“Thank you, Member President.”

“Now, leave us. We have other business to discuss.”

“Yes, Member President.” It must be from old war movies that Ockham learned to click his heels like that, so the clean metal frames which vein his deerskin boots sing like chimes.

Andō breathed a long sigh, shifting from a formal to a friendly posture as Ockham latched the door behind him. In fact they all shifted, shoulders stretching, hips relaxing, legs sprawled at ease, postures of comfort, now that the subordinate was no longer there to make them wear their masks.

Speech did not change so fast. “I must clear this possible hit with the other seven Directors,” Andō began, “but they’re in no position to argue at the moment.”

Perry frowned. “Seven? You still haven’t told Director Bandyopadhyay about O.S.?”

“Nor do I intend to,” the Chief Director answered stonily. “Greenpeace was not part of this arrangement before the merger, and is not now.”

Prime Minister Perry leaned back with a hissing sigh. “I still think it’s risky trying to conceal O.S. from one of your Nine Directors, while all the others know. Any one of them could tip off Bandyopadhyay, and earn a lot of favors in return. If you tell them yourself, you get the favors.”

Andō’s eyes narrowed. “Your lack of confidence in my fellow Directors verges on insult, Perry. The Greenpeace-Mitsubishi merger was a source of strength, not weakness, and we have kept Greenpeace Directors successfully at arm’s length for more than sixty years. Do not presume our strat balance is as deceitful and self-defeating as your own.”

The European sighed contrition. “I’m sorry if it seemed like a criticism. I just meant it as advice, really. Things are much more peaceful and manageable on my end now that I’ve told the rest of my coalition leadership about O.S. It’s united us, both with the feeling that we have an extra tool in our belts, and with the knowledge that, if one of us sells out, we all go down.”

Ganymede’s gold brows knit. “You told your entire coalition about O.S.?”

Perry adjusted the Polish strat band around his upper arm. “Why not? I’ve been head of the Special Means Committee for almost twenty years; most of my close allies either knew or suspected what that really meant. It was an administrative nightmare operating O.S. when it had to be secret from the Prime Minister, the Commission, the European Council, and my own personal coalition. Now that His Inconveniently Catholic Majesty isn’t in charge anymore, there’s no reason to keep things so compartmentalized.”

The Duke’s light fingers trembled. “You’re talking about how many allies here? Five? Ten?” He waited. “Twenty?” Still no nod. “More?”

“Most of my coalition already knew. It was no end of difficulty trying to run Europe’s end of O.S. alone while Spain was Prime Minister, trying to guess what the Hive needed when most of our leadership didn’t know I was important enough to bother informing of pending trouble. I had to have allies who knew, just to have enough ears to the ground to know when to act. Andō does the same.”