I understand that Peter Crane absolutely refused to tell where Tom Kearney ultimately retired. No matter how much we pressed him, he would not budge. Peter Crane seems, within his network of friends in the conservative bloc, to be a man of honor with honorable connections amounting to some level of political clout. I am sure that Finzi would be able to sustain the former-Finzi-Coalition, should this conservative bloc be triggered; but that is something we all agree we would rather avoid. So prodding Peter Crane to such a degree as would prove any sort of provocation for him is something we have all agreed we would not pursue.
I also understand that Kara Martins seems to be one of those loud and irrational individuals. It's true that she is a fringe-nationalist figure whose actions earn her the reputation of being overly charismatic, if not downright insane.
It's a reputation I, myself, would rather not have.
Nonetheless, I will be honest. I do not agree to the consensus to which Cray, Jeo, and Ivella came to accomplish what they did with her.
It started off with Jeo Brock having found some important information about her. During the 1311-12 War, numerous commandos from Gymia had snuck over the border and kidnapped numerous Commonwealth citizens, either raping them or taking them as hostages to help Commander Davis put diplomatic pressure on Finzi. And apparently, Kara Martins had helped this kidnapping scheme by receiving payments from Davis' regime to provide them information on addresses, whereabouts of certain kidnapping targets, and so forth.
Cray was the first to spring the idea, to which Jeo agreed. Peter Quora and I disagreed, bringing our group to a stalemate. Ivella stepped in and, to my complete surprise, sided with Cray and Jeo. Quora and I eventually relented after a great deal of talking, though I still do not think what we did was justified.
On June 13, we ourselves checked into the Lodge at North Rock, located directly below Hywater on the shore of Lake Paron, deep into the territory of Pimdan, and, from there, wrote a collective letter using pen names and declaring ourselves to be important colleagues of Tom Kearney. In this letter, we invited Kara Martins to come to our location for "an important matter." Kara took the bait and arrived. And when she did, we revealed our true identities and agenda. We then told her that if she would tell us the location of Tom Kearney, that we would pay her 1000.00 credits. She was free to leave at any time, of course, but if she did not give us the information beforehand, we would publish her actions regarding her involvement in the 1311-12 War kidnapping schemes to media sources of both Linbrae and the Commonwealth.
Needless to say, Kara was quite upset with this, hurling insults at the lot of us and what not. But after two and a half days, she accepted the terms and told us of Tom Kearney's last known location: the Blue Hill Estates located 25 miles North of Linbrae proper.
That whole process took a couple days, meaning that Kara agreed to the terms she agreed to on June 17. On June 18, I left early in the morning and took a gyroplane to Linbrae proper. There, I logged onto the OCEA platform and found the Blue Hill Estates address, but decided to venture out the next day since I had to make notation on what to ask Mr. Kearney should I have met him there.
All that effort was all for naught, though, as I found out the next day when I traveled to Blue Hill. When I inquired for Mr. Kearney, I had been expecting that he had a layer of privacy, only seeing to those who were not rivals, as I had revealed myself to be back in Lake Paron. And such paranoia was compounded when I received a call from Jeo stating that Kara had slipped out of the North Rock lodge in the early morning hours on the night after I left.
But such paranoia was dashed when, after asking about Tom Kearney, I was directed to an obituary.
Tom Kearney, in fact, passed away on October 12, 1314, apparently from some form of cancer. I visited the Royal Church for further information and found that Tom Kearney had written a confession stating that he had used scripts off a darkfire scroll to try and treat his illness.
Obviously, it did not help him. But I did send a message to Ceri Mains to see if what Tom Kearney said in his confession was true. She, after all, has the documentation on the status of the scripts.
In the meantime, I have checked back with Jeo. Apparently, Kara had departed before accepting the 1000.00 credit payment. I do not know why she did that, but I do suspect a possible ulterior motive, since the ultra-nationalists are still lurking around.
This is my last night in Linbrae. I was going to return to Lake Paron tomorrow, but everyone else is already on their way to Cabotton. So that is where I am going.