Peacekeepers (1988)

by Ben Bova

  Robbie caught the puzzlement on her face.

  "It's all over," he said brightly. "The Eritreans called it quits a few minutes ago."

  "They stopped the invasion?"

  "We beat them back. Clobbered the tanks in their first wave and demolished most of their supply dumps."

  The rest of the monitor team headed down the corridor toward the locker room, chattering like schoolkids suddenly let loose.

  "Somebody," Robbie added archly, "even knocked out their main ammo dump."

  "That was me," Kelly said weakly.

  Throwing an arm around her slim shoulders, Robbie laughed. "I know! We saw it on the screens. The explosion shook down half the mountain."

  "Must have killed a lot of men," she heard herself say.

  "Not as many as a full-fledged war would have taken."

  Kelly knew the truth of it, but it was scant comfort.

  "They started it," Robbie said more softly. "It's not your fault."

  "It's my responsibility. So was the plane."

  Robbie broke out his dazzling grin again. "Worried about a review board? Don't be. They'll end up pinning a medal on you."

  Somehow Kelly could not visualize that.

  "Come on. Angel Star," Robbie said with a one-armed hug, "don't be glum, chum. We're going out to celebrate."

  "Now?"

  "It's Christmas, isn't it? You didn't see a big sleigh pulled by reindeer while you were flinging around out there, did you?"

  Kelly grinned. "No, I don't think so."

  With his arm still around her shoulders, Robbie started for the locker room. "I'm throwing a party in my quarters. You're invited."

  Kelly let him half drag her to the locker room. Van der Meer and Bailey were already there, pulling on their heavy winter coats.

  "Hello there, little sister," Bailey called to her. "Nice job."

  The whole group trudged up the sloping corridor and past the guards, who still sat close to the electric heater in their little booth. If they were aware that a war had just been started and stopped within the span of the past hour or so, they gave no indication of it.

  "You're quite a flier," Robbie said to her. "You'll have to give me lessons; I'd love to learn how to fly."

  Kelly gulped and swallowed, glad that it was too dark for him to see the reddening that burned her face. I've never flown a real plane, up in the air, she wanted to confess.

  Only simulators and teleoperations. But she kept silent, too afraid of cracking the crystal beauty of this moment.

  The sky was still dark and sprinkled with stars, the air bitingly cold. As she followed along beside Robbie and the others, snow crunching under their boots, Kelly dug her fists in her coat pockets and glanced over her shoulder at the sign carved above the base's entrance:

  International Peacekeeping Force Nation Shall Not Lift Up Sword Against Nation We stopped a war, she said to herself. It cost some lives, but we protected the peace. Then she remembered. It might also cost me my job.

  "Don't look so down, girl," Bailey assured her. "The review board ain't gonna go hard on you."

  "I hope," said Kelly.

  "Don't worry about it," Bailey insisted.

  Kelly trudged along, heading for the bachelor officers' quarters across the road from the underground nerve center of the base.

  Should I tell them? she asked herself. They wouldn't care. Or maybe they'd think I was just trying to call attention to myself.

  But she heard herself saying, "You know, this is my birthday. Today. Christmas Day."

  "Really?" said Van der Meer.

  "Happy birthday, little sister," Bailey said.

  Robbie pushed his coat sleeve back and peered at his wristwatch. "Not just yet. Angel Star. Got another few ticks to go . . ."

  Then they heard, far off in the distance, the sound of voices singing.

  "Your watch must be slow," said Bailey. "The midnight chorale's already started."

  "Their clock must be fast," Robbie countered.

  The whole group of them stopped in the starry night air and listened to the children's voices, coming as if from another world. Kelly stood between tall Robert and beautiful, warm Bailey and felt as if they were singing especially to her.

  Silent night . . .

  Holy night . . .

  All is calm, all is bright ...

  The IPF proved itself that Christmas Eve in

  East Africa. The world was stunned with

  surprise. But a hard-line cadre of officers

  hi^ up in the Peacekeepers' chain of

  command was still laying its plans for a

  coup. They knew that if they succeeded,

  their nations would accept their fait accompli. If they failed, their nations would

  disavow themselves of any knowledge of the

  cabal. Being military men, they were

  accustomed to such treatment by the

  politicians. What the politicians didn't

  realize was that if the coup were successful,

  the military officers planned to overpower

  their political leaders and set up their own

  version of a world government, with

  themselves as the chiefs.

  If Red Eagle was aware of this plot, he

  gave no indication of it. He concerned

  himself with another worry. The matter of

  the missing nuclear bombs.

  COMO

  Year 3

  "YOU certainly picked a conspicuous way of coming here, Mr. Alexander," said Red Eagle.

  Cole Alexander shrugged at the massive Amerind. "The plane? It's my home now. A houseboat with wings. Subsonic, but fast enough to suit me."

  "It apparently caused quite a stir when you landed on the lake."

  "Hide in plain sight," Alexander said. "Sometimes that's the best way."

  Red Eagle held the lace curtains aside and stared out the villa's long window down to the lake below. Alexander's swept-wing jet seaplane was moored down among the powerboats and sailing yachts, like a sleek dark panther among fat little sheep.

  Alexander stood slightly behind the Amerind, feeling a bit like a child in the shadow of Red Eagle's huge form. A stray memory of boyhood flitted through his mind, of holding his father's hand as they walked along the Minnetonka lakeside promenade together. Then the surge of sorrow. He would never walk with his father again. Or his mother. He could never walk unprotected in the sunshine again. Too much of a risk of cancer now.

  "Hide in plain sight," said Red Eagle, chuckling. The sound was like a freight train rumbling in the distance.

  "You certainly picked an interesting place for it."

  Lake Como was abuzz with pleasure boats churning up the water, hydrofoil ferries speeding past, float planes from the Como Aero Club landing and taking off. A knot of gawkers stood at the club's ramp, admiring the jet seaplane anchored out among the boats. An endless stream of cars and tour buses and motor scooters growled and hissed and honked along the road that twisted around the lake's steep wooded mountains. Even from this high above the water, in this crumbling, dusty old villa, the two men could hear people singing and shouting at each other down along the lakeside where they were fishing or sunbathing.

  The city, off in the distance, was a cluster of roofs and towers. The gray-white granite monument to Alessandro Volta rose amidst the greenery of a waterside park.

  "It would have been more secure," Red Eagle said, letting the curtain drop, "to meet me on the Swiss side of the lake. I had to go through the border station. My passage will be noted."

  Alexander ran a hand through his dead-white hair. "Can you imagine the Swiss letting me land that plane on their side of the lake? It'd take six months just to fill out the forms!"

  Red Eagle admitted, "The Italians are somewhat easier in that respect. Their border police did not even look at my car as we drove through."

  "You're worried about security?"

  "Yes."

  "Why?" Alexander aske
d. "What's this all about? Why did you ask to see me?"

  Red Eagle stepped away from the window. He seemed incongruous in the setting: a huge man of powerful dignity, dressed in a conservatively tailored dark business suit, looking for a safe place to sit in a room filled with delicate rococo furniture. The villa that Alexander had rented was faded with time and neglect. Once the home of a wealthy Milanese factory owner, it now was let for rentals to foreigners who came for Lake Como's scenic beauty. The scenery was there, all right, but it was buried beneath hordes of tourists and Milanese weekenders who fouled the waters and littered the roads and belched filth from their engines into the air.

  Red Eagle selected an ornate couch of striped fabric and scrollwork legs. Sitting on it carefully, tentatively, he sank into its overplush cushions.

  Alexander pulled up a slim gilt-covered chair to the side away from the window and the sunshine.

  "We're okay in here," he said. "My people checked the entire house this morning. No bugs."

  Red Eagle nodded slowly. Still, he looked around the room as if he could detect electronic listening devices by sheer force of concentration. It was a large room, with a high ceiling decorated with faded frescoes of plump cherubs and insipid saints floating on pinkish clouds. Dust motes lazed through the sunlight lancing in from the long windows.

  "I can close the shutters if you like," Alexander offered.

  "No need," said Red Eagle. "It may sound paranoid, but I know that I am watched constantly. Probably someone is listening to this conversation."

  "I don't see how."

  "Neither do I, but the eavesdroppers are ingenious, and the technology of surveillance is quite advanced."

  "What's so secret, anyhow?" Alexander asked.

  "I have no secrets," said the Amerind, "but I am concerned about your safety, Mr. Alexander."

  "Mine?"

  Red Eagle nodded again, just once, a ponderous movement of his head. "You have made no secret of the fact that you are attempting to locate Jabal Shamar."

  Alexander's face went taut. "He killed my parents. And a couple of million other people."

  "So you want to kill him."

  "Damned right," he replied tensely. Then, with an obvious effort to be lighter, "Oh, I'm willing to bring him to the World Court, if I can. But I want him, dead or alive."

  "That is a very dangerous pastime."

  Alexander made a crooked grin and leaned back in his chair.

  "You have given up your career, sold your business, used your money to buy that airplane and a crew . . ."

  "And I've hired detectives, spies, informers—anybody who can give me information on Shamar's whereabouts."

  "Can you afford to hire a team of mercenary soldiers?"

  Alexander's smile vanished like a light snapped off.

  Drawing in a deep breath. Red Eagle said, "What I propose to tell you could place you in great danger, greater than you have ever been in before."

  The sardonic smile twisted Alexander's lips again. "I lived through Jerusalem. I can deal with risk."

  Red Eagle said nothing for a long moment. He merely gazed at Alexander, as if trying to make the final decision on whether to speak or not. At last, he let out another long, painful breath and said:

  "Mr. Alexander, the International Peacekeeping Force has impounded all the remaining nuclear weapons of the former belligerents of the Final War. Six of them are unaccounted for."

  Frowning, Alexander said, "I don't understand."

  "The IFF has checked the inventories very carefully, and double-checked with all the military, technical and political people involved. Apparently when Shamar disappeared, he took six nuclear weapons with him."

  "Six nukes?"

  "Comparatively small ones, in the one-hundred-kiloton range. Five times more powerful than the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but quite small and compact. Suitcase-sized, according to the technical experts."

  "Jesus Christ! Shamar's got six nukes?"

  "It is worse than that," Red Eagle said, his voice heavy and deep. "The nuclear powers—the United States, Soviet Russia and the others—have suspended their own nuclear disarmament programs."

  "Of course," Alexander said. "They're not going to get rid of their bombs as long as Shamar's running loose with a half dozen of his own."

  "Precisely. This is an extremely serious situation, Mr. Alexander. The path to real peace will be blocked as long as those weapons are in Shamar's hands."

  "But why come to me? This is a problem for the Peacekeepers."

  "No," said Red Eagle, with a ponderous shake of his head. "The International Peacekeeping Force cannot intervene in this problem. The IPF must not even attempt to deal with it."

  "Why the hell not?"

  Red Eagle placed his huge hands on his massive thighs and lifted his eyes to the faded glories of the ceiling.

  "You must understand, Mr. Alexander," he said, looking heavenward, "that the IPF has been created for one reason and one reason only: to prevent nations from attacking one another. The only situation in which the IPF can act is when a nation launches an armed attack across an international border. The only duty of the Peacekeepers is to keep the peace—to prevent war."

  "But if Shamar's got nuclear weapons, he's going to use them sooner or later."

  "Think, Mr. Alexander. Think. Many of the nations of the world do not trust the IPF very much. They fear that the Peacekeepers will turn into a world dictatorship. They refuse to disarm, for fear of leaving themselves defenseless against the IPF. Do you think they will allow IPF personnel to hunt for Shamar inside their own borders? Do you think that they will support the IPFs searching for Shamar in other countries?"

  Alexander felt a slight wave of giddiness wash through him as he realized what the Amerind was after. "You want me to get Shamar for you."

  Red Eagle lowered his gaze and fixed his deep brown eyes on Alexander. "This is very painful for me, Mr. Alexander. I am a man of the law. I do not approve of vigilantes or assassins."

  "But you have to nail Shamar, and damned fast, and you can't use the IPF to do the job."

  "That is the truth of it," Red Eagle admitted.

  "So you want me to do the job for you."

  Red Eagle said, "Through the Peacekeepers, I have access to certain forms of intelligence that are unavailable to you."

  Tingling with sudden excitement, Alexander grinned and said, "You've got a deal!"

  "He must be brought to justice, if possible," insisted Red Eagle. "I will not be party to an assassination."

  Alexander countered, "Listen, you just think of this as an old-time sheriff hiring a deputy—or recruiting a posse."

  "Not the most fortunate of analogies for a Comanche,"

  Red Eagle replied dourly.

  Laughing, Alexander said, "Yeah, I suppose not. But I'll get him for you. Just like I said, dead or alive."

  "And the nuclear weapons. They must be recovered. That is even more important than Shamar himself."

  "Of course. Sure." But Alexander thought to himself.

  More important to you, maybe, but not to me.

  Red Eagle got to his feet. It reminded Alexander of a tidal wave rising out of the ocean.

  "Mr. Alexander, this has been extremely difficult for me. I thank you for your cooperation."

  "We both want Shamar."

  "And the six nuclear bombs."

  "Yes."

  The Amerind headed toward the door, Alexander beside him, almost scampering to keep pace with Red Eagle's stately tread across the elaborately tiled floor.

  Then Red Eagle stopped. "You have not asked about payment."

  "Payment? For what?"

  "You will need an armed force to take Shamar. That will cost money."

  Alexander smiled crookedly. "What will those suspicious national governments say if they find that the IPF is hiring mercenaries?"

  "We could channel the money through a Swiss bank," suggested Red Eagle.

  "Famous last wor
ds."

  The Amerind frowned slightly. "Then how . . ."

  "I'm not broke yet," Alexander said. "If and when I need money I'll let you know. For now, all I want from you is information about Shamar's whereabouts."

  "I will get it to you."

  "Good."

  They shook hands at the door, Alexander's pale white hand engulfed in the Amerind's huge dark paw.

  Alexander watched from the shaded shelter of the villa's front gate as Red Eagle squeezed his bulk into the back seat of a BMW sedan. The car sank on its suspension noticeably.

  As the sedan pulled away and into the honking streams of everlasting traffic along the roadway, Alexander almost jumped into the air with glee.

  I'm going to get Shamar! I'm going to get the bastard and kill him with my own two hands!

  In the back seat of the BMW, Red Eagle was thinking, It is a dangerous thing to sidestep the law. Yet what else can be done?

  He looked down at the hand that had shaken Alexander's as if it were already dripping with blood.

  Red Eagle knew that we—and others—were

  watching his every move and listening to as

  much of his conversation as we could. He

  told himself that, like Marcus Brutus, he

  was armed so strong in honesty that it

  didn't matter. But it did, and what he had

  to do bothered him immensely. No one was

  ever able to trace the Meissner assassination

  to him, but it seemed terribly convenient to

  have that would-be Hitler killed before he

  could bring East and West to the brink of

  war over a reunited Germany.

  While the Peacekeepers stopped the

  Mongolian Crisis from erupting into war

  before a single shot was fired, we were

  getting unmistakable signals that the

  officer's coup was under way. Still the

  sluggards in Geneva did nothing. And Red

  Eagle was not officially part of the

  Peacekeepers; he was mainly concerned

  during those troubled months with feeding

  information to Cole Alexander. Discreetly.