Deception (12 page)

Flattery now
, Keyes thought. Just another form of condescension. He felt the flash of anger again, and drowned it in some diet lemonade.

“Between nanotechnology and genetic engineering, nuclear waste and stem cells, projects like ours … humanity is going to need to navigate some new moral terrain in the very near future. I'm a scientist, Jim. I know better than anyone that progress is inevitable. But we must progress carefully—and we must do what we do for the right reasons. If we allow political or industrial pressures to dictate—”

“Henry,” Keyes interrupted. “I'm sorry, but I've got an early meeting. Could we cut to the chase?”

Chen paused, choosing his next words carefully.

“Put on the brakes. Until we see what Steve saw, that concerned him so much—we need to shut her down.”

“That sounds excessive.”

“Ed has told you he can repeat the results. Hasn't he? That's why you're not more concerned about this.”

“Do I not seem concerned?”

“Ed's wrong,” Chen said decisively. “He's a genius, sure. But he doesn't know his own limitations. I believe Steve is one of only a handful of men and women on earth capable of coming up with … whatever it was he found. A formula to precisely predict the lifetime of the singularities, wasn't it?”

Keyes raised his lemonade, just to do something, and sipped. Was that the car, pulling up around front? No, only the wind.

“What do you see as the goal of the Project?” Chen asked suddenly.

It was a trick question, Keyes sensed. He gave the textbook answer, straight from Greenwich's initial proposal. “Creating under controlled conditions a gravitational singularity that can be sustained and manipulated …”

“Not the textbook answer,” Chen said. “The
real
goal.”

“Liberated vacuum energy. Cheap, clean, safe power … possible defensive applications …”

“All bottom line. That's just my point. You've got no respect for nature. And if you don't respect Mother Nature, Jim, you're asking for serious trouble.”

Keyes made a tight line out of his mouth.

“I don't mean to make threats,” Chen said softly. “But if you won't listen to reason, I intend on going over your head. I respect Steve, and his opinion—more than you do, I'm afraid.”

Keyes ran a hand over his face. For a few moments, both men were quiet.

“Christ,” Keyes said then.

“I'm sorry to pull this on you, Jim.”

“If I had any doubts, I wouldn't even consider …”

“You
should
have doubts. Any sane man would. That's what I'm trying to do, is raise doubts in your mind.”

“I wouldn't dream of moving ahead without all possible precautions being taken.”

“That's not good enough.”

“What would be good enough?”

“Convince Steve that it's safe for him to share his results with us. I'll tell you how to do that. Convene a panel of outsiders to analyze the data. Outsiders with no agenda.”

“By doing that, we take the chance of someone else taking the lead.”

“God willing,” Chen said, “they'll be careful too.”

Keyes didn't answer. He rubbed at his face again. Suddenly he felt weary—weary, ancient, and somewhere near furious.

Chen was accusing him of something, he thought. At best, of hubris; at worst, of stupidity. It was all well and good for Chen to lecture him about not respecting Mother Nature. But if he turned it around and lectured Chen, about not understanding the realities of management and competition in today's world, would it get him anywhere? No. The man was an egotist, in his way. He would give advice without hesitating, but he wouldn't take it in return.

What Keyes would have liked to say was simple: that perhaps Chen respected Mother Nature too much. His respect would make him overly cautious, and they would lose the spectacular chance that faced them. As long as man was willing to accept this sad lot with which God had presented him, how could they ever truly evolve?

The universe, Keyes knew from Greenwich, was a mere fourteen billion years old. It was scientists like Chen who had arrived at this figure; yet those same scientists failed to see the dark humor of their discovery. Fourteen billion. It struck Keyes as a tiny number. For the universe to produce awe, it should have been a billion billion years old, at the very least; something incomprehensible. Not
fourteen
billion. At merely fourteen billion years old, the universe was not that impressive at all. It was like a cheap trinket one might find in a box of Cracker Jacks. Why
should
they respect this universe, and accept their lot without question? It would be cowardly, and weak.

But Chen had never needed to bury a child, he reminded himself. To Chen, the universe did not seem nearly as disrespectable as it seemed to Keyes. And so saying these things would have been a waste of breath. Worse, they would have convinced Chen that he was right—and then Chen would indeed go over his head.

Instead, he decided to placate the man.

He made a show of reluctance. He made a show of agonizing. Then he said, “You've got a point.”

“I'm glad to hear you say that.”

“You're right. Epstein did run. Probably because he doesn't trust me. And Greenwich has promised that he can repeat the results.”

“I knew it already.”

“I'll convene your panel,” Keyes said. “But beyond that, I don't promise a thing. If they report that it's safe to proceed …”

“That's all I ask.”

“Henry—thanks for coming to me. Instead of simply going up the ladder.”

Chen looked taken aback, almost touched. “You're a good man,” he said. “I know that.”

“Trying my best.”

“You've made the right decision, Jim.”

“I hope so.”

“I know so,” Chen said.

Abruptly, Keyes stood. Chen picked up on the signal, and moved toward the screen door leading back into the house. They dropped off their glasses in the kitchen; then Keyes escorted Chen to the front door. “How's Beth?” he asked.

“Good—thank you.”

“The kids?”

“Great. Amazing.”

“Give them my best.”

“I will,” Chen said. He hesitated. “Jim,” he said. “It's the right way. The only way.”

A moment passed. “Drive safely,” Keyes said then.

Chen grinned at him. He turned and crossed the gravel driveway, passing the carport where Jeremy had once done his trick with the bicycle, getting into his Subaru. As he left the driveway, he beeped the horn, once.

Keyes raised a hand, and watched him go.

Twenty seconds later, another car was pulling into the driveway. Keyes held up an index finger:
One second.
He went back inside, climbed the stairs, and found his suitcase.

Before leaving the bedroom, he moved to the telephone sitting by the clock radio. He picked it up and then thought for a moment, scowling. He sat down on the edge of the bed and dialed a number from memory.

Someone would need to handle Chen, and quickly, before he realized that Keyes had lied. He listened as the phone rang.

“Yello,” said a voice. In the background was a television set—
Good Morning America
, Keyes thought—and a woman, talking loudly from another room.

“Roger,” Keyes said. “Sorry to bother you at home …”

ELEVEN

1.

Yildirim seemed nervous.

Of course he did. If he was caught, he would lose his job. But it was nothing compared to what Hannah would face if they were caught, and so she had a hard time finding much sympathy for the man.

They stood together on the Sun Deck, watching as the
Aurora II
slid into port in Istanbul. From this vantage point she could make out the local wharf rats, standing with ropes in hand, waiting. She could also make out a group of men standing farther back on the dock, wearing business suits and gold watches that glistened in the twilight. Those would be the authorities, she supposed. Those would be the ones to avoid.

Yildirim used the remains of one cigarette to light another. He pitched the butt overboard, then pointed with the second cigarette at the men in suits and watches. “See there?”

Hannah nodded.

As Yildirim spoke, his eyes scanned the dock restlessly. “One more time,” he said. “Once you get to Victor's home—”

Meaning Victor Bascara, the husband of a maid who worked aboard the ship. Hannah had memorized the man's address in the Western suburbs. If she was able to slip through the net, she was to get in a taxi and repeat the address to the driver. Yildirim would meet her there as soon as possible, at which point they would work out the remaining fine points: getting her on a plane at Atatürk Airport and, more important from his point of view, placing a call to her accountant, to arrange the wiring of the money.

“—be patient,” he said. “It may take some time for me to get away from here. Especially once they realize you're gone.”

“All right.”

“But I
will
get there. Just be patient.”

“All right.”

Yildirim stifled a cough with his fist. “I must be losing my mind,” he murmured.

As if she was to believe that he was doing this from the goodness of his heart. As if the money wasn't even part of the equation.

Hannah said nothing.

Beyond the dock lay the city of Istanbul at dusk. If it had been earlier in the night, she thought—if there had been more light in the sky—then perhaps Istanbul would have looked more exotic. As it was, she could hardly make out the ancient mosques, looming over the city behind veils of smog. The old city, which had been a world power for sixteen long centuries—first as Byzantium, then as Constantinople, and now as Istanbul—was nowhere to be seen. In its stead were congested traffic, fast-food restaurants, and distant buildings almost tall enough to be called skyscrapers.

Now the wharf rats were coming forward, catching lines thrown from the ship and throwing lines back in exchange. Yildirim drew on his cigarette so hard that the tobacco crackled. “Ready?” he asked.

Hannah hesitated for a moment before answering. The night was warm, but once she was in the water it would be cold. She had never been fond of water. But beggars couldn't be choosers.

She nodded again. “As I'll ever be,” she said.

2.

Keyes overate on the flight—accepting everything offered to him, and then taking seconds.

To hell with the diet, he thought. He popped a jumbo shrimp into his mouth and chewed greedily. When this was finished, he would go back on the straight and narrow. Until then he needed to be at his most alert, which could hardly be done on fifteen hundred calories a day.

After gorging himself, he leaned back, trying to clear his mind. Around him the Gulfstream IV-SP whispered soft white noise. This was a chance for rest. He closed his eyes, hoping to doze.

Upon landing, he checked his cell phone. He had forgotten a fresh battery but it hardly mattered; his network evidently didn't have a server in Turkey. The phone was useless.

He was pleased to find that Dietz had come to pick him up personally.

They drove into the city—heading directly for the quay, Dietz explained, because the ship had already docked and the passengers would be disembarking within the hour. Everything was under control. By the end of the day, they would have the woman, whoever she was, safely in custody. From the passenger roster he had gotten a name—Victoria Ludlow—but that was almost certainly an alias.

Dietz hardly lived up to the picture Keyes had assembled of the man in his mind. He was tall and barrel-chested, in his late fifties, with a wide jaw and squarish head that reminded Keyes of the actor James Caan. His most striking feature was his gray eyes, which were mild and drifting, with a buzz underneath. Except for that buzz, Dietz didn't strike Keyes as a particularly forceful type. He seemed more like an aging hippie, a gentle soul who had somehow gone adrift—a Jimmy Caan who had learned a few hard life lessons, who had gotten his fill of bar brawls and was now looking elsewhere for answers.

Keyes remembered the man's tone over the telephone, the hint of ironic distance that he had found disturbing. Perhaps there had been a personal betrayal in his past, Keyes thought. Perhaps that was why the man seemed so gentle, on the surface, with a hint of something curdled underneath. Some vital part of him had given up.

But a dark side had been there once. Otherwise he would not have been in Roger Ford's Rolodex. And must still be there somewhere, Keyes guessed, buried beneath the deceptively calm façade.

Leonard was at the dock, Dietz explained in his laid-back way, in case the woman tried to disembark early. As the passengers came off the ship, their papers would be checked. Then, if Dietz had read things correctly, they would be escorted by the local authorities to the Istanbul Hyatt. There they would be interviewed by the FBI, who had taken a pair of suites on the top floor. The time to take the woman into custody would be before the FBI became involved—before she was brought to the hotel. With the Turks, a few dollars greasing the right palm would do the trick.

Keyes listened. The FBI could become a problem, he thought. To have the Bureau sniffing around ADS was all he needed. He would need to call in a favor to stop the investigation before it went too far. But he would worry about that later. After they had the woman; after they had their answers.

They were approaching the twilit city. Soon, now, he thought.

Somehow, despite his overeating on the flight, he was hungry again already.

3.

The crane on the
Aurora II
's port side—located directly opposite the disembarkation ramp on the starboard—was used to raise and lower Zodiacs, tenders, or lifeboats, depending on the ship's location and circumstances. But this, Hannah thought, was surely the first time it had been used on human cargo.