State Of War (2003) Read online

  "Woof-woof," she said. "It is a dog!"

  Before her baby was born, she would never have believed that she'd be having these kinds of conversations. When she had heard friends or relatives jabbering at their small kids like this, she had been amused, even condescending. She would never talk to her kids that way. Or so she had thought, anyway.

  The dog, her tail wagging like a crazed metronome, was straining at the leash slightly, obviously wanting to get to Little Alex. Toni looked at the owner, a fit, largish, fifty-something man in a T-shirt, shorts, and running shoes, with short hair and sunglasses. "Does the dog bite?" she asked. "Is she good with children?"

  The owner chuckled. "Cady? She'll lick his face, is all. Maybe knock him down with her tongue. She's the biggest sissy you ever saw. I've seen the cat shove her away from her own food bowl, and all she did was stand there and whine at me: 'Help, Daddy, protect me!' "

  Toni grinned. "Alex, you want to pet the woof-woof?"

  "Woof-woof!"

  "Go ahead, then," Toni said to the dog's owner. "Give her a little slack." She was a little wary, and she edged a tiny bit closer, but she was determined that she wasn't going to walk around her whole life stopping her son from experiencing the world.

  The dog, who had to weigh a hundred and fifteen or twenty pounds, surged forward, and Toni tensed up. Nothing happened, though, except that it began to lap at Alex's face.

  It surprised him, and he flinched, but then he laughed, reached out, and hugged the big beast around the neck. The dog seemed happy enough, and Alex was ecstatic. "Woof-woof! Woof-woof!"

  The owner smiled. "Beautiful little boy," he said.

  "We think so," Toni said. "So is your dog."

  Alex continued to hug the dog, who seemed to think this was a fine game.

  A dog, Toni thought. Now there's an idea. Somebody to keep Little Alex company. She'd always wanted a dog when she'd been little, but living in an apartment in the Bronx made that a problem. No reason they couldn't have a dog now, though. Alex liked dogs, she knew. He had even had one for a while. And they had a yard. Kids ought to have a dog, right?

  Net Force HQ Quantico, Virginia

  They were in the conference room. There just wasn't enough table space in Michaels's office for all the hard-copy documents they needed to spread out and examine.

  Michaels looked at the sea of paper. "God, I hate lawyers," he said.

  "Present company excluded, of course?"

  "No," Alex said, shaking his head. "Especially present company."

  Tommy Bender laughed. "Sorry, pal, I don't make the rules. I just try to keep my clients from being skewered by 'em."

  "Yeah, well, Shakespeare was right. Come the Revolution, first thing we should do is kill all the lawyers. It would certainly make things a lot simpler."

  "That quote is always taken out of context," Tommy said. "King Henry the VI, Part II, Scene II. It's spoken by a comedy relief character named 'Dick the Butcher,' who is a killer, while his buddy Cade muses about what he'd do if he was king. An early lawyer joke is all it was, a cheap laugh."

  "Can't have too many cheap laughs," Alex said. "Or lawyer jokes, for that matter."

  "Here's one," Tommy said. "A lawyer and his wife are on a cruise in the Caribbean."

  "I hate the locale already," Michaels said.

  "You should have thought of that before you started shooting people down there. Anyway, the lawyer and his wife are watching the sharks swim back and forth, and the lawyer leans too far forward and falls into the water. The ship's captain, who is passing by, sees the man fall, yells 'Man overboard!' and reaches for a life ring, when all of a sudden the sharks stop swimming. One of them dives under the thrashing lawyer, picks him up on his back, and heads toward the ship, while the other sharks line up in two rows on either side. The shark delivers the lawyer to the ladder, where the lawyer climbs off.

  "The captain is stunned. 'I have never seen anything like that!' he says. 'That was amazing!'

  "And the lawyer's wife just shrugs and says, 'No big deal. Just professional courtesy. . . .' "

  Michaels smiled and shook his head. "Why is it that all the best lawyer jokes I hear are from lawyers?"

  "We have to be able to laugh at ourselves," Tommy said. "Everyone else does, and it's easier than crying about it. Nobody loves the undertaker, either, but he's got his niche." He shrugged and pointed at the piles of paper. "All right," he said. "Let's get back to your situation, shall we?"

  Alex groaned. "Do we have to?"

  "Unless you want to cost the taxpayers a couple hundred million dollars for violating the civil rights of the dead guys, it would be a good idea, yes."

  "You know," Michaels said, "I just don't understand this. We were in international waters, and they were shooting at us. Doesn't that help?"

  "Yes and no. Mostly, it just muddies things up. A few years ago, it wouldn't have happened, there were actually laws against suing certain agencies in the performance of their duties, kind of like you can't sue a sitting President, and some states won't let cops arrest legislators for piddly stuff when congress is in session. But times change. International Maritime Law is unbelievably complicated, and made even worse by the latest round of rulings from the Hague and by the U.N.'s interpretations of those rulings."

  He sighed. "Look, Alex, the way things stand right now, you can get sued in either state or federal court, since the affected persons were all natives of this country, and of Florida, and so are their dependents. American citizens don't lose their American civil rights while at sea, especially if they are being violated by other Americans. Obviously, the violators in this case would be you, although you personally won't have to pay out anything, since you are under the Net Force umbrella, and federally insured and all. Still, nobody in the food chain is going to be happy if we lose this suit."

  "What about just settling? Wouldn't it be cheaper?"

  "No question, but the people suing you don't want to settle--or, more accurately, the attorney representing them doesn't want to. You know those sharks in the joke? If this guy fell into the water, the sharks would scatter for their lives. Of course, he would just walk back to the ship--on the water, if you get my drift. We are talking about Mitchell Townsend Ames."

  He waited a moment, and when it became obvious that Michaels didn't have a clue who this was, he shook his head. "Don't you ever read a paper, Alex? Or watch the news on TV? Ames is the guy who routinely takes on the major drug companies. And wins. He's filed half a dozen class-action suits against the pharmaceutical houses and has never lost one. This guy's a doctor-slash-lawyer, bright as an H-bomb fireball, and meaner than a bag full of hungry wolverines."

  Michaels shrugged. "If you've seen one lawyer, you've seen 'em all."

  "No, sir, that ain't how it is," Tommy said. "Mitchell Ames eats top guns and spits shrapnel. He's fast, sharp, and he knows both ends of the game when it comes to health suits, plus he is good-looking--and can dumb it down so a jury full of third-grade kids could understand every word of his evidence. He is a very dangerous man in court."

  "And he doesn't want to settle the case."

  "Correct. Look, I understand how you don't think this should have been filed, that you were justified in your actions, and in a criminal court, I would easily kick Mitchell Townsend Ames's ass and make him write 'I'm so sorry Uncle Michaels' on the chalkboard a hundred times. But this isn't a criminal court. They've filed this as a civil matter, where the burden of proof is different--easier--and where the plaintiff has cause to open all kinds of cans of worms. We can block some of it on the grounds of national security, but he's still going to shine some light on corners you'd rather were kept dark."

  "We don't have anything to hide," Michaels said.

  "Yes, you do. You just haven't thought about it enough. Did anybody make any jokes about this incident? Maybe some gallows-humor remark that might have gone out in an e-mail?"

  Michaels shrugged. "I don't know. It's possible, I suppose, but I don't s
ee every e-mail--or even remember every one I do see."

  "Right. So you have this jury looking at some thug's kindly old mama, all teary-eyed, and Ames whips out this e-mail with a remark like, 'Teach 'em to mess with Net Force!' and over that, a picture of her poor dead son taken the day he graduated from high school, or maybe on prom night. Juries are sympathetic to that kind of thing. If he can put a human face on the guy--and he will, even though the bad guy was a cold-blooded headbreaker--he'll be able to cast Net Force as a bunch of bloodthirsty jack-booted storm troopers who laughed as they shot him and spit on his corpse just for fun. Now you and I both know it didn't happen like that, but a good lawyer can convince a jury it did, and Ames is as good as they come."

  Michaels shook his head.

  "And that's just for starters. Once he gets going, this guy can convince a jury of God-fearing folk that you're the Antichrist, or at least Satan's second lieutenant. I've seen him do it. It will get ugly. Your best defense--your only defense--is to show those nice folks on the panel that you had to do what you did, no way around it, else the Republic would have fallen, that you hated to do it, and that you are a much, much nicer fellow than the dead guys. Which won't be easy."

  "Aren't you my lawyer?"

  "Sure. But after the trial is over, I'll go have a drink with Ames, if he's interested. We like to pretend that we don't take these things personally."

  "Well, excuse me if I do take it that way."

  "Yeah, that's allowed."

  What a rotten situation this is, Michaels thought.

  "All right, let's get the story down to brass tacks," Tommy said. "Our legal status is quite clear, of course. 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

  New York City, New York

  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 reds. And his reds? Well, they were just unbelievable.

  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 outsi
de 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 cheap, disposable digital cellulars. Whichever ones weren't used by the end of the week were crushed and trashed, and never anywhere near Ames's residences.

  Every clandestine call Ames made or received was on a two-hour throwaway. Since there was no way to trace them to him, there was no real need to worry about encryption. To be safe, though--and Ames was always very, very careful--they talked in a sort of code, even on these throwaways. Junior would call and say something like, "Your order is ready," or "We've had to back order that item," and that would be enough.