“Pacific Rim Forum,” Tony said. “And it starts in about fifteen hours.”
There ain’t nothing like a late night fuck and a late night joint, thought Smiley Lopez. The girl was in the other room, still sleeping off the tequila. She might not remember the ride, he flattered himself, but she’d be sore in the morning. The fatty was in his hand and he took another puff, put his feet up on the little table, and used the remote to flip on the television. HBO, Cinemax (he called it “Skinemax”), Showtime, and still there wasn’t a goddamn thing on at three o’clock in the morning. He flipped through channels until he came to ESPN-something-or-other. They were playing reruns of fights, but not boxing. It was that other shit, the fighting where you can hit with your knees and elbows and shit. Smiley liked that sort of fighting. It was more like the street.
His cell phone rang. He was expecting a call from some of his soldiers, but this was a different number. “Yo,” he said, knowing who it would be.
“What the fuck’s going on?” the angry voice on the line snapped.
Smiley checked the clock on the cable box. “They shoulda finished it right about now, homes. You can ease up.”
“No, I can’t,” the other man said. “Your little homies” —the word was foreign, clumsy, an insult on his lips, and meant to be so— “screwed it up. For the third time!”
Smiley felt a buzz kill coming on and it annoyed him. “Goddamn,
“Well figure out how!” the man demanded. “Or I’ll make sure your guys inside burn.” Smiley sat up, his buzz gone in an instant. “Listen to me,
“All right,” the other man said. “All right. I know he’s tough, but you keep after it, or you don’t get paid and I will make sure your boys go away.” He hung up.
Smiley took another puff.
Old men don’t sleep much. Martin Webb remembered his father telling him that when Martin was a much younger man. Though he was now approaching seventy-three, Martin’s mind and memory were as sharp as ever, and he could see the old house in Silver Springs, when he’d bring his kids to visit the old man. He’d stay up late working on the financials for some company or other, long after his dad had gone to bed, only to find his dad waking up and coming down for a glass of warm milk. They’d talk then; those were some of the best talks they’d ever had.
Now Martin was the old man. Even his son Max was in his fifties, and when the family came to visit him in Georgetown and Martin got up for his own glass of warm milk, it was more often his grandson Jake he’d find up, though of course Jake wasn’t doing financials.
At the moment, though, he was alone, and instead of padding downstairs for milk he had called room service.
Old men don’t sleep much, he told himself again. But he knew that he had reason to be losing sleep.
The economy. The goddamned economy. It sat there like an engine that ought to start but wouldn’t. No, that wasn’t the right analogy. Better to say hung there like an airplane whose engine wouldn’t start. The plane was losing altitude, gliding on the last of its momentum, and any minute it would plunge.
“That’s about right,” Martin said out loud to his quiet hotel room.
He was the engineer, the man who was supposed to fix that engine. So far, he had tried every tool in his toolkit: interest rates, of course, which served as his hammer, screwdriver, and wrench. He’d employed the bully pulpit to shame the current administration into fiscal restraint. He’d hedged his bets against overseas markets. All to no good. The Dow looked like a downward staircase. Unemployment was up, and so was inflation, and those two things should not go together. According to last month’s index, consumer spending had dipped, and the real estate market was slowing. Consumer confidence — Martin privately called it consumer overconfidence — and the housing bubble were really all that stood between the country and an economic crisis it had not faced in seventy years.
Martin Webb was being humble with himself. Others would say that a third barrier stood between the country and disaster: Martin Webb. Martin was the Chairman of the Federal Reserve. He was not just the grand old man of the economy; in the eyes of many, he
He just didn’t know how.
The warm milk came, and the room service attendant went. Martin sat down and sipped. Right about now was when he needed his son Max or his grandson Jake to stroll in and chat. Lacking Jake, he turned on the television, which bathed him in its hypnotic glow. He flipped channels until his eye was caught by a sports channel. He stopped, and watched two warriors pound each other with tiny gloves on their hands. As the commentator indicated, these were reruns of previous fights, all being broadcast as the prelude to the fights the following night. He’d seen this sort of fighting before — mixed martial arts, they called it — and he admired it. Not so different from the economy, really, with an interesting combination of subtlety and brute strength.
He drank his milk and watched.
8. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 3 A.M. AND 4 A.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME
The last fifteen minutes had been Christmas come early for Tony Almeida. Seth’s code cracking had been brilliant — and it had been followed by quick work from CTU field agents and techs who’d bugged Sungkar’s house. Thanks to their work, Tony was now sitting at his own desk listening to a conversation between Sungkar, on his home phone, and an unknown associate.
“. and you’re sure the other side can deliver?” Sungkar was asking.
“Their reputation is solid. They want the arms and in return they can deliver a computer program that
will do the job.”
“In each country?”
“Yes.”
“And the arms, we can get them?” Sungkar queried.
“I have a contact.”
“We buy the arms, and then trade the arms for the virus,” Sungkar summed up. “Let’s proceed.”
Tony saw the pattern: Riduan Bashir provides the money, Sungkar uses the funds to purchase arms, which he then trades for this computer program, and Jemaah Islamiyah uses this virus to target the Pacific Rim Forum.
The man named Bacharuddin Wahid read an address, which Tony scribbled down. He reminded himself that neither of them had met this arms dealer, and a plan began to form.
Dan Pascal turned his Crown Vic onto Sweetzer just north of Wilshire Boulevard. His radio chattered with updates as LAPD units rolled into position. Two units were ahead of the target and two were behind. Pascal snatched up his radio mike. “Go,” he said.
He stepped on the accelerator and reached Wilshire in a second, just as the blue Maxima passed him. Two cruisers pulled onto the street behind the Maxima, their lights going bright. The other two cruisers pulled out in front of the Maxima, angling themselves to block the street. The blue car hit its brakes and pulled up short. Pascal and the two follow cars pulled up behind, blocking its retreat. Pascal switched his radio mike to PA, threw open his door, and dragged himself out, drawing his Smith & Wesson.45 at the same time. “Stick your hands out of the
