Mirage (Oregon Files 9)

“Amen.” Hanley pointed at Cabrillo’s dinner. “Are you going to eat that?”

Cabrillo pulled the plate closer. “Actually, I am. I’m starved. You can have my wine if you want.”

Max went around the bar to retrieve two fresh icy shot glasses from the fridge and refilled them from the bottle of Stoli. “Pass.”

“Misha knows his life isn’t worth a plug nickel,” Juan said as he dipped a spoon into his chili.

“We discussed that. He knew the score and is already on the move. He says he has a bolt-hole someplace in Africa where Kenin will never find him.”

Cabrillo nodded noncommittally. He knew of dozens of dead or jailed fugitives who thought they’d never be found. But Kasporov wasn’t his responsibility. “Any word from Linda?”

Linda Ross was the Oregon’s number three. An elfish woman who had hit the glass ceiling in the Navy, she was currently on another assignment with one of the Corporation’s regular clients.

“She and the Emir have left Monaco on his yacht and are en route to Bermuda.”

The Emir of one of the United Arab Emirates insisted that he travel with members of the Corporation whenever he left his native land even though he was always accompanied by a virtual army of bodyguards. Usually he insisted that the Oregon shadow his 300-foot mega-yacht, Sakir, but the ship was needed to rescue Yuri, so he’d been mollified by having Linda as his traveling companion.

Max went on, “We’ll have no trouble catching up with them once we clear some of the ice still floating around up here.”

When Juan converted the Oregon into the hybrid warship/intelligence-gathering vessel she was today, the modifications included the ability to break through ice nearly three feet thick. However, in these northern waters, drifting bergs posed the most serious threat, and the Oregon, even with her armored sides, could be torn open as easily as the Titanic by a glancing blow. It wouldn’t be until they were clear of the danger that they could open the taps on the most powerful engines afloat. Her revolutionary magnetohydrodynamic engines could push the ship through the water at a rate not much below some offshore power racers.

“Is the Emir behaving himself?” Juan asked with fatherly concern.

“He’s eighty. Linda says apart from a few perfunctory passes, he reminds her of her grandfather.” Max had a bulldog face, a canvas of a lifetime of experiences writ large. Suddenly his jowls seemed to grow and his brow furled until it was corduroyed. “Something tells me that Linda’s going to be on her own for a while longer, yes?”

“Not sure,” Juan said, tearing a hunk of crusty, chili-soaked bread from the boule and popping it in his mouth. “Just before Yuri died, he implicated Admiral Pytor Kenin—”

“No surprise there,” Max interrupted.

“No,” Juan agreed. “Kenin is behind the frame-up, but I don’t think that’s what Yuri was talking about.”

“What, then?”

“He mentioned the Aral Sea and someone named Petrovski. Karl Petrovski.”

Max leaned back into his barstool, his bullet head cocked to the side. “Never heard of him.”

“Me neither. Then Yuri said something like ‘eerie boat.’”

“Eerie boat?”

“Eerie boat. Don’t ask. I have no idea. But his last word was ‘Tesla.’”

“As in Nikola?”

“I have to assume so. The Serbian inventor who basically created the modern electrical grid.”

“And a heck of a lot more,” Hanley added. “Everyone knows about Thomas Edison and his contributions to modern society, but few have ever heard of Tesla. Well, apart from the new electric sports car named after him. Tesla was an über-genius. Some of his ideas—”

Juan cut him off, a classic case of who knew more about what. “I saw a documentary on cable about how Edison tried to convince people that his DC theory was safer than Tesla’s alternating current by electrocuting elephants in New York City.”

“This was the dawn of a new age,” Max said. “The stakes couldn’t have been higher.”

“But, come on. Electrocuting elephants to prove a point?”

“In the end, showmanship did pay off, in a way. AC won out over Edison’s DC system, yet we all know Edison’s name, and Tesla remains a footnote in history. Sometimes history favors the activist more than the activity.

“So where does this leave us?”