“And that choice is tied to today’s actions?” the reporter asked right on cue.
“Today is a day of liberty,” Djemma said. “Once upon a time, we became free of colonialism. Today we are freeing ourselves from a different kind of oppression. Economic oppression.”
The reporter nodded. “Are you concerned that there will be reprisals for this action?” the man said. “Surely the world will not stand by while you violate the property rights of dozens of multinational corporations.”
“I am only obeying the principle of an eye for an eye,” Djemma said. “For centuries they have violated the property rights of my people. They have come here and taken from us precious gems and metals and treasures and given us only pain in return. A cook in one of these companies’ executive lunchrooms makes twenty times more than a miner who toils in heat and danger, risking his life every day. Not to mention the executive who does less work than the cook.”
Djemma laughed as he spoke. A little good cheer went a long way.
“But the mines, the refinery, the infrastructure, these things cost billions of dollars in investment money,” the reporter said.
“And my people have already paid for them,” Djemma said. “In blood.”
The tanks rolled on, rumbling toward the dockside cranes. A small cloud of dark smoke rose into the sky to the west of the port. It was definitely a fire, but Djemma doubted there had been any real resistance.
Perhaps someone had done something foolish. Or perhaps the black smoke had nothing to do with the events. A car or truck fire or some other industrial incident.
No matter, it made for a good visual. “Film the smoke,” he said to the cameraman. “Let them know we mean business.”
The cameraman turned and zoomed his lens, getting a closer shot of the rising cloud. His recording, and the video of Djemma aboard the tank, would play in endless loops on CNN, FOX, and the BBC.
In twenty-four hours people around the world would know all about him and a country most had never heard of. By then Djemma would have most of the foreign nationals rounded up and placed on flights back to their respective countries.
Their nations would bluster and bluff, and freeze Sierra Leone’s all-but-nonexistent foreign assets. They’d demand he explain himself, which he would gladly, again and again if necessary. In his mind the actions were legitimate; why should he not speak of them?
And then they’d come to him, demanding all kinds of things. The negotiations would begin. They would try very hard not to offer anything at first, lest they be seen to be giving in. But it would matter little as he would not budge.
They would grow angry and pound the desk and rant and rave and threaten things. And then it would get dicey, for with the nations of the world finally interested in him Djemma would not give in but instead he would demand more.
He knew the risks. But for the first time in two thousand years an African general was in possession of a weapon that could bring down an empire.
41
PAUL TROUT WAS SITTING UP in his hospital bed. His wife stood nearby. She’d been hugging and kissing him and squeezing his hand nonstop for an hour. It felt good despite all the other pains in his body.
His back ached. His head hurt and his thoughts came slowly, like he’d been overmedicated or had too many glasses of red wine. Still, he felt surprisingly good, considering what Gamay was telling him.
“I don’t remember any of that,” he said after hearing her explanation of the escape from the Grouper and the fact that he’d been in a coma for the past four days.
“What do you remember?” she asked.
He reached back, clawing at the darkness in his mind. Since he’d awoken, random thoughts had been popping into his head. Like a computer rebooting itself after an unexpected shutdown, it seemed as if his mind was reorganizing things. The smell of food from the commissary brought an odd thought to the forefront.
“I remember that one Thanksgiving in Santa Fe when you burned the turkey and then admitted that I was right about how to cook it.”
“What?” she said, laughing. “That’s what you remember?”
“Well . . .” he said. “To actually be right about something and have you admit it all in the same day was a pretty rare experience.”
She pursed her lips. “I’ve heard that people with head trauma sometimes come out of it with new skills they never had before. It hasn’t happened with you, my love. You were never a comedian and you’re still not.”
He laughed this time. His head felt as if it was clearing a bit more each second.
“I remember the sun shining off the sea,” he said. “And that we were getting ready to take the Grouper down. And I was thinking we shouldn’t both go.”
As it turned out they had worked together seamlessly and almost made it back to the surface. He didn’t remember it, but Gamay seemed to indicate that if he hadn’t been there she would have died.
“So what do we do now?” he asked.
She filled him in on the rest of the details, finishing with her next duty. “I’m flying out to an antisubmarine frigate in the Atlantic this time tomorrow. We’ll be working on the sonar tapes.”
Paul stared at her. He understood the call of duty and he wasn’t about to interfere. But he could not shake the great sense of almost having lost her even if he couldn’t recall the details.
He threw the sheet back. “I’m going with you,” he said, swinging a leg over the edge.
She put a hand on him. “Paul.”
“I’m out of the woods,” he insisted. “The doctor said so. Besides, I’ve worked with sonar a lot more than you have. Specifically, the GEO sounder unit on the Matador.”
He could tell she was against it and worried. After what had happened, who wouldn’t be? But he wasn’t staying behind.
He forced his way out of bed and stood, a little unsteady. He was so tall, the hospital gown looked like a miniskirt on him.
“Don’t these come in long?” he said.
Gamay continued pouting.
“We’ll be on a warship,” he said. “Armor plating, missiles, guns, torpedoes. We couldn’t be safer.”
She shook her head and then exhaled sharply. “Fine,” she said. “I never could talk sense into you anyway.”
He laughed, pressed the buzzer for the nurse, and started looking for a robe or something to cover himself up with.
“One thing,” she said seriously.
He turned.
“I’m not going back in the water,” she said.
He cocked his head. “What?”
“I’m not going back in the water,” she said. “Not in a submersible, not in a dive suit, or any other way. I’m not ready for that.”
As long as he’d known her, Gamay had never been afraid of anything, but the fear was plain in her voice now.
“You don’t remember it,” she said. “In some ways I think you’re lucky on that count. But it was horrible.”
“We’ll stay on deck,” he said. “Or in our air-conditioned quarters. Hopefully, near the mess and the soft-serve ice-cream machine.”
He grinned, hoping to coax a smile from her, but she didn’t offer one, and Paul began to worry about her in a way he never had before.
42
Singapore, Malaysia, June 30
TWENTY-EIGHT HOURS AFTER being freed from the NSA’s clutches, Kurt and Joe landed in Singapore. They’d boarded a flight at Dulles, gladly paid through the nose for first-class tickets, and literally flew to the other side of the world.
A trip to the hotel to unpack and a call to an old friend who’d helped him years back had left Kurt with nothing to do but get some sleep. As it turned out, he was too damn tired to make it off the couch and fell asleep right there.
His two-hour nap ended when the phone rang in the darkness.
Startled awake as if he’d been jabbed with a cattle prod, Kurt lunged for the phone. He grabbed it as he tumbled off the couch, picking up the receiver just in time to prevent it
from going to the message system.
“The White Rajah,” a voice he didn’t recognize said.
“What?” Kurt asked.
“You are Kurt Austin?”
“Yes.”
“I was told to call you,” the voice said. “And to explain where you will find what you’re looking for. The White Rajah.”
“Wait,” Kurt said. “What is the—”
The phone line went dead, and a dial tone soon followed. Kurt placed the receiver back on the cradle and leaned against the front of the couch.
“Where am I?” he mumbled to himself.
He remembered flying, changing planes at LAX, and then part of the next flight. He remembered checking in at the hotel. “Oh yeah,” he said. “Singapore.”
He looked around. The room was utterly dark except for a clock radio between the beds opposite him. The clock read 7:17 p.m. It felt like three in the morning.
Kurt stood awkwardly and pounded on the door to the adjoining room.
“Get up,” he grumbled to Joe. “Time to go to work.”
The door opened seconds later. Joe stood there, clean-shaven, hair gelled, wearing an Armani shirt and white linen slacks.
Kurt stared at him dumbfounded. “Don’t you sleep?”
“The night calls me,” Joe said, smiling. “Who am I to refuse?”
“Yeah, well, somebody else called me,” Kurt said. “So while I shower, you find out what on earth the White Rajah is. I’m guessing it’s a hotel or a bar or a street.”
“Is that where we’re going?”
Kurt nodded. “Someone’s going to meet us there,” he said.
“Who?”
“That’s the thing,” Kurt said. “I don’t have any idea.”
FORTY MINUTES LATER, looking refreshed and like a more conservative version of Joe, Kurt Austin marched into the friendly confines of the White Rajah, a restaurant and bar that had once been an old English gentlemen’s club in the Victorian era, when the English had a substantial influence on the island of Malaysia.
Kurt wandered through several large rooms with exquisitely carved mahogany paneling, hand-blown glass-block skylights, and overstuffed leather chairs and couches that looked as if Churchill himself might have once sat on them.
Instead of bridge tournaments between retired members of the British East India Company and captains of industry smoking pipes and thick cigars, he saw the young and wealthy of Singapore dining on oysters and knocking back expensive drinks.
An informal count registered the crowd to be mixed about fifty-fifty: half were Western expatriates and the rest local citizens or visiting Asian businessmen.
Circling back around to the front of the house, Kurt took a seat at the main bar, which appeared to be made from a thin sheet of alabaster lit from below. It looked almost like glowing amber.
“Can I get you something?” a bartender quickly asked.
Joe smiled. Kurt knew he’d been to Singapore before. “I’ll have a Tiger,” he said.
“Perfect choice,” the bartender said, then turned to Kurt. “And you, sir?”
Kurt was still looking around, scanning for someone, anyone he might recognize, including the contact he’d phoned upon landing. No one looked familiar.
“Sir?”
“Coffee,” Kurt said. “Black.”
The man nodded and hustled off.
“Coffee,” Joe said, apparently surprised at Kurt’s choice of beverage. “Do you have any idea what time it is?”
Above them blue light flickered through the glass blocks of the skylight; either heat lightning in the distance or an approaching thunderstorm.
“I don’t even know what day it is,” Kurt said. “I barely know what planet we’re on.”
Joe laughed. “Well, don’t blame me if you’re up all night.”
“Somehow,” Kurt said, “I have a feeling I’m going to be.”
Kurt looked at the wall behind the bar. A six-foot canvas displaying a strapping Englishman in colonial garb stood front and center.
“Sir James Brooke,” Kurt said, reading the inscription on the brass plate at the bottom.
The bartender returned with their drinks and seemed to notice the focus of their attention. “The White Rajah,” he said.
“Really?”
“He put down a rebellion against the Sultan of Brunei in 1841 and was granted the title Rajah of Sarawak. He and his family ruled a small empire in what we now call Kuching for about a hundred years, until the Japanese invaded in 1941.”
“But Sarawak is across the strait,” Kurt said, knowing Sarawak and Kuching were on the neighboring island of Borneo.
“Yes,” the bartender said. “But when the war ended, the family gave the territory back to the British Empire. The club here was renamed in his honor.”
As the bartender shuffled off, Kurt took a sip of the rich, bold coffee, another step on the road to feeling like himself again.
Joe looked over at him. “So what are we doing in Singapore?” he asked. “Aside from getting a history lesson?”
Kurt began to explain. “Twelve years ago I did a salvage job down here,” he said. “One of my last jobs for the company before joining NUMA.”
Joe cocked his head. “Never heard this story.”
“It’s probably still classified,” Kurt said. “But since it matters now, I’ll give you the gist of it.”
Joe pulled his chair closer and glanced around as if looking for spies. Kurt laughed a bit.
“An E-6B Prowler got into trouble and went down in the South China Sea,” he said. “It was a prototype. There was all kinds of equipment on it that we didn’t want the other side finding, and the other side included China, Russia, and North Korea.”
“Still does, for the most part,” Joe said.
Kurt nodded. “The pilot was using a new side-scan radar and running right along the edge of Chinese airspace. We had reason to believe he’d gone off course and crossed over the line.”
“Ah,” Joe said. “I can see why that would be a problem.”
“You know the rules of salvage,” Kurt said. “In the open ocean it’s finders, keepers, but if that plane was even one foot inside Chinese territorial waters and they found out about it they’d park half their fleet on top of it and shoot at anyone who came within ten miles. Even if it wasn’t, we knew they’d be after it.”
“Yeah,” Joe said. “Chance of a lifetime.”
“Exactly,” Kurt said. “So we concocted a story that we’d rescued the pilot and recovered the wreckage. Even faked video of him being pulled out of the sea and wing sections being hauled aboard a tender. In the meantime, my team and I rounded up a group of locals who could look for the wreck and salvage it without raising any suspicions from the Chinese.
“The guy who helped set it up was a CIA contact known as Mr. Ion. This guy is a half American, half Malaysian operator. He knew everybody and how to get pretty much anything. Still does, from what I hear. But he works the middle ground. You can usually trust him to do what he says and keep it quiet, but you can’t count on him not working for the other guys once you’re gone.
“Anyway, he helped us build the team, including a guy who was with us from Day One. Andras.”
“Was he a problem?” Joe asked, tipping back the beer.
“Not until the very end,” Kurt said. “He even sniffed out a traitor who was connected with the Chinese secret service. But after we set up the lifting rig and got ready to make our move, we caught some bad weather. Three days of sitting made me nervous. Too close to the finish line to pause like that. I decided we would lift the Prowler despite the weather. I rounded up the team, but Andras was nowhere to be found.”
“What happened?”
Kurt took a slug of the coffee. “We got out to the site, and the aircraft was gone. Word was, Andras had been bought out by the Russians. They were just starting to fall in love with capitalism, and one of the things they were selling like hotcakes was MiGs. With the avionics and technolog
y in the Prowler, they could have leapt forward a generation overnight.”
“So that guy was a snake even back then,” Joe said.
Kurt nodded.
“What’d you do?”
“On my first dive to the sunken jet, I’d rigged up fifty pounds of charges. My orders were to blow the plane up if we couldn’t lift it or if we pulled it off the bottom and got caught by the Chinese. The explosives were still on the plane, and they were armed and just waiting for a signal. I uplinked to the satellite and triggered them. Somewhere over Kamchatka a Russian jet exploded. Poor souls flying it probably had no idea what their cargo was.”
Joe shook his head softly. “Rough business.”
“Yeah,” Kurt said, feeling a tinge of remorse for the poor flight crew even after all this time. “So is this. And this time when someone suffers, I’m going make sure it’s Andras.”
Joe looked around. “I’m with you. You think we’re going to find him here?”
“Not him,” Kurt said. “But someone who knows how to find him.”
Kurt picked up the coffee and took another sip.
The way he saw it, Andras had beat him twice. No doubt the man had been paid when he handed the E-6B Prowler over to the Russians. The explosion was their problem. And if history was any guide, he was probably already counting the cash for delivering the kidnapped scientists to whoever they were given to. Then again . . .
Kurt looked up at the oil painting of the White Rajah. He remembered Andras insisting he’d be a king when this was all over. He wondered what the man was up to.
Kurt finished the coffee and motioned for another. As the bartender refilled his mug, Kurt turned around to check the room.
He assumed whoever had called him would be able to find him and then some kind of deal for the exchange of information would be crafted. But, so far, no one had approached, no note had been passed, no waiter or bartender had suggested another party was waiting to see them.
All around, the patrons dined, glasses clinked, and the occasional flash of blue lightning lit up the skylight above, but nothing out of the ordinary happened.