She shook her head violently. "Don Lee lied," she gasped. "I've been to the Bali Hai only once and not with Hammer. I didn't know him personally. My work never brought me in contact with the Cape Kennedy launch crews." She didn't say anything for a moment, then the words seemed torn from her mouth. "I went to the Bali Hai because Alex Simian sent me a message to meet him there."
"Simian? What's your connection with him?"
"I worked at the GKI Medical Institute in Miami," she panted. "Before I joined NASA." There was another ripping sound, this time of fabric, and the inflated life raft went squeezing through the aperture and vanished with a loud boom. The air screamed through the fuselage now, buffeting them, ripping their hair, deflating their cheeks. She clutched at him. Automatically he put his arm around her. "My God!" she sobbed brokenly. "How much longer before we can land?"
"Talk."
"All right, there was more to it than that!" she said fiercely. "We had an affair. I was in love with him — still am, I suppose. I first met him when I was just a girl. It was in Shanghai, around 1948. He came to visit my father, to interest him in a deal." She was talking fast now, trying to control her mounting panic. "Simian had spent the war years in a POW camp in the Philippines. After the war he'd gone into the ramie-fiber business there. He learned that the Communists were about to take over China. He knew that this would create a shortage of the fiber. My father had a warehouse full of ramie in Shanghai. Simian wanted to buy it. My father agreed. Later my father and he became partners and I saw a lot of him."
Her eyes glinted white with fear as another section of fuselage wrenched loose. "I had a crush on him. A schoolgirl kind of thing. I was heartbroken when he married an American woman in Manila. That was in 'fifty-three. Later I found out why he did it. He'd been involved in a number of swindles and the men he'd ruined were after him. Marrying this woman enabled him to emigrate to the U.S., to take out citizenship. As soon as he had his first papers, he divorced her."
Nick knew the rest of the story. It was a part of U.S. business legend. Simian had invested in the stock market, had made a killing, had proceeded to take over a number of failing firms. He'd pumped life into them, then had sold them at fantastically inflated prices. "He's brilliant but absolutely ruthless," Joy Sun said, her eyes staring past Nick at the widening aperture. "After he gave me a job at GKI we had an affair. It was inevitable. But after a year he grew bored and broke it off." She buried her face in her hands. "He didn't come to me and say it was over,' she whispered. "He had me fired and in the process did his best to ruin my reputation." She shook her head at the memory of it. "Still I couldn't get him out of my system and when I received that message from him — it was about two months ago — I went to the Bali Hai."
"He called you directly?"
"No, he always works through intermediaries. This time it was a man called Johnny Hung Fat. Johnny had been involved in a couple of financial scandals with him. He was ruined by it. He ended up as a waiter at the Bali Hai. It was Johnny who told me Alex wanted to meet me there. Simian never showed, though, and I got steadily drunker. Finally Johnny brought this man over. He's the manager of the discotheque there…"
"Reno Tree?"
She nodded. "He made a pass at me. My pride was hurt and I was drunk and I think they must have put something in my drink, because the next thing I knew we were on the couch in the office and… I couldn't get enough of him." She shivered slightly and turned away. "I never knew they'd taken pictures of us. It was dark. I don't see how…"
"Infrared film."
"I suppose Johnny was planning to shake me down later. At any rate I don't think Alex had anything to do with it. Johnny must have just used his name as a come-on…"
Nick decided the hell with that, if he was going to die he at least wanted to watch. The ground came rising up to meet them. Emergency vehicles, ambulances, men in aluminum fire suits went fanning past, already in motion. He felt a gentle thud as the plane touched down. Minutes later they rolled to an even gentler stop and the passengers spilled joyously down the emergency chutes to the solid, blessed earth…
They remained at Barksdale for seven hours while a team of Air Force doctors checked them over, distributed medicines and first aid to those who needed it, and hospitalized two of the more serious cases.
At 5:00 p.m., an Air Force Globemaster arrived from Patrick AFB and they boarded it for the final leg of their journey. An hour later they landed at McCoy Field in Orlando, Florida.
The place was crawling with FBI and NASA Security people. White-helmeted MP's herded them toward the restricted military area of the field where Army scout cars were waiting. "Where are we headed?" Nick asked.
"A lot of NASA brass flew down from Washington," one of the MP's replied. "Looks like it's going to be an all-night Q-&-A session."
Nick tugged at Joy Sun's sleeve. They were near the tail end of the miniature parade and gradually, step by step, they dropped farther back into the darkness. "Come on," he said suddenly. "This way." They dodged behind a petroleum truck, then doubled back toward the civilian area of the field and the taxi ramp he'd sighted earlier. "First thing we need is a drink," he said.
Any answers he had he was going to funnel straight to Hawk, not to the FBI, not to the CIA, and — above all — not to NASA Security.
In the cocktail lounge of the Cherry Plaza, overlooking Lake Eola, he and Joy Sun talked. They'd been doing a lot of talking — the kind of talking people do who've been through a devastating experience together. "Look, I've been wrong about you," Nick said. "It breaks every tooth in my head to admit it, but what else can I say? I had you pegged as the adversary."
"And now?"
He grinned. "I think you're a big, juicy red herring that someone tossed in my path."
She threw her bead back to laugh — and the color suddenly drained from her face. Nick glanced up. It was the cocktail lounge's ceiling. It was mirrored. "My God!" she gasped. "That's just how it was in the plane — upside down. It's like seeing it all over again." She began to shake, and Nick put his arm around her. "Please," she murmured, "take me home." He nodded. They both knew what would happen there.
Chapter 9
Home was a bungalow in Cocoa Beach.
They got there by cab from Orlando and Nick didn't care that their journey would be easy to trace.
So far he had a reasonably good cover story. He and Joy Sun had been talking in low voices on the plane, walking hand in hand at McCoy Field — things incipient lovers were expected to do. Now, after a draining emotional experience, they had sneaked off to be by themselves a while. Not exactly what was expected of a true-blue astronaut perhaps but at any rate not actionable. Not immediately, anyway. He had until morning — and that would be time enough.
Until then McAlester would have to cover for him.
The bungalow was a squared-off block of stucco and cinder right on the beach. A small living room ran the entire width of it. It was pleasantly furnished with bamboo beach chairs upholstered in foam rubber. Palm leaf matting covered the floor. There were broad windows facing the Atlantic, to the right of them a door that led to a bedroom and, beyond that, another door leading out onto the beach.
"Everything's a mess," she said. "I left so suddenly for Houston after the accident that I didn't have a chance to clean up."
She bolted the door behind her and stood against it, watching him. Her face was no longer a cold and beautiful mask. The broad, high cheekbones were still there, the finely sculptured hollows. But her eyes flickered from the aftermath of shock and her voice had lost its cool certainty. For the first time she looked like a woman instead of a mechanical goddess.