The First Casualty

14

Puddles of melting slush along the dock were tiny lakes in some arctic tundra. Jason hardly noticed. He was intent on the yacht slowly tugging at her mooring outside the harbor, as subtle among the working craft as a moose in rut. Although the temperature was struggling toward Sark’s comparatively moderate maritime climate, there was no one in sight. The half dozen fishing boats, the ones that would be full of sport anglers in summer, had left at sunup in pursuit of the mullet, sole, and mackerel that haunted the rocky shores. The fishing was actually better in fall and winter, sufficient reason for professionals to brave the churning, angry Channel waters.

So, how was he going to contact Momma? The president’s cell phone number was a less tightly guarded secret than hers, and Narcom existed in no directory, telephone or otherwise.

Overhead, a gannet cried out as it cut circles in an empty blue sky. With nothing better to do, Jason watched the bird peel off into a dive that would have done credit to a fighter. Its bill barely rippling the water, the fowl struggled back to altitude, a shiny silver morsel in its beak. Jason wondered why the bird didn’t rest in the swells to enjoy its catch.

A sound of an outboard motor distracted him. A launch was departing the yacht. He was chagrined to realize she had been expecting him.

Once aboard, Samedi, still clad all in black, conducted him across a shiny teak deck to a pair of French doors of the same wood with brilliantly shined brass handles. Opening one, Samedi ushered him inside, closed the door, and disappeared on silent feet.

Jason was in the ship’s grand salon, standing on what he guessed was an Oushak carpet that was worth more than most houses on the island. The bulkheads were of dark wood and hung with oils, two of which were either by seventeenth-century Bolognese painter Guido Reni or damn good copies. Two near-life-size gilt Nubians guarded the far door, possibly as expensive as they were tacky.

The light came not from windows — there were none — but from an indirect source in the deck above. It shone down on a Boulle desk, lined in bronze and inlaid with fruitwood. Momma sat behind it.

She displayed her usual dental brilliance. “Mornin’, Jason.” One massive hand indicated a pair of equally ornate wing chairs upholstered in red velvet. “Have a seat. Had breakfast yet? This boat has a full kitchen. Or should I say ‘galley’ ”?

Jason sat carefully, uncertain if he was lowering himself into a priceless, if gaudy, antique or a reproduction. “Coffee would be nice.” He gazed around the room. “Must be good to have friends with nice toys.”

With this degree of opulence, must be a very successful Mafia don. Or head of a medium-size oil sheikdom, someone more prone to extravagance than taste.

“Convenient, anyway. You have a chance to read the book I left with you?”

“I, ah, got interrupted.”

Momma’s eyebrows arched. “On this island? By what, an escaped cow?”

Jason was spared the necessity of an answer by the arrival through the far door of a man in a white jacket. He carried a silver tray bearing a steaming Meissen pot with matching sugar bowl, cream pitcher, cups, and saucers. Jason had no idea how he had been summoned.

Momma waited until he had set the tray down on the desk and departed before she began to pour a stream of fragrant black coffee. “You showed up, I figured you’d read the book.”

He stood to take the cup she was offering him. “Maybe you can just tell me about it?”

She did.

Jason was uncomfortable balancing his cup and saucer on a knee, wishing there was a table nearby to set it on. “Sounds more like sci-fi.”

“A lot of people wish.”

Jason took a long sip of the coffee. There was something in it. Chicory, perhaps? “And you really believe this, this force, whatever it is, took down the Air France Airbus. That there was some kind of directed weapon, like a laser beam? We’re talking a death ray, like out of the comic books?”

“The people at both Le Bourget and Toulon don’t see anything comical about it. Some bunch call theyselves the Islamic Maghreb claim credit for it.”

“I didn’t see that in the news.”

“You won’t. No point in starting a world panic.”

“Then how do we know they really are responsible?”

“We don’t. But we may be fixin’ to find out in the next ten days.”

“How’s that?” Jason asked, skeptical.

“Last week, they broadcast a demand over Al Jazeera, say we got two weeks to release every prisoner at Guantanamo or they going to shoot down another airliner.”

“You believe that?”

Momma shrugged. “There’s them what don’t want to find out. You got ten days left.”

“The BEA and the manufacturer believe.” It was a statement, not a question.

Momma refilled her cup. “From the voice and flight recorders, as well as the parts of the plane the French were able to retrieve, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board is of the opinion there is no known force in nature that could twist and bend metal like that, nor any that could have caused the readings on the flight recorder.”

Jason stood to place his empty cup on the desk, shaking his head no as she held up the coffeepot. “So what makes them so sure of the source?”

“If you’d read the book, you’d know.”

“You tell me.”

Momma lifted an arm to consult a diamond-encrusted antique Girard-Perregaux that Jason knew had at one time belonged to Elisabeth, wife of Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Joseph. The empress had been considered one of the most beautiful women in Europe, even by 1898, at age sixty, when she was stabbed on the streets of Geneva. Her assassin, an Italian anarchist, supposedly snatched the watch as he plunged his homemade dagger into her chest. He still had it when arrested. How its present owner came by it was a subject upon which Jason could only speculate.

The watch was a shiny mole on an arm larger than a leg of lamb. “Ain’ got time to go into all that.” She produced a manila envelope, handing it cross the desk. “It’s all in there.”

Jason took the envelope. “You in a hurry?”

“Nope. You are. You got a flight outta Guernsey into Heathrow in a couple of hours. Only ten days left, remember?”

Jason was suddenly aware his mouth was open. This was the height of presumption even for Momma. “Oh? And just where am I going?”

“You decide once you read what I just gave you, that and the book. The job pays one million, no taxes. You’re going to want to put together a team. I’ll cover those expenses.”

“And just what, may I ask, makes you think I want the job?”

“Among other things, your old pal, Mahomet Moustaph, is involved.”

Jason ignored the sound of grinding of his own teeth.

“Last I heard, he was in some CIA hellhole of an interrogation center off the map.”

“He escaped.”

“But how…?”

“Not like them spooks over to Langley going to hand out press releases ever time they screw up. What I hear, though, is some of Moustaph’s throat-cutting buddies bribed the native guards.”

That was the problem with detention and interrogation centers located in places too remote to come to the attention of U.S. officialdom: The incentive to the locals in allowing such a place to exist was purely financial, not patriotic. Consequently, the natives were often for sale to the highest bidder.

Momma continued, “Thought of you the minute I heard.”

Well she might. Jason made no secret of the fact he viewed Moustaph as his own personal quarry. If there had been any doubt he would take the assignment, it vanished with the possibility he might be able to track down the man responsible for his wife’s death. Still, he wasn’t going to let Momma think she could evoke a Pavlovian response every time the man’s name came up.

“9/11 was a long time ago. Other than Moustaph, what makes you think I want the job?”

Momma’s brow furrowed as though she were in deep thought. “Well, first, you’re bored.”

“You’re guessing.”

“And you need to leave the island.”

“I can make my own arrangements.”

“And you came here.”

For that, he had no answer.

He turned to leave, stopped, and turned again. “If the location of this, this… thing is known, there are any number of ways to take it out without putting boots on the ground.”

Mamma nodded her agreement. “True. But a drone carrying a bomb can’t sift through the wreckage to make sure the machine is destroyed. Since it’s inside, the drone can’t confirm even if it’s there, for that matter.”

“No, but a team of Marine Force Recon, SEALs, or Delta Force could if confirmation is essential.”

“That would be putting those boots on the ground, wouldn’t it? No, way it is, the country has enough enemies in that part of the world to be sending in troops to blow up a mosque.”

“A mosque?”

Momma pointed to the envelope in his hand. “Jason, you really need to read this stuff yourself, ’stead of wasting time and maybe missing your plane. We know the area from which the weapon came. Some kind of triangulation I don’t pretend to understand. We have an idea of the size of a machine that could strike from that distance. Only building big enough to hold it around there is a mosque, a rather famous one as it turns out.”

A job too dangerous for uniformed professionals in a hostile and volatile area. Sometimes Jason wished he had a higher boredom threshold.