| From: | "Paul J. Adam" <shadowtk@********.demon.co.uk> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Sheraton |
| Date: | Tue, 2 Jul 1996 23:06:14 +0100 |
>>>>>[Jason, someone dropped this into my Agency mailbox. I don't know
who, either who delivered or who the parties involved were.
+++++begin video
The camera shows a hotel room, a luxurious suite at a Sheraton. As
always, it's very hard to tell which Sheraton you're in, since the
curtains are drawn. Several small lamps, and the stray threads of
sunlight through the drapes, are the only illumination.
A woman sits in one comfortable chair. Her beautifully coiffed hair is
grey, and the side of her face you can see is lined, though still
handsome. The other is hidden by a white half-mask, with not even an
eyeslit. A blanket covers her knees, and on the table in front of her is
a tea service and a tray of small sandwiches.
There is a knock, and as she turns to glance at the door you see twisted
ridges of scar tissue running from her high collar, up her neck, and
into the mask, then the door opens.
"Mr Redemption. So glad you agreed to meet me. Please forgive me for not
rising." Her voice is English and cultured.
"Who are you?"
"Names, names... I could tell you who I was, and it would mean little to
you. I could tell you what I was, and you would misunderstand. Suffice
it to say I am an interested party in an area of your business. You may
continue to call me Miss Haversham, if you like. Please, be seated."
"You're with Coppinger, aren't you?" Redemption takes the seat opposite
her, loosening his trenchcoat. He seems to be sweating slightly, and you
notice the wall thermostat is set for its maximum of eighty-five
degrees. Miss Haversham appears impervious to the heat: in fact, given
the way she's swathed she seems to be cold.
"I assure you I am not. The good David Coppinger would consider me his
enemy. I have, however, both business and personal reasons to wish Mr
Coppinger and his agents well in this affair. Or should that be affray?"
She smiles to herself.
"And they are...?"
"You've been contracted to eliminate two of his people, haven't you?
Jason Lynch and Lilith DiAnnio. Lynch and the Lady. A very dangerous
task, but then you are a very dangerous individual, aren't you? You
could well succeed, especially at the moment. I would not like that to
happen. Would you care for some tea?"
"That's still a what, not a why."
"In the case of the Lady, a personal debt. For Lynch, he applied a
measure of correction to some of my erring associates, and saved us from
a considerable embarrasment. A debt of business. Finally, they are two
of Coppinger's best, and Coppinger and his people are an important asset
in my view. To have them weakened or eliminated for some petty political
gain would be... dismaying to me." Miss Haversham reaches out - one of
her hands is gloved and moves with the slight jerkiness of old cyber -
and pours two cups of tea from a silver pot. "
"Suppose I were to ignore your wishes?"
"Then there's very little I can do, Mr Redemption. Unlike some of my
associates, I lack the means to dissuade you or have you killed:
besides, one grows out of such childishness. I would merely say it would
be unwise of you to proceed without much thought. I cannot stop you if
you choose to ignore me." She adds sugar and lemon to both cups, stirs
gently. "There would be few ill-effects to yourself."
"Then give me something to think about. Why will killing two people have
such a bad effect?"
"Because it will start a war, Redemption."
"With who? Aztlan?" The man seems amused by that.
"No, no, no. A round of bloodletting among the agencies. There are over
twenty intelligence organisations currently operating, most of them
covert. SIGA is positively blatant in that it at least is known to
exist, though supposedly only in an analysis role. Who would have
thought that the Department of Transportation would have - or require -
a black-ops unit?"
"Transportation? Running covert operations? What, someone's
counterfeiting subway tokens? Come on, get real."
"They exist, believe me. The covert bodies breed like roaches, until
every so often they become so numerous, and individual groups so
arrogant in their power, that their numbers are - must be - culled. The
last major clash was in 2029, after the Crash, though that was a
relatively bloodless affair." She pauses to sip her tea.
"The previous purge was in 2002, and the consequences were appalling:
many of the mistakes that your nation made in the early years of this
century can be traced to that disastrous eighteen months. Information
warfare, Mr Redemption. The eyes of government are blinded. The bodies
that should be its antennae, sensitive to the first hint of a threat,
are locked in internal strife, the watchtowers unmanned."
"This is interesting. Continue, please." Redemption leans forwards,
picks up his teacup and takes an experimental taste: then tries not to
grimace.
"Certainly. SIGA, its few field agents under attack, must choose whether
to fight for its territory or withdraw. Coppinger lacks the means or the
will to fight the hard-core black-ops units, who are far more numerous,
ruthless, better armed, and much more reckless of life than he: yet
withdrawal is in many ways the worse option, as others scramble to fill
the void... and to prevent others from doing so. The traditional game of
one-upmanship intensifies, as disinformation is passed upwards and
sideways, false data is laid, and soon no intelligence estimate can be
trusted.
"Decisions are made based on incomplete data, on wholly wrong data. I
might point to a 2003 assessment that 'there is no credible circumstance
in which increased corporate power could pose a threat to the United
States' as an example of what happens. The results of that period of
conflict led to the support for the Shiawase Decision, and the steady
erosion of national control over corporations... but I digress, Mr
Redemption."
"Why the hell do you create all these agencies anyway?"
"Ah, the eternal question... Expediency, empire building, ego, a
pressing need. Usually they are created for a single, short-term goal.
Yet once formed, they can so rarely be dissolved. Bureaucratic inertia,
Mr Redemption, perhaps the most powerful force in the universe."
"Tell me more about SIGA, then. The stories about it are interesting,
but unclear."
Haversham bows her head slighty, and there is a long pause. When she
speaks, it seems to be with some pain.
"Where to begin? SIGA was born in darkness. A reaction to Echo Mirage,
some said, a body created to seek out the worst of the corporate weapons
of mass destruction: their core-wars viruses, their nuclear and chemical
warheads, their genetically-engineered plagues. Fighting adversaries of
such power, sweeping powers were needed in return. Normally, cooler
heads would prevail, but the aftermath of the Crash was so severe that
anything seemed better than a repeat. Recall, many at the time thought
VITAS had been a rogue corporate weapon too.
"They say power corrupts, Redemption, and they speak truly. The men and
women who ran SIGA had a power that verged on the absolute. What amazes
is that they lasted as long as they did. The first Director was an
honest and idealistic woman, and she did her utmost to control her
subordinates. She was unlucky in some matters, and she failed to
percieve the naked ambitions of several who joined her Agency: she was
naive enough to believe that others shared her goal, and these men and
women were skilled at hiding themselves. Once Bartlett considered
himself and his cronies ready, the Director met with a most
unfortunate... accident."
Redemption shrugs. "What happened to her?"
"Oh, an aircraft crash. Her plane came down over the Rocky Mountains
during a January storm. It was March before they even recovered the
wreckage. This, remember, was over the Jammer's Interstate, where so
many jurisdictions interlock, and there was endless haggling over who
should fund the rescue effort. By then there were no bodies to find, the
wildlife took care of that. Bartlett was the natural successor."
Haversham sighs heavily. "Bartlett wished to ensure none did to him as
they did his prececessor. He used what was then new technology,
recruiting a corps of agents from society's dregs - those that would not
be missed - and eliminating their memories, building for them entire
false lives in which he was their only true friend and benefactor. All
others had betrayed them, but to these reprogrammed soldiers Bartlett
was the only person who could be trusted. To them he was a god:
omniscient, infallible, benevolent, their Saviour. And with his new
soldiers, he turned upon his allies: he saw in them his own ambition,
which he had milked, encouraged, employed for his own ends. Now he had
his goal, he ruthlessly and permanently discarded those who had aided
him, in a single night of carnage."
"A Night of the Long Knives. Germany, 1930s. Hitler used Rohm's SA to
rise to power, then eliminated them when he no longer needed them."
Redemption looks pleased at his simile.
"A wise man studies history, Mr Redemption, lest he become a part of it.
I see you know that lesson well. Bartlett was now endowed with almost
unlimited power, and he turned it to his own ends. There was trivia such
as dealings in drugs, BTL, and the like: he found reliance on federal
funding to be constraining, and raised his own finances. Thus, he could
not be held to account for his deeds by even the most basic method of
financial accounting.
"Bartlett added to his remit the role of investigating corporate
corruption of the Goverment. Thus he could do as he pleased in
Washington itself. He used drugs, chips, prostitution, threats and
murder to build a web of blackmail and deceit, to force a number of key
players into his fold. Where he could not persuade or coerce, he killed.
He began executing members of his own government, Redemption; their
aides, their friends, their families. All justified under SIGA's
sweeping charter. When police investigated a SIGA crime, be it a murder
or a BTL dealer: they were stonewalled: officers who persisted became
threats to national security and were killed. Bsrtlett's orders directly
killed two thousand people in seven years."
"How could he kill so many people without anyone noticing?"
"Oh, he was ruthless and evil, Mr Redemption, but he was also
frighteningly intelligent and understood perfectly the concept of
terror. He struck at friends, at relatives, only attacking directly when
he felt a target was about to try exposing him. There was no pattern, no
link to the crimes, and most were people of little influence. They died
in botched burglaries, random street slayings, supposed suicides.
Remember, SIGA had power over law enforcement too. Anyone who noticed
could expect to be bought, threatened or killed.
"Bartlett's plan, as far as anyone could gather, was simple. He wanted
the Presidency, and he was building his ladder in the same way he had
prepared for his accession to ruling SIGA. He planned certain events -
financial calamities, overseas difficulties, and the like - which would
encourage the voters to support a strong, capable candidate: and he
naturally intended to influence the selection of his rivals, to ensure
they were unappealing and that he had adequate dirt ready to hurl at
both.
"All this. and nobody noticed?" Redemption's tone is not quite
incredulous, but is wary.
"You must understand, he anticipated a thirty-year timescale, and he
began in 2045. Much of what he did was laying groundwork. He was quite
sickeningly ruthless, though. For instance, in 2047 he ordered the
deaths of over sixty commuters at Maple Street subway station in DeeCee.
He sent two assassins to kill every single person in the station. Such
acts boost one's body count wonderfully."
"Two assassins, sixty dead? How and why?"
"How, easily. Grenades and automatic weapons in a confined space, used
on people who were mostly Georgetown yuppies and who considered
themselves safe. They were unarmed and unprotected. As to why... two of
the bodies were never identified. That same night, two people turned up
in hospitals, in separate incidents, with head trauma and concussion
from street robberies. They returned to work, and any confusion or
memory lapses were explained by their injuries. A simple switch that
placed Bartlett's people in positions where they could be assisted to
rise rapidly."
"So, I take it something went wrong?" Redemption, giving up in the face
of the oppressive heat, takes off his trenchcoat and tries one of the
sandwiches.
"For Bartlett? Yes, of course. His programmed monsters were not
sufficiently stable. He took to using a psychoactive hallucinogen to
enhance their performance. The drug was unpredictable, which led to
several unfortunate incidents and unexpected collateral casualties.
Questions began to be asked, that even Bartlett's blanket justification
of national security could not cover.
"His support for, and membership of, a policlub - the Universal
Brotherhood - also raised eyebrows after certain events, most
particularly in Seattle, where some less savory aspects of the policlub
were exposed. The attack on what was then SIGA's headquarters by a small
group of terrorists was by then merely the straw that broke the camel's
back., though they succeeded in killing Bartlett."
Redemption takes another two sandwiches. "Let me guess. Lynch and
Liliith."
"To tell the truth, nobody knows. It might well have been FBI, or a
foreign power, or freelancers. But with Bartlett dead, many of his
operations began to unravel: the house of cards collapsed. Of the
fifteen hundred members of SIGA, over three hundred were imprisoned,
about the same number summarily dismissed, and perhaps a hundred killed.
Over five hundred fled or disappeared: many turned up in Aztlan. A
frightening indictement of the people Bartlett had recruited.
"The skeleton of the Agency - a hundred or so analysts and deckers, who
had been, by and large, completely ignorant of the Agency's true motives
- was originally to be broken up. At the same time, there was talk of
the need to prevent similar catastrophes.
Miss Haversham smiles slightly. "And now, enter David Coppinger.
Coppinger had risen in the CIA by his ruthless efficiency. And then in
2050 his career stalled, in a Pauline conversion: the scales fell from
his eyes, and he suddenly realised that aspects of what he was being
asked to do were unacceptable to him - that he was harming the people he
swore to protect, for the petty gains of venal men.
"Men who will sacrifice advancement for the sake of their conscience are
rare, Mr Redepmtion, and Coppinger is one of the few such I know of. It
was decided that Coppinger should be given leeway to design his own
agency, with an unofficial and well-hidden remit of fighting corruption
of the sort that created the old SIGA. His proposals were examined,
modified slightly, and the new reformed Agency was born. Coppinger
insisted on keeping the name, as a reminder of the dangers they faced
from within themselves. I understand the Agency's motto is taken from
Nietzsche, 'he who fights with monsters should beware, lest a monster he
become.'"
"Well, if his job's stamping out corruption, I have to say he's still
got plenty of work to do." Redemption can't help a slight smirk.
"Perhaps. Though you misunderstand if you think his two dozen field
agents are the force he uses. His role against corruption and abuse of
power is done by his analysts, who pass data to the Committee. The field
agents are there for when immediate and direct action is productive.
Where someone has become too blatant in showing that law can be bought,
or when the law cannot or will not act, Coppinger's people do so.
Illegally, to be sure, yet it amazes how rarely legal action is pursued,
for to provide a motive would be deeply embarrasing to many of the
parties concerned."
"What do you mean, embarrasing?"
Miss Haversham refills her teacup. "Let me cite an example, of a Fuchi
programmer who believed that he was driven by demons. The price for
their help with his work, was that he had to kill. His demons told him
he had to go out, and find and kill a family at the dark of every moon.
In return, he was an exceptional coder of software.
"Fuchi tolerated his excursions, and concealed his crimes: he believed
his demon would protect him from prosecution, and in a way he was right
- as best they could. Extradition warrants were flatly refused on the
grounds of insufficient evidence. The man was a profitable asset, he had
to be indulged lest the profits cease. The UCAS could have let the years
pass and the bodies pile higher, until he was no longer considered
essential. They could, and did, file a request with InterPol, who Fuchi
promptly bought off. Finally, a SIGA-hired team seized Marchant as he
was preparing for one of his crimes, and he is now detained indefinitely
in a psyciatric institute in Massachusetts."
Haversham smiles wintrily. "I understand he still writes quite passable
software. However, you begin to see the method. Fuchi cannot protest the
kidnap without exposing their own cover-up of his killings. The last
time a SIGAagent was caught, Clonalsys-Genetics were entirely unable to
prove anything other than that the individual had sabotaged their
bioweapons area very thoroughly: and since said facility never existed,
they had no grounds for complaint against the UCAS. The agent was
killed, of course."
Miss Haversham takes an old-fashioned fob watch from a pocket, studies
it briefly, snaps it shut. "And now, Mr Redemption, time draws on. I
fear that we must begin to conclude our discussion. Do you now
understand my concerns a little better?"
"I'll think on what you've said." says Redemption carefully, rising and
picking up his trenchcoat. Diffuse light spills into the room as he
opens the door and leaves, Miss Haversham sitting alone in the heat and
darkness.
+++++end video
I don't know anyone with clearance to know all that, who is in the area
to say that, even leaving the appearance aside.]<<<<<
-- Lilith <23:00:21/07-02-57>
