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waited for Flores’ response, hoping the general could overcome the cultural biases he’d grown up with and deal with Calli as an equal.
    Flores swallowed. “Señora Calli—” he began and Nick let out his breath. Flores lifted his hand. “If we do not investigate, how else do we find this man? This person?”
    “We watch,” Calli responded. “And we follow any trail the bastardo leaves. And he will leave one, General. They always do sooner or later. If there are enough of us watching for signs, we’ll spot them.”
    “In the meantime,” Nick added, “we need to filter the information we distribute outside this room. It must be as innocuous as possible. Everything will be on a need-to-know basis until further notice. Most of the key information must be kept here, in this room.”
    Josh scrubbed both hands through his hair. “Any Vice-President worth his salt would advise you, Nick, that your plan will fall over inside two weeks. You’re setting everyone up in this room to become the most overworked souls on the planet. You can’t operate that way in the long term. There has to be a better way to do this.”
    Nick smiled. “That’s fine for the boardroom, but this is military intelligence—”
    “And you’re still using the same basic commodity,” Josh overrode him. “Human bodies.”
    Nick hid the frustration that bit at him. “You have a better idea?”
    “Sure.” Josh sat back. “You need to sniff out a rat, so put a cat on his trail. Pick out the best counter-intelligence officer still reporting to the loyalist army. Once you know they’ve checked out as clean, assign them to hunting down this guy. Give them free rein of the house, all information and records, whatever it takes to track the bastardo down, as long as it’s done discreetly and doesn’t set off any alarms. Meantime, everyone here goes about their normal duties like nothing’s changed.”
    Nick nodded. “It’s a good idea,” he said. “There’s just one minor problem with it. General—” He turned to Flores. “Who is your best intelligence officer on staff?”
    Flores frowned his way through a mental translation, then smiled. “If I knew the name of them, I would not tell you the name of intelligence operators. It would ruin their work, no?” He shook his head. “But I know we have none. All gone. Dead, or with insurrectos , or missing.” He nodded toward Duardo. “Colonel Peña is best at this than any of us. He has…er…training now.”
    “Ten weeks posing as Zalaya doesn’t make me an intelligence officer,” Duardo protested. “What Josh is proposing is completely different.”
    “Why?” Josh asked. “It just takes a sneaky mind that can outthink the rat you’re hunting and you’ve got a mind that works like a pretzel. That Mexican three-step you pulled off as Zalaya is proof of that.”
    “Duardo can’t do it,” Nick interjected. “For the same reason that none of us in this room can. We’re all visible and high-profile in the house and among the army personnel. If we change our behavior patterns in any way, the rat will be alerted.”
    Josh drummed his fingers on the table. “Something isn’t adding up here,” he said slowly. “Duardo has been back from Vistaria for nearly four weeks, but you’re only raising the fact of this rat now. Why only now?”
    Nick caught Calli’s glance at him. He had wanted to avoid this subject, but she had insisted that within this room, it must be aired. Now Josh had skewered the topic neatly through the eye. Nick took a breath. “Mexico broke off diplomatic negotiations with us twenty-four hours ago—to give us time to reestablish our leadership base, they said.” The words tasted like ashes in his mouth.
    There was a little silence.
    Josh blew out his breath again. “Hell’s bells,” he murmured. “Are they talking to Serrano?”
    This time, Nick winced. Calli’s hand curled around his under the table, even though her face was turned to Josh.