Powersat (The Grand Tour) (35 page)

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Authors: Ben Bova

BOOK: Powersat (The Grand Tour)
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T
he Senate had adjourned just after noon on Friday so its members could rush home for a three-day Memorial Day weekend of mending fences and twisting arms. Jane had flown to the ranch in a private jet, looking forward to at least one day of rest out of the three-day “holiday.” Morgan’s campaign was rolling smoothly, but there was still so much more to be done.
She was in the sitting room of her master suite and had just poured herself a nightcap of straight golden tequila when Tómas, her majordomo—a bald, spare, elderly Mexican of great dignity—quietly announced that Dan Randolph had arrived and was waiting in the entryway.
Her first reaction was anger. How dare he come here, uninvited, unannounced? she demanded silently as she wrapped a floor-length robe around her nightgown. Yet by the time she had reached the ranch house’s entry her anger had largely melted away. And when she saw Dan standing there, in jeans and an open-necked sports shirt, smiling sheepishly like a boy who’d done something he knew wasn’t
right but had done it anyway, she couldn’t keep herself from smiling back at him.
But she quickly stifled her smile and demanded sharply, “What are you doing here?”
Dan made a vague gesture with both his hands. “You wouldn’t come to see me, so I came to see you.”
Before she could ask the next obvious question, he explained, “Your office said you were spending Saturday at home and your next public appointment is at Astro Corporation headquarters on Sunday. I thought I could fly you down to Matagorda tomorrow.”
Making certain that her robe was tightly belted, Jane led Dan into the spacious living room.
“I flew in by myself,”Dan said. “Landed in the dark. Rented a car at the Marietta airport under a phony name. Nobody knows I’m here.”
“Except every servant in the house,”she snapped.
Dan replied ingenuously, “I thought they were all old family retainers, loyal unto death.”
Despite herself, Jane laughed. “You’re incorrigible.”
“I try to be.”
“Well, as long as you’re here you might as well sit down.”
Dan went to the sofa, under the Vickrey painting of a little girl standing beneath an umbrella on a rain-slicked parking lot. He sat squarely in the middle of the plump cushions. Jane took the armchair at one end of the sofa, so Dan shifted over toward her.
“Would you like a drink?” she asked.
“Do you have any Armagnac?”
Jane called for Tómas and asked him to find the tequila she had left in her bedroom. “Do we have any …”She turned to Dan. “What was it?”
“Armagnac.”
Tómas’s gray brows rose a millimeter. “I will look in the bar, sir.”
Once he left the room, Jane asked, “What in the world made you fly up here in the dead of night like this?”
“I wanted to see you.”
She tried to frown at him. “Dan, what happened the last time—”
“Was wonderful.”
“I’m a married woman.”
“You don’t love him. You love me.”
“But I’m still married to him.”
His brow furrowed. “Yes. We’ll have to do something about that.”
Tómas returned carrying a colorful ceramic tray that bore Jane’s shot glass of tequila and a trio of bottles.
“There is no Armagnac, I’m sorry to say,” he reported. “Perhaps one of these will do?”
Dan scanned the labels and found a bottle of Presidente. “This will be fine,” he said.
Tómas poured him a snifter of the brandy and departed.
Dan sipped, then said, “I had hoped you’d pop down to Matagorda tomorrow instead of waiting until Sunday.”
“I have a full day tomorrow,” Jane lied. “Then your ceremony Sunday morning, and then I’ve got to fly to Los Angeles for Morgan’s big rally there Sunday night. Monday I’ve got to get back to Washington for the Memorial Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery.”
“That’s a full weekend, all right,” Dan admitted. “The Memorial Day ceremony’ll be at the Tomb of the Unknowns?”
“Monday afternoon. The president’s going to be there, of course.”
“Of course. But do you have to be?”
Ignoring his question, she asked, “You said you had a surprise for me.”
“Yep.”
“What is it?”
“If I tell you, it won’t be a surprise.”
Jane studied his face for a moment. Then, “I’m not going down with you tomorrow, Dan. I’ll be there first thing Sunday morning, when Morgan and the other VIPs arrive.”
“Chaperons,” he muttered.
“You don’t need a chaperon,” she said fervently, “you need a keeper.”
Dan laughed. “Yeah, maybe.”
Very seriously, Jane said, “Dan, there’s nothing we can do. I can’t risk upsetting Morgan’s campaign. We’re planning to announce that we’re married just before the convention starts, for god’s sake.”
“Okay. After he’s elected and all safely ensconced in the White House you can announce that you’re divorcing him.”
“Be serious!”
“I am serious,” he said. “About you.”
She said nothing for a long moment. Dan got up from the couch and bent over and kissed her.
She pushed away. “You’re sleeping in one of the guest bedrooms tonight.”
“Sure,” he said. They both knew it wouldn’t work that way.
 
 
H
igh over the Atlantic Ocean, al-Bashir stretched out in his bed. One of the advantages of leasing a private jet plane, he thought, is that you don’t have to sit up all night in one of those uncomfortable reclining chairs.
He had spent the day in the hilltop villa just outside Marseille, inspecting the makeshift control station that his aides had installed there. Much of the equipment was old, almost antique, but al-Bashir satisfied himself that it would work well enough. Not up to NASA standards, of course, but it would get the job done. Some of it was stolen. Most of it had been leased from the Russians. It had worked well enough for them over the years. The technicians would be able to disassemble it quickly and leave no trace of their work for the police or Western intelligence agencies to find.
Al-Bashir had barely caught a glimpse of the beautiful Mediterranean during his hurried last-minute inspection of the control station. He flew in, let the technicians demonstrate the equipment for him, and immediately took off for Texas again. He kept his clock on American Central Daylight Saving Time throughout the trip.
As he drifted to sleep, lulled by the steady thrum of the jet engines, he fantasized about having April in bed with him. She’ll be thrilled to fly a private jet to France, he thought. She’ll be happy to please me for that.
T
he director of the Central Intelligence Agency was not happy about coming in to the office on the Saturday morning of the long weekend. “It’s a good thing the Orioles aren’t in town,” he muttered darkly to his aides as he took his chair at the head of the long, polished table.
Only three other people were in the conference room with him, two of them women. The long windows that swept across one entire wall were covered with thick drapes. The air conditioning was so frigid that the director felt slightly uncomfortable even with his vest and jacket on. The entire front wall was a smart screen that showed, at the moment, a map of the world.
One of the women, a top analyst from the Asia desk, took the chair at the director’s right and pecked at the laptop computer she had brought with her. A grainy telephoto image of a freighter tied to a dock appeared on the smart screen.
“Our people in Singapore,” she said, “reported a shipment of arms and explosives arrived in port last night.”
“From?” asked the director.
“Calcutta, if the ship’s manifest can be believed.”
“What do you think?”
“Satellite tracking shows the freighter originated in Shanghai.”
The director rocked back in his chair. “Chinese weaponry. Damn.”
The man sitting across the table from the analyst was from the satellite surveillance office. He chimed in, “It could be heading for the rebels in Myanmar.”
“Or Sri Lanka,” said the other woman.
With a shake of his head, the director asked, “Then why put in at Singapore?”
“They’re not off-loading,” said the analyst. “Not yet, anyway.”
For this they called me in on a holiday morning, the director groused to himself. Aloud, he said, “What’s your assessment?”
“Terrorism,” said the analyst.
“In Singapore?”
She shook her head. “Indonesia. The fundamentalist guerrillas must have closed a deal with the Chinese. Oil for guns.”
The surveillance man on the other side of the table countered, “The guerrillas don’t have control of the oil fields.”
“Not yet.”
They argued the point back and forth until the director silenced them. “Okay,” he said. “Notify the authorities in Singapore. They can search the ship, impound the arms.”
The analyst grinned. “And they’ll be a lot tougher on the smugglers than we could be.”
“If they’re not bought off,” muttered the surveillance man.
The director pointed a finger at him. “They won’t be, if they know that we know what’s going on.” Turning to the analyst, “I don’t want our source of information compromised.”
She nodded agreement.
“Anything else?” the director asked, anxious to get back to his home and an afternoon of gardening.
“Some unusual shipments of electronics gear near Marseille,” said the other woman.
“Drug equipment?”
“No,” she said. “Electronics. Several truckloads.”
“Maybe some frogs are starting a rock band,” snickered the surveillance guy. The others chuckled.
“That’s it, then?” asked the director.
“Unannounced rocket launch from Baikonur,” the man said. He tapped at his laptop, and a crisp satellite view of the launch center in Kazakhstan filled the screen.
“Anything unusual?”
“We don’t know what the payload is, but it’s big. They used their heaviest booster.” With a pencil-slim laser pointer he highlighted one of the launch stands. “And it looks like they’re setting up for a manned mission, as well.”
“Resupply for the space station?”
The man shook his head. “Wrong orbit for that.”
“It’s not a missile, is it?”
“No, no worries about that. But it’s a big payload, unidentified and unannounced. Might be a scientific mission. Or a communications relay.”
“Why wouldn’t they announce it?”
The surveillance man shrugged exaggeratedly. “You know the Russians: a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.”
The director frowned at him. “Our job is to solve riddles, whatever they’re wrapped in.”
Nodding glumly, the surveillance man said, “We’re watching, sir. Wish we had some HUMINT on the ground, though.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” said the director, already halfway out of his chair. “Tomorrow.”
 
 
D
awn was just beginning to brighten the Oklahoma sky when Dan awoke gradually, like a scuba diver rising slowly from the dark depths toward the sunlit surface of the sea. As he opened his eyes, for an instant he didn’t recognize where he was. Then he turned his head and there was Jane sleeping peacefully beside him. He grinned and turned on his side to cup his body against hers.
She awoke with a start, then relaxed and grinned over her bare shoulder at him. “You’re poking me.”
“Your snoring woke me up,” he said.
“I don’t snore. And you’re
poking
me.”
“Natural reaction,” said Dan. “There’s only one way to cure it.”
“Only one?” she teased.
“There are certain variations,” he admitted, stroking. her flank.
“Such as?”
It was full morning when they finally got out of bed and showered. Dan made an elaborate show of peeking out into the corridor to make certain none of the servants saw him coming out of Jane’s bedroom.
“I’ll go mess up the bed in the guest room,” he whispered to her.
She tossed a towel at him. “Go to the kitchen and tell the cook what you want for breakfast. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
Dan waltzed down the corridor and found the kitchen.
“Buenas dias,”
he said brightly to the cook.
She gave him a fishy look. “What you like for breakfast, sir?”
Dan almost blurted that he needed a batch of vitamin E. He caught himself, though, and ordered huevos rancheros with grapefruit juice and black coffee.
Jane came in just as the cook put Dan’s eggs on the table before him. She slipped into the padded chair in the breakfast nook beside him, her expression very serious.
“Dan” she said, leaning close to him, “this isn’t going to work.”
His lighthearted mood evaporated.
“What we’re doing is wrong, Dan,” Jane said earnestly. “Just plain wrong.”
“Felt good to me,” he mumbled.
“Be serious!”
He looked into her beautiful, troubled eyes. “For what it’s worth, this is driving me crazy.”
“We’ve got to stop.”
“Or tell Scanwell what the score is.”
“No! We can’t do that.”
“I could.”
“Dan, no!”
“I could walk right up to him tomorrow and say, ‘Hey, pal, your wife and I are in love with each other.’”
“Please, Dan.”
“It’s the truth, isn’t it?”
“That’s only part of the truth.”
He felt a dull, sullen resentment building up inside him. “And the rest of it is that you think his becoming president is more important than you and me.”
“It is, Dan. It truly is.”
“Is it?”
“It’s important to your work, too,” she said earnestly. “It will mean so much. To all of us. To everyone.”
Glancing down at his untouched breakfast, Dan pushed his chair back from the table. “Okay, you go get your husband elected president. I’ve got to get back to the office and get that satellite running.”
Jane made no attempt to stop him.

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