Collateral Damage

“I don’t think so,” said Kharon.

“Eh, always an optimist,” said the Venezuelan. He took a long pull from his cigar and exhaled. “You are good with science, but not with people’s opinions, I think.”

“Perhaps,” said Kharon. “You have the key for me?”

The princess rose from her couch and walked to the settee across the room. She was a real princess, the daughter of a tribal leader whose claim to some sort of local royalty extended back several centuries. But that claim aside, the real attraction for the rebels following her were her looks. At thirty-five, she had the body of a woman ten years younger. But assuming that she was just a pretty face being used by others would have been a dangerous underestimation. The presence of the Venezuelan was proof of that. He was clearly a counterbalance to the Europeans and especially the Americans, who strongly suspected that his government was trying to curry favor with the eventual wi

They were right, of course.

The princess returned with a small thumb drive. Kharon gave it only a precursory glance as he took it.

“The man who delivered it was very scruffy,” she said. “You really should deal with a better class of people.”

Kharon ignored the comment. “The rest of the money will be in the accounts by this evening,” he told her. “I appreciate your help.”

“Maybe you should stay until then,” suggested the Venezuelan.

Kharon turned his head and looked at the short, fat man.

“Señor Sifontes, are you suggesting I would cheat the princess?” he said coldly in Spanish.

“Oh, no, no, you misunderstand.” Sifontes smiled weakly and turned to the princess. “He’s worried that I think he’s going to cheat you.”

“Are you?” she asked Kharon.

“My integrity should be beyond doubt.”

“When you deal with Russians, one wonders.”

“The Russians have their pluses and minuses,” said Kharon. He put the thumb drive in his pocket.

“I had heard that there were government planes near the city that was attacked,” she said.

“I have heard that as well,” said Kharon. “Do you think they made the attack, or the allies?”

“It would be convenient if they did. But from what I have heard, this was not the case.”

“I see.”

“I was wondering if you knew why the government chose that time to attack.” The princess stared at him. “They have not flown their airplanes for several weeks, and now yesterday they come up. Perhaps they made the allied planes miss.”

“I wouldn’t put it past them,” said Kharon.

“You have many contacts.” The princess sat down on the couch, folding one of her legs beneath her. “I’m told you were south just recently.”

“Who said that? The Russians?”

“I hear things.” She waved her hand.

It had to be the Russian, he thought. Or had the Americans realized what he was doing?

Impossible. He would be dead by now. The fact that he could move around freely proved that they didn’t know he existed.

“I do my share of traveling,” Kharon told her.

“To both sides.”

“As I’ve said several times, I don’t care for either cause. Whatever advances my own goals are all I care about.”

“Some people think you’re a spy,” said the Venezuelan.

“Who?” Kharon glared at Sifontes.

“Some people,” said Sifontes. “I don’t doubt that you are loyal.”

“I am loyal to myself. That, I freely admit. In this case, our goals were similar.”

“Stealing information from the Americans did not necessarily help my people,” said the princess.

“But the money did.”

“Yes.” She smiled at him.

“I will stay if you wish.”

“Oh, it’s not necessary. Your payments have always arrived in the past.”

“This one will as well. Until we have the pleasure of seeing each other again, Princess.”

He nodded, smiled as evilly as possible at the Venezuelan, then left the suite.

Alone in the elevator, Kharon took the small USB key from his pocket. It looked like the right device, but he would not put it past the princess—or the Venezuelan—to try and cheat him somehow.

He smiled as he left the building, giving the surveillance cameras a big, toothy grin.

The princess was wrong. He was not trying to steal information about the American weapons. On the contrary. The USB key was one that his agents had used against them.

The Russian agents, to be more specific. Kharon didn’t trust them to dispose of it on their own and had insisted that he get it back. The princess had saved him the trip to Sicily—a necessary precaution, as he didn’t want to be linked to the “accident” in any way.

Not yet.

He crossed the street to a second hotel, the Awahi Sahara. Aimed primarily at businesspeople, the hotel had fallen on hard times since the start of the second revolution; it was less than a quarter full, and room rates had been slashed to thirty euros a night, nearly a tenth of what they had been before the war.

But Kharon hadn’t come for a room. He went straight to the business center at the rear of the lobby, slipped a key card into the door lock and went inside. An older Italian gentleman sat at the computer at the far end of the row, flipping slowly through e-mail.

Kharon pulled the chair out in front of a computer. He moved the mouse to bring up the system screen, then took the USB drive from his pocket. With a glance toward the old Italian—he appeared absorbed in his work—Kharon pushed the key into the USB slot at the rear of the CPU.

The key didn’t register as a drive.

So far so good.

He brought up the browser and typed the general address of Twitter. Entering an account name and password he had composed more or less at random, he did a search for #revoltinLibya.

The Tweet he needed was three screens deep. He copied the characters, then pasted them into the browser. That brought him to a Web page filled with numbers.

It was a self-test page, allowing him to ping the USB disk. A set of numbers appeared on the screen. He looked at the last seven: 8–23–1956.

Ray Rubeo’s birthday. It was the right key.

He backed out, then moved the mouse to the Windows icon at the lower left of the screen. He went to the search line and typed run, adding the address of a small program he had installed on the computer several days before.

When he was finished, the unedited video of the Sabre bombing mission had been uploaded to half a dozen sites.

After his mother died, Neil Kharon had gone east to live with an aunt and uncle. They were older, and not particularly warm people. Alone and isolated, he had concentrated on his schoolwork. It was an inverse acting out—his way of rebelling was to study harder and learn everything he could.

He soaked up knowledge. He loved math and science. Though not rich, his guardians had enough sense to get him into MIT for undergraduate work, and then, with the help of another relative, to Cambridge. From there, he studied on his own, making co

Russia especially. There, still barely twenty-one, he had been hired to work with a state research lab. At first he didn’t know, or at least could pretend that he didn’t know, that his real paymasters were officials in the Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki, or SVR. Within a few months it was obvious. By then he no longer cared.

He was a star for them, a hired gun capable of anything. He learned to steal, to sabotage, and to live in the shadows. Always with one goal—someday he would know enough to ruin the man he blamed for his mother’s death.

The Russians had been most helpful, paying him extremely well and, for the most part, allowing him to work where and when he wanted. They, too, were interested in Rubeo’s inventions, though obviously for different reasons. An entire team had been set up to target them. Kharon had largely abandoned the team once the Sabres were discovered headed for Libya; the Russians did not particularly like his independence, but he was too important to be crossed. They treated him as a petulant child to be indulged—a particularly useful attitude for Kharon.