"Good we've got you to ride to the rescue."
Lafarge let the sarcasm roll off him; Carmaggio suspected he wasn't long on irony, anyway. Is it him, or are they all that po-faced where he comes from?
"No, all I can do is help you. I'm incongruent with this reference frame . . . . Think of it this way: I stand out. Every time I do something that makes things different from the way they'd be if I weren't here, there's a . . . blip. An event wave. The enemy get a chance of detecting how-where-when we are."
"Damned if you do, damned if you don't," Carmaggio said.
Well, Chief Wampanoag, the Pilgrim Father said, he thought, evil spirits hide in the iron tube. When you pull the trigger, they push the lead ball out . . . . Great Thanksgiving turkey, have another cup of mulled cider and now about that little land deal . . . . He couldn't expect it to make any sense. In a way, that was reassuring. If it had made sense in his terms, he'd have doubted it. Four centuries—more, in terms of actual progress. Try explaining electricity to Sir Walter Raleigh.
"What can we do, then?"
"Act on my information. That'll still leave . . . signs . . . but less so. Muffled."
He held up a hand. "I can't direct you. Even that would be dangerous."
***
"Hey, Jake," the Guard officer said.
"El-tee," Henry Carmaggio replied.
Actually Saunders was a National Guard major these days, but they went back a ways. Back to the delta. Carmaggio had been a plain garden-variety grunt; Saunders started out as a lieutenant and walked out a captain. To be precise, he'd been invalided out back to the World as a captain, with some exotic Vietnamese rot carried on a punji stake eating his feet. Still a trim little guy, dark—part Indian, from Oklahoma—looking more wrinkled and gray than they all had in '70, but hell, that was a long time ago. A small, smart man with a big nose, blue cracker eyes and a lot of oil money who still wore the uniform sometimes. Probably with as much conviction as he did the inconspicuously well-tailored businessman's suit he had on now.
"What can I do for you?"
Carmaggio looked around the office. Nice. At Saunders's level, weekend warriors had to have major pull; which meant their civilian jobs tended to be roughly equivalent to their military rank—and a lot better-paying than regular officers of the same formal status. A secretary came in with coffee in elegant bone-china cups. None of the lingering aroma of old socks and sweat you had down at NYPD headquarters, that was for sure. Pale carpet, pale pastel colors on the walls.
"El-tee—Christ, Mr. Saunders—"
"Bill, Henry."
"Okay, Bill. The first thing you can do for me is promise not to send for the guys with white coats and butterfly nets."
Saunders leaned back in his swivel chair behind the broad desk.
"Okay," he said. Time and money hadn't smoothed much of the East Texas rasp out of his voice. "I'm pretty damn sure you're not here to sell me tickets to the policeman's ball or tell me how you found the Lord. Shoot."
Carmaggio ran a hand through his hair. Christ on a stick, this is embarrassing.
"Right. About three and a half years ago, there was a big killing in a disused warehouse, twenty dead."
Saunders frowned. "Yep, remember that one."
"Here's what really happened—"
Twenty minutes later, he sank back in his chair, exhausted enough to let the thick leather upholstery cradle him in its Old Spice-scented comfort. Saunders looked at him silently; Carmaggio waited, sweat rolling down into the collar of his shirt and making his shoulder holster dig into his skin.
"Henry, that story leaves me one of three alternatives," Saunders said, clipping the end off a cigar. "Smoke?"
"Gave it up."
"Yep. Either you've started using the junk you confiscate, or you're seriously bullshitting me . . . or you're telling the truth. If you're tellin' the truth, you'd better have something to show me. I owe you one, but nobody's going to convince me the Gumbys of the Gods have landed without hard evidence."
The detective met the cold blue eyes. William Saunders might have ears like an old-fashioned milk jug and political ambitions, but he'd also brought his platoon through a year of bad bush with fewer losses and more done than anyone else in the district. He was listening for old times' sake, nothing more.
"Yeah . . . Bill. I realize hearing all this isn't like going through it yourself." A bleak nod answered him. "As it happens," he went on, taking a black rectangle out of his pocket, "I do have something fairly convincing."
Chapter Thirteen
"I don't know how you do it," Jennifer said.
The last traces of red and gold were dying out of the clouds on the western horizon, and a cool wind blew the gauze curtains through the open glass doors. Gwen sat with her head framed against the lingering remnants of sunset; some freak of the perspective seemed to make her eyes glint for a second as the lights came up automatically.
"Do what, Jenny?" Gwen said.
"Stay so fresh," she said. "And never get frazzled or get anything wrong."
In this business, nobody was lazy and most were workaholic. Gwendolyn Ingolfsson was . . . demonic, there was no other word for it.
"Ah, well, I just don't need much sleep," she said. "Never did, not more than three or four hours a night."
Oh, great, Jennifer thought. What a week. Even by the Street's insane standards, they'd been working like slaves. The other two execs had turned in earlier; she would herself, if she hadn't wimped out and had a nap earlier in the day. But it was about wrapped.
She looked down at some of the documents. There was that seawater thing; another bacteria that fixed nitrogen on the roots of wheat and corn—GeneTech was going to freak when someone beat them to that—half a dozen things in thin-film screens, holographic displays, superconductors . . . no doubt about it, IngolfTech really did have the assets. Not just blue-sky laboratory stuff, but ready to roll, and three years of profitability from things already out. The biotech would need a lot of regulatory work, but even those were bankable if you knew they were real. The electronics could go tomorrow—some of it already had, commitments from companies that raised eyebrows all around the table.
"Well, you'll be a natural at an IPO circus," she said to the entrepreneur. "It'll be months before anyone sleeps."
"I expect Tom will be doing a good deal of that," Gwen said. "But yes, it'll be strenuous. Worth it, though—we're all very enthusiastic about the job you've been doing."
The initial float ought to bring in around two hundred million for a twenty-five percent offering at fifty a share, she knew. Say three and a half million shares, two and a half primary and a million and a half secondary founders'. Thirty days, and she could do her report. It was straightforward. Maybe too straightforward. As if they were being handed things on a platter; no tangled wires, no sloppy documentation, nothing that would scare anyone.
This was a candy store for venture-capital types; and with half a dozen successful licensing operations already.
"I noticed Ms. Wayne wasn't at the final presentation," Jennifer said. I really should turn in. Somehow she didn't feel sleepy, even though everyone had been keeping country hours while the Belway team was here. More prickly and restless. Hell, it's barely midnight—and we're going back to New York tomorrow afternoon. Back to sleet, back to slush, back to her cat, who wouldn't forgive her for a week.
She forced down bitterness. It's been a very successful week. The problem was that now she had to go back to the workaholic scramble of a semi-upper-middle-class New Yorker's life. Where "life" was two hours of watching PBS between supper and bed, or a squeezed-in night at the opera; lately she might squeeze in a movie with Henry. And Ms. Gwendolyn too-perfect-to-be-true Ingolfsson was going to stay here in this goddamned mansion and pluck the plums of life as she pleased. Give or take a few hectic months while the IPO went through.
Maybe I should have stayed in med school. Then again, no. Doctors got even crazier than analysts, and they had to be ar
ound sick people all the time.
The secretaries began clearing away the documents.
"Well, that's all that can be done tonight," Gwen said. She stretched and yawned. "Let's get something to eat; and I'm going to go berserk if I don't hear somebody discuss something except due diligence reviews, draft registration statements, and the SEC."
The smile was infectious. Jennifer chuckled. "That's my life you're talking about. Odd to hear someone like you getting bored with business."
"It's a means to an end, as far as I'm concerned. This way."
This way was a small dining room, not the formal one downstairs. There were pictures on the walls; portraits. One of a woman with short blond hair and a face of delicate pointy-chinned beauty, dressed in a flowing off-the-shoulder gown.
"You might say that business doesn't run in my family," Gwen went on. "That's my mother, by the way—her name was Yolande."
"She looks sort of sad," Jennifer said.
"She had a hard life, in some respects," Gwen answered.
"What were your family in, if you don't mind me asking."
"My family? Well, soldiers, a lot of them. Gentleman-farmers, too." They sat and shook out their napkins. "The one thing I do envy you for living in New York," she went on, breaking a roll open, "is the opera and the galleries."
"You're an opera buff?"
"Mostly the older pieces. You know Delibes?"
"The one British Overseas Airways uses for their commercials?"
Gwen looked at her blankly for a second, then smiled. "I'd never thought of it that way," she said. "I had an aunt who was very fond of Delibes, though."
The servants brought in Jamaican jerk-pork soup, then steaks in a brown peppercorn sauce; the talk went from opera to design and back.
Jennifer took a mouthful of the steak. "That is good," she said.
"Buffalo," Gwen said. "Hump steak. I've been doing business with a certain TV magnate—he's probably going to be buying in heavily when we do the IPO—and he has a buffalo ranch, sends it over now and then. Nice of him."
That TV magnate? Jennifer asked herself. Oh-ho. "It may be blasphemy, but even the seafood here palls after a while."
"Yes," Gwen said. "Every once in a while I like to know that a higher mammal died for my dinner."
"You may not be an entrepreneur by choice," Jennifer said, "but that sounds quite sufficiently predatory of you."
Gwen looked up at her. "Predatory? Oh, you have no idea," she said, with a clear husky laugh.
God, she's strange, Jennifer thought, chuckling herself. Strange, but sort of fun. That charisma should get damned old after a while, but it doesn't. Just less noticeable. Come on, now, girl—where's your envy and resentment? Gone, it seemed. She'd make a great salesperson, Jennifer decided. The "trust me" vibrations were strong enough to do double duty as an oboe in a symphony.
She glanced over at the painting of Yolande Ingolfsson again, then glanced back sharply. The background seemed to be a window-seat at first glance . . . it was a window-seat, but the curved glass behind it framed a landscape on the moon, gray and silver and a ragged crater wall. Above that hung the full earth.
"I can see that wasn't done from life," she said.
Gwen glanced over, tilting her face and looking out of the corners of her eyes. "No, I did it from memory," she said.
"You paint?"
"It's a hobby."
In your copious spare time, no doubt, Jennifer thought.
"You find me a little odd, don't you?" Gwen said.
Sharp, too. "A little . . . out of the ordinary," Jennifer said.
"Perhaps I'm an alien invader, then," Gwen said. Her green eyes sparkled. "From another dimension."
Jennifer found herself laughing harder. "Oh, right. And you prowl the back roads of America in your flying saucer, mutilating cows and performing proctologies on rednecks."
Gwen arched her brows. "Proctologies on rednecks?" she said thoughtfully. "Carefully selected rednecks . . . with the right prosthetics . . . perhaps occasionally."
Jennifer choked slightly on a mouthful of wine. "Who's Adonis there?" she asked.
The painting was of a youngish man standing on a vaguely tropical beach; long white-gold hair fell to his broad dark-tanned shoulders. He was wearing only loose duck trousers, and sitting casually on a fallen palm-trunk, looking sleekly muscular and utterly relaxed; if the painting was anything like the person, heads would have turned. Not a dry seat in the house, as Louisa says, Jennifer thought.
"Alois, not Adonis. My husband."
The New Yorker set her wineglass down. "You're married?" she said. Somehow it was startling, unexpected, like a cat tapdancing. And I could have sworn Cairstens and she were involved. At least from the way the Californian carried himself. She imagined Gwen next to the man in the painting. And I would have thought they were relatives. Maybe a cousin?
"Was; Alois died . . . some time ago. Sporting accident."
"Oh." Foot-in-mouth disease, Jennifer. "I'm sorry."
Gwen sighed and shrugged. "It was some time ago. He—we both—had a taste for dangerous pastimes. If you do that long enough, it'll kill you. I've just been luckier, so far. In fact," she said, "eventually the universe kills everybody; one argument for taking a theistic approach to it, I suppose."
That which kills everybody is God? Jennifer thought. Perhaps not a tactful comment to make. Odd outlook.
"You paint a lot?'
"It relaxes. Let's finish this Merlot off."
"I shouldn't . . ."
"Work's over, you're leaving tomorrow."
"True. There, dead soldier."
The dessert was various tiny pastries of tropical fruits; the pyramid on the serving tray was as colorful as a peacock's tail or a flower market, and she felt almost guilty at disturbing it. Kiwi, mango, mangosteen, sour-sop, and the coffee was Blue Mountain.
"This is the life," she sighed.
Gwen leaned back with her cup in both hands, sipping. "Its a change from shark hunting," she said. "The Wall Street and finny varieties both."
"There are sharks in the water here? What a pity." The beach looked gorgeous, not that she'd had time for swimming. Visit the tropics and stare at your computer, she thought. Sheesh. Bah, humbug.
"They can be entertaining to hunt, when you feel like spearfishing," Gwen said.
Jennifer looked at her, trying to see if she was serious. "Not the Great White Shark, I hope," she said.
"No." Another of the white grins. "Although I've found some remarkably hostile things coming out of the water at me here," she added. "But enough about me. Tell me what life in New York is like for you."
Later, she stopped herself. "I'm babbling," she said. "You can't possibly want to know about my cat."
"On the contrary," Gwen said, finishing her brandy. "I adore cats. Let's go for a quick swim, then."
Jennifer hesitated. "Not with the sharks, I hope."
"I've got a perfectly good pool here."
She hesitated again. You had to watch out about getting too friendly with clients. On the other hand, why not? Nothing wrong with a swim, and Gwen was nice enough—weird, but nice. Also Klein and Coleman were pills. And she felt restless, as if someone were pricking her skin very lightly with invisible needles. The room swayed a little; she'd exceeded her usual rule of no more than three glasses of Chardonnay or something similar. They walked out to a terrace and down a flight of stairs; the pool was floodlit from below, lined and set among marble tiles and edged with a decoration of colorful Portuguese majolica. Water burbled from the mouth of a bronze lion, into a rock-edged basin and then into the pool itself.
"Which way's my room?" she asked, a little disoriented. "Got to get my suit."
"Why bother?" Gwen said, stepping out of her clothes. "Nobody here but us girls."
Jennifer gaped as the other hit the water in a perfect arching dive and with hardly a ripple. Her shape eeled down the pool, flashing into and out of the puddles of light thrown by the unde
rwater sconces. She surfaced at the other end, mahogany hair plastered to her head, a flash of teeth and eyes.
"Chicken!" she called.
"Hell with that!" Jennifer called back. To hell with being sober and staid.
Hell with the extra ten pounds, too, she thought. She didn't have anything to prove. Still, she kept her briefs on as she waded down the steps. The water was barely cool to the skin, the stone smooth under her feet as she stood hugging herself. Fingers like steel wire suddenly gripped her ankles. She yelled as they heaved her upwards, catapulting her forward into the middle of the pool with a huge splash that sent water fountaining over the cool white and blue of the marble flooring. She whooped and thrashed her way back to the surface, glaring and sputtering.
"You looked so much like September Morn," Gwen said, surfacing not far away.
"Showoff!"
***
Carmaggio leaned back in his chair and watched the image of the earth spin slowly over the office table. It was the size of a large beachball, complete down to the swirling patterns of cloud; if you looked carefully at the edge, you could see a slight diffusion, where the atmosphere would scatter light. He peered closer. The detail got better and better as you approached. He had an uneasy feeling that if you whipped out a magnifying glass, tiny little ships and airplanes would be visible in the sky, and with a big enough microscope you could look in a window in a New York office building and see two men sitting on either side of a desk watching a holograph of the Earth . . . .
"I'd like to know how they do that," Bill Saunders said.
There was a slip of something the size of a business card underneath the image, on the businessman's desk table.
"I don't even understand TV, really," the detective said. "But I can switch it on or off. This quadrant," he added, raising his voice a little. "Enlarge."
The sphere vanished, to be replaced by a three-foot-square section. That flashed down and then down again, until they could all see the street outlines of a city; the buildings were perfectly to scale.
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