THE NOVELS OF
STEVE MARTINI
THE LIST
“ABSOLUTELY IRRESISTIBLE … [A] wild and wooly tale.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“INTRIGUING ANTAGONISTS: the man of action versus the woman of thought. Their dueling turns The List into a fast, and often funny, offering.”
—Chicago Tribune
“GREAT GOOD FUN … the final paragraph is worth the price of admission.”
—Cleveland Plain Dealer
“THE PLOT BARRELS RIGHT ALONG, Abby is a strong and sympathetic character, and the climax is nicely twisty. Along the way, Martini gets in some sharp asides on the nature of fame.”
—The Seattle Times
“AN EXCITING, SURPRISING ENDING … Martini deftly conceals the killer until the last flaming finale.”
—Booklist
“SWIFT PACING AND MULTIPLE PLOT TWISTS.”
—People
THE JUDGE
“RIVETING … a suspenseful tale, right up to the satisfying climax … legal thrillers don’t get much better than this.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A COMMANDING VOICE … the author answers just about every question you’ve ever had about the games lawyers play.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“MARTINI, a former trial attorney, is fascinating on legal strategy.”
—People
UNDUE INFLUENCE
“THE COURTROOM NOVEL OF THE YEAR … virtually nonstop courtroom pyrotechnics … a dazzling climax.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“A COMPLEX, RIVETING TALE and nitty-gritty courtroom drama.”
—Entertainment Weekly
“THE ACTION BUILDS TO A ROUSING CLIMAX through a brilliant series of trial scenes with several surprises.”
—Publishers Weekly
“FILLED WITH SURPRISES AND TWISTS … supremely readable.”
—Seattle Post-Intelligencer
“FANS OF COURTROOM DRAMA will love Martini’s protagonist … and this complex tale of intrigue and murder.”
—USA Today
COMPELLING EVIDENCE
“SUPERB … truly on a level with Presumed Innocent.”
—F. Lee Bailey
“PACKS A WALLOP!”
—Publishers Weekly
“BY FAR THE BEST of the genre that I’ve ever seen … Absolutely thrilling.”
—Clifford Irving
“ALL THAT COURTROOM DRAMA SHOULD BE … seamless, suspenseful.”
—New York Daily News
“ENGROSSING!”
—Entertainment Weekly
“ONE OF THE BEST COURTROOM DRAMAS this reviewer has seen in years.”
—The Sacramento Bee
PRIME WITNESS
“RIVETING, YOU-ARE-THERE IMMEDIACY … ingenious … nail-biting … fascinating … first-rate … Prime is indeed the word for this involving read!”
—Publishers Weekly
“THE TRIAL BEGINS and Martini rolls up his sleeves to do what he does best … packs a satisfying punch.”
—Kirkus Reviews
THE SIMEON CHAMBER
“CHILLING … PROVOCATIVE … STUNNING.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A FINE FOOT-TO-THE-FLOOR THRILLER!”
—New York Daily News
“INTRIGUING TWISTS AND TURNS.”
—The Orlando Sentinel
“THRILLING … a winner … Martini demonstrates a confident and deft control of literary suspense … excellent, top-quality adventure.”
—The Sacramento Bee
Titles by Steve Martini
DOUBLE TAP
THE ARRAIGNMENT
THE JURY
THE ATTORNEY
CRITICAL MASS
THE LIST
THE JUDGE
UNDUE INFLUENCE
PRIME WITNESS
COMPELLING EVIDENCE
THE SIMEON CHAMBER
CRITICAL MASS
STEVE MARTINI
JOVE BOOKS, NEW YORK
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
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Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand. London WC2R 0RL, England
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
CRITICAL MASS
A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author
PRINTING HISTORY
G. P. Putnam’s Sons edition / September 1998
Jove edition / December 1999
Copyright © 1998 by Steven Paul Martini, Inc.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
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ISBN: 9781101550236
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Contents
Cover
Praise for Steve Martini
Also by Steve Martini
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
PROLOGUE
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
THIRTY-FIVE
EPILOGUE
This book is dedicated to the selfles
s men and women of science who work to combat the dangers of nuclear proliferation, and in particular the people of the Russian Republic who have managed against impossible odds to keep the deadly genie in its bottle.
There were people in Hiroshima whose shadows were printed by the blast on the concrete walls of buildings and pavement. These shadows can still be seen. Some of the bodies that made them were never found. It was as if they never existed. There are those who have seen these shadows scorched on the hard ground, to whom they are mere curiosities of history—images of a time that has passed. If that is all they have come to be, then they are indeed the angels of apathy.
PROLOGUE
WEST OF CAPE FLATTERY AND STRAIT OF JUAN DE FUCA
The Dancing Lady was not a thing of beauty. She was sixty-three feet of welded steel, much of it dripping rust down her sides like dried blood.
Her raised forecastle deck and flaring prow were plowing the dark waters west of Vancouver Island at seven knots. She climbed the swells and plunged into the deepening troughs, straining to make headway in weather that was quickly turning foul. Her usual crew of five was down to three—the skipper, Nordquist; his son; and one other crewman who was like family, and like the family was now working for nothing.
The boat was a durable stern trawler with twin diesels designed for deep water. On her aft deck was a massive reel, and wrapped around it was a half mile of open mesh netting, window dressing for this cruise.
The Lady was a bottom fisher, a work boat as common as ten-penny nails in these waters. It was the reason they used her. She wouldn’t be noticed even by overhead surveillance.
She rolled in the swells and wallowed in the troughs. Hydraulic fluid seeped from the hoses that drove her massive boom, and one of her engines was a thousand hours past a needed overhaul, but Nordquist didn’t have the money for the repairs. Working eighteen-hour days in bone-numbing cold water and ice-covered riggings, Nordquist was going broke. His wife was doing her shopping at the food bank, and loans were overdue on the boat. And still, the federal government did nothing to stop the Canadians from overfishing the areas west of Vancouver Island. They had killed the northwest salmon runs and were now busy taking everything they could find off the bottom. Nordquist and his compatriots couldn’t afford the campaign contributions necessary to bribe their own government into action.
He looked out over the prow from the raised wheelhouse. She kept losing RPM on the starboard engine. Nordquist had to fight to hold her steady in the increasing swells. They rose up in front of him like ominous mountains, there one instant, and gone the next. The Lady was starting to pound. The weather was getting worse.
His son was straining to find a horizon through the fifty-power binoculars, eyes fixed to the west.
“Oh, shit.” The boy didn’t have to say more.
Nordquist looked over his shoulder and saw it: a thirty-foot wall of water rushing down on them, on their starboard beam. He spun the wheel to the right, and thirty years of hands-on experience brought the bow of his boat like a knife toward the mountainous wall of water. It cascaded around the wheelhouse and shuddered the Lady’s steel to her keel. She plowed through and came out, plunging down the back side of the wave.
The wave had knocked the kid to the deck. He sat there in amazement, looking at his old man and marveling at his power to focus, even in the face of death.
THE ISVANIA WAS a rusted-out hulk, a remnant of the once powerful Soviet fishing fleet. She’d been condemned for scrap the year before, but like everything else in the new Russia, even this was behind schedule. Heading for the boneyard, she was on her last voyage. She crossed the Bering Sea, threading her way through the Aleutians and the Gulf of Alaska, then down the Canadian coast. Her holds, fore and aft, were empty except for a light load of scrap metal. In the captain’s safe were papers transferring the ship’s title to a scrap yard outside of Bangkok. She ran with a skeleton crew of seven and made only one brief stop at Prince Rupert on the Canadian coast to pick up a small load of lumber, which now rested, stacked on her decks. This was a cover in case she was stopped and boarded by coastal authorities, her justification for crossing the Bering Sea and hugging the American coast. Bills of lading showed the lumber to be delivered to Oakland, California, though her captain had no intention of going there. The lumber would be thrown overboard once Isvania dropped its real cargo. Then the ship would head west and south, toward the Indian Ocean and its final resting place.
The helmsman brought her five degrees to port as her captain, Yuri Valentok, strained his eyes through binoculars for anything on the horizon. The Isvania was taking on water in the forward hold and getting sluggish in the deepening troughs. The bilge pumps were handling it for now, but Valentok wasn’t sure how long they would hold up. He couldn’t see a damn thing through the binoculars. Drops of rain, driven by the wind, pelted the windows on the bridge like bullets. Only one of the wipers was working, and that was useless. The wind-whipped mist and froth from the waves created an impenetrable haze. Valentok could scarcely see the prow of his own ship. To make things worse, his radar was out. It hadn’t worked since the ship left Vladivostok. Twice they’d had to come to a dead stop in shipping lanes for fear of hitting other vessels. They laid on their foghorn and hoped the other ships could see them on their own radar. Isvania was like everything else in their crumbling country: coming apart with no money for repairs.
Valentok carried onboard one other waybill for an additional piece of cargo, but it was only to be used in the event of an extreme emergency, if his ship was forced into port. This particular waybill was forged. If the item was discovered, the captain would argue that he didn’t know the nature of the cargo. Whether it would work with the American authorities he doubted, especially given the nature of what he was carrying. He would spend a long time answering questions, perhaps a long time in jail. He wondered if American jails were better than those in Russia.
He went to his charts on the table and braced himself against one of its metal legs. He checked the ship’s position one more time. If his calculations were correct, they were precisely 112 nautical miles due west of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, the passage to Puget Sound, and the U.S. city of Seattle beyond.
Isvania’s captain had never been to the U.S., though he had friends who sailed there recently, in a ship not unlike his own, a rusted-out scow ready for scrapping. It was becoming a common practice for Russian fishing vessels. They would clear customs and immigration, and as soon as the American officials left the ship, the entire crew, including her captain, would go over the side to start a new life, in a new land. They let the Americans deal with the scrap metal. Valentok thought he would like to go there himself one day, perhaps to Seattle, when this was over.
FOUR MILES TO the east in driving rain and surging seas, Jon Nordquist gripped the wheel of the Dancing Lady with a firm hand. He used the leverage of his body to fight off the force of a giant rolling comber as it slid under the hull and slammed against the rudder. The boat listed heavily to port. For an instant he thought perhaps she might not come back. Then she responded to the helm, slowly.
“It’s turning to shit out there. Can’t see a damn thing.” Ben had his face pressed tightly into the covered scope of the ancient Furuno radar screen. “How the hell are we supposed to find it?”
“Keep looking.” Nordquist cast a quick glance at his son and then back out to the mountainous wave that loomed before them, dwarfing the sixty-foot vessel. Their boat was like a matchstick in a flood.
The towering waves created vaporous green images on the radar screen like islands thrust up from the bottom of the sea. On the next sweep of the radar beam they were gone.
“She could run over us, and we’d never see her.” Ben was scared, and it showed. He’d sailed in heavy seas, but nothing like this.
The thought of collision had entered Nordquist’s mind, but it remained for his son to say it. For the moment he was more worried about broaching, or pitchpoling down the face of one o
f the waves, nosing in, never to come up again. There were a million ways to die at sea.
“Nothing.” Ben pressed his head closer to the radar screen until the pressure against his forehead actually hurt. “Besides, even if we find ‘em, how the hell are we supposed to bring the thing on board in this?”
“One crisis at a time,” said his father. He checked his watch. From his pocket he took a small black plastic object, not much larger than a calculator. With his teeth he pulled out the three-inch antenna and pressed a couple of buttons, then waited, one eye on the sea, the other on the portable global positioning satellite (GPS) unit in his hand. Two sets of numbers appeared, one over the other for longitude and latitude. The pocket GPS unit was not as reliable or accurate as its larger cousins that ran from fixed computers on bigger ships, but still it was not likely to be off by more than a few hundred feet. At this location the Russian ship should be no more than a quarter mile off their starboard beam, that is, if it was on time and hadn’t gotten lost.
There was no way to communicate by radio. Other ships were certain to pick up the signal, perhaps the Coast Guard. They patrolled the waters, even at two hundred miles out, the limits of their jurisdiction. They had satellites and planes and used both to interdict drugs and track vessels carrying human cargo, seeking to deposit their huddled masses on American soil. Two vessels meeting in open sea were not likely to go unnoticed. For this reason a careful procedure for drop and recovery had been worked out. But would it work in this weather? Nordquist didn’t know. No one had anticipated the fucking storm of the century.
HE TURNED HIS ship into the weather.
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