Downing was too surprised to feel surprise, but clearly, Caine had come to the wrong place to make such a pronouncement: Tarasenko would never let it stand. “Come now, Caine, there’s simply no reason—”
Tarasenko did something he rarely did: he interrupted: “He’s right, Richard.”
Downing felt his palms grow suddenly cold. “Right about what?”
Caine smiled. “I’m busted.”
Tarasenko nodded. “He’s contaminated goods.”
It was moving too fast. “He’s—?”
“Compromised by having direct contact with me, particularly so soon after Nolan’s death. To any half-witted newsperson, his coming here will look like he was running back to the home office. Leaves folks wondering if he came here on his own—or if someone sent him. Someone like you, Richard, since I’d lay odds that he made sure the press saw him leaving the villa he shared with you and Nolan. And I’m guessing, in the past two days’ chaos, you haven’t had the time—and he never gave you the reason—to think to have him watched, or have his mobility restricted.” He turned to Riordan. “Damned shrewd. You’d have been pretty good at this line of work, Caine.”
“Thanks—but no thanks.”
Downing discovered he had wandered over to the chair next to Caine’s. He sat heavily. “I don’t understand.”
“You don’t understand what? Why I’d leave? Or how I got in here without an appointment?”
Downing looked at Arvid. “How did he get in to see you without an appointment?”
“Same way he’s probably going to get in just about any place he wants to for the next two or three years—twenty, if he stays in the spotlight: he just gave his name.”
“And you let him in?”
“Jesu Kristos, Richard, why the hell wouldn’t I? He shows up, unannounced, no appointment, Nolan’s recently dead, IRIS is mute: what am I supposed to think? He could be a courier with something you can’t trust to any of your remaining commlinks; he could be coming to tell me that now you had been eliminated, too, and he was the only survivor. He’s not just anyone, Richard—and these days aren’t just any days. He knew that, and therefore knew I’d open my door because I had to presume that his appearance here was necessitated by some kind of emergency. He played us both like a pair of violins, Richard.”
“And now—”
Caine shrugged. “And now, because I’ve been observed to have immediate, on-demand access to Senator Tarasenko, the press will assume that I report to him. And that connects back to you, again, since you’re also known to have a long association with the senator—and collectively, that all points to IRIS.”
“Which means that it still points to nothing: IRIS is still thoroughly secret despite its data leaks.”
“Listen, Richard, my running straight home to Senator Tarasenko like his pet dog will start at least a few of the smarter investigative reporters down the same path I followed in my own researches. They’re going to start unearthing the same ‘coincidental associations’ that I found, start making some of the same conjectures, and then start asking some of the same questions—but in public.
“However, I’ve only come here once. So if I drop off the radar—and you leave me alone—then the news media just might overlook this, or deem the evidence too thin to warrant a follow-up.”
“How kind—and condescending—of you to walk me through all the implications, Caine, but I quite understand what you’ve done. I just wonder if you understand—really understand—the consequences of your actions.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that Nolan and IRIS have been a force for good. Roll your eyes if you like, but you’ve said it yourself on occasion: if there are exosapients, then IRIS was a necessity. You don’t like our methods? Fine: neither do I. You don’t like what I do for a living? Fair enough: most days, I don’t like it much either. But does that mean it shouldn’t be done? Can we afford to hope things will just turn out all right? You’re the military analyst, writer, historian: you, above all people, should know that those who decline to take a hand in controlling events surrender the ability to influence them. And now you may have broken our one useful control mechanism.”
“Firstly, it’s not broken—not yet. And it won’t be, unless you force me back into it,” Caine countered. “But more importantly, if you had only had the common courtesy of asking me to join you—directly, without half-truths and coercion—then I would probably have volunteered to help. But you can’t force someone to become a willing volunteer for a cause. That’s not how loyalty works—and you and Nolan should have realized that.”