“Then of course you have to keep your promise,” Hilo said with a sympathetic smile. “I’ve watched Lott Jin for years and I agree with all you’ve said. I’ll name him as the new Horn at your retirement party.” The Pillar glanced at Shae as she came in. “What took you so long?”
She hesitated to say she’d been at Nau’s memorial service. When Hilo had heard of Nau’s death he’d snorted. “Good riddance to that old snake. I never met a Horn I liked less. Not even Gont Asch, and that bastard killed a lot of my Fists and Fingers and nearly sent me to the grave. But at least he was up-front about it all. Nau Suen was creepy as fuck.”
Instead of answering, Shae opened her purse and took out a padded square envelope. She handed it to Juen Nu. “The latest gift from our Espenian friends.” Juen opened the envelope and took out a floppy disk.
“Espenian friendship,” Hilo said with a grimace, “lasts about as long as a cheap hand job. Every time we try bringing up the issue of offshore mining, they tell us to go fuck ourselves. Then they turn around with a smile and say they want to help us.”
Two ROE military intelligence officers had walked into the Weather Man’s office six months after the Janloon bombing. They’d introduced themselves as agents Berglund and Galo and seated themselves in front of Shae’s desk. The pale-haired one named Berglund said, “Ms. Kaul-jen, the Republic of Espenia stands firmly with Kekon in the fight against radical political terrorism.”
His Keko-Espenian partner, Galo, removed an envelope from his briefcase and placed it on Shae’s desk. “The Green Bone clans have been combating the threat with impressive speed and effectiveness, and we want to help in the effort by sharing our information on the Clanless Future Movement. Our superiors hope this intelligence will help you to dismantle the CFM.”
“Why haven’t you shared this with the Royal Council or the Kekonese military?” Shae asked the foreigners.
Galo leaned forward. “We have an established relationship with your clan. With Cormorant.” She stiffened at the mention of the code name the Espenian military had given to her more than twenty years ago. “We trust your clan has no ties to Ygutanian interests.” The same could not be said for the Mountain, which possessed both legitimate and illegitimate business interests in that country. The two men stood up to leave.
Shae put her hands on her desk and rose from her seat. “It’s a shame,” she said, her voice as flat as a sheet of ice, “that we didn’t receive this information before hundreds of people lost their lives.”
The men paused at her office door. Berglund glanced over his shoulder, his washed-out eyes unmoved. “The Janloon bombing was a terrible tragedy. We all wish it could’ve been prevented, but there’s no reason to cast blame. What’s important is that we prevent anything like it from happening again, wouldn’t you agree?”
After that, information arrived every so often at the Weather Man’s office. The floppy disks contained names of Clanless Future Movement members and affiliates, addresses of safe houses or meeting places, and the identity of individuals and criminal groups suspected to have supplied or aided the CFM. However, the Espenians were not entirely up-front. Some parts of the files were redacted, no doubt because they named Espenian agents. There was also never any mention of the Ygutanian nekolva, or a man named Molovni.
She passed the information she received on to Juen Nu, who combined it with knowledge gathered from his own impressive network of spies. When Juen had become the Horn, Shae had not considered him to be a leader with much personal presence compared to Hilo or Kehn. As it turned out, an operational mastermind was the perfect Horn for the times. Over sixteen years in the job—a longer tenure than any other Horn in No Peak history—Juen Nu had made the military side of the clan more nimble and responsive. He’d distributed responsibility, expanded the clan’s technical capabilities, and vastly improved its network of informers. He was a key reason efforts to crush the clanless were going well. Prudent and unsentimental, he coordinated operations with the Mountain but never trusted them; he triple-checked everything himself. Aben Soro of the Mountain commanded more people and was a more visible Horn, but No Peak was more tightly run. Lott Jin would have a sizable shadow to fill.
Juen slipped the floppy disk back into the envelope. “The Espenians aren’t giving us much of anything we don’t already know these days. The early stuff was detailed and useful. It must’ve come from spies inside the CFM. Now it’s mostly conjecture and weak links.”