Peacekeepers (1988)

by Ben Bova

"They're paying me nothing. My money's not coming from the Sahel. And what I am getting for this caper is barely enough to pull it off and keep us from starving. I'm not a rich man. Red. This plane and the people in it are my fortune."

  Pavel did not believe that for an instant. But he said nothing.

  "Besides, my egalitarian friend, Libya is much richer than most of its neighbors."

  "That's not true . . ."

  "Yes, it is. Check with the World Bank if you doubt it."

  Alexander's crooked smile returned. "Oh, the people of Libya are shit poor. Those farmers and herdsmen you talk about are on the ragged edge of starvation, sure enough. But there's plenty of gold in Tripoli. Rayyid's rolling in money. He could buy fusion desalting plants and string them along his coastline, if he wanted to. Instead, he's using part of his gold to build this monster irrigation project. The rest goes into terrorism."

  "So you say."

  "Listen, kid"—Alexander pointed a forefinger like a pistol—"a helluva lot of Libyan oil money goes straight to Moscow to buy the guns and explosives that Rayyid terrorist squads use in Paris, Rome, London and Washington."

  Pavel leaned back, away fix)m that accusing finger. "So it is all the fault of the Soviet Union, is it?"

  "Did I say that?" Alexander put on a look of pained innocence falsely accused. "It's the fault of Qumar al-Rayyid, and we're going to take steps to stop him."

  "By destroying his aquifer project."

  "Damned right. And letting his own people see that he's been spending their hard-earned money on projects that bring him prestige and leave them penniless."

  "Very clever," Pavel admitted. "You stir up his own people against him, so that when they tear him to pieces you can say that you did not assassinate him."

  "What the Libyan people—or, more likely, what the Libyan military do to Rayyid is their problem, not mine. My problem is to see to it that the bastard doesn't drain that aquifer dry and cause an ecological disaster that'll kill millions of people over the next generation."

  "I could ruin your plans," Pavel said.

  Alexander arched an eyebrow.

  "I could escape from you and tell all this to the nearest Soviet consulate. Once they knew that Algeria and France were paying you . . ." Pavel let the sentence dangle.

  Alexander grinned at him. "First you have to escape."

  Pavel bowed his head in acknowledgement.

  "Actually, it wouldn't be too tough for a man of your training," Alexander said, leaning back in his chair.

  "You're sitting on an ejection seat, you know."

  "Really?"

  "Just strap yourself into the harness and hit the red button on the end of the armrest and whoosh!" Alexander gestured with both hands, "Off you go, through the overhead hatch and into the wild blue yonder. Parachute opens automatically. Flotation gear inflates. Radio beeps a distress call. You'd be picked up before you got your feet wet, almost."

  Pavel said nothing. But he glanced at the red button.

  There was a protective guard over it. With his fingertips he tried it and found that it was not locked; Alexander was telling the truth.

  "What's more," the man was saying, "if you're really here to knock me off, now's the time for it. Give me a whack in the head or something, knock me unconscious or kill me outright. I'm sure they taught you how to do that, didn't they?"

  His lips were smiling cynically, Pavel saw, but his tone was deadly serious.

  "Then slam the throttles and the yoke hard forward, put the plane into a power dive and eject. You go floating off safely and the plane rips off its wings and hits the water at six hundred knots. No survivors, and it looks like an accident. You'd get a Hero of the Soviet Union medal for that, wouldn't you?"

  "You are joking," Pavel said.

  Alexander went on, "You'd kill me and everybody else on board. Wipe out all of us."

  Pavel could not fathom Alexander's motives. Is this a test of some sort? he asked himself. A trap? Or is the man absolutely mad?

  "You could knock me out, couldn't you? After all, I'm an old man. Old enough to be your father."

  Is he actually challenging me to a fight? Pavel wondered.

  Here? In the cockpit of this plane?

  "She told you I'm her father, didn't she?" Alexander asked.

  The sudden shift in subject almost bewildered Pavel. He felt as if he were thrashing around in deep water, unable to catch his breath.

  "Kelly's my daughter. She told you that, didn't she?"

  There was real concern written on the man's face, Pavel saw. And suddenly he realized that all this talk of assassination and destroying the airplane had been a test, after all.

  "Yes, she did tell me," he admitted.

  "I think the world of her," Alexander said. "She's the only child I've got. The only one I'll ever have."

  "She loves you very much," Pavel said.

  "If you kill me here and now, you'd be killing her, too."

  "Yes, that is true."

  For many long, nerve-twisting moments they sat side by side in silence, staring at each other, trying to determine what was going on behind the masks they held up to one another, while the plane droned on high above the glittering gray ocean.

  "When you go into Libya on this mission," Alexander said, "Kelly will be with you. She has a tough assignment, a key assignment."

  "And I?"

  Alexander took in a deep breath, let it out slowly in a sigh that had real pain in it. "I'm asking you to watch out for her. Protect her. I don't care what your government wants you to do to me. I can take care of myself. But my little girl is going to need protection on this job. I'm asking you to be her protector."

  He is mad! Pavel thought. Asking me to protect the woman he has assigned to watch me. His own daughter.

  Absolutely mad ... or far more clever than even the Kremlin suspects. Yes, devious and extremely clever. He has been watching the two of us together. Now he places her safety in my hands. Extremely clever. And therefore extremely dangerous.

  "Hey, look," Alexander exclaimed, pointing past Pavel's shoulder. "The Madeira Islands."

  Pavel glanced out the window to his right and saw a large island, green and brown against the steel-gray of the ocean, a rim of whitish clouds building up on its windward side.

  He could see no other islands, but puffy clouds dotted the ocean and may have been hiding them.

  "There's an example of ecological catastrophe turning into something good," Alexander said, as chipper and pleasant as if they had never spoken of death.

  Pavel gave up trying to figure out this strange, many mooded man. He is too subtle for me, he concluded.

  "Madeira is the Portuguese word for wood," Alexander was explaining. "The early Spanish and Portuguese explorers working their way down the coast of Africa, looking for a way around to the Indies, they stopped at the islands to cut down trees for lumber and fuel. Masts, too. Cut down so much of it they totally denuded the islands in just about a century."

  "A tragedy," Pavel said.

  "Yeah. But somebody got the brilliant idea of planting grapevines where the forests used to be. Now the islands produce one of the world's greatest wines. Madeira was a favorite of Thomas Jefferson's, did you know that?"

  Pavel shook his head.

  Alexander tilted his head back and began singing in a thin, wavering voice that was slightly off-key: "Have some Madeira my dear, You really have nothing to fear . . ."

  His mind whirling, Pavel excused himself and left the flight deck.

  For two days the plane stayed anchored in the harbor of Sao Vicente, in the Cape Verde Islands. Alexander remained aboard, constantly locked in his office, speaking by coded tight beams to contacts over half the world. He must have his own private network of communications satellites, Pavel thought. Then he realized. Of course! He must have free access to commsats owned by half a dozen nations and private capitalist corporations.

  The rest of the crew apparently had nothing to do except guard t
he plane and replenish its stores. Pavel watched closely, but saw no weapons brought aboard.

  There was no way for Pavel to make contact with Moscow. He was watched every moment, and each night the plane was moored far from land.

  On the second day, though, Alexander insisted that Pavel take Kelly into the town for an afternoon of relaxation.

  "Do you both good to get out and away from here for a few hours," he said.

  Pavel wondered what Alexander had planned for the afternoon, that he wanted Pavel out of the way—escorted by his watchdog. Or does he want his daughter to have a free afternoon, escorted by her watchdog? It was too devious for Pavel to unravel.

  Kelly had stayed distant from Pavel since the day they had swum together. But now the two of them took one of the inflatable Zodiac boats to the port and spent an afternoon gawking at the town, like any ordinary couple.

  They wore inconspicuous cutoff jeans and T-shirts—and generous coverings of sun-block oil over their bare arms and legs.

  A big passenger liner was tied to the main pier, and they mingled with the brightly dressed tourists, watching the black-skinned islanders unloading bananas from boats that plied the waters between the Cape Verde Islands and Dakar, nearly a thousand kilometers eastward. Then they climbed the volcanic rocks to the crumbling old Moorish castle that had flown the red and green flag of Portugal for half a millennium.

  He stood on the bare hilltop with Kelly beside him and looked back at the harbor, the ships anchored along the modem concrete quay, a rusting hulk half sunk next to a rotting old pier, the seaplane riding the gentle swells out by the breakwater. The equatorial sun was baking its heat into his bones, yet the trade wind was cool and refreshing.

  "It's beautiful, isn't it?" Kelly said, smiling out at the view.

  Pavel turned his gaze to her. "You are beautiful, too," he said. And he kissed her, wondering just how much he meant by his words, his actions. Kelly clung to him for a moment, then broke away.

  Shaking her head slightly, she said, "Don't play games with me, Pavel."

  "I'm not playing games."

  "Not much."

  "Kelly, honestly . . ."

  "Let's see the town." She turned away from him, and started down the steep path that led back to the port.

  Pavel followed her down the sloping path. They reached the quiet, sun-drenched streets where the stucco fronts of the buildings were painted brilliant hues of blue, yellow, green and white. Children in school uniforms sat up on the roof of a single-story building, intently reading. The outdoor market was noisier, the tang of spices filling the air while women in colorful dresses bargained noisily on both sides of the stalls over freshly caught fish and teeming bins of vegetables. Clouds of flies buzzed over the fish and red meats; Pavel waved at them annoyedly, ineffectively.

  Finally he took Kelly by the wrist and led her away from the stalls.

  They found a tiny cafe with a patio that looked out on the municipal square. The food was good, the wine even better. Pavel began to fantasize about spending the rest of the afternoon in a romantic hotel room, but he knew that Kelly would never agree.

  Yet she suggested, "Let's go back up the hill and find a quiet spot where we can take a nap."

  His thoughts churning, Pavel brought her back to the abandoned Moorish castle. She has almost as many contradictions about her as her father, he said to himself. It's almost as if she is fighting within her own soul.

  But another voice in his mind warned, Her loyalty is to her father; always remember that. Your loyalty is to the Soviet Union and its people. Her loyalty is to her father.

  They climbed solid stone stairs to the topmost turret, stretched out in the sun and almost immediately fell asleep, more like brother and sister than prospective lovers.

  Pavel woke shivering. The sun had dropped toward the horizon, leaving him in the shade of the turret's parapet. It was cold, lying on the stones. Kelly was nowhere in sight.

  He sat bolt upright, then quickly got to his feet. Ah, there she is! Kelly was leaning on the weathered stone parapet, off at the other side of the turret, gazing down at the town and the harbor. Pavel felt an immense flood of relief. She had not deserted him. She had not been abducted.

  Wondering which reason was the stronger within his own mind, Pavel walked over to her side.

  "You were snoring," she said.

  "Impossible. I never snore."

  "How would you know?"

  "Hasn't your father told you that in the Soviet Union, everyone is watched all the time? If I snored, there would be a tape recording of it, and my superiors would have warned me to cease such bourgeois affectations."

  Kelly laughed. "Snoring isn't allowed in the USSR?"

  "Of course not," Pavel joked, surprised at how happy her laughter made him feel. "We are striving to create the truly modem man. Snoring is definitely not modem."

  They laughed and joked their way down the mountainside and back into the town. The sun was setting, so they walked back to the pier and the Zodiac they had left tied there. Kelly inspected the boat carefully once they had hopped into it, even taking a small electronic beeper from her belt and passing it back and forth over its length twice.

  "Don't want to bring any bugs back to the plane with us," she said. "Or bombs."

  Pavel sat beside her as she started the motor. "Your father has enemies."

  "Yes, he does," she replied. Then, staring hard into his eyes, she asked, "Aren't you one of them?"

  He had no answer. They rode back to the seaplane without further words. Pavel felt grateful that the roar of the boat's motor made intimate conversation impossible.

  From São Vicente they flew to Dakar, on the bulge of Africa's Senegalese coast. Again, Alexander suggested to Pavel that he take Kelly into the city. But when Kelly said she wanted to go dancing, both men were dubious.

  "I don't like the idea of you two out in the wild-life district at night," Alexander said grimly. "Dakar isn't a tourist's city; it's a rough, grungy town at night. It can be dangerous."

  Kelly shook her head stubbornly. "We won't go into the red-light district, for God's sake! We'll stay with the country club crowd."

  Pavel had a more serious objection. "I don't know how to dance," he confessed.

  She grinned at him, her father's sardonic, superior semi-sneer. "I'll have to teach you, then."

  So Pavel escorted Kelly on a tour of the city's nightlife, sampling capitalistic delights such as dancing in private clubs that boasted live musicians and dining in posh restaurants, all the while wondering when—if ever—Alexander was going to get his Libyan mission under way.

  It was obvious that Alexander wanted Pavel away from the plane for long hours at a time. But under constant observation, nonetheless. Pavel wondered also about his relationship with Kelly. She is Alexander's daughter, he kept telling himself. She is intelligent, charming, lovely in her own way—but she is Alexander's daughter, and her first loyalty is to her father.

  Pavel found himself wishing it were not so.

  "This is our last night of fun," Kelly said over the din of a torrid Senegalese rock band.

  "What?" Pavel had heard her words. With a shock, he realized that he did not want things to change.

  Kelly leaned forward over their minuscule table. Two plastic coconut shells half filled with poisonously delicious rum drinks tottered slightly between them. The nightclub was lit by strobing projectors flashing holograms of video stars that sang, played their electronic instruments and even "danced" with the customers. Couples gyrated wildly to the throbbing, drum-heavy music, casting weird shadows across Kelly's snub-nosed face. She was wearing a sleeveless frock, its color impossible to determine in the flashing strobe lights.

  "Tomorrow the real work starts!" she shouted into Pavel's ear.

  He took her by the wrist and led her across the edge of the dance floor, threading through bluish clouds of smoke and past the wildly thrashing couples, even directly through several of the oblivious holos. Once th
e thickly padded main door of the club closed behind them, the parking lot outside was blessedly quiet. The stars glittered in the breaks between low-scudding gray clouds. The air was damp and heavy with mingled odors of flowers arid oil refineries.

  "Had enough of the rich capitalist life?" Kelly teased.

  "You said our mission begins tomorrow?"

  "The real work starts tomorrow, yes," she said. "The exact timing for the mission is still a secret."

  "Rayyid will officially open the irrigation system next week," Pavel pointed out. "The news is in all the headlines."

  She nodded, began walking slowly toward the rows of parked cars.

  "Kelly . . ." Pavel began.

  Turning back toward him, her face lit by the garish glow of the nightclub's animated sign, she seemed to be waiting for him to speak the right words.

  "A few days ago . . . you said I was one of your father's enemies. That is true."

  "I know it."

  "But I don't wish to be your enemy."

  She sighed and shook her head. "Can't be his enemy without being mine, Pavel."

  "I have my orders. I am a loyal Soviet citizen. He knew that when he accepted me."

  Kelly took a step toward him, "Pavel—I don't make friends easily. I've always been a loner . . ."

  "Me, too," he admitted.

  She started to say something, changed her mind. Pavel could sense the emotions battling within her.

  "Maybe we'd better leave it that way," she said at last.

  "It might've been good between us, but . . ."

  A blow struck between Pavel's shoulder blades like a boulder smashing him. He went down face-first, heard his nose crunch on the asphalt of the parking lot. Kelly screamed.

  There was no pain. Not yet. Pavel half rolled over, and a massive black man loomed over him, a thick length of pipe in his upraised hand. Beyond him, Pavel could see two others grabbing at Kelly, twisting her arms painfully and laughing as they tore at her dress.

  Without thinking consciously, Pavel blocked the downward swing of the pipe-wielder's arm and kicked his legs out from under him. He went down with a surprised grunt and a thwack as Pavel scrambled to his feet.