Powersat (The Grand Tour)

by Bova, Ben

  “I don’t know what to do,” April blurted, surprised by how awful she felt. “I want to help Mr. Randolph but I just don’t know what to do.”

  Eamons nodded sympathetically. “That’s perfectly all right. It’s not your problem, it’s mine.”

  “But I want to help!”

  For a long moment Eamons said nothing, studying April with those light blue-green eyes of hers. At last she asked, “Do you really want to help?”

  “Yes!”

  “Why?”

  Now April hesitated a moment. Then, “I liked Dr. Tenny. He was like a big gruff uncle to me. And I dated Pete Larsen. He wasn’t a ball of fire but if somebody killed him, murdered him, I want the bastard caught and punished.”

  “And Dan Randolph?”

  A ripple of electricity ran through April. She can see right through me, she realized.

  “Randolph’s the one who needs your help, isn’t he?” Eamons asked gently.

  April nodded, not trusting herself to speak without blubbering that she loved Dan.

  “All right,” said Eamons softly. “I think you can help. It might be dangerous, though.”

  “Tell me what I’ve got to do,” said April.

  CARACAS, VENEZUELA

  By god, thought Dan, he looks like some Spanish conquistador, straight out of the History Channel. Put some armor on him and one of those steel helmets and he could play Cortés or Pizarro.

  Rafael Miguel de la Torre Hernandez did indeed look like a high-born Castilian. Tall, stately, every inch the patrician, there was no doubt about who he was as he approached the little table on the balcony of the hotel’s bar. His cheekbones were high and his nose finely arched. His hair was beginning to gray at the temples, very distinguished, although his full moustache was still luxuriantly dark. But as Dan rose to his feet and extended his hand to greet him, he saw that Hernandez’s eyes did not match the rest of his appearance. They were a dull, muddy brown. The eyes of a peasant. The eyes of a man who could be corrupted. Good, thought Dan.

  He had waited at the balcony bar for more than half an hour before Hernandez had deigned to make his appearance. Across the street was Bolivar Square with its tall, thickly leafed trees spreading their branches out over the busy avenue. Sloths hung upside down from their hooked claws in the trees, barely moving, hardly showing any signs of life, while chattering monkeys raced through the branches like supersonic Tarzans, zipping around and around the entire square endlessly, as if they were hopped up on amphetamines. Dan had watched them, fascinated, until Hernandez showed up.

  “Señor Randolph?” Hernandez asked politely, needlessly, as he took Dan’s hand in a lukewarm grasp. He wore an expensive-looking light gray suit. Silk, Dan thought. Beautifully knotted pale yellow tie. Also silk.

  “I’m very pleased to meet you, sir,” said Dan. As they sat in the wobbly little cast-iron chairs, he added, “It was good of you to take the time to see me.”

  Hernandez nodded graciously, as if he were accustomed to flattery.

  It had taken a tortuous three weeks to get to this meeting. Jane had asked the State Department for someone whom Dan could talk to, as she’d promised. State provided the name of an attaché in Venezuela’s embassy who specialized in economic development. Dan had worked his way through the Venezuelan bureaucracy and finally discovered Hernandez, an assistant minister in the government’s department of transportation. He had flown to Caracas, only to spend two days cooling his heels until Hernandez finally agreed to see him.

  “I apologize for the informality of this meeting, señor,” Hernandez said, in slow, accented English. “Considering your desire for confidentiality, I thought it best that we meet outside the departmental offices.”

  “I agree entirely,” Dan said.

  A waiter bowed to Hernandez, who ordered a whisky and soda. Dan asked for a refill of his piña colada.

  Once the drinks arrived, Hernandez steepled his hands above his glass and asked, “You wish to use our airport?”

  Glad that he had at last gotten down to business, Dan hunched forward and said, “I wish to establish a partnership with a man of vision, a man who can understand that there is vast wealth to be found in space.”

  “Space? You mean out among the stars and such?”

  Dan kept a straight face, wondering if Hernandez were truly that naïve or if the man was simply leading him on.

  “In orbit around the Earth,” he replied. “You’ve heard of the power satellite that my corporation has built?”

  “Naturally.”

  “Then you know that such satellites can generate enormous amounts of energy. Just one of them could supply all of Venezuela with more electrical power than your entire nation now consumes.”

  Hernandez’s brows arched upward. “Truly? Only one satellite?”

  “Only one,” said Dan, nodding.

  “How can that be?”

  So he doesn’t know how it works, Dan realized. Okay, he’s admitted his ignorance without damaging his dignity. Time for the dog and pony show.

  Dan went through his litany of how the satellite uses solar cells to convert sunlight into electricity, then beams the energy to a receiving station on the ground. Hernandez drank it all in as he sipped at his whisky, never objecting or asking a question. He even took the idea of beaming microwaves to the ground without blinking.

  “The key to operating such a power satellite economically is the ability to send maintenance and repair crews to it at a reasonable cost,” Dan explained.

  Hernandez murmured, “Rockets are very expensive.”

  “The spaceplane we’re developing will bring down the costs by a factor of a hundred,” Dan said flatly. It was almost true.

  “This is the plane that crashed recently.”

  “We have another. We will flight-test it soon. I would like to have permission to land the plane at a suitable airport in Venezuela.”

  “Why here?”

  “As an emergency precaution,” Dan equivocated. “We’re negotiating other emergency sites in Spain, Australia, and South Africa.”

  “I see.”

  “You have a fine airport here at Caracas.”

  “It is also quite a busy airport. Many airline companies use it.”

  Dan nodded. He understands the problem. “If we needed to land the spaceplane at your airport, you would have to stop all other traffic.”

  “For how long?”

  “Half an hour, maybe. Maybe a little more:’

  Hernandez sipped the last of his whisky, then said, “That is not impossible.”

  Despite himself, Dan couldn’t keep himself from blurting eagerly, “You could do it?”

  “It would be an expensive operation,” Hernandez said. “There would be many people involved: ground controllers, airline managers, many others.”

  Bribes, Dan realized. He’s talking about bribes. Aloud, he asked, “Could I leave all that in your hands? I’d prefer to deal only with you, and leave the rest of the operation to your discretion.”

  Hernandez allowed a tiny smile to twitch his lips briefly. “Yes, I suppose that would be the best way to handle it.”

  “I could give you a retainer to start with, and then you can tell me how much the operation would cost.”

  “I have a bank account in your national capital. You could transfer the funds there.”

  No international transfers, Dan said to himself. He’s no dummy. “That will be very convenient,” he said.

  Hernandez broke into an unrestrained smile and signaled the waiter for a refill of their drinks.

  “If and when we need to use your airport,” Dan said, “I’ll have to send a small team of technicians here.”

  “That is no problem. I can clear that with the foreign office easily.”

  The waiter brought their drinks, then departed. Dan clinked his glass against Hernandez’s and said, “To a successful partnership.”

  Hernandez sipped, then said, “By the way, your technicians will need hotel accommo
dations here in the city. My brother-in-law manages the finest hotel in Caracas.”

  Dan grinned at him. We’re going to get along just fine, he thought. Just as long as he doesn’t get too greedy.

  ASTRO MOTEL

  The glass double doors that separated the Astro Motel’s pocket-sized lobby from the bar were almost always kept open, so from her vantage point behind the registration desk, Kelly Eamons could see who was coming and going easily enough. Especially who’s going, she giggled to herself: the restrooms were on the far side of the lobby.

  April Simmonds had pulled a few strings and gotten the motel’s manager to hire Eamons as their registration clerk for the night shift: four to midnight. The manager, an overweight son of the family that nominally ran the motel, took one look at Eamons and saw a cute redhead with a glad smile that filled his mind with visions of sugarplums. He himself had been manning the registration desk for the midnight-to-eight A.M. stint, so he moved his night clerk to the graveyard shift and retired to the manager’s office to spend his evenings watching television and trying to get Eamons to have dinner with him. The former night clerk quit, though, and the poor man had to go back to his former duties until he could hire a replacement.

  He didn’t mind it too much. Most of the time there was nothing to do but watch the TV in the lobby, and he got to see Eamons every night when her shift was finished and his just beginning. Many nights, alone behind the desk except for the late-night movies and news broadcasts, he thought about making it with Kelly right there on the big leather couch in front of the TV. Neither he nor anyone on Matagorda Island except April and Dan knew that this attractive, sunshiny redhead was an agent of the FBI.

  Eamons smiled and jollied him along while she kept tabs on the patrons at the bar. Almost all of them were Astro employees; April knew most of them and gave Eamons access to the company’s personnel files.

  April was doing more than that, though. With Eamons watching from the registration desk, April became a regular at the bar. She would come in at the end of the working day for the happy hour two-for-one drinks and stay until the crowd thinned out for dinner. Often she returned later at night, chatting with the Astro technicians and engineers she knew, allowing some of the men she didn’t know to buy her a drink or simply sit beside her at the bar and talk.

  April always went home alone, as far as Eamons could see. She’s smart enough to handle these geek boys, Kelly told herself. Besides, she’s in love with Randolph. She’s not interested in any of these guys. Eamons had assured April that she could protect her. “I’m just a phone call away,” she said, brandishing her cell phone like a miniature club.

  Eamons was living with April in the tidy one-bedroom apartment April rented in Lamar. She slept on the pull-out sofa in the living room and shared the tiny bathroom. They always drove to Matagorda separately, of course: April first thing in the morning, Eamons late in the afternoon. They didn’t want anyone to know they were working together.

  Mornings, over breakfast, they would compare notes, exchange information. The trouble was, Eamons soon realized, that there was precious little information to exchange. April was getting earfuls about who was unhappy with his wife, who was looking for a new job, who was chasing whom. Nothing substantial, though. Nothing that would help with the investigation. Eamons carefully refrained from telling April that Nacho Chavez, back in Houston, was warning her that the Bureau’s higher-ups were talking about terminating the investigation for lack of results.

  She found that she enjoyed being out of the office, in the field, even if the work was boring and unproductive. She enjoyed living with April and found herself wondering what it would be like to sleep in the same bed with her.

  Dan Randolph had returned from Venezuela, full of mysterious smiles, and the engineers were checking out the rocket plane in preparation for its mating to a booster rocket.

  Most mornings Eamons made breakfast for the two of them while April dressed for the office.

  “Are we getting anywhere?” April asked from the bedroom while Eamons gingerly pulled slices of toast from the pop-up toaster. They never pop the slices high enough, she thought, snatching at the crumbly bread and trying to drop it in the plate before she burned her fingertips.

  April stepped through the bedroom doorway, wearing a scooped-neck lilac blouse and a straight-line knee-length skirt of slightly darker hue, tall and sleek and every inch the modern, capable woman. Kelly felt distinctly short and shabby in her shapeless bathrobe.

  Eamons thought, That man Randolph is a damned fool. She’s really beautiful and he doesn’t pay any attention to her. Is it because she’s black? Aw hell, men are all crazy, anyway.

  “Are we getting anywhere?” April repeated as she pulled up one of the stools before the kitchenette’s breakfast bar.

  Eamons shrugged and put the toast down on the counter. “You’ve checked out all of Larsen’s friends. He definitely wasn’t a gambler.”

  April nodded glumly. “We knew that the morning after he was murdered.”

  “My office has sent the recording on Larsen’s answering machine to Washington for voice analysis. If the man speaking has ever been arrested on a federal charge, we might have a voice match somewhere in the files.”

  “That would be something.” April picked at her scrambled eggs. Eamons was not much of a cook; try as she might, her attempts at sunny-side up always came out scrambled.

  Trying to cheer April, Eamons said, “My grandfather was a stonemason back in Cass County. He used to say to me, sometimes you chip and chip and chip away at the stone but it doesn’t crack. Just sits there, stubborn, no matter how hard you’ve sweated over it. And then, all of a sudden, you hit it one more time and it splits open for you.”

  “I wish,” April said glumly. “I mean, I’ve talked with just about everybody Pete knew. I’ve sat at that bar and listened and asked questions until I’m ready to puke. And we don’t know anything now that we didn’t know the morning after he was killed.”

  Eamons was tempted to contradict her, but she kept silent. What April said was true enough. But what April didn’t know was that her asking questions, her insistent poking around among all those who knew Pete Larsen, might be bothering whoever it was who murdered the man. The people who destroyed the spaceplane and killed Tenny also murdered Larsen. They must have other informants inside Astro Corporation, Eamons thought. They must have eyes watching and ears listening. If April asks enough questions, maybe they’ll get worried enough to do something about it.

  Or maybe they won’t, Eamons had to admit to herself. Their smartest move would be to do nothing. They’ve done their damage, why stick around? Just get out and stay out and nobody will ever figure out who they are.

  On the other hand, Randolph is pushing ahead, struggling to keep his company going. Maybe they’ll figure they have to strike again to stop him once and for all.

  “I’m off to work.” April pushed her unfinished eggs away and got up from the stool.

  Eamons walked with her to the apartment’s front door. “See you tonight at the motel,” she said.

  “Right,” said April.

  Eamons closed the door and leaned against it. It’s a helluva plan you’re working, she groused to herself. The best thing that can happen is they try to kill her. Some helluva plan, all right.

  MATAGORDA ISLAND, TEXAS

  Even this early in the morning the thunderheads were piling up over the Gulf, Dan saw. A stiff wind was blowing in from the water as he stood at the edge of the launch platform, Lynn Van Buren beside him, and craned his neck up at the rocket booster standing sixteen stories high, wrapped inside the heavy steel lattice of the service gantry tower.

  “The latest weather forecast ain’t good, chief,” Van Buren said, raising her voice over the gusting wind. “They’ll probably be posting a hurricane watch by ten A.M.”

  “Then what?” Dan snapped. “An earthquake?”

  “We can’t take a chance on having the booster ride out a hurr
icane in the open,” Van Buren said.

  Dan knew she was right. Don’t mess with Mother Nature, he told himself. Some mother. Why can’t she wait until after we get the bird off?

  “Niles has his people tying down the spaceplane in Hangar B,” Van Buren said.

  Dan chuckled, despite everything. Niles Muhamed isn’t going to let anybody put “his” spaceplane in jeopardy. He pictured Niles standing at the door to Hangar B and forcing the hurricane to keep away, like old King Canute trying to stop the tide from coming in.

  “She could ride out a storm,” Dan shouted over the rising wind. “She’s clamped down good and the gantry’s holding her. We calculated a booster could stand up to winds of a hundred and fifty miles an hour, didn’t we?”

  “And what if the calculations were too optimistic?” Van Buren yelled back. “What if we get a hundred-and-sixty-mile-an-hour storm? Or a hundred-and-eighty?”

  Dan frowned at her. He dearly wanted to avoid the cost of taking the booster down, towing it back, and setting it up again after the storm.

  “And there’s the rain, too,” Van Buren went on, relentlessly. “Pounding rain for god knows how many hours. She oughtta be inside shelter, safe and dry.”

  Dan nodded reluctantly, his eyes on the line of trees that marked the edge of the state park. They were tossing fitfully now against the gray clouds scudding across the sky. Soon their leaves will be blowing off, then whole branches. Lots of debris is going to be flying around, he thought.

  “Okay,” he said grudgingly. “Take her down.”

  He turned and clambered down the launch platform’s steel steps, then walked swiftly to his waiting Jaguar. It took less than five minutes to drive to Hangar A, but Dan thought the sky darkened noticeably in that short time. Once he parked in his slot he pulled up the top on the convertible and locked it down tight. The car had never leaked before, but it had never gone through a hurricane, either.

  The sound of the wind was an eerie wail inside the hangar. Now we’ll see if these buildings really will stand up to hurricane winds, Dan thought as he hustled up the stairs to his office. We’re high enough above sea level so we don’t have to worry about storm surges. Then he thought, Unless we get a tidal wave. That would be the finishing touch.