Masterminds (31 page)

“Lovely,” Odgerel muttered because she had to respond to that. She had known about the search by other criminals for the maker of the Frémont clones. A successful attack of that level often served as advertising for a new weapon, and the Anniversary Day attacks were no exception.

“Deshin is known for his killings, but only as a strategy for dealing with rivals, generally those who have crossed him. He prefers shady business deals to assassination and weapons sales. His involvement in all of this is a surprise,” said Brown.

“I seem to recall that we lost an operative on the Moon years ago,” Odgerel said, “when Deshin fired one of the embedded clones. The operative vanished, and it was believed that Deshin had taken him, tortured him, and killed him once he had the information. Or am I misremembering that?”

“You aren’t,” Pirizoni said. “When Mitchell found the connection to Deshin and clones, I searched, and found that was the last mention tying Deshin directly to clones. The clone that was destroyed was the last one embedded in his organization, at least close to his family. He became quite vigilant after that.”

Odgerel frowned. “So we know that Deshin was looking for the maker of the Anniversary Day clones. We know that he probably had a meeting of crime lords at one of his compounds, and the next thing we know is that the clone factory that made the clones
we
embedded into criminal organizations was destroyed.”

We also know that there is an Alliance connection to some of these attacks
, Brown sent her through her links,
although I haven’t briefed everyone in this room on that.

Noted
, she sent back.

“We also know that Deshin is patriotic,” said Jadallah Reinbrecht. He had a gift for understanding a lot of information in a short period of time—and remembering it weeks or months later, without an assist from his networks.

“Patriotic?” Odgerel asked. “To the Alliance?”

“To the Moon,” Reinbrecht said. “He has steadfastly refused to leave the City of Armstrong, although he would quadruple his profits if he moved to the edges of the Alliance.”

“And what do you make of that information?” Odgerel asked Reinbrecht.

“Personally? I think Deshin was going to exact his own revenge on whoever attacked the Moon. Deshin nearly died on Anniversary Day, and he lost some of his team. He’s loyal to them. I think he didn’t find what he was looking for, but he found something else.”

“The clones we’ve been embedding into the criminal organizations,” Odgerel said.

“So why save their lives?” Pirizoni asked.

“He didn’t save all of the clones,” Brown said. “The reports I’m getting list the clone casualties, not as deaths per se, but as property loss. It looks like adult clones still on site were not saved.”

“Just the children,” Odgerel muttered. She blinked, trying to reconcile the idea of a criminal organization led by a man who would save children. “Do you think he wants to use the children for his own criminal activities?”

“I don’t know,” Brown said. “We have already lost track of the rescue ships, if that’s what you want to call them.”

“We can identify those clones,” Barbier said. “I think we put a watch for them once they become adults.”

Odgerel nodded. “I’ll assign that,” she said, although she wouldn’t assign it at this moment. She did not want Barbier handling that, even though he had come up with the idea.

“So we are now certain that the attackers of Hétique City are not the Anniversary Day attackers?” she asked.

“We’re not certain of anything yet,” Brown said.

“It is possible that the crime lords did attack the Moon,” Barbier said. “After all, all of the four we have just named have shell corporations that could be used in the Moon’s rebuilding.”

“Then why the second attack a few weeks ago?” Odgerel asked.

Barbier shrugged.

“I am still of the opinion that crime lords do not have the long-term vision to handle something this large over so many decades,” Brown said.

“I tend to agree. Still, we have to look at all possibilities.” Odgerel turned to Pirizoni. “Eu-fùnh, please, investigate the connection between these crime lords and see if one or all of them could have worked together for the attacks on the Moon.”

“Yes, sir,” she said.

“I do, however, think that this attack is related to the Anniversary Day attacks,” Odgerel said. “But I am guessing that Jadallah’s assumption is correct: that Deshin discovered our clone factory’s purpose while searching for the Anniversary Day clones, and that his connection to the bombings is as victim, not as perpetrator. We should, of course, try to find him and the property he has stolen from us, but our main focus needs to remain finding the perpetrators of the Moon attacks.”

She looked at the group, feeling more energy that she had felt since she woke up.

“Proceed with the Hétique City attack as if it were an isolated event. Investigate it as if it had happened before Anniversary Day and is a crime, not a terrorist act. It’s not necessary to put a lot of resources into this crime if, indeed, we would be taking resources from our primary purpose, which is finding the terrorists who are attacking the Moon. But we shouldn’t lose sight of this investigation either.”

“Waiting will slow us down on catching these crime lords,” Barbier said.

Odgerel smiled at him. “We have been unable to ‘catch them’ in the legal sense for years now. I’m certain that a few months will make little difference. My orders stand.”

He glared at her.

“Is there anything else?” she asked.

“No, sir,” Brown said, clearly speaking for the group.

She nodded. “I appreciate the good and swift information. Please keep me apprised on all of the related investigative fronts.”

Then she bowed her head slightly, and left the room.

She was relieved that this Hétique City attack was not the expected third attack. She did not want the crisis to spread beyond Earth’s solar system.

But she knew that there would be another attack, and her intuition told her it would be soon.

She needed to keep her staff focused, and with any organization this large, maintaining focus was difficult.

She would guide them as best she could until the crisis ended.

If it ended at all.

FORTY-FIVE

THE SIDE ROOM
that Popova had pulled Berhane and Kaspian into seemed claustrophobic and small, particularly with all the floating heads around them. Images of dozens of long-dead Moon citizens, all of whose DNA had been found in the last few months in the ruins from the Anniversary Day bombings.

Popova had turned gray, and she had tucked her hair behind her ears. She looked terrified.

Berhane understood that. Seeing this Lawrence Ostaka person had spiked her heart rate, and it hadn’t slowed down. She never thought of herself as courageous, even though she had fended off a few scummy people inside the ruins while she worked.

She certainly wasn’t sure what to do now.

Except that she needed to give Popova information as quickly as possible.

Kaspian had started to explain how they found the DNA, and Berhane had cut him off. Popova didn’t need that, not right now. Maybe later. What she had needed were the faces of the originals for the DNA that Berhane’s volunteers had found—and now as those faces floated around the room, Popova looked like her world was collapsing.

Popova pointed to another face, not Ostaka’s face.

“I know him,” she said. “He works with the city engineers.”

Her voice was shaking. Berhane felt like she was floating, as if something had shifted in her entire world.

Popova said, “Half of these people are on staff here in Armstrong. How is that possible?”

And then she shook her head.

Berhane had had a bit more time with this, although she hated the idea that these people—these clones—were in the city. She was going to have to be the voice of reason here, at least for the moment.

She remembered how she had been the day her mother died, the way she had become calmer in the crisis rather than panicked, how she had organized everyone on that train.

She found that space in herself again.

“Look,” she said to Popova, “these people have been here for years. We can take another minute or two to confirm what our eyes are telling us. Do you have samples of this Earth Alliance Investigator’s DNA?”

Popova looked at Berhane as if she were speaking Disty. “We don’t have any time at all,” Popova said. “He’s with the chief.”

“And he has no idea that we know who he is,” Berhane said. “Let’s just make sure of this. I mean, some faces look alike.”

“Not to me,” Kaspian said. “That resemblance is enough to indict, as far as I’m concerned.”

Berhane glared at him. She didn’t have to send him a “shut up” message on the links this time. He gave her a sideways glance that she took as an apology.

Berhane asked Popova, “Can you get some of this man’s DNA? If we can just run a simple clone check—”

“He won’t have a clone number,” Popova said.

“Yeah, I know, but there’s a way to check some DNA markers,” Berhane said. “We won’t know if he’s actually from the original that we think he is, but we’ll be able to see if he was cloned.”

Popova visibly squared her shoulders. She seemed stronger, as if having a plan bolstered her.

“We can do that,” she said. “I know where we can get some DNA right now.”

“I’ll come with you,” Berhane said.

Popova shook her head. “For all we know, he’s monitoring his stuff. He’ll wonder what you’re doing there, but he will think I have something to do for my job.”

Berhane bit her lower lip. She didn’t want Popova to face this man alone. “If he’s in that space, then come back here.”

“If he’s in that space,” Popova said, “I’ll be contacting you via links and we’ll go see the chief.”

“You should let the chief know what’s going on,” Kaspian said.

Berhane looked at him in surprise. The man who hated authority wanted an authority figure involved?

He shrugged, then said to Berhane, “You know I’m right.”

“I think we’re going to wait until we have proof,” Popova said. “We have so much happening here that the last thing we want to do is accuse someone who is innocent of doing something wrong.”

“He’s not innocent,” Kaspian muttered.

“But he might not know he was manufactured for something,” Berhane said.

Kaspian gave her a pitying look. “Then he’ll be like those Peyti clones, activated when the time is right.”

“Like they had a timer inside of them?” Berhane looked at Popova. “They didn’t, did they?”

“No,” Popova said, hand on the door. “They knew their whole lives what day they were supposed to die and how. They could have told us at any point.”

Then she made a face as if she had swallowed something bad, and let herself out of the room.

Berhane twisted her fingers together. The Peyti clones had known? For decades? And they’d made friends here?

She had been with one of Peyti clones on the Armstrong Express the day her mother had died. They had talked to each other. She had
helped
him, with his broken little arm.

He had taken her help. He had worked to
survive
.

How could anyone be so normal all the time, knowing they were part of something monstrous? How?

She’d love to think that only Peyti could be so venal, but she knew better.

She looked up at the faces floating around the room. All of those faces were human.

Still, she wanted to be wrong.

She wanted to be wrong more than she had ever wanted anything in her entire life.

FORTY-SIX

THOSE MINUTES INSIDE
the small control room seemed to take forever. Ó Brádaigh watched each part of the system reset itself. He didn’t touch any of it until the entire process was complete. Then he checked and double-checked.

Then he asked the system to check for him. He asked the system to make sure the usual settings were in place. He figured if the system responded that the usual settings had been tampered with, then Petteway had taken his sabotage to a new level—to the level Ó Brádaigh would have done.

Ó Brádaigh would have changed the default settings too. He would have made the system reset itself after the settings were changed, and he would have made the default settings the
new
settings, not the usual ones.

But Ó Brádaigh had asked that question, and the system told him that he had just reset the system properly.

He was feeling so paranoid that he worried that Petteway had set the system to lie to him.

But that would have required Petteway to believe that someone would catch him, and Ó Brádaigh doubted Petteway had planned for that. Particularly with the fact that Petteway had made the settings change himself, and the settings change would only last a few hours.