Fire with Fire

Chapter Twenty-Five

ODYSSEUS

Caine and Nolan exited the ruins of the Temple of Poseidon just to the right of the central column and looked out at the sea. “Ching likes you, you know.”

“Seems to.”

“He does. It’s not an act. When you pointed out the logistical advantages of having the Commonwealth take the last place in Proconsular rotation, you showed him something he hadn’t seen yet. That doesn’t happen to him very often. And you’re an articulate Westerner who is not a loudmouth, and who understands the value of listening instead of talking. You’re a rarity, for him-and he knows that you have a future.”

“I’m glad he knows that.”

“He can smell it. He’s been in this game a long time, and he is its consummate professional.”

“Do I need to watch out for him? Be cautious?”

Nolan chewed down an olive. “For now, you need to be prudent. As time goes on-well, I think you’ll have a friend in him. That’s only a hunch-but sometimes, that’s all you’ve got to go on.”

“Which seems insane.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, maybe you’ve forgotten how the world of global statecraft looks to all us little people who never become a part of it. We presume it’s all a well-orchestrated dance, but in actuality…”

“In actuality,” Nolan finished for him, “it’s just as haphazard an enterprise as any other. But the chaos can be managed if you understand a few basic rules.”

“Which are?”

“There are only three variables governing the outcome of any given situation. Power-political, economic, military, whatever. Intelligence-the information you have and how cleverly you use it. And chance.”

“And that’s it?”

“That’s it. Leaders get themselves too tangled up when they fail to break a situation-any situation-back down to those basics. Or when they forget the fundamental differences between the three variables.”

“Huh. Any more sage advice?”

Nolan smiled without looking over at Caine. “I hope that I can give you reason to move past the resentment fueling those little digs, Caine. Although it’s true enough that we-IRIS-have had to play pretty rough, sometimes.”

“Like with the megacorporations?”

“And with the desperate groups and states that they use as proxies, yes. One of the harshest lessons of intelligence work is that, to borrow your phrase, sometimes you have to fight fire with fire. It’s an unpleasant but inescapable fact-which, as you also remarked, was appreciated even by our primeval forebears when they bred domesticated wolves to hunt the wild ones. Sometimes adopting the methods of your adversaries is the only effective strategy-and I suspect you’re going to come face to face with just how true that is in the coming years.”

“You mean that we have to keep fighting the megacorporations by using their own tactics against them?”

Nolan stared off into the blue. “I mean that you’re going to have to think about how even the best-intentioned states and leaders occasionally have no choice but to fight fire with fire. I’ve lived that truth. Yet, having lived it, I just don’t know that our ends, no matter how worthy they are, can ever justify the means-the ‘fire’-we’ve used.”

“Seems to me you had little enough choice, most of the time.”

“Maybe, but we-Rich and I-could have chosen not to get involved.”

“And then who would have achieved all this?”

“Caine, there’s always someone else. No one is that indispensable.”

“No? That’s what I used to tell myself-before the Tyne. Sometimes, we get to choose if we’re willing to be a link in the chain of history-but sometimes, history chooses us. Puts us in a position where we have no choice but to act.”

Nolan looked over at Caine abruptly, as though his companion had, without warning, jabbed a needle into him. Caine looked closely at the seamed face and he suddenly realized how all Nolan’s secrets had started. “Because that’s what happened to you, isn’t it? You found yourself in a position where you had no choice but to act, because you knew-knew-that there are exosapients. You’ve known from the very start.”

Nolan did not look at Caine, but turned his eyes back toward the blue-on-blue horizon where the Mediterranean met the cloudless sky.

“When did you learn about them-and how?”

A number of others-Ching and Downing among them-were approaching. Caine guessed he had about twenty seconds before they were in earshot. He put a hand on Nolan’s still-considerable shoulder, felt no startled flexure in the smooth expanse of trapezius. “When did you learn? And how?”

Nolan turned, then smiled. The gentle curve of his lips and relaxed creases in his forehead and around his eyes suggested that he was not merely about to share a secret, but jettison it, cut it loose as he would a millstone. He opened his mouth-

CIRCE

He finished counting across the columns and found the silhouette he was looking for. His face relaxed, his shoulders almost slumped, as if he had lost awareness of himself. However, almost visible through his shirt, his heart began to quake, to race, gaining speed, like an engine building up to overload-

ODYSSEUS

Nolan’s lips and eyelids flicked open a little wider. His head went back slightly, as though someone had surprised him by poking a finger into his back. The olives went tumbling out of his hand.

Caine grabbed toward him, but Nolan’s body was already in motion, falling backward, slamming down against the foot ramp and rolling off to one side.

Caine was around the ramp and kneeling beside him while everyone else on the promontory stood immobile for a moment that seemed to stretch on and on and on-

Caine roared: “Call a doctor! Now!”

As if released from a trance, the gathering crowd burst into a criss-crossing rush of chattering and yelling activity. Caine propped Nolan up, felt and saw his chest spasming irregularly, the shocks centered on the sternum. Oh, Christ-

Nolan, eyes wide, was trying to gasp out words.

Downing half stumbled over the ramp, almost pushing Caine out of the way, desperate to ask a question: “What were you trying to tell me, Nolan? What? What?”

For a split second, Caine could not make any sense of the question, then he shoved Downing back in disgust. Always business with you, isn’t it, asshole? Caine looked down. “We’re getting help. We’re-”

Nolan swallowed, closed his eyes as his chest continued to buck irregularly. When he opened his eyes again, he was able to gasp words between the spasms. “Sorry, Trevor…Elena…” His eyes-uncertain-sought Caine. “You. Too. Sorry.”

“It’s okay, Nolan. They’ve got doctors on the way. They-”

Nolan interrupted with a smile that seemed more rictus. He lifted his hand toward Caine-who had the fleeting impression that the redoubtable warrior and canny statesman was attempting to touch his face. But no: his eyes were losing focus. He couldn’t see. He’s alone with the pain, with the approach of death.

Caine reached up with his right hand, intercepted and held Nolan’s faltering one in a firm, and he hoped soothing, grip. “We-I’m here,” he said.

Nolan’s eyes roved, then closed. He smiled faintly, nodded, tried to breathe, seemed unable to do more than gasp in a shallow breath. With which he said, “Trev.”

The hand Caine was holding went limp. Nolan’s body was still; there was no sign of respiration. The surrounding din of frenetic activity either stopped or Caine became deaf to it.

Caine choked back nausea, surprised by the rush of emotion that went through him: Why Nolan? Why now? Why not Downing, that bastard? Nolan-liked me. In a world where no one knows me anymore, he liked me.

The circle around Caine and Nolan had grown still. Somewhere, beyond the ring of witnesses who would soon be mourners, clipped, urgent orders were being given by the security entourage in the ongoing attempt to save a life that was now beyond saving.

Caine looked at the surrounding faces without seeing them. “He’s gone.”

He laid Nolan’s hand down, and withdrew his own.

CIRCE

He withdrew his two fingers from the box, closed it, caught it up and dropped it in the open container of acid. A gout of steamy, acrid vapor shot straight up, accompanied by an agitated hissing and a short, rising squeal that clipped off abruptly-not unlike a small animal being killed sharply, painfully.

Using the two fingers that had been in the box-which were now mottled red, as if they had been scalded-he produced a final olive from his shirt pocket and popped it in his mouth.

His other hand had already uncoupled the binoculars from the tripod. Carefully, leaning away from the container, he dumped these two components-one after the other-into the jar. A slower, roiling bubbling and guttering brewed up out of the container. He waited for it to subside, making sure that there was not much more gas being produced by the reaction, and then recapped the jar. He looked out over the blue Aegean and, smiling broadly, spat out the olive pit in the direction of the Temple of Poseidon.

He turned and headed for the stairway that led down and out of the duplex.

MENTOR

The rough stairs that led down and away from the Temple of Poseidon were a writhing Brueghel tapestry of chaos, panic, and counterproductive activity. Emergency workers rushed up, rushed down again to get additional gear from their ambulances. Security types spiraled out, produced guns, stood uncertainly, called for further instructions, reholstered their weapons, cycled back inward. Several of the delegates were trying to get away quickly; several realized that help was no longer possible and were trying to stay out of the way; others who had held back from the first saw that the crisis had resolved and were now putting on the face-saving skit of attempting to offer assistance.

Downing looked at Nolan and couldn’t move, could only think: How could this happen, here, now? Nolan, this was your triumph. This was what you had lived for and had put aside your loves in order to accomplish. And now this? This is the reward for good and true service, for the countless missed dinners, Christmas pageants, baseball games? For the smiles you were not there to receive, the hugs you were not there to elicit, the “I love you’s” that were not said because you were not there to hear them?

“Downing.”

Richard looked up, hearing hostility in the tone. Caine was facing him across Nolan’s body. But Riordan must have seen something in Richard’s face, because his own became less rigid, the eyes less accusing. “Richard,” he revised, more neutral.

“Yes?”

“This may not be a simple heart attack. But either way-orders?”

At first, Downing didn’t understand. Then he realized that Riordan was already thinking again: Nolan’s death needed investigating-and quickly. And then the real blow hit him: he was in charge of IRIS, now.

Whether he liked it or not.