by Ben Bova
“I presume so.”
Lovett started to ask another question, but a waiter came up to the table, pushing a cart that held their lunches.
Once the dishes were served and the waiter wheeled the cart away, Lovett said, “I’ll have to speak to the senator about this, find out what he wants to do.”
Manstein speared a lettuce leaf with a fork, then looked up. “I would advise you to have him make up his mind as quickly as he can. Senator Sebastian is a very busy man.”
“He’s not the only one,” Jake snapped.
Manstein smiled. Like a snake.
Return to Washington
As they flew back to Washington on Tomlinson’s executive jet, Jake realized that a few days in New York had changed his view of the nation’s capital. Looking down on the Washington Monument, the Mall with its row of museums, the Ellipse, and the White House, Jake recognized the city as a smaller, quieter town than he’d regarded it before. New York blared, it buzzed, it zoomed faster than any place he’d seen before.
Lovett was holed up with the senator in the private compartment in the plane’s rear discussing their luncheon with Manstein while Amy and Tami were sitting together, up in the front row of the passenger compartment, heads together as they chatted like schoolgirls. Wonder what they’re talking about, Jake asked himself. From the smiles on their faces it can’t be anything very serious. Christ, Amy looks as if she hasn’t a care in the world.
Jake pulled out his smartphone and called his office to find out how the finance committee’s hearing had gone. After several rings, his administrative assistant finally picked up the phone.
“I’m sorry, Dr. Ross, I had to go down to Mr. Reynolds’s office to get the results of the finance committee’s hearing.”
“And?” Jake prompted.
“Senator Zucco has scheduled a vote on the loan guarantee question for next Monday.”
Astounded, Jake spluttered, “He did? Next Monday? Were there any objections to the issue? Any discussion?”
In the miniature screen of Jake’s smartphone, the young woman’s face looked perplexed. “I don’t think so. Mr. Reynolds seemed pleased with the results of the hearing. He said the session was strictly routine, pretty dull.”
“Okay,” said Jake. “Thanks.”
Pretty dull, he thought. Strictly routine. That means there wasn’t any controversy. Zucco’s set a vote for Monday. That means he expects it to sail through the committee in good shape. Or maybe he expects it to get shot down, once and for all.
Jake felt like gnawing his fingernails. The loan guarantee measure was the key to the entire space plan. If it didn’t pass, the idea of having private investors finance the plan would go down the drain.
Monday, Jake told himself. Maybe I should try to wangle a visitor’s seat for the session.
* * *
Once they got back to their condo unit and started to unpack, Jake asked Tami, “What were you and Amy talking about? You looked like a pair of sorority sisters dishing the dirt.”
Tami pulled a wrinkled skirt from her travel bag, held it up and shook it. With a shake of her head she said, “I’ll have to iron this one.”
“Send it to the cleaners. Let them do it.”
“Why spend the money when I can—”
“I can cover it in my travel allowance,” Jake said.
She shot him a disapproving look. “My tax dollars at work? I can iron a skirt, for goodness’ sake.”
“Your time is worth money,” he argued.
“And you’re turning into a Washington insider.”
Jake was surprised at the accusation. “Me?”
“You.”
With a shrug, he said, “Okay, iron the skirt. I’ve got a couple of pairs of slacks that need ironing too.”
Tami waggled a finger at him. “Oh no you don’t. Iron your own slacks.”
Jake suddenly realized that she was grinning at him. And she had very effectively avoided answering his question.
Pulling his rumpled slacks out of his roll-along suitcase, he asked again, “So what were you and Amy talking about?”
“Nothing important.”
“You were doing a lot of giggling.”
“It was nothing important,” Tami repeated.
“Such as?”
She glared at him. “Hey, I’m supposed to be the interviewer, remember? I’m not used to being cross-examined.”
“Cross-examined? I’m not grilling you. I merely asked you—”
“It was nothing,” Tami said. “Just two women chatting. Nothing earth-shattering.”
“Nothing about this Manstein thing?”
“Would we giggle about that?”
“I guess not,” Jake admitted. He returned to emptying his suitcase.
“She was telling me how she has to be Frank’s bodyguard when they’re on the road. Lots of young chicks after his body.”
Before he could think, Jake shot back, “And who’s her bodyguard?”
“That’s not fair!”
“She’s put Frank in a spot. He’s going to be blackmailed. He could be ruined.” Jake was surprised at the anger in his tone.
Tami stared at him, openmouthed. “It’s that bad?”
“Sebastian wants to have a meeting with Frank. Very private. With Manstein.”
“Oh,” said Tami.
“Oh,” Jake echoed.
“Will you be there?”
“I think so. I haven’t talked about that yet with Frank and Lovett.”
“Where and when?”
“Not settled yet.” Suddenly Jake realized Tami was pumping him, as if he were a news source. “Hey, this is all hush-hush. Not for publication.”
“Of course,” she said. But Tami’s expression reminded Jake of a sleek cheetah on the prowl. For the first time he wondered how far he could trust his wife.
Finance Committee
Senator Zucco had his finance committee purring along like a well-oiled machine. From his visitor’s chair by the door of the room Jake watched Zucco greeting the arriving senators as they took their places in the double bank of seats in the front of the hearing chamber.
Oscar Zucco was small, and he seemed old, bent, frail, with wispy white hair and a prominent hooked nose. His smile looked genuine enough, Jake thought: like a kindly old grandfather beaming genially at his offspring.
Once he called the meeting to order he said, in a soft tenor voice, “Our first order of business this morning is to vote on the bill to have the Treasury Department guarantee long-term, low-interest loans for private firms to invest in new space development programs.”
“Point of order, Senator.”
Jake felt his brows knitting. He didn’t recognize the woman who spoke. She was fiftyish, chunky, dark hair streaked with gray.
“Senator Fitzgerald, of Massachusetts,” said Zucco, with a little nod in her direction.
Her heavy-featured face serious, almost grim, Senator Fitzgerald said, “This is a momentous bill. Giving the Treasury Department the power to guarantee loans is a serious step in a direction that is fraught with pitfalls. I believe we should discuss the matter further.”
Zucco stared at her for a hard moment. Then, “We have discussed the ramifications of this bill, discussed them very seriously. You were unfortunately absent from several of our sessions.”
“I had other obligations…”
Zucco blinked his eyes and nodded. “Yes, I understand. But the committee has decided—in your absence—to vote on the matter this morning. Further discussion would merely go over ground we have already considered.”
Suppressing a grin, Jake thought that Zucco might look frail, but he knew how to cut the legs out from under an opponent.
“I still think we should give this momentous bill more serious, deeper consideration.”
“Are you making a motion to that effect?” Zucco asked. His tone was still mild, but Jake thought he heard iron underneath it.
“I so move,” Fitzgerald said.
�
��Second?”
Three other hands went up around the table. All Democrats, Jake realized.
Zucco took it all in stride. He called for a vote on Senator Fitzgerald’s motion, and it was voted down, along party lines.
“Very well,” said Senator Zucco. “Now let us proceed to vote on the bill.”
It passed. Even a handful of the senators who voted with Fitzgerald backed away from her and helped pass the bill. Jake breathed a sigh of relief.
Zucco’s screwed Sebastian, he thought. In public. Tomlinson’s stock will go up and Sebastian’s down.
Suddenly Jake realized, We’ve won! Zucco’s made his calculations and he’s jumped to our side!
Jake felt like leaping up from his visitor’s chair and baying at the Moon.
* * *
“Don’t start counting your chickens just yet,” warned Kevin O’Donnell, once Jake bounced into the office wearing a triumphant smile. “Sebastian could still scuttle the bill when it comes up for the full Senate’s vote.”
Jake’s cheerful mood slipped a notch. “What do you mean?” he asked the staff chief. “The bill should win a yes-or-no vote in the full Senate. And it’ll pass in the House easily.”
As O’Donnell led Jake past the desks and cubicles in the front of Senator Tomlinson’s suite back toward his own office, he explained, “Yeah, so it passes in the Senate and the House. Then it goes to the president for her signature.”
“You think she’d veto it?”
O’Donnell stopped at the door to his private office. “In a New York second. Lots of people are against your idea of having the government guarantee loans to private investors. I’m not sure I go for the idea, myself.”
Suddenly feeling deflated, Jake muttered, “And we won’t have the votes to override a veto.”
O’Donnell patted Jake’s shoulder. “If our man wins the presidential election next November, you can get the bill reconsidered.”
“But if Sebastian wins. Or the Democrats.”
O’Donnell made an elaborate shrug. “That’s politics, Jake. The best-laid plans can get kicked into the trash bin of history.”
“Thanks for the good news, Kevin,” Jake growled. And he headed off toward his own office, on the other end of the suite.
National Defense
Patrick Lovett leaned back in his desk chair, a satisfied smile on his face.
“That was the key to your whole space plan, Jake,” he said. “Now it goes to the president for her signature.”
“If she decides to sign it,” Jake said. He was sitting on a molded plastic chair in front of Lovett’s desk.
They were in the Tomlinson campaign headquarters; Jake could hear the buzz and swirl of activity out on the floor of the former supermarket beyond the flimsy six-foot-high partitions of Lovett’s office.
Lovett’s smile turned crafty. “Doesn’t really matter if she signs it or not,” he said. “If she vetoes the bill it gives us a solid issue for next fall’s campaign. If she signs it, we can push the space plan as Frank’s program, play up the job creation and economic impact of it all.”
“Heads we win, tails she loses.”
Lovett nodded. “We’re in a good position.”
“What about Sebastian, though? He’s still ahead of Frank by more than ten percentage points.”
“Frank’s poll numbers are creeping up on Sebastian. We’ve got one more debate coming up, then the party caucuses in Iowa.”
“And the New Hampshire primary, right afterward.”
Lovett said, “The more people see and hear Frank, the higher his poll numbers. I think Sebastian’s scared. That’s why he wants this meeting with our man.”
“Have you settled on a time and place?” Jake asked.
“They’re both going to be campaigning in New Hampshire next week. Sebastian’s people have arranged for a quiet meeting in the home of an old friend of his. A week from Sunday.”
Jake nodded.
“Better pack your woolies,” Lovett said. “It gets cold up there in the hills.”
“I’m going?”
“You, me, and Frank. Sebastian’s bringing two of his people.”
“Manstein’ll be one of them.”
“More than likely,” Lovett agreed.
“Nobody else.”
“Nobody. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention this to your wife.”
“Tami can keep her mouth shut.”
“Maybe. But she’s a newswoman and I don’t want to take any chances.”
Jake said, “I understand.” But he saw another wedge being driven between himself and Tami.
* * *
When Jake got back to his office in the Hart S.O.B. he had a phone message from William Farthington waiting for him. He immediately called through the open office door to his executive assistant and told her to answer the NASA administrator’s message.
I wonder what Bloviating Billy wants, he asked himself.
Farthington smiled his usual disarming grin in the phone screen.
“Good of you to return my call, Jake. I know you must be awfully busy.”
Jake smiled back and returned the BS. “Always happy to talk with you, sir. What’s up?”
His expression turning more serious, Farthington said, “I want you to meet an old friend of mine: General Harold Harmon. He’s the chief of the Air Force’s Space Command.”
Jake’s heart sank. Another expert who wants to stick his two cents’ worth into the space plan, he thought.
But he said to Farthington, “Sure. Where and when?”
“At your convenience, Jake. But the sooner the better.”
Jake tapped his computer keyboard to call up his appointments schedule.
“How about Friday?”
“Fine!” said Farthington. “We can have lunch with Hal in his office in the Pentagon.”
Feeling certain that this would be a waste of time, but unwilling to risk offending Farthington, Jake replied, “Okay. Have one of your people send me the details, would you please?”
“No need. I’ll meet you in the visitors’ entrance at noon, precisely.”
* * *
The Pentagon reminded Jake of an ants’ nest: people scurrying along everywhere, intent, busy, purposeful. Most of them were in uniform, but even the civilians seemed to be focused, hurried. Out around the parking lots men and women in gym gear were jogging determinedly, as if they were in training for the Olympics.
Farthington met Jake at the visitors’ entrance and guided him through the business of getting through the security check. At last, with a badge clipped to his jacket lapel, Jake followed Farthington through a maze of hectic corridors to a bank of elevators.
“This place can be kind of confusing to newcomers,” Farthington said genially as the elevator doors closed. “Lots of lieutenant colonels scrambling to earn their eagles.”
Jake wasn’t sure what that meant, but he nodded anyway.
“I first met Hal Harmon when we were both in West Point. He went into the Air Force, did all right for himself.”
“Head of the Space Command,” Jake agreed.
“They call him ‘Hardass Harmon,’ you know,” Farthington said, with a grin. “But not to his face.”
The elevator doors slid open. The corridors weren’t quite as frantic at this level, but still there were plenty of men and women in uniform pacing purposefully along. Jake felt out of place in his sports coat and slacks, but then he realized that Farthington was wearing civvies too.
They entered an office suite and were immediately ushered by an airman to General Harmon’s private office.
Harold Harmon was a four-star general, and he wore those stars on his shoulders as if they defined who and what he was. His hair was silver-gray, chopped down to a military buzz cut. His face was not hard, exactly, but certainly firm, chiseled. Steel-gray eyes. Strong, almost painful grip when he took Jake’s hand.
The general led his visitors to the round conference table in one corner of his spa
cious office. Through its windows Jake could see the rows upon rows of white crosses of Arlington National Cemetery.
“Take a seat,” General Harmon said, in a deep voice. Three trays covered by silvered domes rested on the table. Our lunches, Jake guessed.
As Jake reached for the domed cover nearest him, General Harmon said, “They knocked out another one of our birds yesterday.”
Jake blinked at the general. “Huh?”
Ignoring the tray in front of him, General Harmon leaned forward slightly in his chair and said, “What I’m about to tell you is top secret.”
Jake started to say, “I’m afraid I don’t have—”
“I know you don’t have a formal clearance, but I figure the science advisor of a US senator knows when to keep his mouth shut.” He glanced at Farthington. “Besides, Billy vouched for you.”
Jake put the lid back on his lunch.
“In the past six months,” Harmon said, his face grim, “three of our recce birds have gone dark.”
“Reconnaissance satellites,” Farthington said, by way of explanation. “Incapacitated.”
“Their sensors just shut down, poof!” The general snapped his fingers. “Like that.”
Jake didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing.
“My bright guys tell me it’s probably a high-power laser overloading the birds’ sensors. Blinding ’em.”
“A laser?” Jake asked.
With a single curt nod, Harmon said, “We have international agreements not to place weapons of mass destruction in space. But lasers are weapons of pinpoint destruction.”
“And they shut down the reconnaissance satellites’ sensors.”
“On three of our birds.”
Farthington said, “It’s not an accident. Somebody’s shooting at us.”
“But who?”
“We suspect the Russians. Maybe the Chinese, but it’s more likely to be the Russians.”
“But why?” Jake asked. “What’s going on?”
With a grim smile, General Harmon answered, “It’s a test. They’re testing their laser system. And they’re testing our ability to respond to the threat.”
“It’s a sort of undeclared war,” Farthington said.
Jake said, “Can’t the UN do something?”
