Your military arm technically works under the auspices of the National Guard and not the FBI, and thus can be activated and sent out of the country when deemed necessary. Our charter doesn’t say that, exactly, but we can blow smoke and wave mirrors and make that sound good. And we are proceeding on the idea that Net Force had reason to believe that the gambling ship was essentially a pirate vessel. This might be a fine legal hair to split, given the strict definitions of piracy according to the U.N. Convention of the Law of the Sea, Article 101, but when you factor in the Internet and terrorism, I think we can pull that off. You, as a duly authorized representative of a sovereign nation, had the right to board and seize the vessel pursuant to Article 105 of the U.N. Convention.”
“I knew it all along,” Michaels said.
Tommy grinned. “Sure you did. That’s why you need lawyers.”
Alex didn’t smile back. Somehow, this just didn’t seem all that funny anymore.
“All right,” Tommy continued, his grin fading. “Start with how you began to suspect that CyberNation was fielding bad guys doing illegal things.”
“That’ll take a long time.”
Tommy nodded. “Then we better get started.”
6
In the kitchen of his apartment, Ames added a bit of Chardonnay — the 1990 Reserve — to the two-quart copper-clad stainless pot holding the lobster and shitake sauce. The pot was from France. You had to give the French that, they did know how to cook. The sauce was for poaching the Yukon salmon he’d had flown in that morning. The fish was a small one, a three-pounder, illegally caught out of season, he believed. When you figured it all up, that salmon probably cost about three hundred dollars a pound, but that wasn’t important. Most of these salmon went to the Japanese, but being rich had its perks. Yesterday, the fish had been swimming in the cold waters of Alaska; tonight, it would be dinner at Ames’s apartment in New York City.
Civilization was a wonderful thing.
The wine he was using for the stock was eighty-some-odd bucks a bottle, too, but there was no substitute for quality. If you were going to cook fine food with wine, what was the point in murdering the taste with cheap stuff?
Ames was not a wine snob. He didn’t bother to learn all the proper terms one used, nose and bouquet and finish and so forth. But he knew a good wine when he tasted it. The first time he had sipped anything from Blackwood Canyon, he knew he’d found a vintner who knew exactly what he was doing. He bought a cellarful of the wines by the case. He had also invested money in the business, as much as Michael Taylor Moore would let him.
He had others now, but Moore’s first winery was a hole-in-the-wall place at the end of a gravel road out in the middle of Nowhere, Washington. His first place was hard to find, and it wasn’t even listed on the local guides. If you didn’t know where the place was, you pretty much had to stumble across it by accident, or else put in a lot of hours doing detective work. It was worth it, though. Back then, the only spot you could buy any of his product was at the winery itself, or by the bottle in a few of the world’s finer restaurants.
Moore made his vintages in the old-style European manner, much of it involving a process called “sur lees.” Ames didn’t quite understand that, but he knew it involved leaving the fruit in the stuff longer than was considered by most to be proper. As a result, the whites had a fullness unmatched by any made in North America. Those whites could run with almost anybody else’s
Moore’s cheap stuff alone was better than most other wineries’ expensive vintages. And with the exception of maybe two other places in the world, one in Spain, one in France, nobody could touch his expensive ones. He called his vintages his children, and he didn’t let them out of the house until they were all grown up and ready to face the world.
He was something of a renaissance man, Moore was. He thought of himself as an alchemist, and considering that he turned water into a wine that eventually turned more or less into gold, it wasn’t a bad description. He was as good a cook as many world-class chefs. He also designed catamarans, some of which would fold up for storage and hauling, and assorted hydrogen-powered farm machines.
A lot of his neighbors hated him because they thought he was arrogant. That was to be expected, though. A man who stood up and said and did what he believed always got flak. Especially when he could actually back it up.
Ames knew all about that. He had been driven by his own demons to excel in everything he tried. First in his class in medicine, first in his class in law school, and a top track athlete. But it wasn’t enough. It was never enough.
Still, being great was why he had hooked up with CyberNation. They appreciated talent and skill, they encouraged it, and they were willing to pay for it. They always went for the best.
Ames smiled. He had never been accused of hiding his light under a bushel.
He stirred the sauce, lowered the heat on the Thermador gas stove’s front burner, and added a few sprinkles of fresh thyme and sage. It would need to reduce for another hour before it was ready to poach the fish. He still had time.
For the dinner with Corinna Skye, he had decided on a Blackwood Canyon Dry Riesling, a 1988. For the appetizers, he had selected a 1989 Cabernet Sauvignon Estate Reserve that should be sufficiently aged by now. A Late Harvest Penumbra Vin Santo would go well with dessert.
When he had bought these, they had been relatively cheap — forty bucks for the dessert wine, a hundred and fifty or two hundred for the others. Now they cost twice that — if you could get them. Moore had sold futures in his wines for a long time, and they didn’t have firm delivery dates — it might be a year, it might be ten years before he thought the wine was ready to bottle and ship, and if you didn’t like it, you could go somewhere else.
Ames smiled again. A man who could make wines like that was to be admired. And humored. And Ames would be very glad to take Michael Moore’s wines on whatever terms they were offered.
He leaned down to check the fire under the pot. That was still the best way, looking at the flame, not the control knob. Satisfied that the sauce wouldn’t burn, he went to mix the salad. He would break the lettuce and endive and other greens now to chill, though of course he wouldn’t dress the salad until it was time to serve it. He had somehow run low on olive oil. He had only one bottle of the Raggia di San Vito left, the best extra-virgin oil available outside Italy — it cost more than a fair bottle of French champagne — and he made a note to have Bryce order more for him.
So much to do, and it all had to be finished at the same moment.
As he pulled the dandelion greens from the humidity-controlled storage bin, Ames glanced at his watch. Junior was taking care of some minor business with a certain Midwestern junior senator this evening, and should be calling to report on the matter shortly.
CyberNation had tried a frontal assault on the world, attacking the net and web to attract customers. It hadn’t worked. They had also tried bribery and legislation, of course, as well as advertising, but in Ames’s opinion they hadn’t gone far enough in those directions.
Which was where he came in. His job was to work the law. Part of that included buying the lawmakers, or scaring them, and if bribery wouldn’t do that, sometimes a fat lawsuit would. Whatever it took. He could get the laws they wanted passed. Get the official recognition they craved.
Personally, he thought the idea was silly. A virtual country? Nonsense. He liked the physical world, with its poached salmon and its dry Rieslings and its many other virtues just fine, thank you. But if that’s what they wanted, and if it was even remotely possible, Mitchell Ames would give it to them. He had taken it on. He would get it done.
He looked at the marble counter with the built-in cutting board. Where had he put the centrifuge? Ah, there it was, behind the food processor.
Junior had the number for one of the dozen throwaway phones Bryce had bought for cash at an electronics store in Baltimore yesterday. Once a week or so, Bryce would travel to a city out of state and pick up a case of
