“And felt his life was in danger,” Arnold added.
“He said someone was killing him,” Greg said, still staring at Paul. “He felt betrayed.”
Paul started to retort that Gregory was an expert on betrayal, but decided it would only make the situation hotter, so he bit it back.
“Are you saying,” Joanna asked her son, her voice tense, strained, “that Gregory committed suicide because he felt betrayed?”
Greg turned molten eyes to her. “I’m saying that my father was frantic. That his feelings of betrayal drove him to drink—”
“Then he must’ve started feeling betrayed twenty years ago,” Paul snapped.
“And after he passed out from drinking,” Greg went on, glowering, “someone slipped into his office, put that gun in his mouth, and pulled the trigger.”
“Bullshit,” Paul growled.
Joanna asked, “Who are you accusing, Greg?”
“We all know who stood to gain the most from my father’s death.”
“Paul couldn’t have done it,” Joanna said, so calmly that Paul wondered how she could control herself so well.
“Why not?”
“Because he was here, with me, that afternoon,” she said, her voice low but firm. “We spent the afternoon in bed together. That’s where I was when the phone call came through.”
Greg’s face went white with rage.
“So if you think that Paul murdered your father,” Joanna continued, “then you’re going to have to blame the two of us. I can’t prove that we were here that afternoon. I obviously didn’t want the servants to see us together.”
“I don’t believe you.” Greg said. “You’re trying to protect him.”
Almost triumphantly, Joanna said, “If Paul murdered your father, then I helped him. Go to the police with that!”
“You were sleeping with him!” Greg accused. “You betrayed my father.”
“Your father betrayed me a hundred times and more,” Joanna said, her voice edging higher. “Paul was the only consolation I had.”
“Paul and who else?” Greg snarled. “How many other men have you—”
Paul jumped to his feet and leaned across the coffeetable to haul Greg up by his lapels. “That’s enough! You’d better shut your mouth.”
Greg pulled free, glaring pure hatred. Bradley Arnold, never moving from his place on the sofa, smiled and raised his hands soothingly.
“Gentlemen!” Arnold said. “Please! Let’s not allow our emotions to get the better of our judgment.”
For a long moment Paul and Greg stood confronting each other, the coffeetable between them: Greg tall and slim, Paul a solid welterweight.
“Sit down, both of you,” Joanna commanded.
“Please,” Arnold said. “Let’s try to keep this on a civilized plane.”
Paul took his place beside Joanna again. Greg sat down next to Arnold. Paul saw that Melissa looked alarmed, frightened.
“If we had wanted to go to the police,” Arnold said, “we would have done that days ago.”
We? Paul’s ears perked up. Arnold said we .
“The reason I set up this meeting,” the board chairman went on, “was to try to come to some sort of understanding about all this. Keep it in the family, so to speak.”
“Then why is she here?” Joanna asked, gesturing toward Melissa.
“She’s with me,” Greg said. “If it hadn’t been for Melissa these past few weeks I think I would’ve gone off the deep end.”
You’re already in over your head, kid, Paul said to himself.
“Now, now,” said Arnold. “Let’s try to be reasonable and come up with a solution that makes some sense.”
“I don’t see where the problem is,” Paul said. “Gregory committed suicide. That’s all there is to it.”
“He was murdered,” Greg insisted sullenly.
“Then show your pissin’ disk to the cops and see what they make of it.”
“No!” Arnold boomed. His deep voice seemed to make the heavy window drapes flutter. “We should settle this among ourselves.”
“Settle it how?” Joanna asked.
“Greg will refrain from showing this disk to the board of directors—”
“Refrain?” Paul snapped. “He’s got no business showing that disk to anybody.”
Arnold shook his head disappointedly. “Paul, I’m sure you understand that even though the disk may not constitute the kind of evidence the police could use, it would certainly look very bad for you in the eyes of the board members.”
“Especially,” Melissa pointed out softly, “with Joanna’s alibi for you.”
Paul sank back on the sofa cushions. “You sonsofbitches are going to use this disk to drive a wedge between me and the board?”
“You can resign,” Greg said. “Just quit and leave the company and I won’t have to show the disk to anybody.”
“Resign?”
“You have a golden parachute,” Arnold pointed out. “You won’t be hurting, financially.”
“Quit the company? Is that all you want?”
“No,” said Greg. “There’s one additional thing you’ll have to do.”
“What’s that?”
“Divorce my mother.”
Paul got to his feet again, slbwly this time. “This meeting’s over,” he said through gritted teeth. “There’s the door, Greg. Get out.”
Still sitting, Greg looked up at him sullenly. “You can’t throw me out. This is my house.”
“Not any more.”
Greg’s eyes widened and he looked past Paul to his mother. “I live here, too!”
“Get out,” Paul repeated, pronouncing each word distinctly. “You can send somebody over to clear out your things later. Now get out of here before I throw you through a window.”
Greg shot to his feet. “Mom, are you going to let him do this to me?”
“I think it would be best,” Joanna said. “We obviously can’t live under the same roof anymore. Not now.”
“You’re letting him throw me out of my own home?” Greg’s voice climbed an octave higher.
Arnold lumbered to his feet. “Come on, Greg, you can stay at my house until you find a place of your own.”
The old man pulled at Greg’s jacket sleeve. Looking bewildered, hurt and angry at the same time, Greg let himself be led away toward the door.
Melissa stood up. “For what it’s worth,” she said softly, “I told him this would happen.” Then she left, too.
LEV BRUDNOY
He was a good-will ambassador or a con man, a free spirit or a pariah, depending on your point of view. Levrentь Alexandrovich Brudnoy was a trained fluid dynamicist who somehow managed to wangle a job as a life-support engineer at the ill-starred Russian facility called Lunagrad, and then go on to become its most famous — or infamous — emissary. The Russians had placed their base at the giant crater Aristarchus, up in the area where Mare Imbrium and Oceanus Procellarum merge, nearly a thousand miles northwest of Moonbase.
Like Moonbase, Lunagrad was originally heavily subsidized by the Russian government. After years of supporting the primitive base as basically an outpost for scientific research and further exploration of the Moon, Moscow decided (long before Washington did) to’spin off the base to private enterprise.
While Masterson Aerospace Corporation operated the American Moonbase under government contract, NPO Lunagrad, the corporation hastily formed to run the Russian base, sought investors all over the world. Few were willing to risk their money on a lunar base.
Lev Brudnoy happened to be in Moscow, applying for his second tour of duty at Lunagrad, when the desperate corporate personnel director caught sight of him. Handsome, red-haired, charming, young enough to appear dashing, old enough to appear knowledgeable, Brudnoy would make the ideal ‘image’ of the new Russian space pioneer. After all, the man wanted to return to Lunagrad, no?
Why did he want to return to the Moon? Some said to realized that this new frontier was humankind’s great new challenge and opportunity. Others said it was to make tht extra salary so he could pay his gambling debts. At leas three different women were certain that handsome Lev was running off to the Moon to escape from them (although none of them knew of the other two).