Islands in the Net (42 page)

“You're shivering,” Baptiste observed. He leaned backward and turned up a thermostat on the bulkhead. Even here, in some sort of rec room, the bulkhead was grotesquely cluttered: a speaker grille, an air ionizer, an eight-socketed surge-protected power plug, a wall clock reading 12:17 Greenwich Mean Time.

“Welcome aboard the SSBN
Thermopylae
,” Baptiste said.

Laura said nothing.

“Cat got your tongue?” Hesseltine said. Baptiste laughed.

“Come on,” Hesseltine said. “You were chattering away like a magpie when you thought I was a goddamn data pirate.”

“We are not pirates, Mrs. Webster,” Baptiste soothed. “We are the world police.”

“You're not Vienna,” Laura said.

“He means the
real
police,” Hesseltine said impatiently. “Not that crowd of lead-assed bureaucrats.”

Laura rubbed one bloodshot eye. “If you're police, then am I under arrest?”

Hesseltine and Baptiste shared a manly chuckle over her naivete. “We are not bourgeois legalists,” Baptiste said. “We do not issue arrests.”

“
Cardiac
arrests,” Hesseltine said, tapping his teeth with his thumbnail. He truly believed he was being funny. Baptiste stared at him, puzzled, missing the English idiom.

“I saw you on Singapore TV,” Hesseltine told her suddenly. “You said you opposed the data havens, wanted them shut down. But you sure went about it in a screwy way. The haven bankers—my former coworkers, you know—laughed their asses off when they saw you handing that democratic guff to Parliament.”

He poured himself tea. “Of course, they're mostly refugees now, and a pretty good number of the bastards are on the bottom of the sea. No thanks to you, though—you were trying to kiss them into submission. And you, a rootin-tootin' cowboy Texan, too. It's a good thing they didn't try that at the Alamo.”

Another sailor made a move in the checker game, and the third one swore in response. Laura flinched.

“Pay them no mind,” Baptiste told her quickly. “They're off duty.”

“What?” Laura said blankly.

“
Off duty
,” he said impatiently, as if it embarrassed him. “They are Blue Crew.
We
are Red Crew.”

“Oh … what's that they're playing?”

He shrugged. “Uckers.”

“Uckers? What's that?”

“It's a kind of ludo.”

Hesseltine assembled, aimed, and fired a grin at her. “Sub crews,” he said. “A very special breed. Highly trained. A disciplined elite.”

The four Blue Crewmen hunched closer over their board. They refused to look at him.

“It's an odd situation,” said Baptiste. He was talking about her, not himself. “We don't quite know what to do with you. You see, we exist to protect people like you.”

“You do?”

“We are the cutting edge of the emergent global order.”

“Why did you bring me here?” Laura said. “You could have shot me. Or left me to drown.”

“Oh, come on,” said Hesseltine.

“He's one of our finest operatives,” explained Baptiste. “A real artist.”

“Thanks.”

“Of course he would rescue a pretty woman at the end of his assignment—he couldn't resist a final dramatic grace note!”

“Just the kind of guy I am,” Hesseltine admitted.

“That's it?” Laura said quietly. “You saved me just on a whim? After killing all those people?”

Hesseltine stared at her. “You're gonna piss me off in a minute.… Don't you think they'd have killed
me
if they knew what I was? That wasn't just your mickey-mouse industrial espionage, y'know. I spent months and months in a deadly deep-cover operation for the highest geopolitical stakes! Those Yung Soo Chim guys had background checks like nobody's business, and they watched my ass like a hawk.”

He leaned back. “But will I get credit? Hell, no, I won't.” He stared at his cup. “I mean, that's part of the whole undercover biz, no credit.…”

“It was a very slick operation,” said Baptiste. “Compare it to Grenada. Our attack on the Singapore criminals was surgical, almost bloodless.”

Laura realized something. “You want me to be grateful.”

“Well, yeah,” said Hesseltine, looking up. “A little of that wouldn't be too out of line, after all the effort we put into it.”

He smiled at Baptiste. “Look at that face! You should've heard her in Parliament, going on and on about Grenada. The carpet bombing took out this big mansion the Rastas gave her. It really pissed her off.”

It was as if he'd stabbed her. “You killed Winston Stubbs in my house! While I was standing next to him. With my baby in my arms.”

“Oh,” Baptiste said, relaxing ostentatiously. “The Stubbs killing. That wasn't us. That was one of Singapore's.”

“I don't believe it,” Laura said, sagging back. “We got a FACT communiqué taking credit!”

“A set of initials means very little,” said Baptiste. “FACT was an old front-group. Nothing compared to our modern operations.… In truth, it was Singapore's Merlion-Commandos. I don't think the Singapore civilian government ever knew of their actions.”

“Lots of ex-paras, Berets, Spetsnaz, that sort of thing,” Hesseltine said. “They tend to run a little wild. I mean, face it—these are guys who gave their lives to the art of warfare. Then all of a sudden, you know, Abolition, Vienna Convention. One day they're the shield of their nation, next day they're bums, got their walking papers, that's about it.”

“Men who once commanded armies, and billions in government funds,” Baptiste recited mournfully. “Now, nonpersons. Spurned. Purged. Even vilified.”

“By lawyers!” said Hesseltine, becoming animated. “And chickenshit peaceniks! Who would have thought it, you know? But when it came, it was so sudden.…”

“Armies belong to nation-states,” said Baptiste. “It is hard to establish true military loyalty to a more modern, global institution.… But now that we own our own country—the Republic of Mali—recruiting has picked up remarkably.”

“And it helps, too, that we happen to be the global good guys,” Hesseltine said airily. “Any dumbass merc will fight for pay for Grenada or Singapore, or some jungle-jabber African regime. But
we
get committed personnel who truly recognize the global threat and are prepared to take action. For justice.” He leaned back, crossing his arms.

She knew she could not take much more of this. She was holding herself together somehow, but it was a waking nightmare. She would have understood it if they'd been heel-clicking Nazi executioners … but to meet with this smarmy little Frenchman and this empty-eyed good-old-boy psychotic.… The utter banality, the
soullessness
of it …

She could feel the iron walls closing in on her. In a minute she was going to scream.

“You look a little pale,” Hesseltine remarked. “We'll get some chow into you, that'll perk you up. There's always great chow on a sub. It's a navy tradition.” He stood up. “Where's the head?”

Baptiste gave him directions. He watched Hesseltine go, admiringly. “More tea, Mrs. Webster?”

“Yes-thank-you …”

“I don't think you recognize the genuine
quality
of Mr. Hesseltine,” Baptiste chided, pouring. “Pollard, Reilly, Sorge … he could match with history's finest! A natural operative! A romantic figure, really—born out of his own true time.… Someday your grandchildren will talk about that man.”

Laura's brain went into automatic pilot. She slipped into babbling surrealism. “This is quite a ship you have here. Boat, I mean.”

“Yes. It's a nuclear-powered American Trident, which cost over five hundred million of your country's dollars.”

She nodded stupidly: right, yes, uh-huh. “So, this is an old Cold War sub?”

“A ballistic missile sub, exactly.”

“What's that mean?”

“It's a launch platform.”

“What? I don't understand.”

He smiled at her. “I think ‘nuclear deterrent' is the concept you're searching for, Mrs. Webster.”

“‘Deterrent.' Deterring what?”

“Vienna, of course. I should think that would be obvious.”

Laura sipped her tea. Five hundred million dollars. Nuclear powered. Ballistic missiles. It was as if he'd told her that they were reanimating corpses on board. It was far too horrible, way off the scale of reason and credibility.

There was no proof. He hadn't shown her anything. They were bullshitting her. Magic tricks. They were liars. She didn't believe it.

“You don't seem disturbed,” Baptiste said approvingly. “You're not superstitious about wicked nuclear power?”

She shook her head, not trusting herself to speak aloud.

“Once there were dozens of nuclear submarines,” said Baptiste. “France had them. Britain, U.S., Russia. Training, techniques, traditions, all well established. You're in no danger—these men are thoroughly trained from the original coursework and documents. Plus, many modern improvements!”

“No danger.”

“No.”

“Then what are you going to do with me?”

He shook his head, ruefully. Bells rang. It was time to eat.

Baptiste found Hesseltine and took them both to the officers' mess. It was a nasty little place, next to the clattering, hissing racket of the galley. They sat at a solidly anchored square table on metal chairs covered in green-and-yellow vinyl. Three officers were already there, being served by a cook in an apron and crisp paper hat.

Baptiste introduced the officers as the captain-lieutenant, captain second rank, and the senior executive officer, who was actually the junior of the bunch. He gave no names and they didn't seem to miss them. Two were Europeans, Germans maybe, and the third looked Russian. They all spoke Net English.

It was clear from the beginning that this was Hesseltine's show. Laura was some kind of battle trophy Hesseltine had won, blond cheesecake for the camera to dwell on during slow moments in his cinema biography. She didn't have to say anything—they didn't expect it from her. The crewmen gave her strange, muddied looks compounded of regret, speculation, and some kind of truly twisted superstitious dread. They dug into their meals: foil-covered microwave trays marked “Aero Cubana: Clase Primera.” Laura picked at her tray. Aero Cubana. She'd flown on Aero Cubana, with David at her side and the baby in her lap. David and Loretta. Oh, God …

The officers were edgy at first, disturbed and excited by strangers. Hesseltine oozed charm, giving them a thrilling eyewitness account of their attack on the
Ali Khamenei
. His vocabulary was bizarre: it was all “strikes” and “impacts” and “targeting,” no mention at all of burned and lacerated human beings. Finally, his enthusiasm broke the ice, and the officers began talking more freely, in a leaden jargon consisting almost entirely of acronyms.

It had been an exhilarating day for these officers of the Red Crew. After weeks, possibly months, of what could only have been inhuman suffocating tedium, they had successfully stalked and destroyed a “terrie hard target.” They were going to get some kind of reward for it, apparently—it had something to do with “Hollywood baths,” whatever that meant. The Yellow Crew, now on duty, would now spend their own six-hour shift in a boring escape run across the bottom of the Indian Ocean. As for the Blue Crew, they had missed their chance at action and were bitterly sulking.

She wondered what they were trying to escape
from
. The missiles—“Exocets,” they called them—had flown for miles before hitting. They could have been launched from almost any large surface ship in the straits, or even from Sumatra. No one had seen the sub.

And how would anyone suspect its existence? A submarine was a monster from a lost era. It was
useless
, designed only for killing—there was no such thing as a “cargo sub” or a “Coast Guard sub” or a “search-and-rescue sub.”

Sure, there were little deep-sea research vessels, bathyscaphes or whatever the word was—just like there were still a few manned spacecraft, both equally obscure and quaint and funny-looking. But this thing was
huge
. And the truth, or a dread strong enough to pass for one, was beginning to seep in.

It reminded her of something she'd heard when she was eleven or so. One of those horror folk tales that kids told each other. About the boy who accidentally swallowed a needle.… Only to have it show up, years or decades later, rusty but still whole, in his ankle or kneecap or elbow … silent steel entity sliding unknown and unknowable through his living breathing body … while he grew up and married and held down some unremarkable service job … till he goes to the doctor one day and says: Doc, I'm getting old, may be rheumatism but I have this strange stabbing pain in my leg.… Well, says kindly Doc, put 'er here under the scanner and we'll have a look.… My word, Mr. World-Everyman, you seem to have a vicious septic needle hiding under your kneecap.… Oh yeah, gosh Doc, I kinda forgot about it but as a young boy I used to play with needles habitually, in fact most of my allowance went toward buying extremely sharp and deadly needles which I scattered lavishly in every direction, but when I grew up and got a little wiser I was sure that I'd picked up
every last one
.…

“You okay?” Hesseltine said.

“Excuse me?” Laura said.

“We're talking about you, Laura. About whether to put you straight in a tank, or let you hang out a while.”

“I don't understand,” she said numbly. “You have tanks? I thought you were navy people.”

The officers laughed, false yo-ho-ho club-room laughter. The Russian-looking one said something about how the world's women hadn't gotten any smarter. Hesseltine smiled at her as if it were the first thing she'd done right.