“I know you’re in a bind. No sense wasting time about this.”
Nodding, Dan said again, “Right.” Yep, he told himself as he blanked the screen, the old shark smells blood in the water and he’s moving in.
He went through the motions of doing a day’s work while his mind spun the possibilities and unknowns like a wild symphony that would never end. Who’s the spy in our midst? Why did they sabotage Hannah’s test flight? Can Joe find the bastard or will we have to bring the FBI into this? Yamagata’s offered financial help and now Garrison is nosing around. How the hell can I hold onto my own company when the big guys are moving in on me? What’s Scanwell going to decide to do?
Why doesn’t Jane call back? What’s she up to in all this? Does she want to help me, or Scanwell? Or both of us? Why hasn’t she called me back?
All day long he kept coming back to that question: Why hasn’t Jane called back?
It was nearly midnight when she did. Dan had spent a long evening going over his financial situation with his chief accountant, an exercise that always left him depressed. He trudged along the catwalk back to his apartment, trying to keep his eyes off the wreckage sitting silently in the shadows of the dimly lit hangar floor. Nobody else in the building, he realized, except the security guards making their rounds. Even Tenny’s office light was off.
Feeling tired and grimy, he went to the kitchenette without turning on any lights and opened the refrigerator. Pretty bare. Pulling open the freezer door he saw that Tomasina had stacked three frozen dinners in among the pizza slices, ice cream, and instant juice containers.
The phone buzzed. Dan slammed the fridge shut and peered through the shadows at the screen on his night table: the caller ID spelled out SENATOR THORNTON, WASHINGTON D.C.
“Phone answer,” he called as he hurried to the bed.
Jane’s face appeared. She seemed to be in her office; Dan saw some photographs hanging on the paneled wall behind her. She was wearing a tailored blouse, but her auburn hair hung loosely to her shoulders. After hours, Dan guessed. Alone in the office after a long, busy day.
“Hello Jane,” he said, sitting on the edge of the bed.
“I got your call,” she said. “I wanted to wait until everybody was out of the office before I called you back.”
“Yeah, I figured that’s what you’d do.” It was a lie, he knew, but now that he thought about it he realized he should have known it all along.
“Morgan was very impressed with you.”
“It was good to see you again,” he said.
“He wants to work your satellite program into his energy policy, Dan.”
“Haven’t seen you since the day after the bridges went down.”
“Dan, let’s stick to the business at hand.”
“You’re the business at hand, as far as I’m concerned.”
She tried to frown at him, but a tiny smile curved the corners of her mouth slightly. “Dan, that was a long time ago.”
“Six years, one month and…” it took him a moment to count it out in his head, “…eleven days.”
She looked away for a moment, and when her eyes returned to him she had regained control of herself. Completely serious now, she said, “If you want Morgan’s support, Dan, you’ve got to promise that you’ll support his candidacy.”
“Sure, I know. One hand washes the other; that’s politics. But you’re the only one I’m interested in.”
“And not your power satellite?”
He took a breath. “You come first, Jane.”
“I didn’t in San Francisco.”
“You do now. I’ll drop this whole project. I’ll sell it off to Yamagata or Garrison or the local junkyard.”
This time she really smiled. But her eyes remained sad. “I know you think you would, Dan. But we both know it’s not true. You couldn’t give up your work, your life.”
“Try me.”
“And you mustn’t sell out your project to the Japanese or the oil interests.”
“I’ll be a senator’s husband. I’ll sit home and stay quiet and show up at parties with you and take you home and make love to you all night long and well into the morning.”
Her smile faded. “Dan, it’s too late for that.”
“Why? You tied up with Scanwell?”
“It’s just too late for us, Dan. We both have more important things to do.”
“I don’t give a damn about any of that. I love you, Jane. There’s nothing more important to me than you.”
“Yes, there is!” she insisted. “Getting Morgan elected president is more important. Getting the United States off its dependence on Middle Eastern oil is more important.”
He shook his head. “Maybe it is, but that’s not my department. The world will have to take care of its own problems. You’re the only one that I’m interested in.”
“Dan, the country needs Morgan Scanwell in the White House. None of the other candidates have the guts or the vision—”
“You’re sleeping with him, aren’t you?”
The question didn’t seem to surprise her. She replied stiffly, “That’s none of your business, Dan.”
“Yeah. Right. And neither is Scanwell. You can both go jump in the Gulf of Mexico.”
“Dan, you can’t
“Good luck on your way to the White House, Jane.” He banged the phone’s OFF button so hard he nearly knocked the console off the night table.
Houston, Texas
As he flew the butter-yellow Beech Staggerwing into the old Hobby Airport, Dan thought that Houston’s sprawl of high-rise towers looked like some Hollywood designer’s concept of what “the city of the future” should look like. All glass and steel, one building gaudier than the next.
Adair had offered to pilot the plane but Dan told him to stay with the FAA team investigating the accident. He flew to Houston on his own in the company’s little “puddle jumper,” a venerable Staggerwing biplane. It was slow and noisy, and it vibrated like a kitchen Cuisinart, but Dan loved the old beauty, loved her graceful lines and her faithful reliability. He and Tenny had personally rebuilt it, and he cherished every bump and rattle as he lined up the biplane for final approach, bouncing around in the jet wash of the Boeing 737 touching down ahead of him.
Garrison had a limousine waiting for him on the ramp as Dan taxied to a parking slot. He grabbed his summerweight jacket and stepped down from the plane. The African-American chauffeur, standing next to the limo in the soggy heat, was in black livery; Dan felt sorry for him. As he walked to the limousine the chauffeur opened the back door for him. Dan noticed that the motor was running and the air-conditioning was on full blast. He didn’t have the heart to tell the guy to turn it down a notch or two.
Garrison’s office tower was also cooled enough to raise goosebumps. Dan was met at the lobby reception desk by a sleek, long-legged brunette with a warm smile and sexy eyes. She led him to an elevator marked PRIVATE, which whisked the two of them nonstop to the top floor of the skyscraper.
When the elevator doors opened, Dan saw that the whole penthouse floor was one single expanse of lush greenery. “Looks like Jurassic Park,” he blurted. The brunette’s smile turned a little brittle. “Mr. Garrison loves nature,” she murmured.
Nature, Dan thought as he followed his escort past trays of colorful flowers and huge tubs that contained real trees. The place smelled like a garden, even down to the scent of freshcut grass, but he wondered if it was real or piped in with the cooled air that sighed through vents in the green-painted pipes twined overhead. The ceiling was mostly glass, deeply tinted to keep the place from turning into a solar oven. Garrison’s turned the top floor of this high-rise into a by-damn greenhouse, Dan saw. He probably thinks of himself as an ecologist while his riggers are out digging up half the world to find more oil.