Caine, backing away, shook his head. “No, we can’t. Not without compromising, maybe scuttling, the Parthenon Dialogs. That’s why we’re setting the fire, removing the weapons.”
Downing was at his car, holding the door for Opal. “That’s right: we have to make this look-at least for the first twenty-four hours of investigation-as though it might be a comparatively normal road accident. If the delegates learn that there was an attempt on the life of an expert witness the day before he testifies, it might scare them all off. These were supposed to be secret proceedings, after all.”
“Then what about the evidence in the second car?” She paused, hand on the door frame, looking down at the flaming wreckage.
“Hopefully, that fire is intense enough to incinerate the bodies and weapons.”
“So why is that one burning so well?”
Downing shrugged, closed her door. “Probably because they were carrying a few liters of petrol to burn your bodies and car once they had finished their job.”
Caine held in a shudder, felt as though he might vomit. “Let’s just get the hell out of here.”
Chapter Eighteen
ODYSSEUS
At the villa-a burnt-ochre mission-style home with a tiled roof and innumerable perimeter cameras-Downing held the door for Opal while two guards stood at either flank of the broad entry. Caine, awaiting the conclusion of the chivalric ritual, saw himself in the glass doors, his image cut into irregular pieces by the black wrought-iron framing. The tinted glass muted the colors of whatever it reflected, so the bloodstains on his shirt and pants and forehead were rendered as brown-mauve patches and spatterings. The three seconds he waited, staring at the stains and himself, seemed unusually long, as though minutes, even hours, were passing-
“Christ, Caine-come in. Come on in.”
Nolan’s voice, then his face, were coming out of the now-vacated doorway at him. Caine nodded, entered as bid.
The interior, he noticed calmly, was quite beautifuclass="underline" beyond the high-ceilinged entry hall, dark wood raftering lent a stately antiquity to the wide, bright interior. He was also aware that Nolan was studying him with a frown, the jocularity of his first exhortation quite gone.
But that convivial demeanor returned-with astonishing, almost disgusting rapidity-as the retired admiral turned quickly to Opal. He scooped a glass from a waiting tray, and stuck a drink in her hand. Caine noted, with a queasy irony, that it was a Bloody Mary.
Caine heard Nolan’s voice grow loud behind him, as though the rising volume were trying to fill up an empty space, or trying to push everything else out: “Captain, it’s a pleasure to finally meet you. I just wish it was under happier circumstances. But you are intact and in a safe place, so let’s drink to that. You know, this whole thing was my fault, really. I shouldn’t have cleared Caine-and you-for unescorted travel. I am becoming an optimistic old man, I guess. Now you just enjoy your drink; I’ve got to hijack Caine for a few minutes. Some unfinished business. Excuse us?”
Her mouth puckering, full of drink, she nodded them out, waving them on with her free hand.
Nolan crinkled his avuncular eyes at her, waved for Caine to follow him.
Which Caine did at a measured pace: if I was a betting man, I’d lay odds we’ll wind up in a windowless conference room.
Nolan led Caine into the room he’d envisioned. Downing closed the door behind them. Caine remained on his feet.
Nolan looked at him. “Caine, will you have a seat?”
“No, not until I get some answers.”
Nolan stared. “Very welclass="underline" what do you want to know?”
“What the hell happened out there? I thought you said-”
Nolan held up a hand. “Caine, as I was telling Captain Patrone, that was my fault, all of it. I got lazy, overconfident, and jeopardized not only you, but also a crucial opportunity for international cooperation. There is no excuse for my laxity; I can only ask your forgiveness and forbearance.”
Nolan, and the apology, seemed sincere-but still, it seemed to come too easy, was too facile. Of course, he’s probably been in this position a dozen times, so he’s had ample opportunities to rehearse this little scene of genuine self-abnegation. “I’ll assume that’s true-for now. But who the hell is trying to kill me? Do you have any better idea now than when you retrieved my lifepod in Junction?”
Downing shook his head. “’Fraid not. There’s a long list of possible suspects, but we have no way of knowing which one-or several-might be responsible. On the Tyne, the only lead was the second engineer, and his identity, and prior assignment at Epsilon Indi, were fabrications. The assassins at Alexandria either escaped or were vaporized by personal failsafe devices-”
“By what?”
“The five strikers we neutralized on adjacent rooftops were burned beyond analysis. Our after-action forensics indicate that each one was equipped with a biomonitor deadman switch rigged to a medley of thermite and white phosphorous charges. If the heart stops-poof: the body and most of the equipment are vaporized by warheads that explode and then burn at twenty-two hundred to twenty-eight hundred degrees Celsius.”
Caine stared at the tabletop. “Wonderful.”
“Almost as wonderful as the cleanup you and I had to perform less than an hour ago. But here, we had to abandon and burn the evidence ourselves because we have only limited influence over the local authorities.”
Nolan shrugged. “I don’t think we’d have learned much from the bodies, anyway.”
Caine looked hard at Corcoran. “Why not?”
“Because they were amateurs, local freelancers. They came after you without any backup plan, their equipment was second-rate, and they were already here.”
“Waiting for me?”
“No: if our adversaries had had any lead time, if they knew you’d be arriving here, they’d have shipped in an A-team. Real professionals. They’d have done the job right: sure, clean, and with absolute plausible deniability. This bunch-they were local muscle, quickly rustled together with phone calls and a few hundred thousand euros, because someone saw you in this area and got the word back to whoever wants you dead. Our opponents probably had only an hour or two to set something up-and by ambushing you with amateurs and failing, they’ve revealed that they don’t yet have an A-team on site. Meaning that they won’t get another shot at you, because by this time tomorrow, you will have told the last of your secrets. After that, there will be no reason left to kill you. Now: will you sit and join us?”
Caine felt the instinct to remain standing: sitting implied a trust, or acceptance, that he did not feel. But to remain standing was to signal hostility. No middle course. So he sat.
Downing hunched forward. “So-what’s the news from Day One, Nolan?”
“Bottom line: there’s general agreement to create a global confederation. When the five blocs were presented with irrefutable evidence of exosapience, there was a unanimous decision to create a central organization with practical political, economic, and military authority.”
Caine cleared his throat; Nolan paused, nodded. “Just cut in whenever you want. No Robert’s Rules, here.”
“What you’re talking about-sounds to me like it makes the U.N. redundant.”
Downing nodded. “Hardly a surprise: the U.N. was never able to put into practice more than a handful of the edicts that it promulgated or the ideals that it espoused. It’s little more than a symbolic memorial.”
“Whereas now the big powers really want to work together?”
Nolan waved away that notion. “Oh, ‘want’ has never achieved anything. But the threat of exosapience means that they need to work together. Of course, that didn’t keep some of the bigger bulls from locking horns for a while.”