Emmerich Wachturm looked at the pile of five-ring binders holding down the conference table, separating him from the four men seated down both sides. They wore the uniform of the Imperial Fleet, but weren’t his people, except in the extreme abstract.
He would be hard-pressed to remember their faces tomorrow. Spies were generally chosen for that characteristic, among others. All the best intelligence operatives were unremarkable, forgettable people, existing in shades of gray, even the analysts who took the thousands of raw reports, mostly snippets of conversations and fragments of documents, and turned them into infuriatingly-ambiguous recommendations.
He reached out a hand and touched the pile, mostly reassuring himself of its immense solidity. After a year, these men had gotten better about just reporting what they knew and not worrying that he would be offended by the results. Both of Em’s predecessors as Imperial Grand Admiral, his cousins Hans Huff and Kunibert Marquering, had let the naval spooks and Imperial Security folks intimidate and bamboozle them.
Em had made it clear that ass-covering would be punished harder than truth. These binders held the new truth. Once those bureaucrats began to fear him.
Em smiled grimly at the men.
“Is there any good news?” he asked the eldest, a fleet captain in a spotless uniform.
“Actually, there is, sir,” the captain replied carefully. All Em ever remembered of the man was the way the gray coming in at his temples contrasted with the dark brown skin. “Since Imperial Security was untrustworthy, we were able to clean up a number of leaks and deep cover agents in the aftermath of the coup attempt last year. Additionally, several double-agents were identified and have been fed bad-enough information to cover other things.”
“And the Princess?” Em asked.
“Princess Kasimira’s journey to Aquitaine is known, but not the specifics of her mission, Admiral,” the man replied. “We don’t believe Buran even has agents there, at least not yet, and all important information is strictly need-to-know at our end.”
“So while we are confident that everything Grand Fleet does will be leaked almost immediately, we have that one ace up our sleeve?” Em asked. “That’s what we have to rely on?”
“Yes, sir,” the man nodded grimly. “They have some method of getting information back to Buran faster than should be possible, according to notes we confiscated from Admiral Dittmar’s operation. Supposedly four months round trip from their capital to ours, when it should easily be three months each way. There are theories, but anything we do to investigate them will likely tip the Sharks off, so we have waited and listened.”
“Nothing a blade in the night can solve?” Em asked.
He hated dealing with that side of his job, but history was replete with examples of a single assassination preventing a war, or ending one. It was a fact of Imperial life.
“The Emperor didn’t ask for Admiral Keller to bring a stiletto, Admiral Wachturm,” the captain said in a dark voice.
The other three men nodded. They had been the ones that had failed, even during Keller’s Raid, but nobody could have predicted Jessica Keller. Even today, the models were barely better than a coin toss. Em knew Jessica liked it that way. Worked at it.
Something else they shared.
“No,” Emmerich replied. “And if you don’t plan to eat the egg afterwards, a sledgehammer is just as effective as the edge of the pan.”
He took a deep breath and nodded.
“Thank you, gentlemen,” he continued. “I’ll take it from here. Dismissed.”
Em rose and left the mess on the table, along with the men. Nothing would depart that room except under strict guard and the watchful eyes of the four men with guns that were waiting in the hallway outside.
Even he didn’t do more than have the papers available during his weekly briefing, so that arcane and obscure points could be looked at more specifically, when questions inevitably arose.
At least the messages from Ladaux had been promising.
Jessica and her people would be leaving soon. And he would travel to meet them, rather than risk all the spies and leaks at St. Legier.
Would it be enough to save the Empire from Buran?