Jarvis mopped his brow again with his shirttail, which by now resembled a cleaning rag. “Listen. You have what you wanted. Anyone can duplicate these. Moffet here is quite capable.” He stopped as his lower lip began to tremble uncontrollably.
Qazi stood silent, expressionless, his hands limp by his sides. Ali moved toward a wall and Jarvis followed him with his eyes.
“Go on.”
“I’m Jewish,” Jarvis blurted.
Qazi slowly folded his arms. In the silence you could hear the bleats and cries of children coming through the window from the huts across the empty street.
“I don’t know where you are going to get these weapons. Maybe you have them already.” Jarvis took a step forward. “But for God’s sake, man, don’t make me a part of it. You can’t.”
“Get on the floor.”
“What?”
“On your knees. On the floor.”
Jarvis looked desperately from face to face. Sakol was staring stonily out a window, oblivious to the scene. Ali stood in the shadows with a trace of a smile just visible on his lips. Qazi’s face was expressionless, without mercy or emotion of any kind.
“I will not repeat myself,” Qazi said softly.
Jarvis slowly sank to his knees.
Qazi stepped forward and looked down on the man. “In this position you forfeited your rights as a man, as a Jew, as a human being. You forfeited your life. Now you will obey my orders or you will force us to smear your wife with your slime.”
Jarvis was sobbing.
“You will do as you are told. You will do precisely and exactly as you are told and you will attempt no evasions or subterfuges. You will concern yourself only with performing the tasks I set for you. You have lost the right to make moral judgments on the affairs of men. You have cut yourself off from your fellow Jews and from your family. We are all that you have left.”
Qazi seized Jarvis’ chin and forced his head up. He stared into the watery eyes. “I’m all that you have now.”
At last he removed his hand and motioned to Ali, who seized Jarvis by an arm and jerked him to his feet, then propelled him toward the door. After the door closed behind them, there were only the dusty shafts of the early afternoon sun.
Qazi bent to the devices on the table. “Nicely played, Colonel,” Sakol said. “Your reputation for manipulating overweight sexual deviates is well deserved.”
The amplified call of the muezzin came through the windows and filled the room. “Allah is most great, I testify that there is no god but Allah, I testify that Mohammed is the Prophet of Allah, come to prayer, come to success, Allah is most great, there is no god but Allah.” Even here, at this army base in the desert, the call of the faithful was part and parcel of life.
The workmanship was excellent, Qazi decided finally. Each wire was of equal length, each was connected with a conservative little solder dollop, nothing sloppy or makeshift.
“But it’s all an act, isn’t it, Colonel? Just an act to impress Jarvis and Ali and whoever Ali whispers to. You have no intention of really using a nuclear weapon.”
Sakol sensed movement behind him and turned to see that Qazi had an automatic pistol leveled at his face, a lethal little Walther PPK, Sakol noted professionally.
“El Hakim is insane, but you aren’t, Qazi. You know that Israel has nuclear weapons and, if pressed too far, will use them. You know that pushing the nuclear button would remove the Arabs from the human race. You know all that, Qazi. So what’s your game?”
“You talk far too much, Sakol. I understand now why the Americans left you to die in that prison in Afghanistan.”
“They were playing games, too.”
“Just one more word and I will finish what the Russians started.”
Sakol stared at him. Finally he said, “You would. I believe you.”
Qazi stepped forward and slashed the front sight of his pistol across Sakol’s cheek, then quickly stepped back. As the blood dripped from Sakol’s cheek onto his shirt Qazi pocketed the weapon. “You’ll be returned to the cell with Jarvis. You’ll ensure he performs as required.”
Just then the door opened and Ali stood there, framed in the opening. Qazi issued orders to Ali in Arabic as Sakol walked toward the door.
* * *
“How do we know,” Ali asked Qazi later in the corridor, “that the electrical outputs those instruments produce are the proper ones?”
“That is why we have Sakol working with Jarvis,” Qazi answered offhandedly, his mind still on Sakol and the possibility he might speak frankly to the wrong people. Keeping Sakol alive was a large risk, a much larger risk than he had previously believed. Sakol’s attitudes and opinions should have been anticipated. There was just no margin in the plan for errors of that magnitude. “Sakol has assured me Jarvis is giving us the correct voltages.”
“Can we not verify the voltages through other sources?”
Qazi stopped on the stairs and faced Ali. The black eyes were not evasive. “That information is classified Top Secret by the Americans. One would need the actual technical data manual for the weapon. That manual is one of the most closely held American secrets.”
“So we must rely on Jarvis and Sakol.”
Qazi resumed his descent of the stairs. “That would be a very slender reed, indeed. No, I have a source that will supply the manual.”
“I suspected as much, Colonel. And what is the source?”
“The traits that make you valuable to me, Ali, are your unquestioning faith and your discretion. Keep exercising both.”
The two men stepped into the desert heat and walked across the courtyard to the waiting Mercedes, where Ali slid behind the wheel.
In the car Qazi sat in the front seat with Ali.
“Why does Sakol hate you so?”
Ali laughed. “I call him a whore, selling himself for money. I ask him to do sexual things for me. He is not amused.” His face grew serious. “I think when he was a prisoner in Afghanistan, the Russians forced him to do sexual things with other men. Or the Russians did it to him. The Russians are such pigs.” He made a spitting motion.
Ali was on the main road now, heading north. To the west the afternoon sun caused the dust-filled sky to glow red. Perhaps they would reach the capital before the dust storm struck. Qazi turned off the air-conditioning and rolled down his window. The heat filled the car. He took a deep breath. He, too, loved the smell of the desert, the smell of purity, the smell of nothing at all.
Along the road ahead he saw a bedouin on a camel. The mounted figure shimmered in the heat as the car approached. As the car went by Qazi saw that the rider did not even deign to give them a glance. Qazi adjusted the rearview mirror on his door and watched the receding figure until it was lost in the heat mirages rising from the stony emptiness.
7
How long was Columbus at sea on his first voyage to the New World?” Jake Grafton asked Yeoman First Class Farnsworth, who pushed himself back from his typewriter and thought seriously about the question.
Abandoned by his mother at the age of five, Farnsworth had spent his youth shuttling between foster homes. He had enlisted in the navy at seventeen and earned his high school equivalency diploma during his first tour of sea duty. The navy, with its routine and tradition and comfortable discipline, was the only happy home he had ever known. There were times when Farnsworth wished the captain standing in the middle of the office and gazing about distractedly had been his father. Except that Grafton was about ten years too young. Still, he had an air of quiet self-confidence that Farnsworth found most agreeable. So Farnsworth tried desperately to recall if he had ever heard how long Columbus’ voyage had taken.
“Sir, I don’t remember.”
“Me either. How about running up to the ship’s library and looking it up? Better check on Noah, too.” And since he was not in the habit of giving frivolous orders, Jake added, “I need a good excuse to ask the powers that be for a day off for the troops. Maybe we could have a deck picnic when
we equal Columbus’ time at sea.”
Farnsworth was out the door almost before Jake finished. The captain went into his office and tackled the contents of his in-basket. He was deep into the preliminary draft of an accident report, Jelly and Boomer’s crash, when Will Cohen knocked and entered.
“Sit down, Will.”
“Thanks, CAG. Thought I’d give you a report on the maintenance inspection.”
Jake leaned back and propped his feet on the open top drawer of the desk. “How’s that going?”
“We’ve finished both the F-14 outfits and one of the F/A-18 squadrons. Still working on the others. One of, the fighter squadrons”—he named it—“has been cheating a little. They’ve been robbing parts from down birds to keep the others flying.”
Jake knew about that dodge. You kept your aircraft available to fly by shuffling components, which increased the work load on the sailors. For every bad component that needed replacement, the mechanics had to remove two parts and install two more. The practice, known as cannibalism, increased the opportunities for a maintenance error, and it certainly didn’t help morale.
“Are parts all that hard to come by?” Jake asked as he watched Cohen take out a pack of cigarettes, Pall Mall filters, and light one.
“Supply says no. But that skipper and maintenance officer are doing their damnedest to keep their availability looking as good as possible.”
Jake grunted and watched Cohen look around for an ashtray. The maintenance officer settled on the trashcan and pulled it over.
“That’s a lot of work for the troops for a damn small increase in availability.”
“Yep,” Cohen agreed. “But when everyone wants a ‘walks on water’ fitness report, you want the numbers as good as possible.”
Jake knew all about the fitness report game, too. But this, he realized, was more complex than the natural desire of the skipper to look good. The skipper was under intense pressure to keep the maximum number of his aircraft ready to fly, and if the supply system failed to spew forth spare parts quickly enough, the temptation to cannibalize an aircraft that couldn’t be readily repaired was almost irresistible. The real challenge was making the supply system work properly. Jake Grafton’s primary responsibility was making the entire system — including supply — function as it should, and the effort absorbed the bulk of his time. There were moments when the sheer inertia of the bureaucracy daunted him. “I’ll have a little chat with that skipper. You give me a list of the parts he’s been cannibalizing. What else have you found?”
“Not a whole lot. Little screw ups here and there, but the repair work seems to be getting done properly and quickly. At times they get behind on the documentation, which is par for the course. Overall the quality of the work is excellent.”
“They only have to fuck up once and somebody dies.” He picked up the draft accident report and perused it again as a thin blue fog of cigarette smoke filled the small compartment. The exact cause of the accident was unknown, but the investigators opined that the probable cause was an oxygen system malfunction that the crewmen had not noticed in time. The equipment used to fill the aircraft’s tank with liquid oxygen had checked out perfectly. The aircraft had flown almost a hundred hours without an oxygen system gripe. The crew was current on their low-pressure chamber training and their masks had been inspected recently. Jelly had five hours sleep in the twenty-four hours prior to the crash and Boomer had slept for six. Both men had eaten within six hours of flying, food from the wardroom that had not affected anyone else.
Jake sighed and tossed the report onto the desk. He eyed Cohen. “Gimme a cigarette.”
“I thought you were trying to quit.”
“I am trying, asshole. But you came in here and fumigated the joint and now I want a fucking cigarette. So gimme one.”
Cohen scrutinized the captain carefully. He decided he was serious and passed one across the desk. Jake sniffed it, then placed it in his mouth. “Now a match.”
“You shouldn’t do this, you know.”
Jake glared.
Cohen passed over his lighter. Jake lit up and exhaled slowly, through his nose. “Keep going on the inspection. And tell Chief Shipman to drop in the next time you see him. I want to hear how he’s doing too.”
Cohen stood up. “Yessir.”
“Thanks, Will.” Cohen closed the door behind him on the way out.
Jake took another drag on the cigarette. It tasted terrible and made him light-headed, yet he wanted it. He held it up and stared at the glowing red tip. I’m addicted to these fucking things, he told himself slowly. He stubbed it out on the inside of the gray metal trashcan, only to see several red coals fall on down toward the bottom, under the paper. He poured cold coffee into the can and sloshed it around.
Farnsworth opened the door, paused, and sniffed. “You’ve been smoking.”
“Eat shit and die,” Jake Grafton snarled.
The yeoman wasn’t fazed. “Columbus was at sea continuously for only thirty-four days before he landed in the West Indies. His whole first voyage, including a few weeks in the Canary Islands, only took sixty-two days.”
“That quick, huh? How long have we been at sea?”
“One hundred five days.”
“So that’s out.”
“Noah might be a better bet. It’s a little confusing, but it looks like he floated around for a hundred and fifty days. And lots of ships have made longer voyages, sir. Maybe ol’ Noah set the record when he did it, but he wouldn’t even be close now. I’ll bet I could find someone who went to sea a bosun third and came home an admiral.”
Down in the wastebasket half the cigarette remained un-burned, though it was slightly bent. Jake pushed it off the paper wad where it rested and watched it turn brown in the coffee at the bottom of the can. “Another voyage from yesterday to the day after tomorrow,” he muttered and sat back in his chair. “Forget it, Farnsworth. It was just an idea. I’ll ask for the day off anyway.”
“Can you imagine ol’ Noah mucking out under all those animals for a hundred and fifty days? And I think I have to shovel shit around here!”
“How about seeing if you can find me a clean trashcan,” Jake said, nudging the offending container with his foot.
“Sure.”
“Thanks, Farnsworth.”
* * *
A heavyset sailor wearing a filthy jersey that had once been yellow stood against the bulkhead outside the XO’s stateroom, facing the marine sentry in dress blues. The marine, a corporal, was at parade rest, his eyes fixed on infinity. For him the sailor was beneath notice, not worth the effort to make his eyes focus. On the sailor’s jersey, just barely visible amid the grease and gray pall of jet exhaust, were the words “Cat 4 P.O.”
“What are you doing down here, Kowalski?”
“Uh, waiting to see the XO, CAG,” the sailor said with an embarrassed little grin. He held his flight deck helmet in both hands and twisted it nervously.
Jake nodded and spoke to the marine. “Tell the XO I need a few minutes of his time.”
The corporal snapped to attention, then picked up the telephone receiver on the bulkhead and waited until the executive officer in his stateroom answered it. “He’ll be with you in a few moments, sir,” the corporal said as he hung up the phone and resumed his parade rest stance. Jake leaned against the bulkhead beside Kowalski.
“Are you ready for Naples, Ski?” Captain James had announced an hour ago on the public address system that the ship would dock in Naples in ten days.
“Uh, yessir.” Kowalski’s forehead and two large circles around his eyes were spanking clean, as white as the top of the corporal’s hat, but the bottom half of his face, which was unprotected by his helmet and goggles, was tanned and grimy. The grime was as nothing compared to his hands though; the grease had become permanently embedded in the crevices of his skin and no amount of scrubbing would make them clean. He reeked of jet exhaust. He was so nervous he could not hold still, so Jake gave him a reassuring s
mile.
The door opened and the XO, Commander Ray Reynolds, motioned to Jake, who went in and closed the door behind him. “What’s the problem with Kowalski?”
The XO grinned, a ludicrous effort since his four top front teeth were missing and when he grinned, he tried to hold his upper lip down to hide the hole. The effort caused his entire face to contort, and as usual, Jake politely averted his eyes at this demonstration of Reynolds’ vanity. Jake liked Reynolds immensely.
“Ski has a habit of getting drunk and getting into a bar brawl every time he goes ashore. He’s an alcoholic.” Grafton nodded. “And he’s the best catapult captain we have. If we could just keep him aboard ship all the time, he’d do fine. I told him last time that his feet weren’t going to touch dry land until the end of his enlistment, but that isn’t fair. So I’m going to let him ashore in Naples. If he gets carried back to the ship one more time by the shore patrol, he’s on his way to the drunk farm, and maybe out of the navy.” Reynolds shrugged. “But what did you want to see me about?”
“I want to have a deck party for the crew on Saturday if we can get a day off. We will have been continuously at sea over three times longer than Christopher Columbus, and I think we ought to play it up and let the crew know they’ve done something big.”
“I’m all for it. I think I can get Captain James to approve it. You talk to the admiral. It’ll depend on whether we can pull off the coast long enough to go to alert status that day. Admiral Parker’ll have to ask the big poo-bahs.” He was referring to the people in Washington. “Three times longer than Columbus, huh?”
Jake nodded and Reynolds crossed his arms on the desk in front of him. He waited expectantly. He was waiting for Jake to light a cigarette. Reynolds was the driving force behind a rigid antismoking campaign that was rolling over tobacco users with the relentless power of a mountain avalanche; indeed, Reynolds was waving the banner of purity with the awesome zeal that he brought to every task. So whenever Jake visited the XO’s office, he lit a cigarette and deposited the ash in a neat pile on the front edge of the desk. Reynolds’ fulminations were quite gratifying.
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