Bernard was nodding but with evident reservations. “True,” he agreed. “But it’s up in the ship, not down here. And it must be strongly protected. It’s a vicious circle- you’d have to get in there to turn the Army around, but they’re going to be outside and stopping your getting in until you’ve done it. 110w can you break out of it?”
“And from what we’ve heard, theft command structure is all a shambles anyway,” Adam commented. “Could a penetration operation like that be organized now?’
Colman had been expecting something like that. “I know one unit of the Army that could do it,” he said. “And they operate best when nobody’s trying to organize them.”
“Which one is that?’ Leon asked from the screen, sounding dubious but also interested.
Colman grinned faintly and gestured across the room. “The same one that brought you Veronica and Celia.”
A gleam of hope had come into Lechat’s eyes. “Do you really think they might be able to pull something off?”
“If anyone could, they could,” Veronica said from across the room. ‘That bunch could clean out Fort Knox without anyone knowing.”
“She’s right,” Celia agreed simply.
Everybody looked at Colman again, this time with a new interest. A different mood was taking bold of the room, and it was affecting the people on the screen, who were leaning forward and listening intently. So far it was just an idea, but already it was beginning to hook all of them.
Bernard was rubbing his lip slowly as he thought about it. He caught Lechat’s eye and appeared worried. “The message would have to go out live from there,” he said slowly.
“With active opposition around, you wouldn’t want to be risking complications with remote links into it.” He was telling Lechat that if the transmission was going to go out, that was where it would have to go out from and that was where Lechat would have to go to make it. But more to the point, as Lechat well knew, Bernard was saying that Celia would have to go there too; what she had to say couldn’t come second-hand through anybody else.
Lechat pursed his lips for a second, and then nodded curtly. “It do it,” he said simply. He averted his eyes for a moment longer, and then looked across at Celia. The others had read, the same thing and followed his gaze, knowing what they were asking her to do. Colman could see the torment in her eyes as she looked back at Lechat. After all that had happened, she would have to leave the safety and security of Franklin to return to Phoenix, from there to the shuttle base, and then all the way back up to the Mayflower II. There was no other way.
Celia was already prepared for it. She nodded. Nothing remained to be said. The room had become very quiet.
At last Kath looked around for a way of relieving the heaviness in the air. “How will you get them up to the ship?” she asked Colman.
“I’ll leave that to Sirocco,” he replied. “He’ll know more about the score at the base. We’ve had a unit there this evening, but they’re probably back by now.”
“How do you know he’ll go along with it?” Barbara asked.
“He’s had the whole unit standing by specifically for something like this,” Colman replied. “He’s waiting for news right now, that’s why I’m here.”
Celia had become very thoughtful in the last few seconds. She waited for the talking to subside for a moment, and then said, “If we have to go up to the ship anyway, it might be possible to make this far more effective than what we’ve 1been talking about so far.” She paused, but nobody interrupted. “I know where the people who have been arrested
are being held. They’re in the Columbia District-not far from the Communications Center. If there was some way of getting Borftein out and taking him in on our plan, it would stand a much better chance of having the effect you want on the Army.” Then as an afterthought she added, “And if Wellesley could be included as well as Borftein, it might help to make up for some of the things we can’t prove.” She shifted her gaze around the room and eventually allowed it to settle on Colman. “But I don’t know if something like that would be possible.”