Islands in the Net by Bruce Sterling Page A

Cyrillic or Hebrew. “No, not like that,” Laura said.
    Voroshilov shrugged and touched the keys. Odder-looking craft appeared: two little blimps. Then a skeletal thing, like a collision between a helicopter and a child’s tricycle. Then a kind of double-rotored golfball. Then an orange peanut. “Hold it,” Laura said.
    Voroshilov froze the image. “That’s it,” Laura said. “That landing gear—like a barbecue pit.” She stared at it. The narrow waist of the peanut had two broad counterrotating helicopter blades. “When the blades move, they catch the light, and it looks like a saucer,” she said aloud. “A flying saucer with big bumps on the top and the bottom.”
    Voroshilov examined the screen. “You saw a Canadair CL-227 VTOL RPV. Vertical Take-Off and Landing, Remotely Piloted Vehicle. It has a range of thirty miles—miles, what a silly measurement.…” He typed a note on his Cyrillic keyboard. “It was probably launched somewhere on this island by the assassins … or perhaps from a ship. Easy to launch, this thing. No runway.”
    â€œThe one I saw was a different color. Bare metal, I think.”
    â€œAnd equipped with a machine gun,” Voroshilov said. “Not standard issue. But an old craft like this has been on the black arms markets for many, many years. Cheap to buy if you have the contacts.”
    â€œThen you can’t trace the owners?”
    He looked at her pityingly.
    Voroshilov’s watchphone beeped. It was the Ranger. “I’m out here on the walkway,” she said. “I have one of the slugs.”
    â€œLet me guess,” Voroshilov said. “Standard NATO 35 millimeter.”
    â€œAffirmative, yes.”
    â€œThink of those millions and millions of unfired NATO bullets,” mused Voroshilov. “Too many even for the African market, eh? An unfired bullet has a kind of evil pressure in it, don’t you think? Something in it wants to be fired.…” He paused, his blank lenses fixed on Laura. “You’re not following me.”
    â€œSorry, I thought you were talking to her.” Laura paused. “Can’t you do anything?”
    â€œThe situation seems clear,” he said. “An ‘inside job,’ as they say. One of the pirate groups had collaborators on this island. Probably the Singapore Islamic Bank, famous for treachery. They had the chance to kill Stubbs and took it.” He shut down the screen. “During my flight into Galveston, I accessed the file in Grenada, on Stubbs, that was mentioned in the FACT communiqué. Very interesting to read. The killers exploited the nature of data-haven banking—that the coded files are totally secure, even against the haven pirates themselves. Only a haven would turn a haven’s strength against itself in this humiliating way.”
    â€œYou must be able to help us, though.”
    Voroshilov shrugged. “The local police can carry out certain actions. Tracing the local ships, for instance—see if any were close offshore, and who hired them. But I am glad to say that this was not an act of politically motivated terrorism. I would classify this as a gangster killing. The FACT communiqué is only an attempt to muddy the waters. A Vienna Convention case has certain publicity restrictions that they find useful.”
    â€œBut a man was killed here!”
    â€œIt was a murder, yes. But not a threat to the political order of the Vienna Convention signatories.”
    Laura was shocked. “Then what good are you?”
    Voroshilov looked hurt. “Oh, we are very much good at easing international tension. But we are not a global police force.” He emptied his teacup and set it aside. “Oh, Moscow has been pressing for a true global police force for many years now. But Washington stands in the way. Always trifling about Big Brother, civil liberties, privacy laws. It’s an old