From:	"Paul J. Adam" <shadowtk@********.DEMON.CO.UK>
Subject:	Unexpected Information
Date:	Wed, 12 Mar 1997 23:40:47 +0000

*****INTERNAL: SIGANet
>>>>>[TO: All

A previously reliable source met with me, and this is what I got.

Scary.

I'm heading in to talk through this one and see what we should do.

+++++begin video
You recognise the familiar view from Lynch's eyecam, walking along a
softly carpeted hotel corridor, glancing at door numbers. He stops by
357 and knocks gently.

"Please, come in." a feminine voice calls, and he does so.

Inside, the room is lit only by one shrouded lamp, his eyes adjusting to
the darkness with the slight graininess of image intensifiers. Two easy
chairs face each other across a low table: one is empty, the other holds
an elderly woman, her face partly hidden by a white half-mask. A blanket
covers her knees: twisted scar tissue runs from her high lace collar to
the mask.

"Mr Lynch, so glad you could join me. Please, be seated. Tea?"

"Thank you. Do you mind if I smoke?" Lynch drops into the empty chair,
as the woman pours two cups.

"Not at all. You may call me Miss Haversham, if you wish a name."

"Thank you." The mercenary sips his tea. "Lapsang souchong? And a very
good one. It always reminds me of old warships. The Constitution, or HMS
Victory. Oak planks and tarred rope..."

"Many find it an acquired taste. I am glad you troubled to acquire it.
Now, previously, I was able to assist you with the problem of a rogue
NSA agent. This time, I believe I have struck closer to the core of the
threat facing you."

"The Farmer?"

"Indeed. My...resources have provided no small amount of information,
which forms a most disturbing picture. Time is short, Lieutenant, and
the danger great."


Lynch lights a Marlboro. "So far, so good, so what?"

Haversham frowns slightly. "It cannot have slipped your memory how
Ploughshare first broke the surface?"

"She tried to take out a team she'd hired, rather than pay them, and
when that didn't work she tried to pin it on me."

"Correct. The team inflicted considerable damage to a facility called
Oxton Radiological Services. It was levelled by explosives last month,
in a professed GreenWar hit?"

"So, you think these disconnected events aren't disconnected events?"

"They are not. I know a little of the Farmer, Lieutenant, enough to
guess at his ambitions and to dimly glimpse his plans. Recently, I was
able to... come into possession, shall we say, of certain information.
The conclusions I was able to draw were quite terrifying.

"Firstly, Lieutenant, know that Farmer is an intensely ambitious man. He
seeks power, at any price. He will pave his road to the dominion he
craves with the corpses of thousands, oil his machinations with blood.
All his thoughts and actions must be viewed through that glass. He
neither avoids the death of others, nor revels in them. Other people are
mere pawns to be sacrificed. Witness the way he abandoned Ploughshare to
her death, for instance, or the way his agents exterminated thousands of
refugees from the camps around Chicago for profit.

"Now, consider carefully, what might produce a low-level release of
radioactivity over a prolonged period, be subject to unpredictable
delays, and require several tens of millions of newyen of untraceable
funding?"

Lynch shrugs. "The obvious answer is covertly, refurbishing old nuclear
weapons."

Haversham nods. "Note this fact: twice, now, Oxton have been on the
verge of beginning a microradiology facility, a shielded and screened
area for measuring and analying the minutest traces of radioactive
material. On both occasions, as the orders for the structure and tooling
were being placed, the business has been attacked by shadowrunners.
Coincidence, Mr Lynch? We know Farmer was behind the first, therefore he
may well be the force behind a second: and why would he care?"

"So he's refurbishing a nuke or three. What does that get him? They're
not exactly of much use in your day-to-day existence." The mercenary's
voice is interested, though.

"What if his ambitions are greater? If he seeks a war?"

Lynch snorts. "You won't win a war with a handful of nukes, and just
having them is dangerous. Ask Nicole Velli. And who are we going to war
with, and why? None of our neighbours really seem likely targets."

Haversham offers a wintry smile. "Suppose you were to be warned of a
terrorist attack on the Everett Navy Yard. The 'Brotherhood of Thunda'
or some such, striking back at their Federal oppressors for the death of
a martyr, planning to shell the Pacific Fleet at anchor with an obsolete
eight-inch howitzer purchased in Asia. You would naturally intervene,
since eight-inch HE or bomblet shells would inflict a great deal of
damage: many millions in repair and dozens of casualties.

"If I heard about it in time, sure, we'd go break it up." says Lynch
cautiously.

"Be sure you would hear, Lieutenant. Boarding and storming their vessel
in the very nick of time, you find the 'terrorists' are far too well-
equipped and too skilled, and equipped with cortex bombs to boot. One
bomb misfires, however, leaving you a crippled prisoner. You also
discover that several of their shells were nuclear devices, and that
their targets were the decommissioned submarines in the Dolphins'
Graveyard."


Lynch sits back, obviously startled. "What yield weapons are we talking
about?"

"From the data I have, I would estimate about fifty kilotons: they would
have to be fired from a weapon of eight-inch or similar calibre, such as
an old M110. As many as five weapons, though I would expect a
reliability no better than fifty per cent."

"Oh, fuck. Even one would do it, the fireball would engulf seven or
eight of those boats easily. Eight spent S6W cores, loaded with a few
decades of decay isotopes, plus the radioactive salt fallout from the
seawater, and the steel of the subs themselves... you'd contaminate the
whole of Everett."

"Military effects?" Haversham asks.

"Anything in the Navy Yard is unusable for months. Decontaminating all
that might not even be possible. Anyone within a mile would probably get
a thousand rems or more in the first hour, we're talking about seventy
or eighty per cent fatalities within two weeks. We'd have to evacuate
most of the north of the Metroplex. Goodbye, Federated-Boeing, too.
You're talking another Douneray or Chernobyl here, and that's before we
think about blast and heat." Lynch's voice is calm and level. "Figure a
quarter of a million dead civilians within a month."

Haversham nods gravely. "You see why I am somewhat perturbed."

"And you seriously think Farmer is going to do this?"

"Leave the Farmer out of this for a moment and stick with our scenario.
An intensive interrogation and hard investigative work reveals that the
entire operation was planned and funded by Aztlan Intelligence.
Information about the planned raid, its supposed backers and its likely
effect leaks to the media. What do you see happening next?"

"We're suddenly at war." Lynch says drily. "Try arguing restraint and
forbearance against those headlines, that surge of outrage. I assume
Farmer is putting the proper gloss on all this, if this is his
objective... and this is why he needs nuclear weapons. Not to detonate,
but as casus belli."

"Exactly. Now, the war offers some potential for Farmer, and is
superficially attractive to the UCAS. Aztlan is well seperated from us
geographically, so cannot move troops against us: her air force must
overfly the CAS to reach us. We enjoy a comfortable naval superiority,
thanks to the foresight of Secretary Hutchison. We could land an
expeditionary force quite comfortably, in an area already weakened by
insurgency. The corrupt and unpopular Aztlan government would supposedly
collapse in the face of a series of military defeats."


"Yeah, right. Doesn't work that way. We land at Punta Yalkubul, the
Yucatan rebels join us, a lot of Aztlan citizens come off the fence to
reject gringo aggression, and we get our butts kicked off the peninsula
and the rebels crushed to boot. Plus the Aztlan navy's a coastal defence
force and we're playing in their back yard, on the end of a long supply
line... and we haven't even moved away from conventional warfare. No
weird magic, no old Aztec rituals, no WOMADs. I don't like the sound of
this game, and if it starts I'm going to be on the team." Lynch stubs
out his cigarette and lights another: you notice his hands are shaking
slightly. "No, thanks, that's worth preventing."

Haversham shrugs. "The actual outcome of the war matters little to
Farmer. In fact, defeat might suit his purposes better. He is ambitious,
not stupid, and is likely to well know the losses we would take.
Properly manipulated, the public will demand rearmament, military might,
new leadership, all to avenge failure or at least prevent its
recurrence: Reagan 1980. If the gambit succeeds, then there are
plentiful examples of successful soldiers rising to rule. He will be
closely involved, though perhaps not obviously: he is perhaps more
likely to be an intelligence official than a soldier."

Lynch nods. "So Farmer presides over the buildup, and plays the hawk
card to run for office... or maybe hide behind a puppet. A hard man for
hard times. Guns before butter. Victory or death. The historic destiny
of the UCAS. That's actually a good each-way bet: but you need your
Pearl Harbour opening."

"You see my concern. I have every confidence that you will be able to,
if you will excuse the pun, defuse the situation. SIGA is the only
Government agency I feel may be trusted: without knowing who or what
Farmer is, you understand I dare not contact more... formal groups."

Lynch rises to his feet, picks up his jacket. "We'll see what we can
do."
+++++end trideo

It's a credible scenario, if done right... and if you're inside the
intelligence system you can make sure the investigation goes your way.

This agrees with everything we have on Farmer so far, and fits observed
events: hell, I met Easy because she was one of the Plough Breakers.

Question is, even if it's true, what are we going to do about it?

En route to DC. Landing at National in four hours, plus or minus.]<<<<<
-- 1Lt J R W Lynch <23:41:49/03-12-58>
Strategic Intelligence Gathering Agency