"I cannot speak for Kai, but I weigh the alternatives. If I tell Victor, it will cause him untold pain and, perhaps, might make him initiate the war that has so recently been averted." Omi met Peter's stare for a moment, then glanced away. "The pain of concealing something from your brother is much less than the pain of making him order troops to death. And, as you know your brother, you also know that he would go into battle at the head of his troops. Causing his death would be the greatest pain of all."
Peter nodded. "Where do you find the strength?"
Omi reached out and touched the center of his chest, then modestly withdrew her hand. "It resides in the heart. You find it when you are comfortable with yourself."
"That is much the same thing Kai said." Peter shook his head. "Though I have no place asking this, I require of you two favors."
"It would be my honor to be of assistance to you, if I am able."
"When you leave here, you will stop to recharge at a world called Zaniah. There is a monastery there for MechWarriors. It is called Saint Marinus House."
Omi nodded. "Morgan Kell spent twelve years there."
"He did. They take MechWarriors in and help them deal with problems. I think, for too long, that I have been Peter Steiner-Davion, the son who is not Victor, the son who will never have the chance to inherit what his father and mother created." Peter smiled slightly. "For the first time in my life I can say that without feeling some anger inside. I think, at Saint Marinus House, they can help me discover who I am and how I can be myself."
Omi smiled openly, then blushed. "Forgive me, Peter, but the spiritual quest you seek is the kind of thing most revered in our traditions. You honor me by letting me start you out on your course."
"The second thing I need from you, Omi, is for you to tell Victor to leave me there until I decide to come out of my own volition. Only Victor, Kai, and you will know where I have gone. Tell Victor I must do this because if I don't I will die. I hope he will understand."
Omi nodded. "I know your brother well, Peter. He will agree. He will not like it, but he will respect your decision. And he will look forward to your return."
Peter smiled and the constriction around his heart ebbed away. "How can I repay you?"
"Promise me this, Duke Peter." She raised her cup in a salute. "When you discover who Peter Steiner-Davion really is, you will one day introduce him to me as a friend."
* * *
Nancy Bao Lee paused in the doorway of Tormano's office, able to make out only the silhouette of his head against the top of his chair. "Are you well, my lord?"
Tormano replied while facing the window and keeping his back to her. "Yes, I believe I am. It is something of a shock, of course, to find myself so ably handled by the younger generation. There is much of his father in Kai, and his mother, too. Candace always was and still is a steel-hearted woman. I should have expected nothing less of a man who suckled at her breast."
"So, you are ruined?" she asked quietly as she entered the room. She stopped behind him and pressed her hands down on the tense muscles of his neck and shoulders. "Will you submit to your exile?"
"Ruined? No, not really." Tormano pointed to the window and the world beyond it as she kneaded his muscles. "He has taken from me my property, but he cannot take my connections. There are many people out there who respect me for my name and my bloodline. There are yet others who wish to use me the way Hanse Davion did. They will rally behind me to oppose Sun-Tzu. With that sort of backing I will endure no more time on my estate than Napoleon did on Elba, and there will be no Waterloo for me when I return."
"Exactly what I expected to hear you say, my lord." Nancy turned and twisted around to the right to pull a silk handkerchief from one pocket. She draped it over the pistol, brought the gun up and pressed it to Tormano's right temple.
Just as she was pulling the trigger, Tormano's right hand grabbed her wrist and, as he leaned forward, he dragged her over his shoulder and smashed her heavily into the ground. Stamping down, he shattered her right wrist, then backhanded her across the face.
"A Maskirovka agent trained before Romano settled her arse in the throne would have known better than to assume I would have offered Kai a loaded pistol," she heard him scream through her pain. "I am not a fool. Sitting here in the dark I determined that only one person could have revealed my true plan to Sun-Tzu and have enough reliability to prompt him to issue orders that would stop my little war before it got started."
"My arm, my lord, you have broken it!" She fought against panic and the wave of nausea rippling through her. "Have you gone mad?"
"Oh, very good, Ms. Lee, very good. You can deny your ties to Sun-Tzu." Tormano scooped up the pistol she had dropped, popped the empty clip from it and jammed a new one home. He pulled the slide back and let it snap forward, chambering a round. "Don't worry, my dear, I am not going to shoot you. You have amused me."
The Mandrinn laughed aloud. "To think of the irony of it. When I contemplated slipping you into my nephew's bed, I told you there was a family tradition involved. Little did I suspect Sun-Tzu was trying to do the same thing to me. He's clever that one—cleverer by half than his mother and sister combined. Must be he takes after his father."
Fire shone in Tormano's eyes. "You're free to go, Ms. Lee. I'm sure the Maskirovka station chief here in Solaris City will take you in. I will have you escorted there, and I will have you killed if I ever see you again. Is that clear?"
Nancy nodded, pulling her feet in toward her stomach. "Yes, Mandrinn."
"Good. Take this message to Sun-Tzu for me." Tormano's smile became cruel. "Tell him I may no longer be the threat to his realm that I once was, but make sure he understands that is only because Kai is now an even greater one."
38
Tharkad City, Tharkad
District of Donegal, Federated Commonwealth
29 April 3056
Victor Davion studied the communique and nodded. "I can live with Katherine's wording on this, I think." He took one last glance at it just to make certain his sister's last iteration of the message had not changed it in some subtle way, twisting it to her advantage.
"DATELINE: Tharkad," it began. "Archon Prince Victor Ian Steiner-Davion has announced his intention to shift the seat of power in the Federated Commonwealth. Where Tharkad and New Avalon previously served as co-capitals, each for six months out of the year, now the seat of power will rest on New Avalon alone. Citing the fact that the Federated Commonwealth has been ruled from Tharkad since his mother's death, the Archon Prince said he would spend the next year ruling from New Avalon, then resume the biannual shift between New Avalon and Tharkad.
"Duchess Katrina Steiner-Davion will act as Regent in Archon Prince Victor's absence. 'I have the utmost confidence in my sister and her ability to handle affairs of state both great and small. Leaving Tharkad in her hands will free me to deal with the grave concerns that threaten the Federated Commonwealth as a whole.'
"Through a spokesperson at the Winter Palace, Duchess Katrina said she was 'delighted' to be of service to her brother, for whom she has 'the greatest of respect and trust.' "
He nodded to the clerk from the Public Affairs Secretariat. "This will stand. See to its distribution."
"As you wish, Highness." The man bowed and exited Victor's office. The guards stationed outside closed the door, leaving Victor alone with Alex Mallory and Curaitis.
The prince smiled at both men. "Alex, I know why Curaitis doesn't like that communique, but I sense it leaves you uneasy as well. Your thoughts?"
The white-haired man shrugged stiffly. "I agree that your departure for New Avalon will help reduce tensions in the Skye. Ryan's death has slowed the momentum of the rebellion."
"Cut off the head of a snake and the body dies."
"Yes, Curaitis, quite true." Mallory frowned. "And Katherine has positioned herself as a conciliator in this matter, so making her Regent here is logical and doubtless valuable. Still and all, the move seems like a retreat to me a
nd that does not leave a good taste in my mouth."
Victor smiled. "I appreciate your honesty. There are some things I think you should know that might make my strategy clear."
Mallory held up a hand. "Beware, Highness, of telling me secrets of state. I do truly intend to resign my position when we return to New Avalon. I will stay with you as long as it takes to find a replacement, but the time of my generation has passed. I fear I do not advise you as well as another might."
The Intelligence Secretary looked over at Curaitis. "Forgive me, but I cannot recommend you to take my place, despite the close working relationship you have with the prince."
Curaitis shook his head. "No matter, I would not take the job."
Mallory sighed as if the admission had lifted a weight from his shoulders. "Would that Kai Allard-Liao were to follow in his father's footsteps and advise you the way his father and grandfather did for your father. You must trust implicitly the person who has your ear."
Victor nodded. "I have someone in mind who will fill that bill, if you will consent to train him and consult with him."
"Of course, Highness. Who?"
Victor walked over to the bookcase built into the north wall of his office. Reaching up under the trim, he hit a switch and half the bookcase slid forward and then to the left. "What you will see is a state secret, Alex, but one I trust you to keep."
A fair-haired man a good head taller than Victor emerged from the passage and nodded to the prince. He scratched at his blond beard, then stepped forward and offered his hand to the older man. "Secretary Mallory? I am Jerrard Cranston."
Mallory took his hand and shook it, but refused to release it. He pulled the man closer, then withdrew his hand from the other's grasp as if he had been burned. "No! This is not possible!"
"Why not?" Victor closed the passage. "Kai Allard-Liao was presumed dead on Alyina, yet he returned from the grave. Why should I deny that luxury to Galen Cox?"
Mallory's jaw dropped open. "But why the deception? Your sister is in mourning. She should be told."
"That is not possible."
"You must. To conceal the truth from her is monstrous!" Mallory shivered. "Your father never would have done anything like this."
"My father was never faced with the same problem." Victor started to ask Curaitis to explain everything, but he knew the taciturn security man would omit details that prompted full understanding. "Alex, Galen's survival is part of a process. Let me lay it out for you and then you decide if I am being a monster, or shielding my friend from one."
"Please, Highness, explain."
"On the eighteenth of April we received a priority message from Solaris that said Sven Newmark, Ryan's aide, had contacted Sergei Chou on Solaris, directing him to engage an assassin to kill Galen. We would have known sooner, but we had technical difficulties with our intelligence-gathering, as well you know. I immediately dispatched Curaitis to Solaris with the intention of intercepting the assassins, faking Galen's death to prevent further attacks on him, and giving Ryan enough rope to hang himself for my mother's murder. As you know, the man who slew my mother operated from Solaris, and Chou was the man who negotiated the deal to kill my mother. Newmark supplied a link between Ryan and Chou."
Victor looked at Galen. "Galen had not been informed of the plan to fake his death until Curaitis met him in the penthouse suite at the hotel to spirit him away right before they blew the building."
Curaitis half-closed his eyes. "We arranged for a troop of scouts to meet with Katherine so she would be out of the suite when the bomb went off."
Galen nodded solemnly. "When I met Curaitis, I surprised him with the news that Katri ... Katherine and I had become very close. He and I agreed that she would have to believe me dead for the time it took to get her back to Tharkad, primarily so she would seem truly distraught for the media here on her arrival. Had we known then what we know now, we would have known she could have—hell, she did—act the part on her own."
Mallory frowned. "I don't understand."
"We are getting a bit ahead of things." Victor clasped his hands together and cupped the back of his neck. "To make everything look normal in the given situation—which was that Katherine could easily have been the target of the bomb—Curaitis evacuated her and had the hotel swept for evidence, all of which was bagged and loaded on the DropShip. During the trip back here, one of the agents who had been guarding Katherine in the hotel lobby—a man who did not know the bomb was ours—mentioned to a lab tech that one of Ryan's aides had given Katrina a note, which she had discarded. He had noticed the man, David Hanau, because he'd seemed so nervous and the note had angered Katrina. The agent thought it might have been something special, perhaps a way to lure her back up to her room.
"The agent and the lab tech found the bag that had been taken from the trash basket in the lobby and went through it. They sprayed the invitation with a chemical solution, looking for fingerprints, then examined it under an ultraviolet light source. What they found, I understand, was the residue of a message written in a novelty ink that vanishes after contact with air."
Curaitis nodded. "It's called Lover's Secret and comes in a variety of packages, including a number of different scents. The message is written, sprayed with a scent fixative, then sealed in an envelope. After the envelope is opened, the fixative evaporates and the message fades. It is not intended for long correspondence."
Galen shook his head. "In this case the scent was Daffodil D'Amore and the message read 'Galen is target. Run.' "
The old man looked stunned. "She knew you were a target and didn't say anything?"
Galen shuddered, his wordless answer eloquent enough for everyone.
"Curaitis sent me a message from the DropShip as it came in, explaining the situation. We decided, at that point, to keep Katherine in the dark about Galen until or unless she spoke up about her knowledge that he was a target. I assumed, and a psychology consultant concurs, that she would have talked about her prior knowledge as part of the grieving process, first to accept guilt, then to work through it. She did not."
"At Prince Victor's suggestion, I did a check on David Hanau and found reasonable evidence to suggest he has been in Katherine's private employ for a number of years. It would appear, as indicated by his method of getting a covert message to her, that he is an amateur spy. As Ryan's aide, his intelligence had to be good, and we have retrospectively documented other unsuccessful attempts by Hanau to get messages to Katherine after the point when we know Newmark engaged the assassin to kill Galen."
Mallory looked from Galen to Curaitis and then to Victor. "So your sister did not warn Galen that he was a target." Mallory cupped his chin with his left hand. "There's something else, isn't there?"
Victor nodded. "Chou had a number of different methods for getting paid. In Ryan's case, Chou used computer thieves to loot a bank account for the correct amount of money. Other clients would pay with high-odds tickets on 'Mech battles there on Solaris. His most ingenious method, however, was buying up worthless properties for little more than the property taxes owed on them, and having a corporation buy those properties from him at an unbelievably inflated price."
Curaitis summed up the investigation succinctly. "We can trace no money from Ryan to Chou at the time the assassin was engaged to kill Archon Melissa. We do have a land-sale deal that ultimately involves a corporation, whose head was awarded a title and a land grant at Katherine's suggestion."
Victor flushed with mortification. "The land this corporation bought for twenty million has been set aside for reclamation and rehabilitation into a riparian habitat, which means the corporation got a tax deduction for the full amount. In effect, the Federated Commonwealth paid for my mother's assassination."
Mallory slumped back into his chair. "Ryan engaged the assassin and your sister paid for him?"
"Yes, but we can't prove it, not a bit of it." Victor shrugged. "If I were to accuse her with no solid evidence, everyone would think it merely an attempt
to discredit her. She is so much more popular than I am that such a move could make the rebellion explode. She has already distanced herself from me and from Ryan in her statement from Solaris, and she could easily rally his forces to herself."
The Intelligence Secretary frowned. "If you suspect her of complicity in your mother's assassination, how can you leave her here on the throne?"
Victor exhaled slowly and forced his hands to unknot. "Had I a choice, Alex, I would stick her away in the deepest hole on the furthest planet in the Federated Commonwealth. That is an option, yes, but not a very viable one right now. Katherine has successfully positioned herself as the grieving princess of the Federated Commonwealth. Condolence messages have been flooding this place from all over the Inner Sphere. She is well loved, and any move against her would be a disaster."
The prince shrugged briefly, then slitted his eyes. "Katherine, while treacherous, still has her uses and I mean to take advantage of them. An incredible number of these condolence messages have come from the Isle of Skye. With Ryan's death, the rebel coalition is tearing itself apart while the rest of the population is mourning Galen's death right along with Katherine. This gives her incredible influence there and the rebellion is collapsing because of it."
Alex frowned. "But you're allowing Katherine to put herself in Ryan's position. This gives her a base from which to oppose you."
"True, but her coalition is based on peace and nonviolence. She can't shift that around to a war footing and still maintain her support. By giving her a peace-loving constituency, I'm pinning her down and limiting her options." Victor said. "At least, I hope that's what I am doing."
Galen folded his arms. "Letting Katherine sit on the Archon's throne also buys us some time to see how much backing she's been able to gather up to this point. Until we uncovered Hanau, we had no idea she was running her own network of agents. While seated on the throne as Regent she might become complacent and sloppy, giving us an edge against her."