"I disagree," Katzen replied. "We can mitigate the situation. And who knows? Maybe the next five thousand years will be better."
"Or maybe the U.S. will get sucked into a religious war that'll tear us apart," Coffey replied. "I'm an isolationist at heart, Phil. That's one thing Senator Fox and I have in common. We've got the best country in the history of the world, and those who don't want to join us in the democratic melting pot can shoot, bomb, gas, nuke, and martyr each other until they're all in Paradise. I really don't care."
Katzen scowled. "That's one point of view, I suppose."
"Damn right," Coffey replied. "And I'm not apologizing for it. But there is one thing you can tell me."
"What?" Katzen asked.
Coffey's mouth twisted. "What is the difference between a porpoise and a dolphin?"
Before he could answer, the door of the van opened and Mike Rodgers stepped out. Coffey savored the blast of air-conditioning before the ramrod-straight general shut the door. He was dressed in jeans and a tight gray Gettysburg Campaign souvenir T-shirt. His light brown eyes seemed almost golden in the bright sun.
Mike Rodgers rarely smiled, but Coffey noticed the hint of a grin tugging at the side of his mouth.
"So?" Coffey asked.
"It's running," Rodgers said. "We were able to uplink to all five of the selected National Reconnaissance Office satellites. We have video, audio, and thermal views of the target region as well as complete electronic surveillance. Mary Rose is talking to Matt Stoll right now, making sure all of the data is getting through." Rodgers's reluctant smile bloomed. "The battery-powered son of a gun works."
Katzen offered him his hand. "Congratulations, General. Matt must be ecstatic."
"Yeah, he's a pretty happy fella," Rodgers said. "After everything we went through to put the ROC together, I'm pretty happy myself."
Coffey toasted General Rodgers with a swig from the water bottle. "Forget everything I said, Phil. If Mike Rodgers is pleased, then we really must've batted one out of the park."
"Grand slam," Rodgers said, "That's the good news. The bad news is that the chopper which is supposed to take you and Phil to Lake Van's been delayed."
"For how long?" Katzen asked.
"Permanently," said Rodgers. "Seems someone in the Motherland Party objects to the excursion. They don't buy our ecology cover story, that we're out here to study the rising alkaline levels of Turkish waterways and its percolation effect on the soil."
"Aw, jeez," Katzen said. "What the hell do they think we want to do out there?"
"You ready for this?" Rodgers asked. "They believe we've found Noah's Ark and that we plan to take it to the U.S. They want the Council of Ministers to cancel our permits."
Katzen angrily jabbed the toe of his boot at the parched ground. "I really did want to have a look at that lake. It's got just one species of fish, the darek, which evolved to survive in the soda-rich water. We can learn a lot about adaptation from it."
"Sorry," Rodgers said. "We're going to have to do some adapting of our own." He looked over at Coffey. "What do you know about this Motherland Party, Lowell? Do they have enough power to screw up our shakedown session?"
Coffey dragged the kerchief along his strong jaw and then across the back of his neck. "Probably not," he said, "though you might want to check with Martha. They're pretty strong and considerably right-of-center. But any debate they start will go back and forth between the Prime Minister and the Motherlanders for two or three days before it's brought to the Grand National Assembly for a vote. I don't know about Phil's excursion, but I think that'll give us the time to do what we came here for."
Rodgers nodded. He turned to Sondra. "Private DeVonne, the Deputy Prime Minister also told me that leaflets are being passed out in the streets, informing citizens about our plan to rob Turkey of its heritage. The government is sending an intelligence agent, Colonel Nejat Seden, to help us deal with any incidents. Until then, please inform Private Pupshaw that some of the people who'll be heading to the watermelon festival in Diyarbakir may be carrying a grudge as well as fruit. Tell him to stay cool."
"Yes, sir."
Sondra saluted and jogged toward the burly Pupshaw, who was stationed on the other side of the tents. He was watching the road where it disappeared behind a row of hills.
Katzen frowned. "This is great. Not only could I miss out on the chance to study the darek, but we've got a hundred million dollars worth of sophisticated electronics in there. And until this Colonel Seden gets here, all we've got to protect it are two Strikers with radios on their hips and M21s, which, of they use 'em, we'll get clobbered for because we're supposed to be unarmed."
"I thought you admired my diplomatic finesse," Coffey said.
"I do."
"Well, that was the best deal we could get," Coffey said. "You worked with Greenpeace. When the French secret service sunk your flagship Rainbow Warrior in Auckland Harbor in 1985, you didn't go out and kill Parisians."
"I wanted to," Katzen admitted. "Boy, how I wanted to."
"But you didn't. We're employees of a foreign power conducting surveillance on behalf of a minority government so that their military can keep am eye on Islamic fanatics. We don't exactly have a moral imperative to gun down locals. If we're attacked, we lock the van door, get inside, and radio the local polisi. They rush out here in their swift Renaults and deal with the situation."
"Unless they're Motherland sympathizers," Katzen said.
"No," Coffey replied, "the police here are pretty fair. They may not like you, but they believe in the law and they'll uphold it."
"Anyway," Rodgers said, "the DPM doesn't expect us to have that kind of trouble. At worst there'll be tossed watermelon, eggs, manure, that sort of thing."
"Terrific," Katzen said. "At least in Washington they only sling mud."
"If it ever rained here," Coffey said, "we'd get that too.
Rodgers held out his hand and Coffey passed him the water. After taking a long swallow the general said, "Cheer up. As Tennessee Williams once said, 'Don't look forward to the day you stop suffering, because when it comes you'll know you're dead.' "
THREE
Paul Hood sat sipping black coffee in the den of his comfortable suburban home. He'd opened the ivory-colored drapes, had cracked the sliding glass door an inch, and was looking across the backyard. Hood had traveled the world and was intimately familiar with many parts of it. But there was nothing that thrilled him as much as the dirty-white picket fence that marked his small part of it.
The grass was glistening-green, and a warm breeze carried the smell of roses from his wife's tiny garden. Eastern bluebirds and yellow warblers were lively with song, and squirrels were acting like furry little Strikers as they moved, stopped, reconnoitered, then moved again. The rustic tranquility was broken now and then by what the jazz-loving Hood called the morning door jam: the slap of a screen door, the groan of a garage door, or the slam of a car door.
To Hood's right was a dark oak bookcase filled with Sharon's well-used volumes on gardening and cooking. The shelves were also hacked with the encyclopedias, atlases, and dictionaries Harleigh and Alexander didn't consult anymore since all that material was on CDROM. Then there was a small corner section for Hood's own favorite novels. Ben-Hur. From Here to Eternity. The War of the Worlds. Tender Is the Night. Works by Ayn Rand, Ray Bradbury, and Robert Louis Stevenson. Old Lone Ranger novels by Fran Striker that Hood had read as a kid and went back to every now and then. To Hood's left were shelves filled with mementoes of his tenure as the mayor of Los Angeles. Plaques, mugs, keys to other cities, and photographs with domestic and foreign dignitaries.