Snickers sounded; Ashmead’s deputy lifted his hand from the tablecloth—just a few inches, but the team quieted immediately. “That’s the objective; what’s the operation—a temporal insertion?” Slick asked Beck. “You going to draft us into Task Force 159? It was your baby, we heard. ’Cause nothing short of that’s going to make a flying fuck’s worth of difference.”
Beck bared his teeth in a facsimile of a patient smile. “159? I don’t know what you’re talking about. The operation I have in mind is both structured and unstructured. In its simplest form, it involves getting a scientist named Morse and a quantity of drugs to President Beggs and his staff—in the US.” Beck paused for any ensuing hisses, boos, or mutters of incredulity, but none were forthcoming. He continued: “This we want to accomplish under the cover of a fact-finding tour composed of members of the International Monetary Fund, which is meeting now in Singapore—” From behind his hip, where Ashmead had assumed a firearm was secreted, Beck took a pouch and laid it on the table in front of Ashmead. “Open that up, will you, Rafic?”
As Ashmead reached for it, Yael shrank back infinitesimally and he took time to glower at her as he took the pouch, much heavier than it looked, and emptied out its contents for all to see: six rolls of coins marked Krugeraands—probably the entire hard currency supply from Beck’s consulate, unless the INR man was using his personal trust fund for this, because American money and American plastic were no good in the Gulf, probably not anywhere except Israel, where Americans could call in markers due.
“There’s your operational fund, folks—we’re on the gold standard, by order of the IMF, in order to prevent a collapse of the entire world banking system,” Beck explained.
Nobody reached out to verify the contents of the red paper rolls or even estimate their value: Ashmead had brought the entire coin petty cash fund with him when he’d left Tel Aviv, but everybody had too much valueless paper money on them not to be impressed.
“Besides the IMF reps,” Beck continued, as if he were briefing an embassy staff on banquet preparations, “we’ll have UN dignitaries, as soon as they finish fighting over who’s who in the new UN in Sydney, as well as causists from the World Health Organization, NATO envoys who must be convinced that reciprocal courtesies to those we showed them after the Second World War are in order, two honorable sirs from the Japanese Ministry of Trade—”
“We get the idea, Beck. You want us to wet-nurse a bunch of dips and leftists who’re going to stand around in their shiny contamination suits and gloat. No dice.”
At Slick’s flat refusal, Beck, for the first time, turned to Ashmead for aid, his Ivy League feathers beginning to ruffle, perspiration beginning to bead on his forehead: “Rafic, is that your answer, or just his?”
“I don’t know yet, Beck. Keep talking.”
“Check. Slick… all of you: I really need you. There are several reasons why your operations team is my optimum choice, but you’re not my only choice, so if I can’t convince you, I’ll be on my way, no hard feelings, no attempts to pressure you through channels. This isn’t a CIA operation and neither the Agency nor INR is in any shape to be heavy-handed. I’m asking you, agents of the American government, to do something more important for your country than forcibly retire a bunch of—”
“Rag-heads,” Thoreau said with bared teeth. “We’re all friends here, you don’t have to be button-down polite with us.” Tipping up his cap’s bill with a knuckle, Thoreau leaned forward: “If I’m copying you right, you’re talking about flying a mission over the Big Water and across what must be at least five hundred miles of red zones, just for starters. You’ve got a plane in mind that can do that?”
“All I can tell you—until we’ve agreed on specifics and you’ve signed on to the mission—is that I’ve got everything I need but you people. And I’ll go to any lengths within my power to convince you to help. Specialists in paramilitary, propaganda, counterterrorism, and security are going to be crucial to this mission’s success.”
Jesse drew a bead on Beck’s face: “No way,” he said judiciously, “are you going to get that many dips in and out of any kind of dangerous terrain without losing a few of ’em; they don’t know how to take direction.”
“That’s secondary. I’ll be happy with a seventy-five per cent survival rate—”
“If you have to, you’ll make do with a ten per cent survival rate,” Slick cut in authoritatively. “You can’t negotiate real life.”
“Whatever.” Beck, Ashmead saw, knew he was winning; he was imperturbable: “The actual mission is the delivery of the material—a serum of sorts—to the Administration.”
“What is this serum?” Zaki asked. “Water from the fountain of youth? An anti-radiation drug, perhaps? Is that why you speak so calmly of such absurdities?”
“Zaki, you’re absolutely right. But I didn’t tell you and you don’t know what it is, because if word leaks, we’re never going to get out of Israel with it, let alone all the way to the Houston White House.”
“So… do we get shots? If we’re going to take it that far, we’ll need all the edge we can get.” Slick was looking out for his people as best he could.
“Absolutely. From the first batch, well before takeoff—as soon as I get mine.” Beck, his trump played, sat back and watched the operations team think about what he’d said.
For the first time, Ashmead took a hand: “You’re going along, Beck?”
“Would I ask you to go, if I wouldn’t?”
“But are you? Not would you.”
Beck met Ashmead’s gaze and it was as if electricity jumped between them: “Rafic, I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
Ashmead nodded absently, putting deeper meanings together in his mind, already launched upon a catalogue of what they would need for weapons, com gear, protective clothing, and fallbacks.
Then Slick said, “Well, Casper, maybe we’ll bite.” He reached out and hefted one of the rolls of Krugeraands. “But tell me something… are you one of these guys who doesn’t have enough sense to be afraid to die, or the type who fancies a heroic death in battle while he’s sitting behind his desk? Because there’s no way we’ll come through this in tip-top operational shape.”
“I know that. But you were all going to blow yourselves to bits in Libya, weren’t you?”
“Maybe we were, maybe we weren’t. Answer my question.” Slick was beginning to realize that Beck was smarter than your average dip, but he’d never accept that Beck was smarter than he was.
“Fair enough,” Beck’s chin tucked in as he answered Slick; “since you asked—I’m terrified of dying, emotionally. But intellectually I understand that the universe is like a novel one might read, if you’ll accept the analogy, in which each second of elapsed time represents one page of the story: you read from beginning to end and yet, if you go back to any particular page, the time and events on it are always happening in the present sense; so, to continue the analogy, everything that ever was, is, or will be, is always ‘now,’ somewhere in spacetime’s novel—we’ll always be sitting here, having this discussion, in a universe which allows manifold novels… eternities, if you like. Consequently, intellectually I know that everything I do will live forever and I try to do my damned best to make sure I’m proud of it.”
“Shit,” Slick shook his head. The rest of his team looked askance at one another.
All but Zaki, who sat forward: “So you understand Einstein, even maybe quantum mechanics. Are you, by any chance, a Jew?”
Caught off guard, Ashmead nearly exploded in laughter: Beck had them, even if he didn’t realize it yet—Zaki, not Slick, would have been the only dissenting voice that could have queered the deal.