artfully put it, you’d better think again.”
“You don’t have a choice,” Janson said.
“What is she doing?” Jessica asked in a low voice.
“We always have a choice.” Lang’s movements grew smaller, more focused; with her
fingers she started to dig at something to the side of her clavicle. “Ah,” she
said. “That’s it. That’s it. Oh, that feels so much better … ”
“Paul!” Jessica shouted. She made the inference a moment before he did. “Stop
her!”
It was too late. There was the barely audible pop of a subdermal ampoule, and
the woman threw her head back, as if in ecstasy, her face flushing to a purplish
red. She made a soft, almost sensual panting sound, which subsided into a
gargling sound deep in her throat. Her jaw fell open, slack, and a rivulet of
saliva dribbled from the side of her mouth. Then her eyes rolled up, leaving
only the whites visible through her half-parted lids.
From unseen speakers, the ghostly voices sang.
Gaudete in ilio, quem no viderunt in terris multi; qui ipsum ardenter
vocaverunt. Gaudete in capite vestro.
Janson put a hand on Marta Lang’s long neck, feeling for a pulse, even though he
knew there would be none. The signs of cyanide poisoning were hard to miss. She
chose death before surrender, and Janson was hard-pressed to say whether it
represented an act of courage or one of cowardice.
We always have a choice, the dead woman had said. We always have a choice.
Another voice, from decades past, joined it in his memory: one of the Viet Cong
interrogators, the man with the steel-framed glasses. Not to decide is to
decide.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
The console on the secretary-general’s desk chimed. Helga’s voice: “I’m sorry to
disturb you, but it’s Mr. Novak again.”
Mathieu Zinsou turned to the high commissioner for refugees, a former Irish
politician who combined a vigorous style with a fair amount of loquacity; she
was currently feuding with the under secretary-general for humanitarian affairs,
who had been conducting turf battles with unyielding and unhumanitarian fervor.
“Madame MacCabe, I’m terribly sorry, but this is a call I must take. I think
I’ve understood your concerns about the strictures coming from the Department of
Political Affairs, and I believe that we can address them if we all reason
together. Ask Helga to arrange a meeting among the principals.” He rose and
bowed his head in a courtly gesture of dismissal.
Then he picked up the phone. “Please hold for Mr. Novak,” a woman’s voice said.
A few clicks and electronic burps, and Peter Novak’s voice came on: “Mon cher
Mathieu,” he began.
“Mon cher Peter,” Zinsou replied. “Your munificence in even considering what we
discussed must be honored. Not since the Rockefellers donated the land on which
the U.N. complex sits has a private individual offered to—”
“Yes, yes,” Novak interrupted. “I’m afraid, though, that I’m going to decline
your invitation to dinner.”
“Oh?”
“I have something more ceremonial in mind. I hope you’ll agree with my thinking.
We have no secrets, have we? Transparency has always been a paramount U.N.
value, no?”
“Well, up to a point, Peter.”
“I shall tell you what I propose, and you tell me if you think I’m being
unreasonable.”
“Please.”
“I understand that there will be a meeting of the General Assembly this Friday.
It has always been my fantasy to address that august body. Foolish vanity?”
“Of course not,” Zinsou said quickly. “To be sure, few private citizens have
ever addressed it … ”
“But nobody would begrudge me the right and privilege—I think I can say that
without fear of contradiction.”
“Bien sûr.”
“Given that a great many heads of state will be present, the level of security
will be high. Call me paranoid, but I find that reassuring. If the U.S.
president is present, as seems possible, there will be a Secret Service detail
on the case as well. All very reassuring. And I shall probably be accompanied by
the mayor of New York, who has always been so friendly toward me.”
“An extremely public and high-profile appearance, then,” Zinsou said. “That is
not like you, I must say. Remote from your reclusive reputation.”
“Which is exactly why I suggest it,” the voice said. “You know my policy: always
keep them guessing.”
“But our … dialogue?” Confusion and anxiety roiled within him; he struggled not
to let it show.
“Not to worry. I think you’ll find that one never has more privacy than when one
is in the public eye.”
“Goddamn it!” Janson yelled. He was reviewing the tape recording of Demarest’s
last phone call.
“What could I have done differently?” Zinsou asked, and his voice held both fear
and self-reproach.
“Nothing. If you’d been too insistent, it would only have aroused his
suspicions. This is a deeply paranoid man.”
“What do you make of this request? Bewildering, no?”
“It’s ingenious,” Janson said bluntly. “This guy has more moves than Bobby
Fischer.”
“But if you wanted to flush him out … ”
“He’s thought of that and has taken precautions. He knows the forces against him
are ultracompartmentalized. There’s no way the Secret Service could ever be let
in on the truth. He’s using our own people as a shield. That’s not all. He’ll be
walking up the ramp to the General Assembly Building with the mayor of New York
by his side. Any attempt on his life would endanger a well-known politician.
He’s entering into an arena of incredibly tight security, with eagle-eyed
security details attached to national leaders from around the world. There’ll be
the equivalent of a force field around him at all times. If an American
operative tried to take a shot, the resulting inquiry would probably blow
everything sky-high. As long as he’s in the General Assembly, we can’t touch
him. Can’t. Imagine it—he’ll be thronged. Given all his generosity around the
world, it’ll be considered an honor for the international community—”
“To welcome a man who seems to be a light unto the nations,” Zinsou said,
grimacing.
“It’s very Demarest. ‘Hidden in plain view’ was one of his favorite
descriptions. He used to say that sometimes the best hiding place was in the
public eye.”
“Essentially what he told me,” Zinsou mused. He looked at the pen in his hand,
trying to transform it into a cigarette by the power of thought. “Now what?”
Janson took a swallow of lukewarm coffee. “Either I’ll figure something out … ”
“Or?”
His eyes were hard. “Or I won’t.” He walked out of the secretary-general’s
office without another word, leaving the diplomat alone with his thoughts.
Zinsou felt a tightness in his chest. In truth, he had slept poorly since he had
first been briefed on the crisis by the president of the United States, who had
only reluctantly acceded to Janson’s insistence that he do so. Zinsou was and
continued to be utterly aghast. How could the United States of America have been
so reckless? Except it wasn’t the United States, exactly; it was a small cabal
of programmers. Planners, as Janson would say. The secret had been passed down
from one presidential administration to another, like the codes to the country’s
nuclear arsenal—and scarcely less dangerous.
Zinsou personally knew more heads of state than anyone alive. He knew that the
president was, if anything, underestimating the bloody tumult that would be
unleashed were the truth of the Mobius Program ever to emerge. He pictured the
prime ministers, presidents, premiers, party secretaries, emirs, and kings of a
duped planet. The whole postwar entente would lay in tatters. Throughout the
world’s trouble spots, scores of treaties and charters of conflict resolution
would be falsified, invalidated, because their author would have been unmasked
as an impostor—an American penetration agent. The peace treaty that Peter Novak
negotiated in Cyprus? It would be shredded within hours, to mutual
recriminations between the Turks and the Greeks. Each side would accuse the
other of having known the truth all along; a pact that once seemed impartial
would now be interpreted as subtly favoring the enemy. And elsewhere?
Your currency crisis in Malaysia? Terribly sorry, old chap. We did that. The
little dip in the sterling seven years ago that caused the economy of Great
Britain to lose a few points of GDP? Yes, our exploitation of that made a bad
situation much, much worse. Awfully sorry, don’t know what we were thinking …
An era of relative peace and prosperity would give way to one bereft of both.
And what of the Liberty Foundation offices throughout the developing world and
Eastern Europe—exposed now as an undercover American intelligence operation?
Many cooperating governments would simply not survive the humiliation. Others,
to maintain credibility among their citizens, would suspend all relations with
the United States and designate the former ally as an adversary. American-owned
businesses, even those unrelated to the Liberty Foundation, would be seized by
governments, their assets frozen. World trade would be dealt a devastating blow.