It is inconceivable that a secret intelligence arm of the government has to comply with all the overt orders of the government.
-- James Jesus Angleton
CIA counter-intelligence chief
"Half a billion bucks is nothing to sneeze at."
Marcus Grant smiled wanly at Donahue. "I intend us to beat everyone else," he said, "but I don't think we'll need the prize. First, we won't be returning to Earth to claim it, and, second, our immediate action upon achieving orbit will be to broadcast a declaration of independence."
"Politics?" Chad Haley leaned in the doorway of Grant's office. "You?"
Grant swiveled in his chair to glance at the newcomer. Haley wore a light tropical outfit that contrasted sharply with the rainfall hammering the Long Beach harbor area. Strapped to his overnight bag, though, was a telltale dripping umbrella.
"It just so happens," Grant said, "that I was quite political in my youth. Anti-political, you might say. I think I can get it up for a blistering attack on UNITO. How was Uganda?"
"I spent a few weeks there yesterday." Haley flopped down in an empty chair, his face a mask of exhaustion. "Speaking of politics, I think the situation is too unstable even for us. There were two gun battles near the airport the one day I was there. Six Ruwenzori protesters dead. Constant announcements from the government that there was no cause for alarm. I couldn't even sign onto The Net over there. However..." He pulled a handful of flyers from his overnight bag and tossed them on Grant's desk. "There aren't a lot of choices when it comes to equatorial launch sites, especially with uninhabited land or ocean to the east. In the Celebes Sea, you've got Malaysia, Indonesia and such. Borneo would be a good location, as would Celebes or New Guinea; over seven thousand of the smaller islands are uninhabited. Biggest problem is that it's under fairly constant satellite observation, due to intense shipping."
"Heck, the whole planet's under surveillance," Grant said. "That shouldn't stop us."
"It rains a lot there, too, which limits launch opportunities. In South America, you just have Brazil. Lots and lots of Brazil. Macapa's a coastal city at the mouth of the Amazon. Good political stability, but maybe too close and cozy with the U.S. That leaves the east coast of Africa. Somalia, to be precise. Kismayu."
"Kiss your what?"
Haley shook his head. The long hours were getting to all of them. "It's a port town smack dab on the equator, give or take a quarter degree. Climate is desert-like, with occasional monsoons."
"Political stability?" Grant asked.
Donahue sighed. "Rotten. Tribal warfare disguised as civil unrest. Somalis versus Bantus. You remember the U.S. was involved a few years back. Dead soldiers dragged around. It's quieter now, but not what I'd call placid."
"Those are our choices?"
"If you want an equatorial orbit. If you decide otherwise, there's--"
"No," Grant said with an emphatic finger jab at the desk. "This station, this first station, has to be in an equatorial orbit. I intend to use it as a way station for geosynchronous rendezvous." He let go a disgusted snort. "Let me think about it. Have you finalized the station blueprints yet?"
Haley shook his head. "Still checking out contractors to do the combustion chambers. We need over eleven thousand of them. And we were going to go to Mojave and check out a composite fabricator for the propellant tanks."
Grant's voice brightened. "Mojave Airport?"
Donahue nodded, smiling. "Across the field from Laurence Poubelle and the Dædalus Project."
A wide grin spread across Grant's face. "When's their gift shop open?"
The rainstorm drenched the desert, too. Grant maneuvered the luxurious Jeep El Capitan through and around sheets of water spilling across Highway 14.
Haley kept his gaze glued to the Jeep's navigation terminal, reading weather information and simultaneously watching a real-time map of the storm enshrouding them. "Flood watch for the area," he muttered, "but no flood warnings yet.
"We're almost there," Grant said, pointing to a faded sign.
Donahue peered out at the sign. On it was painted a bizarre-looking white aircraft with long, thin wings, an engine pod with both pusher and tractor propellers, and twin fuel pods parallel to the cockpit. "Hey! Did you know that this is where Voyager flew out of?"
Grant nodded. "And a few miles down Highway Fifty-Eight is Edwards Air Force Base, where the shuttle lands sometimes."
"There!" Donahue pointed at a small sign indicating the way to the airport. Grant executed a skidding turn that sent a sheet of water splashing against the side of a small diner. A few lefts and rights later, the Jeep slid to a halt behind a series of hangars.
After a few moments struggling into rain gear, the trio popped open umbrellas outside the doors and galoshed into muddy puddles, splashing their way toward the Dædalus Project building. Haley and Donahue headed for the office and Grant for the hangar.
The office was a wonderworld of merchandising: hats, shirts, mugs, keychains, model kits, pamphlets, pens, lunch boxes, postcards, and much more lined the walls and the point-of-purchase displays. The two visitors stood in the entrance shaking off the water and collapsing their umbrellas before venturing forth into the souvenir Mecca.
"Not too crowded today, is it?" Donahue fingered the black corduroy cap with the Dædalus patch.
The lady behind the counter smiled. She was plump and matronly, though her face bespoke too many days in the searing desert sun. "Some people just don't like weather."
Joscelyn slipped the cap over her auburn hair. "How do I look?"
Haley laughed. "Like a wet gas station attendant."
She turned to the woman. "I'll take it."
"Poubelle's really paying for the rocket with all this?" Chad picked up a photo book of the progress so far on the project, along with artists' conceptions of the flight itself.
"Souvenirs and donations." The cashier pointed to a mayonnaise jar by the cash register, stuffed with coins and currency.
Haley and Donahue glanced at each other, then broke out into laughter, both imagining what souvenirs from their own scheme would look like.
In the hangar, meanwhile, Grant observed the dozen or so workers laboring tirelessly on Nomad. His gaze darted everywhere, absorbing details, analyzing strengths, searching for deficiencies. This is the market at work, he thought. Competition fueled by cooperation, driven by a vision. No need to pay them hush money, either.
"Beautiful sight," a voice behind him said.
He turned to face Larry Poubelle, dressed in a glistening wet black leather trenchcoat and carrying a thin Zero-Halliburton aluminum case. A worker ran up to him; he handed the case to him and said, "Gyros and accelerometers. Give them to Pierce."
"Mr. Poubelle." The visitor extended his hand. "Marcus Grant."
Poubelle reached out merrily, then hesitated upon hearing the name. "The Marcus Grant?"
Grant smiled. "I've heard that often enough that I'm going to make it my first name."
Poubelle shook his hand anyway, saying, "I don't believe everything I read in the papers. Considering how they treat me."
"Believe half of it." He reacted only slightly to the grip of the mechanical hand. Upon release, he pointed toward the skeletal aircraft. "You know, the X-15 A-2's drop tanks added a lot of weight and drag for only two more Mach numbers. And the proposal to make it orbital by hitching it to a Navaho booster included the pilot ditching the aircraft to parachute back to Earth."
It was Poubelle's turn to smile at the man. "For a billionaire, you seem to have done your homework."
Grant ran a hand though his grey hair. "We're more or less contemporaries. The original program held my interest as... a teenager."
"What brings you out here?" Poubelle asked. "Rotten weather for limos."
"Business," he said in the politesse of the wealthy that implied it was none of Poubelle's damned business and he was better off inquiring no further. "This part of it is the pleasure I try to mix in whenever possible."
"Would you like the four-bit tour?"
"No, thanks." Grant looked about. "I know you've got a deadline to meet." He paused, then looked Poubelle straight in the eye. "Do you think they'll just let you fly off out of their reach?"
"What?" Poubelle stared at the man with a baffled look.
"You were a military man. How would they--"
"Oh, them. I don't worry about them. The three C's, you know: Cost, Competence, and Conspiracy. Right now, they can't afford it, they probably can't hit an accelerating target over the continent, and there are undoubtedly conflicting factions of the power elite whose divergent interests would probably paralyze any response. Hell, you must have encountered such ruling class intrigue, right?"
A thin smile distorted Grant's lips for a moment. "Spake as one billionaire to another."
Poubelle laughed like a banker in a melodrama. "Don't you hate inherited wealth?"
Grant nodded. "If you don't earn it yourself, you can't appre--"
"Gun!" someone cried.
Poubelle whipped about to see a woman in the hangar door pointing a revolver at him. He cut to the side, covering his face with one arm, his heart with the other. She followed his motion and commenced firing. The shots reverberated in the sheet-steel building as workers jumped from Nomad and dove under desks and behind equipment.
Grant raced toward her and launched into a flying tackle just as her last round fired. They slammed against the concrete together, her head hitting with a sickening crack. A brunette wig flew from her scalp exposing matted, henna-orange hair beneath. Her face was lined like a map of homelessness and misfortune. Blood trickled from her nostrils and ears.
The .38 caliber Colt Cobra skidded from her grip to lay a foot away from her. Grant elbowed it farther away. "Don't touch it!" he shouted to a worker running toward him. "It's got her prints on it."
A strange whirring sound approached him from behind. Pinning the assailant's unconscious shoulders to the ground, Grant turned to see Poubelle approach, his right arm twitching in spasmodic jerks. He fumbled with a pocket on the shirt sleeve; it tore away with the ripping sound of Velcro to reveal an access hatch that he opened to press a finger inside. The arm suddenly froze as if it had been placed in a cast.
"Took a slug in the servos," he muttered, then hollered over his other shoulder, "Antonio! Bring my other arm! It's behind my desk!" He bent over Grant and the woman.
"Who is she?" Grant asked.
"You tell me," he said, looking curiously at his rescuer.
The local constabulary and paramedics eventually arrived to cart the groggy woman away. The rain, at least, had let up. None of the cops lifted an eyebrow of recognition when Grant reluctantly identified himself for their reports. He was mostly known to a higher level of law enforcement than small-town flatfeet.
When the assailant's identity had been sufficiently established, along with it came her disoriented attempt to explain a motive. Joseph Lester and Hillary Kaye were there to tape his response.
"Have you ever heard of Lana Lane before?" Lester asked, turning the microphone toward Poubelle, who sat at his desk on which lay his ruined arm, two bullet holes punched in it, a golden puddle of hydraulic fluid staining the newspaper beneath it.
"Never. And her claim that she had lost some big investment in American Atomic is equally untenable. My people are checking into her claims, but if she has any beef, it ought to be with her stockbroker, not with me." He pulled a cigar from his pocket humidor and rolled it in his living fingers.
"Do you find it suspicious that such an assault would take place in the middle of a winter storm out in the Mojave desert just days after you announce a half-billion-dollar Great Space Race?"
Poubelle glowered at Lester as if he had been asked what color underwear he was wearing. "I don't want to speculate on anything that's even more far out than my offer." He suddenly grinned as if a switch were thrown. "Why don't you ask me if I had it done as a publicity stunt?"
While Lester wrapped up the interview, Poubelle noticed that Chemar had returned from her daily rain-or-shine run to stare in alarm at the crime scene tape blocking the entrance. When she saw Larry, a look of overwhelming relief enveloped her. She rushed over to embrace him, staining his clothes with rainwater. Then she smiled up at him and said, "I'm gone an hour and this is how you treat the crew?"
Poubelle nodded. "No one's hurt," he said, "though I think we may have to address the security question."
"What did I tell you?" she said in a somber tone.
Gerry Cooper sloshed by to say that he had heard about the attack.
"Bad weather brings em out," Poubelle replied.
"It must do something," Cooper agreed. "I took a call this morning from General Davis of the Air Force. They've agreed to let us conduct launch tests from Vandenberg."
Poubelle raised a wary eyebrow. "I'll pencil your name on the check," he said wryly, then added, "Watch your back."
Cooper frowned, perplexed. "Thom Brodsky said the same thing. Don't you guys see that they're finally coming around? That our arguments and examples are convincing them to loosen up?"
"I see them trying to cover all bases." Poubelle flexed his spare arm.
"I know for a fact that there are people in the military and civilian space programs who don't like the Interplanetary Treaty any more than we do."
The robotic arm whirred and slapped Cooper across the back to give him a comradely squeeze. "Then maybe they'll all quit their jobs and join us, eh, Coop?"
Jon Franck and Samantha Madison, while commiserating with Reis yet another night in The Heat Shield, both regretted the pilot's decision. As far as they knew, she quit the corps without even consulting them. A chill permeated the Ablation Room as they discussed the future, an icy atmosphere that distanced her from her closest friends.
Madison coolly suggested that Reis go to an airline. "You're attractive, you could always get a good pr job."
Reis eyed the younger woman with sullen pain. "You could say my looks got me where I am today," she agreed. "Listen, I want to fly spacecraft." She felt miserable and wondered whether she had made a truly idiotic decision. What did she know about spying, anyway?
"Not too late to learn Japanese," Franck said.
"Very funny."
"I'm serious. NipponÆro is just a few years away from their first crewed launch. Forget the pr potential, they might just offer you a chance to pilot the ship because of your expertise."
"Maybe," she said. "But I'd prefer something that'll knock Kirk's ass onto concrete. Something right under his nose." Her voice rose enough for other tables to hear. "I'd like to blast off right out of the middle of Omaha or someplace on a pile of nuts and bolts that cost ten bucks to build and show those bloated little empire-builders in management how a space program ought to work!" There, she thought. That wasn't too hard. Just keep talking that way. Subtle and indirect. She took another sip of her Jack Daniel's.
Franck entertained the idea seriously. "Well, there are private launch systems struggling for a market. That media hog Poubelle is one of the least credible. It's all the regulations, though, that keep them from making any headway. Who can afford to post a hundred million dollar bond before each flight? Governments can -- they print the money, so it's just a bookkeeping entry. Private companies, though, you're talking real money."
"And convincing the satellite industry," Samantha added. "They see the STS and EuroSpace and won't invest in a new system until they see a prototype and no one can afford to build a prototype without investment from industry."
Tammy slugged back her drink as if it were water cooling a fire and slammed the shot glass down. "It's pointless." Her voice was slurred from the third drink. "There're too many little petty cowards in NASA who'll sabotage anything that might threaten their damned funding!" She looked around her and loudly said, "Any one of you think you've got a future in Space? I mean for more than a few days out of your entire lives?"
Samantha touched her arm. "Come on, Tammy. Sit down."
"Everyone talks about how we're like Christopher Columbus," Reis said, nearly in tears. "Columbus didn't matter. Sooner or later someone else would have hit the coastline. The one's who mattered were the Indians who showed up three hundred centuries before and actually settled here! And Virginia Dare, first baby born here from English settlers."
Jon pulled her down into her seat. She stared mournfully at the tabletop. "We're just tourists pretending we'll move there someday, but the boss won't let us transfer. He won't open a branch office. 'Too expensive,' he says. 'No one out there.' Well, I say 'Build it and they will come!' "
Jon shook his head and stood to raise her up. "Let's take her home. When she starts quoting inspirational sports stories, she's had it."
Milton read the flash report carefully. It described the pistol attack on Laurence Poubelle in general terms, closing with the observation "investigators conclude that the assailant was a disgruntled former investor in American Atomic with a history of mental illness. Suspect was under the care of a psychiatrist and was being treated with fluoxytine hydrochloride. Police view suspect as LNA."
LNA was agency shorthand for Lone Nut Assassin.
Milton smiled. The mark of a successful hierarchy was how well a particular task could be accomplished without its goal being mentioned at all. Strategy, discussed at the highest levels, translated into tactics at middle levels -- without the specifics ever being communicated -- and from there trickled downward to operatives as individual actions with no apparent trail of actual orders leading back to the top. This had been the technique of leadership long before Henry II had established plausible deniability in the assassination of Thomas à Becket by uttering no more than the rhetorical question, "Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?"
Milton knew that merely by asking if Poubelle might be in danger because of his public battle with NASA, he had communicated to his aides the need for Poubelle's removal. The assistant quickest to intuit his wishes would be the one who would most quickly find an underling to whom another vague implication would be made. From there, the chain of imply and infer continued until someone contacted the psychiatrist and -- perhaps -- suggested an increase in the dosage of fluoxytine or an in-depth discussion with the patient about her feelings toward Poubelle, or maybe a session on "acting-out" or whatever was the shibboleth du jour.
Milton slipped the report into the shredder, which sliced it in six different directions and ejected it from the underside as a minor snow flurry of small paper flakes.
To rule by decree was pleasing enough, he thought, but to be surrounded by minions skilled at interpreting unspoken wishes was far more sublime.
Milton worked late nearly every night. It was not that he needed to, but that he chose to. Something about the NSA offices -- constantly abuzz with intrigue, incessantly flowing with information plucked from a conniving humanity -- filled him with a sensation of standing on a firm rock in the middle of a vast, turbulent river watching the political and historical waters flow around him. More than anything, he gloried in the giddy realization that he could alter that flow with less than the point of a finger; with an ambiguous wave, a casual word.
When he first achieved the high water mark of the bureaucracy, he discovered that agents would make mistakes in interpreting his wishes. It soon grew apparent, though, that it was an organic, evolving process that winnowed away the ineffective to leave only those who could most consistently execute his unstated desires. To his surprise, he also saw that the mistakes seldom mattered, since undesired results could be explained away as random chance or even turned once again toward his own ends. The only danger in a mistake, he realized early on, was if it caused damage to the secret wishes of those even more powerful than he.
Such an irredeemable foulup had never happened. The only proof that he was consistently pleasing his superiors was empirical: he was still alive and still NSA chief.
"Mr. Milton," the voice on the intercom said. "Call from Mr. Kirk."
Milton realized that he was about to make another part of the river suddenly splash up and shift course. "Put him on," he said, "and secure the line."