“That’s specific,” Max said sardonically
“What about my little girl?” MacD asked, mustering as much dignity as he could. “Now that Smith, or this Bahar guy, knows Ah’ve been found out, they’re goin’ to kill her. They’ve let me talk to her over a webcam. The guys with her are strapped with explosive belts. They’re going to blow up my baby.”
“Who said anything about Smith and Bahar knowing we’ve discovered why you’re here?”
“Ah don’t understand.”
“It’s simple, really. You contact Smith like you’re supposed to and report that the rig was gone by the time we got to it.”
“Okaaay,” Lawless said, drawing out the word as if to draw out more information.
“And then we rescue your daughter, figure out what these sons of bitches are really up to, and nail them to the nearest outhouse door.”
AFTER THE LONGEST, hottest shower he’d had in a long time, Cabrillo went to find Linda Ross. She’d write up a full report of her ordeal, but he wanted to get the highlights quickly to help establish their next course of action. He went first to her cabin to discover that Soleil was there and just out of the shower herself. She had one towel wrapped around her and tucked under her arms and another wrapped in a turban, covering her hair.
“Again, you catch me when I am not at my best,” she said with a coy smile.
“Story of my life,” Juan replied. “Good timing with everything but the ladies. Linda didn’t show you to one of the guest cabins?”
“She did, but your selection of feminine toiletries is a little lacking. She was kind enough to let me use hers.”
“I’ll get on the steward,” he promised, and then asked with genuine concern, “How are you?”
A shadow passed behind her Gallic eyes. And, just as quickly, it faded. “I have endured worse.”
“I read up on some of your accomplishments,” Cabrillo said. “And I was very impressed. However, there is nothing quite like being held against your will. That lack of freedom and control can get to anyone. Powerlessness is perhaps the worst feeling in the world.”
She opened her mouth as if to reply, then suddenly plopped herself on Linda’s bed and buried her face in her hands. She sobbed quietly at first, but soon it grew, until her whole body was shaking. Juan wasn’t the type to be put off by a woman crying, at least when she had a reason. Pointless histrionics just irked him, but something like this naked expression of fear was something he understood all too well.
He sat on the bed next to her but kept his hands to himself. If she wanted human contact, it would be up to her to initiate it. His instincts at times like this were spot-on. In seconds, Soleil had pressed her face into his shoulder. He put an arm around her and simply waited for her to get it out of her system. Less than a minute later she straightened and sniffled. Juan plucked a couple of tissues from the box on the nightstand and handed them to her. She dabbed at her eyes and blew her nose.
“Pardonnez-moi. That was not very ladylike.”
“You’ll be all right now,” he predicted. “I can tell you are a strong woman, but you’ve bottled up your emotions for a long time. I suspect you never showed weakness to your jailers.”
“Non. Not once.”
“But that doesn’t mean you don’t have any. So they come out in a rush in the end. Nothing to it.”
“Thank you,” she said softly. Her voice strengthened, and a little smile played at the corners of her mouth. “And thank you for saving my life. Linda has such faith in you that she never doubted our rescue. I was not so sure. But now?” The smile turned into a grin. “Now I think you can do anything.”
“Just as soon as I get my red cape back from the cleaners.”
The reference confused her for a moment. “Oh, your comicbook Superman.”
“That’s me, but I don’t do tights.” Juan turned serious. “I need to ask you some questions. If it’s too difficult, we can do it another time.”
“Non. I will do my best.”
“Or I can come back when you’re dressed.”
“I have a towel. It is enough,” she said with European pragmatism.
“Did you overhear anything during your captivity? Anything that would give us a clue what this is all about?”
“No. Nothing. They took me from my home in Zurich. Two men broke into my house and attacked me while I was asleep. While one held me down the other gave me a shot. It knocked me out. When I came awake again, I was in that cell where you found me. I did not even know that it was an oil platform until Linda told me. You see, they had drugged her too. But she says she woke in a helicopter on its way out to sea.”
Juan knew that, like himself, Linda would have remained motionless after coming to in order to get a sense of her surroundings. It was a trick he’d taught her.
“Do you have any idea why you were targeted?”
“I assume it has to do with my father,” Soleil replied. “He is a wealthy and powerful man.”
“I met him in Singapore when he hired us to go into Burma to look for you.”
“It is true that I was planning on going to Bangladesh with a friend of mine on an extreme backpacking trip.”
“We know. The man behind your abduction went so far as to update your website to make it look like you’d left for that trip. They covered themselves well. Anything specific about your father? Any recent business deals?”
“We are not so close anymore,” she admitted sadly.
Cabrillo knew that pretty soon she’d have to be told that in all likelihood her father was dead. Bahar had what he wanted, so Roland Croissard had become a loose end. They would keep searching, of course, but the odds were long that the Swiss financier had been left alive.
“Okay, then,” Juan said, and stood. “You get some rest, and we’ll talk more later.”
“There are some people I’d like to call. My father and some friends.”
“I might as well tell you now. Your father is missing. We’ve been trying to reach him for several days but haven’t had any luck. Also, I’m afraid that until we have a better handle on the situation we need to keep up the pretense that you died back on that oil rig.”
“My father? Missing?”
“And the last time anyone saw him he was with the man that most likely kidnapped you in Zurich.”
Guilt, fear, and anger played across her face in a kaleidoscope of emotions. She sat as still as a statue, a beautiful mannequin, her soul having just been torn out.
“I am sorry,” Juan said softly. He wished she hadn’t asked about making calls. She wasn’t ready to hear this kind of news. Not now.
Soleil finally looked up at him, a pleading look in her eyes that he wanted more than anything else to satiate. He’d never seen such naked vulnerability. Now he was in territory where he wasn’t all that comfortable because it brought up feelings of his own loss. He hadn’t been told about his wife’s death until he’d returned from a mission for the CIA and she’d been in the ground for weeks.
With relief he saw her firm up, straighten her shoulders, and harden her eyes. “I think I would like to get dressed and walk the deck, if that is okay. I have not seen sunshine or felt fresh air in a long time.” She pointed to a suitcase just outside the bathroom that he recognized as coming from the wardrobe section of the Magic Shop. Linda and Kevin Nixon had already kitted her out.
“Of course,” Juan quickly agreed. “If you need anything, feel free to ask any of the crew. Even though we didn’t find you where we expected to, they’re all relieved that you’re safe.”
“Thank you for everything.”
“Cocktails in the dining room at six. Dinner’s casual, but I’ll wear my cape for you.”
She smiled wanly at his attempt at humor, and Cabrillo took his leave. He finally tracked down Linda. She was in the exercise room with Eddie Seng. Both were dressed in the traditional gi of martial arts training and were locked in a fight for dominance on the dojo floor.
“Not enough a
ction for one day?” Juan teased.
Linda flared. “That dirtball Smith got the drop on me back in the jungle, and I want Eddie to show me what I did wrong.”
Seng had degrees in several styles of fighting and was the Corporation’s instructor.
“It can wait. We need to talk.”
Linda bowed to Eddie and came across the padded mats in bare feet. “I’ll tell you right off the top that Smith didn’t give away much. As soon as he got me to Yangon he hit me with happy juice.”
“And you woke up on the chopper, heading out to the rig.”
“How did you know that?” she asked, one eyebrow arching.
“I’m Superman. Actually, I just had a chat with Soleil.”
“Chat, eh?”
Juan didn’t take the bait. “Was Smith with you in the chopper?”
“Yes. And he had the bag. And he made his only mistake. It was on the floor between him and the pilot, and, just before we landed, he opened it. Inside were ruby crystals, big ones. I’d say a foot long or longer, and they’d already been cut and polished. I’d never seen anything like it in my life.”
Cabrillo had a hard time believing this was all an elaborate smuggling scheme. There had to be something beyond that.
Linda was still talking. “Once we landed I continued to play rag doll. They took me straight to the cell with Soleil, so I don’t know if Smith hung around for the final act or not.”
“I suspect not. Bahar went through a lot of trouble to get that bag. He’d want the stones as soon as possible. Let me ask you something. I discovered that two entire floors of that rig were crammed with computers. I’m talking thousands of interlinked machines. Any ideas?”
“Ask the brain trust. Mark and Eric are the computer nerds.”
“Aren’t we supposed to call them ITs?”
“So I’m not politically correct. Sue me. Seriously, you’d have to ask them. I was shoved into the black hole of Calcutta as soon as I was aboard.”
Cabrillo found Mark and Eric in Stoney’s cabin. They were playing a video game on a giant flat-screen that was actually four edgeless panels mounted in a square. Juan understood that some games promoted actual skills, but he saw no redeeming features in the two of them racing a cartoon car with what looked like an aardvark behind the wheel through a shopping center.
“I guess you guys haven’t heard.”
“Heard what?”
“Croissard’s daughter was on that rig too. He was used to get to us. And MacD Lawless was a spy.”
“What?” the two crowed in unison.
“The real bad guy turns out to be Gunawan Bahar. He was the mastermind behind everything. So your priority is tearing into every part of his life. I want to know who he really is and what he’s after. When we first contacted Overholt about Bahar, he said that he wasn’t on the CIA’s radarscope, so you’re going to have to dig deep.”
“Hold on a sec,” Mark said. “MacD’s a spy? For who?”
Cabrillo laid out the whole convoluted story, summing up by saying that he and Max both agreed that Bahar felt the Corporation represented a direct threat to whatever he had planned. “Two final pieces,” he added as a further aside. “Linda saw a bunch of foot-long polished rubies in the bag we recovered in Myanmar, and I discovered that two decks of the oil platform had been converted into a massive server farm. Any thoughts?”
The two young geniuses glanced at each other for a moment as if syncing their minds. Mark finally spoke up. “Whatever they were, they weren’t rubies. Corundum, the base material for both rubies and sapphires—the difference being the presence of trace minerals that give them color, chromium for ruby, iron or titanium for sapphire—has a hexagonal crystal structure, but it’s tabular rather than linear.”
Cabrillo kept his face impassive while inside he was screaming, Speak English!
“What he’s saying,” Stone translated, “is that rubies don’t grow lengthwise like emerald or quartz, so it is unlikely that Linda saw foot-long rubies. They were some other type of crystals.”
That supported Juan’s theory that this wasn’t about gem smuggling, but this information got him no closer to the truth. “What about all the computers?”
Mark said, “Obviously Bahar needed to crunch some major numbers, but without knowing more about him or his goals it’s impossible to say exactly what or why.”
“Then you have your marching orders. I want answers.”
“You got it, boss man,” Stoney replied.
17
JOHN SMITH STEPPED OFF THE BOARDING STAIRS OF THE private jet and into the arms of Gunawan Bahar. The two embraced like brothers.
“You have done well,” Bahar said, holding Smith at arm’s length to look him in the eye.
“It was easier than we anticipated, especially after you brokered the deal with the army.” They spoke in English, the only language they had in common.
Smith really had taken the anonymous nom de guerre when he’d joined the Foreign Legion. He’d been born Abdul Mohammad in Algeria and, like many in his homeland, had a great deal of French blood in his veins after one hundred and thirty years of colonial occupation. Also, like many in his homeland, more than forty years of independence hadn’t eroded the hatred he felt for his nation’s former overlords. But rather than fight as an insurgent in his own country against a government he saw as corrupted by Western influences, he had decided to fight the beast from within and joined the Legion as a way of gaining military training and learning how to ingratiate himself with Europeans so that he could easily pass as one.
After his initial five-year contract, he left to join the Mujahadin, fighting the Russians in Afghanistan. The warfare he enjoyed, but the level of ignorance he encountered among the people came as a shock. He found they were all superstitious peasants who spent as much time warring among themselves as they did fighting the Soviets. Even the Great Sheik Bin Laden was a paranoid fanatic who actually believed that once the Russians were expelled they should take the fight directly to the infidels in the West. Though he’d been a playboy in his youth and enjoyed himself in European cities, Osama never understood the true might of a Western army. Battling Russian conscripts on soil that was foreign to them was a far cry from taking on the United States.
Bin Laden came to believe that martyrdom operations, as he liked to call suicide bombers, would bring about the destruction of the Western world. Abdul Mohammad wanted to see America brought to its knees, but he understood that blowing up a few buildings wasn’t going to change anything. In fact, it would harden the victims’ resolve and bring swift and deadly reprisals.
Though he did not know how, he knew there was a better way. It wasn’t until years later, long after Bin Laden took down the Twin Towers and ignited a powder keg that had hurt the Muslim world far more than the West, that Mohammad met Setiawan Bahar, Gunawan’s brother and namesake to his son. (The boy used in the Afghan operation had been a street urchin they had carefully coached not to talk to the infidels.) By the time they met, Mohammad was working for a private security company in Saudi Arabia, the flames of jihad having cooled in his belly. The Bahar brothers were in the country at a time when Wahabi fundamentalists were targeting Western interests. The pair was touring oil production facilities that were interested in buying electronic controls from one of their companies back in Jakarta.
Mohammad was their bodyguard for two weeks, and their full-time employee ever since.
They used him for their own corporate security as well as what they dubbed “special projects.” These ranged from corporate espionage to kidnapping rivals’ family members in order to win contracts at lower bids. The Bahar brothers, and then only Gunawan after Setiawan died of lung cancer, were very careful to shield themselves from any consequences of their more aggressive business dealings. The fact that the Corporation couldn’t trace their ownership of the J-61 oil platform was a testament to their care and caution.
What had bonded the three men originally was their belief that Bin
Laden’s tactics were doomed to fail. They agreed that they wanted the West to end its persistent meddling in the Middle East, but terrorism would never bring that about. In fact, it caused more interference. What the Muslim world needed was leverage over the United States. Since both sides needed oil, the one to run its factories and cars, the other for the tremendous revenue, something else had to be found.
It was four years earlier when Gunawan had read an article in a science magazine—in his dentist’s office, of all places—that he found a way to get that leverage. He had placed Abdul in charge of the venture and gave him near-limitless resources. The very best and brightest in Bahar’s vast empire were put to the task, and outside contractors were brought in as needed. The project was so cutting-edge that secrecy was a given and needn’t be explained to the employees, while only a select few knew the ultimate use of the device they worked feverishly to build.
They had been ready for nearly a year except for one critical component and that’s what Abdul had finally found, thanks to an obscure British researcher who’d put together the pieces of an eight-hundred-year-old legend and led Mohammad to a remote temple lost in one of the most impenetrable jungles in the world.
Muhammad unslung the bag from his shoulder and carefully opened the top. The bright sunshine beating down on the airport tarmac made the crystals gleam like solid fire.
“Congratulations, my friend,” Bahar said warmly. They started toward a waiting limousine. “This has become your obsession as well as mine. Tell me, was the temple as Marco Polo described it to Rustichello?”
“No. The monks expanded it greatly over the years. The original cave where the crystals were first mined was still there, but they had constructed buildings going down to it from the cliffs above and had started carving more idolatrous images on the opposite side of the chasm. Judging by the level of decay, I would say it was abandoned at about the time the current junta took control.”