“I understand the FBI is involved also.”
“If they are, they’re invisible.”
“They’re good at that,” she said.
Dan waited until the eggs were sizzling in the skillet and two places had been set on the small table in the breakfast nook. Jane was setting down two glasses of orange juice. The aroma of brewing coffee wafted through the kitchen as the coffeemaker gurgled busily.
“So why’d you ask me here?” he asked again.
She took up the spatula and shoveled eggs and sausage onto a serving platter. Dan waited until she set the platter on the table, then he took her by the shoulders and turned her to face him. Those cool and limpid green eyes. He always recalled the line from the old song when he looked into her eyes: A pool in which my heart lies.
“Jane,” he said, holding her, “for god’s sake—”
She brushed his hands away. “I asked you here to talk politics, Dan. Nothing else.”
“Nothing else?”
“Politics. That’s all.”
“All right,” he said, with a theatrical sigh. It was pretty much what he had expected of her. He pulled out a chair for her. “So talk.”
“You’re making a deal with Tricontinental Oil.”
“Against my gut instincts,” he said, sitting down opposite her.
“Don’t do it, Dan.”
“And what should I do? Make a deal with Yamagata?”
“Give me a chance to get this bill through the Senate. We want you to raise the money you need from American sources.”
“Tricontinental is American.”
“Garrison is an American—”
“A Texan,” Dan pointed out, managing to grin.
“—But Tricontinental is a multinational corporation. You know that. It’s as much Arabian and Venezuelan and even Dutch as it is American.”
“What of it?”
“Garrison isn’t interested in energy independence. He’s going to fight Morgan every inch of the way.”
Dan nodded.
Ignoring the food cooling on the platter, Jane said earnestly, “Dan, the reason for my bill is to get American funding for you. It’s part of Morgan’s energy independence program.”
“I don’t give a hoot in Herzegovina about Scanwell’s energy independence program! I’m trying to save my company!”
“And we’re trying to help you!”
“But I need help now,” Dan insisted. “Not after the Senate finishes tinkering with your bill. Not after Morgan Scanwell becomes president, if he ever does. Now!”
“You could put your operation in low key for a year, couldn’t you? Lay off some of your staff? Mothball your equipment.”
“Jane, I’ve got a two-mile-wide satellite hanging up there in orbit, doing nothing but soaking up money and getting dinged by orbital debris. I can’t just let it hang there for a year.”
“Why not? It’ll still be there a year from now, won’t it?”
“Yeah, and Yamagata will own it. Or Tricontinental.”
“Not if you don’t make a deal with them.”
“And what am I supposed to do for a year? Sit around with my thumbs up my butt? Besides, the election’s more than a year off.”
“Fourteen months.”
“I can’t lay off my staff and expect them to come back fourteen months later. They’ll find other jobs.”
“Please, Dan. Be reasonable.”
“Reasonable? You want me to put my whole operation in suspended animation for more than a year in the hope that your dark-horse candidate will get himself elected?”
“Yes. That’s what’s best for all of us:”
Dan took a deep breath. Then he counted to ten. At last he said quietly, “It might be best for Scanwell. And you. But not for me or the people who’re working for me.”
“Dan, the country needs Morgan Scanwell in the White House. You don’t know him, he’s a great man, a wonderful man.”
“Yeah, yeah. Okay, I like him, too. He’s a very likeable guy. What of it?”
“If you only knew the pressures he’s under, the battles he’s fighting. The oil interests are dead-set against him. Even in his own state he’s fighting an uphill battle.”
“And you’re sleeping with him, aren’t you?”
Her chin went up. “That’s got nothing to do with it.”
“The hell it doesn’t.”
“Please, Dan. Wait. Let us get Morgan into the White House and then you’ll be able to do everything you want to do. He’s a great man, he really is.”
“I don’t care about him! You’re the only one I’m interested in.”
She didn’t seem surprised. Or angered. Or even distressed. “No, Dan,” she said, very softly. “That was finished a long time ago.”
“I’ll drop the whole double-damned project. I’ll sell it off to the highest bidder. I don’t care about it anymore.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“The hell I don’t.”
“Dan, that project is your life, your work.”
“And what’s it got me?” he answered bleakly. “Three people killed and the project’s going down the toilet. What good is any of it? I don’t want to bury any more of my friends. I want out. I want you. Nothing else matters. You forget Scanwell and—”
“Don’t!” Jane snapped. “We’re talking about the future of America, Dan. The future of the world! Can’t you understand that? Can’t you see? The future of the whole world is at stake!”
“Your world, Jane. Not mine. I don’t give a damn about any of it if you’re not part of the deal.”
She looked at him, her cool green eyes steady, clear, dry. “I’m working to save America from being bound hand and foot to the oil interests. I thought you were, too. It seems I was mistaken”
“No,” he said, low, defeated. “I’m working for that, too. It’s just… I love you, Jane. Nothing else makes any sense to me if we can’t be together.”
For long moments Jane said nothing. Then, with a slow shake of her head, she replied, “We can’t be together, Dan. That’s over and done with:”
Dan realized that she was very, very sad. And so was he.
Houston, Texas
Dealing with any government agency usually drove Dan slightly crazy. The Houston field office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation was no different.
He had spent the Sunday after his brief, bitter meeting with Jane back at his office at Matagorda Island, going through the motions of catching up on his work, but actually mulling over his options. Accept Tricontinental’s offer? Al-Bashir seemed decent enough, genuinely interested in the powersat. Okay, so I sell Garrison fifteen percent of the company’s stock. At a billion five, that drives up the stock’s price very nicely. What have I got to lose?
Your company, answered the sardonic voice in his head that always tempered his fantasies. Garrison will start with al-Bashir on your board and then before you know it you’ll be out on your ear, wondering how the hell they did it to you.
Well, there’s Yamagata, Dan countered. Sai’s been interested in power satellites right from the git-go. Hell, I got turned on to the idea by him. A strategic alliance between his corporation and mine makes a lot of sense.
Right, sneered the voice. Until Yamagata sucks the guts out of your operation. He wants that spaceplane design. He might be a buddy, but he’s a businessman first. He’ll feel bad about it, maybe, but he’ll step over your dead body if he has to.
Dead body, Dan thought. He made a mental note to phone the Houston office of the FBI to see how their investigation was going. The following morning, after several levels of bureaucratic double-talk, he finally reached Special Agent Ignacio Chavez, the man in charge of the Astro investigation.
Chavez seemed polite and businesslike on the phone. On Dan’s desktop screen he looked serious, but not officious: solid, chunky face; heavy black moustache; thick black hair. He offered to fly down to Matagorda to meet with Dan.