Killing Time

around Troyes when Leon began to pick up French police reports concerning a murder at the home of the arms dealer. Given the victim's occupation, the matter was being kept very quiet, though even in their (supposedly) secure communications the police admitted that they had no leads at all: apparently the Israelis were in no rush to acknowledge either that they had done extensive business with the dead man or that one of their own operatives might have been responsible for his death. There was nothing for us to do but program our monitoring system to keep a close watch on all sales of airline tickets for journeys originating in France; by cross-referencing with other databases according to the system already set up by Tarbell and the Kupermans, we could reasonably hope to discover where Eshkol intended to go next.

That revelation, when it came, was more than a little surprising for some of us: 'Kuala Lumpur?' I repeated after Tarbell broke the news. 'Malaysia? He's going into the middle of a full-scale war—'

'Ah-ah.' Leon wagged a finger. 'A 'United Nations intervention,' please, Gideon. They are very particular about that.'

'All right,' I said, irritated. 'He's going into the middle of a United Nations intervention that's turned into the biggest regional bloodbath since Vietnam? What the hell for? Is he trying to get himself killed?'

'You are the psychiatrist, Gideon,' Fouche said. 'That is really a question we should be asking you, non?'

I took a light but fast swipe at him, but he dodged it with the impressive agility I'd seen him demonstrate in Afghanistan. 'This isn't funny,' I declared. 'I hope nobody's thinking that we're going there?'

'Why not?' Larissa asked.

'Into the middle of the Malaysian war!'

'Ah-ah,' Tarbell said again. 'It's not a—'

'Leon, will you shut up?' None of them seemed in the least apprehensive, a fact that was wearing on my nerves. 'Do I have to remind you that every Western power currently has troops in Malaysia? Real troops — not militias, not police, armies. And the Malaysians have become so damned crazed from two years of fighting that they're actually giving those armies a run for their money. You don't expect me to waltz into the middle of that?'

'Darling?' Larissa cooed with a little laugh, coming up behind me and putting her arms around my neck. 'You're not telling me you're afraid, are you?'

'Of course I'm afraid!' I cried, which only amused her further. 'I'm sorry, but there's only so much you can ask of a person, and this—'

'This is necessary.' It was Malcolm, ready with another piece of discouraging but unarguable information: 'We have to go, Gideon. There's only one thing that can be drawing Eshkol to Kuala Lumpur. The Malaysians have been financing their war effort in part through one of the most extensive black market systems ever seen — they're laundering Third World drug money, trafficking in everything from rare animals to human beings, and doing a huge business in stolen information technology and databases. None of this, however, will interest Eshkol. He'll want something else, something that will have originated, unless I'm mistaken, in Japan.' By now all jocularity had departed the table. 'The Japanese economy, of course, never really rebounded from the '07 crash. Like the Malaysians, they've had to use whatever methods have been available to organize even a modest recovery. Certainly, they've had neither the money nor the resources to update their energy infrastructure — they still depend primarily on nuclear power and haven't been able to phase out their breeder reactors.'

Eli suddenly clutched his forehead. 'Breeder reactors,' he said, apparently getting a point that was still very obscure to me.

'What?' I asked quickly. 'What the hell's a 'breeder reactor'?'

'A nuclear reactor that makes usable plutonium out of waste uranium,' Jonah said. 'Seemed a very promising idea at one time.'

'An idea that was abandoned by almost every country in the world,' Malcolm went on, 'because of safety problems — and because of the enormous temptation that copious amounts of plutonium lying around in civilian installations poses for terrorists.' Malcolm looked at me pointedly. 'As well as for the people who do business with terrorists. Japanese black marketeers — without, supposedly, the connivance of their government — have been regularly selling large quantities of their excess plutonium to such people. In—'

'In Kuala Lumpur,' I said, falling into a chair in resignation.

'Actually, no,' Jonah said. 'The U.N. has control over the capital. Most of the serious black marketeering goes on in the Genting Highlands that overlook the city — the old gambling resort. But Kuala Lumpur's the only place the Allies will permit planes to land, since they control both the city and the airport. Eshkol will head there first, probably masquerading as some kind of humanitarian worker, then make his way through the lines and into the high country.'

I took the news as best I could, letting my head fall onto the table and drawing several long, deep breaths. 'So what's Malaysian food like?' I mumbled.

'I doubt if you'll have a chance to try it,' Tarbell answered. 'There is a war going on there, you know…'

CHAPTER 35

There was a time when I contemplated the ecological effects of African tribal wars like the ones I have been observing for the last nine months with horrified fascination. I was aware, of course, that this reaction was due largely to the images of those conflicts that were being circulated by the world's news services; yet even as I acknowledged such manipulation, I remained as riveted and moved as was the rest of the world, enough so that I ignored the much more seriously destructive campaigns that were being waged against rain forests in other parts of the world by a constellation of lumber, agricultural, and livestock companies — companies that were vital parts of larger corporations that owned many of the news services that were keeping the public's attention focused on places such as Africa in the first place. The rate of destruction in those other rain forests — which of course were just as vital to the general health of the planet as their African counterparts — was far in excess of anything that such characters as my friend Chief Dugumbe and his enemies could do during even their most bitter engagements; but jobs were jobs and trade was trade, and so the world saw nothing of that more extensive defoliation save for occasional glimpses captured by maverick journalists.

This state of affairs prevailed until it was almost too late; that is. until scientists began to report rather than predict the changes in air quality that accompanied the disappearance of those natural oxygen laboratories. Global atmospheric deterioration, when the genera] public at last comprehended it, caused widespread panic, and an unprecedented movement to save the forests that were left got under way, one that was belligerent rather than evangelical. Its practical result was the creation of special U.N. 'monitoring forces' — multinational armies, really — that inserted themselves into those locations and situations that seemed most salvageable: Brazil, various parts of Central America, and Malaysia.

The Brazilians and Central Americans went along with the policing relatively quiescently. But the Malaysians, drawing on their ancient warlike traditions, rose up against the foreign invaders, determined not to let some of the only sources of income left to them by the '07 crash be taken away without adequate compensation— compensation that no Western nation was in any position or mood to give. Thus was born a new type of resource war, one that made the violent conflicts over oil and water that had already broken out in other parts of the world out seem tame by comparison. True, Eastern Malaysia was subdued fairly easily, thanks to a generous donation to the United Nations by neighboring Brunei, whose sultan was glad for the chance to rehabilitate the image of his scandal-plagued little principality; but Western Malaysia was another matter. After launching an invasion from three directions, the U.N. troops met far stiffer resistance than they'd ever anticipated; and when members of their force were unlucky enough to be captured they were generally tortured to death, mutilated, and sent back to the Allied lines with a small U.N. flag stuffed in their mouths. Eventually the Allied troops did secure most of the cities ringing the peninsula, but several held out; and those several became conduits to and from the jungle highlands, which had already proved a military quagmire for the Allies and were now transformed into a magnet for rogues and mercenaries from all over the world.