Sabotage (43 page)

Dirgo left her boss's side and walked to Clare.

“You all right, Mal?”

“Doing okay, Kate. Thanks. Awfully shocked to see you.”

She whispered in his ear. “We have Baldr back. Somehow … don't ask me how … we regained control. All we have to worry about is—”

“I know,” Clare said with a gesture toward the detonator in Pearl's hands.

Chatham was studying Pearl from the toes up. “It was
you
?”

“It was me.”

Lips quivering, Chatham searched the depths of his vocabulary for something to say. What finally erupted from his mouth sprang from its basest pits. It wasn't so much his language as it was his aggressive advance—he practically lunged—that caused the old mariner to brandish a vintage Luger and center it on Chatham's chest.

“Anyone who moves like that again dies. Your lot is outnumbered more than twenty to one. You'll go out like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”

“Why are you doing this?” Clare said. “Why damage your own company? The news will spread like wildfire. Your whole cruise line will burn in the flames.”

“Did it occur to you,” Pearl said, “that this might be what I'm after? Recall, the corporation is no longer officially mine. It belongs to Sapphire Pacific.”

Rove realized his wounds and sleeplessness were catching up to him. Feeling faint, he crumpled his bruised face and constricted his abdominal muscles to force blood to his brain. Black spots threatened to encroach upon his peripherals and transform his vision into a narrow tunnel. He was beyond fatigued, having consciously to inject his voice with volume to compensate. He divided his energy among speaking, managing the pain in his head, and remaining conscious.

“Took me a while to figure out why he'd wreck the company he spent his life building,” he said. “Then it dawned on me. Clifford Pearl has been managing two, though not entirely independent, schemes.” Pearl flashed the whites of his teeth, goading Rove to explain. “The first involved the theft of an armed satellite equipped with nuclear power. Dr. Clare here engineered the Baldr satellite not for its explosive faculty, but for its electromagnetic potential. Baldr would lend us the ability to cripple our enemies without killing innocents or suffering the political repercussions typically associated with nuclear detonations.

“The project had to remain classified. The consequences of divulging this top-secret development could be catastrophic. Enemies would try to destroy it, or worse, steal it. With the capacity to debilitate major terror cells in remote locations, foil international outlaws, and shut down entire rogue states and hostile territories, Baldr would become the number-one technological target shared by our enemies.

“Enter Clifford Pearl, a titan of the cruise industry—merged three major petrochemical shipping companies in the mid-sixties into what would become Pearl Voyages. By 1975 a rival cruise line, Sapphire Pacific, had captured substantial market share. Despite the interests of the company, you refused their persistent acquisition attempts, until your own board fired you for your stubbornness. They completed the transaction without you. Whatever it was you lost—pride, ownership, money—you needed a way to settle the score.

“You weren't entirely disheartened. There's opportunity in adversity. As you had expanded your fleet, you had developed a few less-than-reputable associations, perhaps some with access to intelligence circles.”

“You'd be surprised how many foreign intelligence officials one meets as a front-runner in global shipping and transportation,” Pearl said.

“Someone along the way must have informed you of Malcolm Clare's work establishing Glitnir Defense.”

Austin and Victoria traded knowing glances.

“His name was Kaslov,” Austin interjected. “Vasily.”

Clare stiffened. “I know that name, Kaslov. He worked for me at the beginning, but it was under an alias—Christian Lefevre. He'd been a contracts manager before one of our employees discovered his attempts to hack our computer systems.” He stopped cold, then said, “Kate, it was you, wasn't it?”

Dirgo nodded her head. “I remember deporting Lefevre.”

“A generous sentence,” Victoria said. “He nearly killed us more than once.”

Austin directed a statement at Pearl as the piece fell into place. “So you had a partnership,” he said. “Forged from greed.” His look was outright savage. “When you learned of Glitnir Defense and how its technologies could make you richer, you hired Vasya as a private investigator of sorts. Rather than set foot in the Virginia office where he'd be recognized, he hooked up surveillance in two less conspicuous places: Professor Clare's Stanford office in the Gates building, and the apartment belonging to his nuclear consultant, Fyodor Avdeenko.

“By sifting through Vasya's audio feeds, you gleaned information about a monumental project underway. You also learned of the superseding program the professor had created—one that could uplink to the Baldr satellite and intervene should any political party attempt to harness the technology unethically. Dr. Clare gave himself complete, secure, and exclusive overriding control of Baldr from his own laptop. He and Avdeenko were the only two individuals in the world aware of the duplicate.”

Clare scratched his head, estimating they had twenty-five minutes. He looked stunned to learn he had been meticulously studied and exploited via bugs within his own university office.

“So we thought,” he said.

Austin resumed his account, glaring at Pearl. “So you now had information that would prove critical in staging the satellite's heist. Vasya would put you in touch with eager buyers. There were two things you needed to pit Glitnir Defense against its enemies: leverage and security. You needed insurance Glitnir would deposit the funds into your account if they won the auction. Meanwhile, one of your biggest customers, Farzad Deeb, wanted a demonstration of his toy. So you'd give him one, but Baldr wasn't enough for the job. The pulse would eliminate power, but you still needed to place bombs, and plenty of them. You also had to prevent passengers from escaping in lifeboats. You needed a team of capable hijackers to impede evacuation and plant explosives.

“You did your research. You learned of the Black Marauders and the captain of their pirate flotilla, Ragnar Stahl. He and his men could help you seize any vessel for the right price. You stood to net billions, so it made little difference how many you had to hire. You had only to meet Ragnar to discuss your plans and convince him of the possibility. Your pawn Vasya would later prove helpful, once again, by providing aerial support of Ragnar's escape from the penal colony. And he'd make sure governmental authorities would look the other way.

“Long before Ragnar's escape, Vasya learned of Dr. Clare's invitation to showcase his newest biplane—the
Firecat
—in Sweden. But the airshow ended tragically when the Swedish Air Force pilot—a man named Benedikt Stahl—failed to pull out of a nosedive. Swedish military authorities launched an investigation vindicating Stahl of drug abuse, and Clare of faulty design work. No one could explain the accident. This must have come as staggering news to Benedikt's brother, Ragnar.”

Ragnar trembled, reliving the moment.

“Impeccable sleuthing,” said Pearl. “I'm sure Ragnar would tell you that. He did love his brother very much. They shared a common enemy growing up. Their papa was a rather harsh disciplinarian.” He spoke as if the man weren't there to hear him. “So Ragnar killed him and fled to Norway, living off petty crime. Over time, he discovered new vocations. Larceny. Grand theft. Extortion. Kidnapping. Trafficking. Money laundering. You name it. He recently added fraud to the list by hacking Malcolm's email account, contacting his teaching assistants so a capable grad student would assume responsibility for his class. It was Ragnar who ambushed and kidnapped Dr. Clare at Stanford, with every intention of murder.

“Anyway, when I learned of the Marauders, the ‘accidental' destruction of the
Firecat,
and the death of Benedikt Stahl, I saw a fit with my own objectives. I could offer Ragnar not only riches, but vengeance upon the man who designed the plane that killed his brother.”

Chatham began to sweat again. He dabbed himself and tried to avoid notice.

Clare took the comment like a stab to the eye. “The accident was tragic, but as the Swedish military investigation revealed, there was nothing wrong with the
Firecat
. With all due respect to your brother—and he was a fine pilot—he tried to execute the impossible. He didn't pull out of his dive in time. Dan, who was there, can tell you.”

Ragnar slammed a fist onto the railing. “You're running away from your mistake with a lie. My brother wasn't careless. He didn't make stupid errors. It was the biplane.”

“Which had flown successfully before the accident, many times,” Clare said. “Have you considered, maybe he was committing suicide?”

“You didn't know the man whose dignity you insult.”

“And you don't know me,” said Clare. “At least now I understand the message you wrote in my blood. ‘Remember the
Firecat
.' In your mind, you were staging a death comparable to your brother's.” Clare looked at Pearl. “You sick old man. You let him believe Benedikt's death was a result of my negligence?”

Pearl shook his head. “I'm afraid you've
both
been misled,” he said. “Ragnar, my apologies … but the misinformation was a powerful motivator.”

“What's behind this?” Clare said. “Tell us, so we—Dan, you all right?”

Chatham's heavy breathing was beginning to approach hyperventilation. He unzipped his jumpsuit and let the wind cool his body.

“Yeah, I'm okay,” he said. “I'm okay.” He was dripping.

“Actually,” said Pearl, “the
Firecat
disaster was no accident.”

“You're a liar,” Ragnar said, staring at Clare. “You killed Benedikt. I'll kill you.”

“Before doing that,” Pearl advised, “I would talk to Mr. Chatham over here, as the professor suggested. Surely he can shed light.”

Chatham appeared to have entered an almost hallucinatory delirium. “I … what?”

“I said surely you can describe what happened—the biplane crash?”

Glitnir's president held a hand around his overhanging belly as if to steady its contents. He looked to Dirgo in the hopes she would shield him from the question.

“Care to enlighten us?” was all she said.

“What is this, an inquisition?” he muttered. “It was … a long time ago.”

“Poor fellow has amnesia,” Pearl said.

“You heard Malcolm,” Chatham answered. “He just told you what happened. I agree with his story.”

“Perhaps I can jog your memory,” Pearl said. “When Vasya was still conducting reconnaissance, he followed you and Clare to Stockholm. And on the eve of the air show, he saw you leave your hotel for the
Firecat
's hangar.” Pearl sharpened his tone. “Why did you tamper with the controls, Mr. Chatham?”

Clare looked at his colleague, scandalized.
“What?”

It appeared the wind blowing across Chatham's neck and arms did little to reduce his temperature. “That's a … random claim without proof.”

“Oh, we have a few dozen pictures,” Pearl said. “What did you do? Cause the yoke to jam when he entered a dive?”

“It's not true,” Chatham said. “Don't believe him, Malcolm. It's a colossal … a misconstruction.”

“I'm still trying to figure out the motive,” Pearl said. “You and Dr. Clare were roommates at MIT, weren't you? Studied the same subjects? And one of you was always
better
at it, wasn't he? Was there a grain of enmity that burned deep into your psyche, Mr. Chatham? Malcolm went on to achieve great things, didn't he? Earned all sorts of prizes and awards from aeronautical societies, if I'm not mistaken. He became the famous inventor, not you. He had the glory, the celebrity, the recognition … the
ideas
. Not to mention a beautiful wife and daughter. How viciously unfair that his brain work should become your grunt work. The air show seemed a perfect opportunity to tarnish the ungrateful bastard's name. Send the
Firecat
into a blaze while thousands looked on!”

Chatham shook visibly. “That's a lie!”

“No—a theory,” said Pearl, “for why you'd tried to pin the blame on one of your closest friends. But it didn't work. Investigations cleared his name. Was it worth murder?”

“You've killed before!” Chatham exclaimed. “You've done it! That's what this whole thing is about!”

Clare showed no pity as he was jarred into the realization that friendship had usurped the place of disgust for this fraud for almost fifty years. Still, his contempt apparently paled alongside Ragnar's. The man had hated learning his reprisal efforts had been misdirected.

“You filth,” Ragnar vented. “You killed my brother!”

“Stay back, Ragnar,” Pearl cautioned. “He'll be yours in minutes. We must first unmask the extent of Mr. Chatham's treachery. You see, a person so enslaved by his own falsity—whether he admits it or not—
wants
to be found out. Truth cuts the ball from his chain.

“Before beginning the auction, I called Chatham. We struck a deal. If he cooperated by bidding, I promised not to demystify the
Firecat
scandal that would strap him with murder. If he raised the bid high enough, I offered two percent, straight to his personal account. So you see, all those negotiations at Glitnir, the screaming fits, the tantrums, the protests—it was one grand charade. Chatham wanted the auction to continue. If he stopped bidding, he knew I'd release the pictures of his tampering, and if he pushed the bids higher … well, two percent of three billion was worth a little playacting.”