JohnS wrote:Roguevictory wrote:The fact that the assassin of one of the targets was the Haven ambassador's limo driver should have sent up red flags in her mind as well. If Haven can program people to be assassins why would they use someone linked to their ambassador was a hitman?
Yeah, that bothered me a lot. Having that person be the assassin should have screamed, "frame job". I'm not saying that Manticore's analysts should have automatically concluded that it was a frame, but there was certainly enough evidence of Mesan activity aimed at Manticore that the possibility of a frame should have been considered, particularly when the attempt on Queen Berry made no sense from a Havenite perspective.
There's a whole discussion on this in AAC.
"According to the last report ONI shared with the Foreign Office," Langtry said, "we still don't have a clue how they did whatever they did to Lieutenant Meares. There are all sorts of theories going around, but nothing solid. Still, at least one of them suggests that the lieutenant wasn't chosen just for his proximity to Duchess Harrington, but also because there was something unique about him. Possibly something in his medical or genetic background made him more vulnerable to whatever technique they're using. Is it possible that this fellow was the closest person they could lay hands on that fit whatever medical profile they need?"
"Possible, I suppose, Mr. Secretary," Shemais said. "And they did—or, at least, obviously thought they'd managed to—erase the direct financial connection between him and them. If it was a case of their needing someone with his specific profile, at least they went to a lot of effort to sanitize him. But to use their own ambassador's driver?" She shook her head. "Even granted that their hacker could eliminate the record of direct clandestine payments, the connection between him and their ambassador had to jump out and hit any investigator squarely between the eyes."
"Could they have counted on that?" Grantville wondered aloud. Everyone looked at him, and he shrugged. "If there's something to Tony's suggestion that this man may have had some quality they needed if they were going to use him the way they used Lieutenant Meares, then maybe they decided to make the best of a bad bargain. If they had to use him, maybe they figured we'd be asking ourselves exactly these questions."
"A double-blind, you mean, Prime Minister?" Shemais said thoughtfully. "You're suggesting that they want us to think the connection is so obvious no halfway competent covert operations planner would go near it with a three-meter pole?"
"Something like that," Grantville agreed.
"I suppose it's remotely possible." Shemais frowned. "I don't say I think it's likely, though. But the bottom line is that either they didn't do it, and someone's gone to enormous lengths to convince us they did, or else they deliberately set it up this way to point a too obvious finger at themselves."
"Why would they do that, Ellen?" Elizabeth asked skeptically.
"As the Prime Minister already suggested, Your Majesty, making the best of a bad bargain. If there was some reason they had to use this particular man to pull the trigger, then they may have hoped the surface connection between them and him would be so blatant that they could scream they were being framed by a third-party. Which," she admitted, almost against her will, "I personally might have been inclined to place some credence in if it weren't for the history of payments and the fact that they went to such obvious pains to erase that history. Unfortunately for them, there was a previous financial relationship, plus the fact that, according to the bank investigators and the Solly police, they doctored the bank records at least a week before the assassination. Someone else might have found out that the man was on their payroll, which could have made him even more attractive from the prospect of framing them, but altering the records when they did indicates that they knew this was coming and wanted to be certain they'd cut the obvious linkage well ahead of time."
"So you think it was them, Colonel?" Langtry asked.
"I don't know what I think, Mr. Secretary. Not yet," the colonel said frankly. "I'd have to say there's a lot of circumstantial evidence indicating they did do it—as I say, the timing on the computer hack strongly suggests that they knew it was coming. But the tradecraft on this, assuming it was them, isn't just bad, it's atrocious. It's not just unprofessional, it's clumsy, especially for someone with as much institutional experience setting up assassinations as the old People's Republic. I suppose it's possible Pritchart's purge of the old régime's security services cost them some expertise, but still . . . ."
"But if we're going to entertain the possibility that it wasn't them, who else could have wanted Jim dead?" Grantville asked.
"I can't answer that one, Prime Minister," Shemais admitted. "There could be any number of other people who might have had an interest in killing him. But an analyst can get herself into a lot of trouble by wandering off into too much speculation based on too little hard data, and there are two salient points which stand out to me. First, the timing. It could simply be a coincidence, but I'm naturally suspicious of coincidences, and while we're in the middle of a war with another star nation, the reasons that nation might want one of our ambassadors dead go to the head of my own queue. And second, this entire affair certainly does sound very similar to the attempt on Duchess Harrington's life. In that case, unlike this one, there's not much question about why the Peeps wanted her dead, but it's the similarity of technique that strikes me so strongly. When we think about who else could have wanted Admiral Webster dead, we also have to think about who would have the resources and technical capability to put his assassination together this way. From what happened in Duchess Harrington's case, it seems evident that the Peeps have it, but we don't have any evidence that anyone else does. And if it wasn't them, someone went to an awful lot of trouble to convince us it was."
They bring up the points you did about it possibly being a frame-job but then bring up counter-points that are half-way reasonable. All this double-think is exactly what Mesa wanted. Even if their suspicions had leaned toward Mesa as the
origin of the nanotech used on the driver and Tim Meares they might think that Haven bought the tech from Mesa to use.
The actual wildcard is Honor's assassination attempt. It is the one that is throwing their analyses off a bit. There are many reasons for Haven to want Honor dead and Shemais comments on the similarity of technique between Honor's attack and the one on Webster. Because they are so firmly focused on Haven as being behind the attack on Honor and the nanotech used is the same in both cases and
the only people that they know have that nanotech are the Havenites the evidence linking Haven to the Webster attack jumps out.
They were correct in assuming that the attacks on Honor and Webster were carried out by the same nation due to the nanotech's use in both cases but because they had literally
no idea that Mesa would attack Honor like that it left them with no option but to conclude that Haven was to blame for both attacks. Again, they don't have the insight we do into the actual provenance of the nanotech nor its implementation.
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