"You must be able to help us, though. "
Voroshilov shrugged. "The local police can carry out cer- tain actions. Tracing the local ships, for instance-see if any . were close offshore, and who hired them. But I am glad to say that this was not an act of politically motivated terrorism.
I would classify this as a gangster killing. The FACT
communiqué is only an attempt to muddy the waters. A
Vienna Convention case has certain publicity restrictions that they, find useful."
"But a man was killed here!"
"It was a murder, yes. But not a threat to the political order of the Vienna Convention signatories."
Laura was shocked. "Then what good are you?"
Voroshilov looked hurt. "Oh, we are very much good at easing international tension. But we are not a global police force." He emptied his teacup and set it aside. "Oh, Moscow has been pressing for a true global police force for many years now. But Washington stands in the way. Always trifling about Big Brother, civil liberties, privacy laws. It's an old story."
"You can't help us at all."
Voroshilov stood up. "Ms. Webster, you invited these gangsters into your home, I didn't. If you had called us first we would have urged you against it in the strongest possible terms." He hefted his terminal. "I need to interview your husband next. Thank you for the tea."
Laura left him and went upstairs to the telecom office.
Emerson and the mayor were sitting together on one of the rattan couches, with the satisfied look of people who had beaten a debate into submission. Magruder was forking his way through a belated Tex-Mex breakfast of migas and refried beans.
Laura sat down in a chair across the table and leaned forward, vibrating with anger. "Well, you two look comfortable."
"You've been talking to the Vienna representative," Emerson said.
"He's no goddamn use at all."
"KGB," Emerson sniffed.
"He says it's not political, not their jurisdiction."
Emerson looked. surprised. "Hmmph. That's a first for them."
Laura stared at her. "Well, what do we do about it?"
Magruder set down a glass of milk. "We're shutting you down, Laura."
"Just for a while," Emerson added.
Laura's jaw dropped. "Shutting down my Lodge? Why? Why?"
"It's all worked out," Magruder said. "See, if it's criminal, then the media get to swarm all over us. They'd play it up big, and it'd be worse for tourism than a shark scare. But if we shut you down, then it looks like spook business.
Classified. And nobody looks too deep when Vienna comes calling." He shrugged. "I mean, they'll figure it eventually, but by then it'd be old news. And the damage is limited." He stood up. "I need to talk to that Ranger. You know. Assure her that the city of Galveston will cooperate in every way possible." He picked up his briefcase and lumbered down the stairs.
Laura glared at Emerson. "So that's it? You shut down the scandal, and David and I pay the price?"
Emerson smiled gently. "Don't be impatient, dear. Our project isn't over because of this one attack. Don't forget- it's because of attacks like this that the pirates agreed to meet in the first place."
Laura was surprised. She sat down. Hope appeared amidst her confusion. "So you're still pursuing that? Despite all this?"
"Of course, Laura. The problem has scarcely gone away, has it? No, it's closer to us than ever before. We're lucky we didn't lose you-you, a very valued associate."
Laura looked up, surprised. Debra Emerson's face was set quite calmly-the face of a woman simply relaying the truth.
Not flattery-a fact. Laura sat up straighter. "Well, it was an attack on Rizome, wasn't it? A direct attack on our company."
"Yes. They found a weakness in us-the F.A.C.T. did, or the people behind that alias." Emerson looked grave. "There must have been a security leak. That deadly aircraft-I sus- pect it's been waiting in ambush for days. Someone knew of the meeting and was watching this place."
"A security leak within Rizome?"
"We mustn't jump to conclusions. But we will have to find out the truth. It's more important than this Lodge, Laura.
Much more important." She paused. "We can come to terms with the Vienna investigators. We can come to terms with the city of Galveston. But that's not the hardest part. We prom- ised safety to the people at this conference, and we failed.
Now we need someone to smooth the waters. In Grenada."
Rizome's Chattahoochee Retreat was in the foothills of the
Smokies, about sixty miles northeast of Atlanta. Eight hun- dred acres of wooded hills in a valley with a white stony creek that was dry this year. Chattahoochee was _a favorite of . the Central Committee; it was close enough to the city for convenience, and boondocky enough for people to stay out of the Committee's collective face.
New recruits were often brought here-in fact this was where Emily had first introduced her to David Webster. Back in the old stone farmhouse, the one without the geodesics.
Laura couldn't look at these Chattahoochee hills without re- membering that night: David, a stranger, tall and thin and elegant in midnight blue, with a drink in his hand and black hair streaming down his back.
In fact everybody in that party, all the sharper recruits anyway, had gone out of their way to dress in penthouse elegance. To go against the grain a bit, to show they weren't going to be socialized all that easily, thank you. But here they were, years later, out in the Georgia woods with the Central
Committee, not new recruits but full-fledged associates, playing for keeps.
Of course the Committee personnel were all different now, but certain traditions persisted.
You could tell the' importance of this meeting by the elabo- rate informality of their dress. Normal problems they would have run through in Atlanta, standard boardroom stuff, but this Grenada situation was a genuine crisis. Therefore, the whole Committee were wearing their Back-slapping Hick look, a kind of Honest Abe the Rail-Splitter image. Frayed denim jeans, flannel work shirts rolled up to the elbow... .
Garcia-Meza, a hefty Mexican industrialist who looked like he could bite tenpenny nails in half, was carrying a big straw picnic basket.
It was funny to think of Charlie Cullen being CEO.. Laura hadn't met Cullen face to face since his appointment, though she'd networked with him a little when they were building the
Lodge. Cullen was a biochemist, in construction plastics mostly, a nice enough guy. He was a great caretaker Rizome
CEO, because you trusted him instinctively-but he didn't much come across as an alley fighter. Since' his appointment he'd taken to wearing a gray fedora perched on the back of his head. Less like a hat than a halo or crown. It was funny how authority affected people.
Cullen's whole face had changed. With his square chin and broad nose, and mouth gone a little severe, he was starting to look like a black George Washington. The original, primeval
George Washington, not the recent black president by the same name.
Then there were the others. Sharon McIntyre, Emily Donato's mentor on the Committee, and Emily herself, her ringleted hair caught under a scarf so that she looked like she'd just been cleaning a stove. Kaufmann, the realpolitik European, managing to look refined and natty even in jeans and knap- sack. De Valera, self-styled firebrand of the Committee, who tended to grandstand, but was. always coming up with the bright idea. The professorial Gauss, and the cozy-conciliatory
Raduga. And bringing up the rear of the group, the ancient
Mr. Saito. Saito was wearing a kind of Ben Franklin fur hat and bifocals, but he leaned on a tall knotted staff, like some hybridized Taoist hermit.