He rose and reached for his uniform trousers.

Chapter Eighteen

“JESUS Christ, Westerfeldt! What the hell did you think you were doing?!”

Wallace Canning crouched forward over his desk, hands braced on its blotter as if he meant to leap over it and physically attack the man standing in front of it. His face was congested with fury and his eyes blazed, but Colonel Bryan Westerfeldt stood his ground.

“I didn’t do anything,” he replied. He spoke quietly, but there was an edge to his voice—not quite a tremble, but an edge—which suggested he was less calm than he appeared.

“Well somebody fucking well did!” Canning spat. “You stu—!”

He shut his mouth with a click, dragging himself back under control, and forced himself back into his chair. Westerfeldt started to speak, but the savage chop of a hand cut him off, and Canning closed his eyes. He inhaled deeply, tension shuddering in his muscles, and made himself think.

Thank God the admiral had departed for the Republic before this fiasco exploded! He swallowed a bitter, half-hysterical giggle at his own choice of verb, and opened his eyes. All their careful work, their cover plan at the lab, the false records—all of it—for nothing. For worse than nothing. The NPA would never rest now that the “criminals” had murdered almost sixty of its field agents! And if they didn’t find the false trail they were supposed to find, they might—

“All right,” he grated more calmly. “I’m waiting. What happened and how?”

“I passed the initial warning to Summervale, exactly as we discussed,” Westerfeldt said in a very careful voice. “As you know, we had to warn him, since he already knew we were wired into the NPA. If he hadn’t gotten any advance warning at all, Isvarian and Matsuko would have smelled a rat for sure when they interrogated his people after the bust and found out ‘the Organization’ hadn’t even tried to save their operation, and—”

“I know why we decided to warn him,” Canning interrupted coldly. “But I also know you weren’t supposed to actually tell him the raid was coming. Damn it, Colonel—they were supposed to get caught!”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, Sir,” Westerfeldt said almost desperately. “I didn’t warn them about the actual raid. I never sent them a word about it!”

“What?” Canning tipped his chair back with an abrupt movement and glared at his subordinate. “Then how did they know?”

“I can only speculate, Sir, but Summervale did think he was in charge of security. If you want it, my best guess is that he had his own spotters out to give him a second information source. They must have tipped him Isvarian was coming, because I certainly didn’t!”

“But why in hell did he blow the lab?” Canning complained in a less angry, almost querulous voice. “We never told him to do that!”

“That… may have been my fault, after all, Sir,” Westerfeldt admitted unhappily. “He asked me what to do with the hardware, and I didn’t give him specific orders.” Canning glared at him, and Westerfeldt’s own resentment flared. “Damn it, Sir—I thought he’d try to just cut and run! Why shouldn’t I have? I didn’t know what kind of lunatic he was! Ambassador Gowan’s people recruited him on Manticore; if they knew he was that kind of loose warhead, they never should have gone anywhere near him, however good or politically embarrassing his credentials were!”