There were ways to evacuate, and there were ways to evacuate, he thought with a slow, hungry smile. If he had to leave the equipment behind, then he could at least abandon it in a way that would give him personal satisfaction.

He opened the com room door and walked briskly down the hall. He had arrangements to make.

Chapter Fifteen

THE well-dressed man looked vaguely out of place in the luxurious office’s comfortably cushioned chair and his civilian clothing, despite his expensive tailoring. His face was dark and lean, the sort of face which has been trained to say only what its owner wants it to say, and his eyes were hard as he accepted the chilled glass and sipped. Ice rattled like brittle music as he lowered the glass, and his host sank into a facing chair and tried not to look anxious.

“I was sorry to hear about your… unanticipated problems, Mr. Canning.” The visitor’s voice was deep and well-modulated, almost gentle, but his host shifted uncomfortably. “I trust,” the visitor went on, “that they aren’t of such a nature as to interfere with our timetable?”

Wallace Canning, the People’s Republic of Haven’s consul on the planet Medusa, felt sweat bead his forehead. His guest might be in civilian clothes, but every time Canning looked at him he saw the uniform he ought to have been wearing—the green and gray uniform of a rear admiral in the People’s Navy with the hourglass and sword of Naval Intelligence.

“I can’t say for certain,” he said at length, picking his words with caution. “Everything is too up in the air and unsettled. Until we know what this Harrington is going to do next, the best we can do is guess and double-check our potential vulnerabilities.”

“I see.” The business-suited admiral leaned back in his chair, swirling his drink in his hand and listening to its icy tinkle, and pursed his lips. Canning tried not to twitch under his level regard.

“It seems to me,” the admiral resumed after a moment, “that there’s been some sloppy execution at this end, Mr. Consul. We were assured the situation was under control. Indeed, I expected this to be a routine visit to receive your final readiness report, and now I hear that you can only ‘guess’ about what the opposition is going to do next.” He shook his head. “Any covert operation has a built-in risk factor, but we’ve put too much time into this one, and Operation Odysseus is too important for guesswork or field operations that can be completely overturned by a single new factor.”

“It can’t be helped, and it’s no one person’s fault, either here or in the field,” Canning said, choosing to assume the role of a man defending his subordinates and not himself. “And the ‘single factor’ you refer to was a complete wild card no one saw coming, here or on Haven. We couldn’t see it coming, Adm—Sir, because there was absolutely no way to predict that we’d get someone like this lunatic assigned to Basilisk Station after all these years.”