He knew all of the Navy’s ins and outs, all of its senior admirals, the complex web of its family alliances and patronage, where all the bodies were buried… and precisely whose pockets were filled at the trough of the Navy’s graft and corruption. After all, his own were prominent among them, and he personally controlled the spigots through which all the rest of it flowed.

Now if only the idiot knew what the hell his precious Navy was up to, Kolokoltsov thought coldly.

“It seems we have a small problem, Rajani,” he said out loud, beckoning the gorgeously bemedaled admiral towards a chair at the table.

“It bloody well better not be a ‘small’ problem,” Rajampet muttered, only half under his breath, as he stalked across to the indicated chair.

“I beg your pardon?” Kolokoltsov said with the air of a man who hadn’t quite heard what someone had said.

“I was in the middle of a meeting with the Attorney General’s people,” Rajampet replied, without apologizing for his earlier comment. “They still aren’t done with all the indictments for those damned trials, which means we’re only just now getting that whole business with Technodyne sorted out. I promised Omosupe and Agatб;”—he twitched his head at Omosupe Quartermain, Permanent Senior Undersecretary of Commerce, and Permanent Senior Undersecretary of the Treasury Agatб Wodoslawski—”a recommendation on the restructuring by the end of the week. It’s taken forever just to get everyone assembled so we could sit down and talk about it, and I don’t appreciate being yanked away from something that important.”

“I can understand why you’d resent being interrupted, Rajani,” Kolokoltsov said coolly. “Unfortunately, this small matter’s come up and it needs to be dealt with… immediately. And”—his dark eyes bored suddenly into Rajampet’s across the table—”unless I’m seriously mistaken, it’s rather closely related to what got Technodyne into trouble in the first place.”