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intelligence operation .
    Ambassadors Aguirrez, Li, and Schlimmermann have been placed under diplomatic restraints pending the results of the UN special commission’s investigation of the bombings in Greece and other rebel activities .

CHAPTER 17
    CITIZEN KANE OR KILLER KANE?
    The air had a nip in it; Sir John Dudley walked briskly through the park to get some of the cobwebs out of his head.
    Mañuel Aguirrez, Li Xijuan, Heinrich Schlimmermann. The names didn’t go together, had never been associated with one another before. They didn’t even sound right together. Aguirrez, Li, Schlimmermann. In order of importance: Li, Schlimmermann, Aguirrez.
    The real shocker was Li Xijuan. That small, quiet woman who’d shown herself to be a dynamo when it came to getting the Militia authorized, organized, and legalized. She’d led the fight for an international peacekeeping force and then had slave-driven her committee until it hammered out a workable plan. She’d survived criticism and setbacks, media attacks both overt and covert. And she’d triumphed over the worst enemy of all—wishywashyness among her peers. Some of her original supporters in the UN had begun to have second thoughts, and even back home the power structure had given her a bad moment: she was recalled to China. But she’d come back.
    She’d come back and finished the job, and in the process had won over the doubting Thomases. Sir John was well acquainted with the power plays behind the formation of the Militia, and he’d marveled more than once at Li Xijuan’s instinct for survival. She’d managed to convince the world—well, a sizable part of it—that the need for a strengthened and absolute international peacekeeping force was real and immediate. The growth of a world army was possible only through the diminishing of national armies. And Li Xijuan had made it happen. A remarkable woman.
    So what was she doing mixed up with a political also-ran like Mañuel Aguirrez? For she was mixed up with him, no longer any question of that. Kevin Gilbert’s staff had uncovered evidence of her attempt to engineer an illegal arms purchase through a dealer in Hong Kong. She’d wanted to buy a manufacturer-rejected batch of faulty laser-guided antitank missiles.
    Which meant that Li Xijuan was undoubtedly the one who had arranged to supply the rebels in Burma with defective weapons. Which meant that she and Mañuel Aguirrez were in the rebellion-deflating business together. Which meant that she had sought him out—Aguirrez wasn’t the type to initiate international intrigue. By his own admission.
    The man was a baby. Sir John’s interrogators had only to hint strongly that Aguirrez was going to be charged with the massacre in Greece when he broke down and started talking. It was all Li Xijuan’s idea, he said. She’d come to him and to Heinrich Schlimmermann with this plan, see, a way to stop rebels from doing any serious damage. It was only for a while, she said, until the Militia could get itself solidly established. He didn’t know what had gone wrong in Greece.
    Sir John came to an empty park bench and sat down. Every year his legs seemed to tire a little more quickly than the year before— I am an old man , he thought. What had gone wrong in Greece, yes. Heinrich Schlimmermann was the only one of the improbable trio to make any sense. Schlimmermann was an aristocratic Aryan caught in an egalitarian society, and he’d risen to his present degree of eminence in part through sheer will, by keeping his arrogant streak beneath the surface, by learning to manipulate people. Heinrich Schlimmermann was used to getting his own way.
    The explosives used in Greece had been obtained through a middleman in Zurich, a distributor whose purchasing records had conveniently been wiped out. That smacked of the much vaunted German efficiency, the near-obsessive desire to see that every little