Gordon Kent - Top Hook

“This is how it goes. The Chinks’ military intel is the banker for the Party and for the bigwigs who are skimming the cream and sending the money offshore for themselves. Intel also has most of its own secret money offshore; it’s what they use all over the world for spying, subversion—you know. It’s a lot of money. A lot of money. So what I’m going to do is, on a given day, and it has to be soon, I’m going to activate my virus, and it’s going to send little gobblers—like PacMans—and they’re going to gobble up all the offshore accounts and all the data about the accounts, every scrap, and put it somewhere else. And the Chinks won’t know where. And there they’ll be, sitting with their thumb up their ass, with no money for ops, and no Party money, and no money for the bigwigs who will want to know how and why, and who will be trying to take revenge on anybody who stands in the way of their cash, and it’s going to be a bloodbath!”

He grinned. “For about twelve hours, and that’s all I need. Because the Chinks are going to be between a rock and a hard place during those twelve hours, and they won’t know whether to shit or go blind. India is going to be hollering at them from one side, and we’re going to be hollering from another, and Pakistan is going to be begging them to send help, and they won’t be able to do a thing! They’ll be paralyzed.

“And then they’ll try to recover the only way they know, which is by strutting around the world, pretending to be a superpower instead of the world’s shoemaker. And they’ll push some military provocation to make somebody else—India, let’s say—back down, and it’ll all be bullshit! Because China is a paper tiger—a hundred goddam nukes, and so far not a missile that they could lob a wad of toilet paper three thousand miles with! An army of goddam peasants, and technology they’ve had to steal! You know who says the Chinese are a superpower? The same assholes who said that Russia was a superpower!

“Well, I’m going to show what they really are. Their money is going to go down a rathole, and they’re going to panic, and then they’re going to the brink—and they’re going to find that they’re eyeball-to-eyeball with us, and they’re going to back down, because they don’t have the muscle!

“So—I had a reason, do you see, Janey? I always had a reason. You’re the moralist in the family; you’re the one who used to argue the difference between ends and means, so you judge what I’ve done. Judge me. And then forgive me.”

He came to rest at the foot of the bed, his posture appealing to her, begging her. And for a moment, he thought what he saw in return was an illusion—a living woman, eyes open, the faintest of smiles—and then he knew it was not. It was quite real, even to the smears of pale color on her cheeks.

“Janey—!”

She might have said something; her lips parted. But it was her eyes that spoke, sliding aside to look at the CD player. Then back at him. The eyes of a girl, hip and wise.

He got it. Der Rosenkavalier. He pushed the Repeat button. A few notes, and Schwarzkopf’s voice climbed out of the box and filled the room. It was loud, too loud for him to talk. Seeing her eyes, he couldn’t turn the volume down. He could only sit with her, listening.

He sat beside her, and her eyes closed. The music, lush as cream, swirled.

He touched her hand. It was wax. The music spiraled up, the duet, the two sopranos, glory. Then silence.

“Janey?” Now he felt his own desire again, his own urgency. “ Forgive me! ”

But the bird had flown.

Outside the hospice, Suter leaned his back against a tree. Music he didn’t know played its tinny noise in his earphone, but he was oblivious to it. A lot of money . Suter tried to light a cigarette, but his hands were trembling and he had to give it up.

A lot of money . What was a lot of money? A billion? Even two billion?

A lot of money, and Tony knows about it. What would he do with Tony? The man could say that discretion was his stock-in-trade, but Suter knew that discretion, integrity, all that was bullshit when big money came around.

It frightened him and at the same time dazzled him. What could he do with a billion dollars? What could he not do?

He had come out here to get something on his boss. To get a little leverage. Now, Shreed hardly mattered. Now there was money . He tried again with the lighter, and it gave a flame and he was able to hold the cigarette in it just long enough to get it alight. He drew in a gulp of smoke, coughed, and, bent over, began to hyperventilate.

He knew that the only way he could deal with Tony was if Tony was dead.

By the time that the JAG officer from the boat appeared, it was close to three in the morning and he had been moved from the cell where he had been questioned to a comfortable office belonging to one of the detectives, and he was being given strong coffee and biscotti. One of the cops even made small talk.

The JAG was a lieutenant-commander, middle-aged and short, and he weighed as much as he was allowed, but he was professional.

“Commander? You all right? I’m John Maggiulli.”

“Al Craik.”

“You okay? They don’t have you as a suspect any more. Wish I could say that was my doing, but it was over before I walked in.” He lowered his voice. “Admiral Kessler is kind of freaked. Word we had was that there had been a terrorist attack. Why didn’t you tell them to call the boat, Mister?”

“I did.”

“Not their story. They say that you wanted the boat kept out of it and cooperated willingly in their investigation. What were you doing there, anyway? Was it terrorists?”

Alan looked outside the office and saw the razor-thin man in the good suit watching him.

“Not here, John.”

“Al, I’d like an answer. This is serious.”

“I know it’s fucking serious, John! I just shot a guy, excuse me, it’s kind of wrecked my day! The Italians thought I might have been sent here to whack the terrorists, or some such crap. I started requesting legal counsel from the boat four hours ago, as soon as I discovered that we were moving beyond routine.”

John Maggiulli looked at him. Glared, in fact.

“Shore Patrol says you got a message from your wife. You withholding this message purporting to be from your wife from the Italian police?”

“Roger that. John, I’ll make it clear when I’m not sitting in a foreign police station, okay?”

Shaking his head, Maggiulli took his arm; there was a suggestion of taking him into custody. “I got a car, and we’re ducking reporters.” Alan limped beside him.

The thin man watched them leave.

Admiral Kessler was in pajamas and a flannel robe, a rather small man who was not at his best at four-thirty a.m. He sat a little slumped, one hand shielding his eyes as if the glare from Alan’s story was too much for him. Still, he let him tell the whole thing, leaving out only the woman’s saying “Bonner” and the fact that she had asked to meet him in Naples.

“I don’t like my officers getting into trouble, Mister Craik. Especially big trouble.” He looked at Maggiulli, whom he had commanded to stay. “What I really want to know is why you lied to the Italian cops. Well?”

“Sir, it’s, um, a matter of national security that touches on an existing counterintelligence investigation. I’m not in a position to say more until I can talk to NCIS.”

Kessler lowered his hand and turned a pair of very bright, very hard eyes on Alan. “Admirals don’t like to be kept in the dark by subordinates—you follow me?”

Alan, standing stiffly, bit back the angry sense of unfairness that came up like bile. “I’m eager to tell you, sir, as soon as I’ve cleared the matter with NCIS.”