path to conquest (13 page)

“I hope the kids aren’t too upset seeing me back by dinner. I sometimes think they like it better when I’m not there to order them around,” she said wistfully.

“Bull,” Pete replied. “Maybe they’ve got some good data on the site samples.”

The old woman nodded. Pete could see her energy was flagging a bit. “I’d love nothing better than instant correlation.!’

The ride back to Brooklyn to pick up Pete’s car was largely quiet, with each person lost in private thoughts. For Hannah Donnenfeld, usually as resilient as a watch-spring, the trip was an unwelcome opportunity to ponder a morass of doubts she’d have preferred to ignore.
Was
there anything to the nebulous feelings about Neville More that Peter and Mitchell evidently shared?

And what about this budding romance between More and Sari? Perhaps it was a cliche, but the researchers who worked under her at Brook Cove truly were the kids she’d never had, and Sari was her favorite daughter. Sari was thirty-two, with a single serious relationship behind her. When that failed nearly a decade ago, she’d come to Brook Cove and immersed herself in her career.

Hannah knew Sari had cultivated her perky image as a shell to protect the shy midwestem girl inside. She was a damned good scientist, and she’d grown comfortable playing that part. She’d chosen Hannah—who’d never married herself—as a role model.

To Hannah, that was mighty complimentary, but she wasn’t certain it was good for Sari. Even in her midseventies, with all those years behind her and accolades aplenty to convince her she’d chosen the right path, Hannah still had regrets now and then. It hadn’t been easy for a woman in science way back when she’d gotten out of college. Most job offers began and ended with,
“How fast can you type, do you take shorthand, and how good’s your coffee, honey?”

Eventually she and her Ph.D. found a niche. But the single-minded determination it took to establish herself in her field meant little time for love. After a while the urge for intimate companionship had become so well trained, it almost never bothered to make a fuss.

Hannah wanted more for Sari. But did that mean
Neville
More? Was he someone she’d want her surrogate child involved with?

Professionally, Hannah was concerned that these soap-opera-plot machinations might interfere with their work. That she simply couldn't allow, no matter how painful it might be to stop it.

Mostly, Donnenfeld coveted a few hours’ restful sleep—an escape from responsibility.
Just for one night, but I've got a feeling it won’t be tonight.

Like a watering hole in the center of an oasis, with vast and barren lands stretching all around it, the Persian Gulf had been giving life since before the first nomadic Arabian tribes peered into its shallow waters and saw silvery schools of fish swimming close to shore. The ancient ways still worked, and today’s fishermen relied on the methods taught by fathers to sons for more generations than anyone could remember. By oar and pole, they used their flat-bottom boats to herd fish into wide netted corrals, pulled the ends of the nets up to keep the fish in, then scooped their catch into the boats.

“Did you ever do that?” Lavi Mayer asked his companion. The two men were dressed in the loose-fitting robes and white linen burnooses of itinerant bedouins. They lay on their bellies on a dune overlooking the shimmering Gulf. A pair of horses waited patiently behind them, nibbling gently on a scrubby desert bush.

“My family wasn’t involved in fishing,” said the other man, his cultured British accent contrasting with the unique speech pattern that identified Lavi as a
sabra,
a native-born Israeli whose English was an amalgam of the many Eastern and Western tongues spoken in the Jewish state.

An unyielding sun had baked Lavi’s thin nose and hollow cheeks to a reddish bronze, and he wished that he’d used stronger sun-screen lotion.

As if reading the Israeli’s mind, the man with the English accent said, “You’re getting rather sunburned there.”

Lavi Mayer made a pained face. “Do you Arabs always feel compelled to state the obvious, Abdul?”

“Only when my Jewish partner is going to regret his lack of preparedness,” Abdul said with a flashing grin. His broad, handsome face was dominated by a pointed blue-black beard and heavy eyebrows that met above his nose. His medium-brown complexion made it clear that he wouldn’t have to worry much about getting burned himself.

Lavi leaned on his elbows, and his sleeves slipped down to reveal thin arms rippling with ropy muscles. “What’s a nice Jewish boy, approaching middle age—could you tell I’ll be forty in two years?—doing laying in the sand with a Saudi Arabian fellow who speaks like Prince Charles? Answer me that!”

“Yes, I could tell you’re going to be forty in two years.”

The Israeli looked hurt. “How?”

Abdul reached for Lavi’s head covering and lifted it off one temple. “Got a spot of gray creeping in on the reds and browns. Now, as for what you’re doing mucking about in the Arabian desert, we’ll soon find out, both of us.”

“Where
did
you pick up that accent?”

Abdul hesitated. “I, uh, I attended school in England for a bit.” Then he tensed and squinted.

“See something?” Lavi asked.

Both men pulled binoculars out from under their robes and scanned the cloudless sky.

“Damn!” Abdul said.

“What? I don’t see.” Lavi lowered his binoculars to ascertain where his fellow observer was looking.

The Arab pointed, but by now they didn’t need any magnification aid to see that five Visitor skyfighters were flying down from the north. All were equipped with harnesses that hung below them, slinging what were unmistakably the components of a drilling platform. As Abdul and Lavi watched, the Visitor ships slowed, swiveled in the air over the Gulf waters as if hunting for a particular spot, then hovered and lowered their equipment.

One craft set a remote-guided boat down on the sea’s surface. It was a squat, flat-topped thing, floating low in the water, and its airborne operators skillfully maneuvered it to assist in depositing the platform parts.

“That’s a very ingenious design,” Lavi said. “I bet they’ll have that thing anchored and assembled in less than an hour or two.”

Abdul stared at him. “Perhaps you’d like to go out there and slap them on the back. Good show, old boy!”

“Sorry,” Lavi shrugged. “What do you think they’re going to use this for?”

“I haven’t the foggiest notion, but we better get back to Gamel and radio this back to HQ.”

The President waved Pete, Mayor Stein, and Dr. Donnen-feld over to the living room couch, then lowered himself into the deep cushions of a high-backed armchair. He was dressed in blue jeans and a red-plaid flannel shirt open several buttons below the neck to reveal silvery chest hair.

“Mr. President,” Donnenfeld chided, “I haven’t seen you in a business suit in ages.”

He ducked his head sheepishly. “I gotta admit this informal hotel-suite presidency has me spoiled. Now, what have you folks got to tell me?”

Pete and the mayor deferred immediately to Hannah, who opened a tiny leatherbound notebook she had fished out of the side pocket of her bulky cardigan. “Well,” she said, “instead of the old good news-bad news routine, this is sorta both rolled into one, Mr. President. We’ve got a firm match. The substance found in the heating-oil samples taken directly from the buildings where we had those mishaps last week is also in the big storage tanks at the Staten Island company that delivered the oil.”

“Direct link, huh, Doc?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Alison,” Morrow said, “you haven’t had any other incidents, right?”

“No, sir.”

“And I haven’t gotten any reports of anything like this happening anyplace else in the counliy. Seems isolated, and contained.”

“Yeah,” Pete interjected, “but the only reason we were able to contain it here is because the weather suddenly got warmer and we could get by without using heat.”

“And we can pretty much assume the Visitors had something to do with the oddball weather,” Morrow said. “What’re you sayin’, Pete—that whatever the Visitors did to give us that cold snap ended before they intended it to?”

Forsythe nodded. “Seems pretty likely.”

“I’ll go along with that,” said the President. “That also means we can expect more of the same from the Visitors— more weather disruption and more contaminated oil.” No one disagreed, and Morrow went on. “Dr. Donnenfeld, have you got us a way of testing oil for this poison they slipped in there?”

“Not just yet, sir. The system we used is a tad on the unwieldy side. But with a little more work, I think we’ll have a test that can be done right where the oil is stored, without dragging samples back to the lab. Kind of a litmus-type test.” “Good. Let me know as soon as you’ve got that ready. We’ve gotta be prepared, gotta know how much safe oil we’ve got for when nature gives us our regularly scheduled winter— or in case Diana throws another surprise our way.”

“Will do,” the old woman said with a salute.

They heard a commotion out in the suite’s hallway. Before Morrow could react, Chief of Staff Katowski and Secretary of State Draper had rushed into the living room.

“Mr. President,” Katowski said, his Adam’s apple bobbing nervously, “I thought you should hear this right away.” Morrow regarded his aide’s ashen face. “I’m not gonna like this, am I?”

“I’m afraid not, sir.”

“Well, you look like you could use a seat, Len, so come on in and park yourselves.” Morrow reclined and closed his eyes. “Okay, boys, let’s have it.”

“Report from the Middle East, sir,” Nick Draper said in his soothing Virginia drawl. “Seems the Visitors are constructing an offshore rig in the Persian Gulf. Can I show y'all a map?”

Morrow leaned forward. Draper took that as an affirmative signal and opened his briefcase, spreading a chart out on the coffee table. Everyone else gathered around so they could see.

“Here’s where they’ve planted it, sir,” Draper continued, pointing to a red cross drawn just off the Saudi Arabian coast. “Is that strategic?” Morrow asked.

“I’m afraid it is. It’s near a city called Safaniya, and it’s right on top of the world’s biggest offshore oil field. Let me give you a little background. The oil industry is centered on Saudi Arabia’s eastern coast here. A little way south of Safaniya is a place called Ras Tanura. That’s where most of the refineries and tankers are.”

“What’s the military situation, Nick?”

“Well, sir, as you’ll recall, some of the Arab nations realized right after the first invasion that they had a valuable commodity worth protecting—oil. So they formed a common defense force to protect their main oil fields as best they could, with a blood promise that the countries who benefited from having their oil protected would help the others out financially,
if
the Visitors were ever defeated. The Persian Gulf states started out with a force strength of about a hundred sixty thousand troops. About half of those survived the initial fighting with the aliens. They were on the run, though, until the Israelis offered to join up with ’em.”

“You’re kidding!” Hannah interrupted, openly astounded. “The Israelis and the Arabs cooperating?”

“Yeah—didn't you know about that?” Peter asked.

“Hey, I’m just a scientist. I’m not privy to ail the resistance gossip you get, Peter. How are they doing?”

“Practicality seems to be the watchword. They’re still working together,” Draper said. “Israel managed to secure most of its territory almost immediately. The whole country mobilized, and the Visitors decided it was easier to leave them alone for the time being and conquer them later.”

Morrow allowed himself a gallows smile. “The lizards’ll be in for a big surprise.”

“Anyway, the combined forces of what’s left of those armies, plus a solid underground network—well, sir, they’ve managed to keep the dry-land oil fields safe in Saudi Arabia.

But all they can do is hold the ground they’ve got. They just don’t have the firepower to take on the Visitors offshore.” Morrow laced his fingers together and looked at the map. “When did they start working on this platform in the Gulf?” “Last night, our time,” said Draper.

“Any idea yet what it’s for?”

The Secretary of State shook his head. “No, sir. The only details were that it looked like something that could be used for drilling.”

Morrow clicked his teeth together as he turned pensive. “Drilling . . . drilling . . . why would the Visitors be drilling for oil? What do they need oil for?” He shook his head, drawing a blank, then turned to Donnenfeld. “I hate to give your lab folks another thing to do, but point some of those brains at this. Okay, Doc? Any and all theories are more’n welcome.”

The meeting broke up, and Pete escorted Hannah down to the Hyatt’s lobby. “Hey, Hannah, how are Mitchell and Neville getting along?”

“Mitchell’s behaving himself. He grumbles and bitches and moans an awful lot, which I’m frankly getting sick of. But I don’t think it’s getting in the way of the work.”

“And how are
Sari
and Neville getting along?”

The old woman raised an eyebrow. “Let’s just say they’re having an enjoyable time.” She scratched her head before pulling a tweed cap over her white hair. “I just hope she’s not getting involved so deep that she’ll moon around like a love-struck teenager when he leaves.”

“You’re so sure he’ll leave? Maybe you’re enough of an attraction to get him to stay.”

“Sari's
the attraction, son.”

“I meant professional attraction.”

She pressed her lips together, the comers of her mouth downtumed. She shook her head slowly. “No, I don’t think so. For all his charms, Neville More doesn’t seem to be the team-player type. More the superstar on loan, the free agent.” She lowered her voice to a confidential murmur. “I’ll tell you, give me a choice between Neville and Mitch, I'd take Mitchell in a second.”

“Have you told Mitchell that? Sounded to me like he could use a confidence boost.”

Hannah threw her hands up in a parody of terror. “Ack, no! If he knew I’d never trade him for More, he’d be unbearable. ” She completed her act by wiping her forehead. “Whew. Now, how’d you like to give an old lady a ride home?”