Empire Builders (9 page)
THIRTEEN
“DON’T YOU SEE?” Dan pleaded with Jane. “All he’s after is power! He’s using this cataclysm as an excuse to grab total world power.”
FOURTEENThey were walking glumly along the beach as the sunset turned the cloud-streaked sky into flaming reds and oranges.
“Dan, you’re not being fair to Vasily.” “Like hell I’m not.”
“I don’t like what he wants to do, but I’ve got to agree with him. I don’t see how we can accomplish what needs to be done without the authority of the law behind us. We need the GEC’s control over the situation. Otherwise...” Her voice trailed off into silence. Ignoring the beauty of the fading day, Dan urged her, “He wants to be dictator of the world. He’ll be using economic power instead of military, but by the time the shit hits the fan he’ll be a world-class Napoleon. Or worse yet, a Stalin.”
“He’s not like that,” she insisted. “He’s really concerned. He sees this course of action as the only one that has a chance of working.” “And if it does work, he’ll be sitting on a throne for the rest of his life.”
“If it doesn’t work, he’ll take the blame.”
Dan grunted. “Yeah, maybe. If he hasn’t taken total control of the world’s media by then.”
“Be fair!”
“Fair? He knew! The sonofabitch knew all about the greenhouse cliff for a frigging year and he didn’t tell anybody about it. He didn’t even tell you or the rest of the Council.”
“Yes, I know. He was afraid that the news would leak out prematurely. Can you imagine what effects it will have on people when we do start to tell them? The panic?”
“The stock market,” Dan muttered.
Jane stopped walking and turned to face Dan. Standing there on the beach, the dying sun behind her, the sky flaming with color, she looked to him like a tall, strong, beautiful goddess just come out °f the sea.
“Dan,” she said, “we’ve got to work with Vasily, not against him. There’s no other way.” “I don’t have to do a damned thing. He’s arranged it that way, hasn’t he?”
“He knew you’d fight against him.” Dan nodded. “He’s right.”
“But if you’d promise to cooperate-”
“Cooperate? While his paper-pushing desk jockeys try to run my company? It’ll take those drones ten years just to rework the organization charts!”
She sighed heavily and started back toward the huts of the hotel. “I’ll be leaving tomorrow morning, you know. I have an enormous amount of work ahead of me.”
“And I’m supposed to stay here. How long?” She shrugged.
Striding alongside her, he reached for her hand. “Well, at least we’ve got tonight together.” He could not tell in the dying light, but he almost thought he saw tears in her eyes.
“Oh Dan,” she said, “it’s like everything in the whole blessed world stands between us. Has always stood between us.”
“There’s nothing in the world between us now,” he replied gently. “Tonight there’s only the two of us on this beautiful island.
The past is dead and gone and tomorrow doesn’t exist yet. But we have tonight.” “Yes,” she murmured. “We have tonight.”
Dan awoke when his wristwatch’s silent alarm sent its pulsed tingling signal up his left arm. It was still dark. Jane lay sleeping soundly next to him, a thin sheet pulled halfway up her alabaster body. For long minutes he sat in bed gazing down at her in the dim light of the digital clock on the dresser across the
room. God but you’re beautiful, he told her silently. To think of all the years we’ve spent apart. What a waste. What a cosmically tragic waste.
room. God but you’re beautiful, he told her silently. To think of all the years we’ve spent apart. What a waste. What a cosmically tragic waste.
Slowly, softly, he slipped out of the bed, not wanting to awaken her. He grabbed a swimsuit and T-shirt from the pile in the corner of the hut and padded out naked into the starlit predawn. Grinning to himself, he took his pick of the empty huts, taking one as far from his own as he could. There he urinated and showered, patted his graying hair into some semblance of order, pulled on the trunks and T-shirt, and then marched determinedly to the hotel’s office. No one was at the registration desk. The kitchen looked dark and empty. Dan knew that the staff slept in the long hut behind the office building, but the manager and his wife had a private suite in the building itself. It was a small cottage, the only building on the islet that had solid walls instead of bamboo screens.
There was no lock on the building’s front door. Why bother? Where would a thief go on this atoll? All the islets put together barely added up to a few square kilometers. You could see a man standing on the pig farm from all the way across the lagoon; with binoculars you could make out his face.
Dan let himself in. The entire ground floor of the little cottage was a single room: the hotel’s business office. The overhead lights went on automatically as the wall sensor reacted to his body heat. Dan saw a desk with a computer and phone console on it, two rattan chairs with gaudy flowered cushions, and a small bookcase that seemed to hold brochures advertising the hotel and nothing else. The manager gets up early, he told himself. I’ll just wait for him to come downstairs.
He sat in one of the rattan chairs and was almost dozing off when he heard the sound of water gurgling through pipes. A few minutes later, the manager came downstairs, looking more angry than surprised that Dan was waiting for him.
“Mr. Randolph,” he said, “what are you doing here?”
The manager was Polynesian, short and round-bellied, old enough for his short-cropped hair to be snowy white. He wore loose-fitting shorts and a brightly flowered shirt, unbuttoned: his business attire.
“I want you to phone your supervisor in Papeete ,” Dan said. “You are not allowed to make phone calls, sir.”
“I want you to call him.”
Puzzled, the manager asked, “Why?”
“So that he can call his boss in Port Moresby .” “Is this some kind of a joke, Mr. Randolph?”
“Nope. Just tell him that Mr. Randolph is declaring an emergency. And give him the code number fifty-six, twenty-five, seventy-five, thirty-nine. He’ll understand.”
It took ten minutes of persuasion and an electronic transfer of three hundred Australian dollars from Dan’s bank in Sydney before the manager reluctantly, suspiciously phoned his supervisor. Dan sat comfortably in the cushioned rattan chair as the manager’s call was transferred from Papeete to Port Moresby to Honolulu to San Diego and finally to Caracas . With each transfer the man’s eyes became wider.
Dan could see white all around the manager’s pupils by the time he handed the phone over. Smiling his thanks, Dan heard a computer’s synthesized voice say, “Please repeat the security code for voice check.”
Dan said, “Fifty-six, twenty-five, seventy-five, thirty-nine.” “Voice check positive. Stand by please.”
A woman’s voice said, “Security, O’Dare.” “Scramble,” said Dan.
“All messages on this line are scrambled, Mr. Randolph. And carried by laser link to avert tracing.” Dan grinned. She was curt and sharp, no wasted breath. Good.
“I’m on an atoll near Tahiti called Tetiaroa. I need an airlift to a space launching facility where I can get to Alphonsus City as quickly as possible.”
Hardly a heartbeat’s delay. Then, “Computer shows commercial flights to Alphonsus scheduled from Yamagata center in Tokyo Bay in twelve hours.”
“Not soon enough. I need a high-energy boost, too. I can’t afford to spend several days in transit.”
“We can roll out a private booster at La Guaira, have it ready for you by the time your plane gets you here.”
“What about Cape York ? Don’t the Aussies have anything heading for Alphonsus?” “Not for the next thirty-six hours, sir.”
The hotel manager’s mouth had gone just as round as his eyes. Dan grinned at him as he said into the phone, “Get a spaceplane to Papeete . Set up an OTV at space station Nueva Venezuela for a
high-energy burn to Alphonsus. Top priority and top security. Have a plane from Papeete pick me up here and fly me back to the airport. I don’t want anyone to know that the plane is coming to Tetiaroa.
high-energy burn to Alphonsus. Top priority and top security. Have a plane from Papeete pick me up here and fly me back to the airport. I don’t want anyone to know that the plane is coming to Tetiaroa.
That’s vital. And it’s all got to be done beforenoon , my time.” “Yes sir, Mr. Randolph. I’m keying it in right now.”
“Good work, O’Dare.”
Handing the phone back to the goggle-eyed manager, Dan thought, Malik’ll find out about the spaceplane as soon as its flight plan is filed. Maybe he’ll be suspicious about a flight from Papeete to Nueva Venezuela , maybe not. But he can’t react fast enough to stop me. And he won’t know anybody’s coming here to pick me up. He thinks he’s got me stuck on this atoll. My people on the space station can get me off to Alphonsus before he knows what’s happening. Walking out of the office into the first pale light of dawn, Dan told himself, If we move fast enough we can get away with it. I’ll be on my way to Alphonsus before Malik knows I’ve left Tetiaroa. Jane was sitting up in bed, still half asleep, when he got back to the hut. She modestly pulled the sheet over her bosom. Dan grinned at her reaction, thinking
back to their lovemaking during the night.
back to their lovemaking during the night.
I guess the truce is over, he said to himself. “Where’ve you been?” she asked.
“Took a walk.”
She looked slightly suspicious, but as he got back into bed beside her, Jane’s expression changed. “How did you like your lemonade?” she asked.
“Huh?”
“You told me that when they hand you a lemon, you should start making lemonade. How did you like the lemonade?” Grinning, “You’re no lemon, Jane. You’re a peach.” He kissed her and she kissed back and their bodies twined together once again. They barely had time to pull on their swimsuits and take a dip in the lagoon before they heard a plane coming in. Jane squinted up into the bright morning sky.
“It’s early,” she said.
“I don’t think that’s your plane,” said Dan. “Who”
“It’s for me. And you.”
She stared at him. “What do you mean?”
“We’re going to Alphonsus. Grab your bag.” He started toward their hut as the plane swooped in for its landing.
“You can’t leave this island!” Jane shouted after him. “Watch me. And you’re coming too.”
She dashed after him. “What do you mean? You weren’t even allowed to make a phone call. We warned the manager and his entire staff!”
“Honey, the manager and the entire staff work for me. I bought this joint, the whole frigging chain, the day you invited me to meet you here.”
“You what?”
He stepped into the hut and began tossing his scattered belongings into his travel bag. “You ought to check up on the ownership of the places where you want to hold prisoners. Not that it would’ve done you much good. There’re four other corporations between me and this hotel chain. You’d’ye spent a couple of days following the paper trail to find me.”
“You sneaking bastard!”
He looked up at her, standing in the doorway, fists planted on her hips. The swimsuit she wore was a formfitting maillot, emerald green.
“You’re calling me a sneak?” Dan laughed. “I didn’t invite you here for the purpose of sticking you in the slammer.”
“And last night—you knew you were going to do this! And this morning!”
“I knew I was going to try. I’m not going to let Malik or you or the Pope inRome steal my company away from me. Not without a fight.”
Furious, Jane pounded a fist against the bamboo screening. It rattled as if one more shot would knock it down.
“Come on, come on, we don’t have time to waste.” “I’m not going with you!”
“You sure as hell are.” “No?’
Closing the Velcro seal on his travel bag, Dan said, “Jane, I may be old and slow and softened by living on the Moon too much. Maybe Malik can beat the crap out of me. But I can still fling you over my shoulder and carry you out to that plane, if I have to.” She glared at him. “You’d have a heart attack halfway there.” Shrugging, “Then I’ll be dead and that’ll be the end of it. Will you cry over my body?”
“I’ll do something else over your body!”
“That’s not very ladylike. Come on, time’s wasting.” “I’m not going,” she insisted.
He stepped up to her, smiled sweetly, and said, “Either you come with me conscious, or I’ll knock you out cold and drag you.” “You wouldn’t dare.”
“I wouldn’t like to.”
“A minute ago you were going to carry me.”
“Stop stalling. I need you as a hostage. Otherwise that damned Malik would probably use one of the orbiting lasers to blast my spacecraft.”
Jane looked at him. “You’re serious, aren’t you?” “Totally.”
She went to the dresser and began emptying the drawers into her carry bag.
I’VE GOT TO remember to give O’Dare a bonus, Dan told himself. A big one.
The half-hour flight to Papeete was thankfully uneventful. The spaceplane was waiting on the runway, sleek and delta-winged and glistening white in the late-morning sun. Dan and Jane stepped from the little jet that had carried them from Tetiaroa directly into the spaceplane’s big, empty passenger compartment. With only a routine holdup by traffic control, the spaceplane trundled out onto the runway and arrowed into the sky, engines screaming.
Plenty of people come to Papeete on their own private planes, Dan reassured himself. They land spaceplanes here on a regular schedule. This isn’t so unusual. I hope.
The transfer at the space station Nueva Venezuela went smoothly enough. Jane behaved herself, and the two of them went from the spaceplane’s hatch into the zero-g receiving area at the hub of the station and directly through an access tunnel into the claustrophobic cabin of a modified orbital transfer vehicle.
“How do you feel?” Dan asked his hostage as they swam weightlessly to their seats in the OTV’s passenger deck.
“A little queasy,” Jane admitted. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been in zero-g? Dan opened the compartment built into the seat’s armrest and rummaged through its innards. Finally he pulled out a slim plastic package. Tearing it open, he handed Jane a little circular medicinal patch.
“Slap this on behind your ear. It helps a lot.”
She started to nod, turned pale, and pressed the patch against her neck.
There were no windows in the passenger deck, and even if there were they would not have been able to see much of the vehicle they were in. An OTV was built for efficiency, not style. Since it flew only in the vacuum of space, it did not need the streamlining or airfoils of an airplane. It had a rocket engine, maneuvering jets, propellant tanks, cargo bay, a cramped compartment for up to six passengers (eight, the standard wisdom claimed, if they were in love) and docking probes to latch on to a space station or another spacecraft. Plus a two-person flight deck perched at its top like a single bulbous eyeball.
From the outside it looked like an ungainly, unlikely, unlovely collection of metallic spheres and cylinders and cones. This particular OTV was also fitted out, Dan knew, with two extra oversized propellant tanks and spindly, spraddly legs ending in broad round footpads, so that it could set down on the surface of the Moon. The ship’s copilot floated down from the flight deck, feet dangling in midair, only one hand lightly touching a rung of the ladder. A longtime veteran of space flight, Dan could see: grizzled short-cropped hair and a shoulder patch on her Astro coveralls that read:
GREATEST GRANDMOM IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM.
“Mr. Randolph, flight control has asked us to hold for a few minutes. They said something about a message coming up from Earthside.” She looked more annoyed than worried.
“Are we cleared for departure?” Dan asked.
“We’ve got a six-minute window. They’ve asked us to hold until the message comes in. It must be a message for you, I guess.” “Screw it. Let’s get moving. The message can catch up with us while we’re in
transit.”
transit.”
The greatest grandmom in the solar system nodded her agreement. “You’re the boss.” And she pulled herself effortlessly up through the hatch and back into the flight deck. Jane had a bit more color in her face. “You think the message is from Vasily?”
“Who else? And it’s not for me, it’s for the station security officer to check exactly who’s aboard this OTV and why they’re heading for Alphonsus.”
“He must know we’ve left Tetiaroa.’ “Yep. By now.”
They felt the slightest of bumps. Detaching from the docking collar, Dan thought. Then a soft pressure, nothing more than a feeling of settling back in their seats.
“Departing for Alphonsus,” came the captain’s voice over the intercom speaker. “Estimated flight time, eighteen hours, eleven minutes.” That’s the best we can do, Dan realized. High-energy burn, and it still takes more than eighteen hours to get there. He sighed to himself. Well, it’s better than the three days the Apollo astronauts needed. But, hell, eighteen hours! Malik could take over A1phonsus and have a firing squad waiting for me by the time we get there.
Rafaelo Gaetano tried not to let his displeasure show. As calmly as he could, he took a cigarette from the silver-inlaid box on his desk and stuck it between his lips.
Malik was obviously upset. The Russian paced across the Persian carpet in front of Gaetano’s desk, hands clasped behind his broad back, face sunk in a frown of deep thought.
“He got away?” Gaetano asked, in a tone that was almost teasing. “How could he get away from an island in the middle of the Pacific? Did he sprout wings?”
Malik gave him a stare that would boil water. “He is a very clever man. Extremely resourceful. And enormously wealthy. God knows how many bribes he paid out. My people are interrogating the hotel staff.”
“Do you know where he’s gone?”
“No, not precisely. But I have a good idea of where he’s running to.”
Gaetano picked up his heavy silver lighter and puffed the cigarette to life while Malik resumed his pacing. “So?” Gaetano asked, blowing smoke toward the ceiling.
“Alphonsus. He’ll be surrounded by his own employees there.” “But once the confiscation is completed they will be his employees no longer. They will be ours.”
“Perhaps,” Malik muttered, staring out the window. “Perhaps. Loyalty is a strange thing. They may remain loyal to him.”
The Italian swiveled his desk chair around and saw that a half moon was rising, milky pale, in the
late-morning sky. He smiled to himself.
Turning back to Malik, he said, “Arrest him when he arrives at Alphonsus. That should be simple enough.”
“Arrest him on what charge?” Malik snapped. “The plan was to detain him on Tetiaroa. That was close to being illegal, but I was ready to take that risk. But I cannot order our handful of people at A1phonsus to arrest the man without some clear criminal charge against him. A criminal charge-not this confiscation matter.” Gaetano steepled his fingers in front of his face, the cigarette held between forefinger and thumb. Squinting from behind the smoke, he suggested, “Shoot him down, then, before he gets to A1phonsus.
Get rid of him once and for all.”
Malik started across the carpet again. Jesus, he’s going to wear a path through it, Gaetano thought. “He has Jane Scanwell with him,” the Russian growled.
“What?” Gaetano nearly jumped out of his chair.
“She’s with him. We know that much. We can’t kill the American representative to the Council. She’s a former President of the United States , for god’s sake!”
“She’s gone with him willingly?” “How should I know?”
Gaetano smiled and spread his hands in a happy gesture of fulfillment. “There is the answer to the problem.Randolph has kidnapped the American representative to the Council. Kidnapping is an act of terrorism, according to international law, is it not?” Malik stopped his pacing and stared at the younger man. “Yes!
Of course! Kidnapping.” For the first time that morning he smiled. “You see? There is a solution to every problem.”
The Russian’s smile eroded. “But Scanwell might say that she went with him voluntarily.” “Do you think there is such a possibility?”
Malik took the leather chair in front of the desk. “I don’t know. They were lovers once, from what I’ve heard. Perhaps she still loves him.”
“That would be a complication.” ‘”Yes.”
Gaetano brightened. “But you could still arrest Randolph on suspicion of kidnapping, and hold him until Scanwell gave an official statement to the security people at Alphonsus.”
Malik’s smile glimmered again. “Or hold him until a special investigating team can be assembled and sent to Alphonsus.”
“Exactly! That would take a week, ten days—perhaps even longer.”
“And by that time the confiscation procedures will be completed and Randolph will be a man without a corporation.”
Gaetano took a long puff on his cigarette, thinking, you see? I have worked out the entire problem for you in less time than it took me to smoke one cigarette.
But he said nothing of the kind aloud to Malik.
All during the long flight to Alphonsus Dan had to force himself to stay away from the radiophone. He wanted to give orders to his people in Alphonsus, he wanted to fry the ass off Kate Williams, he wanted to find out what was going on and how far Malik and his GEC snakes had gotten with their confiscation order.
But no matter how much he fretted he kept silent. Maintain radio silence, he repeated to himself ten thousand times. Don’t let them know for certain that you’re aboard this bucket on your way to Alphonsus.
But he could listen. For hours on end he sat with headphones clamped on and had the OTV’s captain tune to the business chatter between his office at A1phonsus and Astro’s terrestrial headquarters at Caracas.
What he heard was not good. GEC executive orders had already been filed, notifying Astro management that the corporation was to be confiscated. Teams of GEC administrators had already invaded the Caracas offices and several other facilities elsewhere on Earth. It was only a matter of days, perhaps hours, before they showed up at Alphonsus.
Again and again he heard his top staff people grappling with the problem as best they could, always asking:
“Where’s Dan? We need him to fight this.” “Where’s the boss?”
“Why isn’t he available? Where the hell is he?”
Nobody knew. Dan fumed in frustrated silence as the OTV plied its fixed trajectory toward Alphonsus. Malik hit it just right, he groused to himself. The Russian sonofabitch knew my people couldn’t meet this threat effectively without me to okay their decisions. And my own goddamned insistence on secrecy has just muddled things worse. Nobody to blame but myself and that double-damned Russian.
At least his board of directors had called an emergency meeting, in Tokyo . Sai—No, Dan corrected himself. Nobo’s on the board. And he’s pissed as hell with me. Will he let his personal anger get in the way of his business sense? Christ, I really could lose everything I’ve got!
Jane slept a good deal of the time they were in transit. Dan tried to nap but could not. The captain came down and fixed himself a meal at the little galley built into the side bulkhead of the passenger deck. Later on the copilot came down and prepared a tray for herself.
“You ought to eat something,” Dan told Jane, halfway to the Moon. “How’s your stomach?”
“I’m fine. The medication seems to be working, but it makes me feel drowsy.” “Psychosomatic.”
The corners of her mouth curled upward slightly. “We didn’t get all that much sleep that last night on the island, you know.” He grinned back at her. “You’re bragging.”
Gesturing to the headphones floating aimlessly beside Dan, she asked, “How are things going?” “Piss poor.”
“From your point of view or mine?”
Dan stared at her a moment, adjusting his thinking to recall that they were on opposite sides, politically.
“My point of view,” he said. “Malik’s steamrolling through my people. He’s got GEC teams taking over all my offices.”
“At Alphonsus, too?”
“Not yet. But they’re on their way, I’ll bet.”
“Have you given any thought to what you’re going to do once we get there?”
Dan shook his head. “Not much I can do. Not legally. I doubt that Malik would listen to any offers from me to negotiate.” “Probably not,” Jane said. “He’s got the upper hand; why should he give away anything?”
“And you’re on his side? Really?” “I’ve got to be, Dan.”
“It won’t work, you know. Malik’s way won’t work. Not in time. They’ll move too slowly. They’ll want to have everything properly organized, everything neat and exact. We don’t have the time for that kind of bureaucratic bullshit. We have to move fast. Now Move!”
Jane shook her head. “We can’t afford a chaotic approach to this. We need organization on a global scale.”
He stared at her. “Christ, you really are one of them, aren’t you?” “I suppose I am,” she said.
“So you’re going to let him set up his dictatorship while the world goes to hell in a greenhouse.” Firmly, she answered, “I am going to help the Global Economic
Council to coordinate all the human race’s resources—all of them, off-Earth as well as on the planet—to avert the disaster that is threatening us.”
“And grind me up into little pieces in the process,” Dan said. She reached out to touch his arm. “Dan, just because you’re losing your corporation doesn’t mean that your life is finished. You could help us—help me.”
“What do you want me to do,” he snarled, “run for President of the United States for you?”
Her face went white. Her nostrils flared. Finally she said, “No, Dan. As far as I’m concerned you can go to hell.”
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