CHAPTER 12

“Oh, I think I’ll have the Darjeeling,” said the general, tapping the menu. “Is it first flush or second?”

The man now known as Jean Giroux froze, his face in an almost comic rictus. For a moment, Kovalic wasn’t sure which way it would go – it didn’t seem out of the question that the big man would attempt to throttle the general, who was calmly sitting as though his life hadn’t just been threatened. But Giroux’s lips merely pressed into a thin line. “Still the same old stubborn pain in the ass, I see.”

“I’m far too old to change my ways.”

“I don’t know why you thought coming here was a good idea and,” Giroux put up a hand to forestall an explanation, “I don’t really care. Have a cup of tea, if you must – it’s on the house – but then go and leave me alone.” He’d already snapped his fingers for the server and turned to go when the general spoke quietly.

“Yevgeniy, I am sorry. And I need your help.”

For the second time in as many minutes, Giroux stopped, as if tugged by some invisible thread stringing back years into his past. He sighed and his shoulders slumped.

The server, who had appeared beside them ready to take their order, gave them all a perplexed look until her boss waved a hand towards the back of the tea shop. “This party will be joining me in the private room, Della. Have two pots of Darjeeling sent in. Thank you.”

She nodded in response and hurried off, while the general, Kovalic, and Rance rose to follow Giroux through the main dining room to the door at the rear.

The back room proved to be mostly storage but with a small private dining area, not nearly as elegant as the front of house had been, but somewhat cozier. Instead of high-backed chairs, there were a few plush armchairs and a sofa around a low coffee table. Stacks of supplies were lined against one wall, stenciled with the names of teas. A terminal sat on a desk in one corner.

“Sit,” said Giroux. As invitations went, it sounded grudging to Kovalic’s ears, but the general wasted no time in taking one of the armchairs, his walking stick held loosely in one hand. Rance and Kovalic seated themselves on the sofa, and Giroux dragged over the wooden desk chair, perching atop as one accustomed to having spent long hours in it. He rubbed his face with both hands, as if removing a layer of makeup, and when he looked up again, he seemed almost a different person altogether.

Not through any trick of cosmetics or prosthetics, or even advanced technology like a holoprojector mask, Kovalic realized. No, it was more intrinsic than that: something in the way he held himself, the way his features were composed, had shifted. This was no longer the ebullient, extravagant tea house owner, but someone harder, a piece of stone polished after years of having tumbled against the rougher edges of life.

Yevgeniy Esterhaus. Hiding in plain sight.

“What, exactly, is it you want from me, Hasan?” His voice was flat now, devoid of the resonance he’d displayed in the shop; it had become something rougher, meaner. Kovalic could hear an accent straining to push free – not the indistinct one that he’d used in his Giroux persona, the one that could have belonged to an expatriate from a dozen different worlds, but neither the cultivated tones of Illyrican nobility that still tinged the general’s voice, though it shared similar notes.

“As I said, we need your help,” said the general, his head tilt encompassing Rance and Kovalic. “There is a well-placed Illyrican mole within the Commonwealth intelligence community, and, thanks to some conveniently planted evidence, we’ve been accused of treason. I want your help clearing our names.”

The ensuing silence was so completely quiet that Kovalic was sure you could hear electrons buzzing in the terminal. Esterhaus was staring at the general with a look of bald-faced astonishment.

It was a chuckle that broke the spell, a sharp punctuating laugh. It grew until Esterhaus was clutching his stomach, his head thrown back as he wiped the tears from his eyes. “You. You want me to help clear you of treason?” That set off a new chain reaction of laughter, his whole body shaking with mirth.

“I don’t see what’s so funny,” said the general stiffly.

“Of course you don’t. Of course you don’t. And that, Hasan, was always your problem. You thought your situation so different from everybody else, but despite all your brilliance, you were never able to put yourself in anybody’s shoes.” The chortles had died away now, Esterhaus’s solemnity firmly back in place. “Someone is running your own playbook against you, old friend. Or have you conveniently forgotten what you did to me?”

A solitary crack shot through the general’s veneer, and some of the tension went out of his shoulders. “No. I haven’t. And, as I said, I am sorry for it. I had no other choice.”

“Bullshit. You threw me to the wolves on trumped-up treason charges to cover your own betrayal, and now it’s your turn.” He shifted in the chair, and his attention swung to Kovalic and Rance. “He hasn’t told you that story, has he?”

Kovalic shot a sidelong look at the general, but Esterhaus’s words had clearly struck close to the mark. The old man’s hand clutched at his walking stick, and, for a moment, Kovalic had the absurd image of him drawing his blade and lunging at Esterhaus.

“No,” said Kovalic, though he was starting to piece it together.

“Ah,” said Esterhaus, spreading his hands, “then let me paint a picture for you of the noble Hasan al-Adaj. A man I once called friend. I worked by his side for a decade, and I would gladly have given my life in his service – but that is something quite different when the choice is made for you. I thought our common purpose was clear: to protect the Imperium. Together we concocted what seemed to be a brilliant plan, to insert a double agent into the Commonwealth intelligence apparatus. We spent months creating this person from whole cloth, fleshing out his background, establishing his bona fides, carefully leaking information to the Commonwealth to prove his willingness to defect.”

The hairs on Kovalic’s arms had gone up, and he remembered the name that the general had given in the tea shop. “McCrae.”

Esterhaus’s eyebrows were perhaps the only slight thing about him, slender and dark. They rose at the name. “Indeed. How did you –” Realization broke across his face, followed by something very much like sadness. “Of course. You were the Commonwealth officer he approached – the military attaché at the Illyrican Embassy. Kovalic, yes?”

There was no point in denying it so he just nodded. It had been him on Illyrica, seven years ago on a snowy night, thinking he was off to meet a high-ranking Imperial defector. Which he had – just not the one he’d expected.

“Hasan had been very careful, very precise,” Esterhaus continued. “And it wasn’t until the night your meet was supposed to happen that I realized that something was off.”

Here the general broke in, genuinely curious. “And how exactly did that come to pass? I never got a chance to ask you.”

Esterhaus leveled an icy stare in his direction, then ignored the question, turning back to Kovalic. “I was in charge of the surveillance division at IIS – the Bootblacks, as we were familiarly known, though the sobriquet predates my time there. Keeping tabs on enemy operatives on our soil, internal security risks, that kind of thing. The night of the meet, Hasan and I had agreed to pull back surveillance around the location; he didn’t want to spook the target. You. But shortly before the meet, I got a high-level order to reinstate my people. Only it was late, and I didn’t have time to brief and dispatch a team.

“So I went myself. Imagine my surprise when, instead of our carefully prepared impostor, it was Hasan himself who met with you. That had not been the plan. Still, I gave him the benefit of the doubt; I assumed something had gone wrong, and rather than squander the opportunity by calling off the meet, he’d elected to handle it personally. My remit was not to interfere but to observe, which I did. It wasn’t until afterwards that I pressed him about it.

“He had an excuse, of course. The weather, I believe. He always did have a way of making things sound eminently reasonable. But a sliver of doubt was lodged so deeply in my mind that I could not excise it – and you knew that too, didn’t you, Hasan?”

The general shifted uncomfortably in his seat, as though it had grown suddenly coarse and prickly beneath him.

“Things moved quickly after that,” said Esterhaus. “Too quickly for me to get a handle on. Before I knew what was happening, I was being accused of treason, of leaking the very information on the upcoming Sabaean invasion that Hasan himself had given you. I wanted to stay and defend myself, but the deck had been clearly stacked against me, and I had no choice but to flee Illyrica before a Special Operations Executive team could bring me in.”

Kovalic swallowed, his throat dry. It sounded uncomfortably familiar, and not for the first time he wondered how the rest of his team was faring. If they’d been apprehended, surely he would have heard by now.

Esterhaus folded his hands and continued his story. “I managed to secure a berth on a freighter heading through the bottleneck at Jericho – the Commonwealth wasn’t my first choice, but it seemed the only place far enough from IIS’s influence to guarantee my safety. And by the time I realized that they had bigger fish to fry,” he shot a meaningful glance at the general, “I had already established my life here. There was no going back.”

Silence fell once again over the room, and Kovalic glanced over at the couch, where the general wore a slightly dyspeptic expression. Rance, for her part, seemed as unflappable as ever, absorbing the story like a sponge.

“So,” Esterhaus said. “You can understand why I’m not eager to render you any further service. Especially since the irony of your situation is so particularly delightful.”

There was a knock at the door and the server appeared, bearing a tray with a pot of tea and four mugs. She deposited them on the coffee table and, at a nod from Esterhaus – who had briefly donned his beneficent Giroux persona once again – departed.

“And now, let us all enjoy a cup of this excellent tea, and then part ways, never to see one another again.” He poured the steaming liquid into the mugs.

The general cleared his throat, and leaned forward to take one of the cups. “Yevgeniy, I am truly sorry. But I’m afraid I do need to ask you one more question about your story. That high-level order, the one that told you to reinstate surveillance. Where did it come from?”

Esterhaus picked up his own mug, blowing to cool it, then tilted his head to one side, regarding the general with a neutral look. “You were the director of Eyes. There was only one authority that could supersede yours.”

“The palace.”

The big man nodded. “The order itself was unsigned, but it bore the Imperial seal.”

With a sigh, the general clutched his tea in both hands. “Then, while I cannot absolve myself of my responsibility for what happened to you, it would seem that we were both played, old friend.”

“The princess was a step ahead of you even then,” said Kovalic. He wouldn’t have believed there was anybody who thought more moves in advance than the general.

At that, Esterhaus blinked. “Princess? You mean little Isabella? What does she have to do with any of this?”

The general grimaced. “She appears to have taken up my role as director of IIS and this – all of this – has been part of her plan. I believe she tipped you off in order to force my hand, to make sure that I would have no choice but to ultimately flee the Imperium. I knew even sacrificing you to cover my tracks was only a temporary reprieve.”

“Princess Isabella,” mused the big man. He shook his head in disbelief. “I remember you used to bring her to the office, sit her up on your desk, and let her play with the holoscreens. In between lectures about soft power and the importance of intelligence gathering, of course.” Esterhaus snorted. “It seems perhaps you taught her too well.”

“Indeed.”

“So you want me to help you out of… what? Some old misplaced sense of friendship? Camaraderie amongst expatriates?”

“Yevgeniy, I’ve done much that I cannot atone for, though I’ve tried. I made sure you stayed off the Commonwealth’s radar and thus off the Imperium’s.”

“Ah, it’s to be blackmail, then,” said Esterhaus, his voice weary.

With a sharp shake of his head, the general raised his hand. “No. I intend to keep your secret whether you help us or not. That is the least I can do after how I used you. But there are larger stakes here. Whatever Isabella has in mind, I have no doubt it means instability for the Commonwealth, and you know as well as I that will lead to chaos for everybody.” He raised a finger and pointed to the door they’d entered through. “I think you’ve come to value your life here, Yevgeniy. The people out there are lucky enough to go about their lives without having to worry about open war raining down on them. The citizens of the Illyrican Empire, they deserve a future beyond the conflict waged by their leaders. If we don’t stop whatever Isabella has planned…” he spread his hands wide, “…that is all they will have. The Yevgeniy Esterhaus I knew did his job to protect people from threats they would never know about. The years change us all, but I don’t believe they can truly change our hearts.”

Kovalic had heard a lot of arguments from his boss over the last several years, but he could tell that something in this one ran deeper, a vein of emotion straight to the core of why Hasan al-Adaj had actually believed that the only way to save the empire that he loved was to betray it.

Yevgeniy Esterhaus said nothing for a moment, just raised his cup of tea to his mouth, and held it there, staring contemplatively into the middle distance. Beside him, Kovalic could feel Rance holding her breath, while keeping her stoic demeanor in place.

At long last, Esterhaus sighed. “Damn you, Hasan. You always did know exactly which strings to pull to get your way. And damn me for still believing in a greater good, after all these years.” He drained the cup in one gulp and got to his feet. “Follow me.”