Privateers

by Ben Bova

  “With one band of pirates removed,” Titov muttered.

  “It would be better,” Malik said, “to get the ringleaders. When exterminating weeds, it is necessary to kill the roots.”

  “You know who the ringleaders are?” the Premier asked.

  “The instigator of these outrages is the American capitalist, Daniel Randolph.”

  “Then kill him,” said the KGB chief.

  Malik shook his head. “And create a martyr?”

  The Transportation Minister snickered. “Comrade Malik tried a campaign of terror against the American, but it frightened his fiancee too much. …”

  “That is not true!” Malik snapped, feeling his face redden. “My personal life has not and never will interfere with my duties.” He took a breath and, turning to face the Premier, said more calmly, “We initiated a program of selected violence to isolate and intimidate the American. It was my decision not to assassinate him, since doing so would disrupt the Venezuelan space industry operation in an unpredictable way, and antagonize Venezuela and the other Third World nations.”

  “I am aware of your decision, Vasily Maximovich,” said the Premier. “I agreed with it, at the time.”

  “We wanted to bring the Yankee capitalist to heel, not kill him. We wanted to bend him to our will.”

  “But the results have not been satisfactory,” the Transportation Minister said.

  Malik told himself that this conference room was too small to contain both of them. Sooner or later, either he would do in the Minister of Transportation or he would be done in himself. But he kept his rage under tight control, looked past his rival and addressed the Premier.

  “Comrade Chairman, the Minister of Transportation is misinterpreting the facts. When I tried violence against Randolph, his capitalist friends rallied around him. His Japanese associate sent a team of bodyguards. His friends elsewhere in the world not only refused to abandon him, they actually began their piratical raids at that time. Clearly the campaign of terror was counterproductive.”

  “So what do you propose to do, Vasily Maximovich?” the Premier asked.

  “The idea of putting troops aboard the freighters is basically sound,” Malik said. “But instead of arming all of them, I propose to arm only one.”

  “One?”

  Nodding, Malik said, “One will be sufficient, if we obtain the necessary intelligence to reveal which freighter Randolph will attack next.”

  “Ah …” The Premier smiled. “A Trojan Horse.”

  “You grasp the situation immediately,” Malik praised, stopping himself at the very last instant from saying, “as quickly as ever.” It would not be wise to remind the Premier of his recent stroke.

  “So you catch one band of pirates,” the Foreign Minister said. “How does that differ from what was suggested earlier?”

  “In two ways, Comrade Minister,” answered Malik. “First, we have no need of greatly increased manpower. We arm one freighter only. Second, at the same time we are eliminating the pirates, we take command of the space station from which they came and arrest their ringleader, the American, Randolph. We bring him to Moscow for a trial, before the World Court and with full world coverage on television. Then we hang him, in accordance with international law. That will stop the others.”

  “Do you believe so?” asked the Premier.

  “I am certain of it.”

  The others around the table nodded their agreement. All except the Minister of Transportation.

  “It sounds very good,” he said, cold disdain in his voice. “But how do you learn exactly which freighter should be your Trojan Horse?”

  “For that,” Malik said, “I will need an informer. And I believe I already have one.”

  “An informer? Is he reliable?”

  “The most reliable kind of informer,” Malik retorted, smiling at his rival. “She doesn’t even know that she will be informing on the Yankee capitalist.”

  Chapter THIRTY-ONE

  Rafael Hernandez sat gloomily at the head of the long, polished dining table, carefully watching his daughter. Lucita sat at her father’s right; the massive, high-backed chair dwarfed her, made her look like a little child again in her father’s eyes. The long mahogany table, built to take thirty or more, was empty except for the two of them. No candelabras glittered. No musicians played. No laughter or conversation passed across the table. The room was lit only by the chandelier overhead and the wall sconces. The silence was broken only by the occasional sound of fork or knife against plate, and the hollow boom of thunder outside, from a distant rainstorm.

  Lucita had eaten practically nothing of her dinner. The servants brought course after course and then carried each dish back to the kitchen, virtually untouched.

  His own appetite was failing him as well. He had little stomach for what he was about to do. He tried talking about the wedding, which was barely more than a month away. Still so much to do, so many details to arrange. Lucita replied politely, but clearly without interest.

  It is that devil Randolph, Hernandez told himself. She is brooding over him, instead of looking forward to her wedding. For her own well-being, I must do what must be done.

  Finally, as dishes of flan sat before them, Hernandez said, “I fear I must invite Dan Randolph to the wedding.”

  Her eyes flashed at him.

  “After all, he is an important personage,” her father went on. “Not to invite him would be unpardonable.”

  “He will not come to my wedding,” Lucita said.

  Hernandez touched a spoon to his custard. “What makes you say that?”

  She shook her head, the way she did when she was a little girl. “He will not come. I know it.”

  “I agree with you.” Hernandez forced a grim smile. “I am quite certain that he will not be able to accept the invitation.”

  “Not be able to accept?” Lucita asked.

  The flan was delicious: cool and firm and sweet. Hernandez savored it as he studied the sudden interest in his daughter’s eyes. There was pain in them. And fear. And much more.

  “What do you mean, he will not be able to accept the invitation?” Lucita repeated.

  “I have received information that Seńor Randolph will be locked in a Soviet prison cell by the time of your wedding.” Hemandez’s smile was unforced now. “He will be arrested very soon, for piracy.”

  For long moments Lucita said nothing. She picked up her spoon and toyed with the custard dessert, slowly demolishing its quivering gelled mass. Hernandez watched her, waiting.

  “Good!” Lucita said at last. “Then we’ve seen the last of him.”

  It was his turn to feel surprise. “You don’t care that he will be arrested and hanged?”

  “Care? Why should I care?”

  “I thought you were … fond of him.”

  “I hate him,” Lucita snapped. “And he hates me.”

  “Ah,” said Hernandez. “I see.”

  Lucita struggled to push her chair back and got to her feet. “Excuse me, please, Papa. I can’t eat any more.”

  He nodded to her, and she left the dining room, walking as carefully as a woman who has had too much to drink and does not want to reveal how uncertain of herself she really feels. Hernandez sat at the head of the table, alone. It is for the best, he told himself. It had to be done.

  Lightning flashed outside, throwing the majestic old room into a sudden cold bluish light. Thunder cracked loud enough to rattle the dishes on the table. Rain suddenly lashed against the French windows.

  Hernandez dabbed his lips with the damask napkin, rose from his chair and walked slowly out of the dining room, through the hallway and into the small study that he used as an office. He did not turn on a light as he went straight to his desk, pulled up the swivel chair and pecked out the number of the Soviet embassy on the lighted keyboard of his desktop phone.

  It took a few minutes for the embassy communications center to reach Vasily Malik. It was just after three A.M. in Moscow, but Malik�
�s face looked bright-eyed and alert when it finally appeared on the phone screen.

  “The trap has been baited,” Hernandez said without preliminaries. It surprised him to realize how heavy his heart felt.

  “Good,” said Malik.

  “I am not sure that this will work,” the Venezuelan said. “Her infatuation with the American seems to be finished.”

  Malik shook his head. “I don’t believe so. She will try to warn him.”

  “You’re certain there’s no way …”

  “No way that she can learn you have set the trap for us?” Malik’s lips curled slightly. “No, she will never know-unless I deliberately tell her.”

  “You wouldn’t do that!”

  “Why should I? That would be a grave disservice to my father-in-law, would it not? To tell his daughter that he used her like bait on a fishhook?”

  Hernandez groaned inwardly. Now the Russian had a permanent hold on him. He had made a fundamental error. Malik was not the kind to forget about it, either. They would pull their strings on him as tight as they wanted to, whenever they chose, from now on.

  “She won’t be in any danger, you promised me that,” he said.

  Malik’s smile broadened. “Of course not. She is to be my wife, the mother of my children. I will not endanger her in any way.”

  “Good,” Hernandez said. Automatically, he added, “Thank you.”

  “You have done well. Now we wait for the prey to enter the trap. Good night.”

  The picture screen went blank. Hernandez stared at it for a long time. Yes, he thought, they will help me to become president of Venezuela. On their terms. Only on their terms.

  Nobuhiko Yamagata felt puzzled and flattered at the same time.

  He had been greatly attracted to the young Venezuelan woman who had accompanied Dan Randolph to his father’s ski lodge in Sapporo. At first he had thought she was a servant or a paid companion. It had been during dinner that he’d realized she was merely a friend of Randolph’s; not even that, a casual acquaintance. She was very beautiful, very desirable and very independent. It had overjoyed Nobo when Randolph had asked him to come to Caracas to work for him.

  But Nobo quickly learned that the relationships between men and women in the West were incredibly complicated. Lucita Hernandez became engaged to the chief of the Russian space program, but she had still been seen from time to time in Dan Randolph’s company.

  And now, a scant month before her wedding, she had sent word to Nobo that she wanted to meet with him. Was it an honorable thing to do? Nobo wondered. Would he be causing trouble for Dan Randolph by meeting with her? Would his behavior reflect poorly on the Yamagata family, or cause repercussions between the Russians and Yamagata Industries? Just what did this beautiful but unpredictable woman have in mind?

  Nobo wrestled with his conscience for almost a full day after reading Lucita’s message on the screen of his phone console. His conscience lost. He phoned her and made a date for lunch.

  I am still a stranger in this land, he told himself cheerfully. She knows much more about the customs here than I do. It would not be proper for me to refuse her invitation.

  Thus reassured, he borrowed an Astro Manufacturing car-a GMota, designed in Japan and built by Japanese robots in a Caracas factory-and drove to the restaurant in downtown Caracas where he would meet Lucita Hernandez.

  He took a table on the sidewalk and ordered a Kirin beer as he waited for her. In five minutes he checked his watch seven times, and examined the menu twice to make certain that he was at the right restaurant. It was a pleasant spot, shaded by the tall trees of Bolivar Square, across the street. No automobile traffic was allowed around the square, although several big tourist buses were parked by the hotel up the street. Most of the people strolling past his table looked like vacationers to Nobo; they were clothed in shorts, splashy sport shirts and casual dresses. An occasional businessman strode past, looking tense and wearing a suit with a tie. And then there were the mestizo women: mixed bloods who had the tall, leggy, exotic looks that made Nobo’s heart beat fast.

  Then he noticed that there was life in the high, moss-covered trees of the square. Not merely birds. Monkeys were squawking and swinging through the trees, racing around and around, burning energy as recklessly as a runaway rocket, just for the sheer exuberant fun of it. And as Nobo looked closer, he saw that the trees also were inhabited by other shapes: hairy, dark sloths were hanging from the branches, barely moving, as the monkeys whipped past them. Nobo laughed aloud. In the time it took a sloth to unhook one clawed foot from a branch and move it a few inches, the pack of monkeys had sped around the whole square twice.

  The laughter died away as he thought, How like America and Russia they are. The Americans rushed and raced and exhausted themselves, while the Russians plodded slowly and inexorably to world domination. The comparison somehow made him feel glum.

  As he reached for his half-empty glass of beer, Nobo saw Lucita walking up the street toward the restaurant. She wore a sleeveless frock of white and a dramatic, broad-brimmed white straw hat. Sunglasses hid her eyes, but Nobo had no trouble identifying her. His hand bumped into the beer glass, nearly spilling it.

  He shot up from his chair and stepped out onto the sidewalk to greet her.

  “Seńorita Hernandez,” Nobo said in his best Spanish. “I am so happy to see you again.”

  “It was so gracious of you to meet me, Seńor Yamagata,” she said.

  “Please call me Nobo,” he replied as he held her chair for her.

  She sat and took off the sunglasses. Her eyes were wondrously beautiful. “Yes, I remember from the dinner we had. It was a delightful evening.”

  “I am pleased that you enjoyed it.”

  A robot waiter glided to their table and, after asking Lucita what she wanted to drink, Nobo pecked out an order for a Cuba libre and another Kirin on the robot’s keyboard.

  “You are also Dan Randolph’s friend, are you not?” Lucita asked him.

  Nobo nodded. “I admire him very much. He and my father worked together many years ago. I have known him for as long as I can remember-the American who worked harder than any Japanese.”

  She smiled, but he saw that it was tinged with sadness. “Dan Randolph is in great danger.”

  “He is aware of that,” Nobo replied. “He laughs about it.”

  “It is not a laughing matter.”

  The waiter returned, bearing their drinks on its flat top. Nobo put them on their table and placed his empty beer bottle on the waiter, then inserted his credit card into the robot’s slot. It made a rapid series of clicks, then the card popped out again and Nobo retrieved it.

  As the machine rolled away, Lucita said urgently, “The Russians are preparing to arrest Dan. He must stop these hijackings at once, or else they will take him to Moscow and hang him.”

  “But he’s a citizen of Venezuela. They can’t-”

  “That won’t stop them! My father will allow them to do whatever they want. No matter what it costs him, my father has thrown in his hand with the Russians.”

  “Dan’s aboard Nueva Venezuela right now. He’s not scheduled to return until Friday.”

  “Have him return to Japan,” Lucita urged. “Go to the space station yourself and take him back to Japan with you. He will be safe there, I think. Safer than here.”

  “That may be possible,” Nobo murmured.

  “And above all, make him stop these raids on the Russian spaceships. Don’t let him do anything that they can arrest him for.”

  Shrugging, Nobo replied, “Have you ever tried to make him do something he does not want to do?”

  Despite herself, Lucita smiled at him. “Yes, I know how stubborn he can be. But you must make him stop. For his own good.”

  Hunching forward over the little table and lowering his voice, Nobo said, “A team of astronauts left yesterday to intercept one of the freighters. They will be back tomorrow.”

  “Then make that the last one,” Lucita whisper
ed. “For God’s sake, don’t let him do any more or they’ll kill him.”

  Nobo straightened up in his chair. “I will go to Nueva Venezuela myself, this afternoon. I will tell him everything that you’ve told me.”

  “I will go with you,” Lucita said.

  “I don’t think-”

  “I must! Please. Let me go to him.”

  He studied her face, so earnest, so pleading. She loves Dan, Nobo realized. He thought he should feel surprised, or perhaps even a little resentful. He felt neither. It seemed completely logical to him that the most beautiful young woman in Caracas should be totally in love with Dan Randolph, so logical and natural that he could not be resentful about it, no matter how much he wanted this lovely woman to love him.

  But out of the corner of his eye, he caught the frantic racing of the monkeys through the trees of Bolivar Square. And saw the patient, plodding, inexorable sloths hanging from their branches like hairy growths. It occurred to Nobuhiko that the sloths must live much longer lives than the monkeys. Yes, he realized, the monkeys must die young while the sloths survive indefinitely.

  Chapter THIRTY-TWO

  A silver tray bearing his untouched dinner sat on a corner of Vasily Malik’s desk. A single lamp burned on the desktop, throwing a pool of light over its surface. The rest of his office lay deep in shadow; chairs and the long conference table that extended from his desk like the upright length of a letter T were lost in darkness. Only the massive silver samovar in the corner by the television set glinted a reflection of the desk lamp.

  Outside the curtained windows snow was falling in the evening gloom. Moscow was ablaze with lights, and from these office windows one could see the Kremlin in all its barbaric splendor. But Malik kept the windows tightly curtained. He had no desire to gaze out at the onion-shaped domes and high walls, he took no pleasure in watching the automobile traffic inching through Red Square. Nor did he wish to allow anyone to see through the windows and into his private office. The windows stayed closed and covered, day and night.