After several minutes with no sound but the slap of the water against the side of the raft, Joe spoke. “Where’s the driest place on earth?”
“I don’t know,” Kurt said, thinking. “The Atacama Desert maybe.”
“Next adventure we’re going there,” Joe said. “Or somewhere hot and dry.”
“I’m not sure the National Underwater and Marine Agency has a lot going on where it’s hot and dry,” Kurt said.
Joe shook his head. “Dirk and Al spent some time in the Sahara once.”
“True,” Kurt said. “I’m not sure they would recommend it though.”
“Hot and dry,” Joe said firmly. “I won’t take no for an answer.”
Kurt laughed. It really didn’t sound too bad right now.
He was painfully aware how close they’d come to dying. It wouldn’t have taken much to tilt the scales from life to death for either of them. Kurt knew his overconfidence about what their foes were doing was half the reason for that.
He looked over at Joe, who was finally beginning to show some color in his face.
“I was wrong,” he said to Joe.
Joe turned his head awkwardly. “What?”
“I was wrong about St. Julien,” Kurt added. “He’s a gourmet. He would never chow down at some all-you- can-eat buffet.”
Joe stared at him for a moment and then started laughing and coughing all at the same time. Kurt laughed too. He knew Joe understood what he was trying to say.
“We all screw up, Kurt,” he said. “You just do it bigger than the rest of us.”
Kurt nodded. It sure seemed that way.
He looked out over the surface of the water. Thirty yards away he saw the emergency locator beacon, riding the swells and flashing. He hoped rescue would come soon because there was still work to be done.
The way he saw it, Andras had screwed up even bigger than he had. He’d left Kurt alive and stirred the bitter embers of vengeance in his heart.
38
DJEMMA GARAND STOOD near the edge of the helipad on the false oil platform given the number 4. This platform contained the control center of his weapon and would be his command post if he ever needed to use it.
The control center sat three stories above the helipad, the glass enclosure of its main room jutting out like the bridge on a ship. At the moment Djemma’s attention lay elsewhere.
He stood, leaning up against a rail, in the shadows, his eyes hidden behind the ever-present green shield of the Ray-Bans he wore. Out in the center of the helipad, wilting under the blazing equatorial sun, stood the captured scientists from the various teams who had flocked to the lure he’d offered. The Azorean magnetic anomaly.
Djemma smiled at his own cunning. So far, all things were falling in line with his plan.
With the scientists forced to line up as if for inspection, he waited. Each time one of them tried to sit or get out of line, Andras or one of his men would march out and threaten them with reprisals far worse than standing in the sun. At all times a few men roamed the perimeter with machine guns in their hands.
Finally, when the moaning and complaining began to lessen, Andras came over to where Djemma rested in the shade.
“Leave them out there any longer and you’re going to fry their brains,” Andras said. “Which, if I’m not mistaken, isn’t what you brought them here for.”
Djemma turned to Andras. He would not respond to the man’s questions.
“There were thirty-eight experts in superconduction, particle physics, and electromagnetic energy on Santa Maria,” he said. “I count only thirty-three prisoners. Explain the discrepancy.”
Andras turned his head, spit over the side of the rig, and looked back at Djemma. “The French team took a core sample of the tower. It could have blown the whole operation before we made our move. I had to eliminate them. The Russian expert turned out to be a spy. She tried to escape twice. I killed her as well.”
Andras did not blink as he spoke, but he did not seem to like explaining himself.
“And Mathias?” Djemma asked.
“Your little key master forgot his place,” Andras said. “He questioned me in front of the others. I couldn’t allow that.”
For a moment Djemma was angry. He’d placed Mathias with Andras to watch him, perhaps to keep him under control. No doubt that was half the reason Andras had killed him.
Still, Djemma could not show his anger. Instead he began to laugh. “What leader could afford such insolence?”
He pushed off the rail and stepped away from Andras, walking out into the hot sun to address the assembled group.
By the time he’d reached a spot in front of them a trickle of sweat was running down the side of his face. The scientists looked as if they might soon pass out. Most were from cooler climates, America, Europe, Japan. Seeing their weakness, he took his sunglasses off. He wanted them to see his strength and the fire in his eyes.
“Welcome to Africa,” he said. “You are all intelligent people, so I will dispense with the games and secrecy. I am Djemma Garand, the president of Sierra Leone. You will be working for me.”
“Working on what?” one of the scientists asked. Apparently, they hadn’t steamed the starch out of everyone yet.
“You will be provided with the specifications and requirements of a particle accelerator I have built,” Djemma said. “You will have a single job: to make it more powerful. You will of course be paid for your work, much as I was once paid for working in the mines. For your efforts you will each receive three dollars a day.”
To his right one of the scientists, a man with short gray hair and uneven teeth, scoffed.
“I’m not working for you,” he said. “Not for three dollars a day or three million.”
Djemma paused. An American of course. No people of the world were less used to being powerless than Americans.
“That of course is your option,” he said, nodding to Andras.
Andras stepped forward and slammed a rifle butt into the man’s gut. The scientist crumpled to the deck, was dragged away toward the edge of the platform, and summarily thrown off.
His scream echoed as he fell and then stopped suddenly. The water was a hundred twenty feet below.
“Check on him,” Djemma said. “If he lived, renew our offer of employment.”
Andras motioned to a pair of his men and they double-timed it over to the stairwell. Meanwhile, the rest of the scientists stared at the edge over which their associate had just been thrown. A few covered their mouths; one of them went to her knees.
“In the meantime,” Djemma said, quite pleased that someone had been stupid enough to resist right off the bat, “I will explain our incentive program. One I know you will find most generous. You will be divided into four groups and given the same information to work with. The group that comes up with the best answer, the best way to boost the power of my system, that group will get to live.”
Their eyes snapped his way.
“One member from each of the remaining groups will die,” he finished.
With that, Djemma’s men moved in and began to separate them.
“One more thing,” Djemma said loudly enough to stop the proceedings. “You have seventy-two hours for your initial proposal. In the event I have no satisfactory answer by then, one member of each group will die, and we shall start again.”
