David Weber - At All Costs

Usher was a huge, powerfully built man. Danielle Abrioux, on the other hand, was delicately petite. Like Usher, she'd come up through the Resistance before joining the FIA, and if she looked like a slender, brown-haired child, appearances could be deceiving. She was a very dangerous "child"... as the shades of over a dozen assassinated InSec and StateSec officials-and far more currently carnate inmates of the Republic's penal systems-would have vehemently attested. At the moment, she was perched on the corner of Usher's desk, sipping coffee, and a matching coffee mug sat on his blotter, because Abrioux was one of his most trusted investigators. She knew all about his alleged drunkenness, and it was a relief to be able to abandon the charade during their meetings.

"Boss," she said now, her tone just a bit plaintive, "you know you've got a screwy sense of humor. Just look at what you put Ginny and Victor through, for God's sake! So, yeah, when you call me in for something like this, I've got to wonder whether or not you're trying to see if my legwill come off if you pull it hard enough."

"My sense of humor isn't the least bit screwy," he said with dignity. "Everyone else's sense of humor is. But in this particular instance, I'm serious as a heart attack, Danny."

"My God." Abrioux lowered her coffee cup, her smile fading. "You really are, aren't you?"

"I am, and I wish to hell I wasn't."

Abrioux felt her stomach congealing into a lump of frozen lead. She set her coffee cup down and pushed the saucer away from her.

"Let me get this straight, Kevin," she said very quietly. "You're telling me you think we may have gone back to war against the Manties not because they altered our diplomatic traffic, but because we did?"

"Yes." Usher's always deep voice sounded like a gravel crusher, and he inhaled deeply. "I'm not saying I'm convinced that's what happened, but I'm afraid it may be, Danny."

"Why?" she demanded.

"Partly because of Wilhelm's reports." Usher tipped back in his float chair. "We lost a lot of our best conduits when we took down Saint-Just's organization, but he's still got a few sources in place inside the Manty Foreign Office. Not as highly placed as they were, but high enough to have access to the sorts of insider shop talk permanent assistant undersecretaries get to hear. And according to them, everyone-everyone, from the top down-is convinced we did it."

"That may not indicate anything," Abrioux countered. "Putting something like this together successfully would have required very tight security. Not only that, but it would have been put together by the High Ridge Government, not the current one. So anyone who'd been in on it would probably be out of office by now, anyway."

"Agreed. But the people who are so thoroughly convinced we're the heavies of this particular piece are the people who replaced High Ridge's cronies. Every other bit of gossip Wilhelm's sources have given us only confirms the utter contempt they have for their immediate predecessors. If there were even the tiniest sniff of a possibility that anyone in the High Ridge crowd had been responsible for this, someone would have picked up on it by now. You know as well as I do there are always conspiracy theorists hiding in the woodwork, Danny. Combine that with the blinding rage most of Manticore feels for anyone remotely associated with the High Ridge Government, and one of those theorists would certainly have pounced on any possibility, even if it was only as one of those shivery 'no-shit' urban legends to share over a coffee break. And no one's dropped a single word about it. Not one."

"Hmmm...." Abrioux plucked at her lower lip, then shrugged. "Maybe. But I've gotta tell you, Boss, it sounds mighty flimsy."

"I said that was part of the reason," Usher reminded her. "There are other factors-straws in the wind, you might say. One is how well I know the players on our side."

"Boss, I hate Giancola's guts myself. And I wouldn't be too surprised at anything he did. But much as I might like him as the baddie for this one, I think you're reaching. First of all, he's smart. He has to know that sooner or later whoever wins this war's going to get her hands on the other side's diplomatic archives. Second, however much I may despise and distrust him, I don't see even him as deliberately starting a war just to serve his own personal political ambitions. Especially not when there's no way to be sure we're going to win the damned thing. And, third, how the hell could he have pulled it off without someone else at State realizing he'd altered the original notes?"

"I never said he was stupid," Usher said mildly. "And taking your first and second points together, I also never said he deliberately set out to start a war. If my more paranoid suspicions are on track, what he wanted was to create a crisis he could then successfully 'resolve' as a demonstration of his own competence and tough-mindedness to strengthen his hand when he runs for the presidency a few years down the road. If he'd managed to pull off what I think he was after, there wouldn't have been a war, and neither side would have access to the other's archives. At the very least, it would probably have been decades before anyone had a chance to compare originals."

"Maybe so, but there's still the question of how he could have pulled it off." Abrioux shook her head. "Somehow he'd have had to alter at least the Manty originals after they were received and logged in. And given what the Manties have published as their version of our correspondence, he would have had to alter that from the version the President and the rest of the Cabinet had seen before it was sent, as well."

"Altering the outgoing correspondence wouldn't have been difficult," Usher responded. "He has personal, direct access to the traffic. He's the Secretary of State, after all! And he also has access to the State Department's internal recordkeeping, chip-shredding, and security systems. And, yes," he waved one hand, cutting off her interruption, "I know he still should have stubbed his toe after the Manties published their version of the documents. After all, our 'Special Envoy' also had access to the documents actually delivered to Manticore. He must know whether or not what they've published matches the notes he actually delivered. And Mr. Grosclaude hasn't said a word to indicate they did. Which means that either the documents they're publishing are, indeed, false, or..."

"Or else Grosclaude was in on it, too." Abrioux's dark eyes narrowed thoughtfully, and Usher nodded.

"Exactly. And Yves Grosclaude and Arnold Giancola go way back together. It's only reasonable that the Secretary of State would have picked a special envoy in whom he had complete faith, of course. But what, exactly, did he have faith Grosclaude would do for him?"

"Jesus." Abrioux rubbed her forearms as if she'd felt a sudden chill. But then she frowned again.

"Okay, granted he could have altered the outgoing correspondence, and, assuming Grosclaude really was willing to put it all on the line for him, he could have gotten away with that part of it. But what about the Manty notes? Surely they all carried the proper authentication codes!"

"Which is why I called you in," Usher said grimly. "I've had to be very circumspect, but last week I finally got my own hands on a copy of one of the original Manty notes."

"Wait a minute." Abrioux looked at him with the beginning of genuine alarm. "Got your hands on a copy? Why the hell didn't you just ask for one? As I recall, you and the President are supposed to be on pretty good terms, Boss. So exactly whose back are we sneaking around behind this time?"

"Oh, be serious, Danny!" Usher snorted explosively. "Eloise-and LePic and Tom Theisman-are all absolutely dead serious about the 'rule of law.' Well, so am I. But we're not really there yet. And think about the military and diplomatic implications of what we're talking about here. If I asked Eloise for access to the original diplomatic correspondence, I'd have to tell her why I wanted it. She probably trusts me-and distrusts Giancola-enough to give me the access. But then she has to take official cognizance of what I suspect. So does she just quietly give me the access I'm not supposed to have without State's knowledge and approval or the congressional oversight the Constitution mandates, or does she order LePic to begin a full-press covert investigation? And what happens if and when word leaks that one of our own Cabinet secretaries may actually have created a completely falsified diplomatic exchange which prompted us to go back to war against Manticore? At the very least, it would probably cripple her administration, and the possibilities go steadily downhill from there. At the moment, exactly two people know what I suspect, and we're both in this office right now. And until I'm in a position to tell Eloise something definitive, one way or the other, this stays a completely unofficial, unacknowledged, totally 'black' investigation. Is that clearly understood?"