“Who’s running it?” Ryan remembered that Hanson, good diplomatic technician though he might have been, had never listened all that well to anybody.
“Mr. Murray had designated OPR to continue the investigation independently of his office. That means I’m out, too, because I have reported directly to you in the past. This will be my last direct involvement with the case.”
“Strictly by the book?”
“Mr. President, it has to be that way,” the inspector said with a nod. “They’ll have additional help from the Legal Counsel Division. Those are agents with law degrees who act as in-house legal beagles. They’re good troops.” O’Day thought for a moment. “Who’s been in and out of the Vice President’s office?”
“Here, you mean?”
“Yes, sir.”
Andrea Price answered that one: “Nobody lately. It’s been unused since he left. His secretary went with him and–”
“You might want to have someone check the typewriter. If it uses a carbon-tape ribbon–”
“Right!” She almost moved right out of the Oval Office. “Wait. Have your people–”
304
“I’ll make the call,” O’Day assured her. “Sorry, Mr. President. I should have thought of that sooner. Please seal the office for us?”
“Done,” Price assured him.
THE NOISE WAS unbearable. The monkeys were social animals, who customarily lived in “troops” of up to eighty individuals that populated mainly the margins of forests .on the edge of the broad savannas, the easier to come down from their trees and raid the surrounding open land for food. They had learned in the past hundred years to raid farms, which was easier and safer than what Nature had programmed into their behavior, because the humans who operated the farms typically controlled the predators which ate the monkeys. An African green was a tasty morsel for a leopard or hyena, but so was a calf, and farmers had to protect those. What resulted was a curious bit of ecological chaos. To protect livestock, the farmers, legally or not, eliminated the predators. That allowed the monkey population to expand rapidly, and the hungry African greens would then attack the cereal and other crops which fed both the farmers and their livestock. As a complication, the monkeys also ate insects which preyed on the crops as well, leading local ecologists to suggest that eliminating the monkeys was bad for the ecology. For the farmers it was much simpler. If it ate their livestock, it was killed. If it ate their crops, it was killed also. Bugs might not be large enough to see, but monkeys were, and so few farmers objected when the trappers came.
Of the family cercopithecus, the African green has yellow whiskers and a gold-green back. It can live to thirty years of age–more likely in comfortable captivity than in the predator-infested wild–and has a lively social life. The troops are made of female families, with male monkeys joining the troops individually for periods of a few weeks or months before moving on. An abundance of females in mating season allows a number of males cooperatively to enjoy the situation, but that was not the case in the aircraft. Rather, the cages were stacked like a truck-load of chicken coops on the way to market. Some females
305
were in season but totally inaccessible, frustrating the would-be suitors. Males stacked next to the cages of other males hissed, clawed, and spat at their unwilling neighbors, all the more unhappy that their captors had not noted the simple fact that same-sized cages were used to imprison different-sized monkeys–the male African green is fully double the size of the female–and cramping males who could smell that most welcome of natural signals, so near and yet so far. Added to the unfamiliar smells of the aircraft and the absence of food and water, the crowding caused nothing short of a simian riot, and since the issue could not be resolved by combat, all that resulted was a collective screech of rage from hundreds of individuals which far outstripped the sound of the JT-8 engines driving the aircraft east over the Indian Ocean.
Forward, the flight crew had their cabin door firmly shut and their headphones clamped tightly over their ears. That attenuated the sound, but not the fetid smell which the aircraft’s recirculation systems cycled back and forth, both further enraging the cargo and sickening the crew.
The pilot, normally an eloquent man with his invective, had run out of curses and had tired of entreating Allah to expunge these horrid little creatures from the face of the earth. In a zoo, perhaps, he would have pointed to the long-tailed creatures, and his twin sons would have smiled and perhaps tossed some peanuts to their amusing captives. No more. With his tolerance gone, the pilot reached for the emergency oxygen mask and switched the flow on, wishing then he might blow open the cargo doors, de-pressurize the aircraft and thus both extinguish the monkeys and vent the dreadful smell. He would have felt better had he known what the monkeys knew. Something evil was afoot for them.
BADRAYN MET TH EM again in a communications bunker. It didn’t give him the sense of security that all the massed concrete might have. The only reason this one still stood was that it was concealed under the falsework of an industrial building–a bookbindery, in fact, which actually turned out a few books. This one and a handful of others
306
had survived the war with America only because the Americans’ intelligence had been faulty. Two “smart bombs” had targeted a building directly across the road. You could still see the crater where the Americans had thought this structure to be. There was a lesson in that, Badrayn thought, still waiting. You had to see it, really, to believe it. It wasn’t the same to look at a TV screen or hear about it. There were five meters of rebarred concrete over his head. Five meters. It was solid, built under the supervision of well-paid German engineers. You could still see the impression of the plywood sheets which had held the wet concrete in place. Not a crack to be seen–and yet the only reason this place still stood was because the Americans had bombed the wrong side of the street. Such was the power of modern weapons, and though Ali Badrayn had existed in the world of arms and struggle for all of his life, this was the first time he fully appreciated that fact.
They were good hosts. He had a full colonel to look after him. Two sergeants fetched snacks and drinks. He’d watched the funeral on the TV. It was as predictable as one of the American police programs that blanketed the world. You always knew how it would end. The Iraqis, like most people in the region, were a passionate race, particularly when assembled in large numbers and encouraged to make the proper noises. They were easily led and easily moved, and Badrayn knew that it didn’t always matter by whom. Besides, how much of it had been genuine? The informers were still out there to note who didn’t cheer or grieve. The security apparatus which had failed the dead President still operated, and everyone knew it. And so little of the emotion which had flowed so freely on the screen and across the broad plazas was real. He chuckled to himself. Like a woman, Badrayn told himself, feigning her moment of supreme pleasure. The question was, would the men who so often took their pleasure without giving it notice the difference?
They arrived singly, lest a pair or small group travel together and discuss things which the entire assembly needed to hear as one. A fine wooden cabinet was opened to reveal bottles and glasses, and the laws of Islam were vio-
307
lated. Badrayn didn’t mind. He had a glass of vodka, for which he’d acquired the taste twenty years earlier in Moscow, then the capital of a country now vanished.
They were surprisingly quiet for such powerful men, all the more so for people attending the wake of a man they’d never loved. They sipped their drinks–mainly scotch — and again they mainly looked at one another. On the television, still switched on, the local station was replaying the funeral procession, the announcer extolling the surpassing virtue of the fallen leader. The generals looked on and listened, but the look on their faces was not one of sadness, but fear. Their world had come to an end. They were not moved by the shouts of the citizens or the words of the news commentator. They all knew better.
The last of them arrived. He was the intelligence chief who’d met Badrayn earlier in the day, fresh from having stopped in at his headquarters. The others looked to him, and he answered without the necessity of hearing the question.
“Everything is quiet, my friends.”
For now. That terse observation didn’t have to be spoken either.
Badrayn could have spoken, but didn’t. His was an eloquent voice. Over the years he’d had to motivate many persons, and he knew how, but this was a time when silence was the most powerful statement of all. He merely looked at them, and waited, knowing that his eyes spoke far more loudly than any voice could have done.