“Roland. . . . In case we end up going separate ways in all this, or maybe if we both don’t come through . . . there’s some information that I need to give you. It’s important that it doesn’t get lost.” Cade got the feeling she had been thinking hard about this. He looked over his shoulder to indicate that he was listening. Marie paused, as if searching for the right place to begin.
“Rebecca wasn’t being infiltrated so much to find me. It was the particular group I was associated with. It’s the group that was blamed for that assassination in Washington a couple of weeks back—when the Hyadean flyer was shot down. What the media are saying is all a lie. We had nothing to do with it. No part of CounterAction did. You have to believe that.”
Cade slowed his stirring, and then resumed again just in time to avoid burning the contents of the pan. That was right. . . . The ISS people who came to the house two days after it happened had told him Marie was suspected of being with the cell the Hyadean plasma weapon supposedly found its way to. With all that had been going on, he had forgotten about that connection. “A senator, wasn’t it?” he said. “Farden. . . . And some general . . . ?”
“Right. Meakes.”
“A couple of Hyadeans too.”
“They shouldn’t have been there. The targets were Farden and Meakes. The reason the cell I was with got picked was that it had been compromised somehow. Therefore, it could be targeted to be taken out. Get the idea? Nobody who had been implicated would be around to deny it. That was the intention, anyway. But we were warned ahead of time, and disbanded.”
Cade turned, frowning, as he scooped the eggs out onto the plates. “So that wasn’t what happened yesterday at wherever that call came from—where Len went?”
Marie shook her head. “That was a place in Chattanooga that we were using in transit to wherever next. But there was another man there, who went by the name Otter. He had the information on how those assassinations were really carried out. That’s the information I’m going to give you now. The more chance it has to get around, the better. His real name was Captain Wayne Reyvek of the ISS. He’d had enough of what he’d seen and decided to switch sides. They couldn’t afford to let somebody like him talk. That’s who I think Rebecca was sent to track down.”
Cade added bacon strips from a plate he had set aside earlier and sat down to pour the coffees while Marie buttered the toast. “But they set me up to lead Rebecca to you,” he pointed out. “What reason would they have to think that you and Reyvek . . . I guess he’s history now?”
“Seems like it.”
“What reason would they have to think you and he would be together?”
“I’ve been wondering that too,” Marie said. “All I can think of is that they guessed he’d be asked to compare notes with the people who were being blamed.” She shrugged. “The controllers monitoring a trace that Len took back found they had hit lucky, sent in a hit team—and you saw the cavalry heading the other way when we were leaving the motel. Guess who’d have been next.”
Cade had already figured that much out. He went over what had been said so far while he began eating his breakfast. It still didn’t make sense. “Why go to all that trouble?” he said finally. “If Reyvek knew who really did it, then presumably the ISS knew too. So why not simply go for them in the first place? Why go out of your way to lie about some other group, and then have to take them out in case they get a chance to disprove you?”
Marie sat back and smiled, as if something about the way he still couldn’t see it delighted her. “Because they did it themselves! It was engineered within the ISS! Reyvek was involved in obtaining the Hyadean plasma cannon. It came from some that disappeared in South America, were recovered but not acknowledged, and found their way into an unofficial stockpile at Fort Benning in Georgia. It was fired by a colonel called Kurt Drisson, who specializes in deniable dirty work for friends in high places. Reyvek wasn’t sure, but he believed that a financier called Casper Toddrel was behind it. Toddrel is mixed up in big land deals that are going on in Brazil and Peru. Reyvek had evidence to substantiate his story, which he mailed to a private box in Baltimore. I guess the key’s lost, but there are ways around things like that.”