Or more than she thought it would be worth, anyway, she amended.

“That ‘idiot’ has plans of his own, Tom, and you know it,” she said aloud. “I still cherish hopes he’ll overstep and give me an excuse to bring the hammer down on him, but he’s getting himself well enough entrenched to make it hard. And events are going to play right into his hands if the Manties persist in blowing off the negotiations.”

“Why?” Theisman’s eyes narrowed. “Giancola’s been getting more and more pissed with the Manties for months. What makes that so much more important now?”

“The fact,” Pritchart sighed, “that, as I should hardly have to remind you, of all people, Senator Jason Giancola became a member of the Naval Affairs Committee last week.”

“Oh, crap.”

“Precisely,” the President of the Republic of Haven agreed. “It’s obvious that the good senator could hardly wait to spill the beans about Bolthole to his brother.”

“After swearing to maintain complete confidentiality!” Theisman snapped.

“Of course he did,” Pritchart agreed with a sour chuckle. “Come on, Tom! Half our new legislators are still afraid to sneeze for fear we’ll turn out to be another Committee of Public Safety after all, and the other half is trying to pursue ‘business as usual’ Legislaturalist-style. It’s just our bad luck that the Giancolas belong to the second group instead of the first. Kevin warned you there was no way Jason was going to keep his mouth shut if he learned anything Arnold could use, and you know it.”

“Yes, I do,” Theisman admitted unhappily, and ran his hands through his hair, glaring at nothing in particular for several seconds. Then he sighed and looked back at the President.

“How bad is it?” he asked.

“Not good, I’m afraid. Arnold’s been a little more circumspect about dropping hints on me than I would have expected from him, but he’s made it pretty clear he knows about the ‘black’ aspects of the budget, about the existence of the shipyards, and that you sent Shannon Foraker out to take charge of them. Whether or not he knows what’s actually going on out there is a bit more problematical, but judging from his attitude, I wouldn’t bet against it.”

“Crap,” Theisman repeated, even more sincerely, and it was his turn to lean back in his chair with a sigh.

There were very few things Rob Pierre and Oscar Saint-Just had done with which Thomas Theisman found himself in complete agreement. Operation Bolthole was one of them, although Theisman was scarcely happy about the circumstances which had made Bolthole necessary.

The thing that most amazed him about Bolthole was that Pierre and Saint-Just had managed to pull it off in near total secrecy. Theisman himself hadn’t heard so much as a whisper about it until he’d taken over as commander of Capital Fleet, and virtually no officer outside the project itself below the rank of vice admiral—and damned few senior to that—knew about it even now. Which was a state of affairs Theisman intended to preserve as long as possible.