The Sam Gunn Omnibus (19 page)

“Nowhere in our
promotional literature or video presentations do we promise to take our
customers into space,” Sam said evenly.

“But—”

“The contracts our
customers sign say that Space Adventure Tours will give them an
experience
of space flight. Which is what we do.
We give our customers a simulation: a carefully designed simulation so that
they can have the
experience
of their lives.”

“You tell them you’re
taking them into space!”

“Do not.”

“You do too! You told
me
you’d fly me into orbit!”

Sam shook his head
sadly. “That may be what you heard. What you wanted to hear. But I have never
told any of my customers that Space Adventure Tours would actually, physically,
transport them into orbit.”

“You did! You did!”

“No I didn’t. If you’d
recorded our conversations, you’d find that I never told you—or anybody
else—that I’d fly you into space.”

I looked at Hector. He
sat like a graven idol: silent and unmoving.

“When we were in the
orbiter,” I remembered, “you made all this talk about separating from the 747
and going into orbit.”

“That was part of the simulation,” Sam said. “Once you’re on board the
orbiter, it’s all an act. It’s all part of the experience. Like an amusement
park ride.”

Exasperated, I said, “Sam, your customers are going home and telling their
friends and relatives that they’ve really flown in space. They’re sending new
customers to you, people who expect to go into orbit for real!”

With a shrug, Sam answered, “Ramona, honey, I’m not responsible for what
people think, or say, or do. If they wanna believe they’ve really been in
space, that’s their fantasy, their happiness. Who am I to deny them?”

I was beyond fury. My insides felt bitter cold. “All right,” I said icily.
“Suppose I go back to the States and let the news media know what you’re doing?
How long do you think customers will keep coming?”

Sam’s brows knit slightly. “Gimme two more months,” he said.

“Two more months?”

“Let me operate like this for two more months, and then I’ll close down
voluntarily.”

“You’re asking me to allow you to defraud the public for another two months?”

His eyes narrowed. “You know, you’re talking like a lawyer. Or maybe a
cop.”

“What and who I am has nothing to do with this,” I snapped.

“A cop,” Sam said, with a heavy sigh.

Out of nowhere, Hector spoke up. “Why do you want two months?”

I whirled on the poor guy. “So he can steal as much money as he can from
the poor unsuspecting slobs he calls his customers, why else?”

“Yeah,” Hector said, in that smoky low voice of his, “okay, maybe so. But
why two months?”

Before I could think of an answer, Sam popped in. “Because in two months I’ll
have proved my point.”

“What point?”

“That there’s a viable market for tourists in space. That people’ll spend
a good-sized hunk of change just for the chance to ride into orbit.”

“Which you don’t really do,” I reminded him.

“That doesn’t matter,” Sam said. “The point I’m making is that there
really is a market for space tourism. People have been talking about space
tourism for years; I’m doing something about it.”

“You’re stealing,” I said. “Swindling.”

“Okay, so I’m faking it. Nevertheless, people are plunking down their money
for a space adventure.”

“So what?” I sneered.

Hunching forward, leaning his forearms on the gleaming desktop, Sam said, “So
with three whole months of this operation behind me, I can go back to the
States and raise enough capital to lease a Clippership that’ll
really
take tourists into orbit.”

I stared at him.

Hector got the point before I did. “You mean the financial people won’t
believe there’s a market for space tourism now, but they will after you’ve
operated this fake business for three months?”

“Right,” Sam answered. “Those Wall Street types don’t open up their
wallets until you’ve got solid numbers to show
‘
em.”

“What about venture capitalists?” Hector asked. “They back new, untried
ideas all the time.”

Sam made a sour face. “Sure they do. I went to some of ‘em. First thing
they did was ask me why the big boys like Rockledge and Global Technologies
aren’t doing it. Then they go to the ‘experts’ in the field and ask their
opinion of the idea. And who’re the experts?”

“Rockledge and Global,” I guessed.

Shaking his head, Sam said, “Even worse. They went to NASA. To Clark
Griffith IV, my own boss, for crap’s sake! By the time he got done scaring the
cojones
off them, they wouldn’t even answer my e-mail.”

“NASA shot you down?”

“They didn’t know it was me. They talked to a team that the venture
capitalists put together.”

I asked, “But shouldn’t NASA be in favor of space tourism? I mean, they’re
the space agency, after all.”

“Some people in NASA are in favor of it, sure,” Sam said. “But the higher
you go in the agency the more conservative they get. Up at the top they have nightmares
of a spacecraft full of tourists blowing up, like the old
Challenger.
That’d set back everything we do in
space by ten years, at least.”

“So when the venture capitalists asked ...”

“The agency bigwigs threw enough cold water on the idea to freeze the
Amazon River,” Sam growled.

“And that’s when you started Space Adventure Tours,” I said.

“Right. Set the whole company up while I was still working at the Cape.
Then I took a three-month leave to personally run the operation. I’ve got two months
left to go.”

Silence. I sat there, not knowing what to say next. Hector looked

thoughtful, or maybe
puzzled is a better description of the expression on his face. Sam leaned back
in his high chair, staring at me like a little boy who’s been caught with his hand
in the cookie jar, but is hoping to get a cookie out of it instead of a
spanking.

I was in a turmoil of conflicting emotions. I really liked Sam, even
though he had quite literally screwed me. But I couldn’t let him continue to
swindle people; that was wrong any way you looked at it, legally or morally.

On the other hand, Sam wasn’t really hurting anybody. Was he? Did any of
his customers empty their retirement accounts to take his phony ride? Would any
of those retired couples spend their declining years in poverty because Sam
bilked them out of their life savings?

I shook my head, trying to settle my spinning thoughts into some rational
order. Sam was breaking all kinds of laws, and he’d have to stop. Right now.

“All right,” I said, my mind finally made up. “I’m not going to report
this back to your superiors at NASA.”

Sam’s face lit up.

“And I’m not going to blow the whistle on you or bring in the authorities,”
I continued.

Sam grinned from ear to ear.

“On one condition,” I said firmly.

His rusty eyebrows hiked up. “One condition?”

“You’ve got to shut this operation down, Sam. Either shut down
voluntarily, or I’ll be forced to inform the authorities here in Panama and the
news media in the States.”

He nodded solemnly. “Fair enough. In two months I’ll close up shop.”

“Not in two months,” I snapped. “Now. Today. You go out of business
now
and refund whatever monies you’ve collected for
future flights.”

I expected Sam to argue. I expected him to rant and holler at me. Or at
least plead and wheedle. He did neither. For long, long moments he simply sat
there staring at me, saying nothing, his face looking as if I’d just put a
bullet through his heart.

I steeled myself and stared right back at him. Hector stirred uneasily in
his chair beside me, sensing that there was more going on than we had expressed
in words, but saying nothing.

At last Sam heaved an enormous sigh and said, in a tiny little exhausted
voice, “Okay, if that’s what you want. I’m in no position to fight back.”

I should have known right there and then that he was lying through his
crooked teeth.

Hector flew me back to Panama City and we repaired to our separate hotel
rooms. I felt totally drained, really out of it, as if I’d spent the day
fighting dragons or climbing cliffs by my fingernails.

Then things started to get weird.

I had just flopped on my hotel room bed, not even bothering to take off my
clothes, when the phone rang. My boss from DEA headquarters in Washington.

“You’re going to have a visitor,” he told me, looking nettled in the tiny
phone screen. “Her name will be Jones. Listen to what she has to tell you and
act accordingly.”

“A visitor?” I mumbled, feeling thickheaded, confused. “Who? Why?”

My boss doesn’t nettle easily, but he sure looked ticked off. “She’ll
explain it all to you. And this is the last goddamned time I let you or any
other of my people go off on detached duty to help some other agency!”

With that, he cut off the connection. I was looking at a blank phone
screen, wondering what on earth was going on.

The phone buzzed again. This time it was Hector.

“I just got a phone call from my group commander at Eglin,” he said. “Some
really weird shit has hit the fan, Ramona. I’m under orders to stay here in
Panama with you until we meet with some woman named Jones.”

“I got the same orders from my boss,” I told him.

Hector’s darkly handsome face went into brooding mode. “I don’t like the
sound of this,” he muttered.

“Neither do I,” I confessed.

We didn’t have long to wait. Ms. Jones arrived bright and early the
following morning. In fact, Hector and I were having breakfast together in the
hotel’s nearly empty dining room, trying to guess what was going on, when she
sauntered in.

She didn’t hesitate a moment, just walked right up to our table and sat down,
as if she’d been studying photographs of us for the past week or two.

“Adrienne Jones,” she said, opening her black leather shoulder bag and
pulling out a leather-encased laminated ID card. It said she was with the U.S.
Department of State.

She didn’t look like a diplomat. Adrienne Jones—if that was really her
name—was a tall, sleek, leggy African-American whose skin was the color of
polished ebony. She had a fashion model’s figure and face: high cheekbones,
almond eyes, and a tousled, careless hairdo that must have cost a fortune. Her
clothes were expensive, too.

Hector stared at her, too stunned to speak. I felt dismal and threadbare
beside her in my shapeless slacks and blouse, with a belly bag strapped around
my middle.

I hated her immediately.

“If you’re really with the State Department.” I said as she snapped her ID
closed and put it back in her capacious shoulder bag, “then I’m from Disney
World.”

She smiled at me the way a snake does. “That’s the one in Florida, isn’t
it?”

Hector found his voice. “CIA, right? You’ve got to be with the CIA.”

Jones ignored his guess. “You both have been informed that you are to
cooperate with me, correct?”

“I was told to listen to what you have to say,” I said.

“Me too,” said Hector.

“Very well, then. Here’s what I have to say: Leave Sam Gunn alone. Let him
continue to operate. Do not interfere with him in any way.”

What kind of strings had Sam pulled? He had come across to me as the
little guy struggling against the big boys, but here was the State Department
or the CIA—or
some
federal agency—ordering me
to keep my hands off.

“Why?” I asked.

“You don’t have to know,” said Jones. “Just leave Sam be. No interference
with his operation.”

Hector scratched his head and glanced at me. He was an Air Force officer,
I realized, and had to follow orders. His career depended on it. Me, I had a
career, too. But I wasn’t going to let this fashion model stranger order me
around, no matter what my boss said.

“Okay,” I told her, “I’ve listened to what you have to say. That doesn’t mean
I’m going to do what you’re asking me to do.”

Jones smiled again, venomously. “I’m not asking you. I’m telling you.”

“You can tell me whatever you like. I’m not going to go along with it
unless I know the whys and wherefores.”

Her smile faded into grimness. “Look, Ms. Perkins, your superior at DEA
has been briefed and he agreed to cooperate. He’s told you to cooperate, and
that’s what you’d better do, if you know what’s good for you.”

“You briefed him? Then brief me.”

She snorted through her finely chiseled nostrils. “All I can tell you is