Descent from Xanadu (16 page)

“Yes?”

“Li Chuan is dead. Security went through his room while he was out to dinner. They discovered a number of items. One of them, the access code to our Computer Central. Also that he intended to sell it for twenty million dollars.”

“He was stupid,” Judd said. “There’s no one in his right mind who’d pay anything like that for it. Any half-assed expert would know that access codes are only made to be changed.”

“He wasn’t an expert in practical matters,” Merlin said. “Security also took a good look at the contents of his travel case. Apparently he had a complete printout of our copy involving South and Western Savings and Loan. So, at least, we know why he dipped into the computer. Now we’ll soon find out how he moved the money from our accounts to his own.”

“Who killed him?” Judd asked.

“I went into that subject with Security. They live in their own world. But they learned that Sofia’s old boyfriend masterminded that with the killers.”

He paused for a moment. “What about Sofia?” he asked.

“She’s been a busy girl,” Merlin said. “I have their tapes hot from the scrambler satellite. I’ll play them for you when you come into the office.”

Judd laughed. “So you’re more of a dirty old man than I figured. What about her assignment to the ailing Comrade Brezhnev?”

“That’s true,” Merlin said.

“Does that mean she’s going directly to Russia from there?”

“No,” he said. “She’s booked herself Aeromexico to Mexico City. She should be here this evening.”

“Okay,” Judd said. “Anything else?”

“Nothing that can’t wait until you get into the office,” Merlin said.

Judd put down the telephone and looked at the nurse at the foot of the bed. “I still have that hard-on, ma’am,” he teased.

She held out a pill in a small plastic glass. “Take this with the rest of your orange juice, then a pee and a cold shower. That should take care of it.”

He swallowed the pill, glaring at her. “Cold ass,” he said, in a mocking, baleful voice.

***

“Total environment,” Dr. Zabiski said.

Judd pulled on his sweater. “What do you mean by that?”

“Just what I said,” she said. “If we cannot control the total environment, there’s no way we can control your life span. Everything we’ve done, medically and technologically, has been negated by your life style.”

Judd turned from her. “I can’t stay in this hospital forever. I’ll go nuts.”

“I know that,” she said.

“And neither would life in a totally environmentally controlled space station be any better.”

She nodded. “True.”

“Then what do you suggest?”

“Build your own environment. You can afford it.” She met his eyes. “In a way you already do that, on your airplane. But that is mobile. I understand you have to travel the world for your business affairs; nevertheless, it means your health objectives take second position to other matters.

“Think about it. Is there anything in this world that you can’t bring to you instead of you going out to it? If you built a total environment, everything could be there, communications, technology, food. Even the necessary personal contacts so important to your life style. Everything could come to you, if you demanded it.”

He stared at her without comment for a moment. “That would mean building a small city just for myself.”

She shrugged her shoulders. “So? You’re planning to live forever, aren’t you?” she asked. “Why shouldn’t you have the place where you do the living exactly as you want it?”

“Crazy,” he said.

“Not really,” she said. “You have the opportunity, and the money to achieve your ambition—more than any man ever dreamed or could afford. All you need now is the will.”

He was silent.

“Think about it,” she said. “That island you own off the Georgia coast of the United States is used only as a resort hotel. It would be perfect for what you’d need.”

He looked at her. “I’ll have to think about it.”

“Yes,” she said. “Of course.”

He took a deep breath. “I don’t want to be another Howard Hughes.”

“You wouldn’t be,” she said. “He ran away from the world because he was afraid of it—and afraid of dying. You are afraid of neither: no fear of the world, no fear of death. You could reach out to the world by bringing it to you. To you, death is only a fact of evolution that you want to alter. And to achieve the immortality you desire, you may have to accept that your life will also have to be altered.”

***

Nicky was on the telephone when she came in from the bathroom. She had the towel wrapped around her as she walked to the dresser and picked up her brassiere and panties. He put down the telephone and looked at her. “You don’t have to rush,” he said. “There’s been a change of plan.”

She looked at him questioningly. “The flight to Mexico is at ten o’clock. The next one is six in the evening.”

“You’re not going back to Mexico,” he said. “We’re booked on Aeroflot to Moscow at noon. We want you back there.”

“But the abortion,” she said. “It’s scheduled for tomorrow.”

“Not anymore,” he said. “They want you to have the baby.”

“That’s crazy,” she said. “We don’t know what the child could be. So many things have been tampered with in his bio and chemical systems, the child could turn out monstrous.”

“It’s a chance we have to take,” he said. “As
we
prefer to see it, that child could wind up being his only heir. And with that child, we could control everything he owns: the companies, the money. We’d own one of the most powerful industrial complexes in the Western world.”

“But it was nothing but an experiment.”

“Not anymore,” Nicky said. “It’s a fact of life. Power. Remember what that dead Chinese said.”

“No,” she said. “I’m going back to Mexico as planned.”

“No chance, Sofia,” he said. “You have your orders.”

“And if I choose not to obey them?”

“That’s treason,” he said. “And you know the penalty for that.”

She snapped the brassiere around her and stepped into the lacy bikini. “And who is going to kill me?” she asked casually. “You, Nicky?”

“I have my orders too.”

“But you love me,” she offered gently. “You always said that.”

“That’s still true,” he said. “It always will be.”

“But you love your orders more?” She made no effort to shade her sarcastic tone.

He did not answer.

“Then it’s not love for me that you really profess, Nicky,” she said. “All it comes to is your ambition, your own desire for power.”

He still remained silent.

“Now I understand a number of things, Nicky. I was a bigger fool than I thought,” she went on. “You never planned to divorce Ekaterina to marry me. That would upset the apple cart. Her father is too high in the council and too close to the Politburo.”

He watched her. “Not quite on target, Sofia. That wasn’t all of it. On analysis, I decided to use you to get what I wanted because marriage to you was simply not in the cards. They knew all about you and your reputation. Our top people would never accept you.”

She stood silent before him and, without a word, pulled her small suitcase from the closet, seemed to change her mind, and slipped into the linen suit he had seen her wear when she had first come there. She placed the valise on the bed and opened it. She looked over the open side of the suitcase between them before snapping it shut. “You’ll have to kill me,” she said decisively. “I’m going back, Nicky.”

He stared at her with dismay. “You can’t mean that.”

“Neither can I believe that you’d kill me.”

He remained rigid in the chair next to the telephone. “Orders. I’m a soldier. I have no choice.” A blue-black Beretta pistol came into his hand from his inside jacket pocket. “And neither do you, if you don’t return with me.”

Her eyes met his briefly, hesitated, then turned down to her valise. He never heard the soft coughing of the silencer as the blast that tore out the side of her valise ripped into his chest, or the second soft cough that sliced his face in half like a melon from chin to head. The force of the silent explosions dropped him from the chair to the floor.

She stood up only long enough to remember the gun in his hand. His blood was splattered around him all the way to the wall and the ceiling. She stared down at him.

“Nicky, poor Nicky,” she said softly. “You were stupid. You never knew something Judd Crane taught me. There’s always another choice.”

22

“Father of the year,” he said. “I never even got laid.”

Doc Sawyer laughed. “Don’t complain. It was your idea.” He fell silent for a moment. “But Zabiski is right. I might as well go the whole route.”

“Uncle Paul and the legal department are going to go nuts,” Judd said.

“That’s what they’re for,” Sawyer said. “I’m sure that they’ll come up with a solution.”

Merlin came into the upper deck cabin. “We’ll be landing in Mexico City in forty minutes.”

“Good,” Judd said. He looked up at him. “Any word about her yet?”

“She’s on the Aeromexico flight due in about an hour after we come down,” he said. “The passenger list shows her still on it.”

“Security ready to get her off if there’s any trouble?”

“We’re doing everything we can,” Merlin said. “We were lucky they got into her room the moment she went out. They found him before their own police did and cleaned up everything they could, but we don’t know how long we’ll be able to pressure them to sit on it.”

“We get her off the plane, we’re home free,” Judd said.

“Security tapes told us that he was going to kill her,” Merlin said. “We still don’t know how she faked him out.”

“I have a hunch,” Judd said. “She took my small valise.”

Merlin stared at him. “The snub nose thirty-eight with the silencer fitted inside the combination lock?”

Judd nodded. “It can do a lot of things, but it can’t walk by itself. It wasn’t in my room when I came back from the hospital.”

Merlin nodded approvingly. “The lady thinks,” he said. “That means she’s also dangerous.”

Judd laughed. “All ladies worth the trouble are dangerous.” He picked up a sheet of paper. “About those other girls?” he began. “The future mothers-to-be. Are we making all the arrangements to place them around the country?”

“Security is working on it now. We should have the plan by tonight.” He looked at Judd. “What have you decided about Sofia?”

“I’m thinking on it,” Judd said. “I want to talk some more with her.”

“You’re scheduled to be at the Presidential Palace in Mexico City when she arrives at the airport. We think it’s better that you’re not around. Besides, the meeting with the commerce secretary about Crane Pharmaceuticals will be at that time. Then you have luncheon with López Portillo before you return to the plane. We’re scheduled to depart for Brazil at four P.M. That ought to give you time to think, sir,” Merlin said, only half in jest.

***

Judd looked down at his wristwatch, then around the luncheon table. Three-thirty, and the President was already an hour late. Judd turned to the finance minister to his right. “Perhaps
el Presidente
has more important matters to attend than just this luncheon. I will not be offended if he should want to cancel.”

“There is nothing more important, Mr. Crane,” the handsome finance minister said politely in perfect English. “It’s only that
el Presidente
never takes his luncheon before four o’clock.”

Judd turned to Merlin, then looked back to the finance minister. He rose from the table. “Please give my regrets to
Señor el Presidente
and apologize on my behalf. Alas, I also have a schedule to follow. I have appointments in Brazil tomorrow and my departure is set for four o’clock. That’s only a half an hour away. Perhaps our appointment can be rescheduled for the day after tomorrow when I return to the States.”

The minister’s face expressed a shocked dismay. “But
el Presidente
will be most disappointed, Señor Crane. He has looked forward to meeting with you.”

“And I, too,” Judd said. “I’m anxious to sit down with him.”

“But the business we have discussed… I am sure that he’s anxious to talk more about it with you.”

“There’s really nothing we have to talk about,” Judd said. “We understand your position. I want you to build the laboratory and factory for thirty million dollars. For that you own fifty percent of Crane Pharmaceuticals Mexico. You offer only five million dollars and want me to invest the remainder, twenty-five million dollars, from my resources. In simple American, that’s chicken shit. I am a businessman, Mr. Minister, and I do not intend to become another bank to add to Mexico’s loan liability, which is already greater than it can carry reasonably for repayment.”

“Your opinion is contrary to the many banks we’re doing business with,” the minister replied coolly. “Mexico’s petroleum fields are the greatest in the world. It’s all the collateral we need, no matter how our liabilities look today, sir.”

“Possibly, Your Excellency,” Judd conceded. “Nevertheless, I am neither an oil shipper nor a refiner. Neither have I any interest in that form of energy. I look only at the things already in hand. This is the end of 1979, and Mexico is already fifty-five billion dollars in debt. At the rate you are borrowing, in the two years remaining of the President’s term of office that debt will climb to perhaps eighty billion dollars or more. By that time the world will be awash in oil. They’ll stop talking shortage and conversation and demand something be done about the glut in oil. There is no way I can foresee that your debt can be repaid.”

“But your scenario means many other countries will find themselves in the same position. It also means that accommodations to the problem will have to be made elsewhere, as well as here.”

“True enough,” Judd said. “But I don’t have to move a finger. None of my banks or financial companies has joined the consortium of lenders on oil production enterprises. The future, as I see it, is no longer dependent on a production or a technological industrial age. It’s going to be based on information, communication and medical services.

“The first industry I offer you is medical. The investment I propose is minimal, something you can’t do in oil. Within two years, I tell you, the amount I propose for you to come in with, thirty million dollars, will return you two hundred million dollars of business. And that, Mr. Minister, is only in the Central American and northern South American nations. The second industry I plan will be offered only after the solid base we secure in the first is established profitably. That means we will be sure that the first industry we set up will be free of the corruption and thievery that unfortunately has plagued some of your industries. I offer electronic communications and information, all constructed and maintained in Mexico—an enterprise which can blanket and control the Spanish-speaking world. And that market can be worth untold billions of dollars.