Текст книги "The Storm"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

CHAPTER 7

SEVERAL THOUSAND MILES FROM MALÉ, IN SHANGHAI Province, Mr. Xhou of China and Mr. Mustafa of Pakistan rode in a private car on a bullet train, rushing to Beijing. Xhou wore a suit, Mustafa wore Pashtun tribal dress. A half dozen others riding with them could easily be identified as belonging to one side or the other.

The speed and smoothness of the ride were undeniably impressive, as was the decor. Recessed lighting lit the car in a soft mix of white and lavender. Supportive leather seating cushioned the bones of the passengers while air purifiers and conditioners kept the cabin feeling fresh at a perfect temperature of seventy-four degrees.

Chinese and Pakistani delicacies sat in trays tended by a pair of chefs. Out of respect for Mustafa’s religion, there was no alcohol present, but herbal teas quenched the thirst and refreshed the palate.

Despite the opulence, this was a business meeting.

Xhou spoke firmly. “You must understand the position we’re in,” he said.

“The position you’rein,” Mustafa corrected.

“No,” Xhou insisted. “All of us. We have made the gravest of mistakes. And only now does the full scope of reality become plain to us. The technology Jinn controls will be one of the most powerful ever developed. It will remake the world, but our stake in it is limited. We have invested in an outcome without any claim to the machinery that will produce that outcome. We are nothing more than end users of what Jinn is selling. Like those who buy power from a utility instead of building a power plant of their own.”

Mustafa shook his head. “We have no use for the Jinn’s technology,” he said. “There are none in my country who would be able to use it. All we want is for the Jinn to keep his promises, divert the monsoon from India to Pakistan. Change the weather in our favor. Weather can build an empire or destroy it. My people hope it will do both.”

A condescending look appeared on Xhou’s face for a moment. He knew Mustafa as a shrewd but simple man. Simple desires, revenge against an enemy. Simple thoughts, not the kind that extended beyond short-term gain.

“Yes,” he said. “But you must understand, the weather change is not once and for all. It is not permanent. In this form, it is a gift from Jinn, revocable at his will. Once the rains begin falling on our lands, we become as dependent on them as those in India who are now desperately watching the skies. There is little to stop Jinn from changing his mind and sending the rains back.”

Xhou paused to let this sink in, and then added, “If he wishes, Jinn will become the rainmaker, selling to the highest bidder year in and year out.”

Mustafa lifted his cup of tea but did not take a sip. The truth hit him, and he placed it back on the saucer.

“India is more wealthy than my country,” he said.

Xhou nodded. “You will not be successful bidding against them.”

Mustafa seemed to brood. “Jinn is Arab, he is Muslim, he would not chose the Sikhs and Hindus of India over us.”

“Can you be sure of that?” Xhou asked. “You told me that Jinn’s family have long been called foxes of the desert. How else to explain their rise to wealth? He will choose what is right for his clan.”

Still considering Xhou’s point, Mustafa placed the cup and saucer back on the table. He glanced at the food and then turned away disgustedly. It seemed his appetite was gone.

“I fear you might be right,” he said. “And what’s more, I now suspect this has occurred to Jinn long before it occurred to any of us. Why else would he insist on keeping the production facilities in his tiny country?”

“So we agree,” Xhou said. “With only the Jinn’s promises and no way to enforce them, we are all in a precarious situation.”

“None as precarious as mine,” Mustafa said. “I do not enjoy the luxuries you have here. We have no bullet trains in my country or new cities with gleaming buildings and untraveled roads. We have little in the way of foreign reserves to cushion our fall if it should come.”

“But you have something we do not,” Xhou said. “You have people with long memories and a history of dealing with Jinn. He is far more likely to trust you than an envoy of mine.”

“Jinn will never let us near his technology,” Mustafa said.

Xhou grinned. “We do not need it immediately.”

“I don’t understand,” Mustafa said. “I thought—”

“We need only eliminate Jinn’s ability to direct it. Or better yet, eliminate him and direct it ourselves. Without Jinn to countermand the existing orders, the horde would do what he has already promised. The rains will come to us permanently.”

Mustafa’s mustache turned slowly upward as a sinister smile came over his face. He seemed to grasp what Xhou was getting at. “What are your terms,” he said. “And be advised I cannot promise success. Only the attempt.”

Xhou nodded. There was no way anyone could guarantee what was being asked.

“Twenty million dollars upon confirmation of Jinn’s death, eighty million more if you can deliver the command codes.”

Mustafa almost began drooling, but then a chill seemed to take him, strong enough to cool the fires of his greed.

“Jinn is not a man to be trifled with,” he said. “The desert is littered with the bones of those who’ve crossed him.”

Xhou sat back. He had Mustafa and he knew it. A little prod to his pride would seal it. “There is no reward without risk, Mustafa. If you are willing to be more than Jinn’s puppet, you must understand this.”

Mustafa took a breath, steeled himself against the fate. “We will act,” he said firmly, “upon receipt of ten million in advance.”

Xhou nodded and waved one of his men over. A suitcase was dropped to the floor. Mustafa reached for it. As he touched the handle, Xhou spoke again.

“Remember, Mustafa, there are places in my country littered with bones as well. Betray me, and no one will care if a few Pakistani carcasses are added to the pile.”

CHAPTER 8

AFTER A BRIEF SESSION WITH THE MALDIVE POLICE, KURT took Leilani to the island’s main hospital, a modern building dedicated to Indira Gandhi. As they waited for X-rays to come back, he sent a text to Joe, letting his partners know where he was and how the chase had ended. Then he turned his attention back to Leilani.

“I don’t mean to be blunt, but what in the world are you doing here?”

Her arm was in a sling. A scrape above her eye had been stitched and dabbed with iodine. “I came to find out what happened to my brother.”

Understandable, Kurt thought, except he knew for certain that Dirk Pitt hadn’t contacted any family members yet. “How did you know something was wrong?”

“My brother studied currents,” she said, looking at him sadly. “I studied the things that swim around in them. We spoke or e-mailed every single day. In his last few e-mails he mentioned that he and the others were beginning to find some very strange temperature and oxygen readings. He wanted to know what effects these changes could have on local sea life. He said they were finding drastically reduced krill and plankton counts and far less fish. He said it was like the sea had begun turning cold and barren.”

Kurt knew this to be true from Halverson’s last report.

“When he stopped e-mailing, I got worried,” she added. “When he didn’t answer the satellite calls, I contacted NUMA. And when no one there would tell me what was going on, I flew here and sought out the harbormaster. He told me about the salvage. Told me people from NUMA were coming to check it out. I thought maybe you were here as a search party, but then I saw the boat and …”

She grew quiet, looking down at the floor. Kurt expected tears, and a few of them seemed to be coming, but she kept herself under control.

“What happened to my brother?” she asked finally.

Kurt remained silent.

“Our parents are gone, Mr. Austin. He’s all I have … all I had.”

Kurt understood. “I don’t know,” he said. “That’s what we’re trying to find out. Any idea who those men were?”

“No,” she said. “You?”

“No,” Kurt admitted, though any doubts he had about the catamaran’s troubles being accidental were fast disappearing. “When did Kimo last contact you?”

She looked back at the floor. “Three days ago, in the morning.”

“Anything unusual in the message?”

“No,” she said. “Just what I already told you. Why?”

Kurt glanced around the small alcove of an emergency room: staff members were busy, patients waited, there was the occasional electronic chirp or pinging bell. Calm, quiet, orderly. And yet Kurt sensed danger lurking somewhere.

“Because I’m trying to figure out what those men might have gained from kidnapping you. To begin with, we only suspected foul play before. Now we can almost be certain of it. And if you don’t know any more than we do …”

“All Kimo sent me was the base data. I’m sure you have it too. Even if you didn’t, taking me wouldn’t hide it.”

She was right. But that meant there was even less reason for someone to stage such an attack.

“Are you going to look for them?”

“The police are looking for them,” Kurt said, “though I’m sure they’re long gone. My job is to figure out what happened to the catamaran and its crew. I’m guessing they found something out there that someone didn’t want them to find. Something more than temperature anomalies. If that leads us to the men who attacked you, we’ll deal with them then.”

“Let me help you,” she said.

He’d been expecting her to say that. He shook his head. “It’s not a science project. And in case you couldn’t tell, it’s likely to be dangerous.”

She pursed her lips as if stung by the comment, but instead of lashing out she spoke calmly: “My brother’s gone, Mr. Austin. You and I both know that. Growing up in Hawaii, you learn the power of the ocean. It’s beautiful. It’s dangerous. We’ve lost friends before, surfing, sailing and diving. If the sea has Kimo in its arms, that’s one thing. If some men put him there because of what he found, that’s far worse to me. And I’m not the kind to just let it be.”

“You’re going through a lot,” he said. “And it’s probably going to get worse before it gets better.”

“That’s why I have to do something,” she pleaded. “To take my mind off it.”

Kurt had no choice but to be blunt. “In my experience, you’re going to be unstable whether you have something to do or not. That can have an effect on the whole team. I’m sorry, but I can’t have someone like that tagging along for the ride.”

“Fine,” she said. “But plan on seeing me out there anyway because I’m not going to sit around and grieve.”

“What are you saying?”

This time she was blunt. “If you won’t let me help, I’ll continue to investigate on my own. If my search messes yours up, I guess that’s just too bad.”

Kurt exhaled. It was hard to be angry with someone who’d lost a family member, but she was pushing him toward it. He guessed she meant every word. The problem was, she had no idea what she was getting into.

The doctor walked in carrying the X-ray films. “You are going to be okay, Ms. Tanner. Your arm is only bruised, not broken.”

“You see,” she said to Kurt, “I’m tough.”

“And lucky,” he replied.

“Nothing wrong with having luck on your side.”

The doctor stared blankly, confused at the conversation he’d walked in on. “I also think luck is a good thing.”

“You’re not helping,” Kurt mumbled.

He was trapped. He could hardly dump her off on her own after what just happened. Nor could he have her locked up for her own good or deported back to Hawaii, where she might be safe. It left him only one choice.

“Fine,” he said.

“I won’t cause any trouble,” she said.

He smiled at her through gritted teeth. “But you already are,” he assured her.

Twenty minutes later—to the horror of the medical staff—Kurt helped Leilani climb onto the damaged Vespa. With far more caution than his first trip on the machine, he rode her back to the other side of the island.

They arrived intact. Kurt promised the stricken guard that his scooter would be repaired or replaced by NUMA and offered his watch as collateral.

The guard eyed it suspiciously. Kurt wondered if he realized the watch was worth twice what a new scooter would cost.

With Leilani at his side, Kurt stepped back on board the catamaran and introduced her to the Trouts.

“And this is Joe Zavala,” he added as Joe came up from below the deck. “Your new best friend and chaperone.”

They shook hands.

“Not that I’m complaining,” Joe said, “but why am I her new best friend?”

“You’re going to make sure nothing happens to her,” Kurt said. “And, more important, that she doesn’t cause any problems for the rest of us.”

“I’ve never been the chaperone before,” Joe said.

“First time for everything,” Kurt said. “Now, how are we doing?”

“Power’s back up,” Joe said. “Battery is pretty low, but the solar panels and the wind turbine are carrying the load.”

“Did we find anything?”

Paul spoke first. “Once Joe got the power back on, I was able to access the tracking mode on the GPS. They kept to a westerly course until a little after eight p.m. on the last night they reported in. Then the course and speed become erratic.”

“Any idea why?”

“We think that’s when the incident occurred,” Paul said. “The sail was partially burned in the fire. Losing its shape would change the boat’s profile and speed. Looks like it began to drift.”

“Where were they when this happened?”

“About four hundred miles west-southwest of here.”

“What else?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary on the ship’s log or in any of their notes or computer files,” Paul said. “But Gamay found something of interest, as usual.”

Kurt turned to Gamay.

She held up a glass beaker with an inch of charcoal-colored water in it.

“This is the residue left behind by the fire. I mixed it with distilled water. In most cases, soot is primarily carbon. And while there’s plenty of that in this sludge, it’s also carrying a strange mix of metals: tin, iron, silver, even trace amounts of gold. And a strange speckling that’s quite hard to see.”

Kurt looked closely at the water in the beaker, there was an odd, almost iridescent shimmer to it.

“What’s causing it?”

Gamay shook her head. “None of my equipment was strong enough to tell us. But they had a microscope on board. Once Joe got its power on, we photographed the samples. Whatever it is, it’s moving.”

“Moving?” Kurt repeated. “What do you mean moving?”

“It’s not inert,” she said. “The carbon and the residue are still, but something on or within the residue is still active. Whatever it is, it’s so small, we can’t make it out under a microscope.”

The news seemed to make Leilani uncomfortable. Kurt thought about tabling the discussion for later, but this was the deal: it was going to be uncomfortable, and if she couldn’t handle it, now was the time to realize that.

“Are we talking about a bacteria or some other microorganism?” Kurt asked.

“Could be,” Gamay said. “But until we get a closer look, all we can do is guess.”

Kurt considered this. It was strange, but it didn’t really tell them anything. For all they knew, whatever they’d found in this residue had been deposited on the boat after the fire.

“Could this strange discovery, whatever it is, have caused the fire?” he asked.

“I tried to burn it,” Gamay said. “The residue isn’t flammable. It’s oxidized carbon and metals.”

“If that’s not the cause, then what was?”

Gamay looked to Paul, who looked at Joe. No one wanted to deliver the bad news.

Joe finally spoke up. “Gasoline fire,” he said somberly. “And we can’t find either of the five-gallon tanks they had listed on the manifest.”

Kurt’s mind put the facts together quickly. “The crew set the fire.”

Joe nodded. “That’s our guess.”

Gamay turned toward Leilani as if to make sure she was okay. “I’m so sorry,” she said.

“It’s okay,” Leilani replied. “I’m okay.”

“Why would anyone light a fire on their own boat?” Kurt asked.

“Only two reasons we can come up with,” Gamay said. “Either it was an accident or something on the boat seemed more dangerous than setting a fire.”

“The residue,” Kurt guessed, “and whatever’s inside it. You guys think they were fighting that?”

“I’m not really sure what to think,” Gamay insisted. “I honestly don’t see how it could have presented such a danger, but Paul and I have an appointment with a professor at the university here in an hour to get a better look at whatever’s in this sample. Maybe that’ll tell us more.”

“All right,” Kurt said. He looked to his wrist to check the time and then remembered his watch was in hock.

“What time you got?”

“Four-thirty,” Gamay said.

“Okay,” he said, “Joe and I will take Leilani back to the hotel. We’ll check in with Dirk and wait for you guys. Go see your professor, but be careful.”

CHAPTER 9

PAUL AND GAMAY TOOK A BUS FROM THE WATERFRONT TO the Maldives National University. It pulled to a halt at Billabong Station, and the two Americans stepped off the bus with a group of students as if they were attending night school.

“Ever want to go back to the university?” Gamay asked.

“Only if you go with me and let me carry your books,” he replied.

She smiled. “Might have to consider that.”

They made their way inside. The National University courses ran the gamut from traditional Sharia law to engineering, construction and health care. Its maritime engineering curriculum was widely known to be excellent, perhaps spurred on by the low-lying nation’s desire to prevent the rising seas from drowning it.

A colleague at the maritime school, who was familiar with NUMA, received Paul and Gamay. He introduced them to a female faculty member in a purple sari, Dr. Alyiha Ibrahim, a member of the sciences department.

“Thank you for seeing us,” Gamay said.

She took Gamay’s hand in both of hers. “In the ocean, like in the desert, travelers in need are not turned away,” she said. “And if there is a danger to Malé in what you have found, I would not only be selfish to ignore you, I would be a fool.”

“We don’t know if there’s any danger,” Gamay insisted, “just that something has gone wrong, and this may help us determine the cause.”

Dr. Ibrahim smiled, the mauve color of her wrapping highlighting the green tone in her eyes. “Then let’s not waste any time.”

She led them to a laboratory room. The scanning microscope was set up and ready to operate. A panel showed all systems green.

“May I?” Dr. Ibrahim asked.

Gamay handed her the vial and she drew out a sample. With great precision she placed it on a special tray and slid it into the scanning compartment.

A few minutes later the first photos came up on the screen.

The image was so strange, it caused each of them to pause. Gamay squinted, Paul stood with his mouth slightly open, and Dr. Ibrahim adjusted her glasses and leaned closer.

“What is that?” Paul asked, staring at the monitor.

“They look like dust mites,” Gamay said.

“I’m not sure what they are,” Dr. Ibrahim said. “Let me try increasing the magnification.”

The bulky electron microscope whirred and took another scan. As the second picture emerged on the screen, their surprise only deepened.

Dr. Ibrahim turned to Paul and Gamay. “I don’t know what to tell you,” she said. “I’ve never seen anything like this in my life.”

WITH PAUL and GAMAY at the university and Joe watching over Leilani, Kurt went through the personal effects of the missing crewmen. It felt wrong somehow, like picking over the bones of the dead, but it had to be done if just on the chance there was some clue hidden in them.

After an hour of working that thankless task, he was ready for it to be over. He found nothing to help him but at least one item that might be helpful to Leilani: a printed photo of the crew, her brother front and center, filled with joy, as if the world were his oyster.

He put the crew’s effects away and stepped out into the hall with the photo in hand. One door down he found the suite he’d booked for Joe and Leilani. It was divided into two adjoining rooms, but to reach the second room one had to make it past the first.

He knocked, heard nothing, and knocked again.

Finally the handle turned. Leilani’s face appeared, framed by the door, and it hit him just how strikingly beautiful she really was.

“Where’s your bodyguard?”

She opened the door wider. Joe was sound asleep on his bed, snoring softly, still in his clothes and even his shoes.

“Top-notch security,” she said. “Nothing gets past him.”

Kurt tried not to laugh. It had been a thirty-hour day for Joe. Even if his animal magnetism didn’t have an off switch, apparently the rest of Joe did.

Kurt slipped inside. Leilani closed the door gently and padded silently across the carpet in bare feet, black yoga pants, and a green T-shirt.

Kurt followed her to the adjoining room, which had the shades drawn and the lights dimmed.

“I was meditating,” she said. “I feel so out of touch with any kind of balance right now. One minute I’m angry, one minute I want to cry. You were right, I’m unstable.”

Funny thing, she seemed okay to him. “I don’t know, you seem to be hanging in there.”

“I have something to put my mind to now,” she said. “Finding out what happened. I have you to thank for that, however grudgingly you agreed. Any leads?”

“Not yet,” he said. “So far, all we’ve found are inconsistencies.”

“What kind of inconsistencies?”

“Kimo and the others were looking for temperature anomalies,” he said. “They found them, but not the way they expected. Ocean temperatures are rising all over the world, but they discovered reduced temperatures in a tropical zone. That’s the first odd data point.”

“What else?”

“Strangely enough, reduced ocean temperatures are normally a welcome thing. Cooler temps lead to higher oxygen content in the water and more abundant life. That’s why warm, shallow seas like the Caribbean are relatively barren while the dark, cold sections of the North Atlantic are where the fishing fleets congregate.”

She nodded. And Kurt realized he was going over basic data and conclusions that she would be easily able to make for herself, but they knew so little it seemed best to leave nothing out.

She seemed baffled. “But Kimo told me they were finding lower levels of dissolved oxygen, less krill, less plankton and less fish in the water even as the temperature dropped.”

“Exactly,” Kurt said. “It’s backward. Unless something was absorbing the heat and using up the oxygen as well.”

“What could do that?” she asked. “Toxic waste? Some type of anaerobic compound?”

Ever since he double-checked the numbers, Kurt had been racking his brain for a possible cause. Volcanic activity, red tides, algae blooms—all types of things could result in dead zones and deoxygenated waters, but none of them explained the temperature drop. Upwelling of deep cold water might, but that usually brought abundant nutrients and higher levels of oxygen to the surface, causing an explosion of sea life in the local vicinity.

It was a problem, perhaps even a problem Kimo and the others had been killed for discovering. But it didn’t tell them anything directly.

“I don’t know,” he said. “We’ve gone over everything they sent off, including Kimo’s e-mails to you, just to see if we missed anything. So far, we’ve come up blank.”

A flash of concern appeared on her face. “You looked over his e-mails to me?”

“We had to,” Kurt said. “On the chance he’d inadvertently sent you some vital piece of data.”

“Did you find anything?”

“No,” he said. “I didn’t really expect to. But we can’t leave any stone unturned.”

She sighed, and her shoulders slumped. “Maybe this is too big for us. Maybe we should leave it up to some international organization to investigate.”

“What happened to all that determination from a few hours ago?”

“I was angry. My adrenaline was pumping. Now I’m trying to be more rational. Maybe the UN or the Maldives National Defense Force can handle the investigation. Maybe we should just go home. Now that I’ve met you and your friends, I can’t bear the thought of anyone else being hurt.”

“That isn’t going to happen,” Kurt said. “We’re not leaving this to some agency that has no real interest at stake.”

She nodded her agreement as Kurt’s phone chirped.

He pulled it from a pocket and clicked answer.

It was Gamay.

“Making any progress?” he asked.

“Sort of,” she said.

“What do you have?”

“I’ve sent you a photo,” she said. “A snapshot from the microscope. Pull it up.”

Kurt switched into the message mode on his phone and pulled up Gamay’s photo. In black-and-white but crystal clear, a shape that looked both insectlike and strangely mechanical. The edges of the subject were sharp, the angles perfect.

Kurt squinted, studying the photo. It resembled a spider with six long arms extending forward and two legs at the rear that fanned out into flat paddles shaped like a whale’s tail. Each set of arms ended in different types of claws, while a ridge running down the center of the thing’s back was marked with various protrusions that looked less like spines or barbs and more like the printed wires of a microchip.

In fact, the whole thing looked positively machinelike.

“What is it?”

“It’s a micronic robot,” Gamay said.

“A what?”

“That thing you’re looking at is the size of a dust mite,” she said. “But it’s not organic, it’s a machine. A micromachine. And if the sample I took is any indication, these same machines are seared into the residue from the fire in great numbers.”

He looked at the photo, thinking about what Gamay had just said. He tilted the phone so Leilani could see. “Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie,” he mumbled.

“Try four and twenty million,” Gamay said.

Kurt thought about their earlier conversation and the theory that the crew had set fire to the boat to rid themselves of something more dangerous.

“So these things got on the boat, and the crew tried to burn them off,” he said, thinking aloud. “But how’d they get aboard in the first place?”

“No idea,” Gamay said.

“What are they for?” he asked. “What do they do?”

“No idea on that either,” she repeated.

“Well, if they’re machines, someone had to make them.”

“Exactly our thinking,” Gamay said. “And we believe we know who that might be.”

Kurt’s phone pinged again, and another photo came up. This time it was a page from a magazine article. A photo in the corner showed a businessman stepping out of a gaudy orange Rolls-Royce. His mahogany hair was pulled back into a long ponytail, and bushy beard covered most of his face. His suit looked like a navy blue Armani or some other double-breasted Italian cut.

“Who is he?” Kurt asked.

“Elwood Marchetti,” Gamay said. “Billionaire, electronics genius. Years ago he designed a process for printing circuits onto microchips that everyone uses today. He’s also a huge proponent of nanotechnology. He once claimed nanobots will do everything in the future, from cleaning cholesterol out of our arteries to mining gold from seawater.”

“And these things are nanobots?” Kurt asked.

“Actually they’re larger,” she said. “If you think of a nanobot as a Tonka truck, these things are earthmovers. A similar concept, still microscopic, but about a thousand times bigger.”

Leilani was studying the photo. “So this guy Marchetti is the problem,” she said firmly.

Kurt reserved judgment. “How do we connect these microbots to him?”

This time Paul answered. “According to an international patent on file, this is very close to one of his designs.”

Kurt’s own sense of righteous anger was building, he noticed Leilani wringing her hands.

“Is he using them for something?” Kurt asked. “Experimenting?”

“Not that we know of.”

“Then how’d they end up in the sea?” he asked. “And more important, how’d they end up on the catamaran?”

Paul’s guess came through. “Either they escaped from the lab like the killer bees forty years ago or Marchetti is using them for something without letting the rest of the world know.”

Kurt clenched his jaw, grinding his teeth. “We need to pay this guy a visit.”

“I’m afraid he lives on a private island,” Paul replied.

“That’s not going to stop me from knocking on his door. Where do I find it?”

“That’s a rather good question,” Gamay said.

There was an odd tone in Gamay’s voice, and Kurt wasn’t sure he followed. “Are you saying no one knows what island he lives on?”

“No,” she told him. “Just that no one knows exactly where it is right now.”

Kurt felt as if he and the Trouts were having two different conversations. “What are you guys talking about?”

“Marchetti is building an artificial island,” Paul explained. “He calls it Aqua-Terra. He launched the core last year and has been outfitting it ever since. But because it’s mobile, and because he chooses to stay in international waters, no one’s quite sure where he is at any given time.”

Suddenly, Kurt remembered hearing about it. “I thought that was just a publicity stunt.”

Leilani spoke up. “No,” she said, “it’s real. I read something about it. Six months ago it was anchored off Malé. Kimo said he wanted to see it if he got the chance.”

“Okay,” Kurt said. “You guys find out whatever you can about these microbots. I’m putting a call in to Dirk. As soon as we track down Marchetti, I’m going to pay him a visit. I’m sure a floating island isn’t too hard to find.”