Thanks, it's also why Marcus seemed so confident about the whole thing. Like the USA attacking Iraq vs. Mutually Assured Destruction. It might even go a long way to explaining why Khan is on Kronos since he had a base set up there.
If not a base, definitely a safe house. I don't suppose he just happened to find all those weapons lying around in the street somewhere.
Which leads me to something I've been thinking about since the first time I saw it. Khan and Marcus are obviously bullshitting Kirk with almost every word they say to him. They both consider him to be just a pawn in their respective schemes and they never really tell him what their intentions are or what their real plans are.
The question to me is, Why would Marcus give the Khanpedoes to the Enterprise to shoot them at Khan in the first place? Why not remove those lunatics from the tubes first and then dump them out with the trash, or move them some place -- like the Vengeance -- where Khan couldn't find them? Why send Enterprise to kill Khan when he could have loaded those torpedoes and sent Vengeance to do it anyway?
The answer is that Marcus never intended to KILL Khan. The bombing of the archives and the drive-by on Starfleet headquarters was all part of the plan (which is why Marcus -- ostensibly Khan's primary target -- got away without a scratch). Gunning down anyone in Starfleet who might question Marcus' agenda clears the way for him and creates crisis environment that lets him order Enterprise into Klingon space without anyone -- least of all Kirk -- questioning him. Enterprise firing those torpedoes would have started a war with the Klingons and they would have been blown to bits; the torpedoes, however, would have soft landed, Khan would have hooked up with his people and revived them and immediately opened up the ground front in a war against the Klingons, just in time to coordinate with an orbital strike of Starfleet vessels lead by the aptly named "USS Vengeance" in response to the destruction of the Enterprise. In this scenario, Khan's deal with Marcus would have been for him and his people to help him beat the Klingons, and in exchange, Qo'nos would be theirs to rule when the war was over.
The plan flew entirely off the rails when Kirk decided not to shoot off those torpedoes and went after Khan himself. Khan, realizing Kirk was a man of conscience and therefore (in his mind) weak, and also realizing that Marcus had screwed up and put ALL of the augments on the Enterprise instead of holding a few back as insurance, had an "Aha!" moment and figured he could manipulate Kirk into either giving him command of his ship or helping him eventually commandeer the Vengeance.
Fridge logic here, but it's just a thought.
