No one came to him. No one spoke. He listened past the blood that was surging through his ears.

He was alone.

THIRTY-SIX - The South Pacific Saturday, 7:44 A.M.

THIRTY-SIX

The South Pacific Saturday, 7:44 A.M.

Before Lowell Coffey turned in for the night, he phoned Bob Herbert. Coffey brought Herbert up to date on the latest development involving Jervis Darling. The veteran intelligence officer was not surprised by the idea that Darling might be involved in this undertaking. It was not the power-corrupts bromide that influenced Herbert. It was what Herbert called the big-shot syndrome. The idea that coin itself was no longer the coin of the realm. Resources were. He had tracked the phenomenon from his childhood, when the people who had color television sets were big shots. You went to their house to watch Bonanza or Star Trek or King Leonardo cartoons. Less than a decade later, oil became the prized commodity. Everyone wanted it. The Arabs had it. They became big shots. Kids in the early eighties who had Atari Pac-Man cartridges or Cabbage Patch Dolls were the talk of the class. Shortly after that, the Japanese had the technology everyone wanted. Enter the new generation of bigeru shotsu. Money was irrelevant. People would pay whatever it cost to get what the newest grand panjandrum was peddling.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, high-grade nuclear materials became the hottest coin in the world. Just like the kid with a PlayStation 2, the person who had enriched uranium or plutonium or a nuclear weapon itself could be a star, if only for a moment. Herbert remembered thinking how a few years back atom bombs had briefly been the codpiece of India and Pakistan. One blew up a plain and hogged the headlines, the other blew up a mountain and did the same. Gross national product, religion, starvation, and disease just did not matter then. For those few days, big booming bombs was it. Megatonnage made you the Tom Cruise of the international stage.

Someone accustomed to wealth and control would find nuclear material irresistible. With it, he was a player. Knowing where it was, he was safe. Without it, he was simply an observer who could be erased along with every other pawn on the chessboard. That would definitely not appeal to a man like Jervis Darling. He liked to be a big shot.

Unfortunately, Darling was a big shot. Herbert downloaded gigabytes of data and read up on him. Darling had security, influence, money. He controlled international corporations that could be used to shift money and hide people and deeds. He also had the world’s largest private collection of prehistoric fossils.

“The guy likes to remind himself what happens to giants who don’t adapt,” Herbert mused.

Worse than that, Darling was a beloved big shot. He was the Australian dream made flesh.