"Not to worry," said a hefty European woman, sensibly dressed for catastrophe in a sturdy denim work shirt and corduroy jeans. "We've examined the cargo-there's plenty of Soy Moo and Weetabix." She smirked, raising one plucked eyebrow. "And we met the ship's captain-poor little bloke!

He's got a retrovirus-no immune system left." Bad Luck went even paler.

"No! The captain has plague?"

"Who else would take such a rotten job, working all alone on this barge?" the woman said. "He's hiding now in the wheelhouse. Afraid of catching an infection from us. He's a lot more afraid of us than we are of him." She looked at

Laura curiously. "Do I know you?"

Laura looked down at the deck and muttered something about being in data processing. "Is there a phone here, la?"

"You'll have to stand in line, dearie. Everybody wants on the Net.... You kept money outside Singapore, yes? Very smart. "

"Singapore robbed us," Bad Luck grumbled.

"At least they got us out," said the European woman practically. "It's better than waiting for those voodoo canni- bals to poison us... . Or the globalist law courts... . The

Islamics aren't so bad."

Bad Luck stared at her. "They murder technicians! Anti-

Western purges!"

"That was years ago-anyway, maybe that's why they want us now! Stop fretting, eh! People like us, we can always find a place." She glanced at Laura. "You play bridge, dearie?"

Laura shook her head.

"Cribbage? Pinochle?"

"Sorry." Laura adjusted her hood.

"You getting used to the chador already?" The woman traipsed off, defeated.

Laura walked unobtrusively toward the bow, avoiding scat- tered groups of dazed, shiftless refugees. No one tried to bother her.

Around the Ali Khamenei the gray waters of the straits were full of shipping-reefers, dry-bulk carriers, pallet ships.

Korean, Chinese, Maphilindonesian, some with no flag at all, simply corporate logos.

There was real majesty in the sight. Distance-tinged blue ships, gray sea, the distant green-humped rise of Sumatra.

These straits, between the bulk of Asia and the offshore sprawl of Sumatra and Java and Borneo, had been one of the world's great routes since the dawn of civilization. The loca- tion had made Singapore; and lifting the embargoes on the island would be like unclogging a global artery.

She had been part of this, she thought. And it was no small thing. Now that she was standing alone at the bow's railing, with the primordial surging of the deck beneath her feet, she could feel what she'd done. A little moment of numinous prompting, a mystic satisfaction. She had been doing the work of the world-she could sense the subtle flow of its

Taoist tides, buoying her up, carrying her.

Standing there, shedding tension, breathing the damp mon- soon air under endless gray skies, she could no longer believe in her personal danger. She was bulletproof again.

The pirates were the ones with problems, now. The Bank's brass were all over the deck, in little conspiratorial groups, muttering and looking over their shoulders. There was a surprising number of brass on this ship-the first ones aboard, apparently. She could tell they were bosses, because they were well dressed, and snotty looking. And old.

They had that tight-stretched, spotty vampire look that came from years of Singapore's half-baked longevity treat- ments. Blood filtering, hormone therapy, vitamin-E, electric acupuncture, God knew what kind of insane black-market bullshit. Maybe they had stretched a few extra years out of their expensive meddling, but now they were going to have to go off their treatments cold-turkey. And she didn't imagine it would be easy.

At dusk, a large civilian chopper arrived with a final load of refugees. Laura stood by one of the tall, gently hissing wind columns as the refugees decamped. More top brass.

One of them was Mr. Shaw.

Laura flinched away in shock, and walked slowly toward the bow, not looking back. There must have been some kind of special arrangement, she thought-this Abadan business.

Probably Shaw and his people had set it up long ago. Singa- pore might be finished, but the top data pirates had their own survival instincts. No cheap-shot Naurus and Kiribatis for them-that was for suckers. They were headed where the oil money still ran fast and deep. The Islamic Republic was no friend of Vienna's.

She doubted that they'd make it there scot-free, though.

Singapore might try to ditch the Bank gangsters and the evidence, but too many people must know. There'd be a hot trail to a ship with this many big operators on it. The video press were already swarming into Singapore under the shadow of the Red Cross-eager pioneers of another gunless global army, packing mikes and minicams. Once the ship was out in international waters, Laura was half convinced that reporters would show up.

Should be interesting. The pirates wouldn't like it much- their skin blistered under publicity. But at least they'd es- caped the Grenadians.

There seemed to be an unspoken conviction among the

Singaporeans that the Grenadians had finished. That with the

Bank scattered, and the Government in ruin, there was simply no point left in their terror campaign.

Maybe they were right. Maybe successful terrorism had always worked like this-provoking a regime till it crumbled under the weight of its own repression. "Babylon Falls"

-they'd bragged about it. Maybe Sticky and his friends would now slip out of Singapore in the confusion of the revolt.

If there was any sanity left in them, they'd be glad to run, puffed and proud, triumphant. Probably amazed to be alive.

They could swagger back to their Caribbean shadows as true voodoo legends, new-millennium spooks nonpareil. Why not live? Why not enjoy it?

She wanted to believe that they'd do it. She wanted it to be over-she couldn't bear to think back to Sticky's feverish menu of technical atrocities.

A shudder struck her where she stood. A rocketing wave of intense, unfocused, ontological dread. For a moment she wondered if she'd been pellet-shot. Maybe Sticky had dosed her while she was unconscious and the fear drug was just now coming on... . God, what an awful suspicion.

She remembered suddenly the Vienna agent she'd met in

Galveston, the polite, handsome Russian who had talked about the "evil pressure in a bullet. "

Now, for the first time, she was grasping what the man had meant. The pressure of raw possibility. If something was possible-didn't that mean that somewhere, somehow, some- one had to do it? The voodoo urge to truck with demons. The imp of the perverse. Deep in the human spirit, the carnivo- rous shadow of science.

It was a dynamic, like gravity. Some legacy of evolution, deep in human nerves, invisible and potent, like software.

She turned around. No sign of Shaw. A few yards behind her, Bad Luck was retching, loudly, over the guard rail. He looked up, wiping his mouth on his sleeve.

She could have been him. Laura forced herself to smile at him.

He gave her a look of tremulous gratitude and came to join her. She almost fled at once, but he held up a hand. "It's okay," he said. "I know I'm dosed. It comes in waves. I'm better now."

"You're very brave," Laura said. "I'm sorry for you, sir. "

Bad Luck stared at her. "That's nice. You're nice. You don't treat me like a leper. " He paused, hot little rat eyes studying her. "You're not. one of us, are you? You're not with the Bank."

"What makes you say that?" Laura said.

"You're somebody's girl friend, is it?" He grinned in a cadaverous parody of flirtation. "Lot of bosses on this ship.

Top brass goes for those hot Eurasian girls."

"We're getting married, la," Laura said, "so you can forget all about it, fellow."

He dug into his jacket. "Want a cigarette?"