“At least you got to see your own funeral,” John said.
His body-image still carried the revolver. He opened the cylinder and worked the ejector to remove the spent brass, then reloaded and clicked the weapon closed with his thumb. The action was wholly automatic, after thousands of hours of Center’s instruction—and Raj’s, too. The personality of the general gave the training an immediacy that the machine intelligence could never quite match, one that remembered the flesh and the unpleasant realities to which it was subject.
“My grandchildren were touchingly grief-stricken,” Raj said, his grin white in the dark face. “And now, back to work.”
“This is play?” John asked.
His own bedroom in the embassy complex snapped back into view; it was private, with the door locked, and big enough for his body to leap and move in puppet-obedience to what his mind perceived in Center’s training program. Experience had to be ground into the nerves and muscles, as well as the mind and memory. The rest of the staff thought he had an eccentric taste for calisthenics performed in solitude.
The phone rang, the distinctive two long and three short that meant it was from the ambassador.
John sighed silently as he picked it up. There were times when it was easier to deal with the Chosen; they were more straightforward.
* * *
Gerta found the embassy of the Land of the Chosen in the Imperial capital of Ciano reassuringly familiar, down to the turtle helmets and gray uniforms and brand-new magazine rifles of the guards at the gate. They snapped to present as her car halted; an officer checked her papers and waved her through, past two outward-bound trucks. In the main courtyard, staff were setting up fuel drums and shoveling in a mixture of file folders and kerosene distillate. The smoke was rank and black, towering up into the sky over the pollarded trees and the slate-roofed buildings. The guards at the entrance gave her a more detailed going-over.
“Captain Gerta Hosten, Intelligence Section, General Staff Office, geburtsnumero 77-A-II-44221,” she said.
“Sir,” the embassy clerk said, after a moments check of the tallysheet before him. “Colonel von Kleuron will see you immediately.”
I should hope so, Gerta thought with perfectly controlled anger as she walked through the basalt-paved lobby of the main embassy building. After dragging me out here for Fate-knows-what when the balloon’s about to go up.
It was busy enough that several times she had to dodge wheeled carts full of documents being taken down to the incinerators. Not so busy that several passersby in civilian dress didn’t do a slight check and double-take at her Intelligence flashes; probably the Fourth Bureau spooks were about as happy to see her here as they would be to invite Santander Intelligence Bureau operatives in. The air was scented with the smell of paper and cardboard burning, and with fear-sweat.
She repeated the identification procedure at the Intelligence chief’s office. This time it was a Chosen NCO who checked her against a list.
“Welcome to Ciano, Captain,” he said. “No problems at the airship port?”
“Walked straight through, barely looked at my passport,” she said. “The colonel?”
The NCO hopped up from his desk—it was covered with files being sorted—opened the door and spoke through it, then opened it fully and stepped aside.
Gerta marched through, tucked her peaked cap precisely under her left arm. Her heels clicked, and her right arm shot out at shoulder-height with fist clenched.
“Sir!”
Colonel von Kleuron turned out to be a middle-aged woman with a long face and pouches under her eyes. Her office, with its metal filing cabinets, table with a keyboard-style coding machine, and plain wooden desk, seemed to still be in full operation. All in military gray, nothing personal except a photograph of several teenage children on the desk.
“At ease, Captain,” She looked at Gerta with a slight raise of her eyebrow. “You seem to be throttling a considerable head of steam, Hosten.”
“Sir, Operation Overfall is scheduled to commence shortly. My unit is tasked with an important objective, and we’ve been training for nearly a year. Nobody’s indispensable, but I’ll be missed.”
“We should have you back shortly, Captain,” von Kleuron said. “Not to waste time: give me your appraisal of Johan—John—Hosten, your foster-brother.”