The Lure Part 37

He turned back from the window. 'Who do you have out there, Al?

'A man by the name of Joe Callaghan. His file says hes third-generation Irish. Not what youd call a high flier, but he has a reputation for reliability.

'Christ, Al, were talking about the vital interests of America, and an unsafe house, and specialist Russian teams looking for these people and the clock ticking away. And what do you give me? A footsoldier. Some third-rater out in the boondocks waiting for his pension.

'As I said, sir, I have a team flying out at this moment.

'A team? What sort of team?

'Specialists, the CIA Director said vaguely.

'Specialists. Bull nodded thoughtfully.

46.

Iced Logic So far as Petrie could remember or was it a false memory? it had started at age four. He faintly recalled spending hours making patterns out of Smarties, sometimes constructing little regiments of rows and columns and eating the stragglers. Eating your prime numbers was a good way to learn about them. At school, he found that he was usually able to solve problems better than his maths teachers, and the same had often been true at university.

He knew, and didnt care, that it was an addictive drug. Sometimes his problem-solving was achieved through sheer logic, more often it came in an intuitive leap after hours or weeks of concentrated thinking. As he entered adulthood he found that the things which excited young men of his age left him cold. What did he care about who was dating whom or wearing what designer clothes? Why did the latest sports label on trainers matter? Why should he follow the progress of some team except perhaps as an exercise in random walk theory? Girls were interesting in a visceral way, but none of them could compete with Erdoss brilliant proof of the prime number theorem or Ramanujans wonderful formulae for pi. Strangely, he seemed to attract the opposite s.e.x. He had no idea why but guessed that they saw him as a challenge.

Of course, now there was that d.a.m.ned Norwegian female.

To Petrie, whose working days and nights were spent on the edge of the possible, problem-solving at the limit of his ability, the logic of his position was simple, indeed trivial, to handle.

Dozing on his bed, he heard low voices and footsteps, and then the click of a car door. And then the m.u.f.fled sound of a big engine, and tyres crunching over gravel.

The little man on the wall, dressed in Wellingtons and sou-wester, was holding an umbrella and taking a tentative step out of a door. Next to him a clock showed twenty minutes to two. There was a trace of woodsmoke in the air.

Still floppy from the acc.u.mulation of a weeks stress and the mornings interrogation, Petrie rolled off the bed and put his head in his hands. He went over it again.

1. Were fugitives without money, false doc.u.mentation or the means to obtain it.

2. Were in a strange land, without friends or contacts.

3. Two governments, British and Russian, are determined to obliterate us.

4. That being so, is there anywhere reachable on Earth where wed be safe?

5. America, possibly. The Americans will go for it, or they wont. Lacking information on this, theres an even chance.

6. If the Americans go for it, and the signal goes out, and the celestial coordinates of the signallers become public knowledge, Freya and I will be safe.

7. If the Americans dont go for it, were finished.

8. An even chance of survival is better than a negligible one.

All this had gone through his head while talking to Freya in Rolands Cafe but he had kept his thoughts to himself, ruthlessly stuck with the decision that Freya and he should split, to double the chance of the signal getting out.

The logic might have been icy, but the prospect of being dead in a few hours was flooding his mind and threatening to paralyse him. He tried to relax his muscles, but with no success. His throat felt constricted. He knew, without looking in a mirror, that his face was white. At the same time he had the weird feeling of being disembodied, as if he was a separate person looking down on his anguish.

He wondered about Freya. What was her plan? How could she survive on air? Where was she heading? Would she be safe in Norway, or would she be arrested at some border control and then disappear?

Back to the Americans. If they went for it, they would somehow have to get him out of the country. Somehow they would have to get him through a hostile pa.s.sport control at some airport, on to a transatlantic Jumbo.

They must have done stuff like that hundreds of times.

Or they might buy into the same logic which had made the heads of two countries, one of them his own, decide to kill the knowledge, and its carriers.

He wondered if it had occurred to Callaghan and Alice that, since they were privy to the dangerous story, they might themselves now be targets. He had a surge of guilt at having exposed them to risk; at the same time he knew that anyone exposed to the knowledge would be at risk.

The mobile was under his pillow, apparently unmoved, and it had a message.

You wouldnt believe what Ive been through. Lift to Bulgaria took me to Varna, on the Black Sea. Now in Albena, a seaside resort to the north. Less than 300 km from Russian border. Will try to reach Odessa overnight and tomorrow fly from there to St Petersburg if Unur can get money to me. After that it gets hard but I have an idea. Reply through Unur if you are reading this.

Freya.

Freya, still alive. He heard her soft sing-song voice, smelled her perfume, watched the flow of her long skirt ...

Cut that out. Concentrate on surviving.

Petrie walked on to the verandah. Clouds were straddling the peaks but the sun was riding above them. A car was descending the hairpin road, visible now and then through gaps in the conifer forest below. It was three miles away and Petrie couldnt be sure if it was Callaghans. He breathed in a big lungful of fresh air before turning back into the room.

He stepped down the wooden stairs, meeting warm air coming up from the big living room. The fire was glowing red, and was too hot to stand close to. Petrie threw on some logs.

The kitchen looked new. Dishes piled neatly in the sink told Petrie that Alice and Joe had had breakfast. More exploration revealed a large cupboard which served as a study; it was cramped 'bijou in estate agent speak. The chalet was empty.

Petrie then explored outside. The house was built on a mountainside, in an acre of ground which had been sculpted from the rock. The property was enclosed by high fencing. He wondered about its purpose; he thought it was maybe to keep out chamonix or bears, but it seemed unnecessarily high.

Back in his room, he pulled out Wildlife of the High Tatras. The disk was still there, still between the marmot and the owl. In the bijou study, he fired up Callaghans computer, and found that it was connected to the outside world. He typed in the address of Freyas Icelandic friend.

Urgent for Freya.

Overjoyed that youre still at large but dont send me any more details of your movements. Unless youre pgp-encrypted your messages can be, and probably are, being read.

Tom.

Callaghans e-mail system, so far as Petrie could see, had no inbuilt encryption, nor did he have time to download a system. His message had avoided the key words which would draw the attention of Echelon, but he thought GCHQ had probably extended the repertoire of trigger words. His finger hovered over the return b.u.t.ton which would fire the message over a telephone line, into some paraboloid somewhere and then up into an aether buzzing with curious satellites. He thought the message would probably go down into one of the big ears listening on the Yorks.h.i.+re moors, and from there to GCHQ and MI6. He wondered if its route could be traced back to this isolated chalet in the back of beyond.

He thought maybe yes, maybe no. If yes, the cost of warning Freya could be a visit from British or Russian specialists, and this remote, isolated safe house would become his execution chamber, and Freya might still be caught anyway.

The balance of the logic was clear: dont send the message.

He pressed the b.u.t.ton.

d.a.m.n woman.

47.

The Judgement Half-past three in the morning. A stillness in the glacial air blanketing Camp David, its paths now under two feet of snow. Here and there, little oases of light in the dark, illuminating the falling snow. One oasis around Chestnut, where the duty officer sat at a quiet switchboard; another surrounding Elm, little more than a hut, which a Secret Service man was using to escape the Siberian cold. And lights were burning in the lounge of Aspen, where the President, Hazel, the CIA Chief and Harris were spread around armchairs.

'Executive Order 12333 of 1981. Part two, section eleven. "No person employed in or acting on behalf of the US Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, a.s.sa.s.sination." Hazel waved the doc.u.ment she had taken from the library in Hickory, then dropped it on the floor. She was on her fourth coffee of the night; hours of cigar smoke were drying up her throat.

Bull said, 'Hazel, thats a presidential ban, not a law. I can overrule it.

'But article two, para four of the UN Charter confers peacetime immunity of all people from acts of violence by the citizens, agents or military forces of another nation. She paused. 'We cant seriously conspire to a.s.sa.s.sinate innocent people.

The DCI was starting on his fourth cigar. 'What do you mean by a.s.sa.s.sinate?

'Come on, Al, youre not going to give me some legal fudge?

'Hazel, the line between legality and illegality can be very thin. But these days we stay rigidly on the right side of it. Thats why precise definitions are fundamental. The NSC, the Department of Justice and the armys International Law Division have all carried out legal a.n.a.lyses of domestic and international laws on a.s.sa.s.sination.

'And?

'The reports are all cla.s.sified, but the essence is this: terrorist infrastructure is a legitimate target even if the infrastructure happens to be human.

'And if the infrastructure consists of nothing but an individual?

The Directors voice hardened. 'If he poses a threat to the security of our country there will be nowhere to hide. I think we demonstrated that in Afghanistan.

'I see. So the legal niceties you mentioned, they go by the board.

'No, theyre more important than ever; they define us. Theyre the difference between the civilised world and the barbarians were fighting.

'Okay, Hazel said. 'But these arent terrorists. Theyre innocent citizens. Young people. Its going wrong, she told herself. This isnt turning out the way I wanted.

Logie Harris said, 'You surprise me, Ms Baxendale. Why should you care? Since you believe were all just animals then, to you, there are no absolute rules. Killing for expediency should be easy as falling off a log.

Hazel flushed.

Sullivan said, 'An enemy soldier is an innocent man, doing what he must. And he can be sixteen. Its down to definitions again. Are they bringing us destruction, does that amount to an undeclared war, and is b.u.mping them off like fighting a pre-emptive war?

Bull said, 'Logie, you got an ethical handle on this situation?

The evangelist nodded. 'Practically all authorities agree that the Bible sanctions the taking of life in particular circ.u.mstances. Whether at an individual level, or at the level of nations, killing is justified in self-defence.

'Self-defence? Hazel said incredulously. 'You- Bull interrupted, 'But as Hazel says, these are innocent people.

Harriss face was adopting the old dogmatic expression, the turned-down mouth, the fixed expression. 'They are not. Theyre emissaries of Satan and are only too willing to bring his message and insinuate it into our society. Consider the words of Paul in Ephesians six, verse eleven. "Put on the whole armour of G.o.d, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil." There are no half measures, Seth; nothing less than the whole armour. Thats about as plain as you can get. In war you kill your enemy. And this is a war declared on us by the Prince of Darkness.

Hazel was swinging her long earrings again. 'Logie, do you and I share the same planet?

The President turned to the DCI. 'Al, say I wanted you to arrange for these people to stop breathing. Without fuss. Given all the internal and external scrutiny you guys are subject to, would that be a problem? Theres my own Intelligence Oversight Board, and your internal one the Inspector Generals office and then theres the congressional Intelligence Committee. And they insist on prior notification of all covert actions.

'An a.s.sa.s.sination need cost no more than a few air fares, a few hotel bills and some bullets. Sure we can do it, hide it away in the rounding errors. But if it worries you, Mr President, there are other routes open to you. For example you could go through the Pentagon. They have authority to carry out "special operations" which bypa.s.s congressional scrutiny altogether.

'h.e.l.l, that would bring in the Vice president, SecDef, the joint chiefs, the National Security Adviser and the whole d.a.m.n NSC.

'But as you know, sir, the rules for writing reports of an NSC meeting are strict. If you gave an a.s.sa.s.sination order thered be nothing on paper. Eisenhower and Nixon both played the game.

Hazel couldnt resist it: 'And of course there was the Castro farce, eight a.s.sa.s.sination attempts by the CIA, all failures.

'That was the Stone Age.

'And now? Youre squeaky clean?

'Were more efficient. Sullivans face was beginning to go pink. It might have been the heat from the flames leaping in the stone fireplace. 'Hazel, do we really need ethics to flush nasty things down the tube?

'What about Callaghan and his a.s.sistant? Hazel asked. 'Two Americans; and your own people. They know about this extraterrestrial signal.

Sullivan looked uncomfortable. He glanced over at President Bull, who was leaning back in his chair. 'Its down to what the President wants.

'What do you want, Mr President? Hazel asked.

They held their breaths.

The President told them.

48.

Execution Petrie was on his second coffee when he heard the distant sound of a vehicle. From the bedroom verandah, he watched a white Transit van toiling up the hairpin bends, occasionally cras.h.i.+ng gears. He felt a sudden surge of nausea, for a panicky moment wanted to run into the mountains, had to consciously go through the icy logic again.

He thought they probably wouldnt kill him here, in Callaghans place. More likely they would string him along, tell him some story about transporting him through desolate routes to the safety of the States in exchange for the disk. That way they would keep him docile all through the desolation until the last moments.

The weather had worsened; the fluffy clouds over the peaks had reared up into towering black c.u.mulus, and grey streaks under them told of falling snow.

The van turned into the driveway and pulled to a halt. There was slush under its mudguards. Elmonet was printed on its side, with a red arrow giving the impression that Elmonet was a courier service. However, the two men who stepped out didnt look like couriers and it didnt take two men to deliver a parcel. One of them, a man with a neat black beard to match his black T-s.h.i.+rt, looked up but gave no nod or wave.

Executioners arent required to be friendly, Petrie thought. He took a last look at the mountains before turning back into the chalet.

'Im Amos. The man had an American accent and a neutral handshake.