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jaybee65Title: Succession
Fandom: La Femme Nikita
Rating: Probably a hard R, for sexual situations and violence.
Pairings: Contains Madeline/Paul (Operations) and Charles Sand/Madeline as well as references to Adrian/George, but this doesn't fit comfortably into "shippy" categories.
Length: The whole thing is 120k-plus words. There are 31 chapters, which are distributed among four "Parts."
Warning: Michael and Nikita do not appear in this story, except as minor references at the very end.
Summary: Set during the 1980's, this story traces the events that ultimately led to the overthrow of Adrian as leader of Section One and to her replacement by Paul Wolfe (Operations).
Chapter Twenty-Six
When the bell sounded at the front door, Charles set aside the stack of paperwork in relief. He'd been waiting several hours for a delivery of the latest satellite reconnaissance from the Urals; if it didn't arrive soon, the prospect of staying up all night to finish the tactical guidelines was looming.
"Thank God," he said to himself as he crossed the room to answer the door. But when he pulled it open, the man standing outside was no DRV messenger.
"Good evening," said George.
"Sir." Charles stared dumbly for a moment, then he managed to recover. "Please, come in."
George stepped past Charles and strolled into the apartment. He walked slowly, with an oddly proprietary air, like an appraiser cataloguing the contents of the residence for inventory.
He paused an especially long time to examine a bronze statuette on a table. "Isis?"
"Nephthys," Charles corrected. "Goddess of the dead." He closed the door and joined George by the table. "It was a gift from my wife."
"It's exquisite." George ran a finger along the hieroglyphics inscribed on the base. "It must be worth a fortune."
Charles shook his head. "It's a reproduction. Egypt's been plundered of antiquities enough as it is without my contributing to the problem."
At that, George seemed to lose interest. He proceeded into the living room and sat in one of the chairs.
"Can I offer you something?" asked Charles.
"No."
The clock on the mantel struck the hour. The chimes rang loudly, each note magnifying the silence that hung between the two men. George waited for it to finish, then he crossed his legs and leaned back in the chair.
"Once upon a time," he drawled, "you told me that you'd do whatever was necessary to prevent Paul Wolfe from taking over Section One." He stared at Charles, unblinking. "Do you still feel that way?"
Charles hadn't forgotten that conversation, but it wasn't from lack of trying. Going to George had been a sign of weakness, of a lapse in self-confidence, of anger born from jealousy. The memory of it embarrassed him.
He gave a noncommittal shrug. "Paul fell out of favor long ago."
"A man can be out of favor one day," said George, "and back in again the next."
George's face was completely blank, but he filled his speech with lingering, ambiguous pauses. Charles felt himself grow uneasy.
"What are you suggesting?" he asked.
"That you open your eyes and pay attention to what's going on around you." George's tone sharpened. "That you be prepared to stand up and protect the things you care about."
Charles stiffened. Was this a warning? A challenge? A threat?
"You sound like you have something particular in mind."
"I didn't say that." George smiled. A half-smile, one that merely lifted one side of his mouth, as if it took too much energy to bother with the rest. "It's just friendly advice." He stood. "I don't have time to stay and chat, however. I was on my way to an appointment nearby."
Heading to the door, he stopped again by the statuette of Nephthys.
"For a fake, it's very convincing." He turned to look back at Charles. "By the way, how is your wife?"
Charles blinked at the change of subject. "Quite well, thank you."
There was another half smile. "Be sure to give her my regards."
"I will."
Charles couldn't close the door fast enough.
***
Near the front of the café, a group of women shrieked with laughter. Distracted, Madeline glanced up from her table at the rear and sighed. When the noise subsided to tolerable levels, she took a sip of her Kir and returned to reading the data printouts from Accommodations. She'd finished sixty-seven pages of detailed surveillance on the computer specialists in Systems. So far, all of it useless. She began to massage her temples.
She heard a cigarette lighter flick open. The pungent smell of Gitanes drifted across the table. She looked up at her companion; this was the third cigarette Eduard had lit in forty minutes. She hadn't told him how critical the information she'd asked for was, but he clearly sensed something: his nervousness amplified hers and rebounded back again.
"They're rather well-behaved little drones, aren't they?" he said, attempting jocularity.
"So it seems."
"A bit of drug use here and there, but that's not much to work with."
"No," she agreed.
She had to find something better. She was going to try and persuade someone to plant data in the computer archives to frame Adrian -- a cancelable offense if there ever was one -- and she would need far more than petty crimes as blackmail material. Unfortunately, Jules seemed to have a knack for selecting personnel with a rather limited imagination for misbehavior. Profound laziness and slacking off on the job was about as far as most of them went. How Systems managed to function was the real mystery. Once Adrian was gone, Madeline would have to get rid of all of them.
"There is one other thing I brought along," said Eduard, but he sounded doubtful.
"Yes?"
"She's not in Systems herself, but take a look at this."
He handed Madeline another printout: Mireille Martin, age 45, chief instructor in the Level 16 research facility. A child psychologist by training, recruited after a conviction for forging her employer's signature on handful of checks. A fumbling amateur as a criminal, from what it appeared. Madeline scanned the pages but saw nothing of interest.
"What about her?"
"Do you see on page three? She received a housing upgrade a few years ago that she wasn't entitled to."
Madeline flipped to the page and located the entry. "She bribed someone in your department?"
"She most certainly did not." Eduard sniffed in offense. "That approval code is mine. I think I would remember if someone bribed me."
"Hmm. Interesting."
"Very." Eduard grinned. "There are some other transactions that look suspicious, too. Credit cards, other perks." He reached across the table to point out several entries. "I don't know how she did it, but she seems to have broken into the IT system at multiple access points. Maybe she's the person you're looking for."
"Maybe."
It was puzzling. Martin didn't fit the profile -- by training or personality type -- of someone capable of something so sophisticated. Perhaps it would turn out to be a false lead, and there was an innocent explanation for the anomalies in her record. Still, it was worth following up on.
Madeline drained the rest of her glass and signaled for the waiter. False lead or not, Eduard deserved another drink for his diligence.
Tonight, they could relax. Tomorrow, Madeline would pay a visit to Mireille Martin.
***
When Lisa passed through the exit from Section, a blast of sunlight hit her directly in the face. She blinked in surprise and fumbled for her sunglasses. She'd forgotten it was the middle of the afternoon -- too many time zone changes and too much time in dimly-lit transport planes the past few days. She no longer knew what season it was, much less what time of day.
She should have been used to the constant schedule upheavals by now. But she wasn't. If anything, it got harder to adjust to each passing year. She'd get back from a mission so exhausted she could barely sit up, yet she'd wind up lying in bed for hours with her eyes wide open. Some ops swore by sleeping pills; others resorted to alcohol -- she resisted using either, but the lack of proper rest was taking a slow toll on her health. Fatigue meant slow reflexes; slow reflexes meant mistakes; and mistakes meant something she didn't want to think about.
The smell of freshly-made pommes frites wafted out of a nearby restaurant. She could almost taste them -- they'd be salty and greasy and wonderfully crisp, and oh God, she was ravenous. She stopped to check if she had enough cash in her wallet. She might not be able to sleep, but eating was one thing she could do any hour of the day or night.
Bingo! Amidst the crumpled yen and rupiah notes, she had fifteen francs. Those pommes frites were hers.
"Hey, Lisa," called a voice from behind her.
Crap. She wasn't two blocks away from Section and they were already reeling her back in. Another oh-so-urgent mission that would fling her into yet another time zone before she could even remember which one she'd just come from.
She wiped her face clean of disappointment before she turned around. It was Madeline, dressed in a wool overcoat that probably cost more than Lisa spent on clothes in a decade. This might not be such bad news after all. Madeline didn't usually hand out work assignments to the field ops. Most likely she was just going to remind Lisa to stop in for her semi-annual performance review, or fill out some bullshit report, or engage in one of the other pointless wastes of time that Madeline now presided over in her capacity as Adrian's most skilled dispenser of red tape. Lisa could nod and say, "yeah, yeah," and escape in thirty seconds, back to those pommes frites that were causing the empty core of her stomach to rumble audibly.
"What is it?" she asked when Madeline had caught up with her.
"Are you on your way home?"
"Yeah. I just got back from Jakarta, and I'm wiped out."
"I'll walk with you to the metro, then," Madeline said. "I'm headed that direction."
Lisa gave one last sad look at the restaurant that she wasn't going to get to go into after all. "Sure."
As they walked, Madeline kept up a cheerful patter of small talk. Listening to it, Lisa remembered why she had once liked her so much. When Madeline lavished her attention on someone, she could make him or her feel like the most fascinating person on the planet. When they first knew each other, Lisa had been taken in by it. Later, she dismissed it as a cynical charade. But that wasn't quite right, either. It had taken a long time before Lisa finally figured it out: Madeline was sincerely interested in people. She just didn't care about them. Until she met Madeline, Lisa hadn't realized there could be a distinction.
"Here's my stop," said Lisa, relieved. "I guess I'll see you tomorrow."
Her mind was already wandering, imagining the prospect of pommes frites at the café down the block from her apartment, when Madeline touched her arm.
"You know, Lisa, I owe you an apology."
Lisa frowned. "Um, for what?"
"All this time, you kept telling me how good you were with computers. I'm afraid I didn't take you seriously. I assumed you were exaggerating because you wanted a transfer out of the field. That was wrong of me."
"Oh, wow." Lisa laughed. This wasn't what she had expected at all. In fact, it was a pretty decent thing of Madeline to do. She felt a minor twinge of guilt for her cynical assessment of the woman a moment before. "Look, that's okay. You had no reason to believe me. I'm not offended."
"Good." Madeline smiled brightly. "I was especially impressed when Mireille told about all the things you'd helped her with."
"When…wait…when what?"
Lisa hadn't heard that right. She couldn't have heard that right. If she'd heard that right, she was dead.
Madeline's smile didn't waver. Lisa gaped, her brain stuttering incoherent thoughts until she realized that yes, she had indeed heard that right.
Mireille had sold her out.
"I'll kill her," Lisa said through gritted teeth.
"Don't blame Mireille. I didn't give her a choice."
No. Of course she hadn't. What chance would Mireille have had against Section One's interrogator-in-chief? Lisa's anger deflated, along with what was left of her energy. Her legs didn't seem to want to support her weight anymore. She reached for the wall of a nearby shop to steady herself and slumped against it.
"So, now what?" she asked. "Are you going to turn me in? Score some more brownie points with Adrian? You're getting pretty good at that these days."
"Not at all." If Madeline felt stung by the insult, she didn't show it. She just looked Lisa up and down, her smile warm and conspiratorial. "I'm here to present you with an opportunity."
"Yeah. Right." An opportunity. Leave it to Madeline to resort to a euphemism instead of just saying, I own you. Lisa sighed in defeat. "What do you want?"
"Actually, it's about what you want. That transfer to Systems? I can arrange for that. In fact, when we're finished, you might just have Jules's job."
"When we're finished with what?"
"Why, destroying Adrian, of course."
***
"The profile is superb," said Adrian. "Very fine work, Paul."
"Thank you."
Paul stood at attention in Adrian's office, hands clasped behind his back, his posture straight and confident. He hadn't displayed such a spit-and-polish military bearing in more time than Adrian could remember. It suited him. He looked proud, focused, like someone who possessed not just a clear purpose but also a well-thought-out plan to achieve it. Adrian smiled to herself: it seemed that by giving him a real assignment instead of the make-work errands she'd sent him on over the past few years, she'd managed to shake him out of his cynical complacency a bit.
Perhaps he wasn't an entirely lost cause after all.
"How quickly can we implement this?" she asked.
"I've set a target date of one week before Gorbachev's arrival. That way it will have the maximum impact."
"Very good. Prepare your team."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Dismissed," she said, and she watched as he turned and walked away.
She reached for the telephone and began to dial George's number. She hesitated, finger poised over the final digit. She was on the verge of her greatest achievement, and she wanted nothing more than to share the news with the one person who had been her companion down the long, hard road she'd traveled. George alone would truly understand the enormity of what she was about to do; he alone would appreciate the genius of its scope.
However, there was his well-being to consider. That fool Phillip -- and those small-minded cowards on the Council -- would retaliate, she was quite certain. She had finally seen them for what they were. They had no principles, no vision beyond protecting the status quo and their own comfortable place within it. They didn't understand that the path of history was fraught with risk, that human achievement came at a cost, and that sometimes that cost was the blood of innocents. When China exploded, so would the tottering edifice of the Soviet Union, and the shockwaves would cascade throughout the world in a chain reaction, the pent-up desire for freedom unleashed like a string of atomic blasts. They wouldn't see that as progress. All they would see was chaos. Disruption. Danger. After all, if the world turned upside-down, who knew what their place would be in it?
Once she set the initial events in motion, it would all be unstoppable. But that didn't mean they wouldn't attack her afterwards, lashing out in shortsighted fury. Telling George in advance would make him complicit. And he'd then be destroyed along with her. She couldn't do that. Someone -- someone who understood -- needed to survive to carry on her legacy. He was the only one she trusted enough to do that.
She set down the telephone receiver. She would bear this burden alone. When she thought about the ultimate reward, it didn't seem so heavy after all.
************
To go on to Chapter Twenty-Seven, click here.
Previous Chapters
Fandom: La Femme Nikita
Rating: Probably a hard R, for sexual situations and violence.
Pairings: Contains Madeline/Paul (Operations) and Charles Sand/Madeline as well as references to Adrian/George, but this doesn't fit comfortably into "shippy" categories.
Length: The whole thing is 120k-plus words. There are 31 chapters, which are distributed among four "Parts."
Warning: Michael and Nikita do not appear in this story, except as minor references at the very end.
Summary: Set during the 1980's, this story traces the events that ultimately led to the overthrow of Adrian as leader of Section One and to her replacement by Paul Wolfe (Operations).
When the bell sounded at the front door, Charles set aside the stack of paperwork in relief. He'd been waiting several hours for a delivery of the latest satellite reconnaissance from the Urals; if it didn't arrive soon, the prospect of staying up all night to finish the tactical guidelines was looming.
"Thank God," he said to himself as he crossed the room to answer the door. But when he pulled it open, the man standing outside was no DRV messenger.
"Good evening," said George.
"Sir." Charles stared dumbly for a moment, then he managed to recover. "Please, come in."
George stepped past Charles and strolled into the apartment. He walked slowly, with an oddly proprietary air, like an appraiser cataloguing the contents of the residence for inventory.
He paused an especially long time to examine a bronze statuette on a table. "Isis?"
"Nephthys," Charles corrected. "Goddess of the dead." He closed the door and joined George by the table. "It was a gift from my wife."
"It's exquisite." George ran a finger along the hieroglyphics inscribed on the base. "It must be worth a fortune."
Charles shook his head. "It's a reproduction. Egypt's been plundered of antiquities enough as it is without my contributing to the problem."
At that, George seemed to lose interest. He proceeded into the living room and sat in one of the chairs.
"Can I offer you something?" asked Charles.
"No."
The clock on the mantel struck the hour. The chimes rang loudly, each note magnifying the silence that hung between the two men. George waited for it to finish, then he crossed his legs and leaned back in the chair.
"Once upon a time," he drawled, "you told me that you'd do whatever was necessary to prevent Paul Wolfe from taking over Section One." He stared at Charles, unblinking. "Do you still feel that way?"
Charles hadn't forgotten that conversation, but it wasn't from lack of trying. Going to George had been a sign of weakness, of a lapse in self-confidence, of anger born from jealousy. The memory of it embarrassed him.
He gave a noncommittal shrug. "Paul fell out of favor long ago."
"A man can be out of favor one day," said George, "and back in again the next."
George's face was completely blank, but he filled his speech with lingering, ambiguous pauses. Charles felt himself grow uneasy.
"What are you suggesting?" he asked.
"That you open your eyes and pay attention to what's going on around you." George's tone sharpened. "That you be prepared to stand up and protect the things you care about."
Charles stiffened. Was this a warning? A challenge? A threat?
"You sound like you have something particular in mind."
"I didn't say that." George smiled. A half-smile, one that merely lifted one side of his mouth, as if it took too much energy to bother with the rest. "It's just friendly advice." He stood. "I don't have time to stay and chat, however. I was on my way to an appointment nearby."
Heading to the door, he stopped again by the statuette of Nephthys.
"For a fake, it's very convincing." He turned to look back at Charles. "By the way, how is your wife?"
Charles blinked at the change of subject. "Quite well, thank you."
There was another half smile. "Be sure to give her my regards."
"I will."
Charles couldn't close the door fast enough.
***
Near the front of the café, a group of women shrieked with laughter. Distracted, Madeline glanced up from her table at the rear and sighed. When the noise subsided to tolerable levels, she took a sip of her Kir and returned to reading the data printouts from Accommodations. She'd finished sixty-seven pages of detailed surveillance on the computer specialists in Systems. So far, all of it useless. She began to massage her temples.
She heard a cigarette lighter flick open. The pungent smell of Gitanes drifted across the table. She looked up at her companion; this was the third cigarette Eduard had lit in forty minutes. She hadn't told him how critical the information she'd asked for was, but he clearly sensed something: his nervousness amplified hers and rebounded back again.
"They're rather well-behaved little drones, aren't they?" he said, attempting jocularity.
"So it seems."
"A bit of drug use here and there, but that's not much to work with."
"No," she agreed.
She had to find something better. She was going to try and persuade someone to plant data in the computer archives to frame Adrian -- a cancelable offense if there ever was one -- and she would need far more than petty crimes as blackmail material. Unfortunately, Jules seemed to have a knack for selecting personnel with a rather limited imagination for misbehavior. Profound laziness and slacking off on the job was about as far as most of them went. How Systems managed to function was the real mystery. Once Adrian was gone, Madeline would have to get rid of all of them.
"There is one other thing I brought along," said Eduard, but he sounded doubtful.
"Yes?"
"She's not in Systems herself, but take a look at this."
He handed Madeline another printout: Mireille Martin, age 45, chief instructor in the Level 16 research facility. A child psychologist by training, recruited after a conviction for forging her employer's signature on handful of checks. A fumbling amateur as a criminal, from what it appeared. Madeline scanned the pages but saw nothing of interest.
"What about her?"
"Do you see on page three? She received a housing upgrade a few years ago that she wasn't entitled to."
Madeline flipped to the page and located the entry. "She bribed someone in your department?"
"She most certainly did not." Eduard sniffed in offense. "That approval code is mine. I think I would remember if someone bribed me."
"Hmm. Interesting."
"Very." Eduard grinned. "There are some other transactions that look suspicious, too. Credit cards, other perks." He reached across the table to point out several entries. "I don't know how she did it, but she seems to have broken into the IT system at multiple access points. Maybe she's the person you're looking for."
"Maybe."
It was puzzling. Martin didn't fit the profile -- by training or personality type -- of someone capable of something so sophisticated. Perhaps it would turn out to be a false lead, and there was an innocent explanation for the anomalies in her record. Still, it was worth following up on.
Madeline drained the rest of her glass and signaled for the waiter. False lead or not, Eduard deserved another drink for his diligence.
Tonight, they could relax. Tomorrow, Madeline would pay a visit to Mireille Martin.
***
When Lisa passed through the exit from Section, a blast of sunlight hit her directly in the face. She blinked in surprise and fumbled for her sunglasses. She'd forgotten it was the middle of the afternoon -- too many time zone changes and too much time in dimly-lit transport planes the past few days. She no longer knew what season it was, much less what time of day.
She should have been used to the constant schedule upheavals by now. But she wasn't. If anything, it got harder to adjust to each passing year. She'd get back from a mission so exhausted she could barely sit up, yet she'd wind up lying in bed for hours with her eyes wide open. Some ops swore by sleeping pills; others resorted to alcohol -- she resisted using either, but the lack of proper rest was taking a slow toll on her health. Fatigue meant slow reflexes; slow reflexes meant mistakes; and mistakes meant something she didn't want to think about.
The smell of freshly-made pommes frites wafted out of a nearby restaurant. She could almost taste them -- they'd be salty and greasy and wonderfully crisp, and oh God, she was ravenous. She stopped to check if she had enough cash in her wallet. She might not be able to sleep, but eating was one thing she could do any hour of the day or night.
Bingo! Amidst the crumpled yen and rupiah notes, she had fifteen francs. Those pommes frites were hers.
"Hey, Lisa," called a voice from behind her.
Crap. She wasn't two blocks away from Section and they were already reeling her back in. Another oh-so-urgent mission that would fling her into yet another time zone before she could even remember which one she'd just come from.
She wiped her face clean of disappointment before she turned around. It was Madeline, dressed in a wool overcoat that probably cost more than Lisa spent on clothes in a decade. This might not be such bad news after all. Madeline didn't usually hand out work assignments to the field ops. Most likely she was just going to remind Lisa to stop in for her semi-annual performance review, or fill out some bullshit report, or engage in one of the other pointless wastes of time that Madeline now presided over in her capacity as Adrian's most skilled dispenser of red tape. Lisa could nod and say, "yeah, yeah," and escape in thirty seconds, back to those pommes frites that were causing the empty core of her stomach to rumble audibly.
"What is it?" she asked when Madeline had caught up with her.
"Are you on your way home?"
"Yeah. I just got back from Jakarta, and I'm wiped out."
"I'll walk with you to the metro, then," Madeline said. "I'm headed that direction."
Lisa gave one last sad look at the restaurant that she wasn't going to get to go into after all. "Sure."
As they walked, Madeline kept up a cheerful patter of small talk. Listening to it, Lisa remembered why she had once liked her so much. When Madeline lavished her attention on someone, she could make him or her feel like the most fascinating person on the planet. When they first knew each other, Lisa had been taken in by it. Later, she dismissed it as a cynical charade. But that wasn't quite right, either. It had taken a long time before Lisa finally figured it out: Madeline was sincerely interested in people. She just didn't care about them. Until she met Madeline, Lisa hadn't realized there could be a distinction.
"Here's my stop," said Lisa, relieved. "I guess I'll see you tomorrow."
Her mind was already wandering, imagining the prospect of pommes frites at the café down the block from her apartment, when Madeline touched her arm.
"You know, Lisa, I owe you an apology."
Lisa frowned. "Um, for what?"
"All this time, you kept telling me how good you were with computers. I'm afraid I didn't take you seriously. I assumed you were exaggerating because you wanted a transfer out of the field. That was wrong of me."
"Oh, wow." Lisa laughed. This wasn't what she had expected at all. In fact, it was a pretty decent thing of Madeline to do. She felt a minor twinge of guilt for her cynical assessment of the woman a moment before. "Look, that's okay. You had no reason to believe me. I'm not offended."
"Good." Madeline smiled brightly. "I was especially impressed when Mireille told about all the things you'd helped her with."
"When…wait…when what?"
Lisa hadn't heard that right. She couldn't have heard that right. If she'd heard that right, she was dead.
Madeline's smile didn't waver. Lisa gaped, her brain stuttering incoherent thoughts until she realized that yes, she had indeed heard that right.
Mireille had sold her out.
"I'll kill her," Lisa said through gritted teeth.
"Don't blame Mireille. I didn't give her a choice."
No. Of course she hadn't. What chance would Mireille have had against Section One's interrogator-in-chief? Lisa's anger deflated, along with what was left of her energy. Her legs didn't seem to want to support her weight anymore. She reached for the wall of a nearby shop to steady herself and slumped against it.
"So, now what?" she asked. "Are you going to turn me in? Score some more brownie points with Adrian? You're getting pretty good at that these days."
"Not at all." If Madeline felt stung by the insult, she didn't show it. She just looked Lisa up and down, her smile warm and conspiratorial. "I'm here to present you with an opportunity."
"Yeah. Right." An opportunity. Leave it to Madeline to resort to a euphemism instead of just saying, I own you. Lisa sighed in defeat. "What do you want?"
"Actually, it's about what you want. That transfer to Systems? I can arrange for that. In fact, when we're finished, you might just have Jules's job."
"When we're finished with what?"
"Why, destroying Adrian, of course."
***
"The profile is superb," said Adrian. "Very fine work, Paul."
"Thank you."
Paul stood at attention in Adrian's office, hands clasped behind his back, his posture straight and confident. He hadn't displayed such a spit-and-polish military bearing in more time than Adrian could remember. It suited him. He looked proud, focused, like someone who possessed not just a clear purpose but also a well-thought-out plan to achieve it. Adrian smiled to herself: it seemed that by giving him a real assignment instead of the make-work errands she'd sent him on over the past few years, she'd managed to shake him out of his cynical complacency a bit.
Perhaps he wasn't an entirely lost cause after all.
"How quickly can we implement this?" she asked.
"I've set a target date of one week before Gorbachev's arrival. That way it will have the maximum impact."
"Very good. Prepare your team."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Dismissed," she said, and she watched as he turned and walked away.
She reached for the telephone and began to dial George's number. She hesitated, finger poised over the final digit. She was on the verge of her greatest achievement, and she wanted nothing more than to share the news with the one person who had been her companion down the long, hard road she'd traveled. George alone would truly understand the enormity of what she was about to do; he alone would appreciate the genius of its scope.
However, there was his well-being to consider. That fool Phillip -- and those small-minded cowards on the Council -- would retaliate, she was quite certain. She had finally seen them for what they were. They had no principles, no vision beyond protecting the status quo and their own comfortable place within it. They didn't understand that the path of history was fraught with risk, that human achievement came at a cost, and that sometimes that cost was the blood of innocents. When China exploded, so would the tottering edifice of the Soviet Union, and the shockwaves would cascade throughout the world in a chain reaction, the pent-up desire for freedom unleashed like a string of atomic blasts. They wouldn't see that as progress. All they would see was chaos. Disruption. Danger. After all, if the world turned upside-down, who knew what their place would be in it?
Once she set the initial events in motion, it would all be unstoppable. But that didn't mean they wouldn't attack her afterwards, lashing out in shortsighted fury. Telling George in advance would make him complicit. And he'd then be destroyed along with her. She couldn't do that. Someone -- someone who understood -- needed to survive to carry on her legacy. He was the only one she trusted enough to do that.
She set down the telephone receiver. She would bear this burden alone. When she thought about the ultimate reward, it didn't seem so heavy after all.
************
To go on to Chapter Twenty-Seven, click here.