Tom Clancy's Power Plays 5 - 8

by Tom Clancy

  “Annie, what’s wrong? If this poison’s getting to you—”

  Annie shook her head in the negative, keeping it bent, still covering her mouth.

  Megan’s eyes widened at the stifled sound that escaped Annie’s lips.

  “My God,”she said. “You’re laughing.”

  That was the final straw. Annie giggled helplessly, struggled to compose herself, and laughed even harder.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Really, I hope you aren’t insulted—”

  It was a no-go. She broke up again.

  Meg looked at her.

  “Okay,” Megan said. “Out with it. What’s so funny about my domestic interests?”

  Annie waited until she’d managed to catch her breath.

  “Honestly?”

  “Honestly.”

  “Picturing you in a kitchen apron sort of caught me by surprise.” Annie wiped her eyes. “I just had the impression you’d yearn for Bay Area shopping or nightlife or something . . . that you’d prefer to get your desserts from a gourmet shop instead of a cookie sheet.”

  Megan realized she’d split a grin of her own.

  “I’m not sure why, but something tells me I should be offended by that characterization,” she said.

  “Probably should,” Annie said. “I would be, come to think of it.”

  The women faced each other, both of them laughing now.

  “Annie,” Megan said, “I’ve told you before and I’ll do it again . . . your visit’s been a major reprieve. This ladies’ night out most of all.”

  Annie nodded, reached for her glass.

  “I think we should drink to taking the big step,” she said.

  “From colleagues to friends?”

  “In one drunken toot.”

  “It’s going to be an unholy alliance,” Megan said, and was about to lift her own drink off the table when her cell phone bleeped in her pocket—a three-note sequence she’d tagged to Pete Nimec’s cellular only hours earlier.

  She held up a finger to Annie, took out the phone, and flipped it open against her ear.

  “Pete, hi,” she said. “If you’ve changed your mind about joining—”

  She fell silent, listening. Annie watched Meg’s relaxed expression abruptly transform—the grave, alarmed look that came over it making her very worried.

  “Yes . . . yes . . . how could? . . . okay, I understand . . .” Megan said. Her eyes snapped to the group at the dartboard. “Wait, I have some extra people with me. Stay where you are, we’ll meet you right away.”

  She shut the phone with one hand, then glanced at Annie with dismay.

  “We have a problem,” she said, pushing herself up off her chair.

  “Meg, I don’t see how you expect me to use half these people. . . .”

  “They can handle themselves.”

  “They’ve been drinking.”

  “I know. That’s just how it is. They weren’t on rotation.”

  “But I need to rely—”

  “I’m vouching for every one of them.”

  Nimec and Megan stood facing each other in silence. They’d linked up in one of the interconnected utilidors bored into the solid ice underneath the station, its hooded lights shining down on a tubular steel liner crusted with frost like the inside of a freezer, the temperature almost forty degrees below zero. Close around them, Sword ops were hastily shrugging, zipping, and snapping into their ECW outfits as they came pouring into the tunnel.

  After a moment Nimec nodded.

  “All right,” he said. “Any suggestions about how to divide the manpower?”

  “I’ve got two of our best with Annie and the Senators. I think we can spare four more to secure the area around the building.”

  “That’s seven men,” Nimec said. “Not enough.”

  “Eight men, counting Hal Pruitt.”

  “Still won’t do.”

  “Our total force is twenty-nine, Pete. There are only so many places where anyone can gain access to the base, and I can’t see anyone trying a full-scale action in this storm. It’s not feasible.”

  “Maybe you’re right. But we also didn’t expect what we already know is happening, and I’m not about to gamble,” Nimec said. “I say we double up the perimeter defense into teams, leave four men inside to guard against a breech. That leaves me with thirteen—”

  “I’ll go along with two men to patrol the building,” Megan said. “You’ll need the rest with you. And I’ve got the maintenance and support crew as backup. They’re a solid bunch, Pete.”

  Nimec started to protest, hesitated, then nodded reluctantly.

  “Your call again,” he said. “Make sure Pruitt stays at the monitors. We need him to direct traffic.”

  “I understand.” Megan thought a second. “How do you feel about informing MacTown of our status?”

  Nimec adjusted a velcro strap at the collar of his parka, then got his gloves and outer gauntlets out of a pocket.

  “I can’t see how they can help us right now,” he said. “And I’m not sure I like involving outsiders until we have a better idea what our status is.”

  Megan sighed. “I don’t know. We can’t stand around doping this out. But there’s an argument for contacting them. In case anything happens to us—”

  “Do either of you want my take?”

  This was from Ron Waylon, who had stepped up behind Nimec, his balaclava pulled over his head, the hood of his coat already raised.

  Nimec glanced over his shoulder.

  “Let’s hear it,” he said.

  “There’s no 911 help in Antarctica,” Waylon said. “If we can’t stand on our own, then by the time somebody responds, it’ll be to bury us. Seems to me there’s nothing wrong with holding off unless things start to look bad. No matter what, we’ll have our chances to reevaluate.”

  They looked at him. Looked at each other. Both were nodding.

  “Issue decided,” Nimec said. His eyes steadied on Megan’s. “You gonna be okay?”

  “Yes,” she said. And suddenly grasped his wrist. “Try not to let anyone get hurt.”

  He squeezed the back of her hand, pulled up his hood.

  “That’s the plan,” he said.

  Burkhart halted in the snow as he led his team toward their snowmobiles.

  “Wait,” he ordered, using his headset to communicate with them. Even raised to a shout, his unaided voice would have been overpowered by the wind. Yet he thought he’d heard a sound beneath its leviathan roar.

  He wiped his goggles, peering back in the direction from which they had trod.

  Someone other than Burkhart might have barely discerned the inverted bowl of the dome through blowing sheaves of whiteness. His keen eyes noticed a vague scintillation behind the dome . . . a paper-thin skim of light that seemed to be sliding toward him along the ground like a wide, flattened wavelet over the surf.

  He thought briefly of the woman scientist.

  There had been more backbone in her than he’d suspected.

  He turned to his men.

  “They know we’re here,” he said.

  FIFTEEN

  ASOTNA, SWITZERLAND

  MARCH 12, 2002

  ELATA WALKED ONTO THE DOCK AS A DEAD MAN MUST walk—with great purpose and deliberation. The Italian’s boat had taken him back to Astona, still in Switzerland. But the location did not matter. Morgan undoubtedly had people to trail him; this might even be part of his plan, not the Italian’s. Elata would not get away, and did not intend to. He had already sent the e-mail to Interpol, using their public address obtained off the Web clipper service. He trusted that the note would find its way to the proper person; if it did not, a second one to the FBI in the U.S. was bound to.

  The man guiding the Zodiac rubberized craft hadn’t minded him using the pager as they sped toward shore, nor had he reacted when Elata threw the device into the water.

  What became of the notes and what the police did in reaction to them no longer concerned him. He had a f
ew Swiss francs in his pocket, enough to buy a small notebook and a pen from the stationer he found two blocks away from the dock. There was enough change for a large coffee at the cafe next door. Wanting privacy and feeling somewhat considerate—surely Morgan’s men would be here at any minute, and he didn’t want to trouble the patrons—he decided to sit outside despite the brisk breeze. Elata took a long sip of the strong, black liquid, then began to write.

  “Today, God has proven to me that he does exist,” he wrote on his pad. He labored over the words; he was a painter, not a writer, and even if he was merely writing the truth, he had difficulty letting it flow.

  “He has shown how petty man is. Or no, how petty and evil some men are. I must include myself among them. For until today I did not fully understand the potential man has, or what he should truly aspire to. I did not understand how good and evil coexist and do battle always, nor the importance of—”

  Elata looked up. A man in a hooded blue sweatsuit stood a few feet from him. A newspaper was folded over his hand; beneath the newspaper, a slim, silenced .22 pistol.

  Elata nodded. The paper jerked upward and he heard the sound of a bee swarming around his head. The buzz turned into the drone of a Junker Ju 86; as he slid forward against the table, his eyes were filled with tears, not because of his pain or regret at the way he had lived his life, but because he saw the images Picasso had drawn once more as he died.

  The old castle sat in a gray circle of water roughly equidistant from the shores, its large stones a defense against time as well as human enemies. The brigands who had built it used it not so much as a hideout as a depository; they had bought off anyone with power enough to storm or starve the island fortress, and needed only a place that could be secured against fellow thieves.

  Morgan’s needs were more complex. Eyeing the castle from the forward seat of his Sikorski S-76C, he considered whether it wasn’t time to leave Switzerland for an extended period. The latest messages from Antarctica presaged failure there, and even if the Scottish matter unfolded in a suitable manner, there might be unforeseen repercussions.

  He had to congratulate himself for being an agreeable three or four steps ahead on both counts. Clearly the Scots were befuddled. The misdirected uranium would be found in a rusting hulk in Glasgow harbor. Not the misdirected uranium, of course, not even a portion of what had actually been diverted. But enough to close out any investigation successfully. His agent, meanwhile, would arrange for a last accident as directed; with luck she would be apprehended, implicating Burns, not him—a precaution arranged by the expedience of using the inchworm’s identity for all contacts in this business.

  As for the inchworm herself: She would meet with a regrettable air mishap en route home this afternoon, when the private aircraft Morgan had supplied her would mysteriously disappear at sea. Suitable portions would be found at a respectable interval several weeks into the future.

  Thus would a host of problems be solved even before they became problems. The situation in Antarctica remained considerably more complicated, but he could afford to be hopeful there as well; nothing on the continent directly connected him with the venture, with the exception of the easily disposed of e-mail account.

  As a precaution, however, he should leave Switzerland, at least for a while. His money could only purchase so much tolerance. One of the former Soviet Republics would afford safety; he had places in Iran and Peru prepared. But could he live in any of them?

  He wanted to return to America, with its free air and ready indulgences. Even to go to a place like Thailand or Malaysia, where he could live like a king—what would be the point? If it meant giving up greater glories, the chances of appreciating moments like the one that lay ahead of him, what would be the sense?

  “Boat’s clearing,” said the pilot.

  “Very good.”

  His men in the speedboat, carrying off the professors. He had actually considered keeping them alive—he did owe them a debt of gratitude—but in the end, he judged that this treasure was simply too valuable to jeopardize. The two men would not reach the shore.

  The fact that Elata had been treated differently by the Italian bothered Morgan. His men, of course, would find him, but it raised the possibility—distant but distinct—that this was an elaborate fraud and that Elata was involved in it. It would be foolish to try to cheat Morgan, but men did foolish things all the time.

  The Italian was no doubt halfway to Milan by now. He might as well go to Antarctica, for all the good that would do him if the Picassos proved to be fake.

  The helicopter pitched its nose downward, passing over the fortress twice. Morgan’s men had already searched it using IR sensors; they’d swept it for booby traps and neutralized the electronic surveillance system. What they hadn’t done was establish a suitable place for a helicopter to land. The castle covered the entire island; while there were two courtyards, neither was particularly large, and the pilot feared he’d damage the rotors on the side wall even of the biggest.

  “I can take you back to the shore and meet the speedboat,” suggested the pilot.

  “Not viable,” said Morgan. “I’ll climb down.”

  “Long way to go, even if we had a ladder,” said the pilot. “Which we do not.”

  “The boat landing then.”

  “I can’t get in with those rocks.”

  Morgan considered waiting for his people to finish with the professors. But every night—and every morning, and every afternoon—since meeting the Italian, he had taken out the photocopies and reexamined them. He had decided beyond question to keep the bull and the infant; he suspected, in fact, that he might eventually decide to keep them all. Fifteen million dollars was a minuscule amount of his fortune. Compared to the true worth of the paintings, it was laughable.

  If they were real. Elata and the others had said they were, but he had to see himself.

  “Get as close as you can and I’ll jump. Hover over the boat landing.”

  When he was younger, Morgan had been a good enough athlete to play first-string soccer through college. He still worked out every day and, largely because of his stomach problems, was not horribly overweight. But the wash from the helicopter blades and the craft’s jittery approach nearly unnerved him as it hovered near the wall. The Sikorsky’s stowed landing gear made it impossible for him to climb down, and while the pilot was able to get closer than he’d thought to the wall, there was still a considerable distance between Morgan’s legs and the stones as he lowered himself out the doorway.

  But he remembered the face of the child. Holding his breath, he let go.

  Morgan landed on the smooth stone ramp, a good two feet from the edge of the water. He tottered forward, but easily regained his balance. There was more room here than it seemed from the air, he decided. Ignoring the pain in his ankle, he walked up the ramp into the empty castle.

  The paintings were in the small courtyard, ahead on the left. His heart began pounding heavily, his feet slipped, his head buzzed.

  Smaller than he imagined, though he had pored over every detail beforehand, the paintings stood on cheap wooden easels in staggered rows at the middle of the twenty-by-ten-foot atrium. His glimpse of the first left him disappointed; the perpendicular outline of the lantern outline in the teeth of the horse played poorly against the boldness of the flaming background.

  But his next step took him in view of the child. Morgan felt the mother’s hand clawing with despair, grasping for the last breath draining the infant’s lungs. The baby’s eyes—top closed, bottom fixed upward—took hold of his skull. Morgan took another step and felt his senses implode.

  Who could have faked such work? No one, not even Elata.

  He walked to each canvas as if in a dream. He touched each in succession, running his fingers around the edges of the canvas, tracing the edge of the stretcher at the back.

  My God, he thought—war provoked this. Violence begat such awesome beauty.

  The helicopter revved outside. Morgan
remained fixed, lost in a trance. Finally, after he had seen each painting again, after he had absorbed each one’s beauty and ugliness—yes, of course they contained ugliness, they had to, as man possessed good and evil—he took each with great care and placed them in the vinyl cases the Italian had left. Then he made seven stacks, and carried two out toward the helicopter.

  The pilot had put out his landing wheels and managed to perch at the edge of the ramp. The rotor continued to turn, albeit slowly.

  “Help me!” Morgan yelled as he struggled with the door.

  “I’ve got to hold the aircraft,” shouted the pilot. “We’ll slide into the water if I don’t.”

  Morgan carefully slid the paintings into the rear of the craft.

  “There are twelve more,” said Morgan.

  “Wait!” the pilot yelled as he started to go back. “You have a message—a radio message.”

  “What?”

  “Here.” The pilot handed him the headset and then fiddled with the radio control. Morgan, leaning into the helicopter, put it on.

  “What?” demanded Morgan.

  “The Swiss have arrested Constance Burns,” said Peter. He must still be aboard the boat—Morgan could hear the motor’s drone in the background. Of course—they would be running south for Italy, having panicked and initiated the backup plan.

  So be it. They were small insects who could be dealt with at a more convenient time.

  “Danke schön,” said Morgan simply. “Thank you very much.” He reached to pull the headset off.

  “Interpol was involved,” said Peter, flustered by his employer’s nonchalance. “The Kommando der Flieger has been alerted.”

  “Danke,” repeated Morgan, removing the headset. Swiss Air Force or no, he would take every Picasso from the castle. He clambered back across the ramp, losing his footing because the spray from the helicopter made the rocks slippery. He dropped one of the paintings on the way back, held his breath as it careened toward the water, propelled by the wind. It smacked against the wall, pinned there until he retrieved it.