Powersat (The Grand Tour) (37 page)

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Authors: Ben Bova

BOOK: Powersat (The Grand Tour)
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“N
ow remember,” Dan shouted, standing in the middle of the hangar floor,”this was just a rehearsal. Tomorrow’s the real thing.”
Hardly anyone paid any attention to him, they were all swilling champagne, laughing, pounding each other on the back. Even Niles Muhamed, normally as grim as the angel of death, was shaking up bottles of champagne and spraying them on whoever happened to be in range of the cold, white geyser.
“Give it up, chief,” said Lynn Van Buren, her inevitable dark pantsuit stained with Muhamed’s champagne spray. “They’ve earned an afternoon of fun.”
Frowning with helplessness, Dan said, “I don’t want them hung over tomorrow.”
“They’ll be okay. Let them let off steam. They’ll get a good night’s sleep.”
Van Buren drifted off into the crowd and Dan slowly realized that he was alone. Joe Tenny wasn’t there to share this moment with him. Claude Passeau had gone back to New Orleans. Even April was nowhere in sight.
I wish Jane could’ve been here, he said to himself. She’ll
come down tomorrow but Scanwell will be with her. And six hundred other VIPs and news people. Vickie Lee, most probably. Wonder if she’ll stay the night.
Feeling suddenly unbearably sad, drained, disappointed like a man who had spent his last ounce of energy to reach a mountain peak only to find that it wasn’t worth the struggle, Dan walked slowly toward the stairs leading up to his office and his apartment. Then he stopped. No sense going up there with all this noise going on down here.
There’s no place for me to go, he realized. No place at all.
H
e began to drift through the crowd, looking for April. She’s going to have a lot to do tomorrow, with all the news media coming in. Better make sure she doesn’t get too much champagne into her.
 
 
O
ff in the farthermost corner of the hangar, away from the whooping, sloshing crowd, al-Bashir was speaking quietly, intently, to April. One hand holding a plastic cup of California champagne, he leaned against the metal wall of the hangar with his other hand, neatly pinning April against the wall.
“France?” April asked. “You mean Paris?”
“Marseille, actually,” he said smoothly. “On the Mediterranean. We can go to Paris afterward, if you like.”
April looked surprised, almost alarmed. But she murmured, “I’ve never been to France.”
“Marseille is not far from the Riviera,” al-Bashir said. “They make the world’s best bouillabaisse there.”
“I’ve heard of that. It’s like a sort of fish stew, isn’t it?”
“With certain exotic ingredients added.”
“Like saffron?”
Al-Bashir smiled. “You’ll love it.”
“But there’s so much to do here,” April said, her eyes evading his.
“We can leave tomorrow afternoon, after the turn-on ceremony. Surely Dan owes you a few days’ vacation.”
“I really don’t think I could …” Her voice faded away.
Al-Bashir put his arm down and stood up straight, almost at attention. “You will have your own hotel suite, I promise you. You’ll be perfectly safe.”
A slight smile touched her lips. “Can I trust you?”
“Of course,” he lied.
 
 
A
s soon as she got to her apartment that evening, her head buzzing from the champagne, April phoned Kelly Eamons in Houston. No answer. She left messages on both Kelly’s office line and her cell phone.
Saturday evening, April thought. She’s probably out on a date.
April fell asleep as she sat in her living room recliner watching a detective show on television. It always worked out so neatly on TV: they caught the murderer in one hour flat, even taking time-outs for commercials.
The phone rang and she instantly snapped awake.
“Hi, April. It’s me, Kelly.”
Holding the cordless phone as she got up from the recliner, April said, “Let me put you on the computer, okay?”
“Sure.”
It took a few moments for April to boot up her desktop machine and get Kelly’s freckle-faced image on her screen. Once she did, she told the FBI agent about al-Bashir’s invitation.
“To Marseille?” Eamons echoed. “That’s a major narcotics port.”
“Narcotics? Do you think … ?”
Eamons’s brows knit “There’s nothing linking him to drugs. Nothing linking him to much of anything, outside of his connection with that bozo Roberto.”
“He seems nice enough,”April said half-heartedly.
“I don’t like the idea of you being alone with him. In France, yet.”
April tried to make light of it. “What’s he going to do, kidnap me and carry me off to his harem?”
“He has a harem, you know. In the city of Tunis.”
“Really?”
Frowning, Eamons said, “We’ve checked with the CIA about him. He seems to be nothing more than a big-time international businessman. A billionaire.”
“But you think he might be linked to the murders here at Astro.”
“It’s only a straw,” Eamons admitted. “But it’s the only straw we’ve got.”
“Maybe if I go with him we can learn more,” April suggested.
“Maybe if you go with him you could get hurt. Badly.”
April replied, “He doesn’t want to hurt me. He just wants to go to bed with me.”
“And what do you want?”
Without an eyeblink’s hesitation, April said, “I want to find out who killed Joe Tenny. And Pete Larsen.”
“And that test pilot.”
Nodding, April said, “And what they’re planning next.”
“That’s damned dangerous, April.”
“But he doesn’t know I’m working with you. He just thinks I’m an available woman.”
Eamons’s scowl deepened. “He wants to fly off to Marseille tomorrow afternoon?”
“After we turn on the powersat, yes.”
“We’ll have to act fast, then.”
“And do what?”
“I’ve got to round up a medical team and get them down there tonight,” said Eamons.
“A medical team?”
“You’re going to get an implant.”
“I’m on the pill,” April blurted.
Eamons shook her head. “Not for contraception, silly. This implant is a microtracker. We’ve got to know exactly where you are every second you’re with him.”
S
unday. dawned cloudy and gray. Not a good omen, Dan thought, looking out his window as he got dressed. Shirt and tie this morning, he told himself. You’ve got to look like the successful, prosperous captain of industry.
April was at her desk, on the phone, when he entered his office. But she looked drawn, tired, as if she hadn’t slept all night. Nervous? Dan wondered. Well, she’s had an awful lot to do these past couple of weeks, and today’s going to be the busiest day of her life.
Once he had booted up his computer he saw that Mitch O’Connell’s name was at the top of his to-call list. Dan clicked on the name and the phone made the connection.
“There’s about a hundred and fifty of ’em picketing out by the main gate,” the security chief said, his heavy-jawed face grim.
“Are they making any trouble?” Dan asked.
“Not yet. But wait till the VIPs start showing up.”
Dan thought swiftly. Jane and Scanwell were flying in, as were many of the other invited guests. They’d come right in to the airstrip, bypassing the perimeter gate. But the news people would be coming in their vans and they’re the ones the pickets want to impress. Soon as they see the TV vans they’ll start harassing the limos trying to get through the main gate.
“Send a set of cars to the ferry dock,” he said to O’Connell, “and have the drivers guide the arriving guests down to the secondary road. Let ’em in through the back gate.”
O’Connell said worriedly, “That way they’ll be driving right past the launchpad.”
“That’s okay. Fine, in fact. Give ’em something to gawk at before they park at the control center. The TV crews’ll love it.”
“I don’t know if I have enough people to do it.”
Dan sighed. The ultimate bureaucratic ploy: I need more people. “Call in as many people as you need. Holiday pay scale. Call in the state police, for double-damn’s sake.”
“Okay, boss,” O’Connell said, brightening. “I’ll get right on it.”
 
 
J
ust outside the wire fence that marked the perimeter of the Astro facility, Rick Chatham was giving instructions to his volunteers. Most of them carried placards professionally printed in red, white, and blue:
STOP THE POWERSAT
DON’T MICROWAVE THE WORLD
SPACE IS FOR SCIENCE, NOT PROFIT
“When the TV trucks come down this road,” he said, pointing with an outstretched arm, “we’ve got to swarm around them, wave our placards in front of their drivers so they have to slow down and stop.”
“We can lay down on the road,” a balding, overweight man in khaki shorts called out. “Then they’ll have to stop.”
“If that’s what it takes, that’s what we’ll have to do,” Chatham agreed. “Make them stop and turn their cameras on us.”
“Make the world see what’s going on here!”
“That’s right,” said Chatham. “We’re going to make the world realize that what these industrialists are trying to do is evil. They’re stealing energy from the sun and beaming intense microwaves down to the ground. They’re threatening to upset the balance of nature and destroy our environment.”
“We’ve got to stop them!” a woman cried out earnestly.
“Remember, we’re on state-owned land here,” Chatham said as loudly as he could. “We have a perfect right to be here, and if they try to force us out
they’re
breaking the law, not us.”
On the other side of the gate a quartet of uniformed security
officers stood by uneasily. They wore no guns, but each of them carried a fully charged cattle prod strapped to his hip. A fifth officer, wearing a sergeant’s stripes on her sleeves, stood scowling at the group of volunteers gathered in the road.
Once Chatham finished his little oration she called out to him. “Sir? May I speak to you for a moment?”
Chatham ambled over toward her, leaned one arm on the wire mesh of the gate.
“You’ve got a legal right to demonstrate,” the sergeant said, “on that side of the gate.”
“I know that,” said Chatham. “That’s the law.”
“Right. But if your people try to cross over the property line once we’ve opened this gate, that’s trespassing, and we are under orders to deal with trespassers.”
Chatham smiled lazily at her. “All five of you? How could you stop us? I’ve got more than a hundred people here.”
“A detachment of state police will be arriving on the first ferry, sir,” said the sergeant. “And if you put one toe on this side of the gate I’ll make it my personal business to split your skull open.”
She smiled sweetly at him.
 
 
A
sim al-Bashir drove his rented Mercedes off the ferry and past the line of cars that seemed to be waiting at the edge of the parking lot. Behind him a long black limo with a State of Texas emblem jounced across the ferry’s ramp and onto dry land, followed by a heavy TV van bristling with antennas. Al-Bashir saw one of the waiting autos cut in front of the limo. He watched in his rearview mirror as a young man got out of the car and started talking with the chauffeur. The TV van stopped behind the limo. Cars waiting behind the van bleated their horns angrily.
Wondering what that was all about, al-Bashir leaned on the gas pedal and sped down the main road toward the Astro facility. The limo, he noticed, turned off on the side
road, led by the unmarked automobile, and the TV van followed it.
As he neared the Astro complex al-Bashir saw that a crowd of people was blocking the road. He slowed down and saw that most of them were carrying colorful placards. Demonstrators, he realized. Ecology fanatics trying to block the gate.
Al-Bashir knew how to deal with demonstrators. He slowed the Mercedes to ten miles per hour and kept boring straight ahead. They waved their placards in front of his windshield and yelled at him; he couldn’t hear their shouted curses through the car’s luxurious insulation. Smiling tightly, he edged the car through the angry crowd. The Astro guards had opened the gate and he inched through. None of the demonstrators tried to get through the gate, and a women in a sergeant’s uniform threw him a salute as he accelerated past her.
Al-Bashir laughed to himself as headed for Hangar A. What if we turned the powersat beam onto this spot? he thought idly. What if we cooked those demonstrators where they stood? How poetic! What a sensation that would cause!
But he commanded himself to be serious. You have more important victims to deal with than a ragtag band of dogooders, he said silently. And besides, you don’t want to hurt Dan Randolph. He is the real enemy. The devil incarnate. He must die, and his satellite with him, if we are to win. But not until we strike. Randolph has to be alive to be the focus of the people’s wrath after their president is killed.
Then he thought of April. You don’t want to hurt her, either, he reminded himself. By this time tomorrow, she’ll be flying to Marseille with you. She’ll actually be safer with me than here, when the mobs start to tear this place down to the ground.

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