For All Nails #204: Rogue Asset

Angel Island, California, USM
24 January 1975

"Hello, Joan, what on earth are you doing here?"

It had been so long since Joan Kahn had gone by her real name that at first she
didn't realize the comment was addressed to her.  And so distant was her old
life that when, after a second's hesitation, she turned to see who was speaking
to her, it took her another two seconds to remember the name of the man
standing there.

"Hello, J.D.," she finally answered.  Since she couldn't very well tell her
questioner that she and former CBI director Timothy Liddy were trying to learn
whether a body found washed up on the beach two days before [1] might be
Vincent Mercator, she decided to use a subtle evasion instead.  "I might ask
you the same question."

"I'm here ignoring that old adage about mixing business with pleasure," said
Professor John Dickinson Pez.  "UCPH [2] is holding a seminar on the Rocky
Mountain War, and somehow I got invited."  With a deadpan expression he added,
"It's a working holiday --- I'm working and my wife's on holiday."

She gave him a look of mock severity.  "You got invited, J.D., because you're
an authority on the war.  _Axis of Fire was a great book."  This was true. 
_South Park: Axis of Fire was easily the most readable book on the events
leading up to the Rocky Mountain War she had ever read.  J.D. had a gift, sadly
rare among academic historians, for writing lucid prose.  True, his conclusions
were unoriginal; he had concluded, as many had before him, that Henry Gilpin
had worked from behind the scenes to bring about the war.  As far as Joan was
concerned, Gilpin's responsibility for starting the war had already been
established beyond a reasonable doubt.  Regardless, there was nothing like a
good, gripping historical narrative to get the point across, and J.D. had
certainly managed that.

"Unfortunately," said J.D., "great books don't put food on the table ---
popular books do."

Like yours, was the unspoken thought behind J.D.'s words, though there didn't
seem to be any rancor involved.  J.D. had written the only positive review of
_The Kronmiller Conspiracy to appear in an academic journal.

"So write a popular book," Joan told him.

Glancing around him at the sun-drenched walkway in an ostentatiously
conspiratorial manner, J.D. leaned forward and stage-whispered, "I am.  I'm
writing a novel."

Joan felt a vague sense of alarm.  "J.D., it's not about a middle-aged college
professor contemplating adultery with a student, is it?" Steven Taylor had once
told her that a week didn't go by without him receiving at least one novel
manuscript about a middle-aged college professor contemplating (or committing)
adultery with a student --- this in spite of the fact that the Justice Press
didn't publish fiction.

"Oh, no, nothing like that," J.D. said to her relief.  "I'm writing a sobel." 
Sometime in the year since publication of _For All Time, Robert Sobel's name
had become a synonym for any work that described or was set in an alternative
world.

"About the Rocky Mountain War?" she asked.

J.D. shook his head.  "That would be too much like work.  I'm writing about New
England at the turn of the 18th century.  The idea is that instead of handing
Nova Scotia back to the French after the War of the League of Augsburg, the
Massachusetts colony keeps it.  As it turns out, this eventually causes the
Rebellion to break out 65 years early, and instead of Albany, the Rebellion is
put down by the Duke of Marlborough."

It sounded to Joan like a pretty unlikely idea for a novel, but then she'd
thought _Under the Sun [3] was a pretty unlikely idea for a novel, and it had
sold over two million copies.  She settled for wishing him good luck with it.

"Thank you," J.D. said.  "Tell me, what have you been working on since the
Kronmiller book?"

Joan was amazed at how effortlessly her mind produced a response.  "I'm
investigating the possibility that CBI agents influenced Alvin Silva's decision
to attack Japan."

"Oh, Lord, you and the CBI," said J.D. with a grin.

"Come on, think about it," she urged him.  "Here he is, sitting on top of the
largest, best-equipped army in America.  There's the CNA sitting right across
the Arkansas, ripe for the plucking.  So what does he do?  He lunges across the
Pacific and attacks the Japanese, that's what.  Why would he do something like
that unless someone close to him was deliberately making Japan look like a
threat?  And who but the CNA would have a motive to do that?"

"You come on," J.D. answered.  "The answer's right there in the Mexican War
Department archives.  Peking was about to fall to Japanese-backed insurgents. 
We know now that the Japanese didn't have any designs on Siberia at the time,
but back then Silva thought otherwise."

"According to the archives that Mercator released, you mean," said Joan.  "The
man who had just had Silva arrested.  Don't you see?  He /wanted/ everyone to
think Silva was irrational, that he was jumping at shadows when he attacked
Japan."

"So, what, you're saying Mercator deliberately covered up a plot by the CBI so
he could blame the Pacific War on Silva?"

Joan was beginning to realize that all these thoughts about Silva and Mercator
had been building up in her mind for the last two years.  That explained why
they were pouring out in a sudden torrent, prompted by J.D.'s question.  They
were lining themselves up in her mind even as she spoke.  "Mercator didn't
regard the CNA as a threat.  He never did.  For him, there was only ever one
enemy."

"Kramer."

Joan nodded.  "El Pulpo."

By now, J.D. had picked up the thread of her thoughts.  "And if Mercator told
the people they'd been tricked into a war by the Tories, they'd be clamoring to
attack the wrong enemy."

"Exactly," said Joan.  "So the whole question of outside influence was drowned
in silence, and instead everyone was told that Silva was a madman who had
attacked the Japanese out of sheer paranoia."

J.D. was shaking his head.  "If you want to make this work, you've got to
figure out who the CBI agent was, /and/ explain why he was willing to betray
his own country.  And it would have to be someone right at the very top."

"How about Vincent Mercator?" said Joan, much to her own astonishment.

J.D. opened his mouth, but didn't say anything at first.  Finally he managed,
"That's ridiculous.  He wasn't right at the top, he was a lawyer in Guadalajara
before the war, he didn't even become a colonel until 1948 or something."

"He was a captain in 1941, assigned to the Presidential Guard under Felix
Garcia," Joan pointed out.  "All the garrison commanders in 1949 were former
Guard officers.  Mercator was right there, in Chapultepec Castle, when Silva
decided to attack Japan.  Eight years later, he and the rest of the Guard were
in position around the country, ready to seize power." Joan laughed suddenly. 
"Can you imagine how surprised Gardner [4] must have been when his mole
suddenly made himself dictator of Mexico?"

J.D. was shaking his head again.  "Joan, I mean it, this time you've gone
completely around the bend."

Joan barely heard him.  "Have you ever noticed how obsessed the CBI has always
been with Mercator?  I mean, these days everybody's obsessed by him, but the
CBI was /always/ obsessed.  And Liddy was the most obsessed of all.  I wonder
if they knew each other?"

"Joan, Timothy Liddy is gone!"

But Joan was no longer listening to J.D.  She was thinking about what it must
have been like for the CBI to see their man in Mexico City go rogue.  That was
what they called it, she knew.  An agent who had quit the CBI and begun to
freelance was called a "rogue asset".  Now she understood.

Now she understood everything.

Notes:

[1] See #203, "Mistaken Identity".

[2]  The University of California at Puerto Hancock, but you already knew that.

[3]  _Under the Sun by Andrew Reardon tells the story of a clan of field mice
forced to flee across an open field when their nest is broken up by a plowman.

[4]  Mark L. Gardner, Director of the CBI from 1938 to 1953.