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She felt a sudden trembling shoot through her.
She didn't delude herself that this was a situation she could handle. She was in the hands of murderers. It surprised her that they would pretend to consult her about her own fate.
They must want something from her, though. Hesseltine's lean, weasely face had a look on it like something she would have scraped from a boot. She wondered how badly she wanted to live. What she was willing to do for it.
Hesseltine laughed at her: "Don't look that way, uh, Laura.
Stop worrying. You're safe now." Baptiste shot him a cyni- cal look from beneath heavy eyelids. A sudden sharp cascade of metallic pressure pops rang from the wall. Laura started like an antelope. One of the four sailors nearby languidly moved a checker piece with one forefinger.
She stared at Hesseltine, then took a cup from Baptiste and drank: It was tepid and sweet. Were they poisoning her? It didn't matter. She could die at their whim.
"My name is Laura Day Webster," she told them. "I'm an associate of Rizome Industries Group. I live in Galveston,
Texas." It all sounded so pathetically brittle and faraway.
"You're shivering," Baptiste observed. He leaned back- ward and turned up a thermostat on the bulkhead. Even here, in some sort of rec room, the bulkhead was grotesquely cluttered: a speaker grille, an air ionizer, an eight-socketed surge-protected power plug, a wall clock reading 12:17 Green- wich Mean Time.
"Welcome aboard the SSBN Thermopylae," Baptiste said.
Laura said nothing.
"Cat got your tongue?" Hesseltine said. Baptiste laughed."Come on," Hesseltine said. "You were chattering away like a magpie when you thought I was a goddamn data pirate."
"We are not pirates, Mrs. Webster," Baptiste soothed.
"We are the world police."
"You're not Vie
"He means the real police," Hesseltine said impatiently.
"Not that crowd of lead-assed bureaucrats."
Laura rubbed one bloodshot eye. "If you're police, then am I under arrest?"
Hesseltine and Baptiste shared a manly chuckle over her naivete. "We are not bourgeois legalists," Baptiste said.
"We do not issue arrests."
"Cardiac arrests," Hesseltine said, tapping his teeth with his thumbnail. He truly believed he was being fu
"I saw you on Singapore TV," Hesseltine told her sud- denly. "You said you opposed the data havens, wanted them shut down. But you sure went about it in a screwy way. The haven bankers-my former coworkers, you know-laughed their asses off when they saw you handing that democratic guff to Parliament. "
He poured himself tea. "Of course, they're mostly refugees now, and a pretty good number of the bastards are on the bottom of the sea. No thanks to you, though-you were trying to kiss them into submission. And you, a rootin-tootin'
cowboy Texan, too. It's a good thing they didn't try that at the Alamo. "
Another sailor made a move in the checker game, and the third one swore in response. Laura flinched.
"Pay them no mind," Baptiste told her quickly. "They're off duty."
"What?" Laura said blankly.
"Off duty," he said impatiently, as if it embarrassed him.
"They are Blue Crew. We are Red Crew."
"Oh ... what's that they're playing?"
He shrugged. "Uckers."
"Uckers? What's that?"
"It's a kind of ludo. "
Hesseltine assembled, aimed, and fired a grin at her. "Sub crews," he said. "A very special breed. Highly trained. A
disciplined elite."
The four Blue Crewmen hunched closer over their board.
They refused to look at him.
"It's an odd situation," said Baptiste. He was talking about her, not himself. "We don't quite know what to do with you. You see, we exist to protect people like you."
"You do?"
"We are the cutting edge of the emergent global order."
"Why did you bring me here?" Laura said. "You could have shot me. Or left me to drown."
"Oh, come on," said Hesseltine.
"He's one of our finest operatives," explained Baptiste.
"A real artist."
"Thanks "
"Of course he would rescue a pretty woman at the end of his assignment-he couldn't resist a final dramatic grace note!"
"Just the kind of guy I am," Hesseltine admitted.
"That's it?" Laura said quietly. "You saved me just on a whim? After killing all those people?"
Hesseltine stared at her. "You're go
Those Yung Soo Chim guys had background checks like nobody's business, and they watched my ass like a hawk."
He leaned back. "But will I get credit? Hell, no, I won't."
He stared at his cup. "I mean, that's part of the whole undercover biz, no credit
"It was a very slick operation," said Baptiste. "Compare it to Grenada. Our attack on the Singapore criminals was surgical, almost bloodless."
Laura realized something. "You want me to be grateful."
"Well, yeah," said Hesseltine, looking up. "A little of that wouldn't be too out of line, after all the effort we put into it."
He smiled at Baptiste. "Look at that face! You should've heard her in Parliament, going on and on about Grenada. The carpet bombing took out this big mansion the Rastas gave her. It really pissed her off."
It was as if he'd stabbed her. "You killed Winston Stubbs in my house! While I was standing next to him. With my baby in my arms."
"Oh," Baptiste said, relaxing ostentatiously. "The Stubbs killing. That wasn't us. That was one of Singapore's."
"I don't believe it," Laura said, sagging-back. "We got a
FACT communique taking credit!"
"A set of initials means very little," said Baptiste. "FACT
was an old front-group. Nothing compared to our modern operations.... In truth, it was Singapore's Merlion-Commandos.
I don't think the Singapore civilian government ever knew of their actions."
"Lots of ex-paras, Berets, Spetsnaz, that sort of thing,"
Hesseltine said. "They tend to run a little wild. I mean, face it-these are guys who gave their lives to the art of warfare.
Then all of a sudden, you know, Abolition, Vie
One day they're the shield of their nation, next day they're bums, got their walking papers, that's about it."
"Men who once commanded armies, and billions in government funds,"
Baptiste recited mournfully. "Now, nonpersons. Spurned.
Purged. Even vilified."
"By lawyers!" said Hesseltine, becoming animated. "And chickenshit peaceniks! Who would have thought it, you know?
But when it came, it was so sudden...."
"Armies belong to nation-states," said Baptiste. "It is hard to establish true military loyalty to a more modern, global institution.... But now that we own our own country- the Republic of Mali-recruiting has picked up remarkably."
"And it helps, too, that we happen to be the global good guys," Hesseltine said airily. "Any dumbass mere will fight for pay for Grenada or Singapore, or some jungle jabber
African regime. But we get committed perso
For justice." He leaned back, crossing his arms.
She knew she could not take much more of this. She was holding herself together somehow, but it was a waking night- mare. She would have understood it if they'd been heel- clicking Nazi executioners ... but to meet with this smarmy little Frenchman and this empty-eyed good-old-boy psychotic.
... The utter banality, the soullessness of it ...
She could feel the iron walls closing in on her. In a minute she was going to scream.