It had been an exhausting legal battle. The Constitution was vague as to which Committee should control intelligence gathering and distribution. On the one hand, the Defense Committee was invested with the power to
organize any and all standing forces that are created by law, and have full control over such forces
, but on the other, the Internal Affairs Committee had the power to
oversee the police...administration
. Public Enlightenment and Foreign Relations had some vague claims too, but Lin and Aram graciously declined to take part.
Feng Hu, who had been entrusted with the Defense Committee, as well as what remained of the Navy and Air Force, had little but contempt for Chairman Al-Sistani of Internal Affairs. True, he had defected towards the Democratic Socialists, allowing the formation of the Workers' Social Democracy, and he had shown some competance when he had served a short term as Minister of the Interior under the old regime. But Feng regarded him as a weak opportunist. He had been vindicated during the court fight, at least, it appeared that way to him. Akbar, as the Constitution provided, served as one of three Justices of the People's Supreme Court, which had decided the case, and he had made every argument to secure intelligence gathering for Internal Affairs.
However, Defense's lawyers had been too good; the other two Justices had interpreted Internal Affairs' power to "oversee the police" to mean that it could only control domestic intelligence gathering (OOC: viz the FBI). Defense was awarded Foreign Intelligence gathering. So it was to Feng Hu that the assignment of finding Blue April's leadership fell. Aram's note to the Bustian government, issued at Feng's request, hadn't elicited much information, and Feng had finished reading it by the second day.
That's hardly adequate. They must suspect something. So he decided to make a few deductions before trying again.
He knew the mentality of hunted leadership; he'd been a hunted leader. So he knew the rules.
Rule 1: he thought to himself,
hide where the population won't rat you out. Working on the supposition that the leader's name meant what it said, that meant somewhere in Saint Oz. However, since a letter had been sent to Saint Oz, that ruled out Saint Oz proper.
Moacia. Feng smiled. The sources in Confederate Freedom hadn't reported appreciable Blue April activity there, so the leadership wouldn't be near that border. That left thousands of square kilometers, but it was better than having to search the whole globe.
Then again, since the letters had arrived electronically, which he knew from the Bustian information, that ruled out some other places, including the extreme north. He took a pin and stuck it into a wall-size map, where the epicenter should be.
Around 800 north, 700 west, he thought. He'd put people to searching that area right away, and get Aram to ask Saint Oz to report any Blue April attacks.
