by Tom Clancy
While considerably more than a single pair of eyes had been watching Nimec watch the harbor, the key witness as he mounted his scooter now was seated over two miles north of him in the rear lounge of a Daimler stretch limousine parked outside the flamboyantly decorated and lighted Bonne Chance Casino. Here at the heart of the resort’s entertainment complex, this long-bodied vehicle was not ostentation but camouflage. The Bonne Chance’s wealthy amusement seekers could afford to toy with luck and saw no crime in putting their status and success on display. The Daimler, then, shone only like a diamond in cluster, blending into rather than standing out from the sparkling field of luxury cars in the valet lot.
Skilled at blending in under any and all conditions required of him, Tolland Eckers much preferred the comfortable back of a limo to hiding with his belly down in South American mud and weeds, or with his throat and eyes burned by the freezing cold in rocky Tora Bora, or with the Rhub’ al-Khali’s hot desert grit caking his nostrils. He had roughed it around the globe for almost two decades in service to the Agency; service to Jean Luc Morpaign was a less taxing and dangerous way to earn a living. And, really, it hadn’t compromised his patriotism. Eckers more or less accurately reported his income on his federal returns, paid state taxes on his two hundred-acre property in Pottawattamie County, Iowa, and voted Republican by absentee ballot in every election. To say he’d committed acts that were in betrayal of American interests would be to make naive assumptions about how business worked at the highest levels — Jean Luc was only pissing in a pond where other, bigger fish had already taken their turns.
“Alpha One, this is Gray Base,” a voice said in Eckers’s headset. “Do you want us to stay tight on our man?”
Eckers considered that a moment, studying the picture on his screen as the guest from San Jose mounted his Vespa.
“Let’s not ease up too much,” he said. “I want him covered till he’s returned to the nest.”
“Yes, sir. That’s the standing order.”
“I know the order, Gray Base.”
“Yes, sir…”
“I said make sure. Don’t get lazy about this or I’ll have your ass.”
“I’ll oversee the check myself, sir.”
“You do that,” Eckers said. “And report in to me afterward.”
“Yes, s—”
Eckers reached for his headset’s belt control and lowered the volume, needing to think without distraction. When Jean Luc had told him of Nimec’s impending visit weeks ago, he’d known he had a potentially serious problem on his hands. But he could strike the word “potentially” tonight. The situation had heated up sooner than expected — although so far as he was concerned, putting out flash fires was simply part of his job. The question for him was whether to contact Jean Luc right away or wait for the morning. Probably he’d hold off on a decision till it was confirmed that their Mr. Nimec had gone back to the villa and was finished poking around for now. Whatever he settled upon, however, Eckers knew it was six of one, half dozen of the other. Jean Luc’s options were narrow. Nimec was a top professional and would have access to a limitless variety of resources at UpLink. There was no telling how much he’d already added up, or who he could contact to help him figure it out. He wouldn’t waste time, though. He certainly hadn’t this far. And he’d seen enough of significance so Jean Luc would understand it was no use to just wait around hoping for the best.
Eckers sat there in silent contemplation, his face bathed in the IR monitor’s bluish-gray radiance, his eyes staring at the now-static image of the roadside opposite the harbor. He could call Jean Luc tonight, he could call him tomorrow morning, but either way was already planning beyond that. He’d dealt with fires before, doused every sort imaginable, and could tell this latest one would need to have water poured on it quickly if he was to keep it from spreading out of hand…
And if every last trace of it was going to be washed away, which was precisely what Eckers intended.
* * *
Jarvis Lenard cowered at the rear of the shallow cave, his head bent under the irregular furrows of its ceiling, his knees pulled up to his chest, his back flush against cold, damp stone. He scarcely dared move a muscle. The search team was close by; he could hear them through the screen of brush with which he’d covered his hideout’s entrance, their passage making a flurry of unaccustomed sounds in the forest. And minutes earlier, he had done more than hear them. Having left the cave to empty his bladder, Jarvis had caught a glimpse of them within a half dozen yards of where he’d stood watering the ground. It had cut off his flow midstream, but a small discomfort that had been compared to the unpitying hurts Jarvis was firmly convinced his hunters would dole out if he was captured. He’d been far more willing to tolerate the pressing fullness inside him — and if he couldn’t manage that, to foul himself from top to bottom, or suffer any other indignity his mind could conceive — than to have been cost dear by one extra moment out there.
It was the hack of machetes that had alerted him to their approach — and none too soon. Barefoot over the meager puddle he’d created, Jarvis had peered toward the noise and distinguished their outlines in the soft film of moonlight that had sifted its way down through the jungle’s leafy roof. He’d counted five of them in single file, black-clad, rifles at their hips, their curved blades slicing a path through the tangled, twisted masses of vines and branches hindering their progress. They wore goggles Jarvis knew would allow their eyes to see in pitch darkness, and the lead man had been holding what almost looked like a video camera in front of him — but camcorder Jarvis didn’t believe it was, oh no, at least not the type that someone would bring on a vacation to capture the smiling faces of his wife and children. Its handle was like the grip of a pistol, and its enormous lens about equaled the size of its entire body, and there was a wide viewing screen in back that cast a strange bluish-gray light upon the features of the spotter who carried it, giving him the look of a ghostly apparition. Jarvis had noticed these things — the glow especially — and come to realize that the device was a heat-reader akin to those aboard the helicopters scouring the island for him. The friend who had told him of the nightbirds, an aircraft cleaner he’d linked up with at Los Rayos’s employee compound, had described this machinery one night when rum had turned his mouth to chattering, and Jarvis hadn’t forgotten his words: Their picture’s all gray an’ not green, an’ the lenses can do more’n pierce the black’a night. They can see the natural aura’a heat that come off the skin’a everyt’ing alive, see the vapor that leave yah mout’ when ya breath, even see the shape’a yer ass on a chair yah been warmin’ a full quarter hour after yah ’ave lifted yerself off it.
Jarvis Lenard had stood with his heart pounding against his ribs as the spotter paused ahead of the others in line behind him, and swept the heat-reader first from side to side, and then up toward the treetops. Last, he’d bent and aimed its lens toward the ground… and that was when Jarvis had taken the opportunity to flee, scampering back to the cave entrance before the man could straighten, or resume moving forward with his team. Still hanging out of his pants, he’d dropped onto his stomach, wriggled in under his brush cover, hurried to replace whatever foliage he’d disturbed, and scampered through the claustrophobic, rough-walled tube of rock, which narrowed like a periwinkle shell toward the back to end in a tight, angling notch where he’d finally hunkered down in dread.
Squatted on his heels in that little sideways cut now, Jarvis took a deep breath, another, and then a third, making an effort to slow his racing heartbeat. But his throat had tightened with fear, and only thin snatches of air seemed to reach his lungs, and the hard throbbing in his rib cage did not ease up. He continued to pull in breath after breath, regardless, understanding he must try to be calm… must try mightily to remain still and silent if he was to have any chance of avoiding capture, however easier it might be said than done. From what he could hear, his stalkers had gotten to within a few paces of the cave entrance and stopped again. To its left, a
s it seemed to him. Had they come this far into the woods because they had picked up his trail? Or was it plain, fickle chance that had brought them here?
Jarvis Lenard could not know. Yet he did know that the side of the cave where they had now made their second halt was the same side he’d chosen for taking care of his business, and that the spot of a puddle he’d left there could madly enough do him in. For it had struck him that a device able to read a man’s lingering body heat on a seat cushion would also detect the warmth of his freshly released urine. And if it were to meet the notice of those who sought him, acting like to a beacon, glowing on the face of that viewscreen as though the pecker that had peed it had been flooded with radioactivity…
Jarvis had a moment when he was gripped by a suicidal urge to laugh aloud at that thought — or rather cough out an anxiety-fraught mockery of laughter. But he managed to suppress it, refusing to yield to crazed hysteria. The Sunglasses might take him, yes, they might. He was determined not to serve himself up to them on a platter, though.
Two or three minutes went by with the slowness of as many hours. Jarvis could still hear shuffling footsteps outside. And the chop of machete blades. He had no way to see past the vegetation he’d piled in front of the cave entrance to keep it from sight, but sadly the opposite wouldn’t be true of the instrument in the spotter’s hand. Its lens did not see objects for what they were, not really. Instead it would sense only the heat that escaped them. Leaves and branches would give off no warmth, or very little compared to what was coming from Jarvis, and would be a poor excuse for a barrier. To his understanding, incomplete as it might be, a man’s body heat would appear to burn a white-hot hole through the fold of brush on that evil device’s monitor.
Same as my piss would seem to be burnin’ like an atomic spill, Jarvis thought with a humor that was far more subdued — but no less grim — than the spasm of crazed mirth that had just come so close to pushing him around the corner into lunacy.
If there was anything that might work to his favor and protect him from the searching electronic eye, he supposed it was his having scurried away to hide in the notch, with its wall of thick, solid rock separating it from the forward length of the cave. The question then would be whether the eye was keen enough to penetrate that wall should it be turned in its direction, although Jarvis would be glad never to learn the answer… as if what he wanted mattered at all.
He lowered his head between his knees and took another series of breaths to quiet his nerves. For the present he could only wait like a hunted animal in its burrow, hoping it was only a fluke that had brought these bloodhounds close, and that they would pass as suddenly as they’d appeared without sniffing out any trace of him.
Waiting. Hoping. Words for the desperate, true, Jarvis thought.
He would gladly take them on himself.
A scared, desperate man, he would take them on without argument, and take as well the uncertainty that was their constant companion, if it meant he could elude his pursuers yet another night, and stay free to worry about the next day when it came.
SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA, CALIFORNIA
Julia Gordian broke out of her nightmare with a start, her eyes snapping open in the darkness, her mouth gasping in air, her right hand going to her throat. Her other arm jerked up at her side with a stiff, violent movement that tossed her blanket partway off the bed.
She’d been awakened by the trailing end of a moan that she instantly realized had come from her own lips.
Shaking hard, Julia drew herself to a sitting position. Then she let her fingers slide from her neck, covered her face with both hands, and stayed like that for several minutes. When she at last raised her head from her palms, they were left wet with perspiration and tears.
She took a while longer to collect herself and then reached down for her blanket, thinking the sounds that had torn out of her must have been pretty awful, wondering if they’d been loud enough for her father to hear them. Probably not, she decided; the guest room was on the other side of the house. And though he wouldn’t have admitted it, Dad seemed tired from standing on a ladder with those heavy abstracts. And then the drive, and her laying the rest of that stuff on him. With even a shred of luck he’d still be sound asleep.
Julia wiped her stinging eyes. That other stuff, she thought. Just something incidental she’d wanted to mention. Uh-huh, sure.
Let her go. Let her go now. Let her go, it’s finished…
She took in another breath. The words from her dream clung to her. Those words, and the fearful sensation of the combat knife against her throat, held to her throat in the Killer’s grip. And then the images returned: Tom Ricci standing in the entrance to that room in Big Sur, the door he’d kicked open flung back from the splintered jamb.
Let her go, it’s finished… You do her, I do you, what’s the point?
Ricci again. His eyes on the Killer over the outthrust gun in his hands, the gun targeted on the Killer’s heart.
In Julia’s nightmare, the Killer had been as faceless as he’d been nameless. Wait, maybe not exactly. His features had been constantly changing. One moment they’d been average, even bland. Then atrociously cruel and monstrous. Like in her actual recollections of those black days, she couldn’t quite fix on them.
A year now of trying to remember the Killer’s face, and she couldn’t do it.
But Tom Ricci’s—
His face, eyes, voice — they would return with absolute clarity in her memory and dreams.
You can make it on your own now. Go. It’ll be all right.
Those words… he’d spoken those words to her after persuading the Killer to lower his knife from her throat and slice the ropes that had bound her wrists and ankles to her chair, a straight-backed wooden chair on which she’d been forced to sit until she lost most of her circulation. When Julia lifted her arms, they’d been cramped and stiff as boards. Her legs were worse, so numb at first she had been unable to feel them. And then the painful tingles as she stood up and blood began flowing to them. Trying to take her first step toward Ricci, she had almost toppled over.
And Ricci had steadied her with one hand. Keeping his gun on the Killer with the other, or so she assumed. That was one of the blanks her mind had filled in for her, not because she’d had any awareness of it at the time, but because it had to have happened that way.
At the time there was only Ricci for her.
His face, his eyes, his voice…
His firm, steadying hand. He’d slipped it around her back, held her erect, kept her from falling as the strength returned to her legs, helping her toward the door.
Guiding her toward freedom with his hand.
You can make it on your own now. Go. It’ll be all right.
Julia had hesitated before she stepped out into the hallway. Looking into his eyes, meeting them with hers, wanting to say something. Groping in her mind for something to say, and not quite knowing what in the moment she had available.
A hurried thank-you had seemed woefully, ridiculously inadequate, but it was all that had occurred to her…
And only then had it registered with Julia that there was still a gag around her mouth. The scarf, or strip of cloth, or whatever it was, taut between her lips, its knot uncut.
It had left Julia with no chance to say anything, no chance, and she had simply nodded mutely and gone through the opening, the door shutting behind her with a slam, Ricci’s team of Sword operatives rushing around her, sweeping her down a flight of stairs — a spiral staircase — and outside into the sunlight, and then finally through the door of a car and away, all of it happening in a blur from the point at which she’d heard the loud slam of that door at her back.
Now, over twelve months later in her darkened bedroom, Julia sat up thinking for a time, letting her dream’s intensity fade, as it did for even the worst of dreams, before she gradually let her head sink down to her pillow.
Turning onto her side, she reached across to the empty half of the bed where h
er husband had once slept, briefly spread her fingers over the cool, unruffled sheet, and then pulled back her hand to gather the covers against her breast.
The tears came on and off before she slept, but Julia had learned to get by with that sort of minor nuisance.
At the herbal boutique today, in fact, she’d picked up a fresh bottle of eyedrops that would wash away the redness before she again had to face the world.
FIVE
VARIOUS LOCALES APRIL 2006
BOCA DEL SIERPE, TERRITORIAL TRINIDAD
Nimec held off on phoning Vince Scull, up Link’s chief risk assessment man and lead crank, until nine o’clock in the morning. With the difference in time zones, this meant it would be five A.M. in San Jose, not exactly regular office hours, but Nimec had punched in Vince’s home number and figured he would be up getting ready for work by then. And if he wasn’t, Nimec figured he ought to be. And if that was a stretch to justify the early call, Nimec wasn’t about to let himself feel too bad. He’d waited to the extent that his patience had allowed, reasoned he’d suffered enough aggravation from Vince over the years to be due a huge credit bonus, and in any event had never known Vince to react any better to consideration versus inconsideration. The guy would invariably find some reason to grouse, so why let it be a factor either way?