“I know my unit strengths, Commander. What’s your disturbing bottom line?”
Christine passed across the new sheaf of hard copy. “Admiral, the sizes and diverse origins of these arms shipments suggests to me that Harconan is covertly acquiring and moving a lot of firepower from a large number of diverse sources—much more than he’d need to simply supply his pirate fleet.”
“What could he be doing with it?”
She shrugged and sat back. “That’s just it. I don’t know, unless he could be gunrunning for some of the other rebel factions within Indonesia. Fa’ sure, there’s enough of them and he has the transport network for it. The problem is, none of the extremist groups like the Morning Star separatists on New Guinea or the Muslim Aceh separatists on Sumatra have shown any indication of being up-gunned lately. If Harconan is arms trading, who’s getting the stuff and what’s it going to be used for?”
“Think cyberwar will be able to dig up the answers for us?”
He saw the regretful shake of Christine’s head. “Not unless we get another lucky break like that leaky palm pad. That’s the other interesting factor: Harconan Limited has two entirely different levels of communications going.”
“Go on.”
“On one level, there are the day-to-day business transactions. Cyberwar indicates we are in with that data flow. It all seems to be pretty standard corporate stuff: buy, sell, trade, ship routings, etc. It’s commercially encrypted but we can bust it, no problem. The second level is a different story. Not much of it shows up in the Makara Limited corporate net, and when it does, zip, it’s routed straight over to Palau Piri Island. I suspect a lot more is going in direct to Harconan through his satellite links. This is presumably the hot dope on his piracy operations and arms deals. Unfortunately, we can’t read any of it.”
MacIntyre looked perturbed. “With all of the funding we’ve been channeling into cyberwar, we can’t crack a commercial encryption package?”
“It’s not that simple, sir. Contrary to what the Reverend Dr. Gates up in Seattle would have his corporate purchasers think, there isn’t any encryption program you can’t break eventually with a large enough baseline, a fast enough computer, and a degree of time to work the problem. Harconan’s aware of this, so he’s had someone run him up a computerized variant of the old single-use, tear pad cipher.
“He’s not using one code, he’s using thousands of them, all essentially simple word and number substitutions, none of which is ever used more than once. For example, in one message the letter e could be signified by a multidigit number, say five six eight four. In the next, it’s signified with a word set, like ‘cheese,’ ‘basketball,’ ‘Thursday,’ ‘Mormon,’ but no two ever the same.”
“I understand how a tear pad works,” MacIntyre said. “There’s never a large enough baseline to analyze for decryption. You can’t transmit the Encyclopaedia Britannica or a digital breakdown of the roof of the Sistine Chapel using one, but it’s good enough for basic messaging.”
“And good enough for Harconan’s needs,” Christine agreed. “He must have a computer program that generates huge batches of these code sets. Then he distributes a bunch of inexpensive laptops to his key agents, all of them preprogrammed with an individual set of codes for that specific agent. The code sets are likely designed to sequentially roll over after each use, with the previous code being erased.
“The laptops will be stand-alones that probably have been physically modified so they can’t be networked, guaranteeing man-breaks in the system. After encryption, a message has to be downloaded onto a data disk or card and then physically inserted into a second computer for transmission over the Internet.
“To make things even tougher, according to the transmission addresses, none of this second-level stuff ever comes out of a Harconan Limited office or a personal computer. It inevitably dumps and loads through a public Internet access like a library, a post office, or a business services center at a big hotel. Even if we could track down the holder of one of these boxes and pulled the code set, it would only give us the communications string for that specific agent.”
“Presumably when an agent runs low on codes, he gets sent a new laptop.”
“Exactly, sir. There will only be one master program, with all of the code sets assigned to all of the agents. That will be a stand-alone main frame on Palau Piri. You can bet it will be isolated and impossible to hack from any outside access, and it will be physically guarded like Fort Knox.”
“Enigma rides again,” MacIntyre grunted. He swiveled his chair away from the intel for a moment, staring toward the open porthole in the bulkhead, then turned back. “Tell me, Chris. Does Amanda—Captain Garrett—know about this encryption system of Harconan’s? Did you brief her on it before she went out to Palau Piri?”
It was Christine’s turn to look away. “No, sir, I didn’t. I was waiting for confirmation from cyberwar on certain aspects of the system before discussing the matter with Captain Garrett.”
“Translation,” MacIntyre stated flatly. “You didn’t want to risk her poking around after that mainframe.”
Something hot and angry flared in Christine’s eyes as she looked up. “No, sir, I did not. She’s running a big enough risk as is, being out there with Harconan. I didn’t want her stretching the envelope.”
MacIntyre put an edge on his voice. “And you don’t think Captain Garrett is capable of executing her own good judgment in this matter, Commander?”
“No sir! I do not!” The words slipped out without her meaning them to. Christine mentally floundered for a way to recall them. Shit, MacIntyre was the only person who’d ever had the knack of flipping her open like that.,.
The admiral’s soft chuckle eased her. “Stand easy, Chris. I fully concur with your decision. If you had told her about this damn thing, you, I, and God all know she’d make a try for it.”
Somber-eyed, Christine studied the admiral. At one time she’d thought she had this blocky, plain-spoken man figured. Of late, though, she’d started to sense well-hidden subtleties and a capacity for perception that could be a little unnerving at times.
Such as now.
“You’re worried about her being around Harconan, aren’t you?” he continued.
“Of course, sir. Who wouldn’t be?”
Maclntyre’s eyes narrowed. “But you’re talking about something more than just a tricky tactical situation here, Chris. You’ve assessed something that you don’t like, but you don’t want to speak about it. That suggests to me it’s not professional, it’s personal.”
“Did you ever serve a tour with Intelligence, sir?” Christine asked ruefully.
“No, but I am raising a teenage daughter. The skills required are similar. I’ve found that if something’s making you jumpy, it should be talked about. There are only two of us here. Now, what’s going on?”
Christine sighed and hesitated a final second. Damn, did this have to come out with this man? “I’m afraid Captain Garrett … Amanda … might be getting in over her head in this situation in ways she doesn’t understand herself.”
Christine stalled again, groping to put instincts into words, to give verbalization to deeply personal thoughts.
“Just say it,” MacIntyre said patiently.
“Admiral, Amanda Garrett is a nun!”
Maclntyre’s eyebrows shot up! “What?”
Christine let the words free flow. “I mean, in her way, Amanda has lived a very closed existence. For all of her life she’s been married to the Navy in the same way a nun is married to the Church. It’s her world. Even before she attended Annapolis she was brought up in a Navy environment. As her friend, I can say for a fact that the last time she had a major personal relationship outside of the Navy was in high school.”
“And your point?” MacIntyre asked, puzzled.
Christine took a deep breath. “My point is, she has never had exposure to a man like Makara Harconan or to his ultra-high-roller kind of world. Right now she is w
ay the hell off her playing field, involved in a game she doesn’t really understand, and I’m scared spitless that she won’t realize it until it’s too late.”
MacIntyre stared from across the desk. “You can’t mean … Good God, Chris. Are you seriously proposing that this pirate could … turn Amanda’s head?”
Christine shook her head. “Not to fall in love, sir. Not the genuine article. Not the kind of thing that would ever make her deliberately betray the task force or the Navy. But she might be knocked off her feet enough to be blinded to some personal risks, physical or emotional. We aren’t the ones in danger here, Admiral: Amanda is.”
MacIntyre shot out of his chair and paced off the length of the limited office space. “That’s ridiculous, Commander. That’s just … flatly … ridiculous!”
“Sir, I wish to God it was!” Christine exclaimed, turning in her chair to follow him. “But shit of that nature happens, and with alarming frequency. How many times have you heard of some male officer totally screwing up his life with some chickiepoo not worth the powder to blow her to hell?”
MacIntyre didn’t reply immediately, but the expression on his face indicated he was thinking of any number of prime examples. “But not Amanda,” he said finally. “She has too much common sense to do anything like that.”
“Sir, trust me. When glands override brains, women can be just as gonzo as men.” Christine popped the center of her forehead with the heel of her hand. “Jeez, this is intense woman stuff. How do I say it? Females can be drawn to men of power. Anthropologists say it’s because our instinct is to seek out strong genes and good providers for our children. Be that as it may, certain supermasculine types can sometimes really trip our switches. Makara Harconan is one of those types. He is a total package. He’s highly intelligent, he is highly successful, he is personable, intensely dynamic, and, if you’re a woman, he is drop-dead gorgeous!
“I felt the effect the first time I saw his picture,” Christine concluded. “Just about any conventionally aligned female would. I’d say he’s maybe one in a hundred thousand in that area.”
MacIntyre stared at a pine-paneled bulkhead. “I see. One in a hundred thousand? And how would that apply … tactically?”
“Does the phrase ‘clubbing baby seals’ bring anything to mind, sir?”
Palau Piri Island
1233 Hours, Zone Time: August 16, 2008
Luncheon was served al fresco in the mansion’s central garden, the palm shade and Amanda’s air-light clothing nullifying the tropical warmth of the day. The meal itself was superb. Simple yet subtle, prawns in a butter and garlic sauce, sate, savory barbecued meat impaled on skewers of sugarcane served with a firy sambal peanut sauce made with chilies, peanuts, and coconut cream. Steamed white rice served to mellow the spices and, oddly enough, the solid Dutch-style Anker lager served with the meal perfectly counterpointed the food.
Amanda noted that on this occasion Harconan drank and enjoyed the beer as much as she. Not a Muslim, then, or maybe more just his own man. She had ten thousand questions about this individual, born out of what Tran had told her about him. But she dared not ask too many. She could only catch the scraps of information he offered.
The Chinese server who bore in the dessert tray offered the chance for one such insight.
“I notice that most of your staff here are Chinese,” she commented. “Is there a reason or is it just coincidence?”
“A reason,” Harconan replied. “I suppose you could say it’s for security’s sake. Most of the Chinese here in Indonesia are … apart from the main flow of the island culture. They are overlaid on top of it, as it were—hardworking, successful, and prosperous for the most part, but envied and held in suspicion and distrust by many Indonesians. One could call them the Jews of Southeast Asia, I suppose.”
Harconan took a sip of his beer. “Here in House Harconan, as part of my staff, they receive a good salary and are treated with the respect due good employees. Thus their allegiance is to me, without my having to worry about an excessive number of outside entanglements.”
“You make it sound almost like a feudal society.”
He flashed her a grin and lightly brushed his mustache with a knuckle. “There is no almost about it, Amanda. That’s exactly what it is and I’m quite content with it. That’s what being wealthy can do for a person. It not only permits you to live where you wish, but when as well.”
Over dessert, he introduced her to the local fruits, insisting upon personally wielding the silver fruit knife and skewers himself. She found herself sampling things she’d never even heard of before. The tuih and the zirzak, the blimbing and the honey-flavored sawo, the snake fruit that by Indonesian legend was the true apple in the Garden of Eden, and the durian that smells like an open cesspit and tastes like a blend of onion and caramel and, once sampled, is strangely addictive. Harconan let her consume half a dozen slices before casually mentioning that the durian is also supposedly an extremely potent natural aphrodisiac.
Superb chilled champagne was served with the fruit, and Amanda found the laughter and relaxed conversation flowing easily. Bit by bit her guard came down as Harconan seemed to work at diverting topics away from the task force and anything that resembled politics or world affairs. They agreed that wood was the only decent and proper material to build a sailing boat with, and they compared the points of Indonesian, European, and American design, verbally sketching out a compromise craft that incorporated the best of all three worlds.
The shadows sundialed around the lanai as they forgot time; they were reminded of it by the reappearance of Lo.
“Excuse me, Mr. Harconan, but I fear I must remind you of that conference call.” Harconan started and glanced at his black-faced Rolex diver’s watch. “Damnation, is it that time already? Amanda, you must excuse me. Duty calls in a shrill, unpleasant voice.”
Amanda found she was genuinely disappointed to have the day ending. “That’s a call I recognize all too well. Don’t worry about it. Do you have a pilot who can fly me back to the ship.”
“Nonsense, it’s barely two. The day is young. This will take me forty-five minutes, an hour at the most. Why don’t you have a swim and a sun on the east beach while I deal with this call? I’ll have a word with my chief of security and he’ll ensure you complete peace and privacy. I’ll join you there as soon as I can.”
“That sounds wonderful. Do you have a suit I can borrow?”
Harconan shrugged. “If you feel the need for one.”
A swimsuit, a French-cut backless one piece in pale green satin, awaited her in the guest room along with a short terry-cloth beach jacket and a pair of sandals. Amanda was not surprised when it, too, fit to perfection.
It must be nice to own a magic wand, she mused with irony. Beyond that, there was again the somewhat eerie sensation that her mind or at least her life was being read. If Harconan could even conjure up her clothing sizes when he wished, what else did he have in his hands?
The hundred-yard walk to the east beach followed a meticulously groomed but meandering lava gravel path through the island’s palm groves. The walk itself was an experience. Amanda had visited world-class botanical gardens that didn’t have the beauty of Palau Piri’s wild ground cover. She recognized bougainvillea, jasmine, poinsettias, and marigolds growing in their natural home environment, and a hundred more she couldn’t begin to put a name to.
The air, perfumed with its myriad scents, was almost dizzying. The atmosphere was filled with birdsong and gecko chirp as well, the birds as dazzling as mobile flowers, catching and flaring bursts of the sunlight that leaked past the palm shade, the lizards skittering explosively across the paths and up the striated palm trunks.
It was all a little overwhelming. Amanda found herself wondering just when Bob Hope and Bing Crosby were going to show up.
And then the path wound toward a brightness beyond the trees, and she found herself at the beach. Amanda brought herself up short. The walk had been overwhelming, but this
was awe-inspiring.
It was real.
All the legends, all the images, all the fantasies, conjured by the whisper of “the South Seas” were real. One only had to search until one found the Island of the Princes.
Black velvet sand with snow-colored surf curling against it. A sea and sky two different grades of sapphire, clouds as white as the surf piling against the peak of Propat Agung on the Bali mainland, and the mainland itself and the more distant Menjangang island burning a vivid living green under the sun. A single great crested tern circled offshore.
If she slept a hundred years, Amanda couldn’t imagine ever dreaming of anything this perfect. For long minutes she stood and drank it all in, only to want more.
Eventually she blinked and came back into herself. Glancing around, she noted a pair of comfortable-looking chaise longues drawn back into the shade at the head of the sand, separated by a small drinks table with a cooler set ready at its feet.
Amanda could only grin in sheer admiration. The man was still ahead of her.
She noted something else as well: something tree-tall but not organic in the palm line was set a short distance back from the beach. Curious, she moved closer.
It was a security-camera mount. A gray steel pole with a remote scanning head, part of the island defenses Chris had mentioned. Currently, however, the unit had a nylon cover drawn over its camera. As Harconan had promised, she would have her privacy here.
Amanda returned to the open beach, walking a few more yards farther down. Kicking off her sandals, she found the sand was soft and pleasantly hot under the sun. Shedding her beach jacket, she took a step toward the surf. Then she hesitated, glancing down at herself.
Damn that man!
She remembered the lazy, condescending smile he had given her when she had asked about borrowing a suit. “If you feel the need for one.”
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