“I spoke with the President this morning,” Moon informed him, “and he expressed the same sentiment. If, God forbid, the worst has happened, it would do Secretary Katamora’s memory a disservice by canceling what she believed was the greatest opportunity to achieve regional stability. She more than anyone, I believe, would want us to proceed.”
“In the event that, well, as you say, the worst has occurred, do you know who would represent your government at the conference?”
“Frankly, no. The President refused to even speculate.”
“I understand completely,” Ghami said.
“He and Secretary Katamora were particularly close.”
“I can well imagine. From what I’ve read and seen on the news, she was a remarkable woman. Forgive me, is a remarkable woman.” Ghami stood, clearly irritated at his gaffe. “Mr. Ambassador, I won’t take up any more of your day. I simply wanted to express our concern in person, and you have my word that as soon as I hear anything I will call you regardless of the time.”
“I appreciate that.”
“On a personal note, Charles”—Ghami used his Christian name deliberately—“if this is Allah’s will, I certainly don’t understand it.”
Moon recognized that only the most heartfelt sentiment would cause Ghami to even suggest that he was questioning the will of his God. “Thank you.”
The United States Ambassador led the Libyan Foreign Minister to the bank of elevators. Almost as an afterthought, Moon asked Ghami, “I wonder, if there is wreckage, how we should proceed.”
“I don’t understand.”
“If the plane crashed, my government would most likely request that a team of American examiners inspect the remains in situ. People from the National Transportation Safety Board are experts at determining exactly what forces were in play to cause an airplane to crash.”
“I see, yes.” Ghami rubbed his jaw. “We have specialists who perform a similar function here. I can’t see it as a problem. However, I’ll need to consult with the President.”
“Very well. Thank you.”
A minute after Moon returned to his office, there was a knock on the door. “Come in.”
“What do you think?” asked Jim Kublicki, the CIA station chief at the American Embassy. A former college football star, Kublicki had been with the agency for fifteen years. He was nearly as tall as the doorframe, which meant he would never be a covert operative because he stood out in any crowd, but he was a competent administrator, and the four agents assigned to the embassy liked and respected him.
“If they’re involved in some way, Ali Ghami’s out of the loop,” Moon replied.
“From what I’ve heard, Ghami is Qaddafi’s fair-haired boy. If they intentionally shot down that plane, he’d know.”
“Then my gut tells me the Libyans didn’t do anything and whatever has happened was an accident.”
“We won’t know for certain until they find the wreckage and get a team to examine it.”
“Obviously.”
“Did you ask him if we can bring over folks from the NTSB?”
“I did. Ghami agreed, but he wants to talk it over with Qaddafi. I think Ghami wasn’t prepared for the question and wants a little time to figure out how to accept without admitting our people are better than his. They can’t afford a diplomatic flap by refusing.”
“If they do, that would surely tell us something,” Kublicki said with a spook’s inherent paranoia. “So, what’s he like in person—Ghami, I mean?”
“I’d met him before, of course, but this time I got a better sense of the man behind the diplomatic niceties. He’s charming and gracious, even in these circumstances. I could tell he was truly disturbed by what’s happened. He’s poured a lot of his own reputation into this conference, only to see it marred before it starts. He’s really upset. It’s hard to believe a regime like this could produce someone like that.”
“Qaddafi saw the writing on the wall when we took down Saddam Hussein. How long after we pulled him out of the spider hole did Libya agree to abandon its nuke program and disavow terrorism?”
“A matter of days, I believe.”
“There you go. A leopard can change his spots once he sees the consequences of jerking around the good old U.S. of A.”
The corners of Moon’s mouth turned downward. He wasn’t much for jingoism, and had been dead set against the Iraq invasion, though he acknowledged that without it the upcoming peace summit might never have been proposed. He shrugged. Who really knew? Events had unfolded the way they had and there was no use revisiting past actions. “Have you heard anything?” he asked Kublicki.
“NRO has shifted one of their spy birds from the Gulf to cover Libya’s western desert. The imaging specialists have the first pictures now. If that plane’s out there, they’ll find it.”
“We’re talking thousands and thousands of square miles,” Moon reminded. “And some of that is pretty mountainous.”
Kublicki was undeterred. “Those satellites can read a license plate from a thousand miles up.”
Moon was too upset about the situation to point out that being able to see details of a specific target had no relation to searching an area the size of New England. “Do you have anything else for me?”
Realizing he was being dismissed, Kublicki got to his feet. “No, sir. It’s pretty much a wait-and-see kind of thing now.”
“Okay, thanks. Could you ask my secretary to get me some aspirin?”
“Sure thing.” The agent lumbered out of the office.
Charles Moon pressed his thumbs against his temples. Since hearing about the plane’s disappearance, he had managed to keep his emotions in check, but exhaustion was cracking his professional façade. He knew without a doubt that if Fiona Katamora was dead, the Tripoli Accords didn’t stand a chance in hell. He had lied to Ali Ghami during their meeting. He and the President had discussed who would represent the United States. The President had told him that he would send the VP because an Undersecretary simply didn’t carry enough clout. The problem was, the Vice President was a young, good-looking congressman who’d been put on the ticket to balance it out. He had no diplomatic experience and, everyone agreed, no brain either.
The VP had once met with Kurdish representatives at a White House function and wouldn’t stop joking about bean curds. At a state dinner for the Chinese President, he’d held out his plate to the man and asked, “What do you call china in China?” Then there was the video clip, an Internet favorite for months, of him staring at an actress’s cleavage and actually licking his lips.
Not one for praying, Charles Moon had the sudden urge to get on his knees and beg God for Fiona’s life. And he wanted to pray for the untold hundreds and thousands who would keep dying in the seemingly unending cycle of violence if she was gone.
“Your aspirin, Mr. Ambassador,” his secretary said.
He looked up at her. “Leave the bottle, Karen. I’m going to need it.”
TEN
AS SOON AS THE POLSIHED-BRASS ELEVATOR DOORS OPENED on the Oregon’s lowest deck, Juan Cabrillo felt the pulsing beat against his chest. It wasn’t the ship’s revolutionary engines producing the throbbing presence in the carpeted corridor but rather what had to be the most expensive stereo system afloat. To him, the music blaring from the only cabin in this section of the freighter sounded like a continuous explosion with a voice-over track that seemed to mimic a dozen cats fighting in a burlap bag. The wailing rose and fell in no relation to the beat, and every few seconds feedback from the musicians’ amplifiers would shriek.
Mark Murphy’s taste in music, if this could be called music, was the reason there were no other cabins in this part of the Oregon.
Cabrillo paused at the open door. Members of the Corporation had been given generous stipends to decorate their cabins any way they saw fit. His own was done in various types of exotic woods and resembled an English manor house more than a nautical suite. Franklin Lincoln, who had had nothing growing up on the streets of Detroit, and who had spent twenty years in the Navy sleeping wherever they told him to, furnished his cabin with a cot, a footlocker, and a pressed-metal wardrobe. The rest of his money went into a customized Harley. Max’s cabin was a mishmash of unmatched furniture that looked like it had come from Goodwill.