Kingmaker (20 page)

The panel in the desk illuminated. The headmistress watched Alexei for a moment longer, then looked down.

“Mr. Drovosek, I’m afraid our time is up.” She touched the screen, and a moment later, Alexei heard the double doors open behind him. “But I believe I have your number.”

The Ukrainian-built hydrofoil known as
Predvestnik
was met well east of the Marshall Islands by six orange-hulled response boats with .50-caliber forward-mounted machine guns and two belt-fed, gas-operated, 7.62mm fully automatic cannons mounted port and starboard. Beyond the response boats was a 418-foot
Legend
-class warship, angular and bright coral-white against the turquoise Pacific, its bow still emblazoned with scarlet from its former life in the United States Coast Guard. The deck and bridge of the long slender cutter bristled with antenna supporting its shipboard electronic warfare suite and barrels of varying lengths representing the business ends of both close-in and long-range weapons systems. The eye of its main 57mm naval gun watched the comparatively tiny hydrofoil with eerie impassivity, and when the lead patrol boat hailed, Alexei promptly gave the command to cut the engines, lower
Predvestnik’s
colors, and stand down.

The private maritime fleet’s job was to protect a flotilla of fifty-nine decommissioned and partially dismantled luxury cruise liners with tonnages ranging anywhere from sixty thousand to a quarter of a million. The ships were connected by a network of railed gangplanks, and were permanently moored inside the tropical and still partially irradiated embrace of the twenty-three coral islets collectively comprising Bikini Atoll. The primary concern of the cutters, response boats, multimission choppers, and one of only three privately owned
Virginia
-class submarines was to defend the flotilla against pirate attacks. The region had actually been fairly stable
until the Combined Maritime Forces who were sent in to investigate the relatively minor problem of Australian pirates themselves went feral. As a result, the islands of the North Pacific had become home to thousands of enterprising and opportunistic nomads from all over the world—motley bands perpetually casting about for new sources of supplies, wealth, and human commodities suitable for hard labor, organ harvesting, or any and all forms of carnal indulgence.

The clump of entangled hulks was collectively christened Celebration Island, and its improbable existence owed itself to a chance seating arrangement at a wedding reception. At the corner table sat the CEO of Celebration Cruise Line who was at his wits’ end as to what to do with an entire fleet of vessels which were no longer economically viable now that the very rich tended to favor either their own custom-built private yachts or jet-accessible corporate-owned islands, while the most popular form of vacationing for just about everyone else in the country had finally been reduced to the ultimate low of camping. To his left sat the United States ambassador to the Republic of the Marshall Islands who was desperate for ideas on how to inject new economic life into a region whose reputation was still recovering from the twenty-three nuclear tests conducted at Bikini Atoll way back in the 1940s and ’50s and the fact that the International Atomic Energy Agency still recommended against eating more than one or two locally grown coconuts a year for fear of inadvertently slow-cooking your digestive tract from the inside out. Beside him was a slim and taciturn man who made his fortune several times over supplying food to American military contractors all over the world, and continuing on to his left was the chief marketing officer for ICC—International Corrections Corporation—the largest administrator of private prisons in the world and, as she herself often quipped, the one-stop shop for all your large-scale incarceration needs. Purely for the sake of appearances, she had brought along her excessively pouty philanthropic husband who usually filled his days planning and participating in various charity events benefiting American children who were forcibly removed from their homes by the Federal Bureau of Domestic Affairs—or, as he put it with a dramatic and meaningful eye roll—“the system.” The result was Celebration Island: a joint business venture which, in less than three years, had become the largest and most densely populated orphanage in human history.

Technology, opportunity, diversions, and even luxury were never in short supply on Celebration Island; however the same could not be said for space and privacy. With over seven hundred thousand children placed under the care of the federal government (who, in turn, contracted that care out to Celebration Island on a per-child, per-diem basis), and with the flotilla currently consisting of only fifty-nine ships, the average room occupancy rate was between four and six depending on the class of accommodation. The one exception to the seemingly immutable rule of overcrowding, however, was the suite arranged for one particular twelve-year-old boy by the name of Florian Lasker.

Florian required nothing less than the entire Deluxe Captain’s Quarters of the
Norwegian Epic
and all of its accompanying accoutrements and privilege (unlimited bandwidth, ocean-view balcony, walk-in closet, both indoor and outdoor hot tubs, separate office space, combined dining area and kitchen, baby grand piano, and a king-size bed). As Florian explained during one of the staff meetings he frequently crashed, it was the only way he could be absolutely certain nothing got between him and the algorithmically transmutative passphrase he needed to enter at least once every twenty-four hours in order to prevent his daemon (a process inconspicuously running in the background of a remote server) from sending multiple media outlets irrefutable proof in the form of timetables, photographs, financial records, and detailed sworn testimonials that multiple directors of Celebration Island were carrying on sexual relationships with dozens of underage female residents. In addition to finding his way through numerous firewalls and filters in order to gain leverage over those purporting to be his caregivers, it was from these very accommodations that Florian Lasker also arranged to get himself off of Celebration Island by participating in—and ultimately emerging victorious from—the first annual New Rutherford Academy junior boys chess championship.

Alexei wasn’t permitted on the flotilla itself, so he used one of the hydrofoil’s small tenders to navigate the archipelago, swing around the lagoon, and finally moor at the main dock of Bikini Island where he was met by a soldier in cobalt-blue fatigues and a baseball cap with a bill so rounded that one might fairly call it creased.

“Good morning,” Alexei offered. He held on to either edge of the port-side door as he leaned out, squinting in the glare of the bright white sand and grinning agreeably. He was acutely aware of how badly outgunned he and his crew were, and how little
Predvestnik
would be missed if it never again left Micronesian waters.

Putting himself in such a vulnerable position was feeling increasingly like monumentally poor judgment. He knew that by showing up here he was placing himself at the mercy of Celebration Island’s security forces, but what had not occurred to him until after they were well on their way was what a good opportunity this would be for US forces to take him out. Navy SEALs didn’t particularly concern him, but what Alexei did fear was death from above. With a well-coordinated drone strike, you were simply there one moment, and everywhere
but
there the next. It didn’t matter how quick you were, or how smart, or how well trained. If you were on the CIA’s radar, they knew how to get you off of it and still be home in time for dinner.

The soldier was looking down at his handset. He adjusted his cap. “You Alexei Dro-voo-say-ik?”

Alexei could already tell that the man was from Texas. Not from New Mexico, not from Oklahoma, and not from Arkansas, but from the heart of the Lone Star State itself. He was clean-shaven, but he had one of those heavy black beards that never really went away.

“Close enough,” Alexei said. He put on a pair of sunglasses before taking a long step from the tender to the dock. He was wearing jeans, a black T-shirt, and a pair of rubber, toe-gloved shoes. As he walked, he held his hands out from his body—the universal sign for “It’s cool—I’m not packing.”

“That your boat out there?” the soldier asked, gesturing with the deep glistening cleft of his chin at the ocean over Alexei’s right shoulder.

“It is,” Alexei said. “You like it?”

The soldier put his handset away, cocked his head, and hooked his thumbs in his belt. The proximity of his right hand to the scored polymer grip of his sidearm was almost certainly not accidental. “You know you got to pay a docking fee, right?”

Alexei stopped. He looked at the man for a moment, scanned the beach, then looked back at the man. Diplomacy, he reminded himself. Money he had plenty of; backup, not so much.

“Of course,” he said to the soldier. “I just don’t recall the exact amount.”

“Five thousand,” the man said.

Alexei’s eyebrows went up. “NGD?”

“Unless you got five thousand sixteen-year-old virgins on that little paddleboat of yours, I guess NGDs will just have to do.”

“Right,” Alexei said. “Tragically I didn’t think to bring a harem, so I guess we’re back to money. I’ll make you a deal.”

The soldier’s weight shifted and he once again adjusted his hat. “Go on.”

“I make it back down to this dock in one piece with what I came here for, and I’ll give you ten.”

The soldier looked down the empty beach and squinted. He leaned over and spat, then looked back at Alexei.

“You here for that Lasker kid, ain’t you?”

“That’s right.”

“Shit, I should be paying you to take that little pecker off our hands.”

“That’ll work, too,” Alexei said.

For a moment, Alexei thought he succeeded in making the soldier smile, but it turned out the soldier was just using the tip of his tongue to pick something out of the back of his teeth.

“You know I can press one button and have your ship sunk faster than a cat can lick its ass, right?”

“I have no doubt about that whatsoever.”

“All right, then,” the soldier finally said. “We got us a deal.”

“Excellent,” Alexei said. “Where to now?”

“The Cross Spikes Club,” the soldier said. “Time for a beer.”

The soldier walked behind Alexei, guiding him through a network of tree-lined paths and toward the deep throb of Jamaican dubstep. The sand was fine and white, and the two men trudged up one final dune into an area where the palm trees were far enough apart to walk between. The Cross Spikes Club was a long, thatched, crescent-shaped cabana with a bar assembled out of repurposed crate lumber, and indoor and outdoor seating consisting of mismatched and sun-bleached wooden and plastic lawn furniture. Two soldiers were using a warped and delaminating ping-pong table as the surface for an elaborate drinking game, the focus of which was several tiers of plastic cups containing varying amounts of what must have
been disagreeably warm and probably pretty flat beer. Beneath the thatch, two men in civilian clothing paid close attention to a third who was psyching himself up to throw the last of his three darts. At a small round patio table off to the side sat a young boy with blond hair that was long and wavy and bright blue eyes shining through his bangs. He used one hand to prop up his head and the other to interact lackadaisically with a tablet.

“That’s him,” the soldier said gesturing again with his chin. The men playing darts erupted into a chorus of disbelieving howls.

“You’re not coming?” Alexei asked the soldier.

“Shit no,” the soldier said. “That boy’s your problem now.”

Alexei shrugged and started toward the boy when the soldier took his arm.

“Hey,” the soldier said. Alexei looked down at the soldier’s hand, then back up. “You want some free advice?”

“I’m not sure I’d exactly call it free at this point,” Alexei said, “but sure.”

“Don’t trust that little prick,” the soldier said. “Don’t trust him for one goddamn second. You got that?”

Alexei watched the soldier for a moment, then nodded. The soldier released his arm, then began picking a path through the trees to the bar beneath the cabana. He sat up on a stool where he could see both Alexei and the boy, reached behind the bar, and came back with a dark and dripping bottle. He gave the top a twist and tossed the cap away with considerable force.

The boy did not look up when Alexei approached, nor when he stood there casting a shadow over the table. Alexei could see that he was watching what appeared to be footage from intense urban combat on his tablet, then realized it was probably the unfolding of a maneuver in some sort of a real-time strategy game. The screen was reflective as opposed to backlit so the colors were bright and easily visible in the sun. On the back of the boy’s chair hung a tattered and limp backpack.

Alexei flipped a flimsy plastic chair around and straddled it. He took off his sunglasses and watched the boy play the game.

“Are you Florian Lasker?” Alexei said. He was somewhat struck by how normal the kid looked. After the boy’s performance in the tournament, Alexei was expecting him to somehow appear older, taller—at the very least more mature.