Islands in the Net

"Sorry, I thought you were talking to her." Laura paused.

"Can't you do anything?"

"The situation seems clear," he said. "An `inside job,' as they say. One of the pirate groups had collaborators on this island. Probably the Singapore Islamic Bank, famous for treachery. They had the chance to kill Stubbs and took it."

He shut down the screen. "During my flight into Galveston, I accessed the file in Grenada, on Stubbs, that was mentioned in the FACT communiqué. Very interesting to read. The killers exploited the nature of data-haven banking-that the coded files are totally secure, even against the haven pirates themselves. Only a haven would turn a haven's strength against itself in this humiliating way."

"You must be able to help us, though. "

Voroshilov shrugged. "The local police can carry out cer- tain actions. Tracing the local ships, for instance-see if any . were close offshore, and who hired them. But I am glad to say that this was not an act of politically motivated terrorism.

I would classify this as a gangster killing. The FACT

communiqué is only an attempt to muddy the waters. A

Vie

"But a man was killed here!"

"It was a murder, yes. But not a threat to the political order of the Vie

Laura was shocked. "Then what good are you?"

Voroshilov looked hurt. "Oh, we are very much good at easing international tension. But we are not a global police force." He emptied his teacup and set it aside. "Oh, Moscow has been pressing for a true global police force for many years now. But Washington stands in the way. Always trifling about Big Brother, civil liberties, privacy laws. It's an old story."

"You can't help us at all."

Voroshilov stood up. "Ms. Webster, you invited these gangsters into your home, I didn't. If you had called us first we would have urged you against it in the strongest possible terms." He hefted his terminal. "I need to interview your husband next. Thank you for the tea."

Laura left him and went upstairs to the telecom office.

Emerson and the mayor were sitting together on one of the rattan couches, with the satisfied look of people who had beaten a debate into submission. Magruder was forking his way through a belated Tex-Mex breakfast of migas and refried beans.

Laura sat down in a chair across the table and leaned forward, vibrating with anger. "Well, you two look comfortable."

"You've been talking to the Vie

"He's no goddamn use at all."

"KGB," Emerson sniffed.

"He says it's not political, not their jurisdiction."

Emerson looked. surprised. "Hmmph. That's a first for them."

Laura stared at her. "Well, what do we do about it?"

Magruder set down a glass of milk. "We're shutting you down, Laura."

"Just for a while," Emerson added.

Laura's jaw dropped. "Shutting down my Lodge? Why? Why?"

"It's all worked out," Magruder said. "See, if it's criminal, then the media get to swarm all over us. They'd play it up big, and it'd be worse for tourism than a shark scare. But if we shut you down, then it looks like spook business.

Classified. And nobody looks too deep when Vie

Laura glared at Emerson. "So that's it? You shut down the scandal, and David and I pay the price?"

Emerson smiled gently. "Don't be impatient, dear. Our project isn't over because of this one attack. Don't forget- it's because of attacks like this that the pirates agreed to meet in the first place."

Laura was surprised. She sat down. Hope appeared amidst her confusion. "So you're still pursuing that? Despite all this?"

"Of course, Laura. The problem has scarcely gone away, has it? No, it's closer to us than ever before. We're lucky we didn't lose you-you, a very valued associate."

Laura looked up, surprised. Debra Emerson's face was set quite calmly-the face of a woman simply relaying the truth.

Not flattery-a fact. Laura sat up straighter. "Well, it was an attack on Rizome, wasn't it? A direct attack on our company."

"Yes. They found a weakness in us-the F.A.C.T. did, or the people behind that alias." Emerson looked grave. "There must have been a security leak. That deadly aircraft-I sus- pect it's been waiting in ambush for days. Someone knew of the meeting and was watching this place."

"A security leak within Rizome?"

"We mustn't jump to conclusions. But we will have to find out the truth. It's more important than this Lodge, Laura.

Much more important." She paused. "We can come to terms with the Vie

Now we need someone to smooth the waters. In Grenada."

Rizome's Chattahoochee Retreat was in the foothills of the

Smokies, about sixty miles northeast of Atlanta. Eight hun- dred acres of wooded hills in a valley with a white stony creek that was dry this year. Chattahoochee was _a favorite of . the Central Committee; it was close enough to the city for convenience, and boondocky enough for people to stay out of the Committee's collective face.

New recruits were often brought here-in fact this was where Emily had first introduced her to David Webster. Back in the old stone farmhouse, the one without the geodesics.

Laura couldn't look at these Chattahoochee hills without re- membering that night: David, a stranger, tall and thin and elegant in midnight blue, with a drink in his hand and black hair streaming down his back.

In fact everybody in that party, all the sharper recruits anyway, had gone out of their way to dress in penthouse elegance. To go against the grain a bit, to show they weren't going to be socialized all that easily, thank you. But here they were, years later, out in the Georgia woods with the Central

Committee, not new recruits but full-fledged associates, playing for keeps.

Of course the Committee perso

You could tell the' importance of this meeting by the elabo- rate informality of their dress. Normal problems they would have run through in Atlanta, standard boardroom stuff, but this Grenada situation was a genuine crisis. Therefore, the whole Committee were wearing their Back-slapping Hick look, a kind of Honest Abe the Rail-Splitter image. Frayed denim jeans, fla

Garcia-Meza, a hefty Mexican industrialist who looked like he could bite tenpe

It was fu

Lodge. Cullen was a biochemist, in construction plastics mostly, a nice enough guy. He was a great caretaker Rizome

CEO, because you trusted him instinctively-but he didn't much come across as an alley fighter. Since' his appointment he'd taken to wearing a gray fedora perched on the back of his head. Less like a hat than a halo or crown. It was fu

Cullen's whole face had changed. With his square chin and broad nose, and mouth gone a little severe, he was starting to look like a black George Washington. The original, primeval

George Washington, not the recent black president by the same name.