Killing Time

CHAPTER 35

There was a time when I contemplated the ecological effects of African tribal wars like the ones I have been observing for the last nine months with horrified fascination. I was aware, of course, that this reaction was due largely to the images of those conflicts that were being circulated by the world's news services; yet even as I acknowledged such manipulation, I remained as riveted and moved as was the rest of the world, enough so that I ignored the much more seriously destructive campaigns that were being waged against rain forests in other parts of the world by a constellation of lumber, agricultural, and livestock companies — companies that were vital parts of larger corporations that owned many of the news services that were keeping the public's attention focused on places such as Africa in the first place. The rate of destruction in those other rain forests — which of course were just as vital to the general health of the planet as their African counterparts — was far in excess of anything that such characters as my friend Chief Dugumbe and his enemies could do during even their most bitter engagements; but jobs were jobs and trade was trade, and so the world saw nothing of that more extensive defoliation save for occasional glimpses captured by maverick journalists.

This state of affairs prevailed until it was almost too late; that is. until scientists began to report rather than predict the changes in air quality that accompanied the disappearance of those natural oxygen laboratories. Global atmospheric deterioration, when the genera] public at last comprehended it, caused widespread panic, and an unprecedented movement to save the forests that were left got under way, one that was belligerent rather than evangelical. Its practical result was the creation of special U.N. "monitoring forces" — multinational armies, really — that inserted themselves into those locations and situations that seemed most salvageable: Brazil, various parts of Central America, and Malaysia.

The Brazilians and Central Americans went along with the policing relatively quiescently. But the Malaysians, drawing on their ancient warlike traditions, rose up against the foreign invaders, determined not to let some of the only sources of income left to them by the '07 crash be taken away without adequate compensation— compensation that no Western nation was in any position or mood to give. Thus was born a new type of resource war, one that made the violent conflicts over oil and water that had already broken out in other parts of the world out seem tame by comparison. True, Eastern Malaysia was subdued fairly easily, thanks to a generous donation to the United Nations by neighboring Brunei, whose sultan was glad for the chance to rehabilitate the image of his scandal-plagued little principality; but Western Malaysia was another matter. After launching an invasion from three directions, the U.N. troops met far stiffer resistance than they'd ever anticipated; and when members of their force were unlucky enough to be captured they were generally tortured to death, mutilated, and sent back to the Allied lines with a small U.N. flag stuffed in their mouths. Eventually the Allied troops did secure most of the cities ringing the peninsula, but several held out; and those several became conduits to and from the jungle highlands, which had already proved a military quagmire for the Allies and were now transformed into a magnet for rogues and mercenaries from all over the world.

Such was the monster into whose maw my shipmates were now dragging me. The journey began in Marseille, for it was from that city that Eshkol had elected to leave France. The same name that was on his airline ticket, "Vincent Gambon," soon appeared on the passenger list of a French bullet train headed south from Troyes, and when it pulled out of the station our ship followed on its shoulder, hugging the French landscape under the protection of our holographic projector so that there would be no possibility of Eshkol's eluding us. The train reached Marseille several hours before Eshkol was due to board his flight, giving him and us enough time to get to the airport: Malcolm was determined that we should stay just as close to his plane as we had to the bullet train, even while it was on the ground. This prospect made not only me but several of the rest of our company uneasy, quite beyond the simple dread that any sane person feels on approaching one of the world's overcrowded and overused international airports. Dangerous as was the elaborate version of Russian roulette known as air travel, flying an unregistered and virtually invisible aircraft into the midst of so deadly a circus seemed the very essence of stupidity. But Larissa, having routed the ship's helm control to the turret, was gleefully anticipating just such an undertaking, and all I could do was trust to her genetically enhanced mental agility and try not to look up too often.

Which proved impossible, for as terrifying as the subsequent exercise was, it was also exhilarating. I could scarcely have guessed that the same ship that had flown so slowly and menacingly over the walls of the Belle Isle prison would be capable of the kind of almost playful aerial agility that it displayed as we darted among the arriving, departing, and taxiing aircraft at Le Pen International Airport in Marseille. Not that there weren't solid grounds for terror: the dozens of commercial planes often veered sharply and unexpectedly simply to avoid hitting one another, so absurdly high was the rate at which they were told to approach and depart the airport; and Larissa did, it seemed to me, derive some perverse pleasure from making her passes at them just a little too close. Yet though I sometimes howled with fright, I never felt myself to be in truly mortal peril, and after several minutes I even began to let laughter punctuate my screams.

All the same, I was not entirely disappointed when Eshkol's gigantic Airbus, its two and a half passenger levels stuffed with nearly a thousand trusting souls, lumbered into the sky and began the flight southeast. The plane's four mammoth engines streamed great trails of exhaust that made it impossible to see out of the turret of our ship while we were flying in its wake, and during those tense minutes we very narrowly avoided a collision with another overcrowded behemoth that was coming in from Africa terribly off course, due to the fact that (as I learned while monitoring air traffic control at the airport) none of the flight crew spoke English or French. Using both computer guidance and her own skills, Larissa soon got us out of that predicament and then to a safe distance just above and alongside Eshkol's plane — although we were still close enough for me to be able to see, through the plane's windows, how dismally cramped the conditions within were and to observe the sudden emergence, from one of the overhead compartments, of several live chickens, which appeared to give the flight crew fits.

There were still more harrowing moments as we plowed along through some of the world's most heavily congested air lanes and across half a dozen time zones. Then, as we moved east and south of India, the traffic mercifully began to thin out; but this respite proved brief. During our approach to Kuala Lumpur the swarms of civilian aircraft were replaced with military models: fighter-bombers, manned and unmanned, as well as transports, radar craft, and refueling tankers were all in evidence. The sun was setting behind us now, throwing a spectacular golden light forward to reveal columns of smoke ascending from the West Malaysian jungle: apparently the U.N. allies, in their zeal to keep the Malaysians from destroying the rain forest, were willing to do the job themselves. Or perhaps their anger over being shown up in battle by a supposedly weak country for what I calculated to be the eleventh or twelfth time in three decades had simply blinded them to logical considerations. Whatever the case, evidence of just how bitter the conflict had become began to mount as we approached the capital's battered Subang Airport alongside Eshkol's plane; and by the time that behemoth set down, we were being forced to dodge not only other aircraft but long-range artillery shells, which were being hurled at the capital from the same Genting Highlands to which we would soon, in all likelihood, be forced to journey.

The sight of the destruction that had been wrought at the airport during the war was not, on a comparative scale, particularly disheartening, for Subang was one of those many twentieth-century terminals designed by architects who had attempted to anticipate the future with results that in that same future looked fairly silly. Nor did one particularly mind seeing that many of Kuala Lumpur's famous but no less ugly skyscrapers — including the Petronas Twin Towers, once the tallest buildings in the world — had been damaged or even leveled. But the havoc wrought in the city's historic district was not so easy to contemplate. During its colonial era Kuala Lumpur had become home to some of the most beautiful late-Victorian architecture ever built, particularly the old Secretariat Building and the famed Moorish train station. Both were gone now and had been little mourned by a world desperate for oxygen. Perhaps this was why, after I was deposited on a field to the west of the airport in the company of Colonel Slayton, Larissa, and Tarbell, my utter lack of sympathy with both sides in the conflict began to take on an angry edge.

I soon discovered that this was easily the most appropriate mood to be in when first laying eyes on Dov Eshkol. We spotted our man right after he got through Subang customs, and although we had all studied pictures of him in various guises and pored carefully over a list of his vital statistics, the bearded, wild-eyed Eshkol gave the impression of being far bigger and more deranged than any of us had expected. Dressed, as Jonah had predicted he would be, in the uniform of a world relief organization (Doctors Without Borders), Eshkol strode through the crowds of weeping Muslims and Hindus who were waiting for other passengers on his plane, as well as the many military personnel in the airport, as if he were untouchable— which he was, of course, proving to be. None of us wondered at his not being stopped for questioning — the watch for him here could not have been vigorous, for what kind of fugitive would seek asylum in a war zone? — and before long we were inside a beat-up, stinking old Lexus taxi, following Eshkol's similar conveyance into the city.

Our destination, it soon became clear, was the battered Islamic-style tower called the Dayabumi Complex, where Eshkol apparently had an appointment. As we drove, our taxi driver began to complain about the questionable ethics of following another cab in a manner that indicated he wanted more money; and listening to him rattle on I found myself once again thinking of Max and laughing quietly as I thought of how summarily he would have dealt with the grousing little man at the wheel. I wondered, too, what he would have made of my recent adventures; but I didn't much care for the answers that I soon gave myself. Although I had no doubt that Max would have greatly appreciated Larissa and abusively condemned Dov Eshkol, the Malaysian situation, and many other things I'd come across and through, I couldn't imagine him actually approving of our current job. I tried to tell myself that such an attitude would have been a product of Max's endless cynicism, of his unwillingness — hardened by years on the New York police force — to believe that anyone actually had a lofty or principled motive for doing anything. Yet this self-serving disparagement of my dead friend's philosophy and motivations only disturbed me further, and by the time we pulled up in front of the Dayabumi Complex I found that it was necessary to force his image from my mind altogether.

We scarcely had time to enter the Dayabumi Complex before we saw Eshkol going back out, now in the company of a man who seemed, from his dress and features, to be a Muslim Malaysian. Most of the country's Hindu and Buddhist minorities, originally of Indian and Chinese origin, had sided with the Allies during the war as retribution for years of mistreatment at the hands of the primarily Muslim government. Eshkol's choice of companion, therefore, was at least a fair indication that he did indeed intend to make a run for the loyalist-controlled mountains. When we returned to the crowded plaza outside the building, we waited until we saw Eshkol and his guide disappear in an old Japanese four-by-four up the Karak Highway toward the mile-high peak beyond the front lines that was the site of the Genting Highlands resort. Larissa then signaled her brother, and we all made quickly for a dark, fairly deserted area beyond the National Mosque to rendezvous with our ship, aboard which Eli was already keeping careful satellite track of Eshkol's vehicle.

We conducted our slow pursuit in a somewhat somber mood. Ahead of us lay what was arguably the greatest center of illegal trade and unbridled hedonism on the planet, a place that could not have had a more fitting title than the "Las Vegas of Malaysia"; but before we reached it still more horror lay in wait for us. We found Eshkol's car and its driver at the start of the eleven-mile, bomb-pitted thoroughfare that led to the resort from the main highway: the unidentified Muslim man, having guided Eshkol through the Allied checkpoints below, had been rewarded with a savage slash to the throat, after which Eshkol had apparently continued his passage on foot. He was evidently determined to leave no witnesses behind, a conclusion from which I actually drew encouragement: it at least indicated that he intended to survive whatever event he was planning, which ruled out a suicide bombing, still the only truly foolproof method of committing a terrorist act.

Had I adequately considered the second possibility inherent in his actions — that he simply enjoyed killing when he could — I would have heeded the voice that I had attributed to poor Max, and urged my comrades to turn back.