"Washington, D.C."
Six gestured lightly with the knife toward Tuk and spoke in Khmer. "You're wasting time. Let me work on him with the knife."
Tuk ignored him and turned to Ford. "You are in the government, then?"
"Excellent guess."
"Who did you come here to have a conversation with?"
"Him. Brother Number Six."
There was a sudden, freezing silence. After a moment, Six waved the knife in his face. "Why you want meet me?"
"To accept your terms of surrender."
"Surrender?" Six pushed his face in close. "To who?"
Ford looked up into the sky. "Them."
Both men looked into the empty sky.
"You have . . ." Ford smiled and glanced at his watch, ". . . about a hundred and twenty minutes before the Predator drones and cruise missiles arrive."
Six stared.
"Do you want to hear the terms?" Ford asked.
Six pressed the flat of the knife blade into Ford's throat, giving it just a slight turn. He could feel it begin to bite into his flesh. "I cut your throat!"
Tuk laid a light hand on Six's arm. "Yes," he said easily. "We want to hear the terms."
The knife blade relaxed and Six stepped back.
"You have two options. Option A: you don't surrender. In two hours, your mine will be flattened by cruise missiles and Predator drones. Then the CIA will come in to clean up--to clean you up. Maybe you die, maybe you escape. Either way, you'll be hunted to the end of your days by the CIA. You will have no rest in your old age."
A pause.
"Option B: you surrender to me, abandon the mine, and walk away. In two hours it is flattened by American bombs. The CIA pays you one million dollars for your cooperation. You live the rest of your life in peace, a friend of the CIA. Your old age is calm, restful, and financially secure."
"Why CIA not like this mine?" Six asked. "All legal here."
"You don't know who's buying your gemstones?"
"I sell gemstone to Thailand, all legal."
Tuk nodded slowly, as if in agreement, his eyes half-closed.
"Right. All legal. You're selling honey stones to wholesalers like Piyamanee Limited."
"All legal!" Six said.
"Do you know who the wholesalers in Bangkok are selling to?"
"Why I care? I not break law."
"Just because you're not breaking the law doesn't mean you aren't pissing us off."
Six fell silent.
"Let me explain something," Ford went on. "The Bangkok wholesalers are selling to gemstone brokers in various countries in the Middle East, who are fronting for a Saudi dealer who sells in bulk to buyers in Quetta, Pakistan, who are hiring mules to transport the gems to Al Qaeda in South Waziristan. Do you know what Al Qaeda is doing with the gemstones?"
Six stared. This was clearly a new thought to him.
"Al Qaeda is grinding up the gems, concentrating the radioactivity in them, and is using them to make dirty bombs."
"I know nothing. Nothing!" shrilled Six angrily.
Ford smiled. "Yeah, you and Sergeant Schultz."
"Who is Sergeant Schultz?"
Ford waited, letting the silence build. "So: option A, or option B?"
"You are man who walk in here with stupid story, no more." Six spat.
"Ask yourself, Brother Number Six: would I walk in here without backup?"
"You bring no evidence, no proof, not even ID!"
"You want proof?"
Six narrowed his eyes.
Ford nodded toward the hills. "I'll show you proof. I'll order a Predator drone to fire a missile into the top of one of those hills over there. That good enough for you?"
Six swallowed, his big ugly Adam's apple bobbing. He said nothing. Tuk's eyes remained lidded.
"Untie my hands," said Ford.
Six muttered an order, and Ford's hands were untied.
"Put the knife away."
The Cambodian put the knife back into its sheath.
Ford pointed west. "See that far hill, the one with the double top? We'll hit that one with a small missile."
"How you give order?"
Ford smiled. He knew that most older Cambodians had an almost supernatural dread of the CIA and he was hoping to capitalize on that fear. "We have our ways."
Six was now sweating.
"Within half an hour, you will have your proof. In the meantime, I wish to be treated as an honored guest, not like a criminal." He gestured to the men with the guns.
Six said something and the guns lowered.
"There's a lot of hardware above your heads that you can't see. You do anything to me and it'll rain death and destruction down on you so fast you won't even have time to take a piss."
Six's face remained impassive. He leaned over and spat on the verandah. "You have half-hour. Then you die." He shuffled back over to his rocking chair, sat down, and began rocking.
25
Egg Rock was just about the most desolate island Abbey had ever seen, little more than a pile of sea-battered boulders in the Atlantic Ocean. It took less than five minutes to determine that the island had no crater. After wandering about disconsolately, they rested on the highest boulder at the top of the island. Seagulls wheeled overhead, crying out. The ocean thundered on the encircling rocks.
"Well?" said Jackie, sitting beside her. "That was a bust."
Abbey swallowed. "We still have Shark."
"Yeah, right."
"Fog's coming in," said Abbey. The fog bank was rolling in from the south, a low, gray line on the horizon. Even as she watched, the bank began swallowing Monhegan Island, which grayed out and disappeared, and a moment later it ate up the smaller island, Manana, next to it. She could hear the lonely moan of the Manana Island foghorn every few seconds.
Her eyes moved across the water to Shark Island, a speck of land about eight miles offshore, no more than two acres in extent, treeless and desolate. It was the last island on their list. If the meteorite wasn't there . . . she tossed a pebble, musing gloomily about their odds of finding a crater on Shark. The clouds above began to roll in and a shadow fell across them, the light leaving the air, enveloping them in a cold seaweed smell.
"Gonna rain," said Jackie. "Let's go back to the boat."
Abbey nodded. They picked their way down through the rocks and the sea wrack to the dinghy and launched it into the light swell. The ocean was calm and it seemed to be settling down, as it often did in a fog. Abbey rowed back to the Marea, pulling hard, and in a moment they climbed over the stern. Back in the pilothouse, Abbey ran through a mental list, checking the fuel level, batteries, and bilge. She started the engine, the Yanmar rumbling to life. As she was switching on the electronics, Jackie came in.
"Let's find a nice gunkhole somewhere, drop anchor, and get stoned."
"We're going to Shark Island."
Jackie groaned. "Not in the fog, please. My head aches from that wine last night."
"Fresh air will do you good." Abbey hunched over the chart. Shark Island was exposed to the wild Atlantic, surrounded by sunken ledges and reefs, and swept by dangerous currents. It was going to be a bitch to get on it. She tuned the VHF to the weather channel and the strangely flat computer voice began reciting the report.
"Let's just park here for a while, wait for the fog to blow over," Jackie said.
"This is our chance. The sea's relatively calm."
"But the fog."
"We've got radar and a chartplotter."
As the fog bank rolled toward them, an eerie half-light fell on the sea.
Jackie flopped into the seat next to the helm. "Come on, Abbey, can't we just chill for a while? I've got a hangover."
"Weather's coming in. If we don't take advantage of the calm sea now, we may be waiting for days. Look--once we land, it'll take us five minutes to explore that rock."