Spy Who Jumped Off the Screen : A Novel (9781101565766) (27 page)

“Perhaps,” Ty replied, in a tone intended both to deprecate and deflect the very idea, “but I didn't become an actor in order to play a single role, which can be a hazard for action heroes.”

“No, of course you didn't,” Ian reflected. “A young man with your gifts would be barking mad to put so much promise in such jeopardy.”

Chapter Thirty-one

Aboard
Surpass
, breakfast was
served on bridge deck. From half an hour after first light until nine-thirty, a buffet was set out and refreshed. On a table nearby could be found whatever newspapers the crew had been able to scour from the nearest port.

Ty was quenching his thirst with a tumbler of the best orange juice he had ever tasted, glancing at a copy of that day's
International Herald Tribune,
when Ajay Prajapti whispered, “Well, sadly, we're off after breakfast.”

“We'll miss you,” Ty replied. “Off to where?”

“Home, where I am told it's extremely hot at the moment. That was a lovely little party,” the elder Prajapti continued, referring to the previous evening.

“Yes, it was,” Ty replied, although he had found it neither fun nor in the least useful. As the dancing had worn on, he had continued to worry and later, in a post-midnight e-mail to Oliver, had written,
“Wasting precious time here. Santal suspicious. If I were not Ty Hunter, I might be dead. Escape strategy?”

“I didn't know anyone, really,” Akshar Prajapti offered softly.

“Nor did I,” said Ty, who had felt on display among the Arab women and their enigmatic men. Right now he studied the Prajaptis, amused by the confidence required for a father whose name meant “Invincible” to give his own son one that translated to “Imperishable.”

Just then Isabella arrived. “Good morning,” she said breezily, then turned to approach the buffet.

“My heavens, what's that?” Ajay gasped at the sudden purr of an unfamiliar motor followed by what sounded like a vast wall retracting.

“The tender's being started, that's all,” Isabella explained, only minimally distracted from the steaming scrambled eggs. “I've no idea who's going where.”

“I thought the plan was that we would be going back to Gib by helicopter.”

“Really, I've no idea,” Isabella said, and smiled lavishly, taking the seat next to Akshar and across from Ty. “Transport is Ian's department.”

“Speaking of whom,” Ajay Prajapti said as Ian descended the stairs from his deck, followed by Philip. Both men wore sharply creased trousers and had jackets draped over their wrists.

“Morning, darling,” Ian said at once. “Good morning, everyone!”

“Morning,” Isabella replied then, when the two men seemed to forgo joining them at table, asked, “What's the form?”

“Philip and I are going into Tangier.”

“Just you and Philip?” Isabella inquired plaintively. “Why don't we join you? There's plenty of room in the tender.”

“There will be time for that, I promise you. Now, pretty much everyone else said good-bye last night and, I presume, got off early.”

Jean-François, standing nearby, nodded.

“The Prajaptis are leaving on the chopper at ten-fifteen. You and Ty will entertain them until then, please,” Ian instructed. “Look, I really am sorry, darling, but I simply must concentrate on business on this particular trip. I've no time for sightseeing and cannot be constrained by the movements and whereabouts of others.”

“I understand,” Isabella said.

“Of course you do.”

After they had waved good-bye to the tender, the Prajaptis excused themselves to pack. The cigarette boat's engines could still be heard, its high, white wake still traced when Ty drew Isabella back to the breakfast table, where, on a scrap of found paper, he wrote,
“We have to talk without being overheard. Where is the best place?”

“Why?” she whispered, but stopped short. Seconds later, on the same paper with the same pen, she wrote,
“Epidendrum.”

After finishing their meal at a pace calculated not to draw attention, they made their way to Isabella's stateroom.

Ty surveyed the walls and ceiling with obvious circumspection, then returned to Isabella.

“No one would dare,” she admonished him.

“Even Ian?”

“Especially Ian! Are you mad?”

“I suffer from an excess of caution, with good reason.”

Isabella stood still in the center of the lemon yellow sitting room. “It's not who he is. It's not how he sees himself.”

“Then why did he place a GPS in your car?” Ty bluffed.

Isabella's answer surprised him. “That was done with my permission. Ian wanted to be sure I would be safe. The roads around Pond House can be treacherous, as I'm sure you've seen. Anyway, why would I mind? I'm not living a secret life.”

“No,” Ty said, “I'm sure you're not.”

“He loves me. In his mind he might as well be my father. What the hell is going on? Who are you? Forgive me. That's a stupid question. Let me rephrase it:
Who
are you?”

“A guy in a corner,” Ty told her.

“How uncomfortable!”

“Who finds that the only way out is to uncover the truth.”

“Bravo! Well acted.”

“I'm not acting. I wish I were.” Ty hesitated. He had been ordered never to speak of the matter to anyone outside the small circle who had gathered at Camp David, but circumstances had changed. Time was growing dangerously short. On his own he had come up empty-handed and without Isabella's help was sure to continue to do so until it would be too late. To confide in her now might be fatal, yet not to confide, given the protocols aboard
Surpass
and Ian's suspicion, would almost certainly doom any chance he had of succeeding. He drew a deep breath, then said, “Ian or Philip or both, or maybe neither, may be in the process of transferring nuclear warheads.”

“Next joke,” Isabella said. “Who told you that? Obviously it's another lie.”

“What if it isn't?”

“The only thing either one of them has ever had to do with nuclear weapons is that Philip has practically killed himself trying to rid the world of them.”

“Perhaps,” Ty said. “No one would be happier if you turned out to be right.”

“Are you sure?”

“Warheads
might
be missing from a Russian installation that Philip decertified,” Ty said. “If they are, each could be used to launch nuclear attacks on up to thirty targets. That would be the end of the world as we know it.”

“You didn't answer my question. Where did you come by this extraordinary information?”

“I can't tell you that.”

“Then tell me this: Does anyone else believe this preposterous story?”

“That I
can
tell you,” Ty replied. “The President of the United States does, for one. At least he believes that it is more than possible and therefore cannot be ignored. I'm pretty sure the same can be said about your Prime Minister.”

“Now I
am
lost,” Isabella said. “All this, not from some secret agent but a film star! I'm sure you can understand how it could be too much to take in.”

Ty kept silent.

“Or are you both?” she wondered aloud. “It's as though Matt Damon really were Jason Bourne, isn't it?”

With that she retreated to her bedroom. After a few seconds, Ty heard water splashing in her basin, a drawer being opened and closed, after which she returned.

“Look around you,” Ty said. “At some time you must have asked yourself where this yacht and Pond House and everything else came from.”

“Ian is a genius. I've told you that before.”

“And it may well be true, but what if he's even more than that? What if he's so much of a genius he feels himself above the common morality that binds most other men? You read the newspapers. Every few days, there's a new alarm about loose nuclear materials somewhere. Usually it's small amounts of fissile stuff. But what if Ian thought bigger? He would, wouldn't he? What if he laid a plan so simple and audacious and for such momentous stakes that no normal person would think it possible? You have to admit,
that
would be entirely in character.”

She shot him a ferocious look but did not speak.

“Tell me,” Ty said, “that it has never once occurred to you that someone just like me might knock on your door one day.”

“Oh, please!” Isabella exclaimed. “Someone like you with a story like yours—the odds against that must be one in how many gazillions?”

“What I meant was, just a stranger who came suggesting that everything wasn't as it appeared. You have to have wondered.”

From her pocket she withdrew a Derringer and pointed it at him. “I'm going to call Jean-François,” she said.

“Put that down,” Ty insisted.

“No, I will not! I'm afraid of you.”

“If you were, you would have called him already. You haven't because you know I might be right and you don't want to be responsible for what will happen if I am. You don't want to live with that.”

Isabella glared at him. “What do you want? You're too rich to be a thief.”

“First, put that damned thing down.”

“Why should I?”

“Because I'm not a thief and whether you know it or not, you and I are on the same side.”

“We're not.”

“Somewhere buried in that beautiful, stubborn head of yours, you know that we are. Now, for the last time, put it down or I'm going to take it from you. You'll have to shoot me to stop me.”

Isabella took a deep breath. “I'm not going to shoot you,” she said.

“Good, that's a relief.”

“Not because I believe you, but because I don't want to end up in the tabloids and be known for the rest of my life as ‘The Woman Who Shot Ty Hunter.'”

Ty smiled. “I imagine that would be very bad for jewelry sales,” he said as she reluctantly handed him the gold-plated, ivory-handled Derringer.

Isabella looked down shyly, then up at him again. “Now will you please tell me what it is you want?”

Ty said, “First I have to get into your godfather's quarters.”

“Impossible,” Isabella told him. “They lock automatically whenever he leaves. I have no way to get into them. No one but Ian does, not even Crispin. What are you looking for in there?”

“I have no idea, but whatever it is, if it's on
Surpass,
it's bound to be there.”

“Even if I tried to break in, I'd be stopped before I could. Also, Ian would know immediately, because the alarm would sound on his BlackBerry.”

Ty considered their options in light of what she had said. “The Prajaptis are leaving for Gib,” he said. “We're going with them.”

“We can't.”

“We were told
not
to come along to Tangier and
to
entertain the Prajaptis. Ian gave no other instructions.”

“Why are we going to Gibraltar?”

“To see the apes,” Ty told her.

Chapter Thirty-two

“The bouquet of decay.”
Ian sighed. “Savor it!”

Philip regarded him silently and with the just-shy-of-disdainful curiosity he was apt to show whenever Ian became overly philosophical.

“Breathe it in, Philip,” Ian urged. “Tangier is like a rare orchid. It flowers, as it last did in the fifties and sixties, fades, then, when least expected, blooms once more. And bloom it will!”

They had landed at the yacht-club quay, where
Surpass
's
shore agent from Agence Med had greeted them, along with the British consul and the
commissaire divisionnaire de police.
Now they were in the backseat of a hired car commencing its ascent along the rue Portugal with the Grand Mosque and the wall of the medina, the Old City, at their right. The white city, dappled by soft morning sunlight, rose with the hills upon which it had been settled by Carthaginian colonists in the fifth century
B.C.

Just beyond the Légation Américaine, Ian instructed the driver to stop. He and Philip exited quickly. Drifting on the tide of tourists they proceeded on foot to a narrow iron gate. The gate opened onto a courtyard garden in full flower, at the center of which stood a fountain in whose colorfully tiled mosaic basin water burbled softly. They crossed the garden rapidly, proceeding through the shadowy rooms of an Arabesque mansion until they came into an arbor of astounding luxury, so peaceful and fragrant it might have been hours from any city.

Wazir and Fateen Al-Dosari were waiting for them, along with Sheik al-Awad and three other of their middlemen colleagues from the Arabian Peninsula and the Persian Gulf.

Ian greeted them as though it were they rather than he who had just arrived. “Our adventure is about to have a happy ending,” he declared.

“I am very glad to hear this,” said Wazir Al-Dosari.

Ian's quick nod betrayed a trace of impatience. “First I want to thank each of you for your good work so far. I also want to let you know that, as agreed, we are, as of this moment, issuing the required seventy-two-hour notice for the transfer of the first tranche of funds. Philip will now review those details.”

“You have each subdivided your own accounts into units that should be able to fly below the regulatory radar,” Philip said. “Moreover, you have wire-transfer instructions relating to our accounts, which will be capable of receiving funds on the same basis. Clearly it will be in the best interest of everyone involved if such transfers are sequenced between now and the close of business three days from now. Are there any questions?”

When no one spoke, Philip continued. “The final half of your payment will be expected at the moment our merchandise is delivered to you on behalf of your clients. In both instances, let me assure you, the money will orbit the earth far faster than any satellite. Where it originated and where it is destined will be undeterminable.”

“I wish you all good luck,” Ian said.
“Salaam.”

“Salaam.”

“If I might have a word,” Sheik al-Awad said, taking Ian aside as the brief meeting dispersed. “I shall, of course, deduct the funds I've laid out on gems and jewelry from my share.”

“Exactly as we agreed,” Ian said without slowing.

“Short and sweet,” Ian said when they had come back into the rue Salah Eddine el-Ayoubi. “It's better that way.”

“I think so,” Philip said.

“No one can claim there was a misunderstanding. The participants know both what's expected of them and when to expect their own reward. The truly beautiful part with this cast of characters and three separate pieces of merchandise is that, as you once suggested and I've long believed, we should be able to create our own private standoff in the region, paradoxically making conflict amongst the various parties less likely than it already is.”

Philip smiled. “While reaping tens of billions doing so,” he added.

Ian laughed. “Yes, there is that.”

Ian's disinclination to accept the reality and consequences of his actions and his need to justify them on elaborate theoretical grounds alternately amused and perplexed Philip, whose approach to life had always been to face it directly. Like so many men, Ian could not bear to conceive of himself as acting other than out of some essentially good motive toward some essentially good end. But how could such a canny operator go to such lengths to blinker himself from the truth? Philip had no illusions about the transaction they were concluding or the people with whom they were dealing. The al-Awads and Al-Dosaris of this world were syndicators, go-betweens. Behind them lay a constantly changing cast of shifty principals, dictators and desert princes wielding absolute power, usurpers and warlords, drug lords, nihilistic fanatics and terrorists. So what? That was neither of Philip's making nor his responsibility. He lived in the world he found and planned on neither heaven nor hell. If anything, beyond the fortune he would reap, absolved him of a last vestige of guilt, it was his conviction that the time had come for the cat to be let out of the bag. Where it would scramble was not for him to say. All he could do at this unstoppable historical moment was to seize it and profit from the weapons he now controlled, as other men would surely soon profit from the sale of other weapons to other dubious and dangerous parties. And he had to keep his ear to the ground, to stay a step ahead of trouble and as far away as possible from any theater in which such weapons seemed likely to be exploded. Life was replete with dangers. What were nuclear warheads but one more on a very long list?

“Let's walk, shall we?” Ian suggested. “It feels rather good to stretch one's legs when one's been at sea. Have a word with our driver, would you? Tell him to meet us at the Petit Socco in . . . what do you think? Half an hour?”

“He'll know where that is?”

“He'll know, all right.”

The street was sun-drenched, with an eclectic crowd already gathering by Popeye's Restaurant. At the next major intersection they turned right, past the City Wall into the medina on the rue Siaghine. Here in the souk, the doors and shutters of almost all the shop fronts had been opened, and vendors selling local melons, apples, bananas and dates worked adjacent to those in whose chaotic premises fresh chickens hung from clothesline while live roosters patrolled a sawdust floor below. Still other shops offered various Moroccan arts and crafts; desert clothing such as white dishdashahs and hijabs, pashmina scarves in vivid hues and of complicated design and caftans sewn with elaborate beadwork. Every few yards another emporium offered an array of last season's electronic gadgetry. Ian and Philip climbed the hill in silence until, displayed on a shop's front table, an intricate pyramid of wooden boxes caught Philip's eye.

“Do you mind?” he asked Ian.

“What is it with you and boxes?”

Philip sighed. “It isn't
me
and boxes. Isabella loves them.”

“I know she does, but must she have one from everywhere.”

“I won't be long. I'll catch you up.”

These particular boxes featured parquetry inlays in the repeated geometric patterns typical of much Islamic art. Tiny squares of blond and darker woods, inscribed by contrasting circles, had been fancifully arranged to produce an illusion of depth and movement in their handsome lids. Philip understood that each square represented the four elements of nature—earth, water, fire and air—and that each circle represented the physical world that those elements made possible. He had long appreciated the mathematics of such art, and as he studied several such boxes now, he tried to locate the imperfection in their patterns that their creators would have deliberately introduced as an expression of their own humility and faith that only Allah could achieve perfection.

The shop was narrow, deep and dark. A merchant soon came forth, a man of perhaps forty with sun-cured skin and an angular smile that revealed a missing bicuspid. For several seconds, he watched Philip. Finally, in a hoarse voice, he proclaimed, “They are beautiful.”

“Yes,” Philip said. “They are very nice.”

“This one has a secret compartment,” the merchant said. “Turn this knob once, nothing happens, but twice,
voilà
!”

Philip smiled. “How much?” he asked.

“For this, fifty euros.”

“For the simpler one? I don't require a secret compartment. Besides, the simpler one is more elegant.”

“It is,” the merchant said. “For the one you prefer, thirty-five euros.”

“Rubbish,” Philip said. It was not his nature to bargain, but he knew he would sacrifice the Arab's respect if he did not. “I'll give you half that, no more, but for the first one.”

“You have come a long way,” the merchant said. “Where from? Germany?”

“Spain,” Philip replied.

“Take that one with you, back to Spain, for forty, I beg you.”

“Twenty-five,” Philip countered.

The merchant shook his head.

“Twenty-five,” Philip repeated.

Toward the rear of the shop, a boy of twelve or so made careful note of Philip's insolence. Already a skilled bargainer himself, he understood that it was a game decent people played with a smile rather than as a matter of life and death.

“Twenty-five is not enough,” the merchant said.

“Twenty-five is my final offer.”

The merchant shook his head.

“Twenty-five or I am gone and the box will still be yours.”

“Please!” the merchant said. “I have a shop to run, a son to bring up.”

“None of that is my concern,” Philip said coolly, scanning the room, taking only the briefest notice of a boy clutching a balsa-wood ukulele. “I don't bother you with my concerns. Don't bother me with yours.”

“It's not right,” the merchant said.

“Here is twenty-five,” Philip said, producing two crisp notes. “Take it or leave it.”

The merchant hesitated. He had been prepared to accept thirty-five, and in a better year would not have accepted less. It would hurt to be humiliated before his son, but that would be on the European's conscience, not his own. He needed the twenty-five euros. Reflexively, he fetched a sheet of printed tissue paper from below the counter and began to wrap Philip's purchase. It took him less than a minute to complete the familiar task, write out a receipt, then place both in a green plastic carrier bag.

Philip had to work quickly. The explosive he intended to use was a binary one that Andrej had purchased for him on the black market in Sevastopol. It would require half an hour from the addition of the sensitizer for the white solid and red liquid to set. He'd had no opportunity to do a proper reconnaissance of the area but wasn't worried. Acting quickly meant that potential witnesses were less likely to recall, in meaningful detail, someone they had seen only once and fleetingly.

A third of the way to the Grand Socco,
a shadowy passageway of lesser shops and stalls flowed south from the rue Siaghine. One of dozens of such tributaries, its opening was marked by a sign whose vertical orange letters, faded by years of exposure and neglect, read
HOTEL BELGIQUE
. Philip turned into it. Soon a rivulet of melting ice washed over the soles of his loafers and he realized that by happenstance he had come in at the rear of a large
poissonnerie
. To his left, row after row of ice-covered tables were laden with the catch of local fishermen: mullet, mackerel and sea bass, salt cod and Saint-Pierre, langostinos, squid and shrimps. Crabs squirmed in wooden baskets. Lobsters struggled to swim in large barrels. In the distance, beyond a ribbon of daylight at the far end of the market, stood what he assumed to be either the Grand or the Petit Socco. To Philip's surprise, the fishmongers paid him no attention as they went about their business, folding fish in old newspapers or placing them in the ready buckets of their customers. Then a door opened and from it a single weather-beaten seaman emerged. Surmising that the raised, scuffed
H
on the door stood for
Hommes,
Philip entered the small lavatory, then immediately locked it from within. Overhead, a solitary incandescent bulb threw down ample light for his work. When the explosive had been created and attached to a tiny mobile-phone-activated detonator, he carefully rubber-taped both to the bottom of the secret drawer of his new box, making sure they would be held in place there. Then he snapped the drawer closed and slid the box back into its tissue wrapper, resealing the expertly folded end from which he had withdrawn it.

As he had expected, he found Ian at an outdoor table in front of a café in the square. Even in the midst of urgent business, Ian could seldom resist such places and the chances they afforded to observe people without being closely observed in turn.

“Un citron pressé?”
Ian asked, beckoning Philip to a chair.

“Pourquoi pas?”
Philip replied, and, flagging a waiter, ordered the lemonade. “You look very relaxed.”

Ian smiled. “The moment calls for it.”

“I understand,” said Philip.

“At a moment like this, in a deal like this one, one wants to relax, to put oneself in fifth gear rather than first. Otherwise it may be difficult to deal with uncertainty should it arise.”

Philip nodded. They talked again about Tangier as Ian had first known it, about its successive histories as a Berber, a Roman, a Christian and, since
A.D.
702, a Muslim city; about everything but the subject on both of their minds. Between Ian's paragraphs, silence occasionally fell, and when it did, Philip wondered what he was thinking.

Philip was glad for the delay, which played into his hands, and for a few minutes found his thoughts adrift.

When his iPhone rang, it appeared to startle him. He looked at the screen, then at Ian. “Fateen,” he explained quietly.

“I wonder why,” Ian replied.

“Hello,” Philip said, then pretended to listen for a moment. “Is there a particular reason, may I ask?”