path to conquest (4 page)

“Let’s get a move on,” Draper said. “You’re right, that is important!”

The chief of staff tried to spread his arms in protest, but they were pinned to his ribs. He uttered a strangled cry of frustration. “Ooohl That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you since the lobby!”

Two solid-looking Secret Service agents stood guard at the door of the suite. One nodded at the four officials while the other opened the door.

Barbara Morrow was waiting for them in the entry hall. The President’s wife was a tall, patrician woman, and even at this early hour she looked tastefully stylish. In fact, thought Draper, she fit splendidly with the elegant rose-beige decor of the suite. He noticed that the carpet was so sumptuous, their running shoes left tread marks as they followed her into the living room. A silver tray with coffee, tea, juice, and Danishes was set for them and she invited them to sit and help themselves.

“Bill is getting dressed and dousing himself with cold water. I got him up as soon as Len called to say you’d be up soon.” “Thanks, Barbara,” said Nick Draper. “Makes this sort of thing a whole lot easier when you pave the path for us.” She made a
_t
self-deprecating gesture. “Oh, you people worry too much about him. He’s strong as a horse. The doctors said there was nothing wrong with his heart after those chest pains. He denies it to this day, but I’d swear it was the omelet with the jalapeno peppers he gobbled that morning.”

“Well, it’s also the time he was prisoner,” Katowski began. “Nobody really knows what he went through when Diana had him in her torture chamber for months. We’re just afraid—•” Barbara Morrow cut him off. “I see him every day—almost as much as you, Len,” she quipped, “and I know he’s got no scars from that ordeal. If anything, I think he’s stronger for having survived it. I really don’t think you should concern yourselves so much with his delicate condition.”

“Begging the First Lady’s pardon,” Stu Hart said dryly, “but it’s not the President’s delicate condition that worries us— it’s his wrath when we get him upset.”

Mrs. Morrow broke into a smile. “Bill’s just a big white-haired pussycat.”

A sound came from the living room doorway, and they turned to see the imposing figure of William Brent Morrow, President of the United States. His aides stood to greet him. He motioned them back onto the couch.

His wife shrugged. “See? I told you.”

“Where’s my saucer of milk?” Morrow asked as he came in and kissed Barbara on the cheek.

“I’ll get it, Mr. President,” she said, leaving for the kitchen. Morrow stretched to his full height, well over six feet, then sat back in an overstuffed recliner. “Okay, what’s this morning’s crisis, Nick?”

“I defer to Leonard, Mr. President. He’s got the goods.” Katowski cleared his throat timidly. “Well, uh, sir, it’s the um—”

“With all that nervous energy, I wish you’d apply a bit of it to speeding up this little presentation, Leonard.”

“Yes, sir. It’s the convoy in the North Atlantic. They’ve been attacked by Visitors.”

Morrow leaned forward. “Details?”

“Essentially, all we know is that they came under attack by maybe fifteen skyfighters. But all the alert strategies seem to have worked. The task force had planes up before the Visitors could get close. It was no surprise attack, and I believe our boys got off the first shots.”

“Yeah? And?”

Katowski swallowed, his prominent Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “And what, sir?”

“And what’s happened? Who won?”

“I’m afraid we don’t know yet, sir. My office has instructions to let us know the second something else comes in.” Morrow sat back again, fingers steepled thoughtfully. “And if we don’t hear anything soon, we can assume the Visitors blasted the tankers, the
Nimitz,
and everything else to kingdom come.”

Mrs. Morrow came back with a tall glass of milk, but the President was already on his feet. “Len, get Olav Lindstrom on the horn. Tell him what happened. I want a meeting with his people over at the United Nations. Tell him twenty minutes. I want you all there. Meet me downstairs at the limo in fifteen minutes.”

Draper indicated their running outfits. “Mr. President, we’re all sweaty—”

“You’re too kind, Nick. You all stink, but showers’ll have to wait. Fifteen minutes.” He grabbed the glass of milk in one huge hand and swept out of the room.

Cynthia fingered her perspiration-soaked T-shirt. “Yuck.”

With a haughty glance, Leonard Katowski stepped imperiously past his three co-workers. “Runners—
hah.”
He nodded a farewell to Barbara Morrow and headed for the door.

Cynthia chewed on her lip for a moment. “I want to kill him myself, but I’m willing to draw straws for the privilege.”

Eyes closed, Peter Forsythe rolled his head back and reveled in the pulsing beat of the shower’s steamy jets. The water kneaded his neck and shoulders like tiny, uncountable masseuses. Then he felt genuine human fingers dancing lightly down his sides and clasping his waist and he opened his eyes to find Lauren Stewart’s lips an inch from his own. Her chin rested on his shoulder, and he turned to kiss her. Her lustrous black hair clung to the outline of her face, around finely sculpted cheekbones, framing exquisite almond-shaped eyes. Pete turned around to envelop her in a gentle embrace. He still got a kick out of the way his pale blond coloring contrasted with her caramel-brown skin and marveled at the genetic luck that made Lauren such a scenic combination of her father, a handsome black man, and her late mother, a petite Polynesian beauty.

Playfully, he licked droplets of water off the tip of her nose. “You know,” he said, “if locker room showers were like this one, I might’ve stayed in baseball a coupla years longer.”

She smiled archly. “Co-ed showers, Peter?”

“No—-I mean the shower head. This massage spray is fantastic!”

“Oh, you lousy . . She poked him in the gut, and he doubled over, laughing as she wrestled with him.

“Oh, no . . . no, Lauren. Please don’t tickle me.. .

Pete scrambled to fend off her wriggling fingers as they probed for proven weak spots. “You know there’s only one way I can fight you,” he gasped.

“I dare you. You can’t do it ’cause you’re laughing too hard.”

With visible effort, strain showing on his face, he stifled his giggling and aimed at her neck, planting a soft, wet kiss. She struggled to continue her assault, but his counteroffensive was already beginning to have an effect. His kisses marched down from one earlobe, across her throat, then trailed down her chest.

“Not fair,” she whimpered. The tickling ceased.

“Stop me if I’m hurting you.”

“Oh, without a doubt, Dr. Forsythe.”

“Do you hear bells?” he asked between kisses.

“You’re a conceited son of a bitch.”

He stood up straight and wiped a trickle of water off his cheek. “No, I’m not. Your phone’s ringing.”

“Damn,” Lauren said, snapping back to reality. She swept the shower curtain aside, threw a giant terry bath sheet around her midsection, and trotted out into the bedroom to grab the phone before it gave up.

“Hello?”

“I hope I didn’t wake you, Lauren.” It was the lilting Swedish accent of Olav Lindstrom, Secretary General of the United Nations. Her boss.

Lauren sighed, looking wistfully back toward the bathroom. “No, no, Olav—I’m wide awake. What’s wrong?”

“President Morrow called. Something urgent. He wanted to meet with us right away.”

“How soon?”

“How fast can you get over here?”

Lauren hugged herself with the towel. “Well, I’ve already showered. Fifteen minutes okay?”

“Perfect. I’ll have coffee and pastries sent up so you needn’t worry about breakfast.”

“Okay, Olav. See you in fifteen minutes. ’Bye.”

She replaced the receiver. “Hey, Peter, playtime’s over. Urgent UN meeting with Morrow.” She heard the water stop. “What’s it about?”

“I don’t know, but it’s obviously important.”

Pete came out of the bathroom, a towel wrapped around his waist as he rubbed his sandy,    thinning curls    with a smaller towel. “I’ll drive you over.”

He draped the small towel over his head and pulled the larger one off to dry his arms and chest.    Lauren smiled as    she watched him disappear into the bathroom again. Even though his baseball career with the New York Yankees had been cut short by knee injuries, he still had the taut body of an athlete. If anything, he was in better shape now, following his retirement from the sport after the first Visitor invasion. He’d thrown himself full-time into finishing medical school, but reserved an hour a day for exercise. The love handles that had been growing around his hips when Lauren had first undressed him were gone now. And he still had the cutest tush she’d ever seen on a grown man.

As she chose a blazer and comfortable slacks from her closet and got dressed, she pondered her unlikely relationship with Peter Forsythe.

Hard to believe we couldn’t stand the sight of each other not so long ago,
she thought. He’d been a student of her father’s at Cornell Medical Center, studying part-time while finishing up a baseball career that had made him famous and wealthy. He’d also had well-publicized bouts with various bottles. After the Visitors’ initially peaceful arrival on Earth, she’d been with her father at a party given by the mayor of New York, and Pete and other representatives of the Yankees had been there, too. When her dad had chided her for being cool to Pete, she’d summed up her disdain for him with a succinct characterization:
“I’m always chilly to cynical drunks who make a million dollars a year and have no reason to
be
cynical drunks.”

That particular phrase still stuck in her mind because she’d been so wrong about Pete. Through the long waking nightmare of the Visitors’ occupation, when her father had been kidnapped along with so many other people and had stayed missing for months, Pete’s concern for his teacher and friend had convinced Lauren to take a second look at the man who was much more than a cynical drunk, as it turned out. Circumstances had pushed them into the same band of resistance fighters here in New York. They’d become its leaders, and they’d fought the growing attraction between them. Finally, when the aliens had been driven from the planet and Lauren’s father had been returned, Pete had been the one to make the first move.
That idiot—landing on the roof of the UN with a damned Visitor skyfighter and whisking me off to Hawaii!
That’s where her mother had been bom, where her parents had met. And it was where she and Pete had first made love.
Right out on the beach, just like all those silly romance novels and movies,
she recalled. The proper, practical part of I ,auren—still more than half, she mused—-was firmly convinced that such romantic goings-on
were
silly. She supposed it was a measure of how far she’d come, with Pete’s patient help, that she did do those silly things now and then.

Lauren put the finishing touches on her eyeliner—she wore very little makeup—and turned to see Pete stepping out of the bathroom and buttoning his blue oxford shirt. He grabbed the summer-weight sports coat tossed casually on the comer chair the night before and slung it over one shoulder.

“You ready?” he asked.

“Yes. Let’s go.”

Presidential flags flapping at the comers of its gleaming black fenders, the armored Lincoln bounded up out of the Hyatt’s underground garage and swung onto Forty-second Street. With six police motorcycles arrayed around it, the limousine drove east, covering the three blocks to the United Nations complex in a few minutes.

In the old days,
Morrow thought,
I'd have been greeted by a line of dignitaries from here to next Tuesday, plus a brass band.
But pomp and ceremony were nonessentials in this new era defined by global war. The limo and police escort pulled up in front of the main UN entrance, to be greeted by no one at all. Though he had occasional twinges of nostalgia for the formal flourishes of protocol, deep down in his Texas soul “Wild Bill” Morrow preferred the current simplicity.
Hell, I know my way to Lindstrom’s office.
Jimmy Carter may not have been an all-time great President, but Morrow had admired the man for having the gumption to carry his own suitcase and coat bag when he got off Air Force One.

Morrow reached for the door handle and clambered out first, followed by Draper, Katowski, Hart, and Sobel. The trio of joggers had donned blue warm-up suits. National Security Adviser Gerald Livingston had an apartment a block away, so he’d be arriving on his own, probably late. As he strode into the lobby of the Secretariat building, Morrow hoped that the White House aides who worked in the presidential office here at the UN, and who had called Chief of Staff Katowski with the initial news, would have some conclusive reports for them by the time they convened the meeting.

“Mr. President,” a voice called from behind Morrow’s entourage. It was Pete Forsythe with Lauren Stewart, both hustling to catch up. Katowski had already moved ahead to summon an elevator, so Morrow stopped to greet the new arrivals, exchanging hearty handshakes with both Pete and Lauren.

“I hope it’s okay if Pete comes along, sir,” said Lauren, all business now.

Morrow shrugged. “Resistance heroes have security clearance as far as I’m concerned. Glad to have you join the party, Pete.” He glanced at his watch. “Isn’t it a tad early for you to be up and around, though, just to drive the lady over here? Nice boy, Pete.”

“Well, actually we had a late date, Mr. President,” Pete said sotto voce.

Lauren flashed a chilly glare at Pete and jabbed him in the ribs while the President stifled a knowing grin.

“Let’s go,” Katowski said, holding the elevator.

Lindstrom looked up when he heard the conference room door open.

“Olav!” Lauren scolded.

He spread his hands helplessly. The white-haired Secretary General of the United Nations had his suit coat draped over the back of his chair. He wore a white apron and had been caught in the act of carefully arranging croissants, Danishes, and a variety of other morning pastries on four trays around the long oval table. Coffee was already brewing in the machine and Styrofoam cups and plates were set neatly at each place.