Killing Time

CHAPTER 39

Of our escape and removal to a safe distance I can say little, for shock had clouded my senses. The closure of the ship's hatchway after we'd gotten back aboard and the reactivation of the complete holographic projection around the vessel apparently threw the drones off long enough for us to reach the coast and dive into the Straits of Malacca; but the fact remained that four of our number had been observed and no doubt identified. That Slayton should have been seen was bad enough, but Larissa's presence would no doubt prompt our antagonists to ask uncomfortable questions about Malcolm and probably about St. Kilda as well, once it was discovered, as seemed inevitable, that he owned the islands. Yet despite both this danger and his own deep sorrow over Tarbell's death, Malcolm was determined that we should remain in the vicinity of Kuala Lumpur until we knew where the now massively armed Eshkol was going. All ship's systems were set to work monitoring air traffic, both civilian and military, along with naval communications, private wireless phone calls, e-mail, secure Internet servers, even the radio transmitters of small commercial fishermen. Eshkol could have been anywhere in Malaysia, but he had to be somewhere, and when he made his inevitable move to depart, Malcolm intended for us to be right behind him.

My initial participation in this endeavor lacked both full concentration and a certain heart. The circumstances surrounding Tarbell's death, like those of Max's, had revealed a side of human behavior that I thought worse, in its way, than anything I had encountered during all my years of studying criminal behavior. But whereas Max's death had filled me with a desire for explanations from and revenge against persons who had grievously abused their positions of power, Leon's fate seemed to confirm what I had already begun to suspect: that participating in such high-stakes games, even for the best of motives, would prove not only disastrous but corrupting. In short, the tragic events we were experiencing were being produced by the collective desires of all players, not merely Dov Eshkol, to see their own concept of right prevail.

"What are you saying, Gideon?" Larissa asked me as we lay on the bed in my quarters after some twelve hours of keeping relatively silent vigil in the turret. "That we're as bad as Eshkol?"

"No," I said, bridling a bit at her loaded simplification. "But you can't deny that if we'd just stayed out of the entire thing he would have been quietly killed in General Said's bowling alley. Or what if Malcolm had never ordered the creation of the Stalin images in the first place? Eshkol would have just kept on doing what hundreds of intelligence operatives do every day. There would have been no crisis."

Larissa sat up. "I've never had much use for 'what-if's," she said crisply. "In situations like this, in any situations that involve questions of force and power, virtue's a relative thing. And speaking relatively, I'd say we're the only ones in this mess even trying to do any good."

I stared at the ceiling. "What's that old saying — about it always being the good men who do the most damage in the world?"

Larissa looked even more irritated; perhaps, I thought, because in her heart she agreed with me. "Old sayings like that tend to depend on who came up with them."

"I think it was Henry Adams," I said. "Who, admittedly, chose to be an observer in the power game throughout his life. Unlike his forebears."

"Exactly." Larissa lay back down, trying very hard to douse the quick spark of misunderstanding that flared between us. "The point isn't that Leon died, Gideon — it's that he died as well as anyone could." She smiled fondly. "Certainly as characteristically.. ."

I chuckled once, quietly and sadly, along with her. "He was fairly unbelievable. Even when he took pleasure in something he just seemed so—contemptuous of it. By the way—" I turned onto my side, my face inches from Larissa's. "Did anybody ever actually find out where he came from? I asked him a couple of times, but he always dodged it."

"He told me a story once," Larissa said. "I have no idea whether it was true. It was just after he'd joined us, and I think he was trying to inspire sympathy as a way of seducing me. God knows sex was the only thing that could ever have made him show that side of himself. He claimed that his mother was a Siberian prostitute in Vladivostok and his father was a visiting English telecom executive. The mother was killed during a Russian bombing raid. After that his grandmother took him to Indonesia to get away from the war and supported his schooling by working in a microchip sweatshop. It killed her eventually. He began stealing and later forging to complete his education."

I considered it. "Well," I breathed, "it would explain at least some of his attitude. And if it's not true, he's the only one who could have made it up."

Although I think she wanted to, Larissa could not let my moment of doubt pass without asking, "So is this going to be a problem for you? What we have to do now?"

I gave it several minutes' hard thought. "I won't deny that I have questions," I finally said. "But I also know that since this situation is at least partly our doing, the solution should be, too. Maybe we shouldn't have walked into it — but things aren't going to get any better if we just walk out."

Larissa pulled me close. "That's true…"

I don't think she was entirely reassured by my lofty words; certainly I wasn't. But the conversation had nowhere left to go, and it was somewhat merciful, therefore, that Malcolm's voice came over the address system at that moment, telling us to join him forward. Apparently we at last had a lead, one that we were pursuing with evident dispatch; by the time Larissa and I managed to dash through the ship's corridors to the nose, the vessel was already heading up toward the surface at a good clip, and we joined the rest of our team (minus Julien, who was still in one of the labs) just in time to watch as we burst into the sky above the straits. At this point, however, any encouragement that might have been inspired by Malcolm's announcement vanished:

The waters directly below us were full of American naval vessels, which immediately began bombarding our ship. The electromagnetic fields around the vessel succeeded in throwing these missiles off target or detonating them at a safe distance, but that didn't explain how the warships had been able to locate us in the first place.

"They're finally getting smart," Slayton said, anxiously guiding the ship through the hail of fire from the guidance console. "They monitored the wake we left in the water and any air disturbances that originated with our surfacing point. Then they opened a blanket fire."

"But — don't they run the risk of hitting each other?" I asked. "Or other ships that are farther off?"

"Of course," Malcolm said, wheeling his chair into position beside the colonel. "But they seem more willing than ever to take the chance — not surprisingly."

I was confused for an instant, but Eli quickly turned to explain: "We monitored a Malaysian transmission about fifteen minutes ago, which said that somebody'd made off with the one B-2 bomber they had left — it was being kept at a remote airfield because the only Malaysian pilot who could fly it had been killed. Anyway, there was a lot of garbled, panic-stricken screaming that included a reference to a nuclear device."

"Eshkol," Larissa said. "The bastard can fly, too?"

"He's the complete covert operative," Jonah answered with a nod. "We're on his tail, but the Malaysians also talked about the four of you and about what they saw of our ship. The Americans, according to their transmissions, have concluded that the mystery vessel they've been hearing about and occasionally running into all these months is on the B-2 job, somehow. So things are likely to get very hot on this ride."

"But why?" I asked. "They can't be tracking us."

"No," Jonah went on, "but we've got to follow Eshkol's plane—"

"Which is an old American model," Slayton said, "whose stealth systems the American air force knew how to defeat even when they were still using it. They think our ship's escorting Eshkol, not chasing him. They'll stay fixed on him and look for patterns of air disturbance that match what they monitored when we came out of the sea."

"Do we have to stay so close to Eshkol, in that case?" Larissa asked. "We can track him from the stratosphere, after all—"

"Where we'll be too far away to prevent his doing anything rash," Malcolm cut in.

Larissa considered this with a nod. "Then we shoot him down."

"The Americans may be willing to risk radioactive fallout," Malcolm answered, "but I am not. No, Sister, this time the idiots have us, I'm afraid. For the moment."

"Just for the moment?" I asked, alarmed at the explosions that were surrounding the ship but more unsettled still by Malcolm's concession of even a momentary disadvantage. "What do you mean? What can we do later?"

"It depends on Eshkol's nuclear device," Eli said. "Julien's studying the plans now. If it has electronic components that can safely be disabled—"

"Which we know his plane has," Jonah added.

"Then," Eli went on, "we can hit him with a pulse."

"A pulse?" I asked, at first making the medical connection; then I remembered the kind of ship on which I was traveling. "An electromagnetic pulse," I said, breathing easier as I realized that we might indeed have a chance.

This feeling was reinforced when Julien suddenly burst in from the corridor. "Tonnerre!" he cried, seeming a little amazed himself. "It will work!"