Peacekeepers (1988)

by Ben Bova

Alexander turned to see Harold Red Eagle climbing the steps slowly, with the ponderous decorum that was his trademark. Christ, he's almost as wide as the columns holding up the roof, Alexander thought. But he's slowed some. He's not just being dignified; he's getting old.

  A bit stiffly. Red Eagle walked straight toward Alexander and extended his massive hand.

  "We meet again, Mr. Alexander," he said in a low lion's purr.

  Letting the Amerind's hand engulf his own, Alexander realized that Red Eagle's grip was firm but not hard. The big man was a true gentleman: he had the strength to crush bones, yet he withheld that strength. Instead of foolish displays intended to frighten lesser men. Red Eagle husbanded his power and used it only where and when it was necessary.

  "It's been nearly six years," Alexander said.

  "That long? Yes, I suppose it has."

  "You picked a dramatic place to meet."

  The Amerind made a small smile. "I felt it best to be discreet. You didn't land your flying boat in the Potomac, did you?"

  With a chuckle, Alexander replied, "No, it's up near Baltimore, at the old Martin Marietta seaplane facility. Came down here on the tube train like any ordinary citizen. Took twelve minutes, station to station."

  Red Eagle glanced around at the half-dozen others scattered around the shadowy floor. Two of the couples were heading for the stairs. That left only a young Asian family, the mother holding her sleeping child in her arms.

  She had already placed an incredibly sensitive microphone, the size of a penny, on the marble floor. It would be picked up the following morning before the cleaning crew came into the Memorial.

  "I have found, over the years, that there are some conversations that should not be overheard," Red Eagle said.

  "Or even remembered," Alexander added.

  Red Eagle fixed him with a stare, then admitted, "True enough."

  Alexander began pacing slowly. Red Eagle walked beside him, like a dark glacier gliding across the marble floor.

  "I guess you know why I need the Peacekeepers' cooperation,"

  Alexander began.

  "If you want their help to attack Shamar and the drug manufacturing center in those mountains, I'm afraid that will be impossible."

  "I understand that. No, what I need is some intelligence data . . ."

  "On where the bombs are located?"

  "No, on where the major drug manufacturing centers are. The biggest ones, around the world."

  "What makes you think that . . ."

  "IPF surveillance satellites can spot them," Alexander said, feeling some impatience. "You send reconnaissance drones to sniff them out."

  "If you are referring to the Peacekeepers' routine aerial patrols, I believe that they may occasionally pick up evidence of illicit drug manufacturing facilities. All such evidence is handed over to the national government in whose territory the facility exists."

  "And they file under F, for 'Forget It,' " snapped Alexander.

  Glancing around at the little family reading the plaque engraved with the Gettysburg Address, Red Eagle lowered his voice. "May I ask, Mr. Alexander, why you are interested in this information?"

  Alexander looked up at the big Amerind and shrugged as nonchalantly as he could. "Since we've gotten involved with this problem in Colombia, I realize how serious the drug traffic is. After we get Shamar for you, I think we'll go after the other big drug centers."

  Red Eagle was silent for several moments. He clasped his hands behind his back and paced away from Alexander, across the marble floor and past the seated figure of Lincoln. Alexander thought. They're damned near the same size, the statue and the Injun Chief.

  The Asian family left, yawning. Red Eagle and Alexander were left alone with Lincoln's massive marble likeness.

  And the microphone.

  Turning back to Alexander, Red Eagle said slowly, "Mr.Alexander, I am afraid that I don't entirely believe what you've just told me."

  Alexander hadn't thought he would. "Really?"

  "But we will let it pass, for the moment," he said. "We have need of your services. Your motivations are not my problem, and your future plans are . . ."—he hesitated, then concluded—"something to consider in the future."

  He's up to something, and it's big, Alexander realized.

  He'd never let me get away with the evasions I've just handed him unless he had something much more important at hand.

  "You wish to get Shamar," said Red Eagle. "We wish to get the nuclear weapons he possesses. Time grows short. The fuse is burning. Already Shamar has sold off one of his bombs. Last year he came close to destroying Moonbase with it."

  "He was stopped by a man who now works for me,"

  Alexander pointed out.

  "Hazard's son. Yes, I know."

  "You think Shamar's getting desperate?"

  Red Eagle shook his head slowly. "I believe he wants us to think he is becoming desperate. He still has five nuclear weapons. One of them is here in Washington . . ."

  "What?"

  Raising a giant hand in a gesture of calm, Red Eagle said, "It has been found and disarmed. Shamar's people do not know that. They believe it to be still intact and ready to be used."

  "Where was it?"

  "In a private house on Pennsylvania Avenue, only a few blocks from Capitol Hill. It is still there. Waiting."

  "But why . . .?"

  "The Russians found another one in Moscow. A third one was discovered in Paris."

  Alexander drew in a deep breath to calm the pulse racing through his veins. "I get it. Shamar wants to immobilize the nations that might go after him."

  "Precisely so," said Red Eagle. "As far as we know, he still believes each of those bombs to be armed and capable of being detonated when he gives the word."

  "So he thinks he can hold France, Russia and the States captive."

  "So we believe."

  " 'We,' in this case, is who?" Alexander asked.

  A look of astonishment came across Red Eagle's normally placid face. "Why, the Peacekeepers, of course. Who else?"

  "The Peacekeepers found those bombs and deactivated them?"

  Red Eagle replied, "Peacekeeper sensors located the bombs. As you yourself said earlier, Mr. Alexander, we do have surveillance satellites in orbit and drone aircraft patrolling most of the world's land surface."

  To himself Alexander silently replied, And you've already plotted out the world's major opium fields and drug manufacturing centers, I'll bet.

  "The Peacekeepers shared their information with each national government's top security agency. In Washington, it was the Federal Bureau of Investigation that found and disarmed the nuclear weapon. In Moscow, the KGB."

  "And Shamar doesn't know their teeth have been pulled?" Alexander asked.

  "We believe not."

  "That's three bombs. Where are the other two?"

  "One is in Colombia, at the site where Shamar himself is located. We believe he is making plans to place it in Bogota, the capital."

  "Makes sense. And the fifth one?"

  "That is where you come into the picture, Mr. Alexander. We need your force to get to the fifth bomb and disarm it—without letting Shamar's people know that you have done so."

  "My people? Why me?"

  "Because we cannot possibly trust the local government of the nation where the bomb has been hidden."

  "Why not? Where is it?"

  Red Eagle fell silent again, and stood as still as the brooding statue that loomed above them both.

  "Before I tell you that, Mr. Alexander," he said at last, "I would appreciate it if you told me why you want the locations of the major drug manufacturing facilities."

  There's no sense beating around the bush, Alexander told himself. Better spit it right out. "I want more than that," he said. "I want Shamar's bombs. All five of them. Intact."

  "No, Mr. Alexander. That is not possible."

  Ignoring the refusal, Alexander explained, "I've spent six years tracking down Shamar. Now that w
e're close to getting him, I realize that he's not the only mass murderer walking on God's green earth. The drug dealers are killing millions each year. I'm going to wipe them out, one by one."

  Red Eagle's massive head drooped on his shoulders, his chin sinking to his broad chest. His eyes closed, his shoulders sagged. For a moment Alexander thought that the man was undergoing a heart attack or some incredible, unbearable pain.

  "The fault is my own," he said slowly, so softly that Alexander barely heard him. "I knew it would come to this."

  "I can accomplish what the Peacekeepers can't do and the national governments won't do," Alexander urged. "I can destroy the drug centers . . ."

  "And kill how many?"

  "They're criminals! Killers!"

  "Are the farmers and shepherds downwind of your nuclear attacks also criminals?" Red Eagle asked. "You know what fallout can do, Mr. Alexander. You, of all people, should know."

  "The centers are in remote areas . . ."

  "Such as Marseille?"

  "We'll get that one with different methods."

  The huge Amerind seemed on the verge of tears. "The one thing I feared when I first contacted you six years ago was that you would start to enjoy your work too much. I told you then, Mr. Alexander, that I wanted no vigilantes or assassins. I will brook none now."

  Trying to hold down the furies burning within him, Alexander countered, "There are others who'll pay me to root out the drug dealers."

  "Then you will work against the Peacekeepers, not with them."

  "So what?"

  Red Eagle stared at him. "I am sorry, Mr. Alexander. Our relationship is at an end."

  He began to walk away.

  "Not so fast!" Alexander called, scampering to catch up with him. "I've got my people ready to nail Shamar. Nothing's going to change that."

  Red Eagle stopped and looked down at Alexander. For a long moment he seemed to peering through him, as if his eyes beamed X rays. Alexander stood up to that gaze, his own gray eyes blazing.

  It was Alexander who broke the deadlock. "Don't be so damned hasty," he said, trying to make his voice sound light. "I want Shamar, you want the nukes. We can still cooperate on that."

  "You have just told me, Mr. Alexander, that you want Shamar and the nuclear weapons."

  "Getting Shamar is still more important to me than anything else," Alexander said. It was even true, he told himself.

  "I don't know that I can trust you anymore."

  Grinning crookedly, Alexander countered, "So don't trust me. Just don't get in my way when we go in after Shamar."

  "There is still that fifth nuclear bomb," Red Eagle muttered.

  "Guess you'll have to find somebody else for that one," said Alexander.

  "There is nobody else," Red Eagle admitted. "At least, no one who can be called in so quickly."

  "Then let us get it for you."

  "So that you can steal it and use it for your vigilante justice?"

  Puffing out a long, defeated breath, Alexander lied, "No, goddammit. I guess that was a dumb idea, after all."

  Red Eagle said nothing for several moments. He knows I'm lying in my teeth, Alexander thought. Question is, can he do anything else or will he have to deal with me?

  "Mr. Alexander," the Amerind said at last, "I propose a truce."

  "A truce?"

  "You disarm the fifth bomb and get Shamar. Then we will discuss ways and means of cooperating in attacking the drug centers."

  "You mean it?"

  Raising a giant paw. Red Eagle added, "Without nuclear weapons. There are other possibilities. Our researchers have developed non-lethal chemical weapons. And biological agents might be used against the crops themselves ..."

  His deep voice trailed off into a faint rumble, leaving the possibilities dangling.

  "You've got a deal," Alexander said, extending his hand.

  Red Eagle shook it, again taking care not to exert too much strength. But to Alexander it seemed that the Amerind's hand clasp somehow lacked the warmth and friendship of their meeting, only minutes earlier.

  He doesn't trust me anymore, Alexander said to himself.

  Maybe he never did. Question is, how far can I trust him, now?

  Aloud he asked, "Now this fifth bomb. Just where in hell is it that the local government can't go after it?"

  "Barcelona."

  Alexander felt puzzled. "Barcelona? In Spain?"

  "Yes."

  "What's so touchy about the Spanish government that you can't inform Madrid about the bomb?"

  Pacing slowly out onto the broad front portico of the Memorial, to the place where Martin Luther King spoke of his dream. Red Eagle explained:

  "Spain is going through another of its traumatic seizures, the kind that has led to civil war in the past. The Basques, the Catalonians, even the Andalusians are demanding complete autonomy from the central government of Madrid. The nation of Spain may cease to exist. It may break up into seven or eight independent entities, each with its own government, its own economy, even its own language."

  Alexander nodded understandingly. "But I don't see how a bomb . . ."

  "Shamar is extremely clever," Red Eagle went on. "That is what makes him so dangerous. Barcelona is the capital of Catalonia, one of the regions struggling the hardest for autonomy. The city is about to dedicate the first nuclear fusion plant in Spain—a Russian fusion reactor, by the way, financed with loans from French banks."

  "You think the bomb is there?"

  "It is the obvious place for it, Mr. Alexander. Madrid opposed building the fusion system; the Catalonians claimed it was because the national government wanted to have the first fusion.power plant at the capital instead of Barcelona. Imagine what would happen if the plant exploded in a nuclear fireball soon after being turned on. Madrid would blame the Catalonians for the 'accident'. The Catalonians would become enraged at Madrid."

  Alexander mused, "And hydrogen fusion power would get a black eye—worse than Three Mile Island and Chernobyl did to the old fission power plants."

  "Indeed. To say nothing of destroying much of the city of Barcelona and killing a million or more people."

  His face twisting into an almost evil smile, Alexander asked, "When did you say they're turning on the fusion plant?"

  "The official dedication is a week from today."

  "That doesn't give us much time."

  "The bomb will not be set off until the following week."

  Alexander's brows shot up. "How do you know that?"

  With a heavy sigh, Red Eagle replied, "There will be an international conference in Barcelona during that week. Most of the leaders of the Peacekeepers will be there, including Director-General Hazard and his top aides."

  "Jesus Christ!"

  "With the proper timing, the bomb could decapitate the IPF."

  "That's what Shamar is after!"

  Red Eagle allowed a slight smile to cross his somber face.

  "I will be there also, Mr. Alexander. The bomb will also assassinate me, if it goes off."

  Red Eagle literally placed his life in

  Alexander's hands. And Alexander had to

  postpone his planned strike against Shamar

  to bring his key people to Barcelona.

  BARCELONA

  Year 8

  DRESSED in a chocolate-brown leather jacket, open-necked sport shirt and neatly creased navy-blue slacks. Jay Hazard watched through the bar's open doorway as the entire city of three million people seemed to be parading by.

  The Ramblas was the heart of Barcelona. A broad promenade lined with bars, restaurants, shops and theaters, it extended from the high pillar bearing Christopher Columbus's statue down by the waterfront to the sparkling Fountain of Canaletes, in midtown. On Sundays everyone in the city went to church, had a good dinner and a nap, and then went for an afternoon stroll on the Ramblas.

  Hazard was not interested in everyone. As he sat by the bar's doorway, nursing a glass of pale yellow Rioja wine, his blue-gray
eyes sought only one man's face, a face he had seen only in a three-dimensional holographic picture.

  Instead, he saw Kelly, sitting out across the narrow motorway at the sidewalk tables, sipping a tiny cup of the lethal local version of coffee. Hazard had never seen her in a skirt before. Her legs certainly look good enough to show off, he thought, but she had always worn slacks or jeans.

  Now, however, she was in a tourist's disguise: bright yellow skirt, flowered blouse, and a glitter-decorated sweater to protect her against the springtime chill. She had even put a bright ribbon in her boyishly cropped red hair.

  Kelly saw him watching her and smiled at him. Hazard made himself smile back. She seems to like me, he thought.

  Maybe too much. She's been damned helpful, testifying on my behalf to get me off the Moon, getting me this job with her father's outfit. But I can't let myself get attached to her.

  Not now. Not yet.

  Pavel Zhakarov was out there in the crowd somewhere, too, trying to blend in and look inconspicuous while staying close enough to back them up. Pavel's trained for this kind of thing, Hazard thought, wondering in the back of his mind how far he could trust the Russian.

  "He says he's in love with me," Kelly had told him one afternoon as they studied satellite photos of Shamar's base near Valledupar.

  "I know," Hazard had replied.

  "But I don't love him," she had announced firmly.

  "Pavel's nice, but—I don't love him."

  She had glanced up at him as if she expected him to say something, make some declaration. Hazard said not a word. There was nothing for him to say.

  He forced his attention back to the job at hand. The man they were looking for was known only as Julio. They had nothing more than the three-dimensional photo by which to identify him. He was a technician at the new fusion power plant, and IPF intelligence claimed that he had helped to place the nuclear bomb there for Shamar's people. In fact, he was to get his final payment for his work this Sunday afternoon, at this particular bar. According to IPF intelligence.

  Hazard sipped at the strong wine. It tasted of iron. He had never been much of a drinker, and had gotten out of the habit entirely during his years at Moonbase.

  IPF intelligence, he mused silently. While the bar's loudspeakers hammered out American pop rock and young couples drifted in for a drink and the snacks they called tapas, Hazard thought about the Peacekeepers and the career that he had thrown away.