Islands in the Net (22 page)

Sticky left the jeep. She saw the shadow drop a line, heard it clunk as it hit the hard top of the jeep. Latches clacked shut and Sticky climbed back in. In a moment they were soaring upward. Jeep and all.

The ground fell dizzily. “Hold tight,” Sticky said. He sounded bored. The chopper lowered them atop the nearest tower, into a broad yellow net. The net's arms creaked on heavy springs, the whole jeep listing drunkenly; then the arms lowered and they settled to the deck.

Laura climbed out, shaking. The air smelled like dawn in Eden. All around them mountainsides too steep for farming: green-choked hills wreathed with ink-gray mist like a Chinese landscape. The other towers were like this one: their tops ringed by low ceramic parapets. On the nearest tower, fifty yards away, half-naked soldiers were playing volleyball.

The chopper landed, stuttering, on the black trefoil of its pad nearby. Rotor wind whipped Laura's hair. “What do you do during hurricanes?” she shouted.

Sticky took her elbow and led her toward a hatchway. “There are ways in, besides choppers,” he said. “But none you need to know about.” He yanked the twin hatch covers open, revealing a short flight of stairs to an elevator.

[“Hold it,”] came an unfamiliar voice in her ear. [“I can't handle both of you at once, and I'm not a military architect. This seaside stuff is weird enough.… David, do you know of anyone in Rizome who can handle military? I didn't think so.… Laura, could you kill about twenty minutes?”]

Laura stopped short. Sticky looked impatient. “You won't be seeing much, if that's what's stopping you. We goin' down fast.”

“Another elevator,” Laura told Atlanta. “I'll be going offline.”

“It's wired,” Sticky assured her. “They knew you were coming.”

They dropped six stories, fast. They emerged into a striated stone tunnel the size of a two-lane highway. She saw military storage boxes stenciled in old Warsaw Pact Cyrillic. Sagging tarps over vast knobby heaps of God-knew-what. Sticky ambled forward, his hands in his pockets. “You know the Channel Tunnel? From Britain to France?”

It was cold. She hugged her arms through the
chador
's baggy sleeves. “Yeah?”

“They learned a lot about tunnel making. All on open databases, too. Handy.” His words echoed eerily. Ceiling lights flickered on overhead as they walked and died as they moved on. They were walking the length of the tunnel in a moving pool of light. “You ever see the Maginot Line?”

“What's that?” Laura asked.

“Big line of forts the French dug ninety years ago. Against the Germans. I saw it once. Winston took me.” He adjusted his beret. “Big old steel domes still rusting in the middle of pastures. There are railroad tunnels underneath. Sometimes tourists ride 'em.” He shrugged. “That's all they're good for. This place, too, someday.”

“What do you mean?”

“The tankers are better. They move.”

Laura matched his stride. She felt spooked. “It reeks down here, Sticky. Like the tankers …”

“That's tangle-gun plastic,” Sticky told her. “From war-game drills. You get hit by a tangle-gun, there's a funny stink while the plastic sets. Then it's like you're wrapped in barbed wire.…”

He was lying. There were labs down here somewhere. Somewhere off in the fungal darkness. She could feel it. That faint acid reek …

“These are the killing grounds,” he said. “Where the invaders will pay. Not that we can stop them, any more than Fedon did. But they'll pay blood. These tunnels, they're full of things to jump you out of darkness.…” He sniffed. “Don't worry, not your Yankees. Yankees nah have much nerve these days. But whoever. Babylon.”

“‘The Man,'” Laura said.

Sticky grinned.

The Bank's Directors were waiting for her. They were simply there, in the tunnel, under a pool of light. They had a long, rectangular meeting table and some comfortable leather chairs. Coffee thermoses, ashtrays, some keypads and pencils. They were chatting with each other. Smiling. Little curls of cigarette smoke rising under the light.

They rose when they saw her. Five black men. Four in well-tailored suits; one was wearing a uniform with starred shoulder boards. Three sat on the table's left, two on the right.

The chair at the head of the table was empty. So was the chair at its right-hand side. Sticky escorted her to the seat at the table's foot.

The general spoke. “That will be all, Captain.” Sticky saluted sharply and turned on his heel. She heard his boots ring as he marched off into darkness.

“Welcome to Grenada, Mrs. Webster. Please be seated.” Everyone sat, with squeaks of leather. They all had brass nameplates, thoughtfully turned her way.
DR
.
CASTLEMAN
.
MR. RAINEY
.
MR. GOULD
.
GEN
.
CREFT
.
MR. GELLI
. Mr. Gelli was the youngest man among them. He looked about forty; he was Italian, and his skin was black. The empty seats had nameplates, too.
MR. STUBBS
. And
P.M
.
ERIC LOUISON
…

“My name is Mr. Gould,” Mr. Gould announced. He was a heavyset, black-skinned Anglo, about sixty-five, wearing video rouge and a wiry toupee. “I'm acting as chairman for this special panel of inquiry, examining the circumstances of the death of a Grenadian citizen, Mr. Winston Stubbs. We are not a court and cannot decide legal issues, though we can offer advice and counsel to the prime minister. Under Grenadian law, Mrs. Webster, you are not entitled to counsel before a special panel of this kind; however, false testimony carries the penalty of perjury. Mr. Gelli will administer your oath. Mr. Gelli?”

Mr. Gelli rose quickly to his feet. “Raise your right hand, please. Do you solemnly swear, or affirm …” He read her the whole thing.

“I do,” Laura said. Castleman was the weirdest of the lot. He was grossly fat and had shoulder-length hair and a scraggly beard; he was smoking a cigarillo down to the filter. His eyes were blue and spacy. He tapped left-handed at a little keyboard deck.

Rainey was bored. He was doodling at his paper and touching his large black Anglo nose as if it ached. He had an emerald earring and a bracelet of heavy gold link. General Creft looked like he might be a genuine black person, though his cream-and-coffee skin was the lightest of the lot. He had the unblinking eyes of a crocodile and a street brawler's scar-knuckled hands. Hands that would look natural clutching pliers or a rubber hose.

They quizzed her for an hour and a half. They were polite, lowkey. Gould did most of the talking, pausing to page through notes on his deck. Rainey didn't care—the thrill level here was obviously too low for him; he would have been happier running speedboats past the Florida Coast Guard. Creft took center stage when they asked about the killer drone. Creft had a whole portfolio of printout photos of the Canadair CL-227—the orange peanut refitted with a dreadful variety of strafing guns, napalm squirters, gas dispensers.… She pointed out the model that looked closest to the profile she remembered. Creft passed it silently down the row. They all nodded.… Gelli didn't say much. He was the junior partner. The older model of Gelli obviously hadn't kept up with the times. Somebody had scrapped him.…

She waited for the right moment to spring her news about the F.A.C.T. She called her deck back in the mansion, downloaded the evidence Emily had sent her, and spilled it in their laps. They looked it over, hemming and hawing. (Castleman zipped through it at 2400 baud, his fat-shrouded eyes devouring whole paragraphs at once.)

They were polite. They were skeptical. The president of Mali, one Moussa Diokité, was a personal friend of Prime Minister Louison. The two countries shared fraternal bonds and had contemplated cultural-exchange missions. Unfortunately, plans for peaceful exchange had fallen through, because of the constant state of crisis in all the Sahara countries. Mali had nothing at all to gain from an attack on Grenada; Mali was desperately poor and racked by civil disorder.

And the evidence was bad. Algeria and Mali had a long-standing border dispute; Algeria's State Department would say anything. I. G. Farben's list of F.A.C.T. terrorist actions in Turkish Cyprus was impressive and useful, but proved nothing. Kymera Corporation were paranoid, always blaming foreigners for the actions of Japanese yakuza crime gangs. Blaming Mali was a wild flight of fancy, when the Singaporeans were clearly the aggressors.

“How do you know it's Singapore?” Laura asked. “Can you prove that Singapore killed Mr. Stubbs? Did Singapore attack the Rizome Lodge in Galveston? If you can prove that you dealt faithfully, while the Islamic Bank broke the terms, I promise that I'll support your grievances in every way I can.”

“We appreciate your position,” said Mr. Gould. “Legal proof in a murder committed by remote control is, of course, rather difficult … Have you ever been to Singapore?”

“No. Rizome has an office there, but …”

“You've had a chance to see what we do here, on our own island. I think you understand now that we're not the monsters we've been painted.”

General Creft's lean face creased with a gleam of fangs. He was smiling at her, or trying to. Castleman stirred with a grunt and began hitting function keys.

“A trip to Singapore might enlighten you,” Gould said. “Would you be interested in going there?”

Laura paused. “In what capacity?”

“As our negotiator. As an officer in the United Bank of Grenada.” Mr. Gould tapped at his deck. “Let me point out,” he said, watching the screen, “that Rizome operates under severe legal strictures. Very likely the Vienna Convention will soon shut down Rizome's investigations entirely.” He glanced up at her. “Unless you join us, Mrs. Webster, you will never learn the truth about who attacked you. You will have to go back to that bullet-riddled Lodge of yours, never knowing who your enemy was, or when they will strike again.…”

Mr. Rainey spoke up. He had the drawl of an old-time Florida cracker. “I reckon you know that we have a lot of data on you and your husband. This is no sudden decision on our part, Mrs. Webster. We know your abilities—we've even seen the work you did, on that safehouse where we've been protecting you.” He smiled. “We like your attitude. To put it short, we believe in you. We know how you had to fight within Rizome, to get a chance to build your Lodge and put your ideas into practice. With us, you'd have no such fight. We know how to leave creative people to their work.”

Laura touched her earphone. There was dead silence on the line. “You've cut me off the Net,” she said.

Rainey spread his hands, his gold wristlet catching the light. “It did seem wisest.”

“You want me to defect from my company.”

“Defect—my, that's an ugly word! We want you to join us. Your husband, David, too. We can promise you both a level of support that might surprise you.” Rainey nodded at the deck screen before her. A financial spreadsheet was coming up. “Of course, we know about your personal financial worth. We were surprised to see that, without Rizome, you scarcely own anything! Sure, you've got shares, but the things you've built don't belong to you—you just run them for your corporation. I've known plumbers with bigger salaries than you have! But things are different here. We know how to be generous.”

“You seem to enjoy the plantation house,” Gould said. “It's yours—we could sign over title today. You can hire your own staff, of course. Transportation's no problem—we'll put a chopper and pilot at your disposal. And I can assure you that you'll be better protected under Bank security than you could ever be back in the States.”

Laura glanced at the screen before her. A sudden shock—they were talking
millions
. Millions of Grenadian roubles, she realized. Funny money. “I don't have anything to offer you that's worth this amount,” she said.

“We have an unfortunate public image,” Gould said sadly. “We've turned our back on the Net, and we've been vilified for it. Repairing that damage would be your job in the long run, Mrs. Webster—it should suit your skills. In the short run, we have this Singapore crisis. There's no love lost between us and our rival bank. But escalating warfare doesn't suit either of us. And you are a perfect candidate for conveying a peace proposal.”

“Pure as the driven snow,” murmured Mr. Castleman. He was gazing at the shiny surface of his gold cigarillo case. He popped it open and fired up another.

“You do have a credibility with Singapore that our own ambassadors lack,” Mr. Gould said. A little twitch of irritation had passed his face at Castleman's indiscretion.

“I can't possibly give you an answer without checking with my company,” Laura said. “And my husband.”

“Your husband seems to like the idea,” Gould said. “Of course we broached the idea to him already. Does that affect your thinking?”

“My company is going to be very upset that you've cut me offline,” Laura said. “That wasn't in our agreement.”

“We haven't exactly cut you off,” Castleman said. “The line's still up, but we're feeding it a simulation.…” His pudgy fingers flickered in midair. “An easy graphics job—no backgrounds, just light, darkness, a tabletop and talking heads. None of this exists, you see. We haven't been existing for some time now.”

Gelli laughed nervously.

“Then I'm closing this meeting of our investigative panel,” said Mr. Gould. “You could have told me, Castleman.”

“Sorry,” Castleman said lazily.

“I mean that I would have officially closed the investigation, even before we went offline for the recruitment effort.”

“I'm sorry, Gould, really,” Castleman said. “You know I don't have your flair for this sort of thing.”

“But now we can reason together,” Rainey said, with an air of relief. He bent and reached beneath the table. He rose clutching a Rastafarian hookah of speckled bamboo, with a bowl of curving ramshorn, burnt sticky-black with resin. It looked a thousand years old, mummy-wrapped in antique leather thongs and crude dangling beads. “Will His Excellency join us?” Rainey asked.