John Shirley - A Song Called Youth

And the file on Torrence had been stamped PrS.—Priority Subject. Stoner read:

Torrence quickly graduated from a complete outsider to become one of the top five operatives in the European NR. He has been directly involved in every major guerrilla action since his recruiting, and one eyewitness described him as “ruthless and a little crazy when he’s leading an attack” (extractor ref. SA872) and “a leader, but also the guy is a dog at Steinfeld’s heels” (ibid.). Subject believed to have engineered the capture of the Arc de Triomphe shortly before its Jægernaut demolition in SA Operation Cold Bear and the subsequent evacuation of Steinfeld and NR core from Paris.

This subject experienced a profound motivational shift, with subsequent radicalization, after Paris training. Computer personality analysis and projections foresee extensive militant political involvement and volatile potential for Movement Leadership. Long-term survival of subject Torrence is counter to the best interests of SAISC/CIA projects. Advise subject be terminated with extreme prejudice…

“Can’t kill what you can’t reach,” Stoner murmured. He glanced over the text again and his eyes stopped on the best interests of SAISC/CIA projects. When had it become SAISC/CIA projects, in that order, with that sense of cohesion? There was an Extractor Reference in the file. Some captured NR had been “extracted” by SA operatives. The SA had access to extractors? That was news to him. And Operation Cold Bear—military nomenclature.

There was a Big Military slant to the SA, though they were supposed to be more like a private cop force with army methods. And the guerrillas claimed the Second Alliance was actively racist. It made Stoner nervous, because it made him wonder about Kupperbind.

Emmanual Kupperbind, CIA liaison to the Mossad. Kupperbind had submitted—unsolicited—a report on the “extra-contract activities” of the Second Alliance International Security Corporation in the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, and France. He’d claimed the Second Alliance International Security Corporation itself was a security risk. He alleged “systematically racist activities” and “the implementation of a European apartheid” that would, among other things, inevitably alienate Israel, at a time when American intelligence was already in danger of losing access to Israeli intelligence—some of the best in the world.

Not only had Kupperbind not been taken seriously at the agency, he’d been recalled and put out to pasture. Retired four years early.

There was a rumor that Kupperbind’s dismissal was entirely a function of agency politics: Pendleton, the Director, was said to have gotten his job partly through the influence of the SA’s panel of international security “experts”; the panel advised the president, from time to time, on terrorism and saboteurs. Pendleton owed the SAISC favors, it was assumed.

Whatever, all copies of Kupperbind’s report were gathered up and shredded.

All except one. Stoner had a copy. He hadn’t read it in detail. He’d been busy, and the whole thing had smelled of eccentric alarmism.

But when the clerk had come around asking for the report, Stoner had made excuses. Told them it was locked up in one of his cabinets and it was a hassle to dig it out just now when he had so much work to do. He’d drop it off later that afternoon.

Only he never did drop it off. He wasn’t sure why he’d never turned the report over. Ought to get rid of the damn thing.

But, after all, he was under assignment to study the so called New Resistance. The NR existed—so it said—to oppose the Second Alliance and “the conspiracy for which it is a façade.” And any information on the Second Alliance could conceivably apply to his investigation of the NR. He could read Kupperbind’s report. Skeptically. Perhaps pan a few small nuggets of useful information out of the silt of Kupperbind’s paranoia.

He was startled by a buzzing from his console, almost jumped out of his chair.

Words flashed for his attention on the screen: Incoming call, switch to one mode for receive.

Stoner punched for One Mode. The file page on the screen compressed to a thin line; the line expanded to become something else entirely. A man’s face. Unger.

The TV image of Unger smiled. Squat, almost jolly face, laugh lines around the eyes, always smiling when he first saw you, hail-fellow-well-met. Always wanted something. Stoner had never trusted Unger, but Unger was section chief, so Stoner smiled and said, “What can I do for you?”

“You could switch on visual so I can see if it’s you or somebody doin’ an impersonation!”

“Sorry.” He tapped transmission tie-in with the webcam.

“There you are, by God! How’s it hangin’, Kimosabe?”

Stoner winced inwardly. Kimosabe. Where’d he get that stuff? Something to do with being playful about Stoner’s “rodeo drag.”

“Fine. Great.”

“Good—well, hey, Kimosabe, we’re just trying to get some loose ends tied up here, and we find, going over the checklist for Recalls, that you never turned in that File-178 Report-43 we asked for. Says here you promised to bring it in yourself.”

Stoner felt a chill at the synchronicity of it. File-178 Report-43 was the Kupperbind report. Should have just done a scan on it. “Well, I’ll look it up, see what I got. I don’t know as I have it; they maybe forgot to check it off when I brought it in. I’ll see.”

Unger’s video grin melted into something flat. “Say there, Kimosabe, we got a Focus One on the NR. That file concerns the NR; we need it in here right away. We’re just anal about proceedure, when it comes to Focus One.”

The file’s more about the Second Alliance, Stoner thought. But he said, “If I’ve got it, you’ll sure get it. Right away.”

Unger nodded. Stoner hoped Unger was going to break the connection, but after a moment of silent two-dimensional staring, he said, “I wonder if we could take a quick meeting, say in the commissary in about an hour. We need to talk. Things are moving. Changes coming down. We need to know which side of the changes you stand on, Corte.”

“Uh… I’ve got a lot of…”

“Seriously, Stoner. The commissary. One hour.”

“Uh—okay. I’m there.”

Unger broke the connection. Stoner thought: We need to talk?

Claire almost shot Torrence when he turned the corner. He saw her shudder, the color draining from her face. She lowered her rifle.

Claire and Danco were crouched in the frozen rubble between two sheer rock walls, under the boulder they’d used for surface-to-air launching. A curtain fringe of thin ice hung in little gray spears down the shadowed rock walls beside them. Both Claire and Danco were haggard; Claire was trembly with cold or fear. Torrence wanted to go to her, put his arms around her, but he thought she might resent being comforted in front of Danco, so he held back.

“Your shotgun,” Danco said. “Damaged? It works no more?”

“It works too well,” Torrence said. He looked up, hearing a fresh spate of gunfire. Unconsciously he’d turned so that his back was to the rock, Claire and Danco on the left, a view down the crooked corridor of chill stone to his right.

Movement down there. Hard to make out clearly in the shadow what it was. But in that direction…

“Here they come,” he muttered.

Danco’s walkie-talkie was nattering at him. He pressed it to his ear, frowning, then nodded. “Okay. Sí. ” He put the walkie-talkie back on his belt and told them, “We regroup around the cave. The SA, they are pressing. They are coming in to finish us.”

A cold, weary late afternoon. The sunlight streaking pale between the megalithic stones imparted no warmth. About twenty guerrillas were posted at the openings between the rocks, and in the approaches to the cave from the sides. Two more NR—Sahid and the fatalistic Sortonne—crouched in the crater atop the square boulder, a little bit in advance of the main group; Sortonne with a rocket launcher, Fahid beside him to help reload.