“Good,” Dabir said. “In the meantime I’ll work with our asset to see if she can get the thumb drive away from Dekker.”
“If I’m correct about computers, the program is already in Dekker’s machine.”
“You’re probably right. Nevertheless I’ll feel safer having the original back in our possession, just in case we are attacked.”
“I’ll need authorization,” Delgado said.
“I suggest that you be quick about it.”
* * *
DELGADO GOT his attaché case and on the way out had his secretary telephone Sr. Elizondo again to tell the president’s chief of staff that he was on the way, and to ask for a brief private audience with Chavez. Before the council of war meeting.
Nearly to the palace on Urdaneta Avenue he got a call in his chauffeur-driven armored Hummer from his secretary. The president had agreed to the private meeting, but he would not wait forever.
“How did Elizondo sound?”
“Stressed.”
Five minutes later they were cleared past the security checkpoint, and Delgado hurried inside to the Joaquin Crespo room, formerly the Hall of Mirrors, where formal meetings of the council of ministers was usually held.
Elizondo directed him to a small office across the ornate hall, where Chavez was staring impatiently out the window that looked down into the main courtyard.
“You’re late, my friend,” the president said, turning. He looked tired, but everyone thought it was the situation with the U.S. and not the return of his cancer.
“I’m sorry, Mr. President, but something of grave importance came up just as I was about to leave my office.”
“Does it have a bearing on my council of ministers meeting?”
“Very much so, sir,” Delgado said, and he repeated everything Dabir had told him about the situation with the hacker in Amsterdam.
Chavez smiled and rubbed his hands together. “I don’t see the problem. If he wants to shut off the bastards’ electricity, let him.”
“This would be vastly more dangerous than simply engineering rolling blackouts.”
“They want war—they’ve already made war on us—and so do I.”
“It would be a war that we could not possibly win.”
Chavez stopped smiling. “If you’ve no stomach for what must be done, then step down, I will replace you.”
“It’s never been that, Señor Presidente. I’m suggesting an option so that no matter what occurs we will come out as victors.”
“Tell me.”
“We eliminate the hacker and his girlfriend, who is an Iranian agent. We recover the thumb drive that contains the virus—and use it only if and when the U.S. moves its warships off our coast.”
“It would cause them to attack with even more zeal,” Chavez said.
“Not if the blame were to be placed on Iran,” Delgado said, and his words hung in the air for a long beat.
“President Ahmadinejad is a personal friend.”
“Sí.”
“Iran is an ally.”
“Sí.”
Chavez bowed his head for a moment, then turned and looked out the window. “If Hitler had not allowed the British soldiers trapped at Dunkirk to escape back home, and instead slaughtered them on the beaches, and if he hadn’t been so quick to open a front on the east he could have defeated the English and turned Great Britain into an island fortress before the Americans arrived. Maybe he would have gained the time for his scientists to build the atomic bomb and perfect the rockets to reach New York and Washington, D.C. History so often hinges on the slightest miscalculations.”
The word insanity popped into Delgado’s head, but he said nothing.
“I’ll miss you at the meeting, but you have more important things to attend to,” Chavez said without turning back. “Godspeed.”
“You, too, Mr. President,” Delgado said.
54
IT WAS VERY early in the evening, but Makarov and Ilke had gone to bed and lay naked under the sheet in each other’s arms, listening to Dvorak’s New World symphony playing on the B&O stereo in the living room. He’d come back from North Dakota, battered physically as well as emotionally, because he’d made a mistake.
He’d killed Osborne all right, he’d seen the man go down, but he’d left the women alive. They’d seen his face, even though he’d been in disguise. And the one who’d come up behind him in the house had looked into his eyes, some secret knowledge in hers. She would know him if they ever met again.
Ilke’s head was on his shoulder, a hand on his chest. “A crown for your thoughts,” she said. Her voice was husky as it always was just after they made love.
“I’m thinking about retiring.”
She looked up at him. “Are you serious?”
SEBIN and VEVAK knew about his business here, and about Ilke, and it was no stretch to think that they knew where he lived, though how they had come by that knowledge remained a puzzle to him. But his life here was at an end, as he always knew it would be someday.
“I’m tired of working all the time, the being away, sometimes dealing with people who are—” He searched for the right word.
“Bad?”
“Who’re only interested in money above all else.”
She smiled. “Good, then we can take a long vacation. I’ve always wanted to see New York, and then Washington and Las Vegas. Will you take me gambling? I’d like to spend some of your money.”
“It’s possible,” Makarov said noncommittally, though of course it would never be possible for them to return to the States, at least not as he looked now. And trying to explain why he would need to alter his face with plastic surgery would be next to impossible. One of the things she was most fond of saying was how she loved the line of his chin, and especially the furrow in the middle of his brow just above his nose.
“Makes you look like a professor,” she’d teased. “All you need are a pince-nez and people would start to ask you serious questions.” She’d laughed. “For which you would have all the answers.”
When she got started like this he always let her finish before he brought her back down to earth. Sometimes she would cry, but in the end she would smile, sadly, and the discussion would be ended. But this time she had a fire in her eyes.
“Then when we come back we could buy a little house—doesn’t have to be grand—and I would like to have a dog, and maybe cats. It would be in the country and we could take long walks. Make new friends who we could invite for Midsummer’s Eve bonfires and maypoles.”
To begin with she’d wanted children, but he’d convinced her otherwise, and their lives had been calm, except for his business. But she was hinting again about having a family.
Using the deputy’s truck to get away from Osborne’s ranch, he’d switched to the sheriff’s SUV which he’d left on the eastbound lane of the interstate. By the time he’d crossed the median and flagged down two Walgreen drugstore managers in a Chevy Impala with Montana plates heading west, he’d heard the first helicopter a long ways to the south.
A little later that morning, he’d killed the two men, stuffed their bodies in the trunk, and had driven straight through to Seattle where he’d taken a Delta flight nonstop to Atlanta and from there Air Canada to Frankfurt, the train to Helsinki, and the train-ferry home, changing back to his Stockholm appearance between trains.
“I meant leaving Sweden. Maybe someplace warmer.”
Ilke sat up, the sheet falling away from her small breasts, an uncertain look on her pretty round face. “Like where?”
“Spain, southern France, maybe Majorca.”
“But why?” she’d asked, but the telephone chimed and before Makarov could reach it she answered.
“Yes?”
He could hear a man’s voice, and then Ilke handed the phone to him, and got out of bed and padded into the bathroom.
“Who is calling?”
“You know,” Delgado said.
Ilke had closed the bathroom door, but Ma
karov got out of bed, and took the handset into the living room where he looked down on the narrow street just off the busy Kungsgatan, but he could spot nothing suspicious.
“What do you want?”
“We have another assignment for you.”
“I’m not going back to the States so soon, if ever,” Makarov said.
“Amsterdam,” Delgado said.
Makarov glanced over his shoulder at the open bedroom door down the hall. Ilke was still in the bathroom. Probably sulking. She was a Dane, and Helsinki was about as far south as she’d ever wanted to go. Majorca would be a trial for her.
“What’s the problem?”
“It’s Dekker, he’s become unstable.”
“You knew that from the beginning. Besides, you said that he had a minder.”
“It’s possible that she’s become a part of the problem,” Delgado said. “Both of them need to be eliminated and the thumb drive recovered.”
“I’ve just returned,” Makarov said. But the operation would be fairly easy. Down to Amsterdam in the morning, do the two of them, and return here the same day.
“This is important.”
“They all are.”
“One million euros. But it must de done immediately.”
“Five million,” Makarov said.
Delgado didn’t hesitate. “Done.”
The money would more than buy Ilke her house. Overlooking the Med on Majorca, he decided. “When half is in my account I will do it.”
“It’ll be there within the hour.”
“How do I find these people?” Makarov asked, and Delgado gave him the specific details.
* * *
ILKE WAS sitting on the toilet when he knocked and went into the bathroom. She’d been crying, her face in her hands, and when she looked up her face was puffy and her eyes red.
“I love you,” she said. “I’ll go anywhere with you. Just tell me when and where.”
He sat down on the edge of the tub next to her and took her hands. “Majorca, in the hills above the sea.”
She smiled and half nodded.
“We will have a house, and you will have your dog and cats and maybe even some goats.”
She brightened. “For sure?”
He nodded. “Absolutely. And maybe a llama or two, an ostrich, a milk cow, some chickens. We’ll have a regular farm.”
She laughed. “You’re teasing me.”
“Yes, I am. But after tomorrow there will be no more business, just pleasure. And if you want to spend some of our money on roulette or at the baccarat table, we’ll dress up and play at the casino in Monte Carlo.”
“What about tomorrow?” she asked.
“I have another trip, but this one just to Paris in the morning, and I should be back in time for dinner.”
“Promise?”
“Yes. And then we’ll fly down to Majorca, hire a real estate agent, and go house hunting.”
“Just one last job?”
55
ON THE FOUR-HOUR drive down to Sioux Falls Ashley had plenty of time to think, and when the GPS advised her to turn right on Central Avenue, she came to the conclusion that being a newspaper reporter and being Nate Osborne’s wife would never work. After this business was over with, and she’d filed the last of her in-depths on the attacks against the Initiative, she was going to quit and move to Medora.
The problem that had deviled her was what she would do with her time, and even more importantly, how she could keep herself occupied to a level where she wouldn’t go cuckoo.
Pulling into the Wymans’ driveway a little before five she’d finally accepted what she, and just about every journalist she had ever known, wanted to do was to write the Great American Novel. Or at least a novel. Maybe for children. A sort of modern-day Little House on the Prairie.
A short, somewhat pleasant-looking woman answered the doorbell. “You must be Ms. Borden, from the Bismarck Tribune.”
“Mrs. Wyman?” Ashley asked.
“Yes. My husband has been expecting you,” Delores Wyman said, letting Ashley in. “But he’s been told not to talk to anyone from the press or television.”
“Should I leave?”
“No. He thinks it’s important.”
“So do I,” Ashley said.
She followed the woman to the rear bedroom that had been converted to a den or study where Stuart Wyman, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, moccasins on his feet, was waiting. Her first impression was that he was a frightened man, and perhaps just a little angry. She’d gotten nothing of that from talking to him on the phone.
“Thank you for agreeing to see me,” Ashley said, and they shook hands.
“I don’t think anybody at MAPP is making any real progress. They’re all working real hard just to cover their asses. And let me tell you that the rolling blackouts didn’t do much for them.”
“And you’re the scapegoat?”
“Something like that.”
The small room was pleasant; a desk stood in front of the windows, a pair of wingback chairs, a coffee table, and reading lamp between them, pictures of Wyman hunting and fishing, certificates of merit lining one wall, and two tall book cases along another. A can of Bud Light was on the desk.
“Would you like a cup of coffee, or something?” Wyman’s wife asked from the door.
“Actually a beer would be good. I don’t need a glass.”
She went to get it and Ashley walked over to the bookcases, which contained a lot of books on electrical production and transmission, but several shelves held thriller novels by a lot of authors she’d read. Hunt for Red October, Ashley said. “I read it twice.”
“So did I,” Wyman said, and he motioned her to take a seat.
His wife returned with the beer and left again.
Wyman sat next to Ashley.
“So what do you think really happened to get your lineman killed?”
“His name was Tony Bartlett. Wife and two kids. Toughest phone call I ever had to make in my life, telling her that Tony was dead.”
Ashley waited.
“A friend of mine at our computer analysis center in Minnesota is sure that it was the work of a hacker somewhere in Amsterdam. Same guy who caused the rolling blackouts.”
“Does your boss know this?”
“Of course.”
“But you’re still on the hook.”
“The energize order came from my console, and they need someone to blame.”
Ashley took a drink of her beer. It tasted pretty good after four hours on the road. “Were you on duty anytime during the attacks on the Initiative over the holidays?”
“Almost continuously. We treated it the same as we would a natural disaster,” Wyman said. “I never saw a woman drink beer from a can.”
Ashley grinned. “I was a service brat,” she said. “Do you think the attacks were connected to the murder of Tony Bartlett and the rolling blackouts?”
“Hell yes, especially if you eliminate the blackouts, just for a second.”
“How so?”
“It’d be a pretty big coincidence—the attack on Donna Marie and then the sabotage of the transmission line coming from there.”
“Who’s behind it?” Ashley asked. “Other than the hacker in Amsterdam.”
“I don’t know.”
“But you’ve heard things, you’ve got an opinion.”
“Chavez. The Venezuelans. It’s common knowledge, isn’t it? Why we bombed their air bases.”
“Heard anything about the Russians or the Chinese?”
“That, too, is common knowledge. Either of them, or both, has infected all one hundred twenty-seven of our control centers with a virus. In case of an all-out shooting war they could shut us down. But I don’t think it’s them.”
“Why?”
“They’d have too much to lose. Hell, China would go bankrupt if we stopped buying their crap. And Russia has no reason that I can see to do something stupid like that.”
“Do you think that
Chavez would take such a risk, after we attacked his air bases?”
“He’s crazy enough, I guess,” Wyman said. “And if he did, what could we do in return? We sure as hell wouldn’t put boots on the ground down there. It’d be a hundred times worse than Iraq or Afghanistan.”
“But you believe it’s possible that this hacker was hired by the Venezuelans to screw with us because of the air base attacks?”
“Toby thinks so. He says the hacker was just flexing his muscles with the blackouts. Showing us what he could do anytime he wanted to.”
“Toby?”
“Toby Lundgren. He’s a friend. In fact he called me a couple hours ago, said Nate Osborne, the sheriff who was involved in stopping the attack on Donna Marie, had just left.”
“Did he tell you what they discussed?”
“The hacker,” Wyman said. “Toby figured out where the guy lives and the problem could be solved in the next day or two.”
Ashley was about to lift the can of beer, but she stopped. “How so?”
Wyman backed off. “Sorry, but that was supposed to be confidential. I’ll tell you anything you want to know, but I have to ask that you don’t use what Toby said to me. Could put the sheriff’s life in danger.”
“I know Nate Osborne,” Ashley said. “In fact, he and I are engaged to be married, so there’s no danger of me publishing anything that would put him in harm’s way.”
“I don’t know.”
“You have my word, Mr. Wyman. We’re fighting on the same side. This guy in Amsterdam has to be stopped before the situation gets too far out of hand. A lot of lives are on the line. Already more than Tony Bartlett have died because of him.”
“Osborne is going to Amsterdam, unofficially, to take care of the situation.”
All the air in the room suddenly left, and for the first time in Ashley’s life she was speechless.
56
IT WAS MIDNIGHT when the thirty-foot Bayliner with twin 350 horsepower Honda four strokes entered the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway at Port O’Connor southwest of Matagorda, Texas where the Colorado River emptied into the Gulf of Mexico.
Jesus Campinella was piloting from the fly bridge. “We’re inside,” he said.
Ignatio Gomez, out of sight with Ricardo Gomez just within the cabin, came to the open door. “Any traffic?”
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