Miles, Mystery & Mayhem - Lois McMaster Bujold [44]
"The Ba Lura could have foisted that decoy key onto any number of outlander delegations. Instead, it picked Barrayarans, or rather, its satrap-governor master did. Why?"
"Maybe we were the only ones there at the right time," Ivan suggested.
"Mm. I'm trying to reduce the random factors, please. If Yenaro's backer is the same as our man, we were picked in advance to be framed. Now." He waved at the map. "Picture a scenario where the Cetagandan empire breaks apart and the pieces begin an attempt to expand. Which, if any, benefit from trouble with Barrayar?"
Ivan's brows went up, and he leaned forward, staring at the glowing array of spheres and lines above the vid plate.
"Well . . . Rho Ceta is positioned to expand toward Komarr, or would be, if we weren't sitting on two-thirds of the wormhole jumps between. Mu Ceta just got a bloody nose, administered by us, when it attempted to expand past Vervain into the Hegen Hub. Those are the two most obvious. These other three," Ivan pointed, "and Eta Ceta itself are all interior, I don't see any benefit to them."
"Then there's the other side of the nexus," Miles waved at the display. "Sigma Ceta, bordering the Vega Station groups. And Xi Ceta, giving onto Marilac. If they were seeking to break out, it might be expedient for them to have the empire's military resources tied up far away against Barrayar."
"Four out of eight. It's a start," Ivan conceded.
Ivan's analysis matched his own, then. Well, they'd both had the same strategic training; it stood to reason. Still Miles was obscurely comforted. It wasn't all the hallucination of his own over-driven imagination, if Ivan could see it too.
"It's a triangulation," said Miles. "If I can get any of the other lines of investigation to eliminate even part of the list, the final overlap ought to . . . well, it would be nice if it all came down to one."
"And then what?" Ivan demanded doggedly, his brows drawn down in suspicion. "What do you have in mind for us to do then?"
"I'm . . . not sure. But I do think you'd agree that a quiet conclusion to this mess would be preferable to a splashy one, eh?"
"Oh, yeah." Ivan chewed on his lower lip, eyeing the wormhole nexus map. "So when do we report?"
"Not . . . yet. But I think we'd better start documenting it all. Personal logs." So that anybody who came after them—Miles trusted not posthumously, but that was the unspoken thought—would at least have a chance of unraveling the events.
"I've been doing that since the first day," Ivan informed him grimly. "It's locked in my valise."
"Oh. Good." Miles hesitated. "When you talked to Colonel Vorreedi, did you plant the idea that Yenaro had a high-placed backer?"
"Not exactly."
"I'd like you to talk to him again, then. Try to direct his attention toward the satrap governors, somehow."
"Why don't you talk to him?"
"I'm . . . not ready. Not yet, not tonight. I'm still assimilating it all. And technically, he is my ImpSec superior here, or would be, if I were on active duty. I'd like to limit my, um . . ."
"Outright lies to him?" Ivan completed sweetly.
Miles grimaced, but did not deny it. "Look, I have an access in this matter that no other ImpSec officer could, due to my social position. I don't want to see the opportunity wasted. But it also limits me—I can't get at the routine legwork, the down-and-dirty details I need. I'm too conspicuous. I have to play to my own strengths, and get others to play