The Tin Man (23 page)

H
elen Kaddiri glanced briefly at the good-looking guy who opened the hotel door for her before she walked out toward the docks. She had been born
and raised in San Diego, but she hadn’t been down to the waterfront in years. It was much more crowded than she remembered, but still just as beautiful. The weather was perfect, dry and mild, with just enough of a breeze to bring in the salt air but not enough to require a coat.

She allowed herself to enjoy the weather and the scenery for a moment before her mind returned to the situation at hand: Namely, what in hell did Jon Masters want? His phone call the day before yesterday was the first she had heard from him since the BERP demonstration up in Sacramento. The rest of the board of directors and every one of the senior officers and managers had either spoken or met with her, pleading for her to return—everyone but Jon Masters. Pig-headed as usual.

She had tossed a grenade on their picnic by having her attorney draw up a proposed three-million-dollar settlement agreement. The deal included cashing in some of her preferred-class stock, converting the rest into common stock, and transferring ownership of some of the patents and other technologies still in development that rightfully belonged to her. She wasn’t looking to gut the company, although she certainly could if she wanted.

“Helen?” She turned. To her astonishment, she realized that the young, nicely dressed man who had held the door open for her was Jon Masters. It was practically the first time she had ever seen him in anything but jeans and tennis shoes. His hair was neatly trimmed and combed in place, and—this was almost too much to believe—he was wearing a
necktie
! She never imagined he would even own one, much less wear one!

“I … I’m sorry, Jon,” she said, completely taken off guard. “I didn’t recognize you. You look so … so …”

“Normal?”

Helen smiled. “Something like that, yes.” That was unusual too—Jon never made fun of himself. Just the opposite, in fact—he thought he was God’s gift to the Western world. Helen looked down at her slacks, casual blouse, and plain jacket. “I feel under-dressed standing next to you, Jon, and that’s certainly something I never thought I’d say. It feels weird.”

“I’m very glad you’re here, Helen,” Jon said. He held out a bouquet of red roses. “Happy Valentine’s Day,” he said, looking into her eyes.

A puff of wind could have knocked Helen Kaddiri over. She accepted the flowers with a stunned expression. The most he had ever given her in the past was a hard time. “Thank you,” she said in a tiny voice. “I’m flattered. Now tell me: Who are you, and what have you done with the real Dr. Jonathan Colin Masters?”

“No, it’s me, all right,” Jon said. “We’re this way.” He motioned toward the marina.

“We’re not meeting in the hotel?” said Helen. “I’ve asked my attorney to join us. He’ll be here in a few minutes.” Jon looked confused. “I assumed this was in response to my settlement agreement, Jon.”

“No. I hadn’t planned on bringing any lawyers,” Jon said. “You can bring him if you want, but it might spoil …”

“Spoil what?”

“Spoil … the mood,” he said, a little embarrassed.

“The
mood?”
Helen retorted. She had been intrigued at first, even titillated by what Jon was doing; now she was getting angry. This sounded like yet another Masters prank. But it wasn’t the fact that he was pulling another prank that made her angry—it was her sense that this
wasn’t
a prank,
and then realizing that she had deluded herself. “Jon, what is this? What’s going on? If this is some kind of gag, so help me, I’ll brain you!”

“It’s not a joke, Helen,” Jon said. “Follow me.”

“Where are we going?”

“It’s a surprise,” Jon said. He led her down the steps to the hotel marina. A man in a white waiter’s outfit smiled, bowed, and opened the wharf security gate for them. “I’d ask you to close your eyes,” Jon said, “but the thought of
you
closing your eyes on this dock makes
me
dizzy.”

“Jon, where are we going?” Helen asked irritably. “This is crazy. If we can’t discuss our differences like rational human beings, we should just …”

“Here we are,” Jon said. He had stopped beside the most beautiful yacht Helen had ever seen. It had to be sixty-five feet in length—it looked as big as a house. A waiter in crisp white was standing in the aft cockpit, ready to help them board, and opposite him was a violin player. Up a short ladder was the covered aft deck, on which Helen could see a table laid with a gleaming white tablecloth and place settings for two. The yacht’s engines were running, and dock crews were holding the lines, ready to get under way.

“Jon, what in the world are you up to?” Helen asked.

“We’ll talk on board,” Jon said. “Let’s go.”

“Where are we going?”

“Oh, I thought we’d go to Catalina for the weekend,” Jon said. “Depends on the weather. Or we can go to Dana Point, or Mexico …”

“Mexico?”
Helen asked. “Jon, what
is
all this?”

“Helen, we can talk on board,” Jon said again. He looked up and down the wharf. Attracted by the soft violin music, a small crowd of gawkers had stopped
to watch, which was making Jon uncomfortable. “Your chariot awaits, madame.”

“We’re not going anywhere until you answer me,” Helen demanded. “What’s going on? Is this another one of your elaborate pranks? If it is, I haven’t got time for any of it.”

“This is no prank, Helen,” Jon said. His face was beginning to show the dejection of someone realizing his grand plan maybe wasn’t going to work. “This is a night out for both of us. A chance to be together, to talk, to have a nice dinner, to see the coast at night.”

“No one else?”

“No one else.”

“What makes you think I’d fall for any of this, Jon?” Helen asked.

“ ‘Fall’ for this? There’s nothing to ‘fall for,’ Helen,” Jon responded. “We have a lot to talk about. There’s so much I want to tell you …”. “This isn’t about the settlement agreement, about the buyout?”

“No, it’s not about any of that,” Jon replied.

“Well, what then?”

“It’s about … it’s about you and me, Helen. About us.”

“Us? There is no ‘us,’ Jon.”

“I want there to be an ‘us,’ Helen,” Jon said sincerely. “Can’t we go on board?”

“Talk to me right now, Jon,” Helen insisted. “What are you saying?”

Thankfully, the crowd had started to go on its way. The violin player stepped inside but continued to play. “Helen, I sensed something in you during the BERP demonstration up in Sacramento,” Jon said. “I don’t know if I’m right or not, but I know what I sensed. And when I thought about it, thought about
you
, I felt really good.”

“You mean … you mean, you like me?” Helen asked, sounding perhaps a bit more incredulous than she meant. “As in,
romantically
like me?”

Jon took her hands in his. “Yes, Helen. Romantically. I want to see if there’s anything there, you know?”

Helen paused, looking into Jon’s eyes. This was too much to believe, too much even to grasp. Was this really happening? She became acutely aware that he was holding her hands, and she took them away.

“Jon … Jon, this is very nice,” Helen said awkwardly. “I’ve never been treated to anything like this before. But …”

“But what?”

“We are in the middle of a multimillion-dollar buyout negotiation, Jon,” Helen said. “You’re paying three thousand dollars a day in legal fees to resolve our differences …”

“Well, that’s over,” Jon said. “Whatever you want, you can have. Full rights to the patents, full ownership of the unpatented designs you created, full market value of the stock, and your stake in the underlying Dun & Bradstreet value of the company in cash or in percentage of profits. You deserve it; you should have it.”

Helen Kaddiri was flabbergasted. “Two months of legal negotiations ended just like that?” she asked. “What’s the catch?”

“There is no catch,” Jon said.

“I don’t have to go on this boat with you? I don’t have to have dinner with you? I don’t have to sleep with you?”

Jon gave her a mischievous grin and shrugged. “Well …”

“You are a piece of work, Jon, you really are,” Helen said angrily. “You can’t browbeat me with a
bunch of lawyers, so you decided you’re going to try to woo me to sign your buyout deal?”

“No! That’s not it at all!” Jon said. “The deal’s already been done. I signed your last counteroffer four hours ago.”

“You did?”

“Yes,” Jon said. He took her hands again. “So maybe we can consider this a celebration cruise, or perhaps a reconciliation cruise?”

Helen looked at Jon, at the yacht, then back into his eyes. “Are you serious, Jon?” she asked. “You just … want to spend time with me?”

“Yes,” Jon said. “Maybe more, in the future, if you want. But let’s make this the first step, shall we? I’ve got so much to tell you, so much I want to share with you.”

“Oh, Jon,” Helen said disapprovingly. She let his hands drop again, not as sharply as before but still a rejection. “I guess I’m just not a dinner-on-a-yacht girl.”

Jon motioned to the upper deck, where a small rigid-hulled inflatable boat was waiting on davits. “They’ve got a cool little Nouverania up there we can use.”

“It’s not that,” Helen said after a little laugh that made Jon’s heart do a somersault with hope. “Jon, after all we’ve been through together, this is just not the way I imagined it ever happening. I never expected to be … courted, I guess. And I certainly never expected to be … to be swept off my feet. Especially by Jonathan Colin Masters.”

“Well, believe it,” Jon said. “C’mon, Helen. You know me. I’m a kid trapped in a man’s body. I don’t know how anything is
supposed
to work. I know how it works in my head, and I just do it. I follow my head and my heart because I don’t know any
other way. A yacht ride to Catalina … well, that seemed to be the way to do it.”

“Not with me, I guess, Jon,” Helen said. “Thank you. But I can’t go. I can’t do this. You and me, we have too many bouts under our belts. It would be hard for me to believe that this cruise would be anything else but a prelude to … heck, I don’t know. Throwing me overboard.”

“Helen, give me a chance,” Jon said. “I’ve finally realized that I’m happier with you, that I care about what you think and feel about me, that I want to be with you. I don’t know if there’s anyone else in your life right now, but I definitely know that I want to be in it. I …”

Helen shook her head to stop him. “I’m sorry, Jon. You’ve given me a lot to think about. I wish I could go with you. But I can’t. Good-bye.”

All sound seemed to evaporate as Jon watched Helen turn and walk down that wharf. The gentle throbbing of the twin diesels was gone, the soothing sounds of the violin, the soft creaking of nearby boats straining on their lines. The only thing he could hear were her quickly fading footsteps, walking out of his life for good.

J
on Masters stepped into the middle of the largest hangar inside the security development center at the old alert facility. It was empty except for those looking on: Lieutenant Colonel Hal Briggs, Gunnery Sergeant Chris Wohl, and Dr. Carlson
Heinrich, Sky Masters, Inc.’s staff project medical consultant. Briggs and Wohl were dressed in their typical black battle-dress uniforms, each with sidearms, but the others were in business suits. Masters and Heinrich were both wearing wireless earset commlinks so they could talk with the test subject.

Briggs looked a little puzzled. “We still on for the test, guys?” he asked. “ISA wants a report yesterday. Where’s Patrick? This is his show, right?”

“We’re ready, Hal,” Jon said. “Patrick is standing by.” He folded his hands in front of him, suddenly looking like a schoolboy giving a talk about his summer vacation to his classmates.

“It is believed,” Masters began, “that gunpowder was invented by the Chinese in the seventh century
A.D.
When it was brought to Europe in the fourteenth century, it changed the face of an entire continent, an entire society. The first man-portable gun used in anger was used in the fourteenth century by Arabs in North Africa. It too changed the face of the entire planet—that first gunshot truly was ‘the shot heard round the world.’

“Despite all of the technological advances we’ve made in the past seven hundred years, the gun, and the tiny pieces of metal it propels, continues to change lives, change humankind. It is simple technology hundreds of years old, but still deadly, still lethal. When you think about it, it’s pretty frustrating: Our company builds all kinds of cool weapons technology, but the best-equipped soldier is usually killed by essentially the same weapon used by a nomadic guerrilla desert-fighter centuries ago.

“The soldier of the twentieth century may have better training, better education, and better equipment, but when it comes right down to it, the infantryman of the fourteenth century would probably
immediately recognize him,” Masters went on. “Their tactics, their mind-set, their methods for attack, defense, cover, concealment, movement, and assessment all remain the same. All that, guys, changes right now. Colonel, Gunny: Meet the soldier of the twenty-first century.”

They heard a tiny
woosh!
of compressed gas echo inside the empty hangar—and then, as if out of nowhere, a figure appeared before them, dropping out of the air from the shadows in a corner of the hangar. The figure landed on its feet and bent into a crouched position, then slowly rose and stood silently before them.

It wore a simple dark gray bodysuit, resembling a diver’s three-mil wetsuit; a large, thick helmet; thick gauntlets and boots; and a thin, wide backpack. A helmet covered the entire face and head, molding smoothly out to the shoulders. It had a wide visor, with extensions over the visor containing other visual sensors that could slide into place over the eyes. The helmet appeared tightly sealed from the outside; a breathing apparatus was obviously necessary.