The Stone Dogs (22 page)

Marya spoke: "Marie-Claire Arondin; that's actually her name. Elder brother is Jean-Claude Arondin; refugee from Lyon.

Got out in '48, officially, stowaways in a cargo container aboard a dirigible. Established a machine-parts business in London, and made a fair go of it, despite occasional alcohol problems. The sister went to English schools, latterly a fairly expensive boarding establishment. Did her National Service as an assistant nurse in a West End hospital; the alcohol-rehabilitation ward, where she made some… interesting contacts." His sister's voice had a dry tone he recognized; someone reciting from a file.

"Set up a small dressmaking concern after studying design at the University of London; soon, not so small, due to discreet gifts from several prominent men with whom she became discreetly involved." Her right hand was resting in her lap; the fingers of the left tapped the table. "A very classy and high-priced courtesan, if you examine the record."

"Agent?"

Stoddard nodded. "Ayuh. Her brother was a sleeper—he died in '66—and she was trained in London. Financed very carefully from the Security Directorate's cover-assets in the Alliance." The British capital was the world center of espionage and fashion, if of little else these days. "The usual thing, pillow talk leading to compromise, then blackmail to keep it coming."

"How did—?" he stopped; if there was a need-to-know, he would be told the method of discovery.

"Her mother was still in the Domination; that was their lever.

She died. We started suspecting one of Marie-Claire's… clients, when one of
our
sources on the other side turned up data only he could have leaked."

Stoddard slid another package across the table. Lefarge broke the seals and pulled out the first envelope. It was a set of assignment orders, in his name.

"Assistant Compsystems Officer on the
Emancipator!
" His eyes narrowed. "This had to come from the Service, right?"

The general nodded wearily. "Because she told us the latest of her conquests, Fred," he said, with a tired disgust in his voice.

"Open the next package."

Lefarge obeyed with fingers suddenly gone clumsy. There had to be a reason he, of all people…

Lieutenant Andrew McLean, RN, Alliance Space Force.
"Oh, shit, God, Andy would never sell out!"

"He didn't," Marya said, an impersonal pity in her tone. "She met him at some social affair when he was on leave from Portsmouth, before he transferred here, and hit him like a tonne of cement. Far too expensive for him, and she guided him to some of the best clipjoints and casinos in Britain. Then found

'friends' to tide him over with loans, then… By the time she let the hook show, he was in over his head." She hesitated. "She told the debriefers she's convinced he's in love with her, as well. Gave him a long story about the threats the Security Directorate were holding over her family, that sort of thing."

"It doesn't matter," Stoddard said quietly. "For money, for a promise of Draka Citizenship, for love… it's treason, Fred."

"Why hasn't he been arrested?" Lefarge said, but felt the knowledge growing in his gut, a cancer of nausea.

Stoddard nodded. "We turned Arondin, and the Security Directorate doesn't know it. Won't for several years, during which we'll feed them a careful mixture of accurate data and disinformation… but the stuff she's been getting from McLean has a short halflife, Fred. Nothing too important yet, but the
Emancipator
is the best we have. He can't return from that cruise, and it has to look like an accident. You're the best-placed operative."

Lefarge opened the rest of the sealed packages. An Execution Order. "I… don't like it," he said hoarsely.

"I don't like it either," Stoddard said. "The personal approval of the Alliance Chairman and a quorum of the High Court… It's still a secret trial, and that wasn't what this country was founded for." More gently: "And I know he was your friend, Fred."

"He was." Lefarge slammed his fist into the wall beside him, then looked in shock down at his own bleeding knuckles. "The bastard, the stupid, stupid brains-in-balls bastard."

Marya looked away. Stoddard continued. "Can you do it?"

Lefarge pressed his fingertips into his forehead. Could he kill a friend, a man who trusted him? Another thought twisted the knot below his stomach tighter. He would have to live at close quarters with him. Laugh at his jokes, pass the salt, never let show that anything was different…

"I can," he said. And that was a bitter thing to know about himself, as well.

Marya relaxed, and brought her right hand up from under the table. Lefarge's eyes widened; there was a gun in his sister's hand, an ugly stubby little silenced custom job. For the first time in his life, he felt his jaw drop with surprise; she flushed and looked down. Stoddard reached out and slipped the weapon into his own hand, pointed it out into the night and pulled the trigger.

Nothing. The young woman's head whipped around, and she gave the general an accusing stare. "You claimed there was evidence he might be involved!" she said.

"Circumstantial evidence," the general replied. He snapped the clip out of the weapon and thumbed the square rounds of caseless ammunition out. "He was a close friend of someone we knew had gone over. Actually, I never doubted him."

He smiled bitterly. "Fred, you just passed a test. Your test is willingness to eliminate McLean. This little charade was hers.

Marya was lucky; the information we gave her about you wasn't real. We just needed to see how she would react if it was real."

The expression lost all resemblance to good humor. "This is what I told you, long ago. This business of ours, it takes… a different sort of courage from a soldier's. A soldier,"—his voice stumbled for a moment—"may have to sacrifice his life. More is asked of us; we get the danger without the glory, such as that is. For us, there's the dirty business that has to be done; we may have to sacrifice a friend, a brother… our own sense of honor." He slid the material back into the attache case, stood. "I'll be in touch."

Stoddard left by the back gate, walking toward an inconspicuous steamer. Two of the silent men followed, one taking the wheel. There was an almost imperceptible
whump
of water hitting a flash-boiler, and the vehicle slid away.

"Shit, what a night," Lefarge said, a shakiness in his voice.

"Shit." A hand fell on his, and he looked up to meet his sister's eyes. "Would you have shot me?"

"If I thought you were a traitor?" she said, gaze level. "Yes."

The eyes glimmered suddenly, in starlight and moonlight. "I'd have cried for you after… but yes."

The moment stretched. "Thank you," he replied. Their fingers met and intertwined.
"Merci, ma soeur,"
he said again, in their mother's native tongue.

Presently he sighed. "Look… can you drop me back at Maman's hotel? I'd… like to see Cindy again."

"I understand. It's not far from mine."

"But not the same hotel as Maman?" he said, with a faint smile.

His sister's was more wry. "Maman's never going to accept that I don't have a vocation, Fred," she said.

"Christ, when the Sisters sent that bloody
delegation
around to explain you were a perfectly good Catholic, just not suited—!"

It was an old anger, a relief to slip into it.

Marya shrugged. "Hell, I might as well be a nun, the chances I'm going to get in this line of work… Fred, Uncle Nate told me a little bit more about how he got Maman out of France, back in

'47."

"Oh?"
Thank you for changing the subject
, he thought.
I need
something to calm me down first
. "Her resistance work and so forth?"

"Fred… Maman was in the Resistance, all right. But she wasn't Uncle Nate's contact. She wasn't supposed to come out at all."

"What?
Look, I know there was an agent in place, I'm
named
after the man, but—"

"Shh. That nun that Maman told us about, Sister Marya?
She
was the Resistance contact. Maman just got dumped in the same place, bought out of a Security Directorate pen in Lyons by a planter. She… found out about the operation they were on—you can guess it was weapons research—and… well, threatened to blow the cover unless she was pulled out of there. The whole extraction phase went sour; your namesake was killed, so was the nun… Had to kill themselves, rather. Maman's considered it her fault, ever since."

"Mary mother. No
wonder
she was so set on getting you into the Order!"

"Expiation, and more than that, Fred. There wasn't any husband killed by the Snakes."

"You mean she wasn't pregnant then?" He blinked bewilderment.
Maman? Maman had an
affair
after
she got to
New York?
He had never seen his mother miss Mass or confession in all his life; and he still remembered the thrashing she had given him when she caught him with that women's-underwear catalog under the bed.

"Yes, she was… We're half-Draka, brother."

For a moment Frederick Lefarge saw gray at the corner of his vision, and then his skin crawled as if his body were trying to shed it. Oh, it made no legal difference; by Domination law, only those born of Citizens on both sides were of the ruling caste.

But— He made a wordless sound.

"I know," Marya replied. "I threw up when I heard; I've had a week or so to get used to the idea now. But you can see why, why she's never looked at another man, why she was so dead set against me going into intelligence work. Any sort of field where there was a chance I might be captured." She pressed the button for the waitress. "I think you need a stiff one; then I'll drive you over."

"
Cindy, Cindy!"

"Honey, what is it?" Shock and concern, and fear of what could have harrowed him so.

"Hold me, will you? Just hold me."

In theory, the Alliance for Democracy began as just that: an alliance of sovereign democracies— some, such as the Empire of Brazil democratic by courtesy only. In fact, it was an arm of American policy, the creature of the United States. By 1941 all Europe and most of Russia were under German control- Japan had taken Hawaii invaded Australasia, and was raiding the coastal U.S. as far south as Panama. The Domination of the Draka was mobilized, visibly awaiting an opportunity to jump.

Britain, her Indian dependency and the Australasian Federation were glad to follow the American lead; the only choice was to be eaten alive by one or the other of the predators. South America had known it lived on American sufferance since the U.S. finally pushed its borders to the Isthmus of Panama in the 1860s. When the Eurasian War ended with the Domination in control of three-quarters of the planet everyone realized that the Alliance had to be made permanent; the alternative was the Draka labor compounds and a serf identity-tattoo on the neck.

Paradoxically, it is the transformation of the Alliance into a quasi-state which has caused our present problems with the Indian Republic. Member nations retain considerable autonomy, but the Grand Council and Assembly of the Alliance now control interest rates and other macroeconomic levers as well as setting military policy. For most members, this has been opportunity rather than hardship; the low-tax, minimal-regulation approach which even the Democratic Progressive party here in the U.S.

embraces has proven widely popular. Some feel too popular, as the rocketing growth-rates of the smaller members of the Alliance erode the relative dominance of the United States. India has proven the exception to the general rule, mired down by the fanatical unwillingness of its religious groups to coexist and by the Fabian socialism its ruling class inherited from the British.

Despite prosperous enclaves such as Bombay, most Indians remain subsistence peasants, the last large group of peasants in the world. Poverty breeds demagogic charges of exploitation and cries of "corruption" by American "materialism." The growth of neo-Qandhian pacifism, with its claim that the nuclear balance of terror is absolutely immoral, is especially worrying.

And the Domination, with its usual cold cynicism, is actively fishing In these muddied waters.

The Indian Republic Achillies Heel of the Alliance
by Ernesto Perrez

U.S. Weekly Chronicle

Nation's Bilingual Newsmagazine Since 1912

Managua, Nicaragua

November 1 1972

NEW YORK CITY

FEDERAL CAPITAL DISTRICT

DONOVAN HOUSE

NOVEMBER 20, 1972

"Not going to the Inauguration, general?"

Nathaniel Stoddard snorted without turning from the window and brushed at his mustache. It was nearly solid gray now, only streaked with sandy brown, like the rather untidy mop of hair he kept in an academic's shag-cut.
Getting older,
he thought.
Older
and creakier and more weary… Is it time to retire?
He probed at himself, with the same ruthless analysis he might have used on an agent under strain.
No.
Still flexible, not making too many
mistakes.
You couldn't overvalue yourself either; if you were indispensable, you weren't doing your job properly.

"Work to do," he said, in a voice that carried the flat vowels and drawl of Boston. "The OSS never sleeps."

Frederick and Marya Lefarge were waiting patiently in their seats, still in tropical kit, looking a little rumpled from the two-hour flight from India, a little worn from tension and sleeplessness. Harder than they had, after the work he had put them through these past four years. Easy with each other, and that was important; this had been their first mission together.

There were jobs a team like this had an advantage in.

"And its agents don't get any sleep either," Fred was saying.

"Here we are, just off the Calcutta shuttle, and you don't even give us time to stop off at O'Toole's for a beer."

Donovan House was at the northern edge of the Federal District, the series of interlinked squares and parks that occupied the center of Manhattan island. More and more of the capital's swelling bureaucracy was being moved out to Long Island or the Jersey shore, but the Office of Strategic Services preferred staying close to the centers of executive power. This office was twelve stories up, overlooking Jefferson Avenue; from here you could see north and south to the Hudson and East rivers. The parade was still moving down the six-lane avenue, between sidewalks and buildings black with the crowds. Paper confetti spun through the air, and the noise was loud even through the sealed double-glazed panes. Another flight of fighters went by ten thousand feet up— contrails and a brief silvery flash—and their sonic booms rattled the furniture.