CHAPTER SIXTEEN

No physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion, may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever. Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted, subjected to neural probing, or exposed to any unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind. At all times their mental integrity shall go unviolated.

—from “Protocol VII additional to the Geneva Convention, 2246”

AUGUST KARSH turned around upon hearing Clender enter his office. His assistant said nothing, but everything about him exuded a barely repressed excitement. His eyes fairly gleamed with joy, and his lips were literally twitching. For a moment, they stared at each other, savoring the moment. Then Clender couldn't stand it any longer and broke into a broad smile.

“We got her!”

Karsh gripped the arms of his chair and did his best to maintain a level voice. “Myranda Flare was captured?” The news sounded too good to be true, but he knew Clender would have repeatedly confirmed a matter of such import before coming to him with it.

Clender nodded vigorously. “The message just came through. A local policeman took her down with a stunner before she could make any move to escape.”

“Is the identification positive?”

“Absolutely, August. Well, it's as certain as it can be without DNA verification! There's no doubt about it. She was hiding in a gentleman's club. She took a job there as one of the dancers. I've dispatched some of the images we have of her from our agents on Nizhni-Rostov and we're still waiting on the response, but there isn't much doubt. She matched the description right down to the XSB interface in one of her fingers on her left hand.”

“Excellent!” Karsh said. “But I don't want anyone to interrogate her in any way. We don't want her near any machines and we certainly don't dare hook her up to any interrogation systems. She needs to be held in complete isolation at all times!”

“That was the standing order,” Clender confirmed. “But I will reiterate it just in case anyone gets too curious.”

“If anyone violates the protocol we've laid out for her, I'll have them skinned and salted, then impaled on the spire of this building as a lesson to future generations!”

“I'll reiterate the order,” Clender repeated. “No one is going to screw this one up, August. They wouldn't dare! Now, if Daniela can only come through with the Dai Zhani agents, we'll be able to start sleeping again at night.”

“I could use a night without nightmares of Sol going nova,” Karsh said. He smiled. Flare captured! Once more, he'd locked horns with Golem Gregor and come out on top. Karsh leaned back in his seat, feeling the heady flush of victory. He hadn't expected it to come so suddenly. Or, he reflected, so easily. And catching her alive to boot! That was the real victory. Despite the vast dragnet that had been unleashed, he'd fully reconciled himself to the horrific necessity of destroying Terentulus.

To know that one need not have the blood of 4.1 million innocent human beings on one's hands was a tremendous relief.

“Tell me about it,” he ordered.

“She landed under the name of Dana Smithson, just as we expected,” explained Clender. “Our agents picked up the trail within a day or two of her arrival. She didn't make a particularly serious attempt to cover her tracks.”

“Was she that careless?” Karsh asked incredulously.

“Not careless per se,” Clender hastened to clarify, “but she suffered some rather bad luck.”

“How so?”

“The gentleman's club in which she chose to hide was under surveillance by the local police. Apparently the owner was dealing in illegal hardware that violated the tech level. One of the undercover agents who was infiltrating the establishment identified her as one of the grav dancers.”

“A woman of more talents than we suspected. Did she try to make any contacts while she was there?”

“No sign of any,” answered Clender.

“Did they catch her sleeping.”

Clender shook his head. “No, she was actually in zero-G at the time of the raid. I suppose it's a little difficult to run when you're weightless, half-naked, and upside-down.”

The director burst out laughing. “Yes, I would imagine so. I have to admit, it was a clever hiding place on a world like that. We can't take too much credit for this one, I'm afraid. Lady Fortune appears to have favored us indeed.”

“I still can't believe it!” Clender shook his head.

“Has the High Admiral been informed? No? York should know of this development immediately.”

“I'll arrange for the call as soon as I leave your office, August.”

“Good. I hope they've got her on a fast ship here. Flare was the key operative, to be sure, but we still don't know how she intended to get the information from Li-Hu's men.”

“We'll wring it out of her,” Clender replied confidently.

“So long as we can keep her from suiciding.” Karsh swung around in his chair, gazing out at the golden sun as Clender waited silently. A thought nagged at him. They had Flare now, but her actions didn't make sense, none of them. Or did they? It certainly wasn't like Flare to make such a fatal misstep, however fortuitous the arrest. And grav-dancing? He shook his head, thinking that he couldn't remember a time when he'd been so baffled at the end of a case.

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