The two men who had just alit from the wearily chuffing old train looked around uneasily. As far as the eye could see the land stretched away, flat, brown, and dusty. The sky was enormous, bright blue, cloudless. They were both bundled in thickly padded coats; one wore a woolen watch cap, the other was hatless. The wind whipping in from the arid wasteland blew what was left of his thinning hair.
“You come on good day,” Nikolayev said as the two others hefted their travel bags and followed him toward the train’s baggage car, where their equipment was being unloaded. “Fine weather. Maybe spring will arrive, after all.”
Nikolayev spoke in thickly accented English, the only language that all three men understood. The other two said hardly a word as they toted the bulky loads of equipment to the minibus Nikolayev had waiting for them. They allowed no one to touch their packages, not even the Russian cosmonaut.
Gilly Williamson coughed as he climbed into the ice-could minibus. “Dust in me throat,” he said, half apologetically.
“Much dust,” said Nikolayev, nodding sympathetically. Clambering into the driver’s seat, he pointed skyward. “Soon we will be above it all.”
Williamson’s face was a map of Ireland: pale skin, green eyes, light brown hair that fell boyishly across his forehead. But his face was old, aged beyond his years. His eyes were guarded, suspicious. Born in bloody Belfast, at age three he had been orphaned and nearly killed himself by a car bomb that had been set off in a crowded shopping street. By the time he was old enough to go to university he was an expert wiring man for an offshoot group of the IRA. The organization helped to pay for his schooling, but once he graduated with an engineer’s degree he left Ireland for good and built electronic systems for a major American aerospace firm. Then the company had been bought out in a hostile takeover and Williamson was laid off. Worse, a routine physical for another firm that was about to hire him revealed he had lung cancer. He was unemployable.
That was when a former IRA man contacted him and told him about a job that was available. Very hush-hush. At first Williamson was puzzled: What would an ex-IRA man be doing working for the bloody government? Soon enough, Gilly discovered this was not a government job. Far from it. For nearly a year he had trained for this job in space. He couldn’t help feeling nervous about flying into orbit, but he was determined not to let anyone see his fear. After all, why should a man diagnosed with terminal lung cancer be afraid of flying into orbit?
The third man of the team was Malfoud Bouchachi, a slim, balding, dour Algerian engineer who had helped to devise the plan for destroying the Golden Gate Bridge. Slightly older than Williamson, Bouchachi was a veteran of several terrorist strikes. Possessed of iron self-control, cold and calculating, he trusted no one, not even this Russian who was supposed to fly them up to the Yankee power satellite.
Nikolayev chattered happily as he drove them and their equipment in the minibus from the train station toward the wooden barracks where they would be quartered until their flight.
“Not a luxury hotel,” he warned them, “but toilets work most of time and food is passable. You get the joke? Passable!” He laughed by himself.
Once they cleared the train depot they could see the cosmodrome’s rows of gantry cranes standing against the empty sky, steel latticework towers, silent, rusting.
“My grandfather helped to build those,” Nikolayev shouted over the grumble of the minibus’s engine, pointing as he drove along the rutted road with one hand. “Back in Khrushchev’s time this was busy place, spaceport to the universe, let me tell you.”
The Irishman and the Algerian said nothing, simply gaped at the long rows of rusting towers.
“Now, not so busy,” Nikolayev went on. “Government doesn’t have money for space anymore. Private companies—maybe sometimes. Not much, though.”
Williamson said, “Our people are paying quite a lot for this flight.”
And Bouchachi thought, Quite a lot, considering that this will be a one-way mission.
Dinners with al-Bashir ought to be pleasant, April thought. Yet she always felt tense near him, wary. The best restaurant in Lamar wasn’t all that much for a man of the world like him, she supposed, but he gave every appearance of enjoying his steak and never let the conversation go dull. At least once a week they dined together. Sometimes they went dancing afterward, although it wasn’t easy to find a place where they played anything other than country and western stomps.
April enjoyed the attention and al-Bashir never got grabby or demanding afterward. She would kiss him good night at the door of her apartment building and that was it. He didn’t even try to get her to invite him upstairs to her apartment.
Yet there was something in those dark brown eyes of his, some secret amusement or anticipation that he wasn’t sharing with her. Does he really like me, April wondered, or is he just dating me to find out more about what Dan’s doing? It can’t be that, she told herself. Dan’s given him free rein to go everywhere and talk to anybody he wants to.
For weeks April puzzled over the situation. An American guy would have made his move long before this, she knew. And from all she had heard about Arabs, they treated women like possessions. Yet al-Bashir was outwardly gentle and pleasant. A good conversationalist, good dancer. She thought that she should enjoy being with him. Except—his eyes bothered her. The way he looked at her, she felt like a deer being watched by a wolf. He strips me with his eyes, April realized. It made her uneasy.
She found herself wondering what it would be like to go out with Dan. Would he be gentle and patient and pleasant? She knew he wouldn’t. And she realized that she wouldn’t want Dan to be.
Al-Bashir enjoyed his dates with April, as well. She was lovely, intelligent, and eager to learn from him. He especially liked the way she listened, wide-eyed, to his tales of world travels and international business affairs. She was reluctant to get romantically involved, but he knew that there was plenty of time for that. And there were plenty of women in Houston to satisfy his sexual needs.
April is like a beautiful, sensitive doe, he told himself. She’s not to be hunted so much as won over, like the ancient story of beauty and the beast.
After the power satellite has done its work, he told himself. After I’ve destroyed Astro Corporation and Dan Randolph has been crucified by the politicians and the news media. After she has no job and no hope. Then she will turn to me and offer herself. I will get her and get rid of Garrison at the same time. I will be the most powerful of them all.
Al-Bashir smiled to himself. The future will be sweet, indeed.
Houston, Texas
From her little cubicle down the hall from Chavez’s office, Kelly Eamons phoned April at her Astro Corporation office.
April’s image on Eamons’s desktop screen looked surprised once she recognized the FBI agent.
“Hi, Kelly! How are you? Have you found out anything new?”
Wishing she had something positive to say, Eamons replied guardedly, “Not really. What’s happening with you?”
“This place is jumping. We’re going to turn on the powersat next week. Every news outfit in the country is buzzing around. They all want to interview Dan and Gerry Adair, our astronaut. They’re even asking for interviews with the engineers.”
Eamons tried to hide her disappointment She’d been hoping that April wasn’t too busy to help her stalled investigation.
“I thought Dan made a mistake to schedule the turn-on for the Sunday of the holiday weekend,” April was rattling on, “but he’s a lot smarter about these things than I am. It’s a slow news day, and the media’s practically frothing at the mouth to have a big story for Sunday.”