April 4: A Different Perspective (7 page)

He placed that phone face down in his attaché case. The camera behind him looked out over his table and the camera at the other end of the room had its view blocked by the upright side of his case. He put it face down just for his waiter. The other cell he primed with the number of the window breaching charge in the room with the rifle. He put it back in his pocket with exaggerated care, like a grenade with the pin pulled. A touch of the send button would wreck the entire scam if not sent at exactly the correct time.

While the kitchen processed his order he prepared a FedEx envelope addressed to Keith. There was a drop box in the lobby he could use. He dropped an encrypted e-mail on him at his office suggesting he would receive two phones and it would be in everyone's interest for them to be totally destroyed. By the time Keith got them he'd figure out what they were involved with and be very happy to comply.

Looking at the opened e-mails the identity of the gentleman arrested on the aircraft seemed dubious. The only thing that made Otis believe they had the right man, was several reports of an assassin with similar Polish names. He suspected they were all the same person.

Over his breakfast he read the file on the man from Home. The fellow appeared to be off Earth right now. That made framing him for the assassination difficult. How would he do it if he were setting up the operation? The best way would be for someone to lift to orbit on commercial transport using the ID. But they had given him the alien's card to leave in the room with the rifle.

If they intended to lay it at the fellow's feet they had to either have some credible story of this person taking a shuttle up, or they needed to trap the gunman in the room with the ID on him.

Neither made total sense to him. Of course it was a part of the surrender terms that
nobody
was supposed to be hindered from lifting to Home. Otis didn't for a moment believe the USNA would honor that, if they could get away with detaining somebody secretly. But if they intended to allow it to happen today, then there was probably some sort of directive to honor the agreement that would be fresh and in effect for one day only and they could 'correct' or 'clarify' it tomorrow. Indeed the idea might be to use the assassination to destroy the free travel agreement too. Today might be the ideal time to make his getaway. Tomorrow might well be much more difficult. The fellow was on the small side for Otis to impersonate, but if he did he should get a buzz cut before trying.

It would be hard to throw away his books and clothing in his apartment. The few back at his hotel room didn't matter at all. His legal records and business papers too, although he had electronic copies of those. He had a few weapons of which he was fond, but no family heirlooms. The State of New Jersey had confiscated those from his grandfather before he could inherit them.

It would be hard to just walk away, but this might well be the very best opportunity. Maybe the last. People did after all lose everything in war, or even just from a fire and got on with their life just fine. How much would most of those things mean to a new life off Earth anyway? How many people had the chance to leave the United States of North America with the cash he had sitting in numbered accounts right now? Last he'd heard they were limiting what you could take out of the country physically to a dollar shy of Ten-Thousand. Absence from the country for over a year without government sanction was prima facie evidence of having renounced your citizenship by your actions and triggered fines they took from any accounts you left behind.

Otis called the Swiss bank and got the same fellow with who he'd worked before. He informed him to expect another deposit today and gave instructions for how it should immediately be dispersed and added a Home bank as a destination. There were only three banks listed in their directory. If none of it came in he'd not be embarrassed. After all deals fall through, payments get cancelled. But if it did go in it would be protected without him rushing to do it manually. He'd not want to be making foreign calls, or might be too busy running.

What was going to happen when the window breaching charge went off? He'd thought about that yesterday, but he envisioned agents rushing to seal off the room with the shattered window. Now, when he examined the idea again, he had an uneasy feeling the entire building would be sealed off. He and every other person in the building, could be held for seventy two hours. That would mess up his plans to leave Earth. He weighed the odds and changed plans. The talking heads on the TV above the bar speculated the President should arrive in the next ten or fifteen minutes.

Otis never had trouble being decisive, it was a strength really. He laid money on the table, closed his case and walked out of the restaurant heading for the lobby doors. His computer and his attaché were all that mattered. A bag with a few clothes and toiletries in his room was nothing. The spacer ID in the lamp might never be found. The hidden key card he hated to leave, somebody might misuse it, but he had bigger concerns. He killed the camera feed on the one cell and got Keith online.

"Keith, Otis here. I need a ride. I'll be at the Pacific Pancake House west of my hotel. Come yourself if you can get away, or send a driver, but I need the ride as soon as possible. Bring a pair of hair clippers and drive the van, so I can use the dash outlet. I can't talk right now," he told him and he set the phone back to the web cam.

A brisk walk let him beat Keith to the Pancake House and get seated. It was getting past peak for breakfast. They were bussing tables faster than seating new arrivals and it was clearing out. He asked for a booth with a view of the door so he could watch for a business associate.

It was the sort of restaurant that catered to families, so there was a flat screen TV set in the wall for each booth that took dollar coins. After ordering an omelet and a pot of coffee he fed it coins and got a news channel. The talking heads were different than those he was watching at the hotel. When they cut away to a view of the doors where the President should appear it was a different angle. None of that mattered to him.

His server dropped off a carafe of coffee and went away. On the TV they went back to the doors and kept the camera pointed there. On his web cam a procession of heavy vehicles turned off the road and actually drove over the grass right up to the loading dock and rear entry of the building. Two of the Marines inside came out and they propped one of the double doors open all the way against the rail on the landing outside. On TV the bright rectangle of the doorway was just a glare from inside. You couldn't make any detail out through the contrast.

In the view from his cam the agents formed a corridor. Some faced outward, some clustered around the President as she was walked the three meters from the vehicle to the concrete stairs that climbed to almost the floor level of the building. It was six steps up to a square concrete pad about three meters on a side with a steel rail all around and a slight threshold up into the hall.

An agent on each side climbed the stairs with the President. They refrained from touching her and she didn't move to take either's arm, but they kept her from using the hand rail on either side by their presence.

When Otis saw her blond head appear, set lower between the two agents as she neared the top, he reached in his pocket and hit the send bar on the phone. The crack of the window breaching charge came clearly over the TV.

The unexpected report made the President miss her last step to the top level. Her dress shoe caught the edge but slid on the steel edging pitching her forward. Both agents grabbed at where she'd been, but she was scrambling to catch her balance, past recovery, arms wind-milling.

Three very fast steps carried her forward, losing ground each step until she hit the slight threshold that fully tripped her. She hit inside flat on her face on the concrete, breaking her nose. The blood that squirted in a double gush down both sides of her white jacket looked far worse than the actual injury.

When the back of the President's head dropped from view on his web cam Otis turned it over and shifted his view to the TV. President Wiggen appeared through the door with both arms thrown back and high, like she'd been struck with great force from behind. When she landed on the floor she slid forward about three feet before she rolled over on her back. The bright blood on her front looked horrible and before any more could be seen a jacket was thrown over her and a hand appeared to cover the camera lens.

Nothing more being visible on the TV, Otis checked the cell again. Almost everyone outside had a weapon in their hands now. An agent at the base of the short stairs outside had both hands in a sports bag at his feet. When he straightened up he had a squat cylinder over his shoulder and turned to the left. Before Otis could pan the camera back a swirl of dust and the smoke of an expelling charge announced he'd launched a mini-missile at the window, where the hole in the glass would be obvious to the world.

The TV was still black with the camera lens covered, but apparently it was still transmitting, because there was a hash of raw noise from the blank screen announcing the missile detonation. Barely on the heels of the TV a deep thud shook the restaurant windows, even though it was a full city block from the hotel.

Otis switched to the other web cam he hadn't zoomed in. Across the street thick black smoke poured out of an open rectangle in the side of the hotel. The missile had blown out the flimsy outer wall and windows and the glow from within said the room was gutted by the thermobaric round, right out to the concrete walls. Otis shut down the phone and pocketed it.

Chapter 9

April hugged Papa-san and Mother as soon as she stepped in Heather's place for their meeting. She saw Sylvia wasn't there. It was a kindness to allow them to use her home for such an important meeting. Sylvia's had at least twice the floor area of her new place. Even though she was determined not to clutter her new place up, she doubted all of them would fit there without it seeming crowded. They had Jeff, Heather, herself and Gunny, the Santos and apparently the ex-lieutenant Eric Brockman was a guard for them just like she had Gunny. That made a mob on Home and Sylvia's was one of the few homes she knew that could seat that many without dragging out the folding chairs.

The place was impressive from the moment you stepped in. The entry was an L-shaped lock and the panel facing the outer door was a thick one piece glass slab backlit by the living area. It was deeply carved and subtly tinted with a fabulously detailed swamp scene. A life size Great Blue Heron shared the cat tails and lily pads with frogs and fish, dragon flies and blackbirds. Calling it museum quality was no exaggeration, because Heather's mother had art in museums and lesser galleries, as well as the palaces of Arab princes and penthouses of successful executives.

Heather offered drinks just as smoothly as her mother would have, April thought. She also had pretty little finger food trays on the low table April liked so. The stone slab that was its top had a wealth of fossil sea shells oriented all different ways. Papa-san set his drink down just a tad harder than necessary and laid his hand on the table. Between the sound and how it drew the warmth out of his hand he knew it was real stone. April could guess he was calculating what something like that cost to lift to orbit.

The table and leather sofas on each side were arranged on a huge oriental rug which defined the living room, without breaking the space up with screens or stub walls. The wall coverings mirrored and defined the area similarly.

The gracious touch was mixed with hard practicality. Along the area with a lower overhead was a hydroponic garden and no effort was taken to hide it behind an opaque curtain. Instead natural sunlight came through the translucent curtain from a long viewport for a few minutes on and off as the habitat rotated. When the natural light faded the area didn't go dark as a sensor ramped up grow lights wired above each plant carefully.

"Do I understand correctly this is your home, Miss anderson?" Mama-san asked.

"It is, but I live in my Mother's household," she explained. "She is visiting on the French habitat Le Navet right now. An old friend happened to lift for it and she took the opportunity to visit with him after hours, when his business is concluded." April suspected who that would be, but refused to ask what might be taken as gossip until she had Heather in private.

"Surely they didn't name their space station The Turnip?" Santos objected.

"No it has a long bureaucratic name that includes the agency and names the French state, in a title that takes half a minute to recite. That's just what everybody called it for the shape."

"I find this very gracious," Mama-san decided. "I have not seen much beyond our hotel rooms, so I was getting perhaps an unfavorable impression. "I can see now there is much you can do with private spaces."

"My working spaces are very cramped and utilitarian," Jeff explained. "Not to mention scattered about. I have rented cubic beside my tiny apartment that you might say is my drafting space, as well as working at Dave's our spaceship fabricator and in a zero-G cubic April's grandfather loans me."

"Do you have dedicated cubic for the bank then?" Papa-san asked.

"The bank exists basically
in
one laptop computer and as secure storage and back-up on ISSII and the Moon. Perhaps you have seen the very elaborate offices of The Private Bank of Home, on the corridor just around spin from the cafeteria? If I had built that fancy an office, even in rented cubic, we would be running a deficit instead of a profit. I don't see us having dedicated cubic for the foreseeable future," he admitted. "When the time comes to expand my offices for design work and other things, I will still conduct the bank's business from there or from private places like this," he said, indicating the apartment with a wave.

"But what shall you do for secure storage? What if your customers want a safe deposit box, or want to deposit hard assets to their account?"

"In that case we'd hold them temporarily at the Private Bank vault, but transport those things to the lunar surface at Central on the Moon. We have a tunnel boring machine and expect to expand that capacity very quickly. It is our intent to take the important parts of our lunar site below the surface. The critical parts really deep.
Kilometers
deep."