Sphere Of Influence (24 page)

Or not.

Beamon gunned the engine, accelerating to a slightly unsafe speed on the rough road. When the van hit the sand bog, it stopped a little more violently than he'd expected, throwing him hard against his seat belt. He managed to turn his face away from the side window just before it was smashed in by a hammer and a gun was pushed through the hole.

"Get the fuck out of the car!" The masked man screamed as the van's other windows were similarly shattered.

Beamon unlatched his seat belt and stepped out, feeling an uneasy sense of deja vu as he was forced facedown to the ground and a boot was pressed into his back. From his prone position he watched a beefy-looking four-wheel drive come rumbling up the road. A rope was connected to the rear of the van and it was quickly towed back onto solid ground. The pressure of the boot on his back disappeared and Beamon pushed himself to his feet, glancing at his watch.

"Three minutes," he said, brushing the dust from his cotton slacks. "Not bad, but we can do better."

The men groaned.

"What about what you said before?" Gasta asked as his men unhooked the van and the four-wheel drive retreated out of sight again.

"What do you mean?"

"What if they have a chase vehicle? Or if we run into cops on the way out of here?"

Beamon climbed back into the van and leaned out through the broken window. "You let me worry about that, okay?"

Chapter
31

CHRISTIAN Volkov squinted at the open book in his lap and read the page for the fourth time, but it still meant nothing to him. He adjusted the lamp on his desk to better illuminate the page. Now it was indecipherable and well lit. He had never been able to abide organized religion, seeing too much of the hand of man in it. But he still had a strange compulsion to glimpse the mind of God. As with all his previous attempts, though, this path seemed to lead nowhere.

Volkov leaned back in his uncomfortable new chair and admonished himself again for not rescuing his old one. The office around him appeared overly large and nearly empty, although it was fully furnished. Volkov had an obsessive distaste for paper and other tangible records of his business, making things like filing cabinets and bookshelves useless. His life--his entire history--was contained in billions of encrypted electronic impulses, which were nearly impossible to intercept and simple to relocate, and which could be destroyed almost instantly. An interesting byproduct of this philosophy was that when he died, he would leave almost no trace. If Fortune magazine was aware of his existence and recognized men in his profession, he would be listed as one of the wealthiest men in the world. His innovations in the businesses he was involved in and his success at integrating the undisciplined capitalist elements in the former Soviet Union might have been taught at universities.

Not that he really cared. He had no ambition for notoriety. In fact, there was something strangely appealing about living at the very edge of civilization. It wasn't without cost, though. His freedom from the arbitrary rules and dictates of society was more than paid for with uncertainty and loneliness.

"Christian?"

Volkov smiled as the young man approached his desk hesitantly. "Joseph! What wonderful timing." He held up the book he had been reading and the young man leaned over the desk to see the title.

"It tells the story of a mathematician who solved one of the last great math problems," Volkov explained. "Are you familiar with it?" Joseph had a master's degree in mathematics.

"Fermat's Last Theorem? Sure. But I haven't read that particular book."

"Well, I have," Volkov said, tossing it on his desk. "Twice. And as hard as I've tried, I can't comprehend it. I just read a rather long passage on imaginary numbers. What good is a number if it's imaginary? Isn't that like an anthropologist studying the anatomy of a dragon?"

Joseph laughed. "Imaginary numbers are multiples of the square root of negative one. They are one of the axes of the complex plane."

Volkov stared at him blankly.

"I think it might take some time to explain."

"I suppose so. Maybe we could discuss it over dinner. Francois is doing his duck tonight."

"Thank you, Christian. I'd love to."

"Now, what do you have for me?"

Joseph spread out a map of the Los Angeles area on Volkov's desk. "We've managed to pinpoint the place and time of Carlo Gasta's meeting with Yasin's people."
He tapped an empty spot on the map well outside the overpopulated confines of L
. A
. "Our informant says they will be here at midnight American Pacific time on Saturday."

Volkov nodded slowly. He'd almost hoped that Joseph would fail in obtaining this information. It forced a difficult decision.

"Our informant also tells us that Nicolai is involved."

"Really?" Volkov said, genuinely surprised. The preliminary information Joseph had provided on Nicolai had been intriguing. Now, though, Volkov's interest was quickly turning to suspicion. Why would an extraordinarily well shrouded and apparently extremely effective private operator like Nicolai get involved with someone as unpredictable and well known as Carlo Gasta?

There seemed to be only one explanation: that Jonathan Drake was involved in the sudden appearance of this mercenary after all. It seemed likely that Drake was going to use this drug transaction to do away with both Gasta and the Afghans, thus severing two critical connections between al-Qaeda and the CIA. Could Nicolai be part of that plan--Drake's inside man?

"When am I going to get the remainder of the information on Nicolai?" Volkov asked.

"You already have it. The file's in your computer." Joseph whisked the map from Volkov's desk and began running it through a shredder by the wall.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"I'm sorry. You seemed to be concentrating."

"He's working for Drake at the CIA," Volkov said matter-of-factly.

To his surprise Joseph shook his head. "Every indication is that he's not. You should look at the file. I think you'll find it interesting reading."

Volkov rose from his chair and turned on a portable stereo that was substituting for the elaborate sound system he'd left in the Seychelles. Louis Armstrong's rich voice--one of America's greatest contributions to the world--filled the room.

Volkov knew that he no longer had the luxury of not taking a position. It was time to decide whether he thought the CIA was going to renege on their agreement with him or if as Drake insisted, they were continuing forward. Nothing that had yet occurred was proof of either hypothesis. Gasta and the Afghans were pawns that would logically be sacrificed in light of the FBI's investigation into the rocket launcher photograph.

Despite that, he strongly suspected that Drake was n
o
longer committed to his ill-conceived plan to destroy alQaeda. And if that was true, he would do whatever was in the Central Intelligence Agency's considerable power to see Volkov dead. But were his suspicions enough to start a war with America's CIA?

Volkov made his way back to his chair amid the strains of "Mack the Knife." He knew the answer--he just didn't want to face what would probably be the end of him and his organization. He wasn't ready for that yet.

"What do you want me to do, Christian?"

"I think we have no choice but to try to divert Jonathan Drake's attention a bit."

"And Nicolai?"

"Let me look at the information you've gathered and I'll make a decision by tomorrow. Thank you, Joseph."

The young man turned and started for the door but stopped when Volkov spoke again.

"And, Joseph--don't forget my mathematics lesson tonight. By dessert I want to completely understand the world of modular functions."

Joseph gave him a short nod and then disappeared through the door. He would undoubtedly spend the rest of the afternoon desperately trying to come up with a way to explain advanced number theory over the course of an hour and a half. He was a very bright, very conscientious, and very likable young man. But Volkov was still far from certain that he would ever be able to replace Pascal.

Chapter
32

"
Count
OFF."

"One, in position."

"Two, in position."

"Three, in position."

"Four, in position."

"Leader, in position."

Jonathan Drake leaned against the cliff wall behind him, feeling the jagged rock press painfully into his back. He concentrated on the discomfort for a few moments, sharpening his senses and focusing his mind. It wouldn't be long now.

The tiny space he'd concealed himself in was almost too small for his frame. The stone behind him bowed precariously, sweeping over his head at a height of no more than four feet. In front and to the sides of him were large boulders that had detached themselves from the cliff and now provided perfect cover.

Drake crawled forward, dropping to his stomach as he squeezed through a tight gap, stopping when he had an unobstructed view of the small natural amphitheater that he was at the edge of. The floor of it, some twenty feet below, was basically round and just over two hundred yards across at its widest point. The edges were defined by loose, steep slopes topped with sheer ten-foot cliffs and broken rock. The only entrance was to the west--a barely visible dirt road leading through a narrow gap of dirt and stone.

The topography gave him and his team excellent cover
,
an elevated position that afforded unobstructed visibility and numerous options for escape.

Drake scooted forward a few more inches and scanned the cliff band bordering the far side of the clearing, but could see nothing that would suggest that he had snipers strategically positioned at regular intervals along it. Nothing would survive that he didn't want to survive.

Drake looked down at the softly glowing hands of his watch. Nine fifteen. Less than three hours before Carlo Gasta and the Afghans were scheduled to arrive.

"Wait until the last possible moment," he said into his walkie-talkie. "After Gasta's men attack, let them fight among themselves for as long as you can."

The invisible men surrounding him in the rocks counted off again, acknowledging his orders, although they already understood their role. They were to perform a cleanup function--to make sure Gasta and his men didn't survive and, if possible, to capture one or more of the Afghans alive.

Despite the quickly dropping temperature, Drake found himself sweating more profusely as the time drew closer. He told himself again that he had considered every eventuality and that nothing could go wrong, but he knew that something always went wrong. What would it be?

Would Gasta ignore the orders he'd been given?

Inconceivable. Drake had spoken to him again that morning and again expressed his anger at Gasta for exposing him to Chet Michaels. Besides, Gasta had no money to purchase the heroin and needed cash badly.

Would someone hear the shooting and call the police? Irrelevant. He had set up a man with a machine gun a couple of miles away. Any activity on the police scanner and he'd start shooting, leading the police away.

The most likely problem would be that the Arabs' van would be too badly damaged in the gunfight to drive away. A minor inconvenience. He had a tow truck parked a few miles down the highway.

The worst-case scenario was that the Arabs wouldn't show up. But since they were as desperate for money as Gasta, it was unlikely. If they should fail to appear, Drake'
s
men would simply kill Gasta and his people themselves. And when the gangsters' rotting bodies were found, the FBI would be happy to call it a Mob hit and blame Gasta solely for the death of their undercover man.

It left the problem of the launcher being found by the FBI, of course. If he was able to capture or kill the men making up al-Qaeda's L
. A
. cell, it would put the CIA even further ahead of Laura Vilechi and her investigation. Drake retreated to the cliff wall again and managed to find a marginally comfortable position as the deep glow in the west faded and surrounded him with darkness. He closed his eyes and continued to compulsively run through possible scenarios for tonight and the weeks that followed. It was going to be all right, he told himself.

The sound was so distant and so low that it almost seemed imaginary at first. When the hum persisted and became more defined, though, Drake crawled forward again, trying to identify it. It took only a few moments for it to become obvious that the source was getting closer and for the rhythm of the sound to become apparent. Drake peered around the large boulder in front of him and craned his neck, searching the night sky. Three separate lights had just become visible on the horizon, still distant but quickly approaching.

Helicopters.

It didn't matter: There was still more than two hours before Gasta was scheduled to appear. Even if they flew directly overhead, they would be gone in ten minutes. He struggled to stay calm as the sound of the blades churning the air deepened and increased in volume until it became a pounding in his chest. He watched the helicopters' forward momentum evaporate, leaving them hovering directly over the amphitheater.