Powersat (The Grand Tour)

by Bova, Ben

  “I love you too, Jane,” he heard himself say, his voice hollow with wonder.

  She rose to her feet, facing him eye to eye. “What are we going to do about it?”

  Dan wrapped her in his arms and kissed her. She melted into him and it was as if all the years, the separation, the arguments, had disappeared. After a long, long breathless time he slipped his arm around her waist and guided her toward the office door.

  He saw the questioning look in her eyes. With a lame grin, he said, “Would you believe that my apartment is just down the catwalk?”

  She smiled back at him, her head nestled on his shoulder. “Yes. Knowing you, I’d believe it.”

  Dan felt very grateful for Tomasina.

  They made love languidly, as if they’d never been apart, as if there was nowhere else on Earth that they had to be, no one else that concerned them. But at last, as late afternoon sunlight lanced through the apartment’s window, Jane sat up in bed.

  “I’m afraid I’ll have to get back,” she said.

  “No,” Dan whispered. “Stay with me.”

  “I wish I could, Dan.”

  He nodded reluctantly, knowing the moment was gone. “Okay. I’ll phone the motel and tell them to start your pilot back to the airport.”

  She gave him an impish look. “Not yet.”

  “No?”

  “Do you still like long showers?”

  He took his hand away from the telephone and got to his feet. “I’ll turn on the water,” he said, padding toward the tiny bathroom. The shower’s barely big enough for one, Dan thought. This is going to be fun.

  And it was. Slippery naked bodies slathered with soap suds. Dan banged his elbows on the tiled shower walls more than once, cracked his knee hard enough to make him yowl with pain, but it didn’t matter, nothing mattered except that Jane was with him and they were together and none of the rest of the world mattered at all.

  Until the water at last began to run cold.

  “It’s just a small hot-water tank,” Dan apologized.

  “It’s time to go,” Jane said, stepping out of the shower stall, reaching for a towel.

  Dan patted her dry as slowly as he could, but at last she went back to the bedroom and began picking up the clothes they had strewn across the floor.

  Once he was dressed Dan phoned the motel and told Jane’s pilot they would meet him at the airstrip in half an hour.

  As they walked out into the humid warmth of the late afternoon, Dan asked, “What happens now, Jane?”

  With a moment’s hesitation she said, “I’ve got to get back to Washington and you’ve got to make your power satellite work.”

  “And Scanwell?”

  As if she hadn’t heard him, Jane said, “I’ll get to the head of the FAA for you. I don’t think I can get NASA on your side, but I can at least keep them from publicly criticizing you.”

  “And Scanwell?” he repeated.

  She opened the passenger-side door of the Jaguar and got into the car. Dan walked around to the driver’s side without taking his eyes off her.

  Once he had started the engine, Jane said, “If you don’t go off thumbing your nose at the FAA again, you can be a great help in getting Morgan elected.”

  “That’s not what I mean and you know it,” he said.

  She did not reply. Dan put the Jag in gear, backed out of the parking slot, headed toward the airstrip.

  “Jane, how involved with Scanwell are you? I mean, if we’re going to—”

  “I’m married to him,” she said, looking straight ahead. “He’s my husband.”

  Dan felt as if a ton of ice water had just been poured over him. “Married?” he heard himself yelp.

  “Almost two years now,” she said, her voice so flat and even that he knew she was struggling inside herself. “He’s so straight-laced … well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  “Son of a motherless bitch,” Dan muttered fervently.

  “We’ve kept it a secret. Not even our closest aides know. Half my power base in Washington would disappear if they thought of me as Morgan Scanwell’s wife.”

  Dan kept his eyes on the road, his grip tight on the steering wheel.

  “You left me, Dan. You went off to Japan.”

  “I came back.”

  “But not to me. You came back and started this company of yours. You were more interested in outer space than in me.”

  “I thought you were more interested in being a senator than in me.”

  She turned toward him at last. “We’re a couple of prime fools, aren’t we?”

  “I guess we are.” He thought a moment. “Do you love him? I mean, you must have, to marry him. But now … ?”

  “I thought I loved him. I thought the world of him. I still do. He’s a great man, Dan. A wonderful man in so many ways. He—”

  “Uh, you don’t have to tell me how wonderful he is,” Dan grumbled. “The question is, where do we stand, you and me, right here and now?”

  For the first time since he had first met her, so many years ago, Jane looked uncertain, distraught, close to tears.

  “I don’t know, Dan. I can’t divorce him, not while he’s campaigning for the White House.”

  “And if he wins, you’ll be his First Lady. Christ.” Dan felt like driving off the road, crashing through the thicket of scrub along the shoulder and plunging into the turbid water of the bay that lay beyond.

  “Give me time, Dan,” she pleaded. “Let me try to work this out. It isn’t easy.”

  “You’re telling me?”

  Jane shook her head. “I wish I didn’t love you.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “I don’t mean it. Not that way.”

  He turned down the little side road, saw the control tower’s glass bubble glinting in the setting sun.

  “What are we going to do?” Dan asked. “What in the seven circles of hell are we going to do?”

  “I don’t know, Dan. Not yet. I have to think it out, sort it out in my head.”

  Anger simmered inside Dan as he skidded the convertible to a stop in a cloud of dust and crunching pebbles.

  Jane put a hand on his arm. “Whatever happens, Dan, I love you. Remember that.”

  “But you’re going back to him.”

  “I’m going to my work in Washington. Morgan’s in Austin, when he’s not off campaigning.”

  “You’ll be with him.”

  “I’ll have to be.”

  “And us?”

  “Just don’t do anything crazy, Dan. Get your satellite working, but don’t antagonize the FAA or anyone else. And don’t sell out to Tricontinental or Yamagata.”

  “Yeah. Right.” He wanted to lean his head on the steering wheel. Or maybe blow his brains out.

  HOUSTON, TEXAS

  Special Agent Chavez did not like to be summoned upstairs to the field director’s office. As far as Nacho was concerned, the people upstairs could go their way and play their games any way they wanted, he didn’t care. As long as they left him alone.

  But on this Monday morning he and Kelly Eamons rode the elevator up from their own offices to the executive level.

  “Look at their carpeting,” Eamons whispered as they walked down the corridor to the director’s suite.

  “We’ve got carpeting downstairs,” Chavez whispered back.

  “Not this thick.”

  The director was new to the job, having been promoted from the Seattle office. She was an African American from Philadelphia, and she had a reputation for being a tough, demanding bureaucrat who worried more about looking good to Washington than anything else. Neither Chavez nor Eamons had met her, except at the formal ceremony when she took over the regional office.

  She sure looks tough, Chavez thought as the receptionist ushered them into the director’s office. A little bantamweight sitting behind a big government-issue desk with a pugnacious expression on her dried-up face. Her skin was as dark as the office’s mahogany furniture. The desk was u
ncluttered, actually bare except for a phone console, a slim display screen, and a wireless mouse sitting on a pad that bore the FBI’s emblem. On the wall behind her, though, he saw photographs of the woman with Philadelphia Eagles football players. Tough, all right, Chavez thought; Eagles fans are killers.

  She didn’t get up from her desk chair when Chavez and Eamons came in, merely gestured to the leather-covered armchairs in front of her desk. No offer of coffee or chitchat, either.

  “Washington just got a request for information from Langley—”

  “The CIA?” Eamons blurted.

  The director fixed her with a hard stare. “Worse. Homeland Security. The hotshots want to know what we’re doing with Astro Manufacturing Corporation.”

  Eamons glanced at Chavez, who slipped automatically into stiff officialese as he replied, “We’ve been investigating the possibility that a fatal accident and an apparent suicide were actually murders.”

  “What jurisdiction do we have?” the director asked.

  Chavez unconsciously tugged at his shirt collar. “Um, these incidents might be linked to the crash of an Astro experimental spacecraft,” he replied.

  “The spaceplane might have been sabotaged,” Eamons added.

  “Sabotaged?” the director snapped. “By who?”

  Before Chavez could respond, Eamons said, “Possibly by terrorists”

  The director steepled her stubby fingers in front of her face. “That explains the hotshots’ interest.”

  Both agents waited for the next question.

  “Well, what have you come up with?”

  “Not a whole lot,” Chavez said. “We have one lead, a man who allegedly bribed an Astro employee for information about the company’s operations.”

  “And?”

  “There isn’t enough to hold him. He’s been charged with breaking and entering, and simple assault. He’s out on bail.”

  “Should we be surveilling him?”

  “He’s all we’ve got to go on, so far,” Chavez admitted. “We were going to check his contacts here in Houston; he’s employed as a chauffeur by a limo service.”

  “I checked him out yesterday,” Eamons said.

  “Sunday?” The director looked almost startled.

  With a cheerful shrug, Eamons said, “The regular dispatcher doesn’t work Sundays and his assistant was more helpful than the regular guy would’ve been. Rodriguez—that’s the suspect’s name, Roberto Rodriguez—he’s been mainly driving executives of Tricontinental Oil.”

  “Does Tricontinental have any connection to Astro Corporation?” the director asked.

  Chavez said, “We could ask Astro’s CEO, Dan Randolph. He’s the one who came to us in the first place with the story about his plane crash being caused by sabotage.”

  Turning again to Eamons, the director said, “Get a list of the Tricontinental people this Rodriguez has been chauffeuring.”

  “I’ve already got it,” Eamons said. “I can flash it to your computer from my desk.”

  “Do that,” said the director. “Now. I need that list before I can figure out how much to tell Washington.”

  Dan had slept only fitfully, dreaming tangled dreams of Jane and Scanwell and some dark faceless lurking monster looming over him. He got up as the sun was rising, miserable and bewildered and totally unsure of what to do about Jane.

  Married. She’s married to him. In secret. They don’t want anybody to know. But she told me about it. It can’t be much of a marriage; they’re hardly ever together. But she’s married to him. She has sex with him.

  And you have sex with other women, that sardonic voice in his head reminded him. Hell, you were boffing Vicki Lee the night before Jane came down to see you.

  That doesn’t mean anything, he insisted. There’s no attachment there, no relationship. But she married Scanwell; they’re husband and wife.

  Arguing with himself, Dan dressed and walked down to his office hours before the official opening time. He had barely settled at his desk when April popped her head through his doorway.

  “Breakfast?” she asked, as if everything were normal. “Coffee?”

  “Where were you Friday?” Dan asked.

  “Didn’t you get my phone message?” she said, stepping fully into the office. “I asked Kelly to call you.”

  “Kelly?”

  “Eamons. The FBI agent.”

  Dan shook his head. “What happened?”

  She sat before his desk and went through the story about Kinsky and Roberto and the police.

  “Len was selling information to this guy?” Dan asked, unable to accept the idea.

  April nodded solemnly. “He’s a scary guy, too. Very scary.”

  “The cops have him now?”

  “He’s out on bail.”

  “Great.” Dan studied April’s face for a moment, thinking, If she’s scared, she sure doesn’t look it. “So where is Len now?”

  “I don’t know. Probably on a plane going someplace far from here.”

  “He’s that scared, huh?”

  “He was petrified.”

  “What about you? Should we get you some protection?”

  April hesitated. “I don’t think Roberto … well, maybe.” She shuddered.

  “Okay,” Dan said, with a grimace. “Get O’Connell from security on the phone for me. And I need to talk to Gerry Adair this morning.”

  She nodded. “Anything else?”

  Dan hesitated a moment, then said, “If Len’s really gone, I’ll need somebody to handle public relations around here.”

  “I can call up a few headhunters—”

  “Nope. Can’t afford ’em.” Dan pointed a finger at her like a pistol and said, “You can handle P.R.”

  “Me?” She looked shocked.

  “You. If Len could do it, you can. You’re a lot brighter than he is.”

  “But I don’t know anything about it!” April protested.

  Spreading his hands, Dan said, “It’s simple. When reporters ask you for information, you give ’em our canned answers. Len has a file full of prerecorded statements. If you get a question that’s not already covered, I’ll help you write a response.”

  “But—”

  “When we want to issue a news release, you’ve got Len’s files, all his contacts, names, affiliations, phone numbers, e-mail addresses. Nothing to it.”

  April looked dubious.

  “You can do it, kid. P.R. is based on contacts, and Len built up a pretty good list.”

  “There must be more to it than that,” April said.

  “Nope,” said Dan. “I’ll even give you a raise. A small one.”

  She laughed. “Well, I’ll try. But I don’t know about this.”

  “You’ll be fine. Start a whole new career path for you.”

  She shook her head warily, but stopped protesting. “All right,” she said slowly. “Is there anything else?”

  Dan shook his head. “Not unless you can find me a billion dollars someplace. And figure out how I can keep the wolves from the door.”

  “You mean creditors?”

  “I was thinking of Tricontinental and Yamagata, but, yeah, we owe a lot of people a lot of money, don’t we?” Despite himself, Dan laughed.

  “Speaking of those particular wolves,” April said, rising from her chair, “you have calls waiting since Friday from Mr. Yamagata and Mr. al-Bashir.”

  “Terrific,” said Dan.

  None the worse for the hours he’d spent at the Calhoun County sheriff’s station, Roberto reported for work at the limo service’s garage Monday morning. His only assignment was to pick up Asim al-Bashir, arriving just before noon at Houston International Airport.

  The head dispatcher, a crusty old African American, eyed Roberto suspiciously. Shaking his head, he said, “You must be some kinda special, this A-rab guy pays to have you sittin’ ’round all mornin’ just so’s he can have you drive him in from the airport. He won’t take nobody else.”

  Roberto’s onl
y reply was a grunt.

  “What you doin’ with that A-rab, make him want you so bad?”

  Roberto thought about lifting the shriveled old man off his feet and shaking him like a dried-out gourd, but the dispatcher had the sour courage that comes with age. He knew he was going to die soon, anyway, so he wasn’t afraid of much. Besides, the other drivers hanging around would jump in, and Roberto couldn’t afford to get himself in trouble with the cops again while this B&E rap was hanging over his head in Calhoun County.

  With a glimmer of a teasing grin, the dispatcher said, “I hear them A-rabs a bunch of fags. This A-rab romancin’ you, Roberto, my man?”

  Roberto snatched the clipboard out of the old man’s hand and snapped it in two, then wordlessly handed the broken pieces back to the stunned dispatcher and walked away.

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  An unmarked sedan carried Jane from Ronald Reagan National Airport to her apartment building off Dupont Circle, near Connecticut Avenue and Embassy Row.

  Being a United States Senator has certain prerogatives. A member of that exclusive, one-hundred-member club can phone the director of Central Intelligence from her private plane on a Sunday evening and get the man to leave his dinner table to answer your call. A U.S. Senator can phone the director of the FBI and ask her to cooperate as fully as possible with the CIA in an investigation of the Astro Corporation’s spaceplane crash.

  But as she dressed for her working day on Capitol Hill in her tastefully luxurious apartment, Jane realized how quiet the place was, how empty and lonely. Her swirling thoughts kept coming back to Dan, his vigor, his passion, his drive. It was never quiet around Dan, never predictable or routine. Even the thing that had driven them apart, his insane zeal for creating this power satellite, was magnificent, bigger than life. And now it’s brought us back together, at least for a moment.

  It can’t be, Jane thought as she rode the empty elevator down to the garage where her car and driver waited for her, barely hearing the muted music whispering from the speaker in the ceiling. Dan and I simply can’t be together. I can’t hurt Morgan like that. It would destroy him if I asked for a divorce. It would ruin his chances for the White House.