Ted Bell - Spy

“When you swear to something?”

“Hmm. Anyway, halfway through the novel, the coded message comes to an abrupt halt. Absolute gibberish again after page 230. We’ve hit a wall, I’m afraid.”

“You’re joking. It just stops working?”

“Yes. I’ll keep at it. By the way, Conch was looking for you last night. She rang my cabin. Apparently all hell is breaking loose.”

“Yes. She reached me.”

“And?”

“Ambrose, I’m terribly sorry to do things this way. I know you loathe surprises. But, I’ve canceled your flight for London later this morning.”

“Really?” Congreve said, touching his linen napkin to his lips, “I must say the idea of a few more days in the tropics is not without appeal.”

“I’ve booked you another. In fact, I believe that’s your flight landing now.”

“That thing?”

A few hundred yards away, a large baby blue seaplane was on the downwind leg, about to touch down on a glassy stretch of sea beyond the breakwater. She had her nose up and her floats were just about to splash.

“Yes, that thing,” Hawke said. “It’s quite beautiful, isn’t it? An old Grumman Goose. A G-21. Built just after the war, but newly rebuilt, I assure you. The current owner replaced her old radial engines with new turbocharged ones according to Stokely. Stokely Jones is aboard that plane, by the way. I invited him to breakfast.”

“Well, I should be delighted to see him again. But, Alex, you can’t expect me to actually fly in a contraption like that? Where the bloody hell are you sending me?”

“Ambrose, our only hope is to crack that bloody code book. I think it’s the only way to figure out what these bastards have planned. So I need you to get down to Manaus and find the ambassador’s widow. Today. You’ll be met on the other end by an American named Harry Brock. CIA, and a good one. A NOC, as it happens.”

“Not On Consular. Nonofficial.”

“Yes. If he buys it, there’s no receipt. He’s making all the arrangements at that end. You two have one mission. Find Zimmermann’s widow, wherever she is. Take your book. Get to the bottom of that bloody code as quickly as possible. I don’t exaggerate when I say deciphering that thing as rapidly as possible may prove to be vital. For all of us.”

“I couldn’t agree more, Alex.”

“Look at you, Ambrose,” Stokely said, suddenly appearing on the top step of the starboard staircase, “Got the whole Sydney Greenstreet vibe going on.”

“Ah, Stokely!” Ambrose said, rising from the table to embrace the huge man. “Marvelous to see you,” he said, pounding his broad back.

“Stoke,” Hawke said, hugging him as well, “Have some breakfast.”

“Is that crate airworthy?” Congreve asked, nervously watching the ungainly Blue Goose taxi across the water toward the fuel pier.

“Man, I hope.”

“Ambrose, you and Stokely simply must find that widow alive. She’s the only one who can possibly help us now.”

“I agree. I don’t hold out much hope for cracking the balance of the book without her.”

“Stiletto should arrive in Manaus approximately forty-eight hours from now. God willing, and a calm sea, she’ll be safely berthed at the Jungle Palace hotel at 0700 hours day after tomorrow.”

“And Blackhawke?”

“She stays here.”

“I’ll see you in Manaus, then, Alex,” Congreve said, rising from the table. “Godspeed.”

Stoke said, “We take off for Shit Creek at eight, Constable. Don’t forget your paddle. And, don’t be late.”

“Late does not appear in my vocabulary.”

The resplendent criminalist doffed his tan Panama hat and disappeared down the after staircase.

“So, tell me, boss, how the hell are we supposed to find this bad boy in all that jungle?” Stoke said.

“I’m working on that.”

Stoke smiled.

“Bring your laptop, boss. We get lost, we’ll just go to Google and punch in ‘Amazon.com.’ ”

56

THE BLACK JUNGLE

M uhammad Top, wearing a custom leopard-skin burka and one of his trademark bowler hats, was seated at the controls of a war machine headed east along M Street. He was nearing the target. The softly flashing blue and yellow lights above the Ogre’s control and fire monitors bathed his twisted features with an unpleasant sheen. The massive tank was designed to be autonomous on the battlefield.

But what a thrill it was to be at the controls of such a monster.

The Day was coming. The Hour approached. The Minute. Not quite yet, but soon, very, very soon. His eyes were narrowed in concentration as he spun a cursor, using all the electronic marvels at his disposal to maneuver the great mechanical brute through the snowy streets of Washington, DC.

In his headset, he could hear the squealing protests of the massive caterpillar tracks as he rounded a tight corner into a broad avenue. He had tamed the beast. He could make it go anywhere he wanted. Over the onboard Bose audio system, in his stereophonic headphones, he was enjoying one of his many guilty Western pleasures. The Stones.

His left hand hovered over a small toggle switch just now illuminated on a panel just below the monitor. The Ogre’s Fire Control System was armed and in READY mode.

In a few moments, he would strike the first blow. He would see the flash and hear the thunderous roar of his anti-personnel cannons. Only then, when those who opposed were all dead and posed no further threat, when he had a clearer picture of his target, would he launch his missiles. They would streak away toward their target, creating glowing orange holes where once proud monuments to a former civilization had stood.

The Day was less than seventy-two hours in the future.

He was in drive-by-wire mode, guiding a giant hulking monster, nicknamed the Ogre, through the middle of the New Year’s first massive snowstorm. It weighed slightly in excess of one hundred tons. Despite its heavy composite armor, it was capable of speeds up to sixty miles per hour and could climb steps at angles of thirty degrees.

Ogre would accept commands from either human or non-biological intelligence. There was also a manual override system that allowed the Ogre to act autonomously. In that mode the tanks were fully functional on their own, receiving real time data input and making fluid battlefield decisions as conditions warranted. It was this specific function that had so electrified Khan in the early days of the planning.

Top, however, had always envisioned a more personal approach to destruction. He didn’t want to be seated deep inside a concrete bunker in the fucking jungle when the glorious Hour came. He wanted to be there in the front row when the devil finally got his due. He hadn’t told Khan about his feelings. Khan believed in the perfection of machines. He believed the fewer humans involved in making war, the less chance for plans to go awry. He was right, of course, if you didn’t count the victims.

The digital information now being fed to the Ogre’s CPU was precisely replicating the official NOAA weather forecast for the following week in the Mid-Atlantic States.

A massive low-pressure system was moving across the Midwest directly toward the nation’s capitol. The onboard dynamic weather analysis presented the tank “Sensor Command” with an up to the second picture of the developing storm system and alerted the driver to every nuance of temperature, wind speed, barometric pressure, and, most importantly, road and off-road conditions.

The snow was nearly blinding. Only the radar and GPS functions now depicting real time obstacles on his satnav screen kept him on course. Five minutes earlier, he’d almost found himself careening past the Jefferson Memorial and plunging into the icy Potomac. But a loudly bleeping alarm sensor had alerted him to his course deviation and saved him at the last instant.