"One attempts to be philosophical about it," he said, crossing his arms and running one hand through his beard. "And yet philosophy only sharpens the indictment. You have read Camus? 'A single sentence will suffice for modern man: He fornicated and read the papers.' We must now change this sentence a bit, I think: 'He masturbated and logged on to the Internet.' " Fouché's bushy brows arched high. "But perhaps the order of activity in that statement is wrong, eh?" He tried to at least chuckle at what, under other circumstances, might have been an amusing thought; but just then neither he nor I — nor, certainly, Malcolm — could quite muster the enthusiasm.
Several silent minutes later Larissa entered, bearing news that, if not uplifting, was at least somewhat encouraging: Tarbell had been able to identify a man in the general vicinity of Paris who regularly sold stolen technological secrets and advanced weaponry to the Israeli government through the Mossad. It seemed more than likely that, as Eshkol's flying destination had been Paris, he intended to contact this man, who, according to Leon's research, was capable of laying hands on almost any sort of hardware — including miniaturized nuclear devices. The dealer lived in and conducted his business out of an expansive lakefront estate near the medieval city of Troyes, southeast of Paris in the Champagne province. So we maintained our heading and increased our pace, perfectly aware that the likelihood of the dealer surviving any encounter with Eshkol was slim.
Swift as we were, though, we were not swift enough. Our ship had barely reached the rolling landscape around Troyes when Leon began to pick up French police reports concerning a murder at the home of the arms dealer. Given the victim's occupation, the matter was being kept very quiet, though even in their (supposedly) secure communications the police admitted that they had no leads at alclass="underline" apparently the Israelis were in no rush to acknowledge either that they had done extensive business with the dead man or that one of their own operatives might have been responsible for his death. There was nothing for us to do but program our monitoring system to keep a close watch on all sales of airline tickets for journeys originating in France; by cross-referencing with other databases according to the system already set up by Tarbell and the Kupermans, we could reasonably hope to discover where Eshkol intended to go next.
That revelation, when it came, was more than a little surprising for some of us: "Kuala Lumpur?" I repeated after Tarbell broke the news. "Malaysia? He's going into the middle of a full-scale war—"
"Ah-ah." Leon wagged a finger. "A 'United Nations intervention,' please, Gideon. They are very particular about that."
"All right," I said, irritated. "He's going into the middle of a United Nations intervention that's turned into the biggest regional bloodbath since Vietnam? What the hell for? Is he trying to get himself killed?"
"You are the psychiatrist, Gideon," Fouché said. "That is really a question we should be asking you, non?"
I took a light but fast swipe at him, but he dodged it with the impressive agility I'd seen him demonstrate in Afghanistan. "This isn't funny," I declared. "I hope nobody's thinking that we're going there?"
"Why not?" Larissa asked.
"Into the middle of the Malaysian war!"
"Ah-ah," Tarbell said again. "It's not a—"
"Leon, will you shut up?" None of them seemed in the least apprehensive, a fact that was wearing on my nerves. "Do I have to remind you that every Western power currently has troops in Malaysia? Real troops — not militias, not police, armies. And the Malaysians have become so damned crazed from two years of fighting that they're actually giving those armies a run for their money. You don't expect me to waltz into the middle of that?"
"Darling?" Larissa cooed with a little laugh, coming up behind me and putting her arms around my neck. "You're not telling me you're afraid, are you?"
"Of course I'm afraid!" I cried, which only amused her further. "I'm sorry, but there's only so much you can ask of a person, and this—"
"This is necessary." It was Malcolm, ready with another piece of discouraging but unarguable information: "We have to go, Gideon. There's only one thing that can be drawing Eshkol to Kuala Lumpur. The Malaysians have been financing their war effort in part through one of the most extensive black market systems ever seen — they're laundering Third World drug money, trafficking in everything from rare animals to human beings, and doing a huge business in stolen information technology and databases. None of this, however, will interest Eshkol. He'll want something else, something that will have originated, unless I'm mistaken, in Japan." By now all jocularity had departed the table. "The Japanese economy, of course, never really rebounded from the '07 crash. Like the Malaysians, they've had to use whatever methods have been available to organize even a modest recovery. Certainly, they've had neither the money nor the resources to update their energy infrastructure — they still depend primarily on nuclear power and haven't been able to phase out their breeder reactors."
Eli suddenly clutched his forehead. "Breeder reactors," he said, apparently getting a point that was still very obscure to me.
"What?" I asked quickly. "What the hell's a 'breeder reactor'?"
"A nuclear reactor that makes usable plutonium out of waste uranium," Jonah said. "Seemed a very promising idea at one time."
"An idea that was abandoned by almost every country in the world," Malcolm went on, "because of safety problems — and because of the enormous temptation that copious amounts of plutonium lying around in civilian installations poses for terrorists." Malcolm looked at me pointedly. "As well as for the people who do business with terrorists. Japanese black marketeers — without, supposedly, the connivance of their government — have been regularly selling large quantities of their excess plutonium to such people. In—"
"In Kuala Lumpur," I said, falling into a chair in resignation.
"Actually, no," Jonah said. "The U.N. has control over the capital. Most of the serious black marketeering goes on in the Genting Highlands that overlook the city — the old gambling resort. But Kuala Lumpur's the only place the Allies will permit planes to land, since they control both the city and the airport. Eshkol will head there first, probably masquerading as some kind of humanitarian worker, then make his way through the lines and into the high country."
I took the news as best I could, letting my head fall onto the table and drawing several long, deep breaths. "So what's Malaysian food like?" I mumbled.
"I doubt if you'll have a chance to try it," Tarbell answered. "There is a war going on there, you know…"
CHAPTER 35
There was a time when I contemplated the ecological effects of African tribal wars like the ones I have been observing for the last nine months with horrified fascination. I was aware, of course, that this reaction was due largely to the images of those conflicts that were being circulated by the world's news services; yet even as I acknowledged such manipulation, I remained as riveted and moved as was the rest of the world, enough so that I ignored the much more seriously destructive campaigns that were being waged against rain forests in other parts of the world by a constellation of lumber, agricultural, and livestock companies — companies that were vital parts of larger corporations that owned many of the news services that were keeping the public's attention focused on places such as Africa in the first place. The rate of destruction in those other rain forests — which of course were just as vital to the general health of the planet as their African counterparts — was far in excess of anything that such characters as my friend Chief Dugumbe and his enemies could do during even their most bitter engagements; but jobs were jobs and trade was trade, and so the world saw nothing of that more extensive defoliation save for occasional glimpses captured by maverick journalists.