The O.D. (26 page)

“All you need on Eydos is the time to build up your influence,” Dasching said. “There’s areas nobody else will be able to touch, and I can see that’s where
you’re
headed. That’s why I wanted to meet you. I also wanted to make it clear to you, in case you think I’ve been pulling too many punches, that if I’m going to stay on course and attain the power I need to start changing things around here, then I’ve got to be careful, Lonnie. American’s don’t like it if their gas goes up one
cent
, let alone if we did what was really called for. Do you mind if we sit over there?” He pointed to a pair of comfortable armchairs. It was a sign for some serious talking.

“I’d like to give you an overview of the main problems as I see them, and what can be done ... what
has
to be done to solve them ...”

Dasching’s overview was overlong, and fell well short of the mark, by Pilot’s criteria. The longer it had gone on, the more depressed Pilot had become. On the one hand, it was encouraging to find someone of potential power who was capable of seeing far enough up the road to realise it was leading the wrong way, but disappointing to see him then alter course by only a few degrees.

During the two and a half hours their meeting lasted, Pilot spoke for less than ten minutes in total, and then just to clarify some of Dasching’s statements. The young Senator, for his part, didn’t think this in any way an unfair division of the floor.

At half past one, Dasching’s voluptuous secretary had started making little scissors signs with her long, sexy fingers, and, five minutes later, the entire senatorial entourage had disappeared west.

At one o’clock the following afternoon, a compact rental car pulled into the drive. No train of aides and security men for Charles Williams. He came in on his own and plopped himself and his attitude in the most comfortable chair he could find.

Williams took after his black mother in looks, albeit a shade lighter, but had his father’s green eyes. It was a striking combination that held Pilot immediately, as it did everyone.

Charles Williams was a political troublemaker. It was in his blood. His grandfather had been a ‘Weatherman’, one of that band of underground militants from the University of Michigan who had terrorized America in the 60s and 70s. In forming POCS, Prisoners of a Consumer Society, Williams was carrying on the family tradition of opposition.

“So, you’re him,” Williams said, beginning to wonder why he had agreed to meet with Lonnie Pilot. “What do you want to talk about?”

“Prisoners of a Consumer Society,” Pilot said. “Who are they, what do they represent, how did you find them?”

“O.K. It’s a list of prisoners’ names and addresses. Not a membership roster or anything like that. They’re not members of POCS in literal terms, only figurative. This might surprise you, but we’ve got agents in almost every major US city working with the homeless, the unemployed, the sic
k−
in other words, people who have fallen off the gravy train and are finding it hard just to stay alive. Add the radical green, the marginalized left and the plain anarchical, and you’ve got a pretty sizeable recruiting base. I was thinking of hitting them all with a mail-shot,” Williams joked without smiling. “Free Molotov Cocktails.” Anyone who knew Williams well knew that he never smiled.

“There’s forty or fifty million prisoners
at
least
out there.” Williams’ eyes were burning with the same fire his grandfather’s had shown when he planted an incendiary bomb outside a Philadelphia police station in 1969. “An army of fifty million, each unaware of the others’ existence, but all with the potential to rise up together. All we have to do is push a button they all respond to and
blam
. Our very own Arab Spring.”

The more fervent Williams became, the more uneasy Pilot felt.

“What sort of button are you thinking of pushing?”

Williams froze like an elk hearing a hunter’s footstep and squinted at Pilot. He never wore his glasses when in conversation. “I think you and I will have to get to know each other better before I tell you
that
,” he answered. Pilot withdrew that particular feeler and asked another question.

“Would a Prisoner of a Consumer Society consider blowing himself out of prison?” Pilot asked. “Because I’m not a believer in the overnight revolution myself. I see it lasting a few hundred years.”

“Impossible,” Williams snapped. “You can’t keep a revolutionary ideal alive across such a long time span. It’s hard enough to keep it going a few years. Even my dad and his dad got tired trying. Look, ideas, ideals, motivations… they’re like a morning mist that soon gets burnt off by the sun. Everything is constantly on the move. Things get superceded by new things every second. For one thing to remain on the surface and visible for more than a few months is impossible. If you’re in prison, you don’t want to
die
there. You want to escape
now
. You people are free out there in the Bay of Biscay. I envy you. But over here we’re
suffering
.”

Pilot didn’t like the inference, although he could understand the sentiment behind it. “It’s all the same, Charles. Cleveland, Nillin, Mexico City. Our suffering isn’t any less acute than yours or the other POCS’. But a bloody revolution wouldn’t work in this case. Its effects wouldn’t last more than a few years or decades, then we’d all find ourselves back in prison again.”

Williams was both angry and disappointed at Pilot’s words. “In spite of what you say, man, it’s easier day by day to live in an open prison like yours than in the solitary confinement most of us in the real world have to endure.”

Pilot thought the point eloquently expressed and felt Williams deserved a better explanation. “The revolution, when it comes, won’t – can’t – be
us
against
them
. It has to be us
with
them against
ourselves
. And by ourselves, I mean human nature.”

“What kind of crap is
that
?” Williams spat, being not quite so generous in return. “Judas Priest.”

Pilot said nothing and instead tried to imagine what Williams was thinking of him – that Lonnie Pilot was a dud and hadn’t been worth the drive to Sag Harbour. For his part, and in terms of the support they might have been able to give him when he was ready to act, Pilot felt neither Charles Williams nor Senator Paul Dasching had been worth the voyage to Sag Harbour either.

“I don’t think you people can help us,” Williams said, softening slightly. “I really don’t.”

Pilot just looked at him sadly. For some reason the only thing that was going through his mind was a scene from ‘Dumbo’. It was the part where the locomotive pulling the circus cars is trying to climb a very steep hill. As he painfully nears the top, his steamy voice strains, “I think I can… I think I can… I ... think ... I ... can… I ......... think....... I …….can…….. I……………” and, as he crests the top of the hill and starts racing down the other side, he whoops, “I... knew... I... could… I knew I could … I KNEW I COULD.” Eydos would have to pull the train on its own. There would be no political support from Dasching, even if he were to reach a position to give it. And the kind of things POCS had in mind, Pilot could do without. He had almost forgotten his own words from the Eydos Declaration of the previous Augus
t−
‘we have left everything behind’. To remain impartial, Eydos could not afford to have links to
anyone
, and with sudden realization, Pilot knew that he had very nearly sunk his island.

The next morning, Pilot and Serman, faces covered with scarves, caught the Hampton Jitney bus back to New York. They got off at Grand Central Station, called Forrest Vaalon’s office, spoke a few coded sentences, and hung up. Ten minutes later they were picked up in the Nissan by Vaalon’s new PA and driven to the empty apartment of a major art collector.

“It was too dangerous to take you to the house,” Vaalon said, meeting them at the door with a coldness uncharacteristic of the man. “It’s been beseiged by photographers since December. Ludwi
g−
this is his apartmen
t−
is in Europe, so we have the place to ourselves.” The look of disdain on Vaalon’s face did not bode well, Pilot sensed.

Vaalon came straight to the point. “What on Earth were you thinking of in meeting with those people?” he said. Pilot had never heard such disgust in his mentor’s voice and it shamed him. “Nonaligned. Nonaligned. That’s the word we use. You’ve been sloppy, Lonnie. Tell me, did you put your little initiative to the vote before you went?”

Pilot paused. “Yes and no. I described it as a fact-finding mission, but didn’t mention the meetings. Only Mara and Bradingbrooke argued against my making the trip, for the very reason you mentioned. I should have listened to them. The moment Dasching, and then Williams, walked out the door, I knew I’d cocked up. Mea culpa.”

Serman squirmed in his chair as the silence in the room grew thicker. “Apology accepted,” Vaalon said eventually. “We have another more immediate problem to address.”

“What’s that?” Pilot asked.

“It’s called Mirko Soldo.”

XVI

Vaalon led Pilot and Serman into Ludwig’s study. “This could take a while. Sit down.” He poured three small glasses of brandy and made himself comfortable in a leather wingback armchair. “First of all, it’s my turn to say mea culpa. I owe you an apology for inadvertently appointing a traitor as one of your specialists. Our vetting in this case was lamentable. Mirko Soldo began arousing our suspicions around November when he made two trips to Dubrovnik in as many weeks. On his third visitation in December, I put some of my people on his tail. They followed him up to a small house in Bosanka, overlooking the City, where some sort of meeting was taking place. We got the licence numbers of the three cars parked outside and were unnerved when we traced the drivers.”

Pilot couldn’t begin to guess where this was heading.

“One was a rental in the name of the CEO of the Flamanville Nuclear Power Plant in France. One belongs to Stanko Jer
ić
, a Croat with underworld connections a mile deep. And the third is owned by Dragan Drag
ić
, head of a not so secret nationalist group called The Knights of Blasius, and by
nationalist
, I don’t mean Croatia, but the City-Republic of Ragusa.” Pilot and Serman looked at each other blankly. “I’ll tell you all about Ragusa in a minute. The following day, we managed to photograph the contents of Drag
ić
’s briefcase. But first, some background.” Vaalon adjusted his posture in advance of the history lesson.

“The site of Dubrovnik – Ragusium – was first settled by the Illyrians about two and a half thousand years ago. It began as an insignificant encampment on an inhospitable shelf of rock, not unlike Nillin I should imagine.

“Centuries later, they were joined ten miles to the south by a Roman settlement – Epidaurum, where Cavtat is today. Epidaurum thrived and soon eclipsed Regusium as the power in that area. When the Roman Empire began coming apart at the seams, rule of Epidaurum passed to Byzantium. The city thrived further until the Slavs swept down from northern Europe. In the process of taking the entire Dalmatian coast, they sacked and destroyed Epidaurum. The survivors fled to Ragusium.

“The refugees were traders and seafarers, and breathed new life into the city. By the Thirteenth Century they had made it a major trading force in the Adriatic. This was about the time that Venice was emerging as a power. Control of the Adriatic was essential for the Venetians to achieve dominance, and Ragusium was a thorn it took them a long time to remove. Excuse me a moment.”

On his return from the bathroom, Vaalon picked up where he’d left off. “During their spell under the wing of Venice, the Ragusans built up their city’s defenses to a level where they were impregnable – be it from land or sea – and it was only a matter of time before they acquired the confidence and the strength to extract themselves from Venetian domination. At the beginning of the Fifteenth Century, Ragusa declared herself a republic.

“She was in the right place at the right time to do so. The young city-state became an important staging post between the caravan routes of the East and the major ports of the West, trading with the world of Islam, while maintaining good relations with the Pope, who more or less ran the show on the other side. It was a juggling act that made Ragusa and her leaders very rich indeed. Ragusan ships were trading everywhere – Portugal, England, Flanders. Their tiny republic had become a leading maritime force with consulates and influence all over the Mediterranean and beyond. They picked the wrong horse, though, when they agreed to support the Spanish against Elizabeth the First and lost an enormous number of ships in the Armada.” Vaalon pulled his aged frame up and ambled towards the kitchen. “We’ll continue this after you’ve tried some of Ludwig’s kopi luwak.”

“Kopi what?” Pilot asked.

“Kopi luwak. The most expensive coffee in the world.”

After they’d finished their cups of money, Vaalon resumed his lesson. “The discovery of America, or rather, the discovery of its gold and silver, had a disastrous effect on the value of money back in Europe. It fell like a stone, sending prices up and making less and less cash available for investment in shipbuilding, seafaring and so on. Merchant shipping declined throughout Europe, but was felt more in Ragusa, because they had no other resources to fall back on. Seeing the writing on the wall, the inhabitants withdrew from trading, invested their money in banks and started living off the interest.

“That was the beginning of the end, and in 1667 an earthquake destroyed the city and killed half the population. If it hadn’t been for her money in foreign banks, Ragusa would have died there and then. The place never regained its health and became easy prey for, first, Napoleon, then the Austro-Hungarians. Today, Dubrovnik, which is the Croatian name for the city, is little more than a tourist curiosit
y−
a town with a colourful past, but very little present and no future. International trade, if you can call it that, is what people can pick up in Dubrovnik’s tourist shops. Drag
ić
and Soldo see modern day Dubrovnik as the Epidaurum of a thousand years ago and its hordes of German entrepreneurs and property developers as the invading Slavs. Nillin is the logical refuge for the survivors of Ragusa/Dubrovnik – a
New
Ragusium
in which to rekindle the Byzantine-Ragusan culture. Saint Balsius was the protector saint adopted by Ragusa.
Blasius
is also the codename Dragan Drag
ić
uses in the secret brotherhood of New Ragusans he founded and leads. Soldo’s codename is
Buvina
, after Andrija Buvina, a 13th century Croatian sculptor and builder. Theirs is an organization not without funds and connections, and it is deadly serious in its intentions.”

“Which ar
e−
?”

“In modern parlance, a coup is planned. I’m sure you’ve already guessed as much. The
Knights
of
Blasius
, as they call themselves, have set a time within the next four months for their takeover of the island in the name of Byzantium and old Ragusa. In Eydos, The Knights of Blasius see a golden opportunity which, under your policies, they feel will be lost.”

Vaalon consulted one of the photographed documents on the table.

“Drag
ić
and Soldo aim to base their
Novi
Ragusa
on the old Republic’s specialty of trade and banking, coupled with Dubrovnik’s current pursuit of tourism. They will milk the invading hordes for all they’re worth. As with old Ragusa, banking will be new Ragusa’s lifejacket, but with a difference. The Knights’ version will be more like a laundry than a bank.

“The Knights’ blueprint also calls for the largest gambling and entertainment resort in the world,” Vaalon continued. “I’ve seen the plans for it right here in New York. The contractor for both the resort and the international airport to service it is based three blocks from here – a major Mafia-controlled developer. One of my operatives visited their offices with a camera one night and returned with some very interesting pictures. The Las Vegas valley was just a desert before Bugsy Siegel had his dream, and the Knights want to breathe life onto the barren rock of Eydos in the same way, fashioning a powerhouse of hedonism and exploitation the likes of which have never been seen before.”

Pilot was staring at the floor, shaking his head more in disappointment with his friend Mirko Soldo than in the Knights’ evil intentions.

“To the world’s shipping community, the Knights plan to offer not only an alternative flag of convenience to those of Panama and Liberia, but also an alternative insurance to that of Lloyds of London. That’s not all. The world’s largest oil refinery and storage depot will be sited eighty miles north of Nillin, with a pipeline direct to France. Then there’s nuclear waste disposal. The highest bidder will gain the right to bury theirs on Eydos alongside that of the French nuclear industry, which has been given priority.”

“How do Soldo and Drag
ić
plan getting around
us
?” Pilot asked, more in anger than angst.

“We don’t know that yet. We tracked Drag
ić
to the estate of a retired French general in the Ardêche and are trying to gain access to the property as we speak. Drag
ić
left there with your old friend Major Domaigne. It looks as if they’re putting together a mercenary army.”

“Do we know when all this is likely to happen?” Pilot asked.

“No. But I think you have at least a month.”

“As little as that?” Pilot was finding it difficult to marshall his thoughts. “What if they succeed in taking Eydos?”

“Whatever world opinion might say in your favour, Britain and France will do nothing to help you retake at. They’ll be gaining plenty from the change of management. Your only immediate ally seems to be Ireland, but I doubt if they have the power to help you.”

Pilot winced. “So, France gets exactly what they always wanted without any guilt being attached to them by the outside world.” He was shocked by the conniving nature of the plan. “What are we going to do about it, Forrest?”

“Split the problem down the middle. You deal with Soldo and I’ll see what spanners I can throw into his arrangements with the contractors here. Surveillance on Drag
ić
and the French general will continue and I’ll let you know of any developments there. What passports did you use on your journey here?”

“Both of us were Canadian,” Pilot said.

Vaalon leaned over and pulled two passsports from his attaché case. “Best not to use the same ones on the return trip.” He handed a Dutch passport to Serman and an Irish one to Pilot, each with their respective photos and spurious stamps from fabricated trips. “Better get some sleep. You’re flying out in the morning.”

Pilot opened his new passport and smiled. “Ollie Bolling. You remembered.”

At Newark Airport, Pilot found an abandoned copy of People magazine on a seat and began to read it while waiting for their flight to be called. He was soon engrossed in an article about the nine Americans on Eydos – the six ‘crew’ and the three specialists, arborist Harvey Giles, geologist Bart Maryburg and nutritionist/agronomist, Dr. Steven Schwartzman. The latter, according to the article, had earned the nickname ‘Weedmaster’ amongst the settlers because of his cultivation on the island of a variety of plants, which he maintained provided an important and unappreciated source of proteins and vitamins. Three acres of valuable sediment pit had been put aside for growing flax, barley and ‘Doctor Steve’s weeds’. ‘The Islanders can hardly wait for the first harvest,’ the article sneered, ‘when the barley and linseed from the flax will be mixed with pale persicaria, black bindweed, gold of pleasure, fat hen, kemp nettle, wild pansy, corn spurrey and other exotic-sounding plants to produce a kind of hippy porridge that Colonel Sanders would do well to keep out of Kentucky.’

When he’d finished reading, Pilot handed the magazine to Serman. “There’s a profile of you in here, Aaron. I didn’t know you played the cello.”

The flight from Newark went smoothly enough, but Pilot’s false identity had fooled no one at Dublin Airport. Upon opening Ollie Bolling’s passport, the officer looked straight through the holder’s excellent disguise and said matter-of-factly, “Will you come this way please, Mr. Pilot?” In the VIP lounge where they were taken, ‘Ollie Bolling’ was told that the President’s car was waiting to drive his party to Phoenix Park.

When they reached Áras an Uachtaráin, the official residence of the Irish President, they were led directly to his private study for informal talks. The Prime Minister and half the Cabinet were there, all wishing to meet Eydos’ wind-blown leader. After his miscalculation in meeting Dasching and Williams, Pilot was coy to the point of frigidity. As a result, his hosts knew as little about him at the end of the meeting as they did at the beginning. A naval patrol vesssel was placed at his disposal for his return to Nillin, along with a promise. Whatever assistance was within the power of the Irish Government to render, would be given gratis and without strings. To prove their sincerity, the President informed Pilot of the proposal one of his ministers had received the day before from a Croat named Drag
ić
, offering Ireland strategic concessions and a partnership in a new Atlantic oil refinery in return for her support for a group of ‘enlightened individuals’ wishing to establish a commercial base on Eydos.

“We’ve asked Drag
ić
for more details and will forward our intelligence to you as and when we receive it,” the President promised.

Aaron Serman had spent most of the two-day voyage wringing his insides out over the rail. Now, he had nothing more to give. It had been a rough haul from Dun Laoghaire and both he and Pilot were exhausted.

It wasn’t policy at Nillin to post guards or stand watches. If they were invaded, they were invaded and there’d be nothing they could do about it, so the Irish patrol boat was able to tie up at the quay, deposit her two passengers and cast off again unbeknown to anyone.

Exhausted though they were, Pilot and Serman headed, not for bed, but for the mess hall and some breakfast.

With two bowls of porridge inside him, Pilot was beginning to revive. “Anything interesting happen while I was away?” he asked Bradingbrooke who had joined him.