EXCERPT #14

[…]

INTERVIEWER: “So they just rounded up the five of you and hauled you to the choke point.”

WITNESS #9791: “It wasn’t that simple but yeah, something like that.”

INTERVIEWER: “Did they expect this plan to work?”

WITNESS #9791: “I’m pretty sure they didn’t, but that’s beside the point. The endgame was a different one.”

INTERVIEWER: “Explain how.”

WITNESS #9791: “You see, this whole circus wasn’t about the plan working or not, it was about destabilizing the conflict. Kravchenko had been one of us for all his life, he knew how the Republican Army conducted business in different types or terrain, or different types of odds. Everything we threw at him, he had an answer to, and the right follow-up question, which was keeping us on our toes.”

INTERVIEWER: “So the reason the final siege wasn’t going anywhere was because he already knew what to expect.”

WITNESS #9791: “Among other things, but yeah, that was a big one.”

INTERVIEWER: “You think he saw it coming?”

WITNESS #9791: “No. If he realized that was an option, he’d have done it first. I know men like him.”

INTERVIEWER: “And why do you think he didn’t know it yet?”

WITNESS #9791: “Because like I said, he was one of us. Just another grunt in the end, for better or for worse. Back in the day the army didn’t work as closely to the containment sector, we didn’t know nearly as much about extralogical warfare as we know today.”

INTERVIEWER: “Wasn’t the brass even the least bit skeptical about this plan, in that case?”

WITNESS #9791: “[Laugh] Let’s just say that calling them skeptical would be a bit of an understatement. If I had to guess, they were basically giving the folks at the Institute a shot at this just so it could fail and we could pin the blame on them if the Saint Germain operation went sideways.”

INTERVIEWER: “But wasn’t it a critical moment for the resolution of the conflict?”

WITNESS #9791: “Not nearly as much as they make it look like in government-sanctioned textbooks, I can tell you that. No, Saint Germain was Kravchenko’s last stand, but it was just a matter of time. We had his back against the wall, the supply lines were getting cut and sealed tight, the Coalition was losing faith on his leadership skills, his own men probably just as much… He was gonna lose it, it wasn’t a matter of if, but when.”

INTERVIEWER: “Which makes a perfect opportunity to play a wild card like that.”

WITNESS #9791: “Low stakes and a chance of a clean sweep win, just how we like it. So yeah, the brass didn’t care for the esoteric approach, but it was a chance to either end the war or make the containment people look like a bunch of morons. We’d take either of those.”

INTERVIEWER: “So that was the context in which you woke up at that facility, after your extradition from Terrebonne.”

WITNESS #9791: “Not yet, but that’s what it was lining up for. I remember Burroughs telling me over a month before first contact how boys in intelligence had been intercepting messages between Kravchenko and his handlers inside the Coalition’s Death Factory, and it wasn’t looking pretty.”

INTERVIEWER: “Excuse me, the what now?”

WITNESS #9791: “Oh right, I forgot, the official name is the Cabinet of Foreign Affairs or some suit-and-tie bullshit like that? I don’t know. Anyway, it’s the people the Old Army pays to fuel local conflicts in the Eastern front. Overpaid officers, spies, lobbyists, arm dealers, politicians and other career criminals of the sort. It’s basically their fault the civil war lasted as long as it did.”

INTERVIEWER: “Yes, I remember now, here in the dossier they’re credited as [pause] ‘the Coalition of the Ashen People’s Department of Assisted Freedom’.”

WITNESS #9791: “[Laugh] There is no way you didn’t just make that up.”

INTERVIEWER: “It’s right here, sergeant. Official documents, translated straight from Cinerean.”

WITNESS #9791: “[Laugh] Boy oh boy, are folks back home losing the plot or what. [pause] Anyway, we called them the Death Factory because that’s pretty much what they are. Ilya’s bosses. Apparently communists have them too.”

INTERVIEWER: “And their business relationship was deteriorating at that point, according to information relayed to you.”

WITNESS #9791: “Yeah, Burroughs told me and Kasowitz in a private meeting that we needed to keep the men in line if they were starting to lose heart, because the payoff was getting closer. Lots of info coming in that Kravchenko was losing good faith with the people bankrolling his little campaign. Ever since he started losing ground to us in the Gévaudan frontier it all became finger-pointing and verticalized blame fests. They had to keep it under wraps though, lefties like to think no one can tell they’re always bickering instead of winning battles.”

INTERVIEWER: “And Saint Germain wasn’t gonna be one of those victories, apparently.”

WITNESS #9791: “Oh no, that was gonna be a tough one for us. Make no mistake about it, we knew what we were in for. Except this time, we had our secret weapon.”

INTERVIEWER: “You sound like you were pretty confident.”

WITNESS #9791: “Of the results, you mean? You could say so. I saw them first-hand, there was no way they were ready for this.”

INTERVIEWER: “Does that mean there was anything you were not confident of, besides the results themselves?”

WITNESS #9791: “Yeah. Myself.”

INTERVIEWER: “And why’s that?”

WITNESS #9791: “Why do you think? I was scared shitless. I couldn’t stop shaking that day. I stood next to that chamber when they were loading it into the bomber and it was like I was staring at an ambush predator. I wanted to be a hundred miles away by the moment we set it off. But it was my sworn duty to be the one to open the latch to the cage.”