“In Austin. He’s meeting with the delegation chairmen this morning, and then there’s a big barbecue later this afternoon.”
“He wasn’t invited to Arlington?” Quill teased.
“The president’s going to invite the candidate who’ll oppose him in November? Be real, Bob.”
“Morgan doesn’t have the candidacy sewn up yet. Jackson’s close enough to make a real fight at the convention. Especially if he picks Roswell as his running mate.”
Jane scoffed at the thought. “Liz Roswell would lose more votes than she gains.”
Quill pursed his lips thoughtfully. “You might be right.”
“I know Morgan’s got a lot of work ahead of him,” Jane said, more seriously. “But he’s going into the convention as the leading candidate and we’re going to go for a first-ballot win.”
“Jackson won’t accept the number-two slot.”
“Our people are talking to his people.”
“He won’t go for it.”
Jane let a knowing little smile curve her lips. “Then maybe I will.”
“You?” Quill’s mouth hung open.
Laughing, Jane said, “That’s the first time I’ve ever seen you really surprised, Bob.”
“You’re not serious.”
“We’ve talked about it,” Jane said lightly.
“Pillow talk.”
Her smile disappeared. “It’s more than that. We might have a big announcement to make just before the convention opens.”
His composure recovered, Quill leaned back in the limousine’s plush seat and chuckled quietly. “Let me guess.”
“Go right ahead.”
“You’re going to get married.”
Jane smiled again but said nothing. In her mind, though, she wondered how Dan would react to the announcement. Stop that! she commanded herself. Put Dan out of your mind. You’re heading for the White House, that’s the important thing. The nation needs Morgan and nothing’s going to stop us from making him president, not Dan or anything else.
By the time the limousine pulled to a stop in front of the waiting Marine Corps veteran in his wheelchair, Jane had almost succeeded in forgetting about Dan.
Standing at the base of the launchpad, Dan looked over his maintenance crew with a jaundiced eye.
“By damn, you guys look like something the cat dragged in.”
Gerry Adair grinned wryly. “It was your party, boss.”
“Start sucking oxygen,” Dan snapped. “You’ve got to be ready to launch as soon as the spaceplane’s fueled up.”
One of the technicians stared at him. “We’re going up? Now? Today?”
“Damned right,” said Dan.
“But it’s the holiday!”
“You’ll get double pay.”
Shaking his head, the technician said, “It’s not that. We got a picnic planned. My wife’s family came down from Nebraska, for chrissake.”
“We’ve got an emergency on our hands,” Dan said.
“My wife’s gonna kill me.”
Looking at the dark clouds piling up over the Gulf, Dan thought, If Mother Nature doesn’t kill you first.
The director of the FBI’s Houston branch did not appreciate having to come into the office on Memorial Day, especially when she’d been there the day before.
“What’s all this hysteria about?” she snapped as she stormed into her office. She was wearing a loose sweater over a T-shirt and cut-off jeans that exposed her skinny, knobby-kneed legs.
Kelly Eamons was already there, pacing nervously. “April Simmonds isn’t at her apartment.”
“So? It’s a holiday, for god’s sake. Most people spend holidays with their families.”
The director’s acid-dripping irony made no impression on Eamons. “You don’t understand. She said she wasn’t going to France with al-Bashir. But now I can’t find her.”
“Use the tracking beacon.”
“I tried! The guys downstairs claim they can’t find her signal.”
The director slammed down onto her desk chair muttering, “This was a screwball operation from the beginning.”
“She’s out of range of our local equipment,” Kelly said, pacing again.
“I thought you said she’d decided not to go to France with the suspect.”
“She did. Yesterday afternoon. But now…”
Agent Chavez barged into the office, looking distressed. He was wearing shorts too: picnic clothes.
“I got your message,” he said to Eamons. “The guys downstairs still can’t pick up her signal.”
“She’s gone with him after all,” Eamons muttered.
“But you said she’d decided not to,” said the director.
“Something changed her mind.”
“Or somebody,” Chavez chimed in.
“She could be in trouble.”
The director shook her head, glaring at them both. Then she reached for her telephone. “Do you two loose cannons have any idea of the levels of hierarchy I’m gonna have to go through to get the satellite spooks to see if they can pick up her signal?”
Eamons brightened. “She must be in a plane, heading for France.”
“Or already there,” said Chavez. “In Marseille.”
“Sit down,” the director said, pecking at her quick-dial keyboard. “This could take hours.”
Geosynchronous Orbit
Gilly Williamson had killed men before. The first time was when a daft policeman barged in on him in the cellar of the safe house where he was wiring a car bomb. Before he could even think about it, Williamson put four nine-millimeter bullets through the fool’s chest.
He expected to feel guilty about it. He expected it would give him nightmares. But it didn’t. It was him or me, he knew. The damned idiot hesitated and I didn’t. That’s the difference between life and death.
Of course, the bombs he devised killed dozens, perhaps hundreds. He had never kept score. But personal killing, face to face, that was a different matter. There was the informer that was going to rat out the whole cell to the Tommies. He was stupid enough to warn Gilly over pints at a pub in London. Gilly had thanked him from the bottom of his heart and then, after they walked together to the bastard’s car parked back in the alley, Gilly had brained him with the fool’s own electric torch. He’d looked so surprised when the first blow cracked his skull open. In a few seconds you couldn’t recognize his face at all.
That was when Gilly had to leave the United Kingdom, leave his wife and kids and travel to blasted North Africa. Casablanca. Nothing like the movie, he found. Then Oran, another cesspit full of gabbling Arabs. In Tunis he was recruited by The Nine, although he never met any of the mucky-mucks, just their flunkies.
He knew he had cancer, he’d know it since he’d been diagnosed by the Public Health doctors back in London. Cigarettes, they claimed. Bad genes. Bad luck. What difference? He knew he was going to die and the only question was: How could he provide for his wife and kids?
This one-way mission to the satellite was his answer. Williamson had mailed the bank receipt to his wife before he’d gone off to the remote training base in the stark granitegray mountains of northern China.
Now he hung suspended on a tether halfway between the enormous satellite and the transfer craft where Nikolayev waited for them to finish their tasks. Below him glowed the blue and white-flecked Earth. Beyond it he could see a crescent Moon, small and slim like the symbol on Arab flags. There were stars out there, too, but Williamson could only see a few of the brightest through the dark tinting of his helmet visor and he paid no attention to them.
He had finished his wiring task nearly half an hour ago. The satellite was no longer beaming power through its antenna. Once they removed the antenna and attached the new, special one they’d carried up with them, their job would be finished. Then it would be up to the crew on the ground to point that antenna where they wanted it.