David Weber - At All Costs

She had their full attention, she observed, and smiled almost whimsically.

"Denis," she looked at her Attorney General, "would you ask Kevin and Wilhelm to join us?"

"Of course, Madam President."

Denis LePic pressed a key on his terminal. A moment later, a door opened in the western wall, like a gap ripped from the heart of the living, breathing image of Nouveau Paris. Pritchart always found that particular image rather disturbing, and today it seemed more ominous than usual.

She nodded in greeting to them, then indicated the empty chairs provided to either side of LePic. They settled into them, and she returned her attention to her Cabinet, several of whose members were clearly perplexed... and not a little apprehensive.

"Kevin and Wilhelm are here to help explain things," she said. "In particular, Kevin is going to be briefing you on something which he brought to my attention almost six T-months ago. The short version of it, Ladies and Gentlemen, is that the High Ridge Government did not falsify our diplomatic correspondence."

The handful of people who'd already known that, like Rachel Hanriot, took it fairly calmly. The rest only stared at her, as if their minds simply weren't up to understanding what she'd said, for the first several seconds. After that, it was hard to say whether consternation, disbelief, or anger was the most predominant emotion. Whatever the emotional mix might have been, however, what it produced was something very like pandemonium.

She let them sputter and wave their hands for fifteen or twenty seconds, then rapped sharply on the table top. The crisp sound penetrated the upheaval, and people sank back in their chairs once again, still stunned looking, but also more than a little embarrassed by their initial reactions.

"I don't blame you for being surprised," the President said into the renewed silence with generous understatement. "My own reaction when Kevin brought me his hypothesis was very similar. I'm going to ask him to brief you on a black investigation which I authorized. It was off the books, and, frankly, probably not particularly constitutional. Under the circumstances, however, I felt I had no choice but to green-light his efforts, just as I now have no choice but to bring all of you into it."

She looked at Usher.

"Kevin, if you would," she invited.

"So that's about the size of it," Pritchart said thirty minutes later.

Usher's actual briefing had taken less than ten minutes; the rest of the time had been occupied in answering questions-some incredulous, some hostile, most angry, and all worried-from the rest of the Cabinet.

"But it's all still just speculation," Tony Nesbitt, the Secretary of Commerce, objected. As one of Arnold Giancola's strongest allies in the Cabinet, he still seemed much inclined towards incredulity. "I mean, Director Usher just told us there's no proof."

"No, he didn't, Tony," Rachel Hanriot said.

Nesbitt looked at her, and she returned his gaze with one that was almost compassionate, although they'd generally found themselves on opposite sides of the power struggle between Pritchart and Giancola.

"What he said," she continued, "is that there's no way to prove who on our side did it, although given Arnold's position at State, it's impossible for me to believe he wasn't the prime mover. But even if the Grosclaude documents are forgeries, they're very convincing proof that somebody in the Republic's government falsified the correspondence. At any rate, they seem to me to clearly demonstrate that the Manties have been telling the exact, literal truth about their correspondence. Which strongly suggests they're also telling the truth about the correspondence they say they received from us. Which, again, points the finger squarely at Arnold."

"But... but my cousin Jean-Claude is-was-Arnold's security chief," Nesbitt protested. "I can't believe Arnold could've managed something like this without Jean-Claude at least suspecting." He looked at Montreau. "Leslie? Have you found anything at State to support all these allegations?"

Montreau looked acutely uncomfortable. Despite her position in the official hierarchy, she was the newest member of the Cabinet, and she cleared her throat a bit nervously.

"No, I haven't," she said. "On the other hand, Tony, it never would have occurred to me to look for any evidence of such... incredible criminal activities. I will say this, however," she added reluctantly. "The security measures in place at State may still be a bit too much like the ones the Legislaturalists and the Committee had in place."

"What do you mean?" Nesbitt asked.

"I mean too much control passes directly through the Secretary's hands," Montreau said bluntly. "I was frankly astonished when I found out how much access to and control of the Department's security processes goes directly through my office. It would never have occurred to me that Secretary Giancola might have done any such thing, but looking at the access I have, and assuming-as Director Usher does-that he had access to the Manties' Foreign Office validation codes, as well, he really could have done it. And I'm afraid that so far, at least, I can't think of anyone else who could have."

Nesbitt sat back in his chair, clearly dismayed. Pritchart regarded him thoughtfully, but as far as she could tell, he was at least as astonished as anyone else in the room. More to the point, he seemed horrified.

"Obviously," she said, after a moment, "I've had to proceed very cautiously where this entire incredible bucket of snakes is concerned. As Kevin and Denis have just explained in answer to your questions, we don't have-and probably never will have-the sort of smoking gun we'd need to convince Congress and the public that what we believe happened actually did. Without that sort of proof, going public would still be a highly risky decision, I believe."

"It may be the only option available to us, Madam President," Nesbitt said after a moment. Everyone looked at him, and he shrugged unhappily. "Don't think I like saying that. God knows if there's anyone in this room Arnold completely fooled, it's me, and I'm going to look like an utter idiot when the newsies finally get hold of this! But if you're right about what happened, then we're fighting a war we were maneuvered into by a member of our own administration." He shook his head. "We can't possibly justify not telling the truth."

"But the President's right," Henrietta Barloi, the Secretary of Technology, objected. "No one's going to believe us, and given what happened to Arnold, everyone is going to think we had him eliminated."

"But why would we have done that?" Nesbitt demanded.

"I'm afraid I can come up with several scenarios, Mr. Secretary," Kevin Usher said.

Everyone looked at him, and he shrugged.

"If I were a conspiracy theorist, or just someone with personal political ambitions or a desire to restore the old r‚gime, my interpretation of what happened might well be that Secretary Giancola figured out what that arch traitor President Pritchart had done to justify seeking a declaration of war. When he learned the truth, she-and, by extension, all of you-ordered his execution. Now, however, we're afraid the truth is going to leak out, and so we're attempting to fasten the blame on the man who's safely dead because we murdered him. All of which demonstrates that our highflown principles and devotion to 'the rule of law' are so much crap. Which means this entire government-not just the administration-is a corrupt edifice built upon a Constitution which is nothing but yet another huge swindle perpetrated on the longsuffering people."

"That's insane," Nesbitt protested.

"Of course it is!" Usher snorted. "The best conspiracy theories usually are! How do you think Cordelia Ransom managed to stay in front of the Mob as long as she did? But if you don't like that one, here's another. Someone else, someone in the security area-probably me or Wilhelm, here-did all of this. Giancola found out, we killed him, and now through a sinister cabal, for reasons of our own, we're trying to bring the war to a less than fully successful conclusion and we've spun this whole theory of Giancola's responsibility as a way to do that. Or, if you don't like that one, it's all an attempt by someone-probably an alliance of some of the Cabinet secretaries and Wilhelm and me-to sabotage the President's fully justified and so far successful war against the evil Manties. Unfortunately, we've managed to pull the wool over her eyes, and she actually believes our preposterous tale about Giancola's doctoring the correspondence. Really, the Manties did it all along, and we murdered him because he was the one man who could have proved they had. Or-"