Free The Storm by Clive Cussler, Graham Brown Page A

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.