by Tom Clancy
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 her 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 t
hat 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?
“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-shape
d 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.”