Jennifer Red Cloud was waiting for him at breakfast.
“Where on earth did you disappear to so suddenly yesterday?”
“You don’t know?”
“If I knew, would I ask?”
She might be telling the truth. Forte had never encouraged loose talk among the crew, especially within Mrs. Red Cloud’s hearing. “Later,” said Forte, remembering with what accuracy the note had reported what she had eaten the day before. There was at least one spy aboard– perhaps several–and what he had to say to Jennifer Red Cloud was for her ears only.
He ate in silence, and nothing she said could get a word out of him.
After breakfast, Forte suggested she join him in his morning helicopter inspection of the fleet. She agreed.
“How was the crossing the line ceremony?” he asked when they were winging their way toward the head of the fleet, which, now that the installation of the refrigerating gear and Flettner sails was complete, was reduced to fewer than twenty ships.
“It was fun, innocuous, and only slightly bawdy, if you discount forty horny hands clutching at my backside.”
“So now you’re a shellback.”
“Yes, now I’m a shellback. And if you are through with the small talk, perhaps you will tell me what happened yesterday.”
Forte told her everything, from time to time sneaking a sidelong glance to see her reactions.
She had none.
“And where were you when all this was happening?” he asked when he had concluded the tale.
“At about eleven-thirty when the initiation was over, I returned to the Sun King, had lunch, a nap, did some paperwork, and put in an hour and a half of hard labor on my suntan. Why do you ask? I hope it isn’t because you think I had anything to do with it.”
“No. You’re sneaky, and ruthless, Red, but I don’t think you’re suicidal. On the other hand, if I found by searching your cabin that you had a stock of antianthrax serum stashed away–”
“You wouldn’t dare!”
“I already have. I sent my men in while you were at breakfast.”
“You really have a wonderful opinion of me, don’t you?”
“I’m working on it, Red. I believe a man should always have a good opinion of the woman he’s going to marry.”
He only half heard the sound of her lilting laughter, for already his thoughts were far away, on the attack: Where had it originated, who was behind it, and why had it been launched?
A good Christian could not but grieve over the deaths of the crews of the three Hercules planes shot down in the wake of the Alamo, and over the anguish the attack caused the wise men of Oyo who had sent them, and the fears of Forte and Mansour, and the consternation of Turnbull and Castle. But then, Lieutenant General Grigoriy Aleksandrevich Piatakov was not a Christian, and so he rejoiced. His planning of three years was beginning to pay dividends.
He could not take credit for the fieldwork that had
planted agents aboard Joe Mansour’s ship Linno or in Forte Ocean Engineering and Triple Eye, at the experimental farm in Oyo, or in various high circles of the United States government. This had been done over the years before he had ever become involved with the KGB. But the rest–the grand strategy, the painstaking assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the players involved, the minuet to which he made his unsuspecting players dance–all this was pure Piatakov, and he was proud of his handiwork.
Like all artists, Piatakov yearned for an audience. Yet that was the one thing a clandestine operations professional must do without. There would come a time, within months, perhaps…
Piatakov had rehearsed the entire operation many times, taking into consideration difficulties Forte might encounter. Piatakov’s only miscalculation was that Forte had done his work with more expedition than expected, and with more than an hour to spare.
General Piatakov calculated that three days hence would be the best time to make his approach to Ripley Forte. He would have had time to recover physically, think things through, and realize how lucky he had been to have received a warning from a friend. He would naturally be eager to reward that friendship, which had saved his life, his reputation, and the prospects of his beloved Republic of Texas.
And Piatakov would show him how he could do it. He pulled a tablet toward him, unscrewed the top of his old-fashioned ink-filled pen, and wrote:
My dear Ripley Forte:
I have just had the honor and pleasure of saving your life and those of your shipmates, the Alamo, and, not incidentally, the farmlands on which the future prosperity of your nation depends. I am not a mercenary man, putting a price on services which I am only too happy, in the name of common humanity, to extend to one whose main desire is to embellish the luster of the family name you bear.
I am conscious, however, that your generous spirit
would resist the suggestion that the salvation of an iceberg worth, in monetary terms alone, more than $2 billion should go unrewarded. To relieve you of this embarrassment, I would like to point out that the humanitarian work of the research organization which was able to assemble the information which assisted you a few days ago would be much facilitated by the acquisition of a Brown-Ash Mark IX, should you happen to know where one might be obtained. The exchange of a $36 million computer for a $2 billion iceberg might seem to you ridiculously inadequate, but believe me, it’s the thought that counts.
The Brown-Ash Mark IX, if you should happen to stumble across one, should be shipped to Messrs. Al Ross-Al Bin, 15 Sharia Kamil el-Abd, Tripoli, Libya.
If I can ever be of further service, you can be sure I shall.
A sincere friend.
30. CHOKE POINT
12 MARCH 2008
FOR WEEKS, EVER SINCE THE ABORTIVE AIRCRAFT ATTACK on February 21, Jennifer Red Cloud had been in irrepressibly good spirits. And the happier she was, the more depressed it made Ripley Forte. It was his own fault. He had made the mistake of showing her the notes he had received: the one warning him of the imminent attack and the other demanding a Brown-Ash Mark IX in payment of the information.
She had been enveloped in a cloud of euphoria ever since.
There was no question in Forte’s mind about the reason for her joy. He got an inkling of it with her first question,
after having read the note about the computer, the day after the attack.
“You’re not thinking of giving him the Brown-Ash, I hope?” she had said.
“I’m thinking about it, of course.”
“That’s ridiculous, and you know it. In the first place, without the Mark IX doing your navigating, your precious Alamo is liable to end up in the south China Sea. Furthermore, according to our contract, that computer can be resold only to the original vender: Raynes Oceanic Resources. Not to mention federal law: It is absolutely forbidden to show, much less demonstrate, lease, lend, or ship a Brown-Ash to any foreign power.”
“You sold it to me,” he reminded her. “I’m a Texan.”
“You are a Texan and an American, a dual citizen, as you yourself reminded me when I first refused to sell.”
Obviously, she still didn’t realize that Forte’s request for the machine had been purely a defensive ploy. It was true that alone the Mark IX could have handled simultaneously all the myriad computational problems involved in the transport of the Alamo. But for the Alamo operation, the BAM-IX was not an absolute necessity. Nine IBM-7200 series main-frames in tandem were doing the work quite as well, if rather less speedily, with the same raw data being fed into the BAM-IX as a backup. So far, no discrepancies had appeared in the two sets of calculations, but knowing Jennifer Red Cloud and her conspiratorial little mind, he was sure that one of these days, when least expected, the BAM-IX would start spewing out instructions that, if followed, would probably ground the Alamo in Minot, North Dakota.
As a defensive measure his ploy wasn’t any great shakes, but where Jennifer Red Cloud was concerned, any defense was better than none.
No wonder she was so cheerful. With the Mark IX in reserve, she doubtless had been cooking up other plans to disable the Alamo since her scheme to blow up the anchors had gone sour. But what really brought the rose to her cheeks was the heartwarming realization that another powerful and imaginative enemy of Triple Eye was intent on doing her work for her. One of them, she thought, would have to succeed.
Forte was pretty sure he knew when and where the unknown enemy would strike next.
Two days after the attack, on February 23, at 0°31′ N, 18°30′ E, the Sun King had cast off from Anchor No. 496, the last anchor on the eastern side of the Atlantic. At that point, they had left the cold but slow Benguela Current over the African continental slope and passed into the deep water of the warmer but faster-flowing South Equatorial Current, which pours 6 million tons of water a second across the equator in its surge toward the American continent.