David Weber - Torch of Freedom

Berry looked back and forth between Victor and Yana. "All right, I can see that. Victor and Yana go in as a couple, pretending to be among the very few survivors of the Manpower Incident on Terra—the only StateSec agent and one of the few Scrags who somehow managed to keep from getting slaughtered by the murderous alliance between the Ballroom, Kevin Usher—now the head of Haven's FIS—and a certain then-completely-unknown StateSec agent by the name of . . . Victor Cachat."

"Look at this way," said Victor. "If anybody presses me, I can give them details about the episode that they've never heard, but which will ring absolutely true."

Anton laughed softly. "Since, in fact, there were no survivors of that StateSec unit—except you." He looked at Yana. "And it's almost certain that no one has an exact record of exactly which Scrags were killed in Chicago. Some did survive, after all. So why not you?"

Ruth looked a bit uncertain. "I don't know . . . It would seem to me that there's a risk there. If there were so few Scrag survivors of that incident—and there aren't all that many Scrags in the universe to begin with—isn't there a chance that one of the real survivors will know that Yana wasn't among them? Of course, that's assuming she runs into any such on Mesa, which is probably not likely. Still, it's a risk."

Yana shook her head. "You don't really understand how Scrag society works, Ruth. The level of what you might call internal belligerence is closer to that of predators than humans. It wouldn't be at all surprising if I'd gotten irritated with other Scrags and gone my own way. And, as it happens, I did spend a fair amount of time on Terra in my younger days, most of it in Chicago. A lot of Scrags do, though, so I'd hardly stand out."

She looked at Berry. And, for an instant, might have seemed a tiny bit embarrassed. "I even—just for a short time—had a fling with one of the Scrags who was involved—several years later, you understand, I was long gone by then—in your sister's kidnapping."

Berry put her hand over her mouth, stifling laughter. "Wait'll I tell Helen!"

"I'd just as soon you didn't. No reason to bother, anyway. That particular ex-boyfriend ranks close to the bottom on my long list of ex-boyfriends whose memory I hold in cheerful contempt."

She bestowed an approving look upon Victor. "Not that I'm holding a grudge, seeing as how Victor eventually blew the bastard apart with a flechette gun."

Victor smiled politely in return, the way someone smiles when they're thanked for having done a minor favor in times past. Held open a door in the rain, lent someone a small amount of money, butchered an ex-lover, that sort of thing.

"To get back to the point," he said, "unless someone very high up in Mesan security gets involved, there's really not much chance that anyone will see through the charade. In the nature of things, StateSec saw to it that there were no records of me readily available. No vids, no images, no DNA records, nothing. They were methodical about that to the point of mania, especially during the Saint-Just years. So unless I meet someone on Mesa who actually worked with me in StateSec, I'm not running that much risk. And the chance of that happening is quite low, because . . . well . . ."

"You didn't leave too many survivors," said Ruth sweetly.

"That's one way of putting it, I suppose."

Berry had been frowning. "Victor, what did you mean when you said 'unless someone very high up in Mesan security gets involved'?"

They'd been meeting, as usual, in the deeply-buried operations chamber which now also served as Berry and Ruth's living quarters. Looking at his adopted daughter, Anton had to suppress an urge to grin for perhaps the tenth time since the meeting had started. There was something just plain comical about the very young Queen of Torch officially presiding over a meeting . . . while sitting in a lotus position on top of her bed.

There wasn't much choice, though. The addition of Saburo and now Yana to the inner circle had crowded the seats at the conference table to the point where both Ruth and Berry found it more comfortable to perch on their beds—which wasn't hard, of course, since the beds were jammed up against the table.

As the operations center for which it had been designed, the buried chamber had seemed perfectly roomy. Now that it had to double much of the time as the effective seat of a planet's government, it no longer did.

"What he means," said Anton, "is that we have to assume that even given the incredibly low profile Victor's maintained over the years, Manpower—or whoever's really running the show on Mesa—will by now have gotten enough to be able to identify him. If one of their own top agents spots him. But the odds that they've spread that information widely, even among their own ranks, is low."

"Why?" asked Ruth. "I'd think that's the first thing they'd do."

Thandi Palane smiled, and shook her head. "That's because you've been an individualist your whole life, Ruth—even when your membership in the Winton dynasty enabled you to shoehorn yourself into a central position as an of-fi-cial spy."

Ruth frowned. "Which means . . . what?"

"It means you've had no experience with bureaucracies from the inside out," said Jeremy. "Neither had I, of course"—here he gave Web Du Havel a sour look—"until this inveterate paper-pusher finagled me into accepting a position in his administration. But I know the dynamic, since I often manipulated it myself to good effect. Any bureaucrat, especially a bureaucrat in a security or espionage agency, has what amounts to an automatic reflex to keep things a secret. That's because 'being in the know' is the currency by which such stalwarts trade favors and influence—and thereby their own advancement."

Ruth looked dubious. So did Berry. But both Anton and Victor were nodding their agreement.

"He's right, Ruth. Trust me on this—since I'm the one risking my life, after all."

"And mine," piped up Yana. "But I trust you completely. Sweetheart."

Thandi seemed to choke. The look she gave Yana was one part warning, and ten parts simple amusement.

Even the one part warning, Anton knew, was just a sort of subconscious reflex. He was sure that Palane wasn't really worried about Victor "straying" while he spent weeks or possibly even months in Yana's close company, even sharing a bed with her.

With another man, she might have worried. But one of Victor's cover stories for years had been the pretense he and Ginny Usher had put up of being secret lovers, cuckolding Ginny's older and foolish husband Kevin. They'd used that disguise often and sometimes for long stretches, and almost always sharing the same bed.

Yana was an attractive enough woman, to be sure. But she wasn't remotely close to Ginny Usher, when it came to sheer beauty and sexiness. That was hardly surprising, since Yana's genome had been designed to be that of a soldier and Ginny's had been manipulated to be that of a pleasure slave. If Victor could manage to spend months in bed with Ginny Usher and do nothing, Thandi would be quite confident he could manage the same with Yana. The man's self-control bordered on the inhuman.

Except when it came to being teased by women. In that quirky area of the human psyche, Victor was often still as vulnerable as he'd been at the age of fourteen or fifteen. Anton had to suppress another urge to grin, seeing the way Victor actually flushed at Yana's wisecrack.

Hastily, Cachat pressed on. "The very fact that it's so hard to dig up anything on me means that if Mesa managed it—and we have to assume they did—the information will be kept tightly restricted to the upper echelons of their security forces. At least, until such time as they have reason to think I belong on their front burner—and I can't see any reason they'd do so. Not yet, anyway. Beyond that . . ."