Skinner (33 page)

Montmartre. As least that far back. Undermining the op with two results in mind. First, save Skinner, put him out of play until needed. And second, get himself finally and absolutely discredited. A man on the outside, with the freedom to move, light and lethal. A true sparrow hawk in his last seven years. And she sees it then, how she also was moved on the board. Terrence saved Skinner, and he did it by sending Haven to Iraq. Knowing Haven’s methods, approving the changes to her op in order to keep him there, with her. Was she also meant to be shifted to the edge of things? Emotionally incapacitated and moved from the center until he could use her erratically jumping mind? She could cry again. Reaching, instead, across the small table in the hushed lounge, and taking Skinner’s hand.

He looks down at their entangled fingers, squeezes, and nods in the direction of the fifty-two-inch LCD TV mounted over the bar, BBC World News, volume off in deference to the American jazz standards and French synth pop that play softly over the lounge’s excellent sound system. Closed captions are set to English. Still the language of internationalism, even in France (give China a few more years on that). Blonde newscaster, brisk manner, the kind of cold beauty that the English cultivate in their news media personalities. The still image off her left shoulder shows the Raj Hotel in Bombay, flames and smoke pouring from several windows. Seeing this, it takes Jae a moment to realize that it is a stock photo from the November 26 attack in 2008 and has nothing to do with the events being described in halting, and sometimes misspelled text scrolling in fits over a black background at the bottom of the screen. Something has happened in Bombay, a spate of killings by terrorists. An incursion by Naxalite extremists from the eastern provinces. Unprecedented urban guerrilla warfare from rural fighters, but seemingly isolated from the seats of Bombay governance and power. Attacks restricted entirely within the confines of the Dharavi slum. A story of relatively little international interest, coming as it does from a city where extremist activity has become at least a monthly occurrence. The Brits, with their special regard for their former colony, can be expected to prick up their ears at such goings-on, but, for the rest of the world, the news would typically receive only passing coverage the following day. Except for a last twist on the traditional models of gunfire and bomb blasts in far off cities. According to the closed captioning, one of the
terrorists,
captured by a Quick Response Team from the Riot Control Police, has claimed that the Naxalites have
nuclear capacity
.

Summing up, the cool blonde characterizes it as
an unsettling development, if true.

Jae and Skinner are both on their feet, several euros dropped on the table, bags collected, and on their way out of the lounge and onto the busy concourse. On their way to encourage their charter to take flight as scheduled before events in India can progress and the airports be shut down under the possible threat of a cloud altogether more ominous than mere ash.

The Dassault Falcon 7X is full.

Jae, Skinner, a flight deck crew of three, attendant, and six other passengers who give the appearance of being exceptionally accustomed to flying in this manner. All of the others are Indian, or of Indian descent, anyway; two of them speak Cambridge-quality English. There is a familiarity among the regular passengers. This is a commuter flight for them, something they do at least twice a week; leaving home on Monday mornings to go to the office before returning on Friday. Occasional midweek trips home for special occasions. None of them, other than the attendant, does more than nod at Jae and Skinner. A form of caste politics at work even in this environment.

The jet is Aircell-equipped for broadband, voice, and satellite TV. Each seat graced with its own media screen. Skinner and Jae have one between their facing seats, tuned to the BBC. Coverage of international events, cycling back regularly to the earlier reports of what are now being called
potentially nuclear-armed terrorists.
The sound is off, but no closed captions. Just the ticker scroll of updates at the bottom of the screen. Anyone interested in sound can plug the gold-tipped cable of the luxuriously padded Bose headphones into a seat arm socket.

The mood in-flight, as it had been on the ground when they made their way to the charters gate, uncertain if the jet would be taking off at all, is mildly nonplussed. No one is inclined to react in a manner that might be perceived as outsized. This has happened before, after all, and it turned out to be nothing.
Hasn’t it? Didn’t it?
Some confusion on this point. It seems as though it must have happened, an air of familiarity pervades the discourse both in the media coverage and in the reactions of the experts and officials who have been dredged up to comment. Most of these being American, as Europe was generally abed when the news struck, and the Indians themselves are avoiding anything but the most neutrally toned statements informing the public that they will not comment on unsubstantiated rumors that might foment panic if acknowledged officially.

Yes, it all seems very much as though it has happened before. Recently and regularly.

But Jae knows that it has not. Terrorists are not in the habit of claiming nuclear capability. Such a claim would be counter to the nature of any true extremist. Self-respecting terrorists don’t make statements about their offensive capabilities in advance of using them, they just blow things up.

No, this has not happened before.

What has happened before are any number of things that feel similar.

9/11. The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. London subway bombings. Bombay attack. Madrid bombings. Asian tsunami. European heat wave. Darfur. Somali pirates. Hurricane Katrina. Bird flu. SARS. H1N1. The July war in Lebanon. Fiscal cliff. South Ossetia war. Kashmir earthquake. North Korean nuclear tests. Batman gunman. Global economic recession. Occupy Wall Street. Superstorm Sandy. Deepwater Horizon oil spill. WikiLeaks diplomatic cable release. Sandy Hook Elementary massacre. Haitian earthquake. China floods. Pakistan floods. Indian blackout. Boston Marathon bombers. Midwest drought.
Innocence of Muslims
riots. Queensland floods. Euro zone destabilization. Mexican drug wars. Arab Spring. Japanese tsunami. Highest recorded temperatures. Syrian civil war. Death of Steve Jobs.

All against a constant background of bombings and reprisals, decreasing probability of economic recovery, energy crises, YouTube atrocities, increasingly massive cyber security breakdowns, rising food cost panics, universal political intransigence, radicalized weather events, collateral casualties, systemic unemployment, and the rising awareness that the presence of men with guns in public spaces is becoming a status quo feature for all countries.

It isn’t, Jae is thinking as she watches BBC, that potentially nuclear terrorists are common, but rather that, conceptually, they suit the times. Of course some group of extremists or another has perhaps gotten its hands on a nuke.
Haven’t we been talking about this kind of thing positively forever?
Also the resulting sequence of reactions, subsequent responses, paramilitary ops, and what have you. Calls to increase security. Warnings about threats to personal freedom. What it all
means.
Realignment of world powers to deal with these threats.
Yes, we’ve gone through this, we know how to behave. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a call.
And there is quite a lot of phone calling on the flight. Business and family, reassurances that both will progress as normal. Until otherwise informed. After all, life on the brink can only jar one’s peace of mind so often before it becomes the natural environment.
These times in which we live, private jets to shuttle you back and forth between a Paris office and a Malabar Hill villa, wondrous, yes?
Everything with a cost.

Skinner has been watching the other people on the jet. Several of them have lapsed into naps following the in-flight meal. He looks across the small table between their facing seats, over the remains of the excellent cassoulet they’d been served.

“Conditioning. They’ve panicked before. Bad news. Events that feel momentous. But the world is still here. Their world is still here. Positive conditioning. An emergency introduced to the environment over and over. Until they react as if there is no emergency.”

Jae runs the tip of her spoon around the inner edge of a white ramekin, scraping up the last of her crème brûlée.

“Yes. That’s what I was thinking.”

“Everyone is in neutral on an airplane.”

She licks the custard from the spoon.

“Until it starts to go down.”

Skinner nods.

Jae’s phone rings. Generic pulsing tone. Factory setting.

She has to find it in her laptop bag. The volume is maxed and she fumbles with it a little trying to answer quickly before she wakes any of the sleeping rich people around her. Not realizing that she has no idea who might have this number until she is already holding the phone to her ear and speaking.

“Hello? Yes. I’m here.”

“Jae. It’s Cross. You’re not at the Paris safehouse.”

She hangs up and drops the phone on the table.

Skinner looks at it.

“Not, I’m assuming, a wrong number.”

She folds her arms over her chest.

“Cross.”

The phone starts to ring again, still at top volume, vibrating loudly on the hard surface.

Skinner picks it up, presses the power stud, and the ring mutes. He holds the phone on his flat palm as it trembles like a frightened thing.

“It would be helpful to know how he got the number.”

Jae is feeling like hitting him. She wonders how many more times she can experience that feeling before she finally acts on it.

She takes the phone from his hand. There is something judgmental entering the serene atmosphere of the jet. Passengers disturbed in their repose, projecting their displeasure into her space. More impulses to hit people run through her. Then she remembers the feeling of the man’s jaw breaking under her elbow on the auto deck of the boat train, and the urges diminish. She inhales, exhales. Answers the buzzing phone.

“How did you get this number?”

Silence.

Cross clears his throat.

“It was emailed to me. To my personal account. My most personal account. The one I use for family. Sent several hours ago from a Gmail account. I chose not to act on the information until I knew more about the source.  I’ve been told, after some investigation, that it originated in Mumbai. Assuming that you’ve seen something of the most recent news, you’ll understand why I’m very interested to know exactly where
you
are right this moment.”

Jae is mouthing the word
email
to Skinner. A brief pantomime of typing gets her meaning across. Skinner rolls his index finger in the air.
Get more.

“Jae, that wasn’t a statement, I’m asking, with a great deal of concern, just where the hell are you right now?”

Jae wishes there were some way around explosive decompression at forty-five thousand feet. Some loophole that would allow her to open the cabin door and fling the phone into the troposphere.

“People tried to kill us.”

A long exhale from Cross, exasperation physicalized.

“You stayed with Skinner.”

“People. Who work for you. Tried to kill us.”

“I’m uncomfortable, Jae, talking about that kind of bizarre accusation on an open line.”

Jae attempts to rephrase.

“Fuck you.”

A burble on the line, possible ghost voice evoked by the great distance between them, the near-mach speed of Jae’s flight, and their signal’s journey into orbit and back to earth; communication haunted by the technology that makes it possible.

Cross taps something, computer keys, thumbnail on teeth, a brief tattoo of frustration.

“We’ve been finding things. The anarchists are forthcoming. We have computer forensics. Terrence was doing more than profiteering. He was engaged in something dangerous. Not just dangerous to Kestrel but to America. Jae, I’ve checked that Gmail account I opened for you. I see that the email from Cervantes was read. Did you look at what he had to show you?”

Jae thinks about the satellite photos. Cargo container. The payload it could carry. Thinks about
nuclear capacity.

“I looked.”

“It’s possible. I know you know that it’s possible. The claims on the ground
are possible
.
We’ve done a very good job so far, the community, NGOs, even the governments themselves, tracking these kinds of
materials
.
Making sure they don’t go places we don’t want them to go. But there’s just so much of it. The cold warriors made so damn much of it. And the goddamn Soviets did a piss-poor job of securing it all while their pants were falling down. So we don’t know.”

“What
do
you know?”

“We know that there has been shooting. Organized. Not suicidal. Concentrated in a hard point. Defensive. We know that the source of the nuclear claim comes from a native of the area in Dharavi. Someone that is not, as reported, likely to be a terrorist. We know that the same claim has been made by more than one such person. We do not know if the corroborating claims were made under duress. Torture. We know that the Indians are not inviting foreign involvement at this time.”

“But there is foreign involvement.”

Cross clucks his tongue.

“Undoubtedly. Every embassy on foreign soil has someone tasked with intelligence duties. Some countries have several someones. Some countries are riddled with such personnel inside and outside of their embassies.”

“India is popular.”

“India is a nuclear power at constant odds with another nuclear power that happens to share a border with a country where the United States is currently trying to withdraw from a war that is both constantly drifting over that border and increasingly under the auspices of the fucking CIA, Jae. Yes, there are spies all over the goddamn place, and many of them are no doubt trying to find out if these people really have nukes.”