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  "You can literally get almost anything you want on Havanagas," Chief Long said.

  "Yes, gentlemen," Madame Chang-Sturdevant said, "I know some of the details. But Havanagas operates legitimate business enterprises too, all legally chartered, taxpaying ventures that cater to the perfectly natural desire of people to enjoy themselves in a pleasant atmosphere. Havanagas is a resort world, and millions enjoy vacations there every year. When was the last time either of you watched Barkspiel, gentlemen?"

  Nast grimaced. The syndicated quiz show was watched avidly by billions of people throughout Human Space. It offered its contestants, ordinary working men and women, the chance for instant riches. All they had to do was answer correctly a set of very simple questions while revealing the most intimate details about their personal lives. The prizes were so huge nobody could blame a miner from Diamunde, or a waitress on Wanderjahr, for instance, for divulging the details of their sex lives to hundreds of millions of other people. The show ran on dozens of worlds, each with its own host. The contestants, men and women perfectly groomed, were ageless personalities virtually worshiped by their audiences. And the Grand Prize on each show was an all-expense-paid, top-of-the-line month-long vacation on Havanagas.

  "Gentlemen," Chang-Sturdevant continued, "in this regard, our policy toward Havanagas is ruled by show biz. Shut it down and," she shrugged, "I take heat I don't need. Running the Confederation Council is work enough by itself, I don't need legitimate investors and a trillion fans screaming for my head because I've ruined their fantasy. Shut Havanagas down, no; clean it up, yes. And I don't want anyone to know about it. And if things go bad, I've got to be able to deny my administration had anything to do with it. You take the heat if the operation blows up. I hate to say that, gentlemen, but to survive in politics sometimes you have to lie or sacrifice your loyal supporters."

  Nast and Long exchanged glances. They nodded; losing their jobs would be worth it if they could clean up Havanagas.

  "Also, gentlemen," the president continued, "don't forget there is a highly fragmented, indigenous resistance movement on Havanagas, people who want the mob out of their lives. They're not in the majority and they are largely ineffective, but the movement is alive. They could complicate things. They will want to fill the void when the mob bosses are gone. Have you thought about that, Mr. Nast?"

  "My plan will be executed with utter discretion, ma'am," he replied. "I call it ‘Operation Hangfire’ and—"

  Chang-Sturdevant raised an eyebrow, "‘Hangfire,’ did you say? Translation, please!"

  "Oh, sorry, ma'am. The expression goes back to the days of gunpowder firearms and literally means a cartridge that does not fire immediately. But in another sense it means a slow and deadly reaction, and that's what Operation Hangfire will be to the mob."

  "Thank you, Thom." Chang-Sturdevant smiled. "Please continue."

  "Well, you mentioned the resistance movement, ma'am, the Havanagas Liberation Front, it's called. I am going to use it to rid Havanagas of the mobsters. And to answer your other question, no, ma'am, I hadn't thought about who'll run the place afterward. But shouldn't that be left up to the citizens of Havanagas and the legitimate stockholders in the enterprises that support the world's economy? I assure you, we can pull this off without destroying Havanagas or embarrassing your administration in the process."

  "How?" Chang-Sturdevant and Long asked at the same time. They looked at each other and laughed. "How, Mr. Nast?" the president asked.

  "By snatching the leadership. I don't need convincing evidence of all their crimes, only one, and when I've got it I can take them all into custody. Many great criminal leaders over the centuries have been destroyed because they were convicted of relatively minor felonies. Tax evasion is one. As soon as I have the hard evidence I need, I'll take them." Briefly he explained how he would do it. "You see," he concluded, "the plan is flexible."

  Chang-Sturdevant and Long were silent for a moment, thinking. "It might work," Long said at last. He sighed and shifted his bulk in his chair. But it might not work, he reminded himself. "Larry, I think I'll have that drink now."

  "Very good, sir. I recall you enjoy bourbon with a dash of distilled water?"

  "Today, I want a cold Reindeer. Don't leave a head on it, Larry."

  "Tell me this, Mr. Nast," Chang-Sturdevant said. "I appreciate your coming here and briefing me on this plan, and I support everything you wish to do. But otherwise, why do you need special help from my office? This whole operation is something you can handle within the Ministry of Justice."

  "I was getting to that, ma'am," Nast replied. "I need your help because I need you to order the Commandant of the Confederation Marine Corps to detail three men to me—no explanation offered—to be my special undercover agents on Havanagas. They will make contact with my one agent who has the goods on the mob and the resistance. Discharged Marines, spending their savings on liberty on Havanagas, it's perfect cover. Here," he continued as he loaded a crystal into a reader, "I've got the files on the three men I want for this operation."

  Madame Chang-Sturdevant gasped. "I know these men, two of them anyway!"

  Chief Long gave Nast a long and thoughtful look before announcing that he too knew lance corporals Joe Dean and Rachman Claypoole. "They worked with me on Wanderjahr, Thom," he said. "Damned good men, but..." He was now having doubts about the success of Nast's plan.

  "Mr. Nast, these men saved the life of an ambassador on Diamunde," Madame Chang-Sturdevant said. "I will not have them sacrificed to bring down the syndicate on Havanagas. I will not!"

  Nast had not anticipated Chang-Sturdevant 's reaction. He'd picked Dean and Claypoole because they were brave and resourceful young men, and both Chief Long and the president knew them. He thought this would increase their confidence in his choice of the Marines for the mission.

  "Madame President, I fully understand how you feel," he said. "I picked these men because they have the qualities needed to pull this operation off and survive. They will be under the guidance of Corporal Pasquin, who is a brave and resourceful NCO, but the two lance corporals, Dean and Claypoole, can think on their feet too. They have all been under fire. Ma'am, you know how desperate the fighting was on Diamunde. Dean and Claypoole were in the thick of it. That's what Marines do, they go into tough situations and survive. The Corps will send them into battle again and again as long as they wear the uniform. Like beat cops, they swear an oath to put themselves in harm's way to protect those who can't protect themselves. They are trained to take care of each other. That technique has worked to help Marines survive over the centuries. It'll work with these three men on Havanagas too. I need them for this operation, ma'am. It won't work without them."

  Chang-Sturdevant was silent for a long time. "Can you guarantee me their safety?" she asked at last.

  Before he could reply, Chief Long answered the question: "No, we can't. But as Thom just pointed out, Madame President, they are aces at survival." Long had concluded that if Nast thought these men were good enough to make his plan work, then he would support it.

  "I will personally monitor the entire operation, ma'am," Nast added. "I'll be with the reaction teams. We'll go in at the first sign the Marines have been compromised."

  Again Madame Chang-Sturdevant was silent. At last she said, "Guarantee me one thing, gentlemen. You will not sugar-coat this mission. You will tell them just how dangerous it can be. Give them the option of refusing to go."

  Nast sighed mentally with relief. "Yes, Madame President, I promise you I will do that," he pronounced gravely.

  "Well, your time is up, gentlemen." She stood up and her visitors did the same. "I have to prepare for a reception for the new ambassador from Ivanosk. Keep me briefed on this operation, Chief. I'll tell my secretary you get in to see me whenever you have news."

  They were halfway to the door when the President stopped them. "One more question: Why did you pick three Marines, Thom? Why not two or four?"

  Nast had not expected th
e question, but he was ready, "Well, three is the normal composition of a fire team, ma'am, and these three men were in the same fire team. They know how to work together."

  "And," Chief Long added, "Havanagas is only one world. If we'd wanted to clean up two worlds, we'd have picked four Marines instead of only three."

  Madame Chang-Sturdevant was still chuckling as she prepared for the reception. She pondered what it was Thom Nast had wanted to "share" with her besides that Fidel. She had not survived in Confederation politics without knowing just what it was her enemies—and her allies—were saying about her.

  "Thom," Long said as they entered the elevator, "let's stop in one of those cafés on the plaza. I'm feeling better now and I want to eat something that doesn't have a damned bug in it."

  They retrieved their weapons at the security station and started across the plaza toward a row of shops and cafés three hundred meters from the elevator bank.

  "Mr. Nast? Mr. Nast?" someone called from behind them. Nast turned. A tall man was approaching them, an off-worlder by his clothing. "I have important news for you, sir," he said as he drew back his coat and leveled a black tubular object at Nast. Nast dived for the ground as Chief Long flung his overcoat at the assassin. There was a stunning flash-bang. Razor-sharp titanium slivers from a flechette round struck sparks off the flagstones of the plaza before ricocheting into the crowd. Firing upward from where they lay on the ground, Nast and Long simultaneously sent plasma bolts through the man's chest. The bolts burned through and dissipated harmlessly into the air as he crumpled into a lifeless, smoldering heap.

  The plaza turned into a madhouse as hundreds of people ran for cover, some with slight wounds from the flechettes. Others were injured in the mad rush for safety. Security police, weapons at the ready, rushed to where the trio lay sprawled on the ground.

  Nast tossed his pistol to the ground and stood up, his hands raised over his head. "We are police officers!" he shouted.

  "Turn around! On your knees! Hands behind the back of your head!" one of the officers shouted, his weapon leveled directly at Nast. Nast assumed the position. "Cross your feet at the ankles!" the officer shouted. Nast complied. "Don't move!" Another officer covered Nast while the first holstered his pistol, kneeled on his legs and snapped on the cuffs. He assisted him to stand up. "Do you have any other weapons on you?"

  "No, sir, and if you reach into the inside left pocket of my coat, officer, you'll find my credentials. That fat man on the ground is the Confederation Attorney General. The dead man is a hired assassin. Now would you mind uncuffing me?"

  "I'm hit," Long said from where he still lay, a pool of blood seeping out from under his legs. "Some of those goddamned flechettes got me in the legs. ‘Fat man?’" he groaned. "I'll show you ‘fat,’ you young whippersnapper," he mumbled. Emergency medical personnel were already attending to his wounds. "Hell, I'm all right!" Long shouted. "See to those civilians!"

  "No, you aren't," a medic replied. "Lay still. Don't worry about the civilians."

  As the first policeman uncuffed Nast, another came up to where they stood. He had retrieved the assassin's gun. "It's a Brady Shot Rifle," he announced. "Modified with a three-round tube magazine and the barrel cut down to thirty-five centimeters. Very deadly and very professional."

  "Yeah," a third officer said, "but not professional enough." He nodded toward the still smoldering corpse.

  "He probably had to be sure of his target," Nast said. "Otherwise he'd have shot us in the back from three meters and that would've been it. We were damned lucky."

  "I'm very sorry, Mr. Nast," the first policeman said as he returned the handcuffs to his carrier. "We didn't know who you were." He handed him his credentials and his weapon.

  "No problem," Nast said. What the police officers had put him through was only normal procedure to ensure their safety in a potentially deadly situation. He'd have done the same thing himself. "Who's your station commander? I want a full check on this guy, find out all you can about him." It would probably be useless; they'd find nothing on him, but the checks had to be run anyway. Maybe they'd get lucky again. He turned his attention to Chief Long. "Chief, how you doing?"

  "So I'm a ‘fat man,’ huh?" Long groused. "I heard you! Bugged, given the shits, shot, and now insulted, all in one day! You haven't got many points left with me, Nast."

  Nast smiled. "I apologize, Chief. You are not fat, Chief, only lipoid."

  "That's more like it. Doc, how am I doing?"

  "You have some nasty lacerations in your lower legs, sir, but we'll have you back out on the street in a few hours. Gotta transport you to the hospital, though." He signaled for a litter from the waiting ambulance.

  Long reached up and tugged Nast's sleeve anxiously. "Thom," he whispered, "they're on to you, lad. They know you're up to something. Be careful. Be careful!" he shouted as he was carried off to the ambulance.

  After giving instructions to the officer in charge, Nast asked one of the security officers for a ride to the hospital.

  It had been a long time since he had felt real fear. He didn't have time to be afraid during the shooting, but Long was right, the mob knew he was on to them, and that knowledge struck fear into him.

  "That was some good shooting back there," the officer remarked as they drove through the tunnel complex to the infirmary. Nast fingered the butt of the hand-blaster under his left armpit and smiled. The hand-blaster he could trust—always. He could trust Chief Long too—and those three Marines, he could trust them. But that was it.

  Of course, whatever agents had been following them, including the dead man, must have talked, but none of them knew anything about his plan. So the syndicate on Havanagas had to know he was looking at them. He thought of the murdered agent and the fear melted away, to be replaced with anger. Thom Nast was too professional to give in to emotion easily, but he was mad, and that was a bad sign for the mob.

  Chapter Four

  Brigadier Theodosius Sturgeon, commander of 34th FIST, pondered the data on his desk display for a time, then swiveled his chair to face the window overlooking the parade ground, where two company-size units were going through close-order drill. Normally Sturgeon watched them closely and made mental notes, but he didn't focus on them this time; his mind was on the data he'd just studied, twisting its way through it, trying to make sense of the numbers and find meaning in their implications.

  Knuckles rapped sharply on the frame of his office door.

  "Come," he said without looking to see who was there. Footsteps crossed his office floor and came to a stop on the other side of his desk.

  "Speak." He still didn't look to see who his visitor was.

  "I take it you looked at that data," said Colonel Ramadan, 34th FIST's Chief of Staff.

  Sturgeon turned to face his visitor and lifted a hand to indicate he should sit. Ramadan settled himself in the nearest chair and looked expectantly at his commander.

  "What do you make of it?" Sturgeon asked.

  Ramadan shrugged. "Somebody at HQMC G-1 slipped up." He thought that an unlikely possibility. The G-1, personnel department, at Headquarters Marine Corps on Earth was more efficient about some things than field commanders would wish, and they weren't known for slipping up on routine matters, especially priority routine matters. "Or something's going on that nobody's seen fit to tell us." That, he thought, was more likely.

  "How long ago did you notice this anomaly?"

  "Lieutenant Wakenstrudl brought it to my attention a month ago." Wakenstrudl was Sturgeon's F-1, the FIST personnel officer. "I wanted to see what I could find out before I brought it to your attention."

  Sturgeon cocked an eyebrow. "You found out something already?" Communication between worlds was slow, messages could only go via faster-than-light starcraft and their delivery had to take into account transportation schedules. One month wasn't anywhere near enough time for a query to reach Earth from Thorsfinni's World, the home of 34th FIST, much less for a reply to make its way back.
/>   Ramadan shook his head. "I waited for the next courier. One came yesterday." He chuckled. "That lieutenant is probably still quaking from the grilling he got from a colonel."

  Sturgeon waited, no need to ask the obvious. Ramadan clearly hadn't gotten any information from the courier that wasn't in the dispatches and orders he carried, information and orders that didn't address the anomaly he'd discovered.

  Ramadan had nothing more to say, and outwaited the FIST commander.

  "Somebody's messing with my people," Sturgeon finally said. "It's incumbent on me to find out who and why."

  "Not only your people," Ramadan said. "You're past due for rotation too. So am I, for that matter."

  Sturgeon nodded. "It began with third platoon, Company L of the infantry battalion. Then the rest of Company L, the infantry battalion's command element, and a platoon in Dragon Company. It includes you, me, and Sergeant Major Shiro. There have been no routine changes of duty station in that group in up to a year and a half." He paused and recalled the data. "That clerk, Corporal Doyle, the one we shipped out a couple of months ago, he's the only man from Company L who has rotated in quite a long time."

  "You'll remember, sir, we shipped Corporal Doyle out pending orders."

  "Right." Sturgeon nodded. "That was a tough one. His first sergeant wanted to court-martial him for insubordination, and an army general wanted to give him a medal for the same action." He shook his head. Some problems defied rational solution. Well, that problem had been solved: no court-martial, no medal. The brigadier returned to the immediate problem. "Furthermore, there have been no routine rotations in any element of the FIST during the past four months. Four months. Have you ever seen a FIST go four months without anybody being transferred out?"

  "Nossir. Except for a few times on major deployments." Colonel Ramadan snorted. "I've even seen men yanked out of units on combat deployment for routine changes of duty