Death Echo

Mac wiped his eyes with his T-shirt, and looked around the engine room. When it came time to change the zincs, frustration would be the order of the day. With those big diesels crowding the space, even something as simple as checking fill levels on various tanks required a contortionist.

The only good news was that the black-water tank had a clear stripe to let everyone know when it was getting close to time to pump out. He checked the other tanks as best he could, tapping and listening and tapping again.

The first locator bug was attached to one of the colorful wires snaking from the various subsystems to the breaker board.

The second beacon was stuck to the back side of the water tank. A third was in a toolbox that held spare fuses.

A fourth was taped to the bottom side of the duckboards that covered the bilge.

Talk about redundant systems and overkill, Mac thought as he found a fifth locator bug. Someone really wants to know where this bucket is at all times.

He pulled out the cell phone that Faroe had given him, took photos of everything, and sent them to St. Kilda. Wiping his eyes again, he hoped that he’d found every bug. He really doubted it, but a man could hope.

And keep his weapon handy.

31

DAY FOUR

MANHATTAN

10:38 A.M.

Ambassador Steele frowned at one of the many electronic screens that filled all but the doorways and window walls of his oddly shaped office. His silver hair gleamed in the room’s full-spectrum lighting.

“Is research saying that all of these bugs came from different sources?” Steele asked.

The ruby in Dwayne’s pinky ring gleamed with each movement of his elegant, dark hands over the computer keys. The digital photos Faroe had sent weren’t museum quality, but they got the job done.

“Not all of them,” Dwayne said. “The one we planted on Blackbird in Singapore came from the good old U.S. of A. The others didn’t. Of course, someone could have bought any or all of the bugs at some second-world spy bazaar or first-world swap meet. Two of those trinkets are almost old enough to vote.”

Steele looked at him sharply.

“Joke,” Dwayne said without looking away from his computer. “The bigger they are, the older they are. One of these is downright clunky. Of course, it will still work when the newer, thinner, more finicky models go dead.”

“Basically,” Steele said, “anyone could have planted the bugs on Blackbird at any time since the engines and tanks were put in place.”

“Pretty much.”

Steele muttered something in Urdu.

Dwayne winced. When Steele started talking in tongues, some asses were going to get chapped.

“I’ll let you tell Joe Faroe how little we have,” Steele said.

One of those chapped asses would be Dwayne’s. Faroe never had taken failure with grace.

32

DAY FOUR

NANAIMO, B.C.

MORNING

A ctivate sleeper.

Only two words had been texted to Taras Demidov’s cell phone. Two words that conjured a world long lost, when only two powers ruled the planet.

Or seemed to.

And nothing was ever as it seemed.

Demidov erased the text message and drove his small white Japanese car off the Horseshoe Bay ferry at Nanaimo, Vancouver Island. His wallet was thick with Canada’s modestly colorful currency, his pockets clanked with one-and two-dollar coins.

Best of all, the last time he had checked the locator numbers, he was still ahead of Blackbird. The cautious captain apparently had done everything but dismantle the yacht to reassure himself that there was no contraband aboard.

Demidov crawled in a line of vehicles until he got onto the bypass around Nanaimo. He drove north toward Lantzville, a small coastal community that had been buried under the sprawling waves of housing developments and malls surging out from Nanaimo. His destination was just beyond Lantzville, in an undeveloped area overlooking Nanoose Bay.

When he held down the accelerator, his small rental whined. Reluctantly the car increased speed. In the old days, he would have traveled under diplomatic immunity in a powerful black Mercedes. He still had the diplomatic passport-and the connections to make it stick-but he preferred using the fake Canadian identity.

It was more anonymous.

As a Canadian, his cover would probably hold for the return trip into the United States, where he would disappear back into the loose diplomatic community representing the Russian Federation. Such ease of movement was difficult for people with foreign diplomatic credentials, particularly those from nations who might be unfriendly to the U.S. Unfriendly diplomats were required to seek formal permission to travel more than twenty-five or fifty miles from their consulates or embassies.

Demidov amused himself by thinking about the multiple copies of his itinerary he wouldn’t be filing.

Even if he had to blow this cover, he could slip back into the U.S. through the woods east of Blaine, Washington, and return to Seattle with its consular protection. Russian security officers paid professional marijuana smugglers for current maps of the sensors and guard posts on the American side. Despite the Homeland Security Act, illegal passage between Canada and the U.S. was easy. Only legitimate citizens had difficulty and long waits.

He switched screens on the cell phone he’d left on the passenger seat. Nothing unexpected.

His target was being slow, if predictable. After a delay in American waters, Blackbird had resumed its northerly course. But if the big American had found the bug that had been put aboard in Asia, he hadn’t disabled it. Moscow Center was locked on Blackbird’s locator signal. Everything was on track.

Demidov was locked on the location of a sleeper who had been under so long he wondered if she still spoke Russian. To find her address, he followed the electronic maps on a device attached to the dashboard. It was amusing to have so much accurate, on-the-ground information about local roads at his fingertips. Even where the technology existed in Russia, his country wasn’t nearly so helpful to visitors.

Some things never changed. Paranoia was one. Staying alive was another. Demidov understood the necessity of the first for the second.

The colorful little display panel on his dashboard directed him to a small, weather-beaten house in a grove of cedar and alder trees overlooking Nanoose Bay. Demidov lowered the window, turned off the ignition, and simply sat, letting the sounds of the place wash over him.