Fire with Fire(56)

“But you’ve got the perfect credentials and cover-story for the job. Having retired from all official posts, you’re now just a private citizen. You also happen to be a war hero who travels a lot, consulting for defense and aerospace contractors. But instead of becoming a typical spymaster, you have Downing construct a black-box organization: the Institute. Which you control from afar.”

Nolan raised one eyebrow. “To run the kind of operation you’re envisioning, you need plenty of contacts in the military, government, industry. Downing doesn’t have those contacts, Tarasenko does but is always being watched, and I’m still living too public a life.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Caine objected. “When you consider it with a properly jaded eye, your public life is not so public after all. You’ve always been a closed-door consultant, so I can’t help but wonder: during your visits, were you advising on policy—or were you dictating it? And if so, you’d also be able to use their secure channels to confer with Downing, Tarasenko, and the various section heads of IRIS’s widely distributed net of covert overseers.”

“‘Covert overseers’?”

“Of course. Practically speaking, IRIS is an invisible organization because it exists—in small, completely firewalled packages—within other organizations.”

“A very impressive hypothesis, but why all the charades, the false fronts, and—quite frankly—the subversion of public institutions?”

“Downing gave me that answer when he reanimated me last year. The raison d’être for IRIS is exosapient threats. Right after you intercepted the Doomsday Rock, we started creating the kind of space technology that would protect us from subsequent planet-killer asteroids. But what if the threat was so big that there was nothing we could do to stop it? We had to be able to get out of the way, maybe leave the Solar System—which was why you started Project Prometheus. And as you did, you thought: ‘If humans can learn to travel faster than light, other species can too.’ That’s why you created IRIS: to ensure that humanity can survive both inanimate and animate threats from space.”

Nolan reversed direction, chin raising into the direction of their stroll. “You don’t miss much.”

“I had two unfair advantages: knowing about IRIS and Downing, and then five weeks in which I had nothing to do but gather the facts and think. But I couldn’t get answers to the really important questions.”

“Which questions are those?”

“Nolan, if you had no memory of the most pivotal four days of your life, wouldn’t it be your top priority to ask questions about them, to get them back? Hell, Downing told me your agents grabbed me outside the door of your suite, and that I was behaving in a ‘suspicious manner.’ Accepting for the moment that this was true, what was I doing there? Why did I go to a place—a place I can’t even remember—that was so sensitive that it got me stuck into cold sleep for thirteen years?”

Nolan nodded. “Those are important questions, I agree. I just hope I’ll be able to provide the information you need. Our conversation a day and a half before you were cold-celled was the first, last, and only contact Richard or I had with you.”

“Then you shouldn’t have any problem sharing the records of that conversation. Or a list of my financial transactions while on the Moon. Or any of the several other dozen data trails that any visitor to Perry City can’t help leaving.”

Nolan stopped walking, faced him with a small smile that was unlike any of those Caine had seen in the media: it was gentle, maybe a bit sad. “I’m sorry, Caine, I really am—but I have to ask you to wait one more day. We can’t risk having you dig around for those records now: there’s no way of knowing where they might lead you, or how pursuing any given line of inquiry might somehow compromise all the work we’ve done to bring together the Parthenon Dialogs. But tomorrow, when the Dialogs are over—well, then it will be safe for you to seek your answers.”

“C’mon, Admiral: if I wait another day, am I really going to be that much safer?”

“Yes, absolutely.”

“What? Why?”

“Because Parthenon has already started: we met in Athens for Day One this morning.” Corcoran started strolling back to where they had begun. “Tomorrow—Day Two—is the wrap-up, here at the Temple of Poseidon.”

Caine looked sideways. “I expected that I’d be at the first day’s proceedings, since the main item on the agenda was what I found on Delta Pavonis.”