Love and Darkness (The Cause Book 2) (22 page)

Might be a possibility.  Might?  If Polly Keistermann had Amy Haggerty in her hands, she was rolling her so many different ways she would make a hooker blush.

This was a fucking mess.  I would need to do the impossible: a mind scrape of my Arm boss.  Was this enough meat to be worth a challenge?  I salivated at the thought, but not only didn’t this feel good enough, if I failed my failure would legitimize Polly’s ownership.  I couldn’t risk that.

“Ma’am, I think we need to have a long talk.  Right after exercises and I send Gail back home.”

The
long talk
lasted the rest of the night, and was as bad as the worst of the mind scrapes I had been through with Keaton.  We closeted ourselves in the war room, and Haggerty fought me every step of the way.  I soon recognized Polly’s fingerprints by how hard Haggerty fought me when I got close.

Focuses play with the mind and Polly Keistermann was a master.  Haggerty couldn’t even talk about her conversations without sweating, and to get her to talk, I had to set up a situation by which if
she
didn’t talk
I
was disobeying her orders.  “Ma’am, I can’t ask the next question unless you give me an answer to the preceding question” was the simplest gambit I used.  I said “Ma’am, I’m willing to stop if you want to stop” many times, nearly always followed by some variant of “If you stop you’re disobeying my orders to get to the bottom of this” from her, followed by some variation of “then what did you talk about on your June 8
th
visit?” from me.

Dragging this information out of my boss was like pulling her soul out by the roots.  She swung at me several times, drew her knives on me, screamed at me to shut the fuck up, and called me every obscene name in the English language plus a few imports from elsewhere.  I used every Arm trick I knew, from the leverage of my tag to my ability to read her, and some tricks I invented as I worked.  “Ma’am, see this knife?”  A knife I stuck in my chest.  “These are your words.”  If played right, an Arm boss will feel her subordinate’s pain.  In this circumstance, the trick did get her attention.

In the end, I succeeded.  I hoped I got everything, but there was no way to know for sure, not with Haggerty as my boss.  At the least, I got everything I could trick Haggerty into remembering.

Haggerty had been Keistermann’s for almost two years.  She did whatever Keistermann wanted of her, including the damned Eskimo Spear quest, and answered any questions Keistermann asked.  She regularly updated Keistermann on everything she knew about the activities of the Arms.

Haggerty saw no conflict between her Arm responsibilities and spying on the Arms for Keistermann.  Even when I explained the conflict of interest to her, she didn’t see the problem.  Keistermann’s work.  I took an hour to pry that loose.

When we finished Haggerty was exhausted, humiliated, and angry, and I was a bloody, low juice wreck, barely holding in my temper and giving off far too many inadvertent dominance signals.

Of all my discoveries, one bit angered me the most: Polly dearest had planted the seeds of the
push the Cause
crap in Amy’s mind, and had been using the Arms, or at least Amy and
my
Arms, as fronts for her own hidden agenda.

Using every charismatic wile at my disposal, I made Amy face everything Polly had done to her.  She was, after that long night, free of Polly’s control.

If it had been me, I would have been furious at Keistermann.  Haggerty was furious, but not at Keistermann.  She thought that Keistermann was a senior Focus, and this was how senior Focuses behaved.  She had liked Polly before, and she still did.  She blamed only herself, for her weakness and failure.

I tackled Sibrian the next night, a much easier task.  Keistermann had only just started to work her, and she was cleaner, both because of less contact and better natural resistance.  So much for my comments about Mary not having contact with top end Focuses, though.  She had also gotten to cope with Lori on one of her fanatic research benders and Tonya on a tear, in addition to Keistermann.  What she lacked was contacts with Focuses acting in any other role other than cast iron bitch.

Webberly, Whetstone and Duval turned out to be clean, though, save for their interactions with Gail.  I was going to be irritated if some damned senior Focus had co-opted them as well.

Dolores Sokolnik: October 2, 1972

“It’s a trap,” Bass said.

“Explain.”  Ma’am Keaton glared at them.  She had been in a dark mood ever since Arm Haggerty refused to help her analyze the otherwise incomprehensible Crow research materials, wanting something in return larger than Ma’am Keaton wished to give.  Instead, Ma’am Keaton now laid this impossible burden on them.

Something felt wrong here, something Del didn’t quite understand.  The only thing she could articulate on the subject, but didn’t, for political reasons, was the strange fact that when Ma’am Keaton forcibly humbled Ma’am Bass two weeks ago, Ma’am Bass came out only barely humbled.

“This Crow, Shadow, chose what to put in this box of research materials,” Bass said.  “He didn’t need to include any information at all on the first Focuses and their games.  He’s manipulating us into doing what he wants.”

Five Arms gathered around the table in Keaton’s training complex, all whom had read the box of research materials in its entirety.  From what Ma’am Rayburn had told Del, Ma’am Keaton never gave away information like this, normally only passing out choice tidbits as the need arose.  Besides Ma’am Keaton, Ma’am Rayburn and Bass, Ma’am Billington also attended.  Del, as usual, knelt on the floor at Ma’am Keaton’s feet.

Ma’am’s Rayburn and Billington sat beside each other to Ma’am Keaton’s right, leaving Bass alone to Ma’am Keaton’s left.  Del wondered if the choice of seats indicated anything.

“So you’re suggesting we don’t act on the information because of the source?” Rayburn asked.

“I’m suggesting the Crow left out certain crucial information and added bogus information.”

“Crap.  I think it’s obvious that he left out crucial information.  I believe it’s also obvious that he
lacks
crucial information,” Ma’am Keaton said.  “He says nothing about any of the first Focuses who live west of the Mississippi, except for Fingleman.  He’s as much in the dark as we are, regarding them.”

“That’s not many,” Ma’am Billington said.  “There’s Denise Pitre, whose organization we’ve already broken into, in San Jose.  Cathy Elspeth in Salt Lake City.  Donna Fingleman, in Portland Oregon.  Carrie Sue Sandstrom, in Dallas.  Vivian Titus, in Kansas City.  Of those, only Fingleman is considered one of the ruling firsts.”

“He doesn’t want us going after the Nobles, because the Nobles are his pet project,” Bass said.  “He’s manipulating us.”

“How could he know we even thought about going after the Nobles?” Ma’am Rayburn said.  “Ma’am Keaton got this information in trade before you came by and won your tag.”

“Look at this shit!” Bass said, ignoring Rayburn’s far-too-accurate logic.  “Their documents confirm our worst fears about their espionage capabilities.  I’m sure they’ve been spying on our meetings.  They’re likely spying on us
right this instant
.”

“The fact that Shadow’s information is primarily from the eastern United States implies he’s at odds with the west coast Crows, and lacks access to the west coast Crow records,” Del said.  “Assuming he didn’t specifically leave out information from west of the Mississippi on purpose.”

Bass clenched her teeth, and Ma’am Keaton nodded.

“What about the rest of this political information?” Ma’am Keaton said.

“Well, this gives us confirmation of the Crows’ legitimate grievances against the first Focuses,” Ma’am Billington said.  “The first Focuses did assassinate two Crows during the Quarantine breakout.  They kept up the same scummy behavior since, too.  Four times, in Crow Shadow’s knowledge, they’ve assassinated Focuses in their own organization!  The first Focuses deserve whatever anyone does to them.  They’ve forfeited all their rights by their actions.”

Del couldn’t help but nod.  Shadow’s information was quite damning.  Before, she didn’t understand why the half-assed rebellion hidden underneath the Cause focused on taking out the first Focuses.  Now she understood, and agreed with the call.  From her perspective as a former history teacher, the first Focuses were little more than paranoid bush-league totalitarians, complete with rigged ‘elections’, secret police, informants, blackmail, and assassinations, even supporting multiple independent groups working on identical secret projects as a way to defeat toadyism.  The first Focuses were a hazard to all Transforms.

“I find myself more than a little hot over what they did to Focus Mann,” Ma’am Keaton said, referencing one of the few nuggets of information she had managed to extract several weeks ago.  She was still angry.  “Wendy’s
mine
, dammit.  They did the deed slick enough to convince me the Arm Pet shaming was a spontaneous reaction by the younger low-end Focuses.  Shadow’s information indicates they personally orchestrated that whispering campaign about Arm Pets.  For that, the first Focuses are going to pay.”

The other Arms, Del included, echoed Ma’am Keaton’s righteous anger.  When an Arm claimed something as hers…

“There’s another potential implication that follows,” Arm Rayburn said. She leaned forward with her elbows on the table and talked directly to Ma’am Keaton, ignoring the other Arms. “Wasn’t the Focuses’ military betrayal during the Hunter war supposedly a spontaneous rebellion of the Council Focuses against the first Focuses?  Shadow’s notes indicate Focus Schrum was inordinately pleased about the Council’s rebellion, strange, since she
personally
gave them political cover from the other first Focuses.  I’m hypothesizing she or her immediate boss, Focus Patterson, orchestrated the Council rebellion simply to save the Firsts from our ire.”

All the other Arms nodded, even Arm Bass.

“That does follow, but to get proof of that, we’d need to mind scrape Schrum and Patterson,” Keaton said.  “Patterson loves this sort of convoluted shit; I’ve told you the sick mind games she’s played with Tonya and me.”  They all nodded.

“I also found something else troubling about the Crows.  Did any of you see it?”  Ma’am Keaton said.  Everyone, including Del, shook their heads.  “We knew him as Rogue Crow, Wandering Shade and Innocence, but the Crows referred to him as ‘Crow Killer’.  Several of the important Crows, including Shadow and Thomas the Dreamer, suspected ‘Crow Killer’ was a faction of Crows, not a single Crow, and ‘Crow Killer’ represented the resurfacing of an old Crow internal conflict.  If you read between the lines, they felt vindicated, not chagrined, about how the affair turned out.  To me, they were convinced their supposition was right: Crow Killer
was
a Crow faction, and when Wandering Shade died, only the faction head fell.  Folks, this means there’s a Crow faction still supporting the Hunters.  They’re playing both sides of the fence, with us in the middle.  We can’t trust the Crows on this.”

“That would also explain why the Nobles didn’t participate up front in the Clearing of Chicago,” Ma’am Rayburn said, settling back into her chair, her point made.  “I thought the excuses they used, their claims of weakness and annoyance over not being given command, were rather limp.”

Bass grimaced.  “This proves
my
hypothesis is correct, and we need to count all the other powerful Major Transform groups as enemies.  Consider our so-called friends!  The Focuses of the Cause are a downtrodden weak minority.  The Nobles are duplicitous and useless.  The Crows who deal with us belong to a weak minority with their heads on the chopping block.  Fuck them all.  They’re not worth having as allies or saving from destruction.”

“Ma’am, I don’t see any other choice,” Ma’am Billington said.  The lowest ranking Arm here besides Del, she spoke carefully, watching each of the other Arms in turn.  “We need to go after all of them if we’re to gain the freedom of action we want.  I just can’t see how we can survive doing so.”

“We hit them one at a time,” Ma’am Rayburn said.

“We need to coopt the Nobles,” Bass said.  “Their leadership is the most open to external manipulation.  They’ll get us the subordinate allies we need.”

Ma’am Billington shook her head.  “I disagree; I think the first Focuses’ leadership is far stupider and the second rank Focuses far more tractable.  Consider what we found out from digging around in Denise Pitre’s operation,” she said, pushing forward despite her low rank.  “I’ve never
seen
such weakness.  The first Focuses are a house of cards.  Start plucking the cards loose, and the entire first Focus organization will come tumbling down.  Once they fall, it would be trivial to gather the rest of the Focuses under our control.  They’ll be our subordinate allies…and there are so
many
of them.”

“Easier said than done,” Bass said.  “You didn’t get shot up by Schrum’s idiots.  If the first Focuses are good at anything, it’s protecting their households, which serve as their own small armies.  Taking even one of them out would be non-trivial.  We need our own army first!”

Ma’am Keaton nodded, thinking.  “We don’t possess enough information yet to make a decision.  Nor a plan.  I’m not going to go against the Cause Focuses based on this crap.  I put too many years of work into them, and no, they aren’t idiots.  What I’m looking for is a way to get them to come begging to me to save their asses.”