Emil walked into the outer office and scowled at the pretty young woman seated behind the desk. He didn’t feel old, but realized at a glance that she could be his granddaughter.
He wondered if he’d been in this business for too long.
Certainly, he made an impression on the woman, as she gulped, eyes wide like a fawn.
“May—may I help you, sir?” she finally stammered.
Emil reached into the breast pocket of his old jacket and pulled out a wallet with his identity papers. These even had his real name, something he hadn’t used in the field more than a handful of times.
He stepped across the small reception area, smelling the faintest hint of mold in the background, like a smoke on his tongue, and handed the leather-bound container across the countertop to her.
As she opened it to read, he stood with his hands crossed behind his back, studying himself in the faint reflection of a glass-fronted painting behind her on the wall. Short and heavy-set, going back decades. Completely gray, which was relatively new, though the full beard had led the way back when he’d been a mere stripling at forty.
For this mission, he’d dug out his favorite cap, the one that made folks think he was a fishing boat captain, possibly retired, though the blue eyes were still shrewd.
The woman gasped and twitched as the contents of the wallet became clear. How often did the Fribourg Empire send a diplomat to the offices of a small publishing house without warning? Hardly ever. Doubly so in Salonnia.
The papers might say diplomatic service, but the woman stared at him like she knew the truth.
But then, this was not the first time this particular company had gotten their hands on…certain literary events that perhaps should not have seen the light of day.
Emil smiled at her, prompting her as one pretty hand had half started across to the intercom on her desk.
She completed the motion.
“Mr. Constanz?” she said into the handset she held to her ear like a life preserver. “Sir, there’s a man to see you. A Mr. Emil Yankov…No, sir…Yes, sir…I think he’s a spy.”
Emil nodded again. She was brighter than she looked. Or more jaded. He supposed the publishing industry would sour one fairly quickly on human nature.
Still, that would make everything easier for everyone.
She replaced the handset and handed him back the wallet.
“He’ll be right up, Mr. Yankov,” she said warily.
“Thank you,” he nodded, stepping back and finding a spot on one of the two couches he had largely ignored earlier.
Leather. Worn with age and countless bodies scraping across them. Originally a mustard color, perhaps, faded now to something a little more yellow than his Anglo skin. Perhaps what you might find in Corynthe, were this office moved wholesale.
The door behind the receptionist opened quickly and a middle-aged progressive liberal male stood there. Once, probably a college radical. Two decades since had introduced him to the realities of the world, but Jan Constanz had only tempered his tendencies, according to all the files Salonnian Intelligence kept on the man.
Emil had memorized those yesterday when he arrived on planet.
Constanz scowled when he looked this way. Emil wasn’t dressed in a snappy suit and tie. Instead, heavy slacks of a tough canvas in faded tan. White shirt with a standing collar. Jacket rather than a blazer, because he wasn’t here to charm you with his wit and fashion sense.
Plus, Constanz wasn’t that kind of publisher.
Emil rose and studied the man neutrally.
“Salonnia?” Constanz asked.
“Imperial Fribourg,” Emil replied, placing everything on the battleground up front, in case Constanz had any doubts.
“Let’s talk in my office,” the man said. “Amy, hold all calls.”
Emil followed Constanz back into a warren of desks, cubicles, offices, and stacks of bankers boxes that probably held manuscripts never quite thrown away. Nor important enough to store offsite.
They ended up in an office no larger than the three others along the alleyway leading to it, with the corner seemingly a conference room. Emil noted that facet of the man’s personality and took a spot on the clean chair, the other one having been precariously buried under stacks of…things. Paper and books for the most part.
“Jan Constanz.”
“Emil Yankov.”
“Are you here to shut us down, Yankov?” Constanz began as he sat.
“Not yet,” Emil answered.
It cost him nothing to be honest with some of his answers. Fewer miscalculations later that way.
“I presume a spy within my employees?” Constanz nodded.
Emil shrugged.
“Perhaps a concerned citizen might be a better nomenclature,” he offered. “Someone willing to whisper in certain ears when they saw something that might be a problem.”
“I assume you’re here about the Rojas manuscript?” Constanz continued.
Emil nodded.
“We have Chapter Three now,” the little rabble rouser said with a smile. “Her first decade in the industry, so to speak, when she was largely used as a honeypot to trap enemy agents because her superiors didn’t put any faith in the woman’s intelligence. From there, certain assassinations and governments overthrown, both Salonnian and elsewhere.”
Emil shrugged. He already had a low opinion of his Salonnian counterparts. Junior partners who were very much junior. And exceptionally sexist, but that was the nature of Salonnian culture. Fribourg wasn’t much better, but perhaps a bit more paternalistic.
Still, Emil had done similar things when he was younger, ordering pretty female agents to fuck their way into position to betray a target later. He himself been ordered to seduce a variety of victims as well.
It was an ugly, soul-crushing line of work if you had any hopes about the nature of humanity.
Fortunately, none of that kept him awake at night.
“So what does Imperial Intelligence wish to communicate?” Constanz asked. “We’re within our legal rights to publish the book. And it’s not like I’m the only person she’s mailing these packets to.”
“Understood,” Emil agreed, placing things on the chessboard. “And no doubt you will make arrangements to print at a facility somewhere else in secrecy, rather than one of your main ones, against the risk of a warehouse fire destroying everything.”
Constanz nodded warily. The man had played all manner of games with the local junior varsity over the last decade or more. He had never had something explosive enough that the Emperor might grow concerned.
This was a larger—and far more dangerous—game.
“What happens if she does not deliver the full manuscript?” Emil inquired.
“Chapter Two is missing three pages,” Constanz said, reaching into the pile off to his right and pulling out a thin folder that he handed across the desk to Emil’s clutching hands. “Those are the ones that actually name names and provide the sorts of precise details that transform this beyond a case of prosecutable libel. Chapter Three is the same way.”
Emil didn’t bother to hide his grimace as he flipped through the document, noting the gaps in the numbering.
“And all of the following persons were present at the meeting on August Fourth at Bureau Headquarters in Azgon when the final decisions was made to…”
Yes. Explosive. Careers would be ruined. Syndicates would be materially damaged, because politicians that they owned might be destroyed. Might even be prosecuted, depending.
Much of what intelligence agencies did was generally accepted under unwritten agreements of behavior, but not all of it was fully legal.
And the mob was an unforgiving jury.
He made to hand the folder back.
“That’s your copy,” Constanz waved him off. “I have been expecting someone to arrive. As to your question, I cannot publish the manuscript until it is complete. You know that. Those gaps open me up to government censure if I tried. Criminal charges sufficient to shut me down for good. However, once I have them, then I will rush it to print. The government might try to suppress, but prior censorship laws favor me, as the oligarchs would rather be able to go after someone for libel and slander than keep them from talking. Better penalties.”
“And if they did prevent publication somehow?” Emil asked.
Constanz was sharper than the file suggested. Or better prepared for such a thing.
“You can possibly prevent Salonnian publication, Agent Yankov,” Constanz laughed. “As noted, she sent it somewhere in Fribourg, too. Also Aquitaine, Lincolnshire, and Corynthe, plus who knows where else. I doubt that you can get them all, at which point smugglers will come into play, hauling pallets of books in hidden compartments and selling them like illegal liquors from back alleys.”
It was Emil’s turn to grimace. Salonnia was the galactic hub of smuggling, mostly because the oligarchs and Syndicates liked it that way. And it served Fribourg’s purposes as well. Not everything needed to be taxed at punishing rates.
He wondered if that perception was going to bite them all in the ass this time.
“Would you be offended if I asked you to keep providing me copies as they came in?” Emil asked grimly.
“If it keeps you folks from breaking in here at night and making a mess of things, that would be the better option,” Constanz replied.
Emil nodded and handed the man a business card with local information for Borlait.
He wasn’t Salonnian. The failure of the locals to handle something like this woman wasn’t going to reflect on him. Imperial Intelligence had sent Emil to locate the woman behind this mess herself, because she very obviously knew far more about the inner workings of the Salonnian Intelligence Bureau than supposed. And knew about things that Emil was fairly certain hadn’t been communicated at any point to his superiors on St. Legier.
His bosses wanted to capture her so they could know what other information the woman contained.
Failing that, they wanted her eliminated before Aquitaine could get to her.