Chapter Twenty: McIverton

THE CABINET HAD been up all night. If its members had been growing tired from their long and sometimes pointless discussions, the news of Kirk’s successful escape that early morning had fully awakened them. They sat around the conference table. Some of the more brainless presidential appointees were still nattering uselessly about Centaurus’s planetary rights and the pursuit of justice.

But Burke was bent on revenge. That involved justice, but only coincidentally. He had concealed his impatience well—but it was time to act. Kirk had flown the coop, and here these people were, still arguing over whose fault it was.

Perez, the defense minister, was at the table, silent as he usually was in Cabinet meetings. He used to take his cues directly from the president, thought Burke—referring to the deceased holder of that office, not the spineless idiot presently serving as chief executive—and now he rakes them from me. Good; I need him.

Burke held Perez with his eyes for a moment; the defense minister nodded almost imperceptibly. Burke rose and cleared his throat in the middle of the statement by the minister of tourism.

“Mr. President?” Burke said. “May I humbly suggest that, while we all appreciate the thoughts of the distinguished minister of tourism on the subject of our legal rights in this matter—and I personally thank her for those valuable thoughts—we are faced with a pressing problem that demands action. I would like to talk about that.”

The president sat impassively in his fine leather chair, looking at Burke. Erikkson, Burke’s colleague in the old Cabinet, had always been impressed by Burke’s single-minded approach to his work and had always respected him … and feared him a bit, too. Erikkson made no objection and gave no encouragement; that was enough for Burke, and he began. The minister of tourism, a large woman overdressed for an emergency Cabinet meeting, sat down, obviously miffed at being interrupted.

“Here’s the logistical situation,” Burke said. “Kirk and Sulu have escaped their hotel in the company of Samuel Cogley. We have to catch them. We are not at war with the Federation, we are not mad at the Federation; I think everyone in this room will agree that we do not wish to offend the Federation any more than can be helped. But we do not want to see the people who helped destroy New Athens escape justice—and we will not allow it!”

There was a murmur of approval in the room.

“We all know Cogley’s record,” Burke continued.

“There’s a good chance that Barclay and his bunch will walk out of a Federation court with a ticket to a nice, soft rehab colony. My guess is that—and I’m backed by some legal opinion on this—if we ask a Federation court for Barclay and company’s return to Centaurus for trial, our application to the court would be turned down. Federation policy prohibits the death penalty for terrorist murder; Centaurian law demands it. The Federation says its interests in this case override ours because an annihilation weapon was used. I don’t agree; we’re the ones who lost the people.”

The rumble of agreement was louder.

“And I don’t see the Federation returning prisoners to face a capital charge. It’s as simple as that. So my job is to see that Barclay and his friends never leave this planet.

“Let me be brief. We knew Reuben Barclay disappeared from his usual haunts in New Athens a week before Holtzman’s deadline. With the other leaders of the League for a Pure Humanity still in the city, negotiating with the government, Barclay obviously figured he’d be the big man in the League if the worst happened. It did, and Barclay’s the head of what’s left of the League now; all the other leaders are dead. That, in fact, has led us to believe that the explosion was an accident—at least in its timing. It doesn’t make sense that the top men in the League would hang around and wait to die; I think they were willing to postpone the deadline indefinitely—but something unexpected happened, and we’ll probably never know just what it was.

“I guessed—correctly, as it turned out—that Samuel Cogley’s presence in McIverton for a seminar would trigger an approach by Barclay. Cogley is a well-known lawyer with a bent for accepting ‘impossible’ cases—and winning them. That would attract Barclay. So I put two of my best men on Cogley’s trail, and it paid off: We saw two of Barclay’s henchmen approach Cogley yesterday morning. Unfortunately, we lost the two flunkies; they turned out to be pretty good at shaking a tail. But we stayed with Cogley, who went to see Kirk last evening at his hotel. He talked with Kirk for most of the night; I suppose they were planning Barclay’s surrender. We couldn’t plant a bug in Kirk’s room because there wasn’t a chance to do so, and like most luxury hotels, the Hilton Inn West proofs its windows against laserdropping; business types don’t like the competition reading voice vibrations off windows.

“But one of my men noted that Kirk’s shuttle pilot, Sulu, was out all night, presumably doing the town. On his own initiative, my man broke into Sulu’s room, faked a note from Kirk, and left a packet of—well, it doesn’t matter what. It’s sufficient to say that Sulu was drugged in order to slow up Kirk, should Kirk decide to leave suddenly.”

“Wasn’t that a rather extreme thing to do?” asked the finance minister—a rather prissy type, Burke thought.

“I’ve already ordered a citation of merit issued to the agent involved,” Burke said tersely. “To continue: Kirk overpowered the men I had watching him at the hotel, and Cogley picked him and Sulu off the roof in a flitter. They then disappeared into city traffic. Normally we’d run a trace through a spyeye using the flitter’s transponder—but all the satellites were shot down by the defense system. We put out a radio alert, of course, but damn few police facilities have radios, and the normal communications bands are still swamped by tachyonic interference. Kirk, Sulu and Cogley got away, and they haven’t been seen since. Their shuttle is still at the airfield, but it’s useless to us.”

“So what can we do?” asked the labor minister.

“It occurred to me,” said Burke, “that the key to this whole situation was Kirk, but that we didn’t know much about him at all. I ran his Starfleet records; the non-confidential stuff is all in the central databanks, and fortunately the New Athens ‘banks were duplicated here as they were accumulated. Kirk’s record is quite distinguished, but he’s never had a job to do quite like this one. I doubt he likes it very much; the sense I get is that everything in him rebels against legal maneuvering—especially the possibility that guilty men might escape punishment for their crimes. Kirk is direct, a touch moralistic and, above all, ethical.”

“So?” the minister of tourism asked coldly.

“So—I think that attitude will take the edge off Kirk’s performance. His heart won’t quite be in saving Barclay and his pals from us. Mind you, he has every intention of doing his duty, of bringing Barclay and the others to Earth for trial—but he’s rebelling against that somewhere inside, where it counts. That gives us an edge.

“But there was something else, something I didn’t expect to find,” Burke continued. “I think I know where Kirk is.”

Everyone in the room, except Perez, was startled. Finally the finance minister’s voice rose above the others. “Well, where the hell is he, then?”

“Kirk is a registered landowner here,” Burke said. “He’s got a beautiful piece of land in the middle of this continent; there’s a Ministry of Land Management file on it a meter thick, all consisting of prefiled offers to buy, should Kirk fall behind on his taxes. He’s even got a cabin there. If I were Kirk and running, I’d head there. I wouldn’t expect anyone to make the connection, at least not before my ship could pick me up. And it was just damn lucky I did make the connection.”

“What do you need, Nathaniel?” Erikkson asked.

Burke told him; Perez nodded approval. “All right, then,” Erikkson said. “A small force, lightly armed, to arrest Barclay and the other four. I won’t authorize the arrests of Kirk, Sulu or Cogley; they’re just doing their jobs, and they could probably make a case against us. We’ll just let them leave.”

Burke nodded; he was satisfied. “Thank you, Mr. President,” he said. “Now, if you’ll excuse us, Minister Perez and I have a lot to do.”

“Of course,” Erikkson said.

In the hallway outside, Perez said to Burke, “Nice job, Nat—but what would he have said if he’d known we sent that force out two hours ago? And that it’s not so lightly armed?”

Burke smiled without humor. “What could he have done about it?” He paused. “I’m leaving for Garrovick Valley now. Flitter’s on the roof. Want to come along?”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” said Perez.