Liberty

CHAPTER NINE

Corrigan Engineering’s facilities sat on an industrial campus in the western suburbs of Boston. The senior engineer, Harley Bennett, was a stringy sack of bones with a fringe of hair framing a bald brown pate. He looked to be in his fifties. “You must be a serious runner,” Toad remarked when he shook his hand.

Bennett beamed. “Do the marathon every year, finish in the top hundred.”

“Wow.” Actually Toad thought he was crazy, but he was too polite to say so.

Sonny Tran was also skinny — he didn’t weigh 120 pounds, but he had a small bone structure and ate like a bird. He’d had a third of a muffin at Reagan National Airport for breakfast, and said he wasn’t hungry when asked about lunch. Nor was he gregarious. On the plane that morning he sat beside Toad and didn’t say ten words. He read the morning paper cover to cover — except for the classifieds — looked out the window a while, then worked a crossword puzzle.

In contrast, the Coast Guard officer, Captain Joe Zogby, was a veritable chatterbox. As they waited that morning to board the plane, before he settled in with his copy of the newspaper, he remarked on the weather, the fortunes of two baseball teams, and even noted that the stock market had gone up the previous day.

“So the government’s buying these things?” Harley Bennett remarked. “Getting cutting-edge stuff, I can tell you. C’mon, let’s look, then we’ll talk.”

When the little party entered the lab, he swept his arm and asked, “What d’ya think of that?” The Washington delegation stood staring at a complex electronic instrument chained down to a wooden pallet. Toad bent down for a look. The thing looked a little like the inside of a computer, everything solid state.

“What does it do and how does it do it?”

Harley jumped right in. After he had spent five minutes discussing the sensors and detection technology in general terms, Toad asked, “Does it really work?”

“Of course.” Here Harley got technical, talking about various types of radiation and detection ranges. “The detection range will vary widely,” Harley explained, “depending on the type and strength of the radiation. And that will depend on the amount of shielding around the emitter. A well-shielded reactor, such as one in a late-model nuclear-powered submarine, would probably be undetectable unless you were within a few dozen yards. Perhaps not even then if it were an American sub. A Russian sub — I’m guessing — maybe a mile.”

“A Russian warhead — how far?”

“Missile?”

“Yes.”

“They don’t have much shielding because the shielding is too heavy. Of course, the plutonium inside is not critical, but it’s decaying, radiating. Given the amount of shielding in a missile warhead, and a leaky Russian one to boot, I should say we can detect it at five miles. Maybe six.”

Toad whistled. “You’re the man,” Joe Zogby said with a grin. Even Sonny Tran smiled.

“Give us a demo,” Toad suggested.

First Harley screwed a sensor cable into one of the wire sockets. He laid the cable in a straight line along the floor. On a nearby table sat an instrument containing a rotary drum and stylus. He turned it on.

“You’ll notice that the detector is physically connected to the operator’s instrumentation and recorder. In later versions of this gear the sensors, detector, and instrumentation can be at three different sites and communicate through data-link. For short-range versions we will put the sensors on belt clips and everyone can carry them around. We aren’t there yet, though.”

From a lead vault, Bennett produced a small lead box. “Inside here we have a radioactive isotope for use in certain medical diagnostic procedures.” He carried it into the lab and set it on the table near the machine. As he lifted the test tube containing the isotope from its lead box, the recorder on the nearby table emitted a high-pitched noise. On the recorder the stylus began squiggling. Harley carried the test tube from the room. The instrument continued to scream. The noise stopped, finally, when Bennett was in the parking lot outside. He called in on the lab’s telephone to report his location.

An hour later Toad Tarkington called Jake Grafton in Washington. “You better sit down, boss. You aren’t going to like this.”

“Shoot.”

“Corrigan has hand-built prototypes of his detectors that he has been using for testing purposes. He has no manufacturing facility. The outfit he was dealing with to build the things is in China.”

“Which China?”

“The big red one.”

“Has he given them the engineering drawings or specs?”

“These people say no. Apparently he was negotiating with the government for a technology export license. That’s how the administration learned what he had.”

“What has friend Corrigan been doing to get these things built since he shook the president’s hand?”

“He’s got a couple of custom shops lined up to hand-build the things, so they’ll be pricey. Another screwing for the taxpayers.”

“They’re used to it. Do these detectors work?”

“Seem to. The head engineer gave me a demonstration and a classified capability sheet. These things would be very nice to have.”

“Get a delivery schedule and call me back.”

“Yes, sir.”

Jake went back to his paperwork. He was inundated. He needed someone to handle it for him, but he had to do the paperwork to get that someone.

And four warheads were missing. Where are they?

Tommy Carmellini knocked on his door. He was wearing an electrician’s outfit. A&B Plumbing and Electric. His shirt proclaimed that his name was Junior. Jake waved him in.

“Just wanted you to know, sir, that Zelda and the Zipper are hard at it. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t watched it — they went right into the credit card databases of three large banks bang, bang, bang. Nothing to it. They know how security systems are set up, they know how to go around them, and they know how to get what they want.”

“Where did they learn all that?”

“I didn’t ask, sir. I don’t want to know. I don’t think Zelda or Zip wants the FBI to ask either.”

“We need permanent access.”

“They’re working on it. They actually designed one of the systems, left themselves a hole to go in and out of.”

Jake made a face.

“You know, Admiral, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but I don’t think they’re honest.”

“I like your duds.”

“Yessir. I’m going to visit the D.C. police department about their cameras. We’ll be wired in by tomorrow.”

“New York. We need every video feed in that city.”

“New York is going to be tougher because there is no central place to tap in. We need to let a subcontract.”

“For an illegal wiretapping?”

“It’s a couple of independents the agency uses from time to time. I can get them in here for an interview if you like.”

“You trust them?”

“Yes.”

“Sign’em up.”

A half hour later Tarkington called again. “One every two weeks, Admiral. Each has to be tested for a week before it can be put in service.”

“Terrific,” Jake muttered, wondering what the president would say when he heard. “Leave Tran and the Coastie up there to learn all they can. You jump a plane back. I want to see that capability sheet.”

“See you this evening.”

The little bell on the door rang when Tommy Carmellini pushed it open on Tuesday morning. He went inside, stood by the counter looking at the televisions and VCRs stacked on the back wall. There was even a computer. A black man came through the door at the far end of the counter and walked along behind it. “Hey, Carmellini, my man. What’s happenin’?”

“Hey, Scout. How come you guys got all these televisions and VCRs and stuff? These for sale?”

“We got’em’cause the owners couldn’t pay their bill, man, and we needed some security. You see anything there you like?”

“Ah … no. Came to discuss a business proposition.”

“Hey, Earlene, come out here,” he called. “Carmellini is here and wants to make us rich.”

Earlene was a striking, statuesque woman. She was fit and looked it — she had spent two years in the WNBA. Now she was half of S&A Electric. Carmellini didn’t know if Scout and Earlene were married; he had never thought to ask.

“Hey, Tommy.”

“Hey, Earlene.” He jerked his head toward the partition. “Anyone else back there?”

“Nope.”

“Mind if I look?”

Scout and Earlene glanced at each other. “It’s like that, huh?”

“Yeah.”

Carmellini walked around the counter, stepped to the door, and looked. There was no one. He came back to the counter and leaned on it again. “I need some serious help. The agency wants access to some computers around the country, like the video control computer at D.C. police headquarters, the mainframe at various credit card processors, airline reservation computers, all of it. A lot of this work will be in New York.”

“The agency? That mean CIA?”

“Yeah.”

“Man, I thought they already had wormholes and trap doors and all that shit.”

“If they did, I wouldn’t be standing here.”

Scout laughed. “Oh, man, this is heavy. The CIA?” He slapped his leg. “They know I’m a convicted felon?”

“Hell, no, they don’t know. My boss told me to get some people I trust. I trust you. I’ll give him an invoice from S&A Electric and he’ll sign it and you’ll get paid.”

“We’re electricians, not telephone or computer experts.”

“Oh, don’t give me that. I’d bet a paycheck that you do interior telephone wiring from time to time.”

“Well, yeah, sure. Got the stuff and know which wire is which, but we don’t have the passwords and phone company numbers and all that.”

“I do.”

“How much?” Earlene asked sharply.

“Your usual rate.”

Disgust registered on Scout’s face. “You a fuckin’ comedian, man. I’m going to take a chance on gettin’ arrested and losin’ my fuckin’ electrician’s license for my fuckin’ usual rate? Enough already. I ain’t got time for your shit today, Carmellini.”

“If we get popped, the charges will get squashed. We’re working for the CIA, not some cracker hacker.”

“We?”

“I’ll be there, too, for some of it. I have a lot of projects and I can’t do them all. I need help. I told my boss I trust you. He trusts me, so that’s good enough for him.”

“I don’t want to bust your bubble, Tommy, but what if I get a little tempted?”

“Like I said, I trust you, Scout. You and Earlene. We know each other. You decide to cross me, better kill me first.”

“So that’s how it is?”

“Yeah.”

“I hear you, man.”

Earlene snorted. “Hell, we’re so far down the food chain that when we finally get a government contract, the work is illegal.”

“I brought you this deal because you’re a minority-owned business.”

“Female-owned, too,” Earlene said. “I got fifty-one percent.”

“The rising tide of social progress has lifted your boat. Money only lightly soiled? How can you say no to an offer like this?”

They arrived at police headquarters an hour later. Tommy Carmellini presented a work order bearing the signature of a senior civil servant in the district public works department — Carmellini had signed the work order himself — and fifteen minutes later he was standing with Scout and Earlene in the main trunk room of police headquarters.

Carmellini had briefed them on the way downtown. Now they identified the incoming video lines, the camera control lines, and the feed to the main computer. As Carmellini suspected, there were bundles of unused telephone and fiber-optic lines coming into the police station, a legacy of the massive bandwidth build-out during the final days of the great tech bubble that caused every street in the center of the city to be dug up and poorly repaved, sometimes numerous times as company after company laid their own lines willy-nilly under the streets, one atop the other. The bandwidth gold rush was aided and abetted by the city fathers, who pocketed campaign contributions and refused to force the network companies to pay for the damage they did to the pavement and underlying roadbase. As usual in America, when the bubble popped and the dust settled it was the taxpayers driving on ruined streets who got the bill for the incompetence, greed, and stupidity of their elected leaders.

When they finished in the police station, Carmellini and company went outside, set up four barricades around the nearest manhole, and pried off the lid. As Scout and Earlene worked underground, Carmellini consulted the maps he had stolen during the weekend from the network companies. When Scout called for it, he passed down equipment.

By six that night the ad hoc computer center in the basement of CIA headquarters was receiving the feed from police headquarters. Carmellini stood behind Hudson and Vance and watched as they manipulated the video cameras in public sites all across the city, zooming in, focusing, tracking specific people.

“How is your recognition program coming?” Carmellini asked.

“We should be ready for a trial by tomorrow night. Get it up and running, start hunting glitches.”

“Okay.”

“We managed to hack into three of the larger banks’ credit card operations today,” Zelda Hudson reported. “We can do data searches, construct time lines and credit histories, get addresses and references, basically see whatever they have.”

Carmellini clapped.

Zelda bowed her head in acknowledgment as her cheeks flushed with pleasure. The security measures had been unexpectedly challenging, and she had enjoyed every minute of it. With Zip watching, tossing in suggestions, they had gotten it done. “We’re a good team,” she told him now, and he grinned at her.

Tommy Carmellini slapped them both on their shoulders, then headed for the cafeteria to get a sandwich as the campus emptied out. Zelda and Zip didn’t yet have a car, but they had arranged to ride with a car pool, so he was relieved of chauffeur duties.

He was getting more than a little peeved at Arch Foster and Norv Lalouette. He had been waiting for them to drop the other shoe, and they hadn’t. The waiting was hard.

Arch and Norv were slimy and had an odor about them. In contrast, Scout had done a stretch in the joint for stealing money and drugs from people’s houses while he was working on their wiring systems, yet he didn’t stink like Arch and Norv. Those two …

When he finished his sandwich, Tommy walked back across the Langley campus to his building. The guard inspected his badge, then admitted him. On the third floor another guard also inspected his badge. As he walked down the hall the sensors in the ceiling read his badge electronically. He opened the cypherlock to his office, turned on the lights, and punched his secret code into the keypad, disabling the zone alarms. He sat in his chair, stirred through the stuff in his in-basket, looked at the evening through his window, and thought about things.

It would be interesting to see what was in Arch Foster’s house or apartment. And Norv’s, for that matter. What in the devil were those two jerks up to?

He picked up the telephone book for the Metro area and looked up Foster. Let’s see … Foster, A., Alice, Allen, Archibald … Archibald C. A house in Silver Spring, looks like.

Lalouette … He wasn’t in the book. Probably an unlisted number.

The days passed one by one, and Jake Grafton felt the pressure intensely. He could almost hear the doomsday clock ticking. Each day, each hour, each minute that passed was gone forever. He couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, and he couldn’t get the problems he faced out of his mind.

The computer teams made up of NSA and CIA experts worked hard on software programs, integrating information from dozens of sources, all unauthorized, to which Tommy Carmellini and his friends provided access. Jake put Zelda to work researching Frouq al-Zuair and the Sword of Islam.

He talked to the president’s aide twice a day, talked to federal agencies and individual members of his staff at all hours of the day or night. The president, state department, and federal law enforcement agencies were working their foreign resources, covertly and overtly. Everyone was putting in brutal hours. Tempers were short, the pressure intense — and that worried him. If he got too focused on the here and now he would lose track of the big picture. His job, he well knew, was to drive the ship, not stoke the boilers. Fortunately Gil Pascal was shouldering a huge share of the load, which helped enormously.

He forced himself to take time to read the papers, to keep up with world events. He even took his wife to a movie, but it didn’t help. He ignored the actors on the screen and thought about nuclear weapons.

Toad briefed him every morning on progress with the new radiation detectors before Jake sat down with Pascal to review progress. “The problem,” Toad said one morning, “is that they detect everything. Tons of radioactive materials move through our cities and ports every day, radioactive waste, hospital isotopes, research materials …. Food processors even use isotopes to radiate produce.”

“We’re running in place,” Jake muttered. “We don’t have anything to grab on to.” “Hey, CAG,” Toad said, “something good will happen. We’ll get a break. You gotta have faith.”

Jake stared at Tarkington, who hadn’t called him CAG in years. The old naval aviation acronym stood for Commander Air Group and was pronounced to rhyme with “rag”; it had been Jake’s title when he and Toad met years ago on a cruise to the Mediterranean.

“You gotta have faith,” Toad stated dogmatically. “The good guys always win in the long run.”

If only that were true!

“That clock—” Jake pointed at the government-issue electric clock that hung on the wall opposite his desk. “Take it down and get rid of it. I’m tired of looking at it.”

Toad bit his lip. “Yes, sir,” he said.

On the evening of the seventh day after leaving Karachi, Olympic Voyager passed Sharm el Sheikh and entered the Gulf of Suez. The next morning at dawn she picked up a pilot at the port of Suez and entered the canal. Nine days after leaving Karachi, she eased against a quay in Port Said, at the northern end of the canal.

From his perch on the wing of the bridge, Dutch Vandervelt watched as the passenger went down the permanent ladder on the starboard side of the ship to the gangway the dockworkers had pushed against the lower steps. Once on the quay they crossed it and disappeared from view. The first mate had only spoken to him on two occasions after their conversation on that first night. Once the man asked for a ladder to get to the containers stacked above deck level, and the next time, as the ship entered the Red Sea, he reported that the job was done.

“I am finished. I shall leave the ship at Port Said.”

“What about your tools, your gear?”

“Everything is in the other two containers. Off-load all six at Port Said.”

“Are the weapons armed?”

“Don’t ask foolish questions,” the man snapped. “I have installed new shipping documents on the containers. Off-load them at Port Said and forget you ever talked to me.”

That, Dutch Vandervelt knew, was sound advice. He lit a cigarette and watched a dock crane lift the first container from the top of its stack. Lee, the second mate, supervised the hookup. Once he looked up at the bridge at Dutch, who pretended not to notice.

The stevedores were hooking up the second container when Dutch realized Captain Pappadopoulus was standing beside him. Fortunately the breeze carried away his stench. An unshaven, heavyset man, the captain wore filthy trousers, carpet slippers, and a shirt that had once been white. He hadn’t bothered to tuck his shirttail into his trousers. He put a hand on the railing to steady himself and peered myopically at the containers on the deck.

“Get them off my ship,” he shouted hoarsely at Lee, and waved his other hand, making a brushing gesture. “Get that shit off my ship.”

“Captain,” Vandervelt said, “this isn’t the time or place to make a scene. Why don’t you go below?”

Pappadopoulus glared sullenly at his first mate. “Don’t give me orders, you son of a bitch. I’m the master of this vessel.”

“I’m not giving you orders, sir. I merely made a suggestion. Your officers and crew will get the containers unloaded expeditiously and have the ship under way in about an hour.”

“Never should have agreed to this fucking deal,” Pappadopoulus muttered, and turned to look again at the offending containers. “I’ve spent my life sailing from Third World shithole to shithole, hauling trash, dealing with trash.” He glanced again at Vandervelt. “Trash like you. All my wasted life. But I was honest, did honest work, earned honest money. Not much of it, you understand. Still, the money was clean. Didn’t stink. Wasn’t bloody.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Clean money, by God. Not like this Arab shit.”

For the first time he looked at the quays and piers and warehouses and the pollution cloud tailing out to sea from the city. “The asshole of the world, by God.” He snorted. “Appropriate, I suppose.”

Now he half turned and stared owlishly at Vandervelt. “I haven’t got that many years left. You’re young. Sold your fucking soul young. I pity you, you miserable bastard.”

Pappadopoulus headed for the ladder. He kept his hands on the railings or hatch or bridge fixtures as he went, whatever he could reach, steadying himself against the nonexistent roll of the ship.

Dutch Vandervelt caught a glimpse of his own reflection in a bridge window. He looked pasty-faced and drawn.

The old man was a sot, a worthless friggin’ drunk, but he called it right. Vandervelt had sold his soul for money, and he knew it. “I pity me, too,” he muttered.

Oh, shit, what had he done? Why oh why had he ever agreed to do this?

For money!

He did it for the money. And if those bombs ever exploded, he was going to have to live with it the rest of his life.

He paced the bridge thinking about that.

On her fourth day in Zurich, Anna Modin returned to the hotel in the afternoon after another round of meetings with Swiss bankers. A consortium of companies wanted to sell computers and software in the Middle East; their European banks wanted Walney’s to finance the buyers and bear the risk if the buyers defaulted. Of course, the credit ratings of some of the buyers were less than sterling. Negotiations had been tense.

She had three messages on her voice mail. The first two were from bank officers in Cairo — she had already called them before she left the host bank. The third message was from a man who merely said the. name of a local restaurant and a time — nothing else. She played the message three times before she erased it.

It was Ilin’s voice. Modin was sure of it. She hadn’t talked to him in three years, but she was certain.

Anna Modin glanced at her watch. She had thirty minutes.

Frouq al-Zuair sculled the rowboat along the waterline of Olympic Voyager on the side of the ship away from the quay. The filthy water of the harbor had the clarity of motor oil and in a pinch could be used as a substitute for it. With zero visibility, there was no way for a diver to work except by feel. Consequently the diver was under the boat, being towed along with a rope around his waist. Fortunately the swell from the sea was almost nonexistent here in the harbor. Bubbles from the diver’s scuba gear merged with the ripples of the boat.

Zuair glanced upward at the wing of the bridge. Anyone standing there could see this boat near the ship’s hull, but that was a chance he would have to take. He glanced at the other ships in sight. No one seemed to be paying any attention to this rowboat.

Sinking a seagoing ship before she could get off a distress signal or a passing Samaritan could rescue the crew was not a job for an amateur, a fact of which Zuair was keenly aware. He had given the problem much thought. Starting a fire in the engine room would do it, of course, but the ship might drift for days. He could carry plastique aboard, yet knowing where and how to place the charges so that she would sink quickly would require a demolition expert with a thorough knowledge of the ship’s systems.

The best bet, he decided, was to place charges below the waterline, then detonate them. No doubt there were acoustic transmitters that could be reliably used for underwater charges, but he didn’t have access to those. He was using what was available.

He had made up four bombs containing twenty-five pounds of plastique in each. He had rigged up motorcycle batteries to fire the fuses, three for each charge, and a twenty-four-hour timer to trigger them. Each bomb was wrapped in thick polystyrene and sealed to keep the water out. This package was placed inside another polystyrene bag, one containing six powerful electromagnets and two batteries, and after all the air was carefully squeezed out, sealed again. The switch to turn on the power to the electromagnets was inside the bag; the diver would have to manipulate it by feel.

The four bombs lay in the bottom of the boat. He had sealed them up just an hour ago, immediately after he started the timers. The timers were ticking.

He stopped the boat about seventy-five feet aft of the bow and tugged on the diver’s rope. The hull of the ship was encrusted with weeds and crud that the diver had to scrape away with a tool he had attached to his wrist, or the electromagnets would not stick. Zuair checked his watch. The minutes passed slowly. Three minutes … four … five. At six minutes the diver’s head reappeared in the narrow gap between the boat and the ship’s hull. The man’s head broke the surface, then a hand. The diver was in a black wet suit, wearing a mask, scuba tanks, and a mouthpiece.

After another glance at the empty bridge wing, Zuair braced himself and carefully picked up one of the bombs — which weighed about sixty pounds each. The boat rocked dangerously. Trying not to capsize, he passed the bomb over the stern to the diver, who let the weight push him under.

Less than a minute later a hand rose above the water. A thumb in the air signaled success.

Zuair sculled the boat another hundred feet aft, then tugged on the line again.

When Anna Modin entered the restaurant she saw Janos Ilin sitting at a table at the back of the room. He looked exactly as she remembered him. He stood as she approached and helped her with her chair.

They chatted for several minutes as if they were old acquaintances. Ilin led the conversation along innocuous lines. After dinner they left the restaurant together.

Walking the streets of Zurich, he strolled briskly and kept a wary eye peeled to ensure they weren’t being followed. As he walked he talked. “That CD you brought from Cairo is full of Walney’s Bank records. They show how the money flowed to Frouq al-Zuair for the purchase of those four warheads. It’s a long, convoluted trail.”

She nodded.

“I want you to take it to a man in America. His name is Jake Grafton.” He gave her Jake’s address in Washington.

“When?”

“Now. In the morning on the first flight. The weapons were put aboard a freighter, Olympic Voyager, in Karachi nine days ago. He needs to know that, too.”

“Don’t you have any other way of getting him this information?”

“No.” He said the word abruptly. “I’m operating on my own. There are factions in the SVR and Russian government that would call what I’m doing treason. I faked up a reason to go to America several weeks ago, but I cannot go again now. I do not have a plausible reason in position. Perhaps I should have, but I don’t. If I go to America, the people in Moscow will suspect treason and everything I have worked for all my life will collapse.”

“I guess I always knew you were on your own,” she admitted. “That’s the only reason I did as you suggested, went where you wanted me to go.”

Ilin nodded, his lips a thin line. “Perhaps we’re both fools.” He gestured irritably. “I’m asking you to risk your life. Abdul Abn Saad and his friends will suspect you betrayed them. They’ll come after you. The fact that you’ve already told what you knew won’t matter — they’ll want revenge. Tell Jake Grafton that and he will try to protect you.”

“I saw the bombs.”

“I know you did. Grafton will believe you. That is why I’m asking you to do this. Abdul Abn Saad is one of the most dangerous men alive — he’s up to his eyeballs in this mess. The Americans must be told.”

He stopped and faced her. “You understand, if those weapons explode, the world that we know will cease to exist. The world will enter a new dark age. Billions of people will starve. I don’t know what your politics are, and I don’t care, but that outcome must be prevented.”

“When I don’t return to Cairo Saad will look in the bank for an accomplice. He’ll find your agent.”

Ilin made a gesture of helplessness. “Perhaps he won’t find her. If he does, she knows nothing that will help him. She, too, is a soldier — she must take her chances.”

“No,” said Anna Modin, shaking her head. “I must return to Cairo and get her. I shall take her with me.”

“Too dangerous. I forbid it. They may capture you both, which is an unacceptable risk. You know too much. You know me! They’ll torture you until you tell them everything. If the woman in Cairo dies, we’ve lost a soldier. If I die, we’ve lost the army and the war. There will be no one between us and them.”

Janos Ilin cocked his head and examined her eyes.

“Do you understand?”

“I do understand. Years ago you bet your life on your ability to find people with integrity to help you. If you made a single error you would forfeit your life. As a person who grew up in communist Russia I appreciate the magnitude of the risk you chose to run and your courage. You are either the greatest man who ever lived or the biggest fool. That question remains to be decided.”

Anna Modin paused and touched Ilin’s arm. “I do not question your assessment of the risk. On the other hand, if we abandon this woman we will be no better than Abdul Abn Saad or Frouq al-Zuair or General Petrov. They are the evil I am fighting against.”

His eyes looked as hard as the steel in a rifle barrel. “No.”

“Yes,” she said simply. “I will not abandon that woman. There is no other way, unless you go to America yourself. Give me the CD and tell me her name. She and I shall go to America together.”

Ilin had no choice. He didn’t like it, but he gave her the name and the disk.

Dutch Vandervelt made a decision as the containers were being off-loaded to the quay. He decided he would send a message telling about the bombs in the clear on the international distress frequency as soon as the ship was out of Egyptian waters. Every ship in the eastern Med would copy the message, and they would relay it to governments around the world …

He had grabbed for the gold ring and knew now that it had been a horrible mistake. Oh, Christ, what had he done? Even that sot Pappadopoulus had seen the evil of it.

He stared at his hands. They would put him in prison, probably. Being human, he thought about that.

When the last container from Olympic Voyager’s deck was on the quay, the pilot came up the ladder with a port official. They climbed to the bridge. Dutch Vandervelt had never met the pilot, who had little to say. The port official was overly friendly, unctuous.

“Your friends suggested that you wanted no written record of your port call, for private reasons, all legitimate of course, and we wish to help you in any way we can …”

After negotiation, five hundred dollars American was agreed upon. Vandervelt removed a wad of bills from his pocket and peeled off ten fifties.

Dutch Vandervelt surveyed the horizon. The brisk wind off the desert carried a load of dust, restricting visibility. Five or six miles, Dutch thought idly, trying to get his mind off bombs and fanatics and his own stupidity. He was looking with unseeing eyes at the gulls wheeling and soaring about the bridge when the radio operator ran onto the bridge.

“The com gear is ruin! Someone smash the radios!”

“What?”

“Someone hammer on the radios — probably before we dock. Smash the radios all to hell.”

One of the crew? Naw! It couldn’t have been the pilot — he never left the bridge. The port official went ashore immediately after he got his bribe.

That fucking nuclear engineer! He must have done it just before he went ashore! But why?

Then he knew: They didn’t want anyone on Olympic Voyager sending messages.

He looked about desperately. There were people on the quay, men of course — Arabs — everywhere. The port official was walking across the deck, heading for the top of the ladder that would take him down to the quay.

My God, they must intend to sink the ship, to kill everyone aboard! Suddenly his legs would no longer support his weight. He grabbed for the rail to keep from falling.

Of course, they can’t leave a shipload of sailors to tell who, what, where, and how after … afterward.

What in the name of Christ have I done?

“What I do, sir?”

He shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts.

“What to do, sir?” It was the radio operator, speaking to him.

Maybe they wouldn’t kill him.

“Here,” Dutch said, and reached into his pocket. He pulled out the wad of bills and thrust them at the man. “Take this, get off the ship. They’re going to kill us all, I think. Go down the ladder — right now — and walk away. Don’t look back.”

The man stared at him.

“For God’s sake, you fool, take the money and go!” He wrapped the man’s hand around the money and pushed him away.

A moment later Dutch saw the radio operator crossing the deck. He paused at the top of the starboard ladder, looked back at him, then disappeared down it behind the port official.

Vandervelt waved feebly to Lee, the second mate, on the deck. Ten minutes later the ship was moving away from the dock under its own power.

The pilot boat was waiting outside the harbor, as usual.

Vandervelt signaled all stop on the engine telegraph. He had no money for the pilot, and told him so. The pilot was horrified.

“You must pay me!”

“Write a letter to the company, you wop bastard. Now get the fuck off this ship.”

“That no way to talk. Talk respectly. I a pilot. Highly skilled.”

“Get off this ship. Now! Get down there.”

After a last look at Dutch’s face, the pilot stepped back several paces, then turned and made for the ladder to the main deck.

As the ship slowed, the little pilot boat moved in toward the starboard ladder. The pilot waited at the top with the mate, talking volubly and gesturing grandly at the bridge.

Lee looked at Vandervelt, who stood impassively.

The truth was there was nothing he could do — he had realized that standing on the bridge when the ship was at the dock. If he left the ship, they would kill him. If they intended to sink the ship, they probably would. He and the crew had no weapons aboard — they were completely defenseless.

He was mulling all this, trying to see a way out, when he realized with a start that Lee was signaling to him, waving his arms … and four men carrying weapons topped the ladder. Backpacks hung from their shoulders.

In less than a minute they were on the bridge, pushing Lee in front of them with a gun in his back.

“Get under way,” Frouq al-Zuair snapped, and pointed a submachine gun at Vandervelt’s midriff.

Lee stared at him, his eyes big as saucers, as if to say, See, this is where our greed has taken us.

“We had a deal,” Vandervelt managed.

The burst hit him in the stomach and hammered him against the engine telegraph pedestal. Dutch Vandervelt felt everything inside coming loose. With his hands on his stomach, he slid toward the floor, unable to stay erect.

As his blood pressure fell, Dutch heard the jingle of the telegraph, heard Zuair say something to Lee. The last thing he saw was the dirty green tile on the deck, then he lost consciousness. Sixty seconds later his heart stopped.

Zuair and his holy warriors were merciless. As the ship worked up to fifteen knots, they went methodically through the ship killing the crewmen, shooting them where they stood. Lee they left alive, on the bridge conning the ship, with a man standing behind him with a submachine gun against his back.

As the afternoon wore on Zuair set charges of plastique explosive that he and his men had carried aboard in their backpacks. It was possible, he knew, that the charges on the port side of the ship, below the waterline, might be torn off by the sea. He had to allow for that possibility.

He planted charges around the pipes that fed oil to the boilers and the water intakes from the sea. Just to make sure, he set incendiary charges with delay fuses on the ladders leading up from the engine room.

At sunset, with the charges set, he climbed the ladder to the bridge. From the wings of the bridge he used binoculars to survey the surface of the ocean. One ship in sight, on an opposite course, apparently heading for Port Said. Several miles behind Olympic Voyager and offset from her wake was a cabin cruiser on a parallel course.

Satisfied, he walked back across the bridge. As he walked he pulled a pistol from his waistband. When he passed behind Lee, he shot the second mate in the back of the head.

“Put them in there,” he said to his man, and nodded toward the hatchway to the radar shack. “Lock the door. We don’t want bodies floating.”

The sun sank into the sea and black night enveloped them. An hour later a large container ship appeared from the haze behind them, overtaking. It was a bit to port. He watched the lights of the ship through his binoculars, then turned the helm and let the ship’s head come starboard twenty degrees. Then he recentered the rudder.

It took almost two hours before the other ship’s lights were fading into the haze again.

He consulted the radar display. He didn’t know how to operate it or the scale of the presentation, but he saw no blips close by. That would have to do.

With his man tending the helm, trying to hold a steady course, Frouq al-Zuair climbed down the ladder and went along the deck to the ladder leading below. Once in the lower deck passageway, he made his way to the ladder well that led down to the engine room.

Two bodies lay sprawled on the deck. Zuair ignored them as he studied the engine controls. Tentatively he closed the lever he thought must be the throttle. The beating of the engine slowed, and the revolutions dropped on the RPM gauge.

He didn’t know how to secure the flow of fuel to the fireboxes, so he didn’t try. He scurried up the ladder well and left the hatches open behind him.

On the weather deck he could feel the absence of vibration as the ship began to respond to the swells.

The man from the bridge was already standing by the starboard ladder. The other two arrived as the cabin cruiser made its approach.

When he and his men were aboard the boat, Zuair removed a radio controller from his backpack and turned it on. The green light glowed in the darkness. He pushed the button … and heard the thump of the charges within the ship going off.

Olympic Voyager’s running lights were still on, so the ship was easy to see at a hundred yards from the cockpit of the boat.

He didn’t know how long it would take for the ship to sink. A half hour passed as the ship lay motionless on the sea, then another.

He could detect no noticeable settling. Frustrated, Zuair pushed the second detonator to explode the incendiary charges.

Five minutes later a dull glow could be seen amidships. Fire must be coming up the passageways and ladder wells from the engine room. Soon the watchers smelled smoke, noxious, oily, greasy fumes.

The glow finally became open flame. Still Zuair waited. One of the men wanted to go before a ship came into view, but Zuair cut him off with a curt word.

He looked at his watch repeatedly. Finally he heard the explosions from the charges he had set while the ship was moored in Port Said, one boom, then two quick ones ten seconds later, and a fourth fifteen seconds after that. At last!

They pulled off and waited as the flame from the burning ship lit up the sea for a half mile in every direction. The ship soon began listing.

Frouq al-Zuair took the helm himself and steered the boat back toward the burning, sinking ship. He used a powerful spotlight to inspect her. She was visibly settling, listing at least twenty degrees. Satisfied, he turned the boat away from the ship and told the helmsman to take over.

As the boat sped away from the derelict, Zuair watched the burning ship in his binoculars. He hoped it would sink before dawn. “Inshallah,” he whispered, God willing.