A Death in Geneva (34 page)

Chapter 15

L
eslie Renfro sat motionless, repulsed by Starring's touch. He stood behind her in the catamaran's ornate dining room, hands on her shoulders, announcing that she would accompany him to the White House on the Fourth of July. She listened, incredulous that she had not known of his plans. Their strategy had called for him to be on the catamaran until July 5. During the crossing from Malta, his schedule had shown the fifth.

Her eyes shot to Tooms. He had said the fifth. His face was locked in a drunken smile. She felt the secretary, Sullivan, observing her from the far end of the table. She met her eyes, forced her to break off the encounter with a dab at her plate.

It was late evening. Starring had held them, insisting on a celebration to mark the majestic appearance of the
Towerpoint Partner,
the mirror ceremony for her sistership
Mayan
on the Fourth, the launching of the expedition. She was exhausted. She looked around her. Head's face was waxy with fatigue. Her mind ached. She argued briefly against the plan, but Starring would have none of it—this would be the most important Fourth of July ever.

“George the Third would still have given it a pretty low rating, maybe one out of ten.” Tooms gurgled to himself, enjoying his joke, held his glass up for the stewards.

“You need some sleep, Oats; we all do.” Starring was at the stairway. “Sullivan, what time do we depart?”

“Noon, tomorrow, sir. Your meeting is at two P.M.”

“Excellent. Give Miss Renfro the details. She will be with you at the hotel. A splendid day, my friends. You have done us proud.”

At 3:00 A.M., Tonasi's voice was a low, doped snarl, dismissing her doubts. “The next one's loaded with gas. She's loaded; we'll boil the fish! You hit that son of a bitch. You kill him; you're the important one, Les. Kill him; watch yourself—Paulo . . .?” He tugged on the blond beard, shrugged off Head's punch to his injured arm. “Paulo will be like a mother to me, Les. We'll be in Copenhagen. You take care of yourself. You're the good hunter, the leader—Copenhagen—we'll be there.” He left them, walked slowly to his cabin, lobbed the packet she had given him on his bunk, and collapsed asleep.

Head was certain they were making a mistake, and he continued to argue. “The hell with the bloody tanker. Starring, this bloody ship; they're our targets. We should take them now. Rig the mines; blow them before dawn. We'll be out of the States together, before the pigs know we're still alive!”

She held firm. She would take care of Starring. The second tanker was essential to the peoples' victory. Head would be in command. The death of the ship was his responsibility. “The criminals will never recover. Make it work, Paul; in three days, Copenhagen.” Their hands parted; her cabin door closed.

The mining of the first tanker . . . hours, days, weeks ago? . . . only hours . . . impossible. She was awake, tense . . . 3:30 A.M. . . . force yourself to sleep, but not yet.

The thought that Head would take her place in the second attack tore against her instincts of combat. The mission would be out of her hands. They had just spent two hours in preparation, reliving the first attack. She saw the great red hull, again, rushing toward her. The draft? He knows she will be deeper. He must be deeper, run at least twelve feet. They would talk after he had slept. She damned herself for her carelessness.

When they attack, I will be with the U.S. president. Her head snapped involuntarily at the thought. She would be stalking Starring, in Washington, in the White House. It was staggering. She would kill
them both! Could she? There would be secret police, their agents. She grappled with the new unknowns, crossed her cabin to recheck the door lock, picked up the Beretta pistol, removed the thirteen-round magazine from its plastic wrapping, placed the pieces on the bunk.

The Skorpion machine pistol was big beside the Beretta, a foot long with the butt folded double over the barrel, more than two feet with the silencer fitted and the butt extended. She would need two twenty-round magazines for the Skorpion—fifty-three rounds in all. She could not take more. She rolled the pistol and its clip first in a plastic sheet, then in the tight roll of a blouse. She set the insulated bundle aside, checked her two passports, the currencies, her cover documents, and placed them in the bottom of the expedition's nylon shoulder bag. She would wear the expedition's coveralls and windbreaker in the morning—that would please Starring. She packed the leather gloves, the hood, more clothing, then the rolled blouse. The four pieces of the Skorpion were next; she tied the rolled shirt with a belt, placed it in the bag. Her eyes were burning in the artificial light. She stuffed cosmetics in the pockets of her raincoat, folded it, and stuffed it over the rest and zipped the bag. Everything else in the cabin, she would leave as always, nothing unusual to arouse the curiosity of the stewards.

She lay on her side, her eyes closed in the darkness, and listened to the cabin air vent and the faint clanking of night maintenance far off in one of the hulls. She forced her body to breathe slowly, steadily, slowly—to lie still. She forced her mind to a different time and she slept.

“Eleven-thirty; we have a few more minutes.” Starring, in his suite with Tooms, was flipping through the morning news file prepared for him by the ship's communications officer. “Had a telegram from Adrian earlier this morning, Oats—good coverage of the
Partner
on the networks last night, and in today's press. A grand sight, wasn't she?”

“A knockout!” Tooms leaned forward, balancing his coffee, to reach for the clipping held out to him by Starring.

“A nice piece on Tina's opening this afternoon, apparently a first, this Fourth of July matinee. She's unhappy with me for not being there. I'll make it up to her; she's unhappy when I'm there. Give her a call this morning, Oats. She'd like a good word, some reassurance.”

Starring was on his feet, shot the French cuffs off his white shirt, slipped into the dark-blue pin-striped suit jacket held out for him by the steward, adjusted the silk tie, giving it a critical look in the mirror—blue, fine red dots, went well with the suit. “Give her a ring, Oats.”

“As soon as you are airborne, Tommie. She'll be okay. Joanie's happy with her.”

“Another piece there you ought to read, an attempted hijack of spent fuel rods from a Colombian reactor. What good are spent rods?”

Tooms picked up the reading folder, searched for the page, skimmed the article, let his glasses drop to their familiar perch on his chest. “Plutonium, by-product of the reactor's fission. You start off with U-238 in the fuel rods, fission, power from the reactor; in the process, the U-238 transforms into plutonium 239; that's what you need to build a bomb.”

“Not that easy is it?”

“Hell, no!” The reading folder skid as it hit the table. “Those banditos are lucky they were caught, stuff's tricky to handle. They would probably have glowed for a day or two after they started playing with it, then gone to a higher calling in the sky.”

“It's getting a hell of a lot worse, isn't, Oats?” Starring cast an approving eye at the clear sky, only the faintest haze, as they walked aft to the flight deck. “The proliferation of sabotage, terrorism, destruction.” Their feet clanked up the metal ladder.

“Do a message to Adrian, in my name. My guts tell me we've been leading a charmed life—these stories are appearing every day. Have our best people pull together a complete statement of our security procedures. Bring in a good contractor. I want the report to take a hard look at the threat, the new weapons and tactics, the growing pattern, if there is one, around the world. I want a candid, emphasize that, candid appraisal of deficiencies and a hard list of recommendations. . . . Ah ha, the ladies are already aboard. I'll give your regards to the White House, Oats.”

Starring slipped out of the jacket, climbed into the co-pilot's seat of the bubble-topped helicopter. Renfro and the secretary were squeezed together in the rear of the small craft. He greeted them, passed his jacket back to Sullivan, took the headphones from the instrument panel, and leaned out to Tooms again. “Make sure we have good coverage of
Mayan
today, important part of the historical record!” Tooms nodded vigorously. Starring slapped him on the shoulder. The flight deck crew
closed the bubble door, made sure the chief scientist was clear, extended his arm in a vertical, circling “start engine” motion.

“You're a darling, Oats. You're always a darling. Everything is fine. How are you and that funny boat of yours?”

Tooms had returned to the owner's deck to place the call. He sat with his feet propped on the railing, the first ale of the day cooling his left hand, soothing the damage of the night before. “You left too soon, Tina. I'm in charge today, another parade, a dive with two of my Maltese dolphins this afternoon, a hot shower, an hour of whiskey sours, and an evening of fireworks
a la Towerpoint Octagon
.”

“The Ritz.”

“The Ritz.”

You can dance with Sullivan and little Miss Whatshername, Tommie's pet fish, can't you? Muriel probably has a secret—she tangoes! Give her a double, Oats darling, after your shower.”

“After, to be sure.”

“Bring out the best in her. There, that was small and mean enough. I'm girding for my matinee.”

“No dancing aboard ship tonight, m'lady. They've both flown the coop, off to Washington.”

Her voice hardened. “I thought this was to be Tommie's famous
retreat,
solitude, an ancestral enrichment? They're not going to be with him?”

“Poor choice of words on my part, Tina, apologies. He'll be solituding tonight. Sullivan and Renfro will be manning the hotel suite. He's taking Leslie—”

“Yes, dear Leslie?”

“Tommie will be taking her along this afternoon as a live exhibit for the president.”

“Lucky, lucky, lucky.”

“You must be about ready to head up to the theater?”

“Yes, darling, one of Tommie's lovely blue mobiles is out front waiting, and tyrant Joanie is stomping around downstairs yelling for me. I'm off as soon as I tear myself away from you.”

“Tina, I've never seen the boss so charged up, excited about his rendezvous with the Leader of the Free World. He loves you—”

“
Yes,
of course he does—”