Invader (51 page)

Then he'd gotten himself the possibility of a backup in Graham, if Graham made it down safely. And the shaky character of his dealings with Banichi, who knew how to forgive him, at least, told him he
had
to pull himself together or hand Jase Graham the keys to his soul, which Jase might not be good enough or benign enough not to use. Jago touched him, not in an unknowing way, and he hadn't, in small idle seconds, forgotten the feeling of her hands, the sensation that shivered through his nerves and said… he needed. He wanted not to have been responsible. He wanted Jago to have ignored warnings and gone ahead with… whatever atevi did with their lovers, which had become in his thoughts a burning curiosity.

Jago… and Ilisidi. He'd made a place in his human affections for the woman with all her edges and all her secrets — he'd ignored all the rules, even given her a piece of human loyalty that must have, in some intrusive way, taken Ilisidi herself by surprise and sent her judgment of him skittering off at angles no ateva could figure, as if he'd touched on
man'chi
and given a chivalrously honorable — aristocratically possessive? — old ateva a real quandary of the spirit. Like Tabini, he suspected, she'd tried to figure him, adjusted her behavior to fit her conceptions of
his
action, and gone off into that same unmapped territory of mutually altered behavior that he and Tabini wandered.

His fault and not hers. Ilisidi was angry with him. Jago, thanks only to Jago, could take care of herself. Jago
had
taken care of herself and walked out when he warned her. And Banichi knew. Banichi found everything out.

Or Jago had outright told him. Whatever that meant, in a relationship Bren had never puzzled out.

Damned fool, he said to himself. He heard people move about in the apartment, up and down the hall outside his bedroom. But he knew that Banichi knew who they were, and that no one moved there who Banichi didn't approve. So that was all right.

He heard the door open and close, very distantly. But, again, he expected comings and goings. He hoped it was good news. Or at least that bad news of whatever nature was being handled as well as it could be.

He had the damn code. Shawn or somebody had risked a great deal to get him a code that he didn't, on sober reflection, believe he'd gathered in his computer when he'd plugged in and sent out his Seeker.

He had a sure knowledge that Hanks' computer was in unauthorized hands, on Tabini's side or the opposition's. And that code Shawn had gone to great lengths to give him could, if it was what it seemed, blast through Mospheira's electronic obstructions and get at least one message to the right channels in the Foreign Office.

He had the remote unit plugged in. He could send that warning here, from his bedroom, without any need for lines, without tipping off more than the massive security he was sure Tabini mounted on his phone lines, that he had been in direct communication with Mospheira after the attack. But Tabini gave him all the latitude he wanted — an enviable position for a potential spy.

If that spy wanted to act, tipping off Mospheira that violence had happened in the Bu-javid, that Hanks was in foreign hands, possibly being interrogated, possibly being coerced to breach Mospheira's electronic defenses.

The aforesaid spy could also expect that Mospheira would lose no time relaying the information to the ship, who might delay the landing, or change the landing site, just the same as if he'd admitted on the phone that he was standing in the aftermath of a double murder and the kidnaping of a human representative.

In which light — he didn't send the warning to Mospheira. The aforesaid potential spy and employee of the Mospheiran government had to lie abed and not make a move more than he had, letting whatever happened to Deana happen, because Mospheira couldn't do a damned thing. His own security and Tabini's was the only chance Deana had for rescue, and if he made that call, as Shawn and other people pinning their careers on him might not understand in its emotional or logical context, Tabini could lose his gambit with the ship and Deana —

If they let her live, Deana could find herself in the position of paidhi to the opposition to Tabini, dammit.

Exactly the position she'd courted, if she lived to have the honor, if her bones held out — atevi didn't always exercise due caution — and if she could use her head.

God, she might
call
Mpspheira and say she'd been kidnaped with precisely the idea of aborting the landing. She might, in fact, work for the opposition. It might serve Mospheira very well.

On that thought his eyes came open again, staring into an answerless dark. He asked himself how he'd gotten into this position, except one good intention at a time; asked himself, too, how he'd gotten so much invested in betraying his president, his government and every democratic process on Mospheira that said one man didn't make decisions like this.

Step by step and on understandings of the situation Mospheira's government didn't have: it wasn't the kind of answer a good government servant gave to his government —

But, dammit, the officials
of
his government backed Hanks, who might still be able to reach Mospheira, with the conspirators' full permission, for all he knew — and blow everything.

He wasn't thinking clearly. He wasn't reasoning in a way that came up with answers — just — the arrangement he'd worked out led to atevi being dealt in on the development; Shawn might stand by him, a handful of the FO might stand by him, even in
not
using that code, and letting the landing go ahead — at least Deana couldn't use the big dish. Not without relay to Mospheira.

Which might tell the ship folk something, too.

That was the only thought that let him finally settle toward sleep.

«
^
»

T
he plane's engines
were running as they boarded, not surprising since the plane had flown two trips during the night before their own, at dawn, and refueled. Of baggage, there was a mysterious lot already going on board that had Tabini's red-and-black seals on the bags, nothing to do with his own small bags, all for cabin storage, which were simply clothes enough to last until the lander came down, to last until they came back to the Bu-javid.

There were at least thirty cases out there on the baggage ramp.

There were — persistent since he'd waked with a bowlful of urgent personal messages in the foyer and, as he left, bouquets standing in the hall outside — well-wishes from officials and others to whom the event was not as secret as he wished.

Now as he looked out the window a van pulled up, the driver argued with security, there was waving and pointing toward his window, the driver peered up at him, and understanding his presence was in question, Bren gave a tentative wave.

After which the driver and an assistant set more bouquets out in view of his window, in the vicinity of the plane, that being as close as his nervous security would let the deliveries come.

It wasn't the last van. Two more pulled up, with more flowers, until it looked like a funeral or a wedding. And the cards at least reached him, carried up by boarding crew, and security, even by the crew who carried the carefully inspected galley load aboard. The bouquets were from committee heads. They were from the serving staff.

They were from the clericals, lately begun in their jobs, one of which said,

Nand' paidhi, this is my first job. I am rereading all the mail I did in hopes that the threat against you was nothing I missed.

And another:

Nand' paidhi, please be very careful. Don't let there be a war.

And one in elaborate court calligraphy from the gentleman of Tano's acquaintance, the manager who'd come out of retirement, who said, more expansively,
Nand' paidhi, I have all confidence in your security. Please accept my wishes for your long life and the wishes of all my house for the continued benefit of your good counsel to the aiji and his house, long may he direct the Association
.

The latest delivery people understood their restrictions and simply laid the bouquets within sight of his window, a mass of pastel color in the grayed and cloudy dawn. He felt walled off from his well-wishers, lonely, seeing the bouquets abandoned to the weather and the wind from the engines, comforted by the gesture, though, and also appalled, thinking how expensive some of those bouquets were, from clericals who didn't make all that lot of money. He tucked the cards one and all into his document case, the ones with plain citizen ribbons, the ones with heavy noble seals, to answer when he could. He vowed to send at least a small floral recognition along with each one of them to the clericals, who, he was confident, hadn't missed any warning. No, dammit, not a blossom or two — real bouquets, and put it on the paidhi's florist bill, which went right to the State Department, with notations to bounce it back to him if State balked.

Another van. Another bouquet arrived, a huge, extravagant one. The delivery agency wished vehemently to board with it. He watched the argument through the window. But his security was adamant, called Banichi, and Banichi himself brought the card aboard and gave it to him, clearly the price of the agreement.

"An importunate well-wisher," Banichi said, and the first glance determined that it and the bouquet were lord Geigi's.

Nand' paidhi
, it said,
wiser heads than I are studying the answer which you have returned in regard to my question, at unanticipated personal effort. I deeply regret that your absence in pursuit of this answer may have given opportunity or motive to some person or persons to attack the paidhiin, an action in which I realize that I am necessarily suspect, but which I personally deplore. I have written under separate seal to Tabini-aiji, and hope that you will also confirm my good wishes to your associates of whatever degree. I also hope for the safety of Hanks-paidhi and will bend whatever efforts I and my staff can make to assure that no harm comes to her
.

"Do you believe this gesture?" he asked Banichi.

Banichi took the card, read it, lifted a brow. "One would never question." And added: "Nor accept the bouquet from this source under one's roof."

"Surely it doesn't contain bombs. They've been fueling out there. The truck —"

"One doesn't know what it doesn't contain. Gambling is not a passion with me. I'll convey your politic appreciation. I've already suggested they move the fuel truck, and pull us away from the area ahead of schedule."

"Jago isn't aboard."

"Jago is coming," Banichi said, "at all possible speed. If she should miss us, she'll come out this afternoon with Tano and Algini. I agree with you. I increasingly dislike this accumulation of good wishes near our fuel tanks. Especially the latest."

"Have you any word yet on Hanks?"

"They're still looking."

"Jago —" He could see, past Banichi's shoulder, the aiji's other security preparing to shut the door.

And a running figure corning from the building and headed for the steps.

The men inside evidently saw her, too. They waited. In a moment more Jago was through the door, the door shut, and the crew outside was pulling the ramp back.

"Have they found anything?" he asked as Jago, smoothing her uniform to its usual impeccable state, came down the aisle to join them.

"One doubts. Would you care for a snack after takeoff?"

"Just word on Hanks."

"None. Are you sure? I'll be having fruit juice, myself."

"The same, then. Thank you." He cast a look at Banichi as Jago passed him down the aisle. "I thought the new policy was to tell the paidhi the truth."

"No. One resolved to brief the paidhi on matters regarding his safety. Not on operations."

"Dammit, Banichi!"

"Information which might tempt him to assist. Or make impossible his innocent reaction to other information. You have such an expressive face, Bren-ji."

The engines grew louder. The flowers and the fueling truck passed out of view as the plane turned and moved out toward the runway.

Banichi and Jago sat down with him and belted in. Other security moved from the door to the cluster of six other security agents at the rear, men and women who talked together in voices that didn't carry above the engines and held no humor at all. The servants had gone on the last flight, before daylight; servants in the number that Saidin had determined as fortunate.

Saidin. Damiri's security. Tabini had directly suggested Saidin do the picking, knowing, as the paidhi hadn't known at the time, Saidin's nature. It had been a direct invitation to Saidin, a challenge to Saidin, to put one of her people on the Taiben staff — for good or for ill.

The paidhi had been so stupidly blind on that point,
knowing
, intellectually, that security necessarily went in such places — but he'd come in drug-fogged, had formed his subconscious, subsequently unquestioned opinions on the staff, catalogued Saidin as an elder matron, and never, dammit, asked himself the obvious. He'd gotten fond of Saidin — and Saidin might have assumed he knew what she was; which might, Banichi was right, have changed his reactions, his expressions, his levels of caution, if

he'd known what he should have known, what any atevi would have known —

He must have perplexed Saidin no end. And, dammit, he still liked the woman.

There seemed a quality to people the Assassins' Guild let in and licensed. He didn't know why. He didn't know what they had in common, except perhaps an integrity that touched chords in his shades-of-gray soul, a feeling, maybe, that one could do things that rattled one's conscience to the walls and foundations and still — still own a sense of equilibrium.

Baiuchi was going to teach him about doors. It wasn't what he wanted to learn from Banichi. What he wanted to understand was something far more basic.

When he and Jago had almost — almost — gone over the line, and he'd panicked, maybe it was that integrity he'd felt shaken. That very inhuman integrity. That more than human sense of morality.