Verkan and his party were back at the rented estate, which housed both the offices of Verkan's Hos-Hostigos Trading Company and the Kalvan's Time-Line conveyer-head before Verkan felt it was safe to talk. In the scrambler-shielded barn, they sat down on bales of hay while Zinna poured three beers.
"I'd like to find out who talked to Theovacar's spy about your stop at Thagnor City," Kostran Galth began, but Verkan cut him off.
"That's not important even if we could do it safely, and we can't. We'd risk offending the captain of my ship by bothering his men. Offend him badly enough, and he'd take the matter before the Mariners' Guild. Then we'd have Styphon's Own Time getting any shipmaster to sail for the Hos-Hostigos Trading Company. The spy could easily turn out to have been one of Theovacar's agents buying a drink for one our crew.
"We could use the hypno-truth drugs," Zinna said.
"We could, if we didn't have to assume that King Theovacar has enough spies to detect any pattern of interest we show in anybody. I'd rather assume that until Theovacar owes us enough to overlook any little games we play on our own that aren't directed at him. Right now, we're too dependent on his goodwill.
"While on the surface Grefftscharr appears less sophisticated than the civilization of the Six Kingdoms, things run much deeper here. This civilization is a thousand years older than the Eastern Kingdoms and has survived in the midst of a sea of competing barbarian tribes and kingdoms. If poor Great King Kaiphranos had had Theovacar's network of spies and agents, Kalvan might be moldering in a box instead of on the throne of Hos-Hostigos.
"Then, too, there's another category of people I'd rather probe. The Council of Guilds seems to include a few of our enemies. I want to find out who they are, without giving them or Theovacar any clues about what we're doing."
Verkan paused to sip his beer. "Our not being able to hire mercenaries may be a stroke of luck. We can post notices that we're hiring experienced caravan guards for duty both on land and shipboard. Our enemies on the Council will take the chance to plant spies among those we hire. Once we're out of Grefftscharrer territory, any spy we detect can be interrogated freely.
"Also disposed of freely, if we find that necessary," Zinna put in. Kostran frowned at this casual ruthlessness, but Verkan wasn't surprised; Zinganna had spent the first twenty years of her life in Old Dhergabar. Anyone who did that, and came out alive and sane, could have few illusions about the virtues of being too nice to your enemies.
"Exactly. It may take a while for the spies to turn up so I'll want you both to prepare a supply of false data we can feed them to pass to their masters on the Council of Guilds. That will also help us trace who those masters are. Who do you recommend for interrogating the spies in the field?"
The discussion of possible candidates for this certainly thankless and probably grisly job lasted nearly half an hour and several more rounds of beer. By the time they had the names of three Paracops, Verkan was sure Kostran and Zinna had completely forgotten that he'd been arguing for a degree of caution in dealing with potential enemies near settled communities that was unusual for Chief Verkan Vail.
He hoped he'd prevented the asking of unanswerable questions-unanswerable not just for security reasons but also because of inadequate data. Verkan was satisfied that one or more of the University people was a spy for Hadron Tharn. Now that almost all the necessary locals had been hypno-conditioned for establishing believable covers, any widespread use of hypno-mech interrogation, where there'd be Fourth Level witnesses, might now reach the ears of a qualified First Level observer who could understand what was going on. So interrogations that might otherwise pass unnoticed might reach the Opposition Party, to provide them with yet another charge against the Paratime Police.
Then the power pile would begin to overload. It was the next thing to public knowledge that the Opposition was making its peace with some of the trading interests who were unhappy-to put it mildly-over the possible shutdown of Fourth Level Europo-American. Given a solid case of "police abuses," the Opposition might slip the leash. Dalla's renegade brother would be howling loud and clear near the head of the pack.
The two men had never liked each other; even at first sight! He'd always thought Dalla had babied her younger sibling, while Tharn resented Verkan taking up her time and attention from him. But there was more than sibling rivalry and displaced affections going on in the Tharn family; serious mental illness, along with genius, was the family's legacy. Even ex-Chief Tortha had warned him-without getting specific-about involving himself with the Hadron family. But he'd been bewitched by Dalla, and still was; she was the most interesting and vibrant woman he'd ever met. He had lost her once to his career and ambition, and he had promised himself that would not happen again. And he certainly would not risk losing her to her brother's compulsion for revenge.
Twice Dalla had talked him out of filing a complaint with the Bureau of Psych-Hygiene-a Paratime Police Chief's complaint resulted in compulsory testing and treatment of any First Level Citizen. With all his other problems and trying to live a double life, Verkan was beginning to regret giving in and letting her brother-who needed a Mentalist scrub-run free. Not only was Tharn dabbling in First Level politics, but also he was trying to setup the University of Dhergabar as a weapon against Verkan and the Paratime Police.
Verkan doubted that Hadron Tharn had anything to do with the shipboard spy; that thread would probably lead back to the Council of Guilds and some merchant who was in hock up to his eyeballs to Styphon's House. Or one of King Theovacar's agents who kept a watch on the Salt-less Sea shipping. Verkan would have been much less frustrated if there'd been even a little more he could do about the probable spy. Investigate, identify, neutralize or terminate (though not always as thoroughly as Zinna had suggested) that was standard Paratime Police procedure for dealing with intelligence leaks.
With the leak on the University study teams, he couldn't do any of these without offending the University as an institution, instead of just a collection of individual scholars and Opposition sympathizers. He couldn't investigate without somebody noticing the investigation. If he identified the spy without an investigation, he couldn't neutralize them without somebody noticing the re-routing of data or the supplying of false data. And, as for terminating him/her, better to stick his own sigma-ray needler in his ear and fire. It would do the same job with much less time, effort and mess.
What he could do was limited to talking things over with Tortha Karf and Dalla as soon as he could. They always helped, if only by making him feel that he was something more than a fixed and highly visible target. He'd also commend Ranthar Jard for compiling the dossier on the data leaks, tell him to keep it secret from everyone except Verkan personally and have him keep an even closer eye than usual on where the University people went and what they did. It was unlikely that this would turn up the spy; it was possible that it would reduce the risk of one of the University people getting accidentally killed, and that would be one less grievance the University could have to lay at the door of the Paratime Police.
Verkan found that he wanted more beer, and then reached for his mug and discovered Zinna had refilled it so quietly he'd never even noticed. She had the knack of knowing when somebody wanted to be alone with a problem and a steady supply of food and liquor. Perhaps not a very heroic virtue, but Verkan had ducked bullets in a civil war caused by poor bar service in a medium-priced whorehouse, and certainly it had kept Kostran Galth married for eight years, which considering how valuable a subordinate Kostran was-
Verkan laughed and swigged more beer. He would have to be careful, not to imitate Tortha Karf's grandfatherly concern for his subordinates personal lives. He was not only the youngest Chief in the history of the Paratime Police; he was barely half the age of some of his chief subordinates. He'd only make himself look ridiculous without doing any good.