Empire Builders (28 page)
THIRTY-EIGHT
BENEATH MORE THAN two and a half miles of water and another mile of bottom sediment and ooze rests the bedrock of the basins that make up the Gulf of Mexico and the adjoining Caribbean Sea .
THIRTY-NINEThe fault line that marks the border between the Caribbean tectonic plate and the North American runs roughly from Cuba to Mexico ’s Yucatin peninsula, buried so deeply that most geologists were uncertain whether the Caribbean basin is truly a part of the North American tectonic plate or a small plate of its own.
Their uncertainty ended abruptly. After centuries of inactivity the fault line slipped slightly, a minor readjustment in geological forces, a tiny shudder of the Earth’s rocky crust. Seismographic stations as far away as St. Louis recorded an earthquake that registered 7.2 on the Richter scale.
“Thank god the epicenter was far out at sea,” said the public relations woman for the Mexico City seismographic center. “An earthquake of that severity would have caused incredible damage had it been located anywhere near a populated area.”
Jane had arrived at the castle late the previous night and had been taken directly to her locked and guarded room. One of the guards had brought her a supper tray.
This evening, however, she ate in the castle’s dining hall with Gaetano and a very young red-haired woman who was introduced to her as Kimberly Williams.
“My fiancée,” Gaetano said, with a smile that bordered on smirking.
Jane had reluctantly changed into a simple jacketed frock that she had found in the closet waiting for her. Kimberly wore a clinging metallic blue sheath that might have looked sexy if she had more meat on her bones. Jane thought the kid was pretty in an immature, freckled way. But there was something nearly haunted about her face. Her eyes glittered, almost like a feral animal’s. She talked too loudly, too fast, and laughed far too easily.
It was a tedious dinner in the dusty, shadowy old hall. Jane had little to say, Kimberly had too much to say and Gaetano obviously enjoyed having the two women on either side of him as he sat at the head of the long heavy wooden table.
“I will be away on business tonight,” he announced, as an ice cream dessert was being served by a silent, heavyset woman in a black maid’s uniform.
“Tonight?” Kimberly fairly shouted. “Why tonight? Can’t you go tomorrow?” “I should be back tomorrow around midmorning,” said Gaetano.
Then he turned toward Jane and added, “With Dan Randolph.” Jane gripped her spoon hard enough to bend it. But she said nothing.
“Why do you have to leave tonight?” Kimberly pouted. “Why do I have to be all alone tonight?” “Important business,” said Gaetano. “Don’t worry, little one. I’ll bring you a present.”
The kid literally bounced up and down in her chair. “A present! What? What is it? Tell me!” “Someone you would like to see, I think. Someone who wants very much to see you.”
“Kate?” Kimberly’s excitement died immediately. She looked across the table at Jane and explained glumly, “My sister. My older sister.”
Jane said nothing. But she remembered that Kate Williams was the leader of the GEC team that had taken over Dan’s office at Alphonsus. Now that she knew the relationship she could see a family resemblance in Kimberly. She turned back to Gaetano, who had the self-satisfied smile of a snake on him.
He’ll be bringing Dan here. And despite all his oily assurances, Jane was certain that Gaetano fully intended to murder Dan. And herself.
“Are you certain that this thing’s going to work?” Dan asked, staring at the tiny flesh-colored plug he held in his palm.
“It performed almost perfectly in the lab tests,” said Nobuhiko. Dan looked up at Nobo, then across the cabin to Malik, who was already worming a similar plug into his left ear. The only sound in the cabin was the gentle lapping of waves against the yacht’s hull. “It is practically invisible once it’s in your ear,” Nobo went on, encouragingly. “And since it’s made entirely of protein it won’t show up on any kind of metal detector. They can strip-search you and they still won’t find it.”
“Electronic chips made of protein,” Malik murmured. “Remarkable.” “And very new,” said Nobo. “So new that your Mafia kidnappers have probably never heard of them.”
“You said it worked almost perfectly,” Dan countered. “What’s the ‘almost’?”
Nobo smiled. “Apparently it can cause a slight ringing in the ear when it’s activated. And perhaps a slight loss of balance. The radio frequency may interfere with the middle ear’s balance mechanism. It’s only temporary, of course.”
Dan frowned at him.
“Come on,Randolph ,” said Malik, “it’s too late to chicken out now.”
“Famous last words,” Dan muttered. But he screwed the biochip radio transceiver into his ear. It felt huge, bulging.
“To be on the safe side,” Nobo explained for the twelfth time, “Don’t activate it until you are actually at the place where you want the assault squad to hit.”
Nodding, Dan said, “I know. I know.” The biochip plug felt like a watermelon jammed into his ear. He could barely hear anything through it.
Their plan was simple. Malik had already contacted Gaetano with the news that Randolph was ready to give himself up in exchange for Jane’s safety. Malik would bring Dan to Gaetano, leave him and return with Jane. Both men would be wearing the protein-chip transceivers so that an aerial assault team of Yamagata special forces could locate them and swoop in—but not until they had definitely seen Jane and knew exactly where she was.
As a backup, a smaller team of Yamagata personnel was trailing Kate Williams, who had transshipped from the Nueva Venezuela space station to a shuttle for Milan . That worried Dan. One of the planes that might have been carrying Jane had landed in Milan . He was certain that Gaetano had taken Jane to Sardinia , but Milan was bothersome.
Malik sighed as they clambered down the ladder to the power launch that would take them to the floatplane waiting for them. “This is going to be very risky,” said the Russian.
“You can stay here,” Dan said. “You don’t have to put your neck on the line.”
Malik shook his head with the stubbornness of a man who had struggled to make up his mind and, once it was made up, had no intention of changing it.
‘”We have no way of knowing that they will take you to the same place that they are holding Jane,” he reminded Dan. “I can demand to see her and bring her out with me. You are in no such position.”
Dan knew that the Russian was right. Gaetano’s people aren’t fools. If anybody connected with this situation’s been a fool, it’s been me. Breaking in on the commsat broadcasts the way I did forced their hand. I shook them up, all right. And Jane’s in danger because of it. Because of me.
Yet he found himself grinning at Malik as the powerboat headed for the sleek, twin-engine plane. “Who would have thought that the two of us would ever be working together, Vasily?” he shouted over the roar of the boat’s motor.
Malik made a pale smile as he squinted against the spray. He mumbled something that Dan could not hear through the transceiver plug in his ear.
“What?” Dan shouted, instantly hating the fact that he sounded like a deaf old man. “Certainly not I,” Malik yelled back.
Once they had climbed into the plane and strapped themselves into their seats, Dan’s smile faded. Maybe we’re not really working together, he thought. Maybe he’s on Gaetano’s side after all and he’s just bringing me to the slaughter. And Jane, too.
Big George leaned his heavy forearms on the yacht’s rail and watched the sleek twin-engine floatplane lift off from the calm Mediterranean water. Nobuhiko and Tamara stood beside him. As the plane dwindled into the cloud-flecked sky, Nobo turned to Tamara and said, “I have much to do.” He started toward the hatch to the main salon.
George grabbed him by the arm, turning him around. “I’m going with your rescue team,” George said.
Nobuhiko’s eyes flashed wide for an instant. Then he smiled and said, “I’m sorry, that will be impossible.”
“I’m going,” George said, still holding Nobo’s arm.
“Perhaps you don’t understand. The team is composed of paramilitary specialists. They are all highly
skilled, highly trained.” “Dan’s my friend and he’s going to need all the fooking help he can get.” “This will be an extremely difficult and dangerous operation,” Nobo said.
“If it was a fooking piece of cake I wouldn’t bother with it,” George said, his temper rising.
Tamara stepped between them. “Let him go with your team,” she said gently to Nobo. “He is concerned for Dan.”
“But the team-”
“Let him go with them,” Tamara urged.
“Have you ever jumped in a parachute before?” Nobo asked George.
The big Aussie scratched at his half-grown beard. “When I was a kid, back home in Queensland .” “How many jumps?”
“Oh,” George waved a ham-sized hand, “dozens of times.”
Nobo knew he was lying. “Can you speak Japanese?” “Wakarimashita,” George said. I understand. Then he added,
“You can’t work on the fooking Moon without learning some Japanese. I can understand it if you motto yukkuri hanashite kudasai.” “The soldiers may not have the time to speak slowly to you,” Nobo said.
“Look,” George said, looming over Nobo and Tamara like a glowering thunderhead, “I’m not going to sit here and bite my nails while Dan’s got his neck on the chopping block. I may not be a fooking ninja but I can fight.”
Nobo glared back at the giant.
Tamara suggested, “What about the other team, the one that is following Kate Williams?” Nobo said grudgingly, “I could ask the team leader to take you with them.”
George grinned like a kid in a candy shop. “Thanks! You won’t regret it.” He rushed to the hatch and ducked down belowdecks. Nobo shook his head. “This is a mistake. George will be a drag on them. He’ll make matters worse, not better.”
Tamara slipped her arm around his waist and leaned her head against his shoulder. “You did the right thing. He wants to help Dan.” Silently she added, And he might have broken every bone in your body if you refused to allow him to go.
THE UNDERWATER EARTHQUAKE lasted only seventy-two seconds. Some of its impact on the sea above was absorbed by the soft mud of the seabed sediments. Still, a tremendous jolt of energy was imparted to the water.
Monitoring satellite sensors detected a deep swell in the Gulf of Mexico , a spreading ring of waves like the ripples caused by dropping a pebble in a pond. But these waves contained megatons of energy. They were not high, so far away from land where the water was more than two miles deep. But they were spreading in all directions, racing across the face of the Gulf, and steepening as they ran toward the shallower waters of the coast.
The satellite automatically sent its data to the ground stations beneath its flight track. None of the automated equipment was programmed to recognize a tsunami. There had never been a tidal wave in the Gulf of Mexico within the history of the satellite monitoring system. No alarm bells rang. No human observer shouted out a warning. The data were entered in the monitoring system’s computer files, where they would be analyzed someday.
While the tsunami silently, relentlessly surged toward shore.
Don Marcello Arcangelico found himself on the horns of a delicate dilemma.
On the one hand, it was his policy never to allow himself to be physically connected with a crime of any sort. Other people committed the acts that he deemed necessary while he sat safely in his home, surrounded by witnesses. He had never been charged by the police with so much as a misdemeanor.
On the other hand, he felt that he had to see this man Randolph with his own eyes. Gaetano was ambitious enough to cut his own deal with the big shots in the GEC.Randolph had to be silenced and the Scanwell woman neutralized. And Gaetano kept firmly in hand. Don Marcello could not rest easily on any of those counts until he saw Randolph with his own eyes. Trust did not come easily, not when the whole world was at stake. This was no time for a slip up, no time to let Gaetano think that the old man was getting careless. So he commanded Gaetano to bring Randolph to his home in Reggio. There was little risk that Randolph would ever identify him as being involved in Scanwell’s abduction.Randolph would be dead within hours.
About an hour after the floatplane took off Dan whispered to Malik, “We’re not heading for Sardinia .”
“Are you certain?”
Pointing at the placid sea and puffy cumulus clouds outside their circular window, Dan said, “The sun rises in the east and it’s ahead of us on our left.Sardinia is a little west of south from where the yacht was anchored. If we were heading that way the sun would be almost behind us.”
Malik unbuckled his safety strap and made his way forward to the flight deck, hunched over because of the plane’s low ceiling. He spoke briefly with the two pilots and then returned to his seat.
“Well?”
“They told me to mind my own business.” Dan shook his head. “It’s not Sardinia .” “What can we do?”
“Get some sleep,” said Dan, cranking his chair back. He closed his eyes, but he was far too restless to
sleep. He felt a sullen fatigue sapping at his strength. Maybe I really have radiation sickness, Dan thought. I feel like a squeezed-out dishrag. And that damned earplug hurts.
He knew there was a plane full of Yamagata paramilitary following them at an extreme distance, guided by mini-satellites that Nobo had launched specifically to monitor the region. But what good is all this if they don’t take either one of us to where Jane is?
Gaetano had left the castle immediately after dinner. Up in her room, Jane heard a car crunching on the gravel driveway that circled the castle’s inner courtyard. Going to the window, she saw a flash of headlights against the main gate, and then the car was heading down the switchbacks of the road cut into the cliff’s face.
Someone knocked at her door.
From the barred window Jane called out, “Who is it?” “Me,” came a muffled voice. “Kim.”
She let out a pent-up breath, suddenly aware that she was alone in a castle full of armed men, except for Kimberly.
“Come in,” she called.
The bolt slid back and the door creaked open. Jane caught a glimpse of the young man guarding the door, his dark face solemn as Kimberly stepped into the room. She was still in the glittering blue sheath she had worn at dinner.
“Wow! They gave you the biggest bedroom in the place.” “I suppose they did,” said Jane.
“But no TV.”
Jane had not noticed until Kimberly mentioned it. “I think Rafe would rather I didn’t see any of the news broadcasts,” she said flatly. “There’s nothing much on anyway,” said Kim, moving slowly through the room, touching the sturdy old bureau, the faded mirror atop it, the massive hand-tooled armoire, the dusty tasseled spread across the canopied bed.
“You’re lonely,” Jane said. “Kind of.”
“Are you really Rafes fiancée? Has he proposed marriage to you?”
Kimberly laughed brittlely. “Marriage? Not for me! I’m never going to marry Rafe or any other man.” “Then...?”
“Oh, he was kind of fun for a while. But I get the feeling he’s just using me to make my sister sore.” “He’s not a decent man.”
Kimberly shrugged. “Who is?”
Jane went to the couch, sat down and patted the cushion beside her. “Come here and tell me about yourself. And your sister.”
Luther Clay took his family to Biloxi for the weekend. As head of Louisiana ’s environmental protection agency, Clay had phoned his opposite number in Mississippi to make certain that the beach at Biloxi was reasonably clean of oil and the Gulf water was all right for swimming.
His daughter had whined and complained all through the long, sweltering Friday-night drive. She wanted to be with her boyfriend, not stuck with her medieval parents. But as soon as they hit the beach early Saturday morning she found that there were plenty of guys there who were quickly attracted to her. Clay fretted about the amount of skin she was exposing in her bikini. Even black skin was no protection these days. But his wife told him that it was better than her spending the weekend with that white trash she thought she was in love with.
It was a hazy, cloudy day. The sun seemed pale and too weak to harm anyone despite the warnings about skin cancer. The tide seemed to be out farther than Clay had ever seen it before. Tides around the Gulf were never that big to begin with, but this morning it seemed as if the water had just picked up and walked away. Wet gray sand stretched out for what looked like a mile or more.
Clay stood staring at the uncovered beach, the tiniest hint of a worrisome thought nagging at the back of his mind. He saw his daughter laughing and horsing around with a bunch of boys, some of them white.
Then he noticed something really odd. Far out on the horizon the sea seemed to rise up. Like a wall of water, just lifting up, its top edge as straight as the horizon itself. Clay thought his eyes were playing tricks on him.
He had never seen a tidal wave before.
“So you are Dan Randolph,” said Don Marcello.
Dan looked down at the corpulent old man in the wheelchair. There was a smell of corruption about him, a stink of fear in the way the other men in the room walked on tiptoe and spoke in whispers. Even Gaetano seemed subdued in this darkened, dusty, closed-in chamber with its heavy ancient furniture and its lone feeble lamp casting more shadow than light. It was high noon outside, but in this room there was no sunlight, no time. Like a gambling casino, thought Dan.
He and Malik had indeed been strip-searched and walked through an X-ray metal detector identical to the type used at airports. Now they stood in the gloomy study of Don Marcello’s dreary house, under the scrutiny of the balding old man and a roomful of guards.
“You know who I am,” Dan said, standing before the wheelchair. “Who are you?”
Don Marcello waggled a fat beringed finger. “That is not important,” he said in heavily accented English. Dan noticed that his rings dug deeply into the flesh of his fingers; the old man had been wearing them for many years.
“We were supposed to see Mrs. Scanwell,” said Malik, standing beside Dan. “Where is she?” “You will see her,” Don Marcello replied. “Mr. Randolph will not.”
A bolt of fear sizzled through Dan. I should have known better.
They’re too smart to take me to the same place they’ve taken her. “Then it’s no deal,” he said sharply. “If I don’t see her with my own eyes, the deal is off.”
Don Marcello’s mouth dropped open for a moment, then he threw his head back and laughed, laughed so hard his eyes squeezed shut and tears ran down his baggy cheeks, laughed until he began coughing and sputtering. One of the silent men standing in the shadows behind the wheelchair came up and handed him an inhalator. Hacking and coughing, the old man stuck the nozzle in his mouth and pressed the plastic plunger.
Maybe he’ll choke to death, Dan thought.
“They didn’t tell me you are a comedian,” said Don Marcello, once he got his breath under control again.
“The deal was that I see Mrs. Scanwell and make certain that she’s safely on her way back to Paris ,” Dan insisted.
“You’re in no position to make any demands,” Don Marcello replied. Pointing to Malik, “This one will see the woman and take her back to Paris . You stay here.”
“No,” said Malik.
“What?” It seemed to be a word that Don Marcello did not often hear. “We have honored our commitment. You must honor yours.
Randolp his entitled to see Mrs. Scanwell. You pledged that he would. You must honor that pledge.” “Honor? You talk to me about honor?”
Malik leaned down slightly to put his face closer to the old man’s. “You cannot keep the woman silent if she fears that Randolph has been murdered. Unless she sees him, she will not cooperate with you.”
Don Marcello glared up at him.
Malik turned to Gaetano. “You know Jane, Rafaelo. Am I speaking the truth about her?” “Yes,” said Gaetano reluctantly. “She is in love with Randolph .
If she thinks we’ve killed him—well, we’ll have to kill her too.” “So?”
“And you will have to kill me also,” Malik said. “I will not stand idly by if you murder Jane Scanwell.”
Dan’s eyes flicked from one of them to the other as he thought,
Malik doesn’t mind them knocking me off, but he’s sticking his neck out for Jane.
“How will the world react to the death of two members of the Global Economic Council?” Malik asked. “One of them its new chairman.”
Gaetano shifted uneasily on his feet. Don Marcello stared at Malik, one hand stroking his chins.
“There are limits to what you can get away with,” Malik went on. “Murdering two GEC representatives will bring down the full power of the international community upon your heads. And you know it.”
Dan was silently urging, don’t tell him we’re being tracked, for Chrissakes! Don’t blow it! Don Marcello finally replied, “You will cooperate with us if we satisfy the woman?”
With a glance at Dan, Malik allowed a tiny smile to creep across his lips. “Naturally. What do I care if you kill this American? He’s been nothing but a thorn in my flesh for years. But Jane Scanwell is another matter. Let her see Randolph . Then I will take her back to Paris . What happens to this Yankee afterward is of no concern to me.”
He sounds as if he means it, Dan thought. Aloud, he said, “Jane won’t go along with you if she realizes I’m dead.”
“She will not realize it,” Gaetano said. “We will make a few tapes of your voice and then use a synthesizer to send her telephone messages every few weeks.”
“You’ll need my cooperation to make those tapes.”
Gaetano snickered. “You’ll cooperate. First you will scream a lot, but soon enough you’ll do whatever we tell you to.”
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