“Our people in Singapore,” she said, “reported a shipment of arms and explosives arrived in port last night.”
“From?” asked the director.
“Calcutta, if the ship’s manifest can be believed.”
“What do you think?”
“Satellite tracking shows the freighter originated in Shanghai.”
The director rocked back in his chair. “Chinese weaponry. Damn.”
The man sitting across the table from the analyst was from the satellite surveillance office. He chimed in, “It could be heading for the rebels in Myanmar.”
“Or Sri Lanka,” said the other woman.
With a shake of his head, the director asked, “Then why put in at Singapore?”
“They’re not off-loading,” said the analyst. “Not yet, anyway.”
For this they called me in on a holiday morning, the director groused to himself. Aloud, he said, “What’s your assessment?”
“Terrorism,” said the analyst.
“In Singapore?”
She shook her head. “Indonesia. The fundamentalist guerrillas must have closed a deal with the Chinese. Oil for guns.”
The surveillance man on the other side of the table countered, “The guerrillas don’t have control of the oil fields.”
“Not yet.”
They argued the point back and forth until the director silenced them. “Okay,” he said. “Notify the authorities in Singapore. They can search the ship, impound the arms.”
The analyst grinned. “And they’ll be a lot tougher on the smugglers than we could be.”
“If they’re not bought off,” muttered the surveillance man.
The director pointed a finger at him. “They won’t be, if they know that we know what’s going on.” Turning to the analyst, “I don’t want our source of information compromised.”
She nodded agreement.
“Anything else?” the director asked, anxious to get back to his home and an afternoon of gardening.
“Some unusual shipments of electronics gear near Marseille,” said the other woman.
“Drug equipment?”
“No,” she said. “Electronics. Several truckloads.”
“Maybe some frogs are starting a rock band,” snickered the surveillance guy. The others chuckled.
“That’s it, then?” asked the director.
“Unannounced rocket launch from Baikonur,” the man said. He tapped at his laptop, and a crisp satellite view of the launch center in Kazakhstan filled the screen.
“Anything unusual?”
“We don’t know what the payload is, but it’s big. They used their heaviest booster.” With a pencil-slim laser pointer he highlighted one of the launch stands. “And it looks like they’re setting up for a manned mission, as well.”
“Resupply for the space station?”
The man shook his head. “Wrong orbit for that.”
“It’s not a missile, is it?”
“No, no worries about that. But it’s a big payload, unidentified and unannounced. Might be a scientific mission. Or a communications relay.”
“Why wouldn’t they announce it?”
The surveillance man shrugged exaggeratedly. “You know the Russians: a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.”
The director frowned at him. “Our job is to solve riddles, whatever they’re wrapped in.”
Nodding glumly, the surveillance man said, “We’re watching, sir. Wish we had some HUMINT on the ground, though.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” said the director, already halfway out of his chair. “Tomorrow.”
Dawn was just beginning to brighten the Oklahoma sky when Dan awoke gradually, like a scuba diver rising slowly from the dark depths toward the sunlit surface of the sea. As he opened his eyes, for an instant he didn’t recognize where he was. Then he turned his head and there was Jane sleeping peacefully beside him. He grinned and turned on his side to cup his body against hers.
She awoke with a start, then relaxed and grinned over her bare shoulder at him. “You’re poking me.”
“Your snoring woke me up,” he said.
“I don’t snore. And you’re poking me.”
“Natural reaction,” said Dan. “There’s only one way to cure it.”
“Only one?” she teased.
“There are certain variations,” he admitted, stroking. her flank.
“Such as?”
It was full morning when they finally got out of bed and showered. Dan made an elaborate show of peeking out into the corridor to make certain none of the servants saw him coming out of Jane’s bedroom.
“I’ll go mess up the bed in the guest room,” he whispered to her.
She tossed a towel at him. “Go to the kitchen and tell the cook what you want for breakfast. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
Dan waltzed down the corridor and found the kitchen.
“Buenas dias,” he said brightly to the cook.
She gave him a fishy look. “What you like for breakfast, sir?”
Dan almost blurted that he needed a batch of vitamin E. He caught himself, though, and ordered huevos rancheros with grapefruit juice and black coffee.
Jane came in just as the cook put Dan’s eggs on the table before him. She slipped into the padded chair in the breakfast nook beside him, her expression very serious.
“Dan” she said, leaning close to him, “this isn’t going to work.”
His lighthearted mood evaporated.
“What we’re doing is wrong, Dan,” Jane said earnestly. “Just plain wrong.”
“Felt good to me,” he mumbled.
“Be serious!”
He looked into her beautiful, troubled eyes. “For what it’s worth, this is driving me crazy.”
“We’ve got to stop.”
“Or tell Scanwell what the score is.”
“No! We can’t do that.”
“I could.”
“Dan, no!”
“I could walk right up to him tomorrow and say, ‘Hey, pal, your wife and I are in love with each other.’”
“Please, Dan.”
“It’s the truth, isn’t it?”
“That’s only part of the truth.”
He felt a dull, sullen resentment building up inside him. “And the rest of it is that you think his becoming president is more important than you and me.”
“It is, Dan. It truly is.”
“Is it?”
“It’s important to your work, too,” she said earnestly. “It will mean so much. To all of us. To everyone.”
Glancing down at his untouched breakfast, Dan pushed his chair back from the table. “Okay, you go get your husband elected president. I’ve got to get back to the office and get that satellite running.”
Jane made no attempt to stop him.
Matagora Island, Texas
Dan’s foul mood only worsened as he flew the Staggerwing back to Matagorda. He tried to forget about Jane and the mess his personal life was in. Yeah, he told himself as he banked the biplane around a massive thunderhead that was building up above the Texas plain. Forget about her. That’s easy. Like forgetting about breathing. Think about business, he commanded himself. Get your mind off Jane and Scanwell. Stop thinking about them together.
All right, concentrate on business. What if something goes wrong with the satellite? You’ll have every VIP you could coax down to Matagorda standing there watching. What if something goes wrong? You’ll be laughed out of business, that’s what. Like that old Vanguard rocket, back in the beginning of the space age. Everybody in the world watching and it blows up four feet above the launch stand.
So what can I do about it? Dan asked himself. We push the button and the powersat doesn’t turn on. Some glitch. Something goes wrong. The Staggerwing bounced through a layer of turbulence as he began his descent toward the airstrip at Matagorda. I ought to have the spaceplane ready to go, Dan realized. Have the bird on the pad with Adair and a maintenance crew ready to take off at a moment’s notice. That’s what the spaceplane’s for, after all. Quick reaction. Immediate access to orbit.