by Tom Clancy
On the exercise bicycle beside him, Nordstrum glanced down at his own softening middle, felt a twinge of embarrassment, and fingered the touchpad to increase his level.
“I thought you’d be giving me background on the Seawolf today,” he said, struggling not to sound winded. “So how come we’re talking about Roger Gordian?”
“Don’t be a wise guy,” Weston said. “I’m not always this generous with my advice.”
Alex frowned. “Okay, have it your way. But I really do need that information.”
“And you’ll get all you can handle in a minute.”
Weston rowed, his sinews working, inhaling and exhaling softly through his nose. His eyes were centered on the rowing machine’s video screen, where tiny red and blue boats were racing over green water past a strand of white beach in a computer-simulated regatta. Nordstrum waited for him to resume speaking, peripherally aware of the smooth-operating silence of the modem equipment filling the gym. There was the occasional pneumatic hum of inclines being raised on the treadmills, and now and then the metallic clank of weight adjustments on the presses, but what he mostly heard were the sounds of controlled human exertion in uncluttered acoustical space: measured expulsions of breath, the rhythmic pounding of feet on rubber.
“Let me ask you something,” Weston said at length. “Which would be of more concern to you—a bunch of thieves moving next door with a home security system identical to yours, or those same crooks moving in without any security of their own, but having the tools and wherewithal to disable your system? To open your front door, switch off your alarms, and walk into your bedroom any time you’re sleeping or gone?”
“Rhetorical as posed,” Nordstrum said. “I’d prefer they have neither.”
“So would anybody, but that wasn’t one of my choices. Indulge me, will you?”
Nordstrum shrugged and pedaled, his upper body bent forward over the handlebars, the towel around his neck damp with perspiration.
“Suppose I wouldn’t want them getting into my house,” he said.
Weston looked at him briefly. ‘ There it is. My whole point. Gordian wants to make his case about crypto tech to the public, it ought to be his point too.”
“That as far as you’re going to spell it out?”
“Yes,” Weston said, and then turned toward the screen again. “What do you want me to tell you about the sub?”
Nordstrum wondered if he’d missed a segue. “Everything you can. I should probably know what sort of boat I’ll be riding in.”
“And writing about.”
“As a conscientious member of the press, and someone who doesn’t like looking foolish,” Nordstrum said.
Weston eyed the screen, produced another stream of epithets, and pulled more forcefully at the cable.
“You ever see that old TV program Voyage to the Bottom of the SeaT’ he said. “My boys used to watch it religiously when they were young. Sunday nights at seven. When I was on tour I’d have to call in and listen to their episode summaries.”
Nordstrum shook his head. “We didn’t receive American programming in Prague at the time. Blame my ignorance on the Commies.”
“Sure, forgot where you grew up,” Weston said. He drove, recovered. “On the show there was a futuristic sub called the Nautilus, named after the one in the Jules Verne story. The Seawolf’s its real-life equivalent, loaded with capabilities that the designers of Los Angeles-class vessels could only imagine. Goddamn thing’s a testbed for advanced naval warfare technologies. It’s got a modular construction for limitless upgrades. New low-signature hydrodynamics, and integrated detection, telemetry, and communications systems. Carries the usual array of anti-ship Harpoons, Mark 48 torpedoes, mines, you name it, plus the new Block 5-series Tomahawk. A land-attack missile that can hang in the air for up to two hours and has more warhead options than I can rattle off, including Hard Target Smart Fuze munitions able to penetrate to twenty feet underground before detonation.”
He winked and lowered his voice confidentially. “While the Navy doesn’t officially have nuclear-armed Tomahawks aboard its subs, the capability naturally exists.”
“Naturally,” Alex said.
“I should add that the Seawolf’s able to operate in the littorals.”
“Near ports, cities, enemy strongpoints, other land-based targets.”
“Exactly.” Weston examined his reflection in the floor-to-ceiling mirrors, swore disgustedly under his breath, and straightened his posture. “Before I get into more detail, you ought to know why the Seawolf’s deployment under SEAPAC isn’t just one of the President’s typical mental farts, but his worst stinking room-clearer yet.”
“Let me take a wild stab at it,” Nordstrum said. “You’re troubled by the prospect of having Japanese, South Korean, and other regional crew components aboard, even in exclusively non-combat roles .. . medical, research, and the like.”
“You know me well, Alex. It’s the treaty’s dumbest provision.”
Nordstrum pedaled. Though Weston hadn’t yet broken a sweat, he was akeady starting to feel bushed.
“I don’t know, Craig,” he said. “Maybe you used the wrong television show for your analogy. The better comparison might be thinking of the Seawolf as a kind of USS Enterprise. Representatives of the world’s peace-loving peoples consolidating their resources to guard against the Klingons.”
“Never understood how that sappy shit got so popular,” Weston said.
Nordstrum smiled. “Be that as it may, you know our Asian Pacific allies have been moving toward greater participation in regional military operations for some time. The Japanese alone spend millions on joint ballistic missile defense research with us every year. And there are Klingons in their part of space. North Korea’s got Nodong-2’s capable of dropping chemical and biological weapons into the heart of Tokyo.” He paused, feehng a little out of breath. “This isn’t anything that was pulled out of a hat, but a logical evolution of existing strategic policies.”
“So you’ve stated ad infinitum in the editorial pages,” Weston said. “And here I thought you were only doing it for a free thrill-ride on a submarine.”
Nordstrum gave him a look. “Should I be offended by that comment?”
“It was a joke,” Weston said without a trace of humor in his expression. “Look, cooperation is one thing. But how did we go from that to letting foreign seamen live and work aboard a nuclear sub, a fucking leviathan of the deep? What were our defense and intelligence communities thinking when they allowed it? I’ve never been phobic about the Japanese, but they will do what’s in their own best national interest. For the past few years that’s included joint military exercises with China and Russia. They’re reaching out in directions besides just ours.”
“I’ve never suggested SEAPAC doesn’t have its risks. Obviously there have to be tough security procedures—”
“You mentioned medical personnel. As you’ll see for yourself in a couple of weeks, even the biggest sub feels like a claustrophobic tin can once you’ve been aboard a while. It’s a short hop from the infirmary to the torpedo room. Or the control room. Ghosts have a way of floating between decks, Alex. Of going wherever the fuck they want without being noticed. Because they can make their damned selves invisible.”
Weston rowed silently, seemingly with nothing more to add, and having shed very little light on the technical workings of the submarine. How had they gotten sidetracked onto policy matters?
Alex swung his leg off the bike and wiped his forehead with his towel.
“That’s it for me,” he said. “Feel like breakfast?”
“I owe this cocksucking torture machine another fifteen minutes of my life,” Weston said. “Next time, though. We’ll have some pancakes.”
“Sure,” Nordstrum said, starting toward the locker room.
“Alex—”
He paused and looked over his shoulder.
“It’s the key, not the lock. Tell that to Roger Gordian. Before the press confer
ence. Okay?”
Alex regarded Weston a moment, then nodded.
“Okay,” he said.
SEVEN
SINGAPORE
SEPTEMBER 18, 2000
THE SUBTLEST OF VISUAL CUES JACKED BLACKBURN TO heightened alertness. He could not have expressed the feeling in words; it was instinctive, programmed into his neural circuits by long years of battle experience with the Special Air Service. And he trusted it no less than his eyes and ears.
The man who had triggered his reaction had been poring through a magazine as he waited at the bus stop—so why had his eyes flicked over the upper edge of the magazine as Blackburn walked by? And why the sharp look of recognition on his features, the abrupt stiffening of his posture?
Why, all at once, had Blackburn gotten the powerful sense of being watchedl
Perhaps twenty yards ahead of him, Kirsten was starting down the stairs in front of the Hyatt’s entrance. Max slowed his pace and pulled back his gaze. He ranged it from right to left across an area several feet away and parallel to him, then reversed direction, scanning a larger, farther sector until it once again encompassed Kirsten. His attention had divided itself, automatically and simultaneously keying into separate frames of reference: the particular and the general, the narrow and the wide, points and lines.
Blackburn marked the bodies of the people within eyeshot as stationary and moving objects, drawing correlations between their positions and the broader patterns of foot traffic. Scouting for any peculiarities in their interrelationships.
Several were readily apparent.
There was a man launching off the curb directly across the street to his left, beyond the pedestrian crossing, then weaving through traffic toward his side of the street—a rare sight in a country that punished jaywalking with steep fines. Another was advancing from a short distance up the sidewalk, shoving through the crowd. Two more were rapidly converging on the hotel from opposite sides of the entrance.
Blackburn snapped a glance behind him, felt the skin on the back of his neck prickle. The man he had passed at the bus stop was pushing toward him, the magazine he’d been holding no longer in evidence.
All four of the men were around the same age, Asian, and wearing the same basic style of clothing.
The entire surveillance took under eight seconds and left him with little to consider. He had learned to be aware of everything that happened around him and quickly digest what he observed. It was clear now that he had walked into a trap. A closing trap. He did not know for certain who his enemies were, how they were deployed, or even their total number … but he did know the positions of five of them.
He walked on, trying to control his nerves, making a tremendous effort to conceal the fact that he’d spotted his attackers. Kirsten was halfway down the steps now, the men nearest the hotel closing in on her. Which could only mean they—or whoever had sent them—knew something about the Monolith files. He had to to get her away from them. But how”?
Scanning the area near the hotel, he came up with an idea.
Without wasting an instant, he reached into his sport jacket for his palm phone, flipped it open, thumbed the power button, keyed up one of the speed-dial numbers stored in its memory, and hit “Send.” Hoping to God that Kirstens cell phone was on, and that she would answer his call if it was.
Kirsten had almost reached the sidewalk when her cellular trilled in her purse. She paused, looked toward Max, and smiled. He had lifted his own phone to his ear. Was he going to mutter sweet nothings to her as he came up the street?
Moving against the handrail, she set her briefcase down on a step and got out the phone.
“Hi-ho,” she said into the mouthpiece. “I see you’re finally—”
“Don’t talk. There isn’t time.”
Confused, she looked across the short distance between them and saw that his face was as serious as his tone.
“Max, what’s wrong?”
“I said to be quiet and listen.”
Her stomach clenched with tension. She swallowed, nodded, her hand squeezing the phone.
“There’s a taxi stand up the block to your right. Walk over to it as fast as you can without running.”
She nodded again, looking at him with wide, questioning eyes. The stand was in the opposite direction from Max. What was going on?
Suddenly the emotion gripping her middle was no longer anxiety but fear.
The disk. God, this had to be connected to the—
“I want you to jump into a cab and get the hell away from here. I’ll contact you soon. Understand?”
She gave him a third nod.
”Go!” he said.
Her heart knocking, she replaced the phone in her bag, snatched up her briefcase, and hastened down the remaining stairs to the street.
The two members of the strike team nearest the woman saw her stop and pull out her cell phone, then looked down the street at Blackburn, saw him talking into his phone, and immediately knew they’d been discovered.
One of them raised a hand to signal this to the others.
Bare seconds later he saw her resume walking, reach the bottom of the steps, and swing away from Blackburn toward the cab stand.
He and his companion increased their pace, pushing through the crowd, confident they were close enough to intercept her before she reached it.
Blackburn was still a few steps away from Kirsten when he saw the man turn his head toward her, turn his head toward him, and then give what was clearly a signal to his companions.
Not good, Blackburn thought. If the man had seen both of them on their phones, he wouldn’t have to be a genius to conclude they were talking to each other, and that his group’s little ambush was no longer any kind of secret.
The gesture would have warned his friends to hurry up and make their move.
Kirsten had reached the pavement, turned away from him, and started hastily toward the taxi stand, where a line of robin’s-egg-blue Comfort cabs were waiting to pick up fares. The pair of men who’d been covering the door had veered off after her, right on her tail, blocking her from Blackburn’s sight.
His teeth clenched, Max bumped quickly past a group of women with shopping bags hung on their arms, shuffled past some dark-suited businessmen, and then moved up behind the pair at a fast walk, using every available ounce of self-restraint to keep from actually breaking into a run. If he did that, it was a safe bet his attackers would do the same, and he had no way of telling whether he’d made all of them, or whether there might be someone he hadn’t identified even nearer to Kirsten than the two men in front of him—and in an easy position to outrace him.
He gained on the men, gained some more, and when he was almost on top of them suddenly swung around to their left, quickstepping off the curb, then stepping back onto it, passing them, putting himself between them and Kirsten. He was three feet behind her now, maybe less.
Almost close enough to touch her.
Almost …
He heard hurried footsteps coming up behind him, and lunged ahead with a burst of speed, no longer checking himself, knowing there wasn’t any room left for hesitation. Reaching her at last, he hooked his right arm around her shoulder and swept her along toward the idling cabs, bracing her so she wouldn’t trip head over heels onto the asphalt, using his body to shield her from their pursuers.
Rigid with shock, Kirsten stumbled along uncomprehendingly for several feet, trying to resist—then all at once realized it was Max and loosened up, letting him steer her forward.
She glanced over at his face as they approached the cab stand, her eyes bright with distress, their cheeks almost touching. “Max, dear Heaven, Max, I thought you were one of them. I—”
”Shhh!”
Kirsten fell silent, her body trembling against him. She had no sooner registered that he was looking past her toward one of the standing cabs, than he reached out and tore open the taxi’s door so violently she had the wild idea that its handle would come off in his grasp.
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What followed would always be a blur in Kirsten’s recollection. One instant they were together, she under his arm. Max practically carrying her along, and the next he’d shoved her into the backseat of the cab, and was standing on the street, standing there alone, leaning through the door from outside.
“Selangor!” he shouted at the driver.
The man behind the wheel jerked around to look at him through the safety partition, his shoulder rattling the clutch of religious trinkets dangling from his rearview mirror.
“Sorry, no long distance, ai,” he said, shaking his head.
Blackburn jammed a hand into his pants pocket, hurriedly yanked out his billfold, and tossed it into the front seat.
“There’s more than two hundred American dollars in it,” he said. “Take her and it’s all yours.”
Kirsten was gaping up at him with a kind of helpless desperation. The driver, meanwhile, had already lifted the billfold off the seat and was peering into it with astonishment.
“Max, I don’t understand,” she cried shrilly. “What’s happening? Why aren’t you coming?”
“Stay with your sister,” he said. “If you don’t hear from me in a few days, I want you to get in touch with a man named Pete Ni^”
Max felt a hand seize on his left elbow from behind. He tensed, trying to keep himself planted between the two attackers and the cab.
”Get moving!” he screamed into its interior, then pulled his head out of the door, slamming it shut with his right hand. He could see the reflections of the two attackers in the window—one still holding onto him, the other trying to scramble past him to the car.
