Debt of Honor

  “Have you completed your survey?” Corp asked, surprising Clark again with his grammar.

  “Yes, sir, we have. May I show you?”

  “Certainly.” Corp followed him to the back of the Rover. Chavez pulled out a survey map and some satellite photos obtained from commercial sources.

  “This may be the biggest deposit since the one in Colorado, and the purity is surprising. Right here.” Clark extended a steel pointer and tapped it on the map.

  “Thirty kilometers from where we are sitting ... .”

  Clark smiled. “You know, as long as I’ve been in this business, it still surprises me how this happens. A couple of billion years ago, a huge bubble of the stuff must have just perked up from the center of the earth.” His lecture was lyrical. He’d had lots of practice, and it helped that Clark read books on geology for recreation, borrowing the nicer phrases for his “pitch.”

  “Anyway,” Ding, said, taking his cue a few minutes later, “the overburden is no problem at all, and we have the location fixed perfectly.”

  “How can you do that?” Corp asked. His country’s maps were products of another and far more casual age.

  “With this, sir.” Ding handed it over.

  “What is it?” the General asked.

  “A GPS locator,” Chavez explained. “It’s how we find our way around, sir. You just push that button there, the rubber one.”

  Corp did just that, then held the large, thin green-plastic box up and watched the readout. First it gave him the exact time, then started to make its fix, showing that it had lock with one, then three, and finally four orbiting Global Positioning System satellites. “Such an amazing device,” he said, though that wasn’t the half of it. By pushing the button he had also sent out a radio signal. It was so easy to forget that they were scarcely a hundred miles from the Indian Ocean, and that beyond the visible horizon might be a ship with a flat deck. A largely empty deck at the moment, because the helicopters that lived there had lifted off an hour earlier and were now sitting at a secure site thirty-five miles to the south.

  Corp took one more look at the GPS locator before handing it back. “What is the rattle?” he asked as Ding took it.

  “Battery pack is loose, sir,” Chavez explained with a smile. It was their only handgun, and not a large one. The General ignored the irrelevancy and turned back to Clark.

  “How much?” he asked simply.

  “Well, determining the exact size of the deposit will require—”

  “Money, Mr. Clark.”

  “Anaconda is prepared to offer you fifty million dollars, sir. We’ll pay that in four payments of twelve and a half million dollars, plus ten percent of the gross profit from the mining operations. The advance fee and the continuing income will be paid in U.S. dollars.”

  “More than that. I know what molybdenum is worth.” He’d checked a copy of The Financial Times on the way in.

  “But it will take two years, closer to three, probably, to commence operations. Then we have to determine the best way to get the ore to the coast. Probably truck, maybe a rail line if the deposit is as big as I think it is. Our up-front costs to develop the operation will be on the order of three hundred million.” Even with the labor costs here, Clark didn’t have to add.

  “I need more money to keep my people happy. You must understand that,” Corp said reasonably. Had he been an honorable man, Clark thought, this could have been an interesting negotiation. Corp wanted the additional up-front money to buy arms in order to reconquer the country that he had once almost owned. The U.N. had displaced him, but not quite thoroughly enough. Relegated to dangerous obscurity in the bush, he had survived the last year by running caq into the cities, such as they were, and he’d made enough from the trade that some thought him to be a danger to the state again, such as it was. With new arms, of course, and control over the country, he would then renegotiate the continuing royalty for the molybdenum. It was a clever ploy, Clark thought, but obvious, having dreamed it up himself to draw the bastard out of his hole.

  “Well, yes, we are concerned with the political stability of the region,” John allowed, with an insider’s smile to show that he knew the score. Americans were known for doing business all over the world, after all, or so Corp and others believed.

  Chavez was fiddling with the GPS device, watching the LCD display. At the upper-right corner, a block went from clear to black. Ding coughed from the dust in the air and scratched his nose.

  “Okay,” Clark said. “You’re a serious man, and we understand that. The fifty million can be paid up-front. Swiss account?”

  “That is somewhat better,” Corp allowed, taking his time. He walked around to the back of the Rover and pointed into the open cargo area. “These are your rock samples?”

  “Yes, sir,” Clark replied with a nod. He handed over a three-pound piece of stone with very high-grade Molly-be-damned ore, though it was from Colorado, not Africa. “Want to show it to your people?”

  “What is this?” Corp pointed at two objects in the Rover.

  “Our lights, sir.” Clark smiled as he took one out. Ding did the same.

  “You have a gun in there,” Corp saw with amusement, pointing to a bolt-action rifle. Two of his bodyguards drew closer.

  “This is Africa, sir. I was worried about—”

  “Lions?” Corp thought that one pretty good. He turned and spoke to his “policemen,” who started laughing amiably at the stupidity of the Americans. “We kill the lions,” Corp told them after the laughter settled down. “Nothing lives out here.”

  Clark, the General thought, took it like a man, standing there, holding his light. It seemed a big light. “What is that for?”

  “Well, I don’t like the dark very much, and when we camp out, I like to take pictures at night.”

  “Yeah,” Ding confirmed. “These things are really great.” He turned and scanned the positions of the General’s security detail. There were two groups, one of four, the other of six, plus the two nearby and Corp himself.

  “Want me to take pictures of your people for you?” Clark asked without reaching for his camera.

  On cue, Chavez flipped his light on and played it toward the larger of the two distant groups. Clark handled the three men close to the Rover. The “lights” worked like a charm. It took only about three seconds before both CIA officers could turn them off and go to work securing the men’s hands.

  “Did you think we forgot?” the CIA field officer asked Corp as the roar of rotary-wing aircraft became audible fifteen minutes later. By this time all twelve of Corp’s security people were facedown in the dust, their hands bound behind them with the sort of plastic ties policemen use when they run out of cuffs. All the General could do was moan and writhe on the ground in pain. Ding cracked a handful of chemical lights and tossed them around in a circle downwind of the Rover. The first UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter circled carefully, illuminating the ground with lights.

  “BIRD-DOG ONE, this is BAG MAN.”

  “Good evening, BAG MAN, BIRD-DOG ONE has the situation under control. Come on down!” Clark chuckled into the radio.

  The first chopper down was well outside the lighted area. The Rangers appeared out of the shadows like ghosts, spaced out five meters apart, weapons low and ready.

  “Clark?” a loud, very tense voice called.

  “Yo!” John called back with a wave. “We got ‘im.”

  A captain of Rangers came in. A young Latino face, smeared with camouflage paint and dressed in desert cammies. He’d been a lieutenant the last time he’d been on the African mainland, and remembered the memorial service for those he’d lost from his platoon. Bringing the Rangers back had been Clark’s idea, and it had been easy to arrange. Four more men came in behind Captain Diego Checa. The rest of the squad dispersed to check out the “policemen.”

  “What about these two?” one asked, pointing to Corp’s two personal bodyguards.

  “Leave ’em,” Ding replied.

&n
bsp; “You got it, sir,” a spec-4 replied, taking out steel cuffs and securing both pairs of wrists in addition to the plastic ties. Captain Checa cuffed Corp himself. He and a sergeant lifted the man off the ground while Clark and Chavez retrieved their personal gear from the Rover and followed the soldiers to the Blackhawk. One of the Rangers handed Chavez a canteen.

  “Oso sends his regards,” the staff sergeant said. Ding’s head came around.

  “What’s he doing now?”

  “First Sergeants’ school. He’s pissed that he missed this one. I’m Gomez, Foxtrot, Second of the One-Seventy-Fifth. I was here back then, too.”

  “You made that look pretty easy,” Checa was telling Clark, a few feet away.

  “Six weeks,” the senior field officer replied in a studiously casual voice. The rules required such a demeanor. “Four weeks to bum around in the boonies, two weeks to set the meet up, six hours waiting for it to happen, and about ten seconds to take him down.”

  “Just the way it’s supposed to be,” Checa observed. He handed over a canteen filled with Gatorade. The Captain’s eyes locked on the senior man. Whoever he was, Checa thought at first, he was far too old to play games in the boonies with the gomers. Then he gave Clark’s eyes a closer look.

  “How the fuck you do this, man?” Gomez demanded of Chavez at the door to the chopper. The other Rangers leaned in close to get the reply.

  Ding glanced over at his gear and laughed. “Magic!”

  Gomez was annoyed that his question hadn’t been answered. “Leaving all these guys out here?”

  “Yeah, they’re just gomers.” Chavez turned to look one last time. Sooner or later one would get his hands free—probably—retrieve a knife, and cut his fellow “policemen” free; then they could worry about the two with steel bracelets. “It’s the boss we were after.”

  Gomez turned to scan the horizon. “Any lions or hyenas out here?” Ding shook his head. Too bad, the sergeant thought.

  The Rangers were shaking their heads as they strapped into their seats on the helicopter. As soon as they were airborne, Clark donned a headset and waited for the crew chief to set up the radio patch.

  “CAPSTONE, this is BIRD DOG,” he began.

  The eight-hour time difference made it early afternoon in Washington. The UHF radio from the helicopter went to USS Tripoli, and then it was uplinked to a satellite. The Signals Office routed the call right into Ryan’s desk phone.

  “Yes, BIRD DOG, this is CAPSTONE.”

  Ryan couldn’t quite recognize Clark’s voice, but the words were readable through the static: “In the bag, no friendlies hurt. Repeat, the duck is in the bag and there are zero friendly casualties.”

  “I understand, BIRD DOG. Make your delivery as planned.”

  It was an outrage, really, Jack told himself as he set the phone back. Such operations were better left in the field, but the President had insisted this time. He rose from his desk and headed toward the Oval Office.

  “Get’m?” D’Agustino asked as Jack hustled down the corridor.

  “You weren’t supposed to know.”

  “The Boss was worried about it,” Helen explained quietly.

  “Well, he doesn’t have to worry anymore.”

  “That’s one score that needed settling. Welcome back, Dr. Ryan.”

  The past would haunt one other man that day.

  “Go on,” the psychologist said.

  “It was awful,” the woman said, staring down at the floor. “It was the only time in my life it ever happened, and ...” Though her voice droned on in a level, emotionless monotone, it was her appearance that disturbed the elderly woman most of all. Her patient was thirty-five, and should have been slim, petite, and blonde, but instead her face showed the puffiness of compulsive eating and drinking, and her hair was barely presentable. What ought to have been fair skin was merely pale, and reflected light like chalk, in a flat grainy way that even makeup would not have helped very much. Only her diction indicated what the patient once had been, and her voice recounted the events of three years before as though her mind was operating on two levels, one the victim, and the other an observer, wondering in a distant intellectual way if she had participated at all.

  “I mean, he’s who he is, and I worked for him, and 1 liked him ...” The voice broke again. The woman swallowed hard and paused a moment before going on. “I mean, I admire him, all the things he does, all the things he stands for.” She looked up, and it seemed so odd that her eyes were as dry as cellophane, reflecting light from a flat surface devoid of tears. ”He’s so charming, and caring, and—”

  “It’s okay, Barbara.” As she often did, the psychologist fought the urge to reach out to her patient, but she knew she had to stay aloof, had to hide her own rage at what had happened to this bright and capable woman. It had happened at the hands of a man who used his status and power to draw women toward him as a light drew moths, ever circling his brilliance, spiraling in closer and closer until they were destroyed by it. The pattern was so like life in this city. Since then, Barbara had broken off from two men, each of whom might have been fine partners for what should have been a fine life. This was an intelligent woman, a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, with a master’s degree in political science and a doctorate in public administration. She was not a wide-eyed secretary or summer intern, and perhaps had been all the more vulnerable because of it, able to become part of the policy team, knowing that she was good enough, if only she would do the one more thing to get her over the top or across the line, or whatever the current euphemism was on the Hill. The problem was, that line could be crossed only in one direction, and what lay beyond it was not so easily seen from the other side.

  “You know, I would have done it anyway,” Barbara said in a moment of brutal honesty. “He didn’t have to—”

  “Do you feel guilty because of that?” Dr. Clarice Golden asked. Barbara Linders nodded. Golden stifled a sigh and spoke gently. “And you think you gave him the—”

  “Signals.” A nod. “That’s what he said, ‘You gave me all the signals.’ Maybe I did.”

  “No, you didn’t, Barbara. You have to go on now,” Clarice ordered gently.

  “I just wasn’t in the mood. It’s not that I wouldn’t have done it, another time, another day, maybe, but I wasn’t feeling well. I came into the office feeling fine that day, but I was coming down with the flu or something, and after lunch my stomach was queasy, and I thought about going home early, but it was the day we were doing the amendment on the civil-rights legislation that he sponsored, so I took a couple Tylenol for the fever, and about nine we were the only ones left in the office. Civil rights was my area of specialty,” Linders explained. “I was sitting on the couch in his office, and he was walking around like he always does when he’s formulating his ideas, and he was behind me. I remember his voice got soft and friendly, like, and he said, ‘You have the nicest hair, Barbara’ out of the blue, like, and I said, ‘Thank you.’ He asked how I was feeling, and I told him I was coming down with something, and he said he’d give me something he used—brandy,” she said, talking more quickly now, as though she was hoping to get through this part as rapidly as possible, like a person fast-forwarding a videotape through the commercials. “I didn’t see him put anything in the drink. He kept a bottle of Rémy in the credenza behind his desk, and something else, too, I guess. I drank it right down.

  “He just stood there, watching me, not even talking, just watching me, like he knew it would happen fast. It was like ... I don’t know. I knew something wasn’t right, like you get drunk right away, out of control.” Then her voice stopped for fifteen seconds or so, and Dr. Golden watched her—like he had done, she thought. The irony shamed her, but this was business; it was clinical, and it was supposed to help, not hurt. Her patient was seeing it now. You could tell from the eyes, you always could. As though the mind really were a VCR, the scene paraded before her, and Barbara Linders was merely giving commentary on what she saw, not t
ruly relating the dreadful personal experience she herself had undergone. For ten minutes, she described it, without leaving out a single clinical detail, her trained professional mind clicking in as it had to do. It was only at the end that her emotions came back.

  “He didn’t have to rape me. He could have ... asked. I would have ... I mean, another day, the weekend ... I knew he was married, but I liked him, and ...”

  “But he did rape you, Barbara. He drugged you and raped you.” This time Dr. Golden reached out and took her hand, because now it was all out in the open. Barbara Linders had articulated the whole awful story, probably for the first time since it had happened. In the intervening period she’d relived bits and pieces, especially the worst part, but this was the first time she’d gone through the event in chronological order, from beginning to end, and the impact of the telling was every bit as traumatic and cathartic as it had to be.

  “There has to be more,” Golden said after the sobbing stopped.

  “There is,” Barbara said immediately, hardly surprised that her psychologist could tell. “At least one other woman in the office, Lisa Beringer. She ... killed herself the next year, drove her car into a bridge support-thing, looked like an accident, she’d been drinking, but in her desk she left a note. I cleaned her desk out ... and I found it.” Then, to Dr. Golden’s stunned reaction, Barbara Linders reached into her purse and pulled it out. The “note” was in a blue envelope, six pages of personalized letter paper covered with the tight, neat handwriting of a woman who had made the decision to end her life, but who wanted someone to know why.

  Clarice Golden, Ph.D., had seen such notes before, and it was a source of melancholy amazement that people could do such a thing. They always spoke of pain too great to bear, but depressingly often they showed the despairing mind of someone who could have been saved and cured and sent back into a successful life if only she’d had the wit to make a single telephone call or speak to a single close friend. It took only two paragraphs for Golden to see that Lisa Beringer had been just one more needless victim, a woman who had felt alone, fatally so, in an office full of people who would have leaped to her aid.