“Rafic.” Beck gave Ashmead his best interrogator’s stare. “If you know something you’re not telling me—if this is another case, like the consulate, where you’re holding back informa—”
Saadia came back with murmured apologies and flopped bonelessly down on Beck’s couch: “Don’t stop because of me, guys.” She wiped swollen lips with the back of her hand.
“Yael,” Beck said, resisting an impulse to touch her knee, lecture her about the madness of going into radiation red zones pregnant: “I’m trying to convince Rafic that I can handle one flight controller’s station—probably both—and that I’d like you and Jesse on the 727 with Chris Patrick… we need your propagandist talents more than we need another scope-watcher: you and Jesse, as ‘reporters,’ have an opportunity to assess and cut out the targets from this herd of—”
“Beck,” Ashmead’s rough-hewn face was expressionless, his gaze fixed on Yael Saadia, who was looking at him hopefully: “Go with Yael to the P-3B. If she checks you out, you’ve got your deployment of assets. But don’t ever do this to me again. It was an intelligence failure that got us into this—yours. You want to go for two, that’s fine, but not while I’m involved. If you think this is some fucking democracy I’m running here, you’re deluded. Explain things to him, Yael.”
Dismissed as if he were a member of Ashmead’s team and not its controller, Beck had left quickly with Yael Saadia, who, in the hall of Beck’s apartment building as they waited for the lift, touched his arm gently and said: “Rafic’s never wrong about this sort of thing, you know.”
“I know. And I know it’s risky, but I want you where you can do the most good. Ashmead’s letting his personal feelings intrude. I can’t do that. I’ve got a mission to run.”
Just then the lift chimed and its doors slid back to reveal Slick, his respirator dangling from one side of his motorcycle helmet: “A mission? No shit, Casper? Going to reactivate the ‘Directorate for Science and Technology’s’ time travel project, are we? Roll the tape back and let us take those rag-heads out on the Riyadh runway like we wanted, like we could have done?” Slick’s finger was on the elevator’s “Emergency Stop” button and it was buzzing angrily.
“Slick, I don’t know what you’re talking about, and if I did, this is no place to discuss it.” Beside Beck, Yael busied herself hunting for car keys in her purse. Task Force 159’s time travel project had been an operational bust, just a flyer taken by a bunch of physics buffs with enough clout to convince a fondly permissive group of government agencies that their combined IQs were reason enough to fund their interagency project.
Slick’s sarcasm twisted his pleasant grin as he continued: “You were in Task Force 159, seconded to CIA for that project, so tell me that’s what this is really about, Casper. Otherwise,” Slick let the button go and stepped over the lift’s threshold, blocking their entry so that the doors closed, “you and I have to get one thing straight—”
“I can’t tell you that—it’s not true. 159 was bullshit; by God I wish it wasn’t, Slick, and I wish you’d stop this—”
“Bullshit. Too bad. But that figures. You can bullshit the rest of ’em all you want, but it’s clear to me that this whole half-assed operation of yours is just to ease your conscience, ’cause you can’t live with the way you fucked up. Which is about one hundred per cent. And now, since we understand each other, you go ahead and piss into the wind all you want. I haven’t got anything better to do, thanks to you, than watch from the upwind side.” Punching the “Door Open” button, Slick stepped out of their path.
When the lift had closed and Beck was alone with Saadia, she tossed her long auburn mane back from her breasts and said: “Don’t mind Slick; he’s the best there is when there’s something going down or if you’re under his command. It’s just that he’s not used to orders from anyone but Rafic.”
“You mean from someone he doesn’t respect,” Beck corrected, trying to shed his irritation but not quite succeeding.
“That’s right,” said Yael Saadia with equanimity. “Rafic keeps telling us how talented you are, but we haven’t seen any sign of it. We’ve been together a long time. You can’t expect us to just welcome you as a co-commander with open arms, not in this kind of life-and-death venue. Nobody’s got any reason to trust you but we’re stuck with you. Rafic’s told us to be polite….”
’That’s polite?” He flicked his chin in the direction of the floors above as the lift descended.
“For Slick, yes. The rest, you’ll have to earn.” She smiled to make her words less stinging. “If you really can handle the P-3B’s controller’s station, that’ll be a start. I’d much prefer to be rating those dips on the 727; I’ve done so much work on them it would be a shame to leave it to your Miss Patrick….”
Saadia’s smile was still there, but it was a Sabra’s smile, full of desert wiles and killer instinct, that made Beck wish 159 had had more than “mildly encouraging” results, so that he could turn back the clock and make everything all right the way he’d once been able to, so that he wouldn’t be in the unenviable position of placing his hopes and perhaps his survival in the hands of Rafic’s operations team, who held him personally responsible for the Forty-Minute War and who harbored a despite for State Department people that he’d never be able to overcome.
But then, he didn’t want to marry them; he wanted to deploy, enable, and activate them.
Which, in spite of Slick’s open hostility and Ashmead’s doubts and because of Beck’s affinity for electronic countermeasures and familiarity with early warning aircraft, he was able to do: when the P-3B and the 727 finally took off from Jerusalem, he and Ashmead had reached a compromise which allowed Beck to put Jesse and Yael Saadia aboard the 727, although Chris Patrick, as well as Slick, Morse, and five dignitaries of Beck’s choice, were on board the P-3B.
Nine hours into the flight and two hours after their refueling stop in Morocco, during which no one was allowed off their planes, he was grateful for the distraction Patrick and the diplomats provided: he kept thinking about Muffy and the kids. He hadn’t realized what so long a confinement away from the workload he’d been using as a buffer was going to mean to his state of mind: a solitary meditation on radiation effects and the degree to which the American damage estimates had been laundered was the last thing he needed.
So he watched Patrick try to work the passengers and pretend she disliked him and Slick make frequent trips aft to whisper familiarly in her ear or bring her coffee or a drink like a solicitous flight attendant until the NATO Southern Commander, Dugard, and a Magyar named Nacht from the IMF trapped him into a post-mortem of the war.
He found it distressing that the Magyar, a ComBloc millionaire from Pest, knew more about Soviet damage estimates than he did, but not as distressing as phantoms of Muffy trying to shield Jennifer and Seth with her own body from the firestorm so that all that was left of them was a many-legged black silhouette etched into the concrete of the walkway leading to his club.
He listened with half an ear to Nacht’s mid-European-accented English recitation of Soviet sites destroyed—Tyuratum, home of the Soviet shuttle program; the Sheremetyevo Airport; Moscow’s antiballistic missile sites and the Pushkino phased-array battle management radars at Pechora and Abalakova, as well as the Saryshagan test facility. “In fact,” said the Magyar with a degree of satisfaction Beck didn’t understand, “the entire Maskirova program—the word means concealing, or masking—is no more.”