He smiled at April as he passed her desk. She looked happier now that Vicki was gone. Dan closed his office door behind him and slid into the ultramodern leather swivel chair behind the heavy, ornately Victorian desk. His grandfather had given Dan the desk when he’d first started Astro Corporation. It had been the desk of his father, Dan’s great-grandfather, when he’d been a genteely impoverished young minister in rural Virginia. Dan had promised to use it as his very own. So now it dominated the cluttered office like a dark brooding castle looming over an untidy little hamlet.
Dan booted up his desktop computer and punched up his schedule for the remainder of the day. And frowned at the screen. One P.M.: Claude Passeau, Federal Aviation Administration. That’ll take the flavor out of lunch, he thought.
He’s coming here to close me down, Dan thought. What he didn’t know was how he might talk the man out of it.
It was precisely twelve minutes after one when Dan’s phone buzzed.
“Mr. Passeau to see you,” April announced. Dan thought again of how fortunate he was to have April as his executive assistant. The woman was smart, hard-working, and good-looking, to boot: tall and leggy, with skin the color of creamy milk chocolate and glossy shoulder-length dark hair. She ran his office, his social calendar; she could even program his computer with cool efficiency.
The memory of Vicki Lee’s accusation about an affair with Hannah flicked into his memory, annoying him all over again. If I was going to take an employee to bed it would be somebody like April, Dan said to himself. Not my top test pilot.
His office door opened and Claude Passeau stepped in. He was a small man, almost dainty, wearing a lightweight beige suit and a neat bow tie of blue and yellow stripes. Clip-on, Dan guessed. Passeau looked to be about forty, forty-five. Too young to be worried about his retirement benefits yet. He had a trim little moustache; his hairline was starting to recede, but his hair was still dark brown, although thinning.
Dan got to his feet and came around the desk, his hand extended. “Mr. Passeau.”
“Doctor Passeau, actually,” he said in a smooth voice that almost purred. He smiled pleasantly as he spoke.
Gesturing the man to the little round conference table in the corner of his office, Dan asked, “Doctor of engineering?”
Passeau brushed his moustache with a fingertip. “Psychology, I’m afraid. It was the only curriculum I could get in the school’s distance-learning program.”
“Oh. I see.” Dan started to ask which school he’d gone to, then thought better of it, realizing that Passeau had bought his doctorate from a diploma mill.
“The doctorate looks good on my resumé,” Passeau said as he sat at the chair Dan proffered. “The government doesn’t really care where it comes from or what subject it’s in. Just being able to claim a doctorate from a reasonably reputable school is enough to boost your salary category.”
Dan grinned as he sat next to him. Either this guy is charmingly honest or he’s a damned slippery customer, he thought.
April stepped into the office. “Can I get you gentlemen something? Coffee, maybe?”
“Thank you, I’ve had my lunch,” said Passeau.
“I’ll have coffee,” Dan said.
“In that case, so will I,” Passeau reconsidered.
As April shut the door behind her, Dan leaned slightly toward Passeau and said, “My people seem to be working well with your investigators. I think they’ll find the reason for the accident in a week or so.”
“More like a month or two, I’d say,” Passeau replied.
Dan said nothing, but grumbled to himself. More like six months, if I don’t light a fire under this bureaucrat.
Passeau asked, “Do you intend to build another spaceplane?”
“We’ve already got one nearly finished. It’s over in the next hangar, if you want to see it.”
“You realize, of course, that you will not be permitted to fly it until our investigation into the crash is concluded.”
Dan leaned back in his chair. “It could take a year to finish all the paperwork.”
“At the very least,” said Passeau.
“I was thinking that once you found the fault, we could fly the new bird without waiting for the paperwork to be finished.”
Passeau began to reply, but April came in with a lacquered tray bearing an insulated stainless steel jug of coffee and two delicate-looking china cups.
“I’ll pour,” Dan said, shooing her out of the office with the expression on his face.
Passeau said, “I know you’re anxious to get a successful flight, but the Federal Aviation Administration has rules, you realize, and those rules must be obeyed.”
And rain makes applesauce, Dan said to himself. Aloud, he asked, “Can’t we bend those rules a little?”
“And kill another pilot? What would that gain you?”
Washington, D.C.
“It’s a mistake, Senator.”
Jane Thornton said nothing; she merely continued walking along the side of the reflecting pool, her back to the giant phallic Washington Monument, her eyes on the classic beauty of the Lincoln Memorial. The smell of freshly cut grass filled the air. It was a warm afternoon; tourists and office workers were strolling along the lawn or sprawling on the grass, soaking up the sun. Jane wondered inwardly, How many of them are federal workers who should be at their desks? She smiled slightly at the thought that “federal worker” could be regarded as the biggest oxymoron of them all.
The man beside her was grossly overweight, sweating heavily in his summerweight suit, tie pulled loose from his wilted collar. He misunderstood her smile.
“You think it’s funny?” asked Denny O’Brien. “It isn’t, you know. We’re talking about your political future.”
“I understand that,” Senator Thornton said, without taking her eyes off the distant Lincoln Memorial. Squinting, she thought she could make out the form of the heroic statue inside the graceful Greek columns. Hidden by a grassy knoll off to the right was the Vietnam Wall. To the left, the Korean Veterans’ Memorial.
“I mean, you back a dark horse and win, you’re a genius,” O’Brien went on, wheezing slightly. “But you back a dark horse and lose, like Scanwell would lose, and you’re an idiot.”
Very few people could speak that way to Senator Thornton. O’Brien was one of them. He had engineered her campaign for reelection to the Senate. Now he was worried that she was going to throw it all away.
“Scanwell hasn’t got a chance, Senator.”
Senator Thornton at last turned her eyes to the globulous O’Brien. In high heels she was inches taller than he, and even though she was wearing comfortable flats at the moment, she still looked down at him. Her long auburn hair was done up off her graceful neck in a stylish swirl. Her skirted suit of pale green was modest, yet heads still turned as she strolled along the pool. She was not merely beautifuclass="underline" Jane Thornton was regal, tall and stately, possessed of the porcelain-skinned, greeneyed beauty of a Norse goddess. Yet she had a reputation for being cold, aloof, a hard-headed, no-nonsense Ice Queen.
O’Brien was becoming frustrated by her frosty silence. “Come on, Senator, face it: Scanwell’s a nobody!”
“He’s governor of Texas,” she said calmly.
Squinting in the sunshine, O’Brien countered, “Not every governor of Texas becomes president of the United States.”
“Morgan Scanwell will.”
O’Brien looked as if he wanted to hop up and down in frustrated fury. He’d give himself a heart attack if he did, Senator Thornton thought.
“You can’t declare for him! It’d be political suicide!”
“Not if he wins, Denny.”
“Which he won’t,” O’Brien retorted sullenly.