“Already?”
“Where?”
“When?”
Again, he raised his hands to quiet the room. “A select group of our scientists at the plant near the Caspian has been working on a brand new nuclear weapon for quite some time. I did not want to announce any of this until I learned if they were going to be successful. I have just received their report. They say they are ready for a test.”
“A test?”
“In the atmosphere?”
“No one has done an atmospheric test since …”
“Quiet!” the president shouted. “It will be a small test southeast of the Caspian. Down toward the Turkmenistan border. There are no people there. As you all know, it is a very desolate area.”
“But on the way down there, isn’t that where some of the new oil and gas is being drilled?” the minister of energy asked, giving the president a puzzled look.
“That’s hundreds and hundreds of miles away,” the president said with a wave of his hand.
“What about the protesters? They are against any type of testing. Anywhere,” the minister pressed.
“They will be too busy organizing their reunions and rallies all around the country. Besides, they won’t know about it. There will be no announcement. Let me repeat that.” He stared at the ministers and said again, “There will be no announcement beforehand. Do you all understand? No announcement until we know for sure that our new weapon works just as it should. And once we know, then and only then, will we say to the world, and especially to the Russians, that we have our own deterrent. Is that clear?”
There were mumbles of “Yes, sir,” and, “Certainly, Mr. President.”
As President Suleimenov began to gather his papers together, signaling the end of the meeting, his vice president, sitting to his right, spoke up again. “Mr. President, just to understand the situation as you see it, are you saying that you have information that the Russians really do have designs on our country? Information that moves might be imminent?”
“Let me answer you this way,” the president said. “If you were the leader of Russia and you wanted to expand your empire, as they have tried to do throughout history, would you do it now when you have over 140 million people? Or would you wait until 2050 when your population is expected to drop to 110 million and China and India had populations that would have increased exponentially? I believe we can all figure out the answer to that question.”
CHAPTER NINE
ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA
Samantha pulled up to the entrance of the modern building where a uniformed valet opened her door. “Good evening, Madam. Welcome to Turnberry Tower.”
She was used to this routine now. When she had first visited Tripp’s contemporary condo, she had been amazed at the tall steel and glass structure with a doorman who had an English accent, a concierge in the lobby and condos so large, any one of them could hold three or four the size of her little place in Georgetown. Even though she had a number of reports to review tonight and an early morning meeting, Tripp had insisted she come by for what he said would be a special dinner. She had no idea what he was talking about. It wasn’t her birthday. Not his. Not an anniversary of anything she could remember. Not of the day they met or of the first time … what a night that had been, she reflected as she headed for the elevator.
He had simply said he had a surprise for her, and he really wanted her to come. Since he wasn’t in town much of late, she did want to see him again, so she had worked hard to finish a number of projects. She then spent the afternoon chairing an inter-agency meeting on the Lincoln Tunnel situation, listening to a conference call with CDC, HHS and FBI officials about that virus problem and reviewing some proposed talking points for the president to use in a meeting he had tomorrow with a business group worried about added security measures he wanted installed at major ports. Whenever the president had meetings with outsiders on his schedule, the speechwriters prepared talking points which then were sent around to various offices to be cleared. Now that she headed up his Homeland Security operation, it was just one more pile of paperwork she had to deal with on a daily basis. Then just before she had left her office, the chief of staff’s secretary had called to ask if she would stop by his office first thing in the morning, before the senior staff meeting. She had no idea why he wanted to see her. He hadn’t sent an email or sent around any questions. But any summons to his first floor West Wing office could never be ignored. After all, he basically ran the place. So she had added it to a long list of commitments for the following day.
She stepped off the elevator and knocked on Tripp’s door. When it door opened, she gave a little cry of joy. “Dad!” She threw herself into his arms as he gave her a hug.
“Hi Pumpkin,” Jake Reid said with a big grin.
Samantha loved the way her dad called her “Pumpkin.” He had done that for as long as she could remember, saying that you find pumpkins out in the field just as he often found her – out in the fields tagging along with him when he was prospecting, checking oil rigs or inspecting the gauges on gas lines. “What are you doing here?” she asked as she stared up at the burly man she loved so much.
“Tripp and I will explain it all to you over dinner. Come on in. He just opened some wine for you. I’ve got my scotch and soda here.”
They walked into a cavernous living room with sliding glass doors that led out onto a balcony with a great view of Key Bridge, Georgetown and some of Washington’s monuments off in the distance. Tripp came in from the kitchen carrying a glass of merlot in one hand and a can of Budweiser in the other. He handed the wineglass to Samantha. “Here you go sweetheart. Pretty surprised, huh?”
Samantha leaned over and gave Tripp a quick kiss, tossed her shoulder bag on the side of the black leather couch and took the wine glass. “Surprised? I’m amazed.” She sat down and motioned to her father to sit beside her. You didn’t tell me you were coming to town. What’s going on here?” She glanced over at Tripp and then grinned at her dad. “Okay, you two, come clean.”
“Guess we can’t let it wait till dinner,” Jake said.
“Guess not,” Tripp said, pulling up a side chair. “Remember how I told you that Jake had been bugging me to take him on some of our trips overseas?”
“Yes,” Samantha said warily. “But remember I said that he should take care of his health.”
Jake reached out and took her hand, “I do take care of my health, sweetheart. I’m in great shape”
“But dad, you’ve got a pacemaker now,” Samantha said with a note of concern in her voice.
“Honey, I’ve got a pacemaker, not a wheelchair. Look at me. I’m fine,” he said, taking a sip of his cocktail.
She turned to Tripp. “Does this mean you’ve come up with some overseas assignment for him?”
“Yep! I’ve got a big trip coming up myself that involves a government negotiation, well, sort of a renegotiation. And since we took Jake on as a consultant, he’s been analyzing the data on this deal, and now headquarters thinks it would be good to have him along. He could be a real help to us on this one, along with all the lawyers we always have to drag to these meetings.” He held up his beer in a toast to her father. “And after we re-do some of the terms of the leases, we’re going to head out to the field because they’ve run into a few problems, and Jake might be able to iron them out. I mean, since we’re over there, we can call it a two-fer.”
“But where? Where are you going?”
“To one of the stans.”
“The stans? You mean Uzbekistan? Turkmenistan? I hope you don’t mean Afghanistan? What stans?” she asked.
“To Kazakhstan,” Jake replied. “The biggest of them all. Isn’t that great?”
“Kazakhstan?” she asked. “But that’s so far away. I mean, it goes from what? The Caspian all the way to China?”
“Girl knows her geography,” Jake said with an approving nod.
“Okay, I know they have oil and gas,” she said. “But aren’t we alre
ady developing those fields? Why do you have to go over there?”
“Their government is trying to pry some more bucks out of us. Not that that’s so unusual. But it’s kind of complicated, so we’ve to go talk to their Oil Minister and a few others and figure out a way to sweeten the deal without, well, without breaking any laws,” Tripp explained.
“You mean the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act?” Samantha asked.
“Oh yeah. Of course, we’re just about the only country playing by those rules. You know that.” Samantha nodded as Tripp took a swig of his beer and went on. “You should see the kinds of bribes, payoffs, deals the other countries cut when they put together their energy contracts.” “Kind of makes you wonder how we ever win that game,” Jake observed.
“Our sense is that they’re trying to get more of our guys in there and wean themselves off the Russians and some of the others. They know we’ve got the best technology, and at least we’re honest about it all. Besides, they get a pretty hefty payout once the wells come in.”
“Of course, it takes years,” Jake said. “But still those guys have been doing okay since we all started drilling over there. The way they divvy up the payments, they’re developing their own set of oligarchs. Some of the Russians may have bought up a bunch of villas on the French Riviera, but the Kazakhs are no slouches when it comes to Rolexes and off-shore real estate.”
Samantha took a sip of her wine and put her hand on her father’s arm. “So you’re really going all the way over to Kazakhstan. How long will you be gone?”
“They haven’t told me yet.” He glanced over at Tripp who shrugged his shoulders. “But look at it this way,” Jake said. “I’ve never been to that country. It’ll be a great adventure. Besides, this time of year the weather is still pretty nice. We need to get going, though, because over the summer the temperatures can really get up there. Up to 120 or more, or so I’ve heard.”
Samantha sat back and thought about all of this. The two men who mean the most to her in life are about to go traipsing off to the other side of the world, and one of them has a pacemaker. What if something happens to him? What if his heart acts up? Where would they find medical care in a place like that? She didn’t really know anything about Kazakhstan, but she couldn’t imagine that there would be any good doctors, especially heart doctors, out near some new oil fields. No. there wouldn’t be any, and that meant her father’s health could be at risk. She felt like the moment had come when the child becomes the parent, and she was now very worried about his welfare.
But what could she do about it? It sounded like he really wanted to go. Of course, Tripp probably made it sound too exciting to pass up. Could she trust Tripp’s judgment on this one? Was there any way she could dissuade her dad from making the trip? She doubted it. It sounded like a done deal, and she hadn’t even been told about it until they finalized their plans. Now that she thought about it, her dad always made his own decisions. He was a tough guy who ran his crews with a pretty iron hand. The men liked him though. Liked his forcefulness, his determination, his way of encouraging them even when a well looked like it might end up as a dry hole. Some of them did, but he was always able to put a good face on it and push on to the next one. His record had been amazingly good, considering the odds in the business. She took another sip of her wine, leaned back on the couch and crossed her legs.
“I guess there isn’t much I can do to persuade you to skip this one, is there?” she said, facing her father.
“Honey, I want you to be happy for me. Don’t be a pessimist. Wasn’t it Churchill who said, ‘A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity? An optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty?’ Look, this is going to be great fun.” He motioned to Tripp, “Besides, it gives me a chance to get to know this man of yours a little better.”
Samantha felt herself blushing. Was he her man? She knew that she was the only woman he was seeing now. That is, whenever he was in town. But with his travel schedule and her new job, they hadn’t carved out as much time to be together as they used to. She thought she was falling in love with Tripp. Was he in love with her as well? He had never quite said as much, so she kept trying to hold back a little.
She had been married once before to a great guy. She had thrown herself into that relationship. They skied together, biked together, hiked together. But it was on one of those grueling hikes up in the Tetons that a sudden storm had come up. He lost his footing and fell over a sharp cliff. She had leaned over screaming his name, powerless to get down there to help him. She had called for the medics on her cell, but by the time the rescue team arrived, it was too late. He had died from the fall.
After that horrible experience, she had developed an awful fear of heights. Every time she had looked down from an airplane or even one of those glass elevators, she felt queasy, light-headed and short of breath. She had tried to fight it and sometimes when she was with Tripp, she felt a bit more secure. Looking back, after her husband died she had spent some two years grieving and not getting involved with any other man. Until Tripp. Now as she looked over the rim of her wineglass at the handsome man with the great build, short brown hair and eyes the color of dark chocolate, she wondered if she could go through it all over again. Or, if he would ever ask her to.
Tripp got up from his chair and said, “I’ve got some dinner warming up. It’s take-out, but we’ve got a pretty good set-up here.” He turned to Jake. “There’s a great deli around the corner, and they deliver some good pasta” then to Samantha, he said, “I’ve even got salad for you, my lady. Let’s get things on the table and we can talk some more about the trip.”
As Samantha took her wine glass to the dining room table, she took a long look at her dad and wondered why she didn’t feel happy for him. The trouble was—a trip like this was just what he’d been angling for. He knew the business, and he was tough as nails. So why was she worrying? Why was she picturing an hourglass and wondering how much more sand would slip through in her father’s lifetime now that he had a heart condition? As Tripp poured more wine into her glass, why did she have a feeling in the pit of her stomach that this whole thing just wasn’t something to celebrate?
CHAPTER TEN
UCLA CAMPUS
Powerful arms tore through the water with a vengeance. When he got close to the edge, he gasped for breath, made the turn and kicked hard, propelling him out from the wall. He raced to the other end, and as he touched the tile and surfaced he saw the scowl on his coach’s face when he read the stop watch.
“59.45! You’re never going to catch the Michael Phelps’s of the world with that kind of time. What’s the matter with you?”
Pete gulped some air and hoisted himself out of the pool. Grabbing a towel, he threw it around his shoulders. “I thought I was smoking it this time.”
“Looks like you’ve been smoking something all right,” the coach said derisively. “And what’s with your form? That turn back there wasn’t tight. Not nearly fast enough.” Then glancing down at his clip board he said, “What’s going on with you anyway? Looks to me like you should be spending more time training and less time with that nutty group of yours I heard about. The SAINTS? I’ll tell you something, Kalani, either you train harder and shape up, or this scholarship of yours could be pulled next season. And there won’t be any saints on the selection committee to save your ass. You got that?”
Pete stared at the man. Lose his scholarship? That couldn’t happen. He had to finish college. It was his only ticket to a good job, to a decent future. He knew he could swim and he thought he was getting better. Okay, maybe he had skipped a few workouts. Maybe he was too focused on the SAINTS and the rest of his studies. His calculus course was a bitch. And so was the English Lit class he had to take. He couldn’t afford any of the student tutors, and if he lost his scholarship he had no idea where he’d get enough money to graduate.
He had less than seven hundred dollars to his name. He had nailed a part time job at a shoe store over in the Mall at th
e beginning of the semester. He had wanted to work there because it was the only place he could find size 14 shoes and get them at a discount. But right after Christmas, their sales had been so bad, they laid off all the new guys, just like what happened last summer. He looked down at the floor and took a deep breath. “You’re right. I need this scholarship, and I need to work harder. I’ll try to fit in some extra time over the weekend”
“You do that. You’ve got to shave several seconds off that hundred-meter butterfly or you won’t even qualify for the finals.” The coach turned toward another swimmer who was hanging on the side of the pool and added, “And all that talk about the Olympics? Forget it. The only thing you seem to have in common with Phelps is big feet.”
Pete headed to the locker room and glanced at the tile walls. He always thought they were the color of Crest toothpaste, and right now the whole scene left a bad taste in his mouth. It wasn’t just the chlorine either. It was the pressure. The incessant carping of the damn coach. The time he’d have to spend in the pool when he needed to concentrate on final exams. He turned on the shower and thought about the offer to go to Kazakhstan with Nurlan. He did like the guy, even if he was a bit of a nerd. Then again, it seemed like the nerds were getting all the good grades and good jobs these days. He wondered how much money he could make over the summer. They had talked about a lot of possibilities. Nurlan said he would be going to a place called Atyrau, a town on the Caspian. He had looked it up on the internet and found out that there were a bunch of oil companies around there. He knew that the guys who worked the rigs down in Texas and Oklahoma were cleaning up when it came to hourly wages. But he knew jobs were tight down there. Sure it was tough work, but he could handle it. If there were any American companies with crews over there by the Caspian, maybe they could use him. After all, there wouldn’t be too many US citizens around so maybe they’d give him some preference. He’d have to think about that. Maybe he could ask Nurlan how to contact one of those outfits. Then if he could nail down a good job, he could make enough to pay back the air fare, handle his expenses and have some bucks left over for next semester.
Castle Bravo Page 5
