Chapter 16: The storm that breaks the calm

Adam. 11

Jasmine Mavinda was a striking woman; there was no way to deny it. Tall, only a few inches shorter than Adam, with silky black hair that was tied back into an elegant style that made him think of Lucy. She would have been enthralled by her. There was a regal elegance about her, a quiet confidence that somehow managed to draw people in while simultaneously keeping them at arm’s length as well.

She was the sort of woman who commanded a room as soon as she stepped into it, who was often found in the upper echelons of planetary governments and corporate hierarchies, not just because of their intelligence or ability - it was doubtless that Minister Mavinda, the head of the ministry for health and education, had both - but because of their charismatic presence and sheer ... well, there was no other way to really say it. She was beautiful, she was classy, she was successful, and she looked the part. Although he didn’t doubt for a second that the Minister was an extraordinarily capable woman, he also didn’t doubt that what set her above all the other capable women out there were her looks.

There was also the way she was looking at him. Adam had spent a very long time in the cutthroat world of internal security. It may not have been as glamorous as the work done by the boys over in the Foreign Ministry’s espionage branch, but it was arguably more ruthless. To be a spy, you needed to learn how to lie, to play the part, and to know what information was valuable. You also needed to be able to actually get it. To be a spy hunter, on the other hand, meant having to size up and evaluate - sometimes at a single glance - almost everyone you came into contact with.

You had to know every single weakness in the society around you, every single person who could be a weak link, every single angle that could be taken to exploit those things; you had to be able to spot anomalies in the quickest of glances, assessing if they were a threat and, if so, how to contain them. A spy only had to succeed once to get access to information that should be kept secret. Spy hunters had to be successful every single time, and to be successful every single time required a certain degree of ruthlessness. Counter intelligence was where Adam had cut his professional teeth before he had moved over to investigations. Still, that ability to size someone up was a skill that he never allowed himself to lose.

That was precisely the look that Jasmine Mavinda was giving him now.

That look came with a hard, almost aggressive edge in men, but in women, it could take on a whole myriad of other forms. His female agents were arguably much better at this than the men were because they could use this exact tactic against the weaker-minded males. But Adam was anything but weak-minded, and her tricks were washing over him like water off a duck’s back.

She was flirting with him.

She brushed herself against him as he gave her the tour of the ISD compound outside Carracus. She let her hand linger a little too long on his arm as they spoke. She held his eye with an unusual, almost fierce intensity. Her tongue would dart out to wet her lips as she listened to him talk about something that, under normal circumstances, would make her eyes glaze over. She adjusted her top - just enough to give him a tantalizing glimpse at her impressive, supple cleavage - when they were alone in the elevator, and every time he found himself walking behind her, she would glance over her shoulder with a playful, almost daring smile at him and make sure to add an exaggerated sway into her admittedly impressive ass.

More than that, she laughed at him. Adam had his alter egos; he needed them to be able to survive in this world with his sanity intact. His home life, his good Adam, was - at least in his own opinion - hilarious. Dad humor was something that he genuinely enjoyed torturing his kids with, and he and Jenny would throw quips back and forth with almost savage speed. His work alter ego, however - his bad Adam - was not funny. Not in the slightest. Bad Adam didn’t make jokes, he wasn’t personable, he had exactly zero charisma, and he made sure that everyone knew it. He had found himself, more than once, on the receiving end of a joke being told at work and stared at the comedian with a completely stoney face after the punchline was given, not even showing the slightest hint of a smile, then walked away as if those were 30 seconds of his life he would never be able to get back, only to go home that night and tell the same joke to his wife, laughing riotously along with her at the punchline.

So, for Minister Mavinda to act like she found him even slightly amusing, let alone funny, was so absurd as to be dismissed out of hand. She wanted something, and she was trying - poorly - to ingratiate herself to him in order to get it. Adam was a decent-looking guy; he had never been exceptionally popular with the ladies back when he was single, but he liked to think that he had aged well. He knew there were women out there who found him attractive; Jenny would often grin teasingly, making Adam feel incredibly awkward when she would point them out. So, there had been an infinitesimally small chance that the Minister had genuinely been interested in him, but that idea was quashed when she kept laughing at jokes he wasn’t making.

Now, it was taking all of his considerable willpower not to roll his eyes every time she made one of these increasingly transparent attempts at seduction. But it did raise the question: what was it that she wanted?

That being said, it was a nice ass, and it did look good in that emerald green saree that she had wrapped around her. He wasn’t entirely opposed to watching it while waiting for the Minister to get to her point.

Mavinda had asked to visit him at the ISD compound during his appearance at the Imperium high council; it was a request that had surprised him even then. But what had surprised him even more was that three days later, she had actually turned up. That was the first of a few red flags that were currently waving around in Adam’s analytical mind. For her to request a visit to an agency that was in no way associated with her ministry was one thing; maybe she did it to raise a few eyebrows at the council, or maybe she was just trying to show support in a council chamber on the receiving end of some pretty bad news, one that could - in theory - be coming after his job ... and his freedom. But for her to actually turn up, on the first attempt, with no fucking around with rescheduling or any such nonsense, was the sort of thing Adam had learned to pay attention to.

Not making, then breaking, three or four prior appointments meant that Mavinda had an important reason to be here, one that couldn’t wait, but also one that only occurred to her once he had made his appearance before the council. She would have arranged this visit before then if it had. Then, for her to turn up and try every trick in the book of feminine wiles to get him to like her was red flag number two. And red flag number three was the fact that despite this pointless little tour having gone on for the past three hours - and even he had to admit that three hours of a Minister’s time was an extremely precious commodity, let alone the value of his own time - she still hadn’t actually told him the reason she had visited at all.

The tour was, thankfully, coming to an end, though. As the flagship department of the agency and the place where his office was, the tour predictably ended on the 91st floor, the headquarters of the ISD’s investigation branch. Ben’s desk was empty, with his effeminate and exceptionally effective gatekeeper off in parts unknown, keeping Adam’s family safe. Adam had to consciously and deliberately force his jaw not to clench every time he looked at that empty desk–Mavinda was an observant woman; she would have spotted it instantly. Ben’s desk was a stark, visceral reminder of the danger recent times had brought to his life and the threats still looming over them. More than that, those thoughts dredged up every carefully concealed feeling of disgust, disdain, and betrayal he now felt toward the Imperium, the Emperor leading it, and the council that had so callously signed off on the deaths of millions of people.

For all her charm, wit, intelligence, beauty, and flirting, Jasmine Mavinda was certainly included on that list, and Adam was under no doubt. If the rebellion he had conspired with got their way, if he got his way, the Minister for Health and Education would join her friends in front of a firing squad and that pretty face, that seductive body and everything else about her would be ripped apart in a savage, totally justified hail of laser fire.

He was also under no doubt that he would be next.

And, for the things he had done, he was pretty sure he would deserve it.

Finally, after hours of working, and after hours of showing the Minister around an office that he doubted she had even the slightest modicum of interest in, he finally led her into his office.

“Can I get you anything to drink, Minister?” He asked politely, while still keeping the gruff edge of his evil alter ego in his voice. He was getting better at playing politics, but he still hated it.

“No, thank you, Mr. Doncaster,” she smiled back at him, moving to his desk and taking a seat in front of it before he had offered. “However, for council security reasons, I would kindly request you activate your privacy systems.”

Audio scrambers built into the walls and the desk, internal sensors switched off, a pulse of power into the windows that gave Adam a clear view to outside, and into the bull pen turning them into a white, opaque wall, and an ultrasonic emitter that would fry the microphones of any device that had managed to get past the building’s security and into the citadel of his office. It was basically a larger, more complicated, and more effective, built in version of the little black box he had slid onto the conference table for his meeting with his team a week or so ago. Adam nodded, rounding the desk to sit down into his own chair without another word, reached under the closest edge of the desk, and pressed a button to activate the system. The windows suddenly clouded over, and a soft, but quickly fading whine echoed around the room for a moment before rising beyond the spectrum of human hearing range.

He waited a few seconds before nodding to the Minister. “The room is secure, you can speak openly.”

“Thank you,” she smiled again. “I suppose you have been wondering why I asked to meet you.”

“The question had crossed my mind, yes,” he replied, his face carefully stripped of any form of emotion.

“Sanda White and I were close,” Mavinda started. There was no force on earth observant enough to pick up on the way Adam’s heart suddenly jumped into his throat, but he kept staring at the Minister with that same stoney expression, as if waiting for her to get to her point. “Well, I should clarify; we were close in that ‘keep your friends close, and your enemies closer’ kind of way.” She paused, apparently waiting for Adam to comment. He didn’t. “So I would like you to tell me what really happened to her.”

“I already told you what really happened to her.”

“Mr Doncaster, I can make life very difficult for you. Or I can make it much easier,” Adam’s one eyebrow arched in a way that spoke volumes, the sort of things that Minister White should have paid attention to. Jasmine Mavinda, however, proved to be just as observant as Adam had predicted. “Please, that is not meant as a threat. I just happen to know you are lying.”

Adam tightened his grip on his own body, refusing to let it show even one shred of the tension that was currently coiling inside him. “I’m sure you will tell me in your own time, Minister.” He cooly said.

“Well, let’s start with the fact that I know her bodyguards didn’t kill her,” Jasmine smiled, leaning back into her chair a little further. “I know this because they worked for me, and they were under strict orders not to kill her until I told them to.”

Adam felt his lips part, the closest thing his alter ego would allow to his jaw hitting his desk.

“Sandra White was an evil, calculated and disgusting excuse for a human being. All of them are.” Mavinda shrugged, “So when my men got the information I wanted out of her, they were going to put her out of our misery”

“I feel obliged to remind you of the seriousness of what you are saying. This is conspiracy to commit treason.”

The Minister chuckled. “But if my men didn’t kill her,” she went on as if Adam hadn’t said anything. “And you are insinuating that they did, that can only mean one thing. You killed her, and I would like to know why. Now...” Mavinda stood up, slowly walking around the desk until she was standing right next to Adam’s chair, and hoisted herself up to sit on the edge of his desk. “ ... we both know you are a very clever and resourceful man. I have no doubt that you know how to circumvent the privacy systems in this room and are recording this conversation right now. Anything I say to you will incriminate me as much as you, and I have already said enough to be tried and executed for treason, I would like you to show me the same trust and respect as I am putting into you.” She parted her legs a little, her saree riding up her silky smooth things in just enough of a way to draw Adam’s eye for a moment before they snapped back to hers. Her smile grew a little wider.

“If you are trying to get me to confess to a crime, Minister, you are going to have to do better than that.” Adam finally said, surprising even himself with how level and calm his voice sounded.

“Which part?” Mavinda asked as her eyes sparkled. “I’m sure you’ve noticed that I’m not wearing any panties. Do you mean I should do better than a little tease? Would you like that? Would you like an Imperium Minister to hitch up her skirt, bend over and offer herself to you?”

Adam said nothing, he held her eyes with an almost laser focus.

“No, of course not,” She grinned back. “You are a happily married man, and a little bit of fun wouldn’t sway someone with so much to lose...”

That sounded an awful lot like a threat. A very heavily veiled one, but a threat nonetheless.

“ ... so that can only mean that ‘do better’ involves me telling you properly how I planned to kill the evil, conniving little bitch and mount her head on my bookshelf. Or, perhaps, you want to know why?”

“Let’s start with the why.”

Mavinda’s smile grew even more. It wasn’t smug, it wasn’t even predatory, it seemed like she was genuinely enjoying this teasing back and forth. “I will give you an answer, but a cryptic one. If you know what I suspect you know, you will understand my reasons. If you don’t, then I will explain it properly after you have given me yours.”