“Boys and girls are perfectly equal,” Sophie said when he wouldn’t let her go by herself. “Yes, of course they are, but Sophie, there’s something we must talk about.” To Sophie, it all seemed quite clear. Convinced that Scotland had a moral obligation to go to war with the European Federation, Joanna Murchison must have channeled funds (under the pretense that the money came from the Europeans) to the impressionable and easily directed young Brothers of the Northern Liberties. If the minister could only implicate Europe in the deaths of Scottish citizens, Scotland would be able to go to war—and the rest of the Hanseatic League would have to join them. The medium must have learned something about the minister’s role in the bombings and tried to extort money from her. But the minister was not the sort of woman to be blackmailed. She hired the Veteran, probably using her loyal assistant Nicko as a go-between, and the woman’s death was assured. When the Veteran spoke about money—“Where’s ma money?”
