Toddrel had arrived the day before with several others also attending the unofficial conference that Denham had arranged. The guest accommodation rivaled the best European hotels. After a champagne breakfast on a glazed veranda looking down over cataracts and greenery, he walked with the Englishman and the ISS colonel Kurt Drisson to the Hyadean hoverbus that would take them to the part of the estate where the talks would be held. With them was General Insing, who was Meakes’s replacement—hand-picked by Toddrel and his associates, far more cooperative and understanding than Meakes had been. A significant improvement in relationships with the military was expected from now on. Thoughts for the immediate moment, however, were on damage containment following the story that was breaking in the U.S. The biggest threat right now were the Californian influence peddler Cade and the CounterAction woman known as Kestrel, who had gotten away from the motel in Chattanooga minutes ahead of the security forces after killing the ISS undercover agent Ruby. It was virtually certain that Kestrel was the only surviving witness to have heard Reyvek’s story firsthand; Cade would be able to testify for her, and had possibly talked to Reyvek also, if only by phone. Producing them when the moment was right had to be what Sovereignty meant when it promised that proof of the Reyvek cover-up would be forthcoming. Hence, finding and getting to them first was imperative. Combing the Chattanooga area, and putting a watch on communications and on Cade’s listed contacts in California had turned up nothing. Some of the intelligence people working on the case wondered if the pair were still in the country.
“Cade was friends with a Hyadean political observer called Vrel at their place in Los Angeles,” Drisson told the other two. “Three days after the Chattanooga bust, Vrel took a trip to a military base near St. Louis, organized at short notice. Then, yesterday, the Hyadean records show him escorting a couple of academics, who happen to be a man and a woman, to the Hyadean mining center at Uyali in Bolivia.”
“You think it’s them?” Denham ased.
“I’d bet my next promotion on it. The names are in the system, but so far there’s been no independent corroboration that they’re real. They were accompanied on the flight by another Hyadean called Thryase, who’s a critic of their policy toward Querl and is now questioning what’s happening here. It smells from end to end.”
“Why Uyali?” Denham asked.
“Who knows? Maybe it seemed out of the way and different—the kind of place nobody would guess. And who would?”
“And she’s his ex-wife,” Toddrel grumbled. “Does that mean he’s been a source for Sovereignty all along? Didn’t it occur to anyone?”
“That’s exactly the reason Arcadia was put in there more than a year ago,” Drisson said defensively. Arcadia was the ISS’s live-in agent planted with Cade. “She never found any indication of communication between them.”
“A strange way to rekindle an old romance, then,” Toddrel commented. “So where are Vrel, this other Hyadean, and the academics now?”
“If they’ve left Uyali, the vehicle they used isn’t registering,” Drisson said. “We’re giving it maximum effort. The minute anything comes up, I’ll be informed.”
“So is Arcadia still there—at the house in Los Angeles?” Insing asked.
“For the present, yes.”
“Isn’t that risky? They must know now about Ruby. If she was supposed to have been an old friend of Arcadia, that implicates Arcadia too.”
“Right now, the group in Uyali are the only ones who know,” Drisson said.
“All they have to do is get a message back to LA.”
“And what would the people there do? Cade’s friends are just good at making money. And Hyadean clerks?” Drisson shook his head. “This isn’t their line of business. If they’re onto her, Arcadia will know in time to get out. In the meantime, with all the uncertainty out there, she’s still a valuable resource. She’s also the bait if we’re wrong about Cade and Kestrel, and they show up there again suddenly.”
“It still sounds like a hell of a risk,” Insing said heavily. “I read Kestrel’s profile. She’s good. And she has a big score to settle here.”