by Tom Clancy
“What the hell do you want?” Scull said groggily once Nimec had announced himself.
“We need to talk, Vince.”
“Gee-fucking-whiz what a treat,” Scull said. “Just when I think I’m rid of you for a couple weeks, you decide to haunt me long distance.”
“This is important, Vince.”
“It occur to you I might have company and we’re maybe in the middle of something?”
“No, Vince. Honest. Can’t say it did.”
“Yeah, well, up yours, too,” Vince said. “Speaking of which, want to hang on while I pay a visit to the throne, or is it okay I carry the phone in and chitchat as things move along?”
“We need to talk right now, Vince.”
There was a pause of what Nimec took to be consternation at the other end of the line.
“Have it your way,” Scull said. “You hear a grunt come out of me, it’s not because I got turned on by your voice.”
“Good of you to share that,” Nimec said, and without any further holdup went on to outline the observations he’d made at the harbor.
Ten minutes and various undefined rumblings from Scull later, he’d gotten around to the questions that had plagued him since then… the first of which concerned the lines he’d seen run between the main container ship and its three feeders.
“I think they were fuel transfer hoses,” he said. “And I’m wondering if you’ve ever heard of cargo ships that double as oil tankers.”
“Uh-huh,” Scull said. “I have.”
“You have?”
“Oh, sure. Multitasking’s the word these days. What it’s all about,” Scull said. “Take this pair of shoes I bought, for instance. Put ’em under a bright light and they can dance ballet, tap, and modern jazz on their own. I’m telling you, Petey, you oughtta see the razzle-dazzle show they give on my kitchen table.”
Nimec rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger.
“Come on,” he said, exasperated. “Be serious.”
“Okay, I was full of crap about the ballet part, and the taps lose rhythm after a minute or two,” Scull said. “What the fuck you want for fifty bucks at Payless?”
“Damn it, Vince—”
“I’m seriously trying to tell you I’ve never heard of anything like you mentioned,” Scull said. And was quiet a second. “Well, okay, strike that. Think it was in World War Two, the Allies used to dress up fuel tankers heading out to the Pacific as standard freighters. Made ’em lower value targets for the Zeroes. And far as I know they really carried freight on deck.”
“Dress them up.”
“Is what I said two sentences ago, yeah,” Scull said. “There’s a problem with your phone connection, Petey-boy, you could always hang up and call back after the birds start to chirp.”
Nimec was tugging his chin.
“The Second World War dates back a ways.”
“You’re implying what’s old ain’t relevant, I’d have to take that as an insult.”
Nimec ignored him. “Question, Vince. You figure it’s possible anybody would be doing that now?” he said. “I mean legitimately using dual-purpose carriers.”
“Anything’s possible,” Scull said. “Can’t be too complicated a trick to overhaul a ship. But you know you’re asking me a two-in-one of your own here, right?”
“Yeah.”
“So which you want me to check out for openers? Who might be doing it on the up-and-up, or who might have reasons that’re on the slippery side?”
“Both,” Nimec said. “It’s why I asked the way I did.”
Scull gave him a somewhat exaggerated harrumph.
“This happen to tie in with Megan’s mystery e-mails?”
“I’d say so if knew, Vince.”
“But you don’t.”
“No,” Nimec said. “I don’t.”
“How about theories?”
“Yours would be good as mine.”
Again, Scull didn’t say anything.
“I wanna be sure I’ve got one thing straight before I go ahead and do your bidding,” he said after a moment. “Those cargo ships… you positive they were feeders and not coasters?”
“What’s the difference?”
“Coasters wouldn’t need tugboats because they’ve got engines aboard to power ’em,” Scull said. “They’re usually sorta long and narrow so they can snake through tight spots. Canals, river openings, that kind of shit. I saw a lot of them that year I was in the Polynesian islands scouting out sites for our ground stations. How they get their name is bringing loads along coastal routes.”
Nimec remembered what he’d seen beyond the piers.
“The boats last night had tugs,” Nimec said. And paused. “Until they didn’t and still sailed out of the channel.”
“Instead of pulling back into the harbor.”
“Right.”
Scull sighed. “I gotta admit, Petey, that right there confuses me.”
“Same here,” Nimec said. “And the sooner you can find information that’ll unconfuse us, the better.”
The phone became quiet again.
“Still with me, Vince?”
“Yeah, I had some private business that needed doing, want a graphic description?”
“No, thanks.”
“Then why don’t you hang up and let me roust my top-notch staff from under their quilts,” Scull said.
“Think we can keep this in-house?”
“Don’t see why not. Cal Bowman, you know him?”
“The name rings a bell.”
“He’s got a good bunch under him who specialize in what we call maritime works issues. They do reports on coastal processes, traffic forecasts—”
“Great, Vince.”
“I’m guessing you’re on a ’crypted freq?”
“Yeah. My satphone.”
“Keep it handy,” Scull said. “I’ll call back in a few hours with whatever we can pull together.”
Nimec considered that and had to smile.
“Those birds chirping in SanJo yet?”
“Not anywhere near my block, how come?”
“Thought you’d feel it was a little early to be waking people up.”
Scull produced an ogreish chortle.
“I give what I get when it comes to distributing the misery,” Scull said. “Fuck ’em all, big and small.”
“That a Vince Scull original?”
“A collaboration between me, Robin Hood, and Karl Marx,” Scull said. “Like it?”
Nimec shrugged. “Sends a clear message.”
“On behalf of the three of us, I’m glad you got it loud and clear,” Scull said.
And on that delightful note he signed off.
* * *
Henri Beauchart had been at the surveillance station well before Eckers arrived at nine A.M., accompanied by three of his adjuncts from Team Graywolf.
It only fed Beauchart’s existing unhappiness. He and his own staff had already completed their electronic probe. A simple effort, yes, but hastily called for. And here Eckers would come walking in the door to take control of an operation that was itself something Beauchart detested at his core. Still, what was to be gained from dwelling on his resentments? That would only make him miserable. The time for second thoughts or complaints was long past. His position at Los Rayos had been one thing before Jean Luc Morpaign returned from Paris to handle his deceased father’s business affairs, and another thing afterward. The brutal truth was he’d allowed himself to be purchased, gone from preventing and solving crimes to committing them. And he should be accustomed to Tolland Eckers stepping on him these days.
Eckers was Jean Luc’s man. Indeed, his spiritual familiar.
Now he approached the U-shaped terminal where Beauchart sat beside a young, dark-haired woman wearing a conservative blouse and skirt, a red bindi dot of Hindu tradition in the center of her forehead.
“Henri,” he said. “You have what I wanted?”
Beauchart looked back over his shoulder
at the American. His companions had remained a few paces behind him.
“It is all done,” he said with a nod toward the woman at his console. “Chandra is one of my best intranet monitoring operators. I’ve had her bring up this graphic so you can see for yourself how the information was obtained.”
Eckers waited.
“The summary log reports and strip charts have been hard-copied, but I’ll venture a guess you won’t care to review them,” Beauchart said, pointing to the screen in front of him. “What you see here will be good enough.”
Eckers leaned forward and scanned the screen. Its galaxy view of the resort’s network architecture showed a large circle representing the primary host surrounded by smaller circles that depicted its various nodes, with connecting lines to display the inbound and outbound communications routed between their portals. On the perimeters of the orbiting circles were hundreds of tiny colored points, each of which stood for an individual computer in the system.
“My first step was a global query, entering the names of Mr. Nimec and his wife,” Chandra explained. “This sought them out of the resort’s computer databases and those of any licensed and rented alliance businesses they might have visited on the island.” She paused. “Shops, nightclubs and restaurants, tour organizers… we require they use certain collaborative software applications to give us different sorts of information. Most of it’s statistical. They rarely raise complaints, since the stated reason for this is our desire to learn which attractions and hospitality providers are popular with our guests, and how to improve and better target services for them.”
“Tracking their activities being a fringe benefit,” Eckers said.
The woman nodded.
“Our partners understandably do object to having some of their programs, or specific program files, interface with our central database… There are degrees of overlap in the merchandise and services they provide, and that creates occasional competition between them,” she said. “An example of what they like to keep private might be their accounting and inventory figures. Scheduling information is another very pertinent example, as I’m about to show you. The business owners are often insistent about maintaining the confidentiality of this data, which is why we slip trojans into their computers over the intranet. They’re self-updating and undetectable to any firewall or spyware-detection program compatible with our system infrastructure. And we have built-in alarms should they try to install any other such programs.” Chandra placed a hand over her computer mouse. “To get back to my global search, it gave us several immediate hits. But the tracking data we needed would usually take from several hours to a day before being transferred between their computer subsets and our host by the trojans.”
“Why’s that?” Eckers asked.
“Too routine to red flag other than for a special action,” she said. “Then it suddenly becomes important. But an unregulated flow of traffic would overtax the system’s capacity, so we use automatically staggered cycles.”
“Like timed stoplights on a busy intersection.”
“Yes… unless circumstances dictate that we go into the computers, override the predetermined cycle, and extract the information packets as I did from here,” Chandra said, and then moved and clicked the mouse.
Eckers watched closely as she highlighted one of the orbital subnet circles on the galaxy view and then zoomed in on a specific point along its circumference. It grew large on the screen, a numerical internet protocol address appearing above it.
Beauchart saw the American’s eyes narrow with curiosity. Again, he had to stamp down on his distaste.
“The computer we’ve identified belongs to one of the resort’s licensed agents… a water sports shop that also schedules a range of excursions,” he said. “The Nimecs are booked for an outing this afternoon. One that I believe will present the singular opportunity you desire.”
Eckers caught his quick, meaningful glance.
“The shop’s name?” he said.
Chandra clicked her mouse and it appeared over the IP address.
Eckers read it off the screen, grunted as his interest was further stirred.
“Okay,” he said. “Give me a look at the details of what they’ve got scheduled.”
Chandra gave them to him.
They were, as Beauchart had predicted, good enough.
BONASSE, TRINIDAD
Jean Luc winced when his blackline cell phone rang on its docking station first thing in the morning — the caller ID display told him it might only complicate what was set to be a busy day. At the top of his schedule was a ten o’clock meeting in Port of Spain to settle down the apprehensive gentlemen at the Ministry of Energy and Energy Industries. Then it would be across Independence Square to the Finance Building, where he’d no doubt have to apply more verbal palliatives. And then an international call to Reed Baxter, during which he’d be obliged to pass on a filtered and edited version of the gaining worries in the Capitol and tolerate Reed’s whining on about his own. So much nervous energy generated on both sides, and he the transoceanic conductor that made it flow smoothly back and forth rather than build to some dysfunctional system overload. Jean Luc hated to think what might happen if he decided to let it go. The whole shebang, everything. And sometimes he felt he could, even would, inherited alliances and duties aside. He had an ample bequest and many interests. He could travel the globe for the rest of his life and never grow tired of its sights and cultures. The past bore on him only to the degree that he allowed it, and by no means would Jean Luc continue shouldering its burdens if he grew convinced they’d add up to his personal ruin.
Now he entered his study in a robe and slippers, thumbing the cellular’s talk button and shooting a glance at the antique Boullé clock on his mantel.
“Toll, it’s barely eight,” he said. “I’ve got my fingers crossed you’re calling with good news.”
“I wish I was, sir,” Eckers said. “There’s been a development that’s going to need our attention.”
“Involving our elusive islander?”
“Elusive if alive,” Eckers qualified. “The perimeter watch has been maintained around the village, but Team Graywolf gave me nothing to indicate a substantive change in that situation when they last reported in. They’re convinced he wouldn’t have made it out of the southern preserve, and are combing it day and night.”
“Then what’s this about?”
“The visitor from San Jose,” Eckers said, and then paused. “I think this has to be considered highly time-sensitive, sir.”
Jean Luc closed his eyes and released a breath.
“Let me hear it,” he said.
Eckers did, his summary delivered cool-headedly enough — he was a man whose calm outward demeanor rarely if ever gave a read of his true level of concern. Jean Luc appreciated that, considering what little it took to induce fits of panic in too many of his business and political associates. But Eckers’s haste to contact him was itself a measure of the seriousness of what the cameras had apparently picked up at the harbor last night.
“You don’t suppose he could’ve missed the transfer, do you?” Jean Luc said. He was reaching, of course, and could tell from the momentary silence in his earpiece that Eckers knew it.
“We’d have to rule that out,” Eckers said. “Our surveillance video’s close-up, and digital quality. And I reviewed it in various enhanced modes to eliminate any guesswork.” He paused again. “He observed the whole thing, sir. Those were high-magnification surveillance NVG’s he was using… advanced military grade optics. The ships would have been well within their range at the point of rendezvous, and he was looking directly out at them.”
“And I don’t suppose we can gain any comfort by telling ourselves he probably doesn’t know what he saw.”
“He’ll know he saw something,” Eckers said. “If he didn’t realize what it was, he’s going to want to find out.”
Jean Luc sat behind his desk and stared at the glass-door bookcase against t
he wall to his right. On its upper shelf were four thick, leather-bound volumes that comprised the family record, notably minus the diary pages of Ysobel Morpaign, wife of Lord Claude, which had remained locked away in a vault for over a hundred years after her suicide. The Morpaigns had always revealed more truths about themselves between the lines than in them, but on occasion Jean Luc would read through their handwritten memoirs and try to decipher the reality of who his ancestors had been compared to how they’d wished to show their faces to the world — in some indescribable way, it helped put his responsibilities in their rightful place. He was the family scion. The keeper of its legacy, obliged to oversee its commercial holdings and carry through its immediate and far-reaching goals. A now kind of person, as he’d put it to Eckers. But that was his own outward face. Privately, he dwelled on the past more than he would have cared to acknowledge, and time and again found himself wondering about old Lord Claude, plantation owner, bootlegger, and forerunner of an oil dynasty in Trinidad. Claude, whom Ysobel’s sad, secret writings claimed would have ordered his only son thrown into the pitch lake as a newborn infant, his body left to sink down into the tar with the bones of nature’s failures and discards, had not letting him live been a wiser expedient. Childless in his marriage, Lord Claude had desperately wanted a male heir. That it had been conceived out of his lust for a black slave woman was something he could abide, just so long as the light-skinned son could pass as his legitimate issue, and its birth mother could be made to disappear forever. And so long as fragile, vulnerable Ysobel, who had assumed her husband’s disgrace as her own by blaming it on her infertility, could be manipulated into spending the nine months of a supposed pregnancy in her Spanish homeland to enable the lie.
It was, Jean Luc knew, all dust and cobwebs. Ancient history that shouldn’t matter to him, let alone be a kind of closet obsession. And what did his preoccupation with it signify if not a shameful lack of pride in who he was, a hunger for acceptance from elitists and polite society bigots about whom he shouldn’t give a good God’s damn?
“The visitor,” he said now, turning from the bookcase. “He’s supposed to be staying at Los Rayos a few more days, that right?”