Yet that wasn’t what immediately captured my attention. Holographic projectors, cleverly concealed among the hanging plants, had suspended a monstrous machine about twenty feet above the floor: the Sentinel 1 satellite, its long, thin solar arrays thrust out from its cylindrical fuselage, gold Mylar-wrapped spherical fuel tanks nestling against its white segmented hull just short of the black maw of its gun. The image had been shrunk somewhat-the real Sentinel was nearly as long as a football field-but the overall effect was nonetheless impressive: a giant pistol in the sky, and God help whoever tried to stare it down.
Milling around the atrium was a large crowd of business types, clustered in conversation circles, standing in front of the bar or taking drinks from the robowaiters, idly watching the shuttle countdown on the videowall. There was a buffet table at one side of the room; the aroma of hors d’oeuvres was too tempting for someone who hadn’t eaten all day, so I excused myself from John to go get some free chow.
After wolfing down a plate of cocktail shrimp, fried mushrooms, and toasted ravioli, I was ready to start thinking like a professional journalist again. John was nowhere in sight; I eased myself into a vacant corner of the room and took a couple shots of the holograph, then began to scan the room through the Nikon’s telescopic lens under the pretense that I was grabbing a few candid shots. The nice thing about posing as a down-at-the-heels news photographer is that, under circumstances such as this, you fade right into the woodwork; no one pays much attention to the photog because no one wants to seem as if they’re posing for pictures.
At first sight, no one seemed particularly remarkable; you’ve seen one suit, you’ve seen ’em all. The only exception was another photographer across the room, a young lady in jeans and a sweater who looked just as seedy as I. She scowled at me before melting into the crowd. Professional rivalry; she was probably from the Post-Dispatch. I wondered if she could help me adjust my F-stops …
Enough of that. Like it or not, I was still married, even if Marianne had sent me to the darkroom. I continued to check out the atrium.
For a few moments I didn’t see anyone recognizable. Then I spotted Steve Estes. The most right-wing member of the City Council was standing in the center of the room, yukking it up with a couple of other guys who looked as if they were fellow alumni of Hitler Youth. The pompous prick was probably bragging about how he had managed to get ERA to roust a bunch of panhandlers out of the park the night before.
Estes was clearly maneuvering for a run against Elizabeth Boucher in next year’s mayoral election; every public statement he had made since the quake hinted that he was going to oppose “Liberal Lizzie” (to use his term) on a good ol’ Republican law-and-order platform. It would be an easy run; Liz had been caught off guard by the quake and everything that occurred afterward, and in the last few weeks she had been rarely seen or heard outside of City Hall. Rumor had it that she was suffering from a nervous breakdown, a drinking problem, or both, and her foes on the council, chief among them Big Steve, had been quick to capitalize on the rumors. If she ran for reelection, it would be as an unstable incumbent; if you believed Estes’ rants, you’d think Boucher had gone down to New Madrid and jumped up and down on the fault line to cause the quake herself.
Estes glanced in my direction; the grin on his face melted into a cold glare. I took the opportunity to snag his picture before he looked away again. If anything, the shot could be used for Bailey’s next editorial against Estes and his hard-line policies. Then I happened to notice a small group of people standing across the room.
Unlike nearly everyone else at the reception, they were inordinately quiet, seeming somewhat ill at ease even though all three wore the blue badges that I had already recognized as designating Tiptree employees. Their apparent nervousness caught my attention; they appeared to be in terse, quiet conversation, occasionally shutting up and glancing furtively over their shoulders when someone happened to pass by.
I zoomed in on one of them, a distinguished-looking guy in his mid-fifties, tall and rail-thin, with a trim gray Vandyke beard and a receding hairline. Although his back was turned toward me, it was apparent that the two other people were deferring to him. When he looked over his shoulder again, I snapped his picture, more out of impulse than anything else.
Then, in the next instant, he shuffled out of the way, for the first time clearly revealing the shorter person who had been standing opposite him …
A middle-aged black woman in a powder blue business suit and white blouse, not particularly distinguishable from anyone else in the crowd-except I recognized the shock of gray in her hair and the stern expression on her face.
No question about it. She was the very same lady I had encountered in the park last night.
Fumbling with the lens-control buttons, I zoomed in on the woman as much as the camera would allow. The Nikon’s varioptic lens did wonders; now it was as if I were standing three feet in front of her. I could clearly read what was printed on her name badge: BERYL HINCKLEY, Senior Research Associate.
As if she were telepathic, her eyes flitted in my direction when I snapped her picture. I lowered the camera and smiled at her.
She recognized me. Her face registered surprise, and for a moment I thought she was going to come over to speak to me.
“Ladies, gentlemen, if I could have your attention please … we’re about to get started here.”
The amplified voice came through hidden speakers near the ceiling. A young executive was standing at a podium below the videowall. The drone of conversation began to fade as everyone quieted down.
The exec smiled at them. “We’ve been told that the shuttle has come off its prelaunch countdown hold and will be lifting off in just a few minutes,” he went on, “but before that, I’d like to introduce someone who has a few remarks to share with you …”
I glanced across the room again, only to find that Beryl Hinckley had vanished from where I had last seen her. I looked around, trying to spot her again; I caught a brief glimpse of her back as she disappeared into the crowd, heading in the direction of a side exit. She had a true knack for making her escape.
“… Our chief executive officer, Cale McLaughlin. Mr. McLaughlin …?”
A smattering of applause, led by the exec, as he stepped away from the podium to make way for McLaughlin. Tiptree’s CEO was an older gentleman: tall, whip thin, and white haired, with wire-rimmed glasses and the focused look of a man who started his career as a lower-echelon salesman and clawed his way up to the top of the company.
Probably a pretty good golfer, too, but that didn’t mean I was more interested in him than any other corporate honcho I had seen before. I zoomed back in on the conversation circle, only to find that the two men who had been talking with the mystery lady had also faded into the background.
“I’ll keep things brief, because it’s hard to compete with a shuttle launch.” Some laughter from the audience, which had otherwise gone respectfully quiet. McLaughlin’s voice held a soft Texas accent, muted somewhat by the careful diction of a well-educated gentleman. “The Tiptree Corporation is pleased to have been part of the Sentinel program since the very beginning. Hundreds of people have been involved with this project over the last few years, and we believe that it is an important asset to the national security of the United States …”
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So was the B-2 bomber. I was too busy wondering why this Hinckley woman needed to take a powder every time she saw my face.
I was about to wade into the crowd in hopes of finding her again when a soft voice I had never expected, nor hoped, to hear again spoke from behind me.