by Tom Clancy
She smiled a little. “That’s a very generous offer … but I hope you won’t be offended if I decline to accept it, at least for now. I’d like some time to myself. Time to … regroup. You understand?”
His eyes were still holding steady on her.
”Yes, yes, I do,” he said. “As long as you understand that the offer stands if you ever change your mind. And that I never forget my friends.”
She nodded, her smile growing larger. It was very genuine and very beautiful, and Gordian thought he knew what Blackburn must have seen in it.
“Is it back to Singapore for you, then?” he said.
She was quiet a moment, then nodded again.
“For a time, anyway. But there’s one more thing I have to do here in America before I go.”
Armitage sat by the answering machine in his office, his eyes staring out of his wasted features with a cold vitality which seemed to demand and consume all that was left of his life force—like small, mean creatures arising from detritus, feeding on decay.
There had been a number of messages from Marcus Caine waiting for him this morning, each more panicked and desperate than the one preceding it.
No more of that, he thought.
Bound to a failing body and his wheelchair, he was determined to cast off unnecessary ballast. It was hard enough to manage without the dead weight.
“Erase messages,” he said, activating the device with a voice chip produced in one of Monolith’s San Jose factories. He paused a moment, then set it to screen and disconnect any calls originating from Caine’s home or office, verbally inputting the numbers to be blocked.
He did not want to be dragged down with Marcus as his role in the SEAPAC affair, the campaign finance scandal, and numerous other damning episodes became known. Indeed, any association with him at all would be a severe liability.
How quickly things changed. He had believed Caine a likely candidate to win Uplink International and forge a media/technology monopoly that would extend around the globe as no single entity of its type had done before .. . and as a plum for being instrumental in bringing that about, Armitage was to have been handed Uplink’s bio-sciences division on a silver platter. Who could say what new treatments for his condition might have emerged with the company’s resources at his disposal? Who could truly say?
But Marcus had disappointed him, failed him, and none of that was to be.
He pulled air through his throat and released it in a watery sigh. Perhaps the ALS would get him in the end. Almost certainly it would. But he would live long enough to see Marcus go down first. …
And no doubt write many interesting and widely read columns about his fall.
“There it is. You can check everything out if you’d like.”
Marcus Caine sat on the leather-cushioned sofa in his study, a square of mahogany wall paneling pulled back on his right to reveal an open wall safe.
The man he’d spoken to stepped across the room and peered into the safe. He reached a hand inside, extracted a banded pack of bills, rifled their edges, then put them back and looked into the safe another minute.
“It contains over a million dollars in cash. And some trinkets … diamonds, my dear wife has always loved her diamonds .. . worth a great deal more.”
The man shifted his gaze toward Caine. He was smallish with a pencil mustache and gray eyes that matched the color of his sport jacket.
“You sure you want me to do this?” he said.
Caine spread his arms over the top of the backrest, tilted his chin up, and laughed—a sound that reminded the man a little of crows.
“What’s the problem? Are you afraid you’ll screw up, the way your friends did at the airport? Or how about Sacramento—shall we discuss that merry fucking romp?” ~ “There’s no reason to talk to me that way,” the man said. “Those were tough assignments.”
Caine laughed his harsh, cawing laugh again.
“Then let’s see you tackle an easy one,” he said. “Earn your money this time. And spare me the humiliation of becoming the poster boy for Court TV for a year or so, to be followed by a lifetime of prison interviews.”
Silence.
The man walked across the room, stopped in front of Caine, and reached under his jacket. The weapon he brought out from underneath it was a Heckler & Koch .45 P9S.
A moment passed. Still standing there, he took a sound suppressor from his inside pocket and screwed it onto the barrel.
“You worried about how your wife finds you?” he asked. I
Caine straightened, and brought his arms down off the backrest. The pained humor was gone from his face and his eyes were watery.
His mouth suddenly tightened.
“Earn your money,” he snapped. “Make a fucking mess for her.”
The man nodded, cocked the gun, and angled its bore up at Caine’s head. There was the sound of Caine sucking in air, and then the muted thud of bullets leaving the gun as he pulled the trigger ten times, emptying the magazine.
When his job was finished, the man bolstered the gun, I walked back around the couch to the safe, and quickly I emptied it, transferring everything that had been inside to ^ his briefcase.
He paused briefly at the door on his way out. Looked at the body and the blood on the sofa and walls. And nodded to himself with satisfaction.
Got what you paid for, he thought.
The inscription on the gravestone was elegant, a quote from Wordsworth:
O joy! That in our embers Is something that doth live. That Nature yet remembers, What was so fugitive.
Reading it, Kirsten wiped a hand across her eyes.
“I remember, too. Max,” she said. “I remember.”
Behind her, Pete Nimec waited quietly, standing in the shade of the Japanese maples that grew where Blackburn had been laid to rest, his body flown back from Malaysia soon after his identity was confirmed.
Kirsten knelt over the soil that filled the grave, still loose under her fingers.
”Atman and Brahman/’ she said. “Sometimes, Max, we need illusion to show us the truth in ways we can manage … and though I can’t be sure, I sometimes think you didn’t understand that, and sold yourself short because you didn’t. That you felt guilty about asking me to make difficult choices, and let that guilt get in the way of your opening up to me.” She felt moisture on her cheeks. ‘The thing is. Max, I believe Roger Gordian is right. That you were really showing me the way to my own conscience. To my own heart.”
She tasted salt, touched her fingers to her lips, touched the place where Max’s name was carved on the gravestone.
“You … what we had … it was Brahman, my sweet love,” she whispered. “It was truth.”
Kirsten lingered there a moment, her eyes closed as if in prayer or repose.
Then she rose, turned from the grave, and strode slowly to where Pete Nimec was waiting.
“You okay?” he asked softly.
She looked at him, smiled a little.
“I will be,” she said.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Acknowledgements
ONE - KENNEDY SPACE CENTER CAPE CANAVERAL, FLORIDA APRIL 15, 2001
TWO - VARIOUS LOCALES APRIL 17, 2001
THREE - VARIOUS LOCALES APRIL 17, 2001
FOUR - MATO GROSSO DO SUL SOUTHERN BRAZIL APRIL 17, 2001
FIVE - VARIOUS LOCALES APRIL 17, 2001
SIX - CHAPARE REGION WESTERN BOLIVIA APRIL 18, 2001
SEVEN - PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA APRIL 18, 2001
EIGHT - NORTHERN ALBANIA APRIL 18, 2001
NINE - HOUSTON, TEXAS APRIL 18, 2001
TEN - QUIJARRO, BOLIVIA APRIL 19, 2001
ELEVEN - SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA APRIL 19, 2001
TWELVE - CAPE CANAVERAL, FLORIDA APRIL 21, 2001
THIRTEEN - SOUTHEASTERN BRAZIL APRIL 21, 2001
FOURTEEN - EASTERN MAINE APRIL 22, 2001
FIFTEEN - VARIOUS LOCALES APRIL 22, 2001
&n
bsp; SIXTEEN - COASTAL MAINE APRIL 22, 2001
SEVENTEEN - VARIOUS LOCALES APRIL 22, 2001
EIGHTEEN - FLORIDA APRIL 23, 2001
NINETEEN - VARIOUS LOCALES APRIL 23/24, 2001
TWENTY - WESTERN BRAZIL APRIL 23, 2001
TWENTY-ONE - KAZAKHSTAN APRIL 26, 2001
Epilogue
ACCLAIM FOR THE BESTSELLING NOVELS OF TOM CLANCY
“Action-packed.”—The New York Times Book Review
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—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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“A high pitch of excitement.”
—The Wall Street Journal
“Tom Clancy is the best there is.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“Clancy’s writing is so strong that readers feel they are there.”
—Boston Sunday Herald
“No one can equal his talent.”—Houston Chronicle
NOVELS BY TOM CLANCY
The Hunt for Red October
Red Storm Rising
Patriot Games
The Cardinal of the Kremlin
Clear and Present Danger
The Sum of All Fears
Without Remorse
Debt of Honor
Executive Orders
Rainbow Six
The Bear and the Dragon
Red Rabbit
The Teeth of the Tiger
SSN: Strategies of Submarine Warfare
NONFICTION
Submarine: A Guided Tour Inside a Nuclear Warship
Armored Cav: A Guided Tour of an Armored Cavalry Regiment
Fighter Wing: A Guided Tour of an Air Force Combat Wing
Marine: A Guided Tour of a Marine Expeditionary Unit
Airborne: A Guided Tour of an Airborne Task Force
Carrier: A Guided Tour of an Aircraft Carrier
Special Forces: A Guided Tour of U.S. Army Special Forces
Into the Storm: A Study in Command
(written with General Fred Franks, Jr., Ret.)
Every Man a Tiger
(written with General Charles Horner, Ret.)
Shadow Warriors: Inside the Special Forces
(written with General Carl Stiner, Ret., and Tony Koltz)
CREATED BY TOM CLANCY
Splinter Cell
CREATED BY TOM CLANCY AND STEVE PIECZENIK
Tom Clancy’s Op-Center
Tom Clancy’s Op-Center: Mirror Image
Tom Clancy’s Op-Center: Games of State
Tom Clancy’s Op-Center: Acts of War
Tom Clancy’s Op-Center: Balance of Power
Tom Clancy’s Op-Center: State of Siege
Tom Clancy’s Op-Center: Divide and Conquer
Tom Clancy’s Op-Center: Line of Control
Tom Clancy’s Op-Center: Mission of Honor
Tom Clancy’s Op-Center: Sea of Fire
Tom Clancy’s Op-Center: Call to Treason
Tom Clancy’s Net Force
Tom Clancy’s Net Force: Hidden Agendas
Tom Clancy’s Net Force: Night Moves
Tom Clancy’s Net Force: Breaking Point
Tom Clancy’s Net Force: Point of Impact
Tom Clancy’s Net Force: CyberNation
Tom Clancy’s Net Force: State of War
Tom Clancy’s Net Force: Changing of the Guard
Tom Clancy’s Net Force: Springboard
CREATED BY TOM CLANCY AND MARTIN GREENBERG
Tom Clancy’s Power Plays: Politika
Tom Clancy’s Power Plays: ruthless.com
Tom Clancy’s Power Plays: Shadow Watch
Tom Clancy’s Power Plays: Bio-Strike
Tom Clancy’s Power Plays: Cold War
Tom Clancy’s Power Plays: Cutting Edge
Tom Clancy’s Power Plays: Zero Hour
Tom Clancy’s Power Plays: Wild Card
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
TOM CLANCY’S POWER PLAYS: SHADOW WATCH
A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with RSE Holdings, Inc.
PRINTING HISTORY Berkley edition / November 1999
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1999 by RSE Holdings, Inc.
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eISBN : 978-1-101-00255-1
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Jerome Preisler for his creative ideas and his invaluable contributions to the preparation of the manuscript. I would also like to acknowledge the assistance of Marc Cerasini, Larry Segriff, Denise Little, John Helfers, Robert Youdelman, Esq., Tom Mallon, Esq.; the wonderful people at Penguin Putnam, including Phyllis Grann, David Shanks, and Tom Colgan; and Doug Littlejohns, Kevin Perry, the rest of the Shadow Watch team, and the other fine folks at Red Storm Entertainment. As always, I would like to thank Robert Gottlieb of the William Morris Agency, my agent and friend. But most important, it is for you, my readers, to determine how successful our collective endeavor has been.
—Tom Clancy
ONE
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER CAPE CANAVERAL, FLORIDA
APRIL 15, 2001
LATER, WHEN IT BECAME BOTH HER JOB AND OBSESSION to determine what happened at the pad, she would remember how everything had gone just right until it all went terribly wrong, turning excitement and anticipation into horror, and forever changing the course of her life. Astronaut, media celebrity, role model, mother—the world’s easy reference tags for her would remain the same. But she knew herself well. There was the Annie Caulfield who had existed before the disaster, and the Annie Caulfield who eventually arose from its ashes. They were two very different women.
The morning had promised ideal conditions for the launch: calm winds, moderate temperatures, a clear blue spread of sky running off toward the eastern rim of Merritt Island, where the sun was shining brightly over Pad 39A at the ocean’s edge. Annie would never forget that gorgeous sky, never forget looking out a window in the Launch Control Center and thinking it was like something from a Florida postcard or tourist brochure, the sort of roof NASA mission planners frequently wished for and rarely got.
Indeed, the preparations for Orion’s launch had gone without a hitch from the beginning. There had been no false starts, none of the frustrating last-minute technical snags that often caused countdowns to slip, and sometimes even forced missions to be scrubbed entirely.
Everything, everything, had seemed just right.
At T minus two hours, thirty minutes, Annie had joined members of the Mission Management Team and other NASA officials in accompanying the flight crew—her crew, as she’d called it, as she referred to all of the teams under her supervision—to the transport vehicle that would ferry them to the pad. While this was typically staged as a photo op by NASA’s Public Affairs people, she was still a little surprised by the number of newsies waiting outside headquarters, their microphones covered with those furry wind baffles that looked like oversi
zed caterpillars. There had even been a host from one of the network morning shows, Gary Somebody-or-other, who’d dragged her before the cameras for a comment.
In hindsight, Annie supposed she should have been prepared for the attention. NASA was intent on working the media, and she was aware that her strongly requested presence at the Center on the launch date, and to some extent even her appointment as Chief of Astronauts—a position very much at the upper level of the agency’s organizational hierarchy—were calculated to draw a larger-than-normal press contingent. But she accepted her value as a PR tool, and sincerely believed the mission warranted its hype.
Long delayed due to funding problems, and of major importance to the International Space Station, the facility’s first laboratory module was at last being sent into orbit, where it would be connected to the building-block segments already in place just two weeks before another research module was to launch from a Russian cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Far beyond their political merits as concrete examples of East-West cooperation, the two missions were at the very heart of ISS’s future scientific endeavors, opening up a new era in space exploration, and Annie was sure this was why she’d been so focused on their nuts and bolts and uncharacteristically oblivious to the surrounding hoopla. Together, they represented the largest step ever toward realizing a dream that had held her in its grip since childhood, and cost her dearly as an adult. With success for the ISS program within reach, Annie was hoping the pride she felt over her contribution might finally eradicate the guilt and pain that had been its lasting by-product.
