"I thought we had," Larissa said, in a tone that clearly indicated she had no regrets about having been Price's executioner.
"Sometimes, Larissa," Malcolm said, "death doesn't put an end to the dangers a person can pose."
"And what do you think those dangers are?" I asked, looking around the table.
"I've studied the communications Leon intercepted," Colonel Slayton replied. "And putting them together with what I heard, I'd say the situation is very bad. Worse yet, it's fairly advanced. The Israelis are clearly worried about some specific terrorist response to this new revelation about the Holocaust, a response that's apparently going to come from one of their own operatives. Probably the same man who discovered the images."
"A fanatic? "Eli asked.
Malcolm nodded, self-recrimination all over his face. "It's why I canceled the project in the first place, before even telling any of you about it. There are certain historical events, I've come to realize, that even we must never toy with — the violence of the emotions they unleash is simply too great. We're talking, now, about what is quite probably the blackest moment in all of human experience. Even the tortures and brutalities of the Dark Ages had nothing like the scale, the systematic insanity…" Malcolm shook his head. "This man may have lost family in the Holocaust. Or he may simply have grown unbalanced contemplating it." I felt a quick pang of dread at this thought: not only did it seem entirely plausible, even likely, but I'd dealt with similar characters before and knew what they were capable of. "Whatever the explanation," Malcolm continued, "he has now joined the ranks of those whom the world should always fear most, those who were responsible for the Holocaust in the first place: fanatics.''
"The Mossad is full of them," Colonel Slayton said, "unlike most intelligence agencies. But they're being very careful not to use this character's name in communications that are not absolutely secure— they're determined to handle this internally."
"That is understandable," Fouché judged. "Ever since they entered the Turkish civil war on the side of the Kurds, there has been enormous tension between America and Israel. It may be that the Israelis had no choice, now that they are dependent on water that flows from Kurdish territory, but this does not change the fact that Turkey remains an American ally."
"I have checked CIA communications," Tarbell said. "To no one's great surprise, I am sure, they know less than we do. They are aware that the Israelis have a problem with one of their people but have no idea why. Still, they are interested. And when the CIA staggers blindly in the dark, well… unfortunate things have a way of occurring."
"Not to our people," Larissa said firmly. "The real thing to worry about is this Israeli. Who is he? How the hell did he get hold of the images in the first place?"
"And what is he intending to do about it?" Malcolm added. "These are all questions that we must answer. Not the Israelis, not the Americans, not anyone else. I want us to find this man, secure his copy of the images, and finish him."
The ruthless finality of this statement caught me off guard. "But — surely we can just hand him over to his people after we have the images," I said.
"No," Malcolm replied with the same chilling determination. "If he gets back to Israel, he'll spread rumors and stories that will be worse than the images themselves. If he vanishes — or better yet, if we can force him to tell his superiors that the images are actually fabrications before he vanishes — then and only then will it all blow over."
I glanced quickly from face to face. I knew that what Malcolm had said made sense, but I nonetheless found myself hoping that someone else would raise an objection.
None came. "Where do we begin?" Fouché asked solemnly.
"Unfortunately," Malcolm said, "if there were any more information in Price's New York residence, his wife would, I suspect, have turned it over to Gideon. Which leaves…" His face filled with deep reluctance.
"Los Angeles," Jonah said with a nod.
Slayton tapped the table. "It won't be easy — the city's in chaos, along with the rest of southern California."
"Water again," Eli agreed.
"Yes," Malcolm said, "but we have no choice. Set a course to approach Los Angeles from the sea, Colonel — I don't want to get tangled up with any of the National Guard or militia units. People who've been without adequate water for long enough can be worse than ethnic fanatics."
"Understood," Slayton replied, rising.
"Let's hope this will be simple," Malcolm said as the rest of us moved to follow Slayton. The last to go, I was almost out the door when I heard him mutter quietly, "By all means, let's hope once more for the impossible…"
CHAPTER 28
The developments which led to the "water wars" that have consumed the American Southwest for the last five years have been so well scrutinized that it seems unlikely anyone today could be unfamiliar with their details. True, such an assumption is belied by the fact that the same drastic suburban overdevelopment that originally brought violent chaos into the sunniest corner of the United States is today going on in other similarly warm but arid parts of the world; so perhaps in this instance — as in, I now believe, so many others — it's wrong to think that awareness of history is anything other than intellectual vanity. Whatever the case, my principal concern in these few pages is not to summarize the origins of those vicious conflicts but to tell what came of our efforts to find in water-hungry Los Angeles a connection between John Price and the unknown Mossad operative who had taken possession of the Stalin images and then become a fugitive from his own people.
Following Malcolm's directive, we avoided the skies above southern California, not because we were aware of any specific danger posed by such a route but precisely because the situation was so unpredictable. Throughout the region National Guard units — and on a few occasions even federal troops — were desperately trying to preserve order among battling gangs and militias, each of which believed that their particular town, city, or county held the most legitimate claim to the water they had all once shared. Such engagements might involve sticks and knives, but they were just as likely to involve tanks and handheld missiles captured by the militias during run-ins with state and federal troops; and while it was unlikely that any of these weapons could score a chance hit on our ship (particularly now that we could travel under a holographic cloak), it was best to indulge the better part of valor and approach from the sea. So we climbed back into the stratosphere for half an hour or so, then waited for dark before descending to cruising altitude above the Pacific near the island of Catalina.
During that descent we received a series of satellite images which told us that although the California National Guard was still very much in evidence on the streets of Los Angeles, the city itself was relatively calm south of the Santa Monica mountains. North of that line, however, our aerial reconnaissance revealed a patchwork of hot zones, indicating that the residents of the San Fernando Valley— one of the first places to feel the full effects of the region's water depletion — were rioting and engaging the authorities with the same crazed determination that had consumed them for years. Fortunately, our particular business lay in the fashionable west side of Los Angeles: John Price's appallingly tasteless home was situated in that equally tasteless city-within-a-city, Beverly Hills.