"A double Jameson's, straight up, soda back."
He wrote it down and left. They waited for the drinks. The waiter returned.
Selena downed a third of her drink and set her glass on the table.
Carter said, "I was going to offer you dinner somewhere. Maybe another time."
"People just tried to kill us and you're thinking about dinner?"
He shrugged. "Still have to eat. You all right?"
She took another hit from her glass. "Better."
"Want another?"
"Yes."
Carter signaled the waiter.
When he came over she said, "Art, can you bring us some calamari and a cheese plate, maybe some bread and oil on the side, with some of those little sausages? And another round?"
Nick reached for his wallet. "I'll get it."
She touched his hand. "Please. Let me. If you hadn't been with me I wouldn't be sitting here right now."
True. He put his wallet away.
"Where did you learn to drive like that?" he said.
"I took a course in case I ever needed it. My uncle was wealthy, it made me a potential target. I thought I might have to get away fast some day."
"You were right. Why didn't the airbags deploy?"
"I turned them off. There's a switch on the dash." She emptied her glass. "I never thought anyone would shoot at me."
"They missed, that's what counts. Harker's putting a guard outside your room tonight."
Selena fiddled with her straw. "You always carry that gun?"
"Yes. You shoot?"
"I've got a Ladysmith, but I don't carry it. I never felt I needed to, but I will now. I'm a good shot."
She took the straw from her glass, looked down at it and twisted it in her hands.
"I can't get over how fast it was. I don't know what to think. People died out there."
"Better them than you."
"Maybe they just wanted money. I could have given them that."
"I don't think so. I think someone wants that book. It would have been bad if they'd grabbed you."
"You think they know about the house? Where we're going?"
"Probably not. They don't know the book is in California and they think you're here in D.C. It should be okay."
Carter wasn't sure it would be okay, but there wasn't anything to do about it. Keep his eyes open.
Art brought the food and another round.
"How did you get involved with Harker?" she asked.
"She recruited me when I came back from Afghanistan. A friend introduced us."
"What was it like, over there?"
The memories started. He didn't want them. "It was insane." He picked up his glass and changed the subject. "Harker said you're a language expert?"
"Dialects and ancient languages. I give lectures and I consult with NSA. I come to Washington a lot." She sipped her drink. "Your Director seems pretty sharp."
"Not much gets by her."
"What branch of the service were you in?"
"Marine Recon, thirteen years."
There was an awkward pause. Carter picked up a piece of bread.
She said, "You have any family around here?"
"No. My mother's in California. She's got Alzheimer's. My sister is two years older than me. We don't see eye to eye on things. My father's dead."
Something about Selena made it easy to talk.
"My father was a drunk. He used to beat the hell out of my mother and me. He was one of the reasons I went into the Marines, to do something about people like him. People who use fear to get what they want. I figured the Corps would give me a shot at making a difference. It didn't work out like I thought."
Nick looked at the gleaming bottles behind the bar, thinking about his father.
"How about you?" he said.
Something flickered across her face, a moment's darkness. "My parents and brother died when I was ten. Uncle William brought me up. There's no one else now."
She set a half eaten snack down on her plate. "How are we going to stop these people who came after us?"
"With Harker on it we'll get them. It might take some time."
"I want to help."
"We need to know what's in the book and why they want it. Maybe you could translate it."
"The Sanskrit's no problem. Everyone guesses at Linear A."
Nick looked at his watch. "I have to make a call. Thanks for the drinks."
"My pleasure."
"Here comes your bodyguard." He gestured at a tall man coming into the bar. "Harker will send a car in the morning. You want me to walk you to your room?"
"No, I'll be fine."
He got a cab outside the hotel and thought about her standing on a highway littered with spent shells and bodies. Standing in an instant war zone. She could have gotten hysterical. Instead, she'd been pissed about her car.
He liked her for that.
Chapter Seven
General Yang Siyu peered out at the barren wasteland of China's Lop Nur nuclear testing range. The desert rippled under the furnace glare of the Mongolian sun. Yang stood with his feet planted apart, hands clasped behind his back. The hardened concrete building smelled of stale stress and the dry odor of electricity. Racks of instruments lined the long room. Rows of fluorescent lights reflected from banks of electronic equipment, cold counterpoint to the searing sunlight outside.
A thin, dry, angry looking man stood next to Yang’s squat form. The creases on his immaculate uniform were as sharp as the harsh contours of his face. Lieutenant General Lu Cheng commanded the missile base at Luoyang, where China’s long range ICBMs were targeted on the West. Lu looked at the clock on the wall.
“Two minutes. This warhead will increase our strike range and destructive yield at the same time. We must have these.”
“If the test goes well.” Yang’s voice was wet, throaty.
“Deng has assured me it will go well.”
Deng Bingwen was chief research scientist in China’s nuclear weapons program. A graduate of America’s MIT, he was considered a treasure among the scientific elite of the People’s Republic, if always suspect because of his American education.
The treasure himself came over to the two generals. Deng was a mouse of a man, small, his sparse hair slicked back from his domed forehead. Large glasses with thick plastic frames set crookedly over his nose. He wore a white laboratory coat two sizes too large on his stooped frame, making him seem even smaller. He nodded his head nervously at Yang, almost a bow, smiling to hide his feelings of unease.
He looks like one of those little dogs, Yang thought, a Pekinese under a white tent.
“Thirty seconds, General. I think you will be pleased with the result.”
The men watched as the countdown reached zero. In the distance three columns of white smoke rose skyward, marking the underground shaft where the warhead would detonate. A deep rumble under the ground vibrated through the thick concrete beneath their feet. The earth erupted in a black, towering geyser rising hundreds of feet into the air. The blast expanded outward in a wide ring, a boiling cloud of churning sand and dust racing across the desert floor.
Lu Cheng smiled.
Deng glanced at the instruments recording every detail of the blast.
“Even better than we hoped. Eight point two megatons. Over fifty percent increase in output.”
Deng looked again at the readings.
“A bit dirty. We’ll hear from the IAEA about this.”
“Let them wag their fingers and cluck like chickens,” Lu said. “There’s nothing they can do about it. How soon can we go into production?”
“There is the question of resources," Deng said. "If we had a high grade source of ore and more centrifuges we could produce fifty of these warheads a year, even a hundred. As it is, perhaps eight or ten.”
China’s entire strategic arsenal consisted of only three hundred missiles of varying capabilities, and none carried a payload bigger than five megatons. Lu’s smile widened at the thought of a hundred powerful new missiles each year.