of the terms escaped him. “She’s her own boss, she can do what she likes.”

“Plus of course it’s very prestigious and fortunate,” Rashmi added. “To have a priestess as a partner. The good publicity gets us lots of clients, so my fellow partners view my time off as an investment. You seem to be in some trouble.”

“I’ve been in far worse,” Sandy assured her.

“Durga Puja is next week, yes?” Weller asked Rashmi. Weller wore denim shorts and a T-shirt, hair tied in a short blonde ponytail. Han wore cargo shorts and a loud shirt, as did Ogun, though Khan’s shirt was more stylish, too much the dresser to stoop so low. They all carried small backpacks. The four of them looked like tourists, which was the intention. No one in Tanusha glanced twice at tourists.

“It is next week,” Rashmi confirmed. “Would you like to come? We should have as many as half a million people just around this temple.”

“If we’re still alive, I’d love to come,” said Weller.

Rashmi looked at Sandy with concern. “But you said it’s not too serious.”

“I never said that,” Sandy said calmly. “I said I’ve been in worse.”

“Cassandra, I cannot be a party to anything that may end in Callayan citizens being hurt. And you have made yourself my concern by sheltering in this temple.”

Sandy shook her head. “The only Callayan citizens who may conceivably get hurt here are us.” She nodded at the GIs. “We’ll not fight back. We know we are guests here, even me, and it would be no way to repay that hospitality. But neither does that mean we shall simply sit and watch as terrible things happen elsewhere that we might be able to prevent.”

Rashmi nodded slowly. “You won’t tell me what, precisely?”

Sandy shook her head again. “I can’t. But you may guess.”

“I think so. Ibrahim is adamant it is none of Callay or the Federation’s business?”

“Ibrahim perceives that my preferred action would lead to turbulence that would upset the peace, and thus the security of the Federation. He’s almost certainly correct. But I maintain that if we abandon morality for security, we are eventually left with neither. Morality is the ultimate underpinning of security. Without it, we are none of us secure.”

Rashmi smiled. Then sighed, and shook her head faintly, at some private humour. “Very well,” she said. “What can I do to help?”

Han noticed someone familiar approaching. A young man, broad shouldered, dressed touristy like them all. “Poole!” he said with surprise. “You decided to come!”

Ibrahim was called from an important meeting. An aide followed in case of other orders, and Ibrahim leaned against the wall by the conference room doors and put on some shades to better access the uplink visuals.

“
Ibrahim,
” he formulated.

“
Director, we have eyes on the target Poole,
” came the operations coordinator. “
We’ve traced him to the Durga Temple at Patna. We think it may be a rendezvous. CSA Director Chandrasekar has given his approval to go in, but he’d like a final clearance from you.
”

It felt odd to only have a supervisory role in Callayan security affairs now. But in the meeting he’d just left, they were discussing the deployment of assets a hundred times larger than Chandrasekar had access to. It would take his brain a while to adjust to this new paradigm.

“
I give you my final clearance,
” he said. And hoped that Chandrasekar knew what the hell he was doing.

Ayako finalised tacnet alignment and moved, walking quickly along the downtown Patna pavement to the intersection opposite the Durga Temple. MoB walked with her, slower strides on longer legs.

“No guns Moby,” she told him, watching as tacnet changed the traffic lights, and gave them a pedestrian green signal. “Keep your hands visible.”

“We’re supposed to bring them in unarmed?” MoB asked in disbelief. MoB didn’t like being called Moby, but it was a department rule that in a city with this many Mohammeds, alternatives were preferable, even nicknames. And so Mohammed Bilal became MoB which—face it, Ayako had told him—was cooler than the original. He was a big guy, tall enough for basketball, with angled sideburns and a diamond earstud.

“Use your brain,” Ayako told him. “If they want to shoot, we’re dead. I’m good, but two hundred of me couldn’t take Kresnov, trust me. With her friends, even less chance.”

“So what are we doing here?” MoB asked as they strode across the intersection, past rows of waiting traffic. “Committing suicide?”