Without Warning Part 16

And anyway, where could she go?

Wales was uncontactable, probably because they'd grabbed him. The cell structure of Echelon's wetwork sections meant she was floating, alone. There were no convenient fronts or trapdoors through which she could slip. Beyond a few dead drops and compromised layup points, the network had no permanent presence on the continent. No outposts or operational centers. Just a transient pool of operators, like her, who came and went with each mission. And she was being hunted.

But why now? What was the f.u.c.king point?

A small tic tugged at her cheek in the fly-spotted bathroom mirror. "Relatively safe" didn't really mean much in Paris at the moment. Caitlin pulled down on a string, killing the power to the bare bulb that hung from the ceiling. She couldn't be sure it would come back on when next she needed it. The city's electricity supply was getting patchy. They'd been blacked out for three hours yesterday, and this morning the water had run brown and cold from all of the taps.

She padded down the short hallway, so as not to disturb Monique, who was sleeping in the single bedroom. It was well after midnight, and the only light spilled in through the large windows overlooking an intersection. She moved up to the nearest one, careful not to silhouette herself. Dead birds still littered the cobblestones. She watched as a thin, scabrous dog carried off one of the bodies. The lights of the old city center provided a pale illumination under the thick blanket of smog, while the fires burning out in the otherwise darkened suburbs threw a harder, eldritch glare over the world below.

Caitlin had never had to use the hideout before. She only ever leased these places as a fail-safe, a fallback position, taking them for a maximum of six months before switching to a new address. After setting one up she would almost never return, unless her cover was blown, and that had happened only once, six years earlier in Berlin. It had convinced her of the need for a bolt-hole, no matter how much expense and ha.s.sle were involved in maintaining one without the direct logistical support of Echelon.

After staring out the window for a few minutes she realized that her nausea had eased, replaced by a hollow feeling in her stomach. Hunger. With one last glance at the deserted streets outside, Caitlin padded through to the kitchen to prepare a meal. It was late, but if she didn't feed herself now, she might not have the chance for another day. She'd been eating when she could, to fuel up for the long periods when her body simply rejected anything but water and breath mints. For some reason the mints seemed to help with the queasiness. She suppressed a sigh as she entered the tiny kitchen, not bothering with the light, which had blown earlier.

Besides the small box of prohibitively expensive fruit and vegetables Monique had bought on her last expedition, two weeks' worth of dried and tinned food remained, although given her reduced appet.i.te it would probably last longer, maybe even a month. Caitlin ran the tap for a minute, which helped to thin out the brown tea-stained tint of the water. Satisfied that the quality wouldn't improve any more, she filled a pot and added a pinch of salt, setting it down on a gas burner. The pretty blue flame that flared up at the touch of a match was a pleasant surprise. The building's gas supply had been interrupted the previous day. As she worked, her hunger came roaring back and she decided to chance a slightly heavier meal.

She diced a brown onion and set it aside before opening a can of Italian tuna and breaking the chunks into a bowl. Another tin gave up four deep red Roma tomatoes swimming in their own thick sauce. Saliva began to squirt into her mouth, and she felt almost dizzy with new hunger and the prospect of a decent meal. She had no idea why her nausea had cleared, but she wasn't going to waste the opportunity. There was a hunk of nearly dried-out bacon in the small fridge and Caitlin diced that up, frying it with the onion in the oil from the tuna. One last shriveled mushroom went into the pan, which was spitting and popping as the meat cooked.

When the water boiled, Caitlin added a thick sheaf of dried spaghetti, pus.h.i.+ng the long yellow stalks under as they softened. The tuna went into the frying pan, followed by the tomatoes and their sauce. She dialed the heat right back to a simmer while the pasta cooked. It was an old and much-loved dish, one of only three meals her dad had been able to cook. One-eyed Egyptians. s.h.i.+t on a s.h.i.+ngle. And this bad boy right here. She knew nowadays that the recipe was a variation on an old Italian standard, usually made with porcini mushrooms and their soak, but for Caitlin it had always been "Dad's big pasta sauce" and as a teenager she had begged him to cook up buckets of the stuff to freeze and take away on surfing holidays. After seven or eight hours of carving up the big sets off northern California she could inhale three bowls worth.

The small domestic scene in front of her blurred and disappeared behind diamonds and blue sapphires of light as tears filled her eyes. She rubbed away the moisture with the back of her hand. Her parents, of course, hadn't known the exact nature of her work, but her dad, an old air force man, had filled in some of the blanks for himself. He never asked Caitlin why a bureaucrat from the U.S. Information Service had to travel so frequently, or spend so much time out of contact. He never asked how a junior civil servant came to acquire such an impressive array of scars, broken bones, and deep-tissue injuries over the years, and when other family members did, she explained them away as surf injuries. But he had taken her aside at a family wedding a while ago, just after she'd returned from four months "out of contact" in the aftermath of 9/11, and he'd told her that he knew his little girl was doing "good work," and that she needed to know that her family loved her and was very, very proud of her. Dave Monroe, a veteran of Tricky d.i.c.k Nixon's undeclared war in Cambodia, had held his daughter's gaze for what felt like an eternity, and while no more words had pa.s.sed between them, understanding did. He knew his daughter was a soldier.

"Caitlin?"

She had heard Monique shuffling up the hallway and rubbed the last of her tears away before the French girl had caught her in a moment of weakness. Still, her eyes were red-rimmed and gla.s.sy as she turned around, holding the onion skin by way of explanation. The French girl seemed to think nothing of it. She herself was very sensitive to the smell. It had probably awoken her.

"You are hungry then?" she asked. "You don't feel sick anymore?"

There was a keen edge of hope to Monique's questions. For a muddle-headed idealist, she had proven herself to be a lot tougher and more reliable than Caitlin had thought possible. Long accustomed to isolation and loneliness, Caitlin had allowed herself to relax just a little around her companion. She drained the pasta and poured it into a large serving bowl, tipping the rich, steaming sauce over it straight away. "For now I'm fine," she said. "So I'm going to eat, if you want to join me. A bit late for dinner, I know, but I have to take what I can get at the moment."

"I'm hungry, too," Monique conceded. "I have not eaten since this morning. It is so difficult to get good food, non?"

Caitlin ladled two large servings of the meal into a couple of old china bowls that had seen better days. "It doesn't help that we can't move about freely because of me," she said. "I'm sorry about that, Monique. I'm sorry you got caught up in all this."

"All this?" The French girl gestured expansively, taking in the disintegrating city, and a whole world of hurt beyond it. "This is not your doing. This would have happened whether we had ever met or not. Look out there. It is so sad. People behaving so badly toward each other. That is not your doing."

She gestured toward the window where Caitlin had been standing earlier. With the apartment in darkness, the fires burning through the outer burbs stood out prominently against large swaths of blacked-out city. Here and there blue and red strobes marked the pa.s.sage of emergency vehicles, but they looked ... inadequate. Paris was heading toward a tipping point. Caitlin doubted most of the city's residents realized that yet. Not down in their marrow, anyway. As soon as they truly understood what was coming, the unrest of the present moment would probably give way to savage anarchy. It would be a little while yet, however. The civilized mind was slow and deeply reluctant to throw off the habits of a lifetime. It meant that Caitlin and Monique still had a chance to escape.

They moved through to stand by the window as they forked up the pasta. It had become something of ritual between them, a way to push back the walls. It wasn't so much a problem for Caitlin, but Monique very much felt the press of claustrophobia as their time in the hideout dragged on, and the city itself seemed to contract around them, the sky lowering, the streets becoming mean and pinched and increasingly filthy. And of course, there were hunters, somewhere out there, still looking for them. The lack of a police response to the events at the hospital, the appearance of more anonymous gunned-up suits and the vans outside Caitlin's other, "official" safe house, did more to convince Monique that she'd been caught up in something weird and dangerous than anything Caitlin had said. She was not a believer. She hadn't gone across to the dark side, as the American wryly put it. But she was more trusting of Caitlin than she had been, more willing to go along with her call.

They ate in silence, enjoying the luxury of being warm, dry, and well fed in a world that had turned inexplicably hostile, just a few inches away, on the other side of a windowpane.

The recipe wasn't perfect, but it was close enough to her dad's to be both comforting and upsetting to Caitlin. She had accepted the fact of her family's death. They were gone, and the shock of it was doubly unsettling because she had never expected to outlive them. The familiar scent and taste of the dish brought home a flood of memories and threatened an even greater flood of tears. She would allow herself to grieve later. She knew that such feelings couldn't be bottled up without doing damage. But likewise, she was not ready to let her guard down in front of Monique, no matter how much closer they had become under the stresses of the last week. In the end, she told herself, the French girl was just a contact on a job that had gone wrong.

"We can't stay here, you know," she said. "We will have to get going, and soon."

"But where? And how?" asked Monique. "Travel is so difficult for everyone right now. And for you it is worse. Where would you even go?"

Caitlin nodded. Three men ran through the intersection below, all of them young and white. Two had shaved heads but the third wore his lank, dark hair in a ponytail. They seemed to be laughing, but running as fast as they could. Whether toward or away from something she could not tell. She waited for some further development but the cobbled street, wet with acidic rain and glowing a sick, jaundiced yellow under the streetlamps, remained deserted.

"Things are better in England," said Caitlin. "The government seems to have a stronger grip."

"Social fascists." Monique shrugged. "And racist, too. Putting the army on the streets like that. And only in the Muslim districts, of course."

Caitlin didn't rise to the bait. There was no pa.s.sion in the delivery. It was almost as though her companion was reciting a lesson by rote. A few days ago Caitlin would have argued with her, pointed out that the army had gone where the violence was worst. But she stayed silent, and Monique abandoned her polemic, switching to a practical protest.

"How would you get there?" she asked. "The borders are closed."

"I'm not a tourist, baby."

"No. I suppose not. But you are still hunted, non?"

"We are still being hunted," Caitlin reminded her.

"Do you think? Really? Don't you think they have bigger problems? After all, you are no longer working on your mission, are you?"

For the first time in many days an accusing tone crept back into Monique's voice, but unlike the first twenty-four hours after their escape from the hospital, it was unaccompanied by any whining or hectoring. If Caitlin wasn't mistaken, Monique was almost gently mocking her.

"No," she admitted. "The mission's been scrubbed. By me. By circ.u.mstance. Or whatever. My priority now is getting the h.e.l.l outta Dodge, and I will take you with me, if you still want to come. But if you believe you're safe here, I'll go alone."

Monique held her gaze for a long moment, lifting her chin in an almost defiant gesture.

"What was your mission, Caitlin? Why did you lie to us? Why did those men kill Maggie and the others?"

Caitlin shook her head as she put down the empty bowl.

"I don't know why they were killed, Monique. I've told you that. It was probably just a f.u.c.kup. I don't think it had anything to do with my mission, although it obviously had something to do with me, since I'm the one they were trying to grab up."

"But we were your mission. Your target."

She said the word with more venom than Caitlin was expecting.

"No, you weren't," the American replied, trying to sound soothing without being patronizing. She paused then, on the verge of a significant departure. To go on would be to acknowledge that not just the mission but her whole world had been scrubbed. She stared out the window, looking at but not really seeing the bleak scene below. She missed Wales, missed the security of knowing that he was out there somewhere, watching her back, keeping her safe.

She felt guilty at being unable to help him, but of course there was no way of knowing whether he was in even in the country when the Disappearance went down. He might well have been out of Paris or out of France altogether, especially with her laid up at the hospital for so long.

Her training rea.s.serted itself. Putting aside pointless speculation, she had to go with what she knew, addressing the situation right in front of her.

"You were going to lead me to my target," she explained. "To a man, a blind recruiter, called al-Banna."

Monique looked confused.

"But I don't know any blind men."

Caitlin shook her head. "Sorry, jargon. Al-Banna's not blind. You are. He had targeted your group as mules, carriers. You were going to take something back to the UK for him."

"What bulls.h.i.+t." And in an instant the old Monique was back, her face an angry mask of disbelief. "I've never heard of this al-Banna. None of the others mentioned such a name. Do you take us for fools?"

Caitlin kept her face professionally blank at that question, but Monique seemed not to notice. A switch had flipped over somewhere, and a torrent of impacted rage released.

"We are not idiots, you know, Caitlin. We are not blind or even one-eyed, like some. We saw oppression and violence on all sides. Not just you and your masters. I have worked as a volunteer in a women's shelter, I have seen what happens under the burqa, non? The broken arms, the smashed ribs and bruises everywhere. Do not imagine that just because we opposed your stupid oil war we did not understand the nature of your enemies. You were as bad as each other. They may even have been worse, possibly, but they lacked your means. So please, this stupid conspiracy of yours, don't imagine that..."

"Monique," Caitlin sighed, tired from a bone-deep weariness. The inertia and fatigue in her voice seemed to trip the other girl up.

"What?"

Caitlin shook her head.

"Sweetheart, you'd already been recruited."

"What do you mean?" she demanded to know. "By who?"

Caitlin squared off and gave it to her cold.

"Your boyfriend."

Acapulco Yacht Club, Acapulco

The Gurkhas were a real find, the first stroke of good luck they'd had in a week. The Nepalese warriors were long famed as members of one of the finest regiments in the British army. Fearsomeness alone did not make them special, however. The world wasn't short of violent men. The Gurkhas were special because they combined a well-deserved reputation for savagery in battle with an equally well-founded renown for disciplined professionalism. The British army had recruited Gurkha infantry since the 1850s, and thousands still served in the regiment named for them. Such fame had they earned that former members were in high demand by private security concerns all over the world. Of course, this, too, made them little different from the old boys of any of the world's A-list military outfits, but for Jules the five Gurkha warriors standing before her were of singular appeal because they had, until a week ago, been employed as s.h.i.+pboard security by the Carnival cruise line, headquartered in Florida.

Unfortunately the Disappearance had robbed them of an employer and any way of getting home. Julianne chewed at the stub of a pencil while she pondered exactly how much legitimate work she might have for them, but she pushed that thought to one side. For now, she needed some tough, reliable men who wouldn't fall apart if you pointed a gun at them and who, just as important, she could trust not to sell her out.

"So, Mr. Shah, how long did you serve in the regiment?"

"Twelve years, ma'am," replied the short but powerful-looking man who acted as the group leader. His accent was quite polished, for a sergeant from Nepal. "Four years as private soldier. Eight as a noncommissioned officer."

"A sergeant?"

"For the last six, yes, ma'am."

Jules nodded as she scanned the employment history of the five men. The minimum any had served was six years. Shah had the longest stretch at twelve. He was the only one who'd risen above corporal, making him the natural leader, even though they no longer took Her Majesty's coin. Jules was thankful for that. It made negotiating with them a simpler affair.

She leaned back in the old wooden chair behind a scarred table on which sat a small pile of papers, the men's resumes, and a loaded handgun within easy reach: a big s.h.i.+ny Mac-10, unsafed and set to full auto, for which she had traded away her former skipper's beloved yacht. The beautiful wooden cruiser had been worth the gun, a thousand rounds of ammunition, two Mexican army M16s, one crate of 5.56 mm reloads, and a half-pallet of rice, milk biscuits, and flour, all packed tightly into bags stamped A GIFT FROM THE PEOPLE OF AMERICA-USAID. The guns and stores were secured in a cage behind the Gurkhas. She would have preferred to transfer them to the yacht, but had decided with Fifi and Mr. Lee that hiring reliable security was their first priority.

"Do you mind if I ask why you left the Cunard line?" she asked. The men had all been employed by the premier British cruise line, and some had even worked on the QE2. In her admittedly biased opinion, signing on with the Florida-based party-boat operators was not the first step on the happy staircase to success.

"Downsizing," said Shah. Coming from him, the Western techn.o.babble sounded weird and alien. "The labor hire firm that subcontracted our services to Cunard was bought out by P&O, who were taken over by Carnival a year later. We were transferred to their Caribbean operations a fortnight ago. We were to pick up our next berth here at Acapulco."

The former sergeant shrugged as a way of finis.h.i.+ng his explanation.

Jules sighed. "Say no more."

The small shed she'd hired at the yacht club just down from the Avenue de las Americas was a long way from the resort town's tourist center, but she could make out the beachfront apartments and hotels through a greasy, unwashed window to her right. One of the bigger towers was ablaze, with flames leaping high over the top floor. It was a moot point whether anybody was trying to put it out. Most likely not. The lower floors were probably being looted as she sat there.

"Well, Mr. Shah. My father would have been impressed with your regimental connections. He was a navy man, but he didn't hold with all that in-terservice rubbish. And he thought very highly of Cunard. It's a pity you got shafted like that."

She didn't mention that the old rogue had been banned by Cunard for cheating at cards on a cruise through the Med ten years earlier. Mr. Shah looked like the sort of chap who'd throw card cheats over the side. Only a swift return of the swindled funds and an abject apology to his victims had kept the police from becoming involved. Instead she continued, "I'd be very keen to take on you and your men, Shah, but there are two issues we need to settle. One I don't see causing much difficulty; the other, however, we'll have to see."

Julianne spoke directly and forcefully, never taking her eyes off the man she was addressing. Behind him, his companions remained as immobile as stone dogs.

"First, this won't be a pleasure cruise. My s.h.i.+p, which you should know straight off we boarded and took over after the original crew disappeared behind the event horizon last week, has already been attacked once. My captain was killed, and in turn we killed every one of the pirates attempting to seize the vessel. I do not expect that that will be the last trouble we see. I cannot guarantee anyone's safety, quite the contrary, but we will endeavor to avoid whatever hazards we can."

She gestured back over his shoulder to the view of downtown Acapulco.

"I probably don't need to tell you that things are going to get worse, do I?"

"No," agreed Shah. "The risks are acceptable. And your second point?"

"Payment," she said. "And length of contract. Without a stable currency in which to negotiate we are stuck with bartering for your services. As a minimum I promise free pa.s.sage to the port of your choosing in Asia, at which point our business together will be deemed complete. Right now, I cannot give you a schedule. We might get there in a few weeks. It could be six months. Over and above pa.s.sage, you'll require payment. I'm happy to hear any suggestions you might have about how we calculate a reasonable figure."

Shah nodded slowly, his eyes peering into an unknowable future. She noted that he didn't consult his men.

"Gold," he said at last. "We shall settle on an amount of gold, the value to be calculated at the end of the cruise, based on an equivalent pay scale to that which we would have earned with Carnival, plus hazard pay at current regimental rates, for each day spent in combat. The pay of any man killed or totally and permanently disabled to be delivered to his family by those surviving along with a compensation payment to the value of his entire contracted fee. As to length of service, we would insist on an end to the contract within twelve months of its commencement."

It was Jules's turn to nod sagely and give the impression of hard thought. She quickly toted up what she was getting into and figured it to be worth about half of their current liquid a.s.sets. A lot, in other words. On the other hand, there would doubtless be ample opportunity for "salvage" in the near future. And, if she could just get to the Caymans before everything turned completely pear-shaped, she might be able to access her own accounts, and maybe even Pete's. Beyond that broad-brush plan to cash up and lay in stores, she wasn't sure what they would do. Lee was no more interested in returning to his home village than she was in heading for England, where there were still warrants out for her arrest on charges relating to the money her father had sent her. As for Fifi, whatever sorry excuse for home and hearth she'd once had was now lost behind the energy wave. It was possible they might well end up going with Pete's original plan and heading for Tasmania. It was far enough from everywhere to be safe, surely, and he'd insisted it was one of the few places in the world that would still be able to feed itself following a core meltdown of the old world order.

After a moment's consideration she glanced at the men behind Shah.

"Do you mind if I talk to your men?" she asked him.

"No. Ask them what you will."

"Are you men okay with that offer? Do you need to discuss it?"

The briefest of nonverbal conferences took place, with each quickly exchanging glances, shrugs, and nods with the others.

"That will be acceptable," said the man standing nearest to Mr. Shah. Jules was pretty certain it was a former corporal, Birendra. His first name was as long as a Himalayan mountain path, and just as difficult to negotiate.

"Good-o, then," said Jules. "Mr. Shah, if you would like to work out the precise figures we shall draw up a contract today. I'd like to get some of your men out to the yacht as soon as possible, but I will need two of you here with me over the next couple of days as we take on crew."

Shah grunted in affirmation and, she was sure, nearly saluted her.

"Corporal Birendra will take Subba and Sharma out to the vessel. I will remain with Thapa and you."

"Okay," said Jules, still unsure who was who, other than Shah and possibly Birendra. She did note the use of the military rank, too. "I imagine you fellows will have personal effects you want to pick up. And I suppose there's a bill for your accommodation to be worked out?"

"Yes and no," said Shah. "We have personal items to gather. For the last week, however, we have provided security to our hotel in return for lodging. No bill."

And soon after you're gone, no hotel, Jules thought to herself.

"Just one other thing, Mr. Shah. Or would you prefer 'Sergeant'?"