"Not that crowd of lead-assed bureaucrats."
Laura rubbed one bloodshot eye. "If you're police, then am I under arrest?"
Hesseltine and Baptiste shared a manly chuckle over her naivete. "We are not bourgeois legalists," Baptiste said.
"We do not issue arrests."
"Cardiac arrests," Hesseltine said, tapping his teeth with his thumbnail. He truly believed he was being funny. Baptiste stared at him, puzzled, missing the English idiom.
"I saw you on Singapore TV," Hesseltine told her sud- denly. "You said you opposed the data havens, wanted them shut down. But you sure went about it in a screwy way. The haven bankers-my former coworkers, you know-laughed their asses off when they saw you handing that democratic guff to Parliament. "
He poured himself tea. "Of course, they're mostly refugees now, and a pretty good number of the bastards are on the bottom of the sea. No thanks to you, though-you were trying to kiss them into submission. And you, a rootin-tootin'
cowboy Texan, too. It's a good thing they didn't try that at the Alamo. "
Another sailor made a move in the checker game, and the third one swore in response. Laura flinched.
"Pay them no mind," Baptiste told her quickly. "They're off duty."
"What?" Laura said blankly.
"Off duty," he said impatiently, as if it embarrassed him.
"They are Blue Crew. We are Red Crew."
"Oh ... what's that they're playing?"
He shrugged. "Uckers."
"Uckers? What's that?"
"It's a kind of ludo. "
Hesseltine assembled, aimed, and fired a grin at her. "Sub crews," he said. "A very special breed. Highly trained. A
disciplined elite."
The four Blue Crewmen hunched closer over their board.
They refused to look at him.
"It's an odd situation," said Baptiste. He was talking about her, not himself. "We don't quite know what to do with you. You see, we exist to protect people like you."
"You do?"
"We are the cutting edge of the emergent global order."
"Why did you bring me here?" Laura said. "You could have shot me. Or left me to drown."
"Oh, come on," said Hesseltine.
"He's one of our finest operatives," explained Baptiste.
"A real artist."
"Thanks "
"Of course he would rescue a pretty woman at the end of his assignment-he couldn't resist a final dramatic grace note!"
"Just the kind of guy I am," Hesseltine admitted.
"That's it?" Laura said quietly. "You saved me just on a whim? After killing all those people?"
Hesseltine stared at her. "You're gonna piss me off in a minute... . Don't you think they'd have killed me if they knew what I was? That wasn't just your mickey-mouse indus- trial espionage, y'know. I spent months and months in a deadly deep-cover operation for the highest geopolitical stakes!
Those Yung Soo Chim guys had background checks like nobody's business, and they watched my ass like a hawk."
He leaned back. "But will I get credit? Hell, no, I won't."
He stared at his cup. "I mean, that's part of the whole undercover biz, no credit
"It was a very slick operation," said Baptiste. "Compare it to Grenada. Our attack on the Singapore criminals was surgical, almost bloodless."
Laura realized something. "You want me to be grateful."
"Well, yeah," said Hesseltine, looking up. "A little of that wouldn't be too out of line, after all the effort we put into it."
He smiled at Baptiste. "Look at that face! You should've heard her in Parliament, going on and on about Grenada. The carpet bombing took out this big mansion the Rastas gave her. It really pissed her off."
It was as if he'd stabbed her. "You killed Winston Stubbs in my house! While I was standing next to him. With my baby in my arms."
"Oh," Baptiste said, relaxing ostentatiously. "The Stubbs killing. That wasn't us. That was one of Singapore's."
"I don't believe it," Laura said, sagging-back. "We got a
FACT communique taking credit!"
"A set of initials means very little," said Baptiste. "FACT
was an old front-group. Nothing compared to our modern operations.... In truth, it was Singapore's Merlion-Commandos.
I don't think the Singapore civilian government ever knew of their actions."
"Lots of ex-paras, Berets, Spetsnaz, that sort of thing,"
Hesseltine said. "They tend to run a little wild. I mean, face it-these are guys who gave their lives to the art of warfare.
Then all of a sudden, you know, Abolition, Vienna Convention.
One day they're the shield of their nation, next day they're bums, got their walking papers, that's about it."
"Men who once commanded armies, and billions in government funds,"
Baptiste recited mournfully. "Now, nonpersons. Spurned.
Purged. Even vilified."
"By lawyers!" said Hesseltine, becoming animated. "And chickenshit peaceniks! Who would have thought it, you know?
But when it came, it was so sudden...."
"Armies belong to nation-states," said Baptiste. "It is hard to establish true military loyalty to a more modern, global institution.... But now that we own our own country- the Republic of Mali-recruiting has picked up remarkably."
"And it helps, too, that we happen to be the global good guys," Hesseltine said airily. "Any dumbass mere will fight for pay for Grenada or Singapore, or some jungle jabber
African regime. But we get committed personnel who truly recognize the global threat and are prepared to take action.
For justice." He leaned back, crossing his arms.
She knew she could not take much more of this. She was holding herself together somehow, but it was a waking night- mare. She would have understood it if they'd been heel- clicking Nazi executioners ... but to meet with this smarmy little Frenchman and this empty-eyed good-old-boy psychotic.
... The utter banality, the soullessness of it ...
She could feel the iron walls closing in on her. In a minute she was going to scream.
"You look a little pale," Hesseltine remarked. "We'll get some chow into you, that'll perk you up. There's always great chow on a sub. It's a _navy tradition." He stood up.
"Where's the head?"
Baptiste gave him directions. He watched Hesseltine go, admiringly. "More tea, Mrs. Webster?"
"Yes-thank-you ..."
"I don't think you recognize the genuine quality of Mr,
Hesseltine," Baptiste chided, pouring. "Pollard, Reilly, Sorge
... he could match with history's finest! A natural operative!
A romantic figure, orally-born out of his own true time....
Someday your grandchildren will talk about that man."
Laura's brain went into automatic pilot. She slipped into babbling 'surrealism. "This is quite a ship you have here.
Boat, I mean."
"Yes. It's a nuclear-powered American Trident, which cost over five hundred million of your country's dollars."
She nodded stupidly: right, yes, uh-huh. "So, this is an old
Cold War sub?"
"A ballistic missile sub, exactly."
"What's that mean?"
"It's a launch platform."
"What? I don't understand."
He smiled at her. "I think 'nuclear deterrent' is the concept you're searching for, Mrs. Webster."
" `Deterrent.' Deterring what?"
"Vienna, of course. I should think that would be obvious."
Laura sipped her tea. Five hundred million dollars. Nuclear powered. Ballistic missiles. It was as if he'd told her that they were reanimating corpses on board. It was far too horrible, way off the scale of reason and credibility.
There was no proof. He hadn't shown her anything. They were bullshitting her. Magic tricks. They were liars. She didn't believe it:
"You don't seem disturbed," Baptiste said approvingly.
"You're not superstitious about wicked nuclear power?"
She shook her head, not trusting herself to speak aloud.