The zenith angle (32 page)

“You are lovers with her.”

“Look, she is twelve years older than I am,” said Tony, pleading. “Mrs. DeFanti is completely devoted to a much older man who is mentally ill. Katrina and I have useful talents for each other. It is very possible for an adult man and woman just to be good friends. Really, it is!”

“You are
lying
!” The actress drew a sharp breath. “Or you are abnormal.”

“Okay, fine, I’m abnormal,” Tony said. “I prefer ‘extraordinary.’ ‘Brilliantly talented.’ ‘Fantastic.’ ‘A dream boyfriend.’ But okay, ‘abnormal’ will do. Just be nice to Katrina for one evening. That’s all I ask!

There is a lot of money at stake. Crores and crores, and lakhs and lakhs, of rupees.”

Tony’s voice faded in Van’s earplug. To Van’s astonishment, he saw that Tony was suddenly standing right next to him, at the edge of the outsized desk. Tony set down his black shoulder bag. It brushed the edge of Van’s black shoe.

Van looked up, and saw Tony’s pale, strained face. But Tony did not look down. Tony’s special guests were arriving.

As the observatory door yawned open, Van’s earpiece caught a faint cross-talk of radio chatter. The cyberwarriors outside the observatory sounded real busy.

Tony left to face his guests. Van quickly opened Tony’s shoulder bag. Tony’s bag was a rat’s nest. Crumpled business documents. Headache medicines. Indian gossip magazines. A laptop. A set of Bollywood DVDs.

A titanium ray gun.

Tony’s customers entered the observatory for their demonstration. There was a babble of voices and the clatter of portable chairs.

Someone wandered into range of the fifth audio bug. Van turned up his audio stream.

“I can’t like a man who lies to a hunting companion,” said a male voice. “Yes, I might buy a jet from him, but I can never be his friend.”

“I hate what he did to my husband’s elk,” said a woman. “He never asked my permission to blind them and scorch them with his laser beams. Those poor creatures!”

“How could poor animals hide from a reflecting balloon in the sky?” said the man. “It’s just not sporting. Such an ugly business happening there, when your American plantation is so pretty and beautiful. My film crew and I, we so enjoyed our stay at Pinecrest. That suite was just like the Raffles in Singapore.”

“Oh, you noticed,” said the woman, pleased. “I’ve been to Singapore so many times.”

“Look at Carew moving those chairs. Can’t he let the guards do it? He’s so busy, busy, busy all the time! He’s like a servant!”

“They all are,” said the woman thoughtfully. “Always. But I’ve come to like them, the Americans.”

“They are lovable, in a strange way?”

“All right, I don’t love them. But I love
being
American. Everyone on earth should be American. I put on my sunglasses. I go to Denver. I’m just a woman, I’m just a normal American woman. No one makes a bother of me, they just sell me whatever they have. ‘Have a nice day.’ ”

“I also like America very much,” the man confessed. “They know me too much in Bombay, Nairobi, and London. In America no one knows my face yet.”

“They must have noticed that you are very, very handsome.”

“Thank you so very much. But why would beauty make a man happy, Katrina?
Duty.
Duty is what makes a man happy . . .”

Van listened as Tony set to work to entertain his special guests. Tony’s audience did not fully understand his American English. This forced Tony to speak very slowly. His taut, ranting voice echoed from the top of the observatory vault. “You are about to see . . . the single most astonishing . . . and significant technical development . . . in the modern Revolution in Military Affairs . . .”

The dome’s great double doors opened to the black night sky. The observatory’s strawbale walls spun as lightly as a carousel.

Van hastily picked up another squawking earpiece. The open roof had hit the right vector. He was getting a signal from his cyberwar team.

Wimberley’s frantic voice. “. . . burst of electrical down there! When that wind picked up, they really . .

.” Then Wimberley’s signal vanished, and Hickok and Gonzales were still blocked out.

“Now that our roof to the stars is open, I suggest we make our Iridium calls,” said Tony. “Mr. Gupta, you may call your home offices at the Research and Analysis Wing in New Delhi. And, Mr. Liang, perhaps you’ll be kind enough to call the Second Department Analysis Bureau in Beijing. It’s time for a joint understanding.”

An icy mountain draft rushed down from the black night sky. It chilled Van’s flesh as he crouched below the desk.

Overhead lights faded. New lights flashed on, stagily.

Van dared to press his belly to the floor and sneak a look around the desk. The Lady was beautifully lit now, a diva poised in creamy pools of light.

Van climbed to his feet in the thick gloom. His head pounded with the altitude. Tony and his guests were completely seduced by this gizmo. They had no idea that he was standing in a pool of darkness, watching them.

Van silently opened the fabric rifle case. He removed Tony’s gun. An elk rifle. It was loaded. There was a huge brass round already in the chamber.

Van leaned his elbows on the ergonomic desk and stared down the rifle’s scope. He picked their human faces out from the darkness, his crosshairs dissecting their heads. They were civilian targets. Utterly unsuspecting.

A Chinese functionary. He was an older man with thinning hair, a big gut, and a carpetbag. A younger Chinese man at his elbow, some flunky gopher and interpreter. His bodyguard had the stiff back and humorless scowl of an old-fashioned Red Army commissar.

Katrina DeFanti was a pleasant, middle-aged Chinese woman with nicely done hair and a roomy pink Chanel suit. She looked exactly like the kind of woman who should never, ever be shot at. An Indian film star. Another Indian film star, even prettier. A much older Indian man, with an accordion-sided valise, a white Nehru jacket and whiskers. An impassive Sikh bodyguard, who looked like he was cut from solid teak.

Van had spent time in shooting ranges. He had learned a lot about rifles. He felt confident that he could put bullets into each one of them. But, as a professional cyberwarrior, he also knew that such crude behavior was counterproductive. Why had Tony bothered to hide a rifle inside this building? What on earth did he expect to gain by that pitiful tactic? For a struggle of the kind happening inside here, a simpleminded rifle was an admission of defeat. It was worse than stupid. A rifle was pure despair. Van climbed back under the desk and returned to his surveillance duties.

“Whenever a great power achieves a spacewar capability, this creates a whole variety of remarkable technical spinoffs,” Tony told his guests. “Through our methodical exploration of this weapon’s capabilities, we’ve discovered its peripheral features. When combined with laser reflectivity from a Mylar aerostat, we can refocus effective heat beams over a seventy-five-kilometer radius. In early Star Wars parlance, that beam was known as ‘The Finger of God.’ Space-based lasers have never been put into practice. They are simply too heavy to launch with conventional rockets. Even airborne lasers need a chemical power plant bigger than a 747. However, this ground-based laser, combined with an airborne mirror, can dominate the horizon. It can hit settlements, moving vehicles, any target chosen.”

The Chinese translator spoke up. “Mr. Liang would like to ask a question.”

“Of course! Ask me whatever you like.”

“Mr. Liang would like to ask a question of Mrs. DeFanti.”

Tony was startled. “I, uh, yield the floor.”

“Mrs. DeFanti, please tell us something. Is this strange device responsible for the many unsightly forest burns that we witnessed in your husband’s rural properties?”

“Yes, Mr. Liang,” said Mrs. DeFanti in English. “The laser here caused forest fires on my ranch, and elsewhere. There were a number of incidents. The laser also burned up two of the communications blimps.”

“One can’t expect pinpoint accuracy from an airborne blimp,” Tony said. “But that’s one feature only!

Much more remarkable is the laser’s fantastic ability to project colossal holograms. Here one combines the laser beam with an airborne chemical compound that fluoresces in infrared light. Spray that chemical across the sky, and you have psychological warfare effects previously undreamed of. Imagine the effect on the morale of enemies unprepared for an illusion of that size!”

Now it was Mr. Gupta’s turn to object. “How do you place these pollutants up into the sky?”

“That’s a very simple matter! Jet exhaust! Chemtrails!”

The Indian actor spoke up. “You put adulterated fuels in that jet? You never told me you had spoiled the jet’s engine with contaminants.”

“I didn’t harm the jet,” said Tony, shocked. “It’s not a Space Shuttle. Boeings can burn anything.”

“But it’s a matter of principle,” said the actor. “You did not disclose to us that you had subjected my property to unclean fuels! The Bharatiya Janata Party will have to reduce its price accordingly.”

Tony was angry. “Sanjay, you’re letting this go to your head! I know you’ve taken pilot training, and I know that’s rather hard to get in America, these days. But the condition of the Boeing Business Jet is completely a side issue. I think Mr. Gupta and his superiors in New Delhi can speak for themselves.”

Mr. Gupta removed his bristly ear from his brick-shaped Iridium phone. “Oh, no, no.” He chuckled richly. “Sanjay Devgan is not merely our movie hero, don’t you know? Inside the Research and Analysis Wing, Sanjay Devgan also happens to be
our hero.
Our brave young colleague has our fullest support!”

Mrs. DeFanti spoke up. She seemed irritated. “Gentlemen, I know you are all jet-lagged. But if you squabble in this way, we’ll be up here all night. I want to see this ugly matter resolved. My husband is too troubled a man for such complex affairs. I want this situation liquidated.”

Liang ran this speech through his Chinese interpreter. Then he replied. “We Chinese are not interested in some remote device in the rural mountains of America. We do have some interest in the plans and the hardware. Could you ship?”

Mrs. DeFanti grew peppery. “All right. I am merely a housewife. It’s not my fault that we Chinese suffer a Two Chinas policy! I am very weary of having my family in Taiwan required to sabotage visual imaging chips, just so that major heat sources in a narrow band of laser wavelengths cannot be detected on the ground by spy satellites. It was very tiresome and difficult to get those Taiwanese chips designed, bought, and installed in American spysats, just so that this spacewar laser would not be visible. If the American spies seek other chip suppliers for their later spacecraft, then it will be senseless for any of us to build spacewar lasers at all. Your lasers would be spotted instantly by American spy satellites, and blown to shreds with American cruise missiles. So you must deal with us now, and pay us now, or else this entire laser effort is useless!”

Tony cleared his throat. “Well, as Katrina points out so aptly, there you have it. It’s our way or the highway. The very good news is, we
have
successfully defeated the KH-13 satellite. Using this weapon, we burned the KH-13 so effectively that it will never be trusted again. We have proved that, with this telescope, we have a covert device which is also the world’s first and only effective spacewar weapon. With this laser capability in place, we can defeat any craft that any space power ever puts into orbit.”

“Into
low
orbit only,” said Mr. Gupta skeptically. “You cannot damage any spacecraft in the valuable geosynchronous Arthur Clarke orbit.”

“There’s nothing that far out but some harmless comsats,” said Tony. His wristwatch bleeped. “We need to wrap this up now all right? It’s time for our product demo.”

Electro-actuators kicked into life beneath the Lady’s great blue mirror. The digitized mirror was clicking and flexing, moving in tiny increments of a few wavelengths of light. The digital telescope sounded like a roomful of typists.

Tony spoke again. “I didn’t mean to interrupt our valuable negotiations, but it’s necessary to time this demonstration with care. We are about to attack the Iridium spacecraft that is carrying your phone signals, gentlemen.”

“How can you prove that?” said Sanjay.

“You’ll be able to hear the attack happening in real time,” Tony promised. “And so will your sponsors at home in your nations’ capitals.”

“You might be simply changing the phone signals inside this observatory building,” said Sanjay silkily.

“So that proves nothing at all.”

“I was aware of that objection,” said Tony. “As you all know, my personal associate inside the National Security Council is extremely well placed in American cyberwarfare circles. It will be simple for Dr. Vandeveer to get the outage reports from the Iridium’s new owners. I can forward those reports directly to you. That will prove the power of my antisatellite capability.”

The spies listened silently to their satellite phones.

“The Iridium satellite is not being destroyed,” Mr. Gupta reported at last. “We hear only a faint crackling! We have not even lost our phone connection to New Delhi!”

“It’s an overcast night,” Tony explained. “The damage is mild. The ideal conditions for our laser are clear nights with a strong storm front through the local windmill farm.”

“Wind there, and yet no clouds here? How often do you get those weather conditions?”

“There is very good visibility up on this mountain. After all, this is a telescope.”

“Snow, rain, then they make your laser weapon quite useless?”

Tony tapped busily at his laptop for some time. Then he spoke again. “Of course it takes some time for a silent beam of light to destroy a metal satellite. We do not have enough wind power to destroy satellites instantly. Besides, it would be very foolish to detonate satellites, for then the Americans would know the truth at once. Think of this fact, though: we could attack Iridium satellites, weather permitting, very stealthily, for years. A reputation for bad technical performance would finish Iridium off for good. Then we could short their stock and buy Iridium competitors, such as Globalstar. That would be so profitable that it would easily pay for this telescope.”