“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.”
Ganymede frowned. “Andō asks permission every time they discuss my assassins with any breathing soul.”
Perry gave a tired smile. “Then I envy Andō, having time to visit you so often.”
The Duke President glared, and glared more when he caught a smirk on Andō’s face. “Levity has no place in this. Every person who knows is that much more danger.”
“Andō has told their allies, I told mine.”
“Seven Board Directors is not fifty-plus unstable coalition allies.”
“It was the right call,” Perry insisted. “It’s smoothed everything. I finally have Parliament in hand, really in hand. Now that they know I can call on a power like that, they snap to like a Familiaris in front of MASON!”
“You will not reveal O.S. to anyone else without my express permission. Ever.”
Perry sighed his consent. “I’ll check with you whenever I can, but sometimes I need the extra leverage at a moment’s notice.”
“Ever,” Ganymede repeated.
“I’ll do my best. I’ll always tell you afterward.”
“You will find your own means to keep your house in order, or I shall send a housekeeper.”
Perry’s eyes glittered coldly between their nests of care-lines. “I’ll thank you to leave Europe to the European.”
At that the Duc de la Trémo?lle rose to his feet like wrathful dawn. “Your presence in my house is a privilege, Perry. You advise me on the use of my assassins as a privilege. You access my ba’sibs at Madame’s as a privilege. You keep your precious coalition and your seat because I refrain from calling a few friends to say I am tired of you. I do not need to threaten to expose how you used Ziven Racer to oust Spain from office; I can unseat you by hinting that I wish it so. You will not insult me ever again. And you will not speak of my O.S. to any breathing being.”
The Prime Minister drew slow breaths, staring up at backlit Ganymede, whose blazing mane turned his pale face to silhouette, like the moon at the eclipsing of the sun. What is that that Perry swallows down now? Words? Or pride? “Yes, Your Grace.” He bowed his head. “I’m sorry. I’ll never do anything like it again.”
The eclipse passed. “You will supply me with a list of everyone who knows, and you will not question how I choose to deal with them.”
“Of course, Your Grace.” Not quite all pride was swallowed. “Doesn’t Andō get a chiding too?”
Blue diamond eyes flashed murder. “What for?”
“Me telling my allies caused nothing, just stability. Shanghai and Beijing brought traitors into the Saneer-Weeksbooth bash’ itself! It was Andō’s job to vet the Mitsubishi Special Guard, make sure they were the loyal among the loyal. And there’s the Canner Device.”
Andō paused in pacing the room, his stony frown darkening to something worse, a stony smile. “What about the Canner Device?”
Perry looked nervous. “You … you made it, didn’t you? Japan keeps coming up in all of the reports. It’s a big, sophisticated tool, hijacking the entire tracker system, millions of tracker signals at once. You’ve had it for more than a decade and never shared it with us? This alliance is supposed to be complete, coequal, sharing all we have to guard our stability against MASON’s. The only reason to hide something like that from allies is if you plan to use it against us.”
Ganymede turned on Andō, anger on his golden brows. “Is this true?”
Andō shrugged, still smiling. “I have no plans to use the Canner Device against you or anyone.”
“But it’s true? You made it?”
Still the Chief Director smiled. “A predecessor made it.”
Hurt mixed with anger on the Duke’s face. “You knew who made the Canner Device? You didn’t tell me?”
Andō stepped close enough to smile down at the delicate Duke. “You didn’t need to worry yourself about it.”
Gold brows tightened. “That isn’t your decisi—”
“Yes it is.”
Ganymede stared up at him. “You cannot hide a thing as serious as—”
A kiss rendered the Duke mute as Andō seized him, a fast, practiced embrace which pinned the Duke’s slim arms to his sides. Ganymede’s eyes answered the kiss with wet anger, then some moments of serene enjoyment, then anger again as he craned his neck away. “Not…” He stopped—how could he finish? Not here? Not now? Not in front of this worm Perry? Any of those would have proved to Perry that elsewhere, elsewhen, the Duke would have submitted.
“What?” Andō answered with a sibling’s nonchalance. “Perry’s been invited upstairs, it’s nothing they’re not going to see a thousand times.” He pressed the Duke President against a wall and took his lips a second time.
“Upstairs!” Perry cried in full-bodied delight. “You asked Madame? I’m in?”