Chapter 20

Karl knew that there was no official record kept of this child and its disposition, so he sought out people who should know what was what, and began asking questions.

The first contact told him the zygote had come from medical scientists in the USA, and had been implanted in a military volunteer. To take it from there, he would have to speak to a specific US General.

Getting the contact details from his contact, Karl phoned the General. He explained the duty that had been laid on him by the UN Secretary-General, and asked the General where he should go next, to track down the child.

"Mister Brunner, back then I sorted out the line of command, but had no direct involvement with the matter. I didn't want to know. There were two strands. The scientists and the military personnel in control. The scientists were the ones who dealt with the ... medical ... matters. I left the USAF's Intelligence division to deal with the security of the child and the mother. I dumped it on the USAF because the surrogate mother was a USAF junior officer. It was easier to keep it all "in house", I decided.

"You should speak to the major-general involved. That intelligence agency was made over into the 25th Air Force some years back, but the personnel remained the same. My staff can give you the number to call. You may find their general uncooperative, so tell him that I authorised you to enquire."

"Thank you sir. Your help is appreciated."

"Mister, regard me as having said nothing, in your report. It is better that way."

"Yes, sir. I have noted that. Goodbye."

Karl's next call was to the USAF 25th Air Force commander, and the General's anticipation was accurate.

"Malan child? Sorry, we know nothing about any such thing."

"General Mackenzie said to tell you that he authorised me to enquire, sir. It is a matter of international importance, you see."

"Karl, was it? Will you allow me to phone the UN building and ask for you, so that I can confirm you are who you say you are?"

"Of course, sir. That is only prudent. I shall await your call."

The officer immediately realised that the General was steering clear of events. The authorisation was merely to "enquire" without stating into what, so that no-one could accuse him of anything at all.

The promised call took half an hour to be implemented, for the Major-General needed to ascertain the current facts for himself, before he spoke to the UN official.

"Secretary-General's office. Can I help you?"

"Hello, is that the Karl who rang me earlier?"

"Major-General, sir?

"It is. What exactly do you want to know, mister Brunner?"

"It is delicate, sir. The Governor of Rehome Colony, where the FOUR Malans are now resident, has been somehow told that there is a fifth Malan child here on Earth, and is demanding its repatriation to join its fellows on Rehome. We would rather have the matter dealt with quietly, than have the public know that we told The Personalia an untruth about the number of children, and then experimented on this one. I do hope that the child has not been harmed in the last few years. That would make things VERY difficult, politically."

"I can see the position our political masters might find themselves in." He hesitated to take a deep breath before continuing, "Karl, I have made enquiries on your behalf, and as of today, I can assure you that NO Malan child is in our custody."

"But sir, according to the General, a Malan child WAS placed in your custody."

"Mmm ... that is also true. It is a bit embarrassing, Karl. What I tell you now is highly classified, until we can investigate further. The child appears to have been ... snatched ... from us."

"Snatched? Did you not have the child in secure custody?"

"We did. It was even kept outside of the United States, so that political interference would be minimized. We have an Intelligence Squadron detachment at a certain RAF base in England, and the child's mother was appointed as a serving officer there. The child was kept with its mother, for emotional bonding and better control. It worked well, up till now.

"In the last 24 hours, the child and its mother were ... removed ... from that air base, during darkness."

"Removed from its surrounding military personnel, on an air base, in England, and spirited away?" Karl sounded unbelieving. "Sir, I hate to say it, but this sounds terribly like an excuse for not producing the child. Do you have injured personnel resulting from this raid?"

"No, sir, none. It was surgical strike, better than we could mount ourselves. Karl, I swear to you: it is the truth. We looked for the mother's female lover in a nearby town, and she had disappeared as well. It has all the signs of a planned military extraction, but not by us! The garbled accounts we have received from the staff at that base talk of a debilitating weapon being used on the personnel of the base, so that they were out of action. The security office was cut off from all signals traffic and monitoring of the base, and by the time the personnel were able to act again, all they saw was a succession of large aircraft taking off from the main runway. There was no description of the aircraft other than the craft used rocket propulsion to take off and up into the sky. The radar returns indicated they went up to orbital height before being lost."

"Didn't the radar returns show where they came from?"

"No. There appears to have been some interference with our radar equipment. Nothing shows in the radar records until the craft were taking off. We are forced to assume that someone came on to the base, collected the child and its mother, and made off with them. It is quite distressing, Karl."

"Sir, far be it from me to tell you your job, but your description suggest that the only way such a raid could be mounted with such high tech precision would be a body more effective than the USA, and that implies The Personalia. They have the ships to land, collect people, and depart again. Do you agree?"

"It is a conclusion we have also come to, Karl. Do you imagine that we can phone them up and ask if they have snatched people from a secure base in the middle of the night, with no-one noticing it happening? Can you imagine how that would make us seem? I did the next best thing. I phoned the Governor of Rehome, to ask if he knew anything about it."

"And what did he say?"

"He gave me the run-around, Karl. It was all very diplomatic, avoiding my questions, but when I point blank asked him if he knew about this raid, he said quite clearly that he didn't."

"I see. I would have thought that people were needed to effect the extraction on the ground. Being in the diplomatic service myself, sir, may I ask a follow-up question that comes to mind? With all the bluster, did the Governor at any time deny that the Malan child had been snatched – and probably taken to Rehome?"

"Oh. Now that I think back, I don't think that question ever got asked directly. It was all about the raid, and who conducted it. Why?"

"Simple, sir. If the Personalia conducted the entire raid on their own, without any human input, then of course the Governor would know nothing about it, other than the arrival of new people. As I explained to the Secretary-General, the principle of deniability is a good political fall-back to avoid unwanted questions being answered. As you failed to ask about arrivals at Rehome, he didn't have to answer that point.

"Diplomacy, sir, is the art of not answering questions, and giving out the minimum of information. Obfuscation is the order of the day in diplomacy, and you have discovered it in action."

"Did I not! I asked him if he knew about Landership operations the previous night, and he said, yes, of course, and proceeded to tell me about thousands of potential Landership movements throughout the cosmos, instead of the specifics that I wanted to know about."

"Naturally, sir. He would have no direct knowledge of the movements you wanted to know about, but he found it simpler to divert you and confuse you with irrelevant facts, rather than give you even a hint about what he thought may have happened. Diplomacy is a wonderful tool, sir, in the right hands."

"Then it is no surprise that diplomats can only be countered by other diplomats. That makes it somewhat of a closed shop, does it not?"

"Indeed sir, in a similar way to the law ... or the military?"

"Yes. Now, Karl, let's get back to the nitty-gritty. What can you report back to your boss?" The Major-General was much more affable now.

"Sir, based on what you have told me; or rather were unable to tell me due to security classification; I must report that the only known Malan on Earth was, shall we say, "spirited" away the other night from its believed location in England. I can say that it is suspected that The Personalia were directly involved in the matter, but I will inform him that we cannot prove it.