Power Play (11 page)

The hotel itself was an imposing pile of brickwork and Victorian ornate décor. A statue of the general on horseback adorned the front entranceway. Jake hurried through the lobby, nearly empty in mid-afternoon, and took the groaning old elevator up to the suite where Tomlinson was to meet with Professor Sinclair. And Nacho Perez, Senator Leeds’s man.

Jake had briefed Tomlinson and Amy on Sinclair’s position, barely hiding his disdain for the professor. The bastard chased after Mrs. Cee even after she had married Lev. Was he hopelessly in love or just mad to get his hands on her? The latter, Jake felt. Sinclair didn’t impress him as the type to pine away for love. Lust, yes, but not love.

Amy opened the door to the suite and let Jake in. Looking bright and cheerful in a knee-length pale yellow chemise, she smiled at him, but nothing more. As he stepped into the room, Jake saw that the furnishings were slightly old-fashioned: overstuffed chairs, a pair of smallish sofas, and a dusty-looking little desk of dark wood. A bar had been set up by the draperied windows.

“Where’s the man?”

“In the bathroom,” Amy said. “He’s a little nervous about this, you know.”

“Nervous? Him?”

“He has nerves. He’s not as cool as he pretends to be.”

Before Jake could think of a reply the door to the bedroom opened and Tomlinson stepped in, looking perfectly relaxed in a pair of pearly gray casual slacks and an open-necked coral shirt beneath an ivory sport jacket.

“Where’s Professor Sinclair?” Tomlinson asked.

Jake looked at his wristwatch. “He should—”

The phone rang. Amy went to the ornate little desk and picked up the receiver. She nodded once, then, as she replaced the receiver, she said to Tomlinson, “They’re on their way up.”

“Good,” said Tomlinson. “Jake, you let them in, please. Amy, you can be in charge of the bar.”

Jake started to ask why he didn’t get the hotel to provide a bartender, but quickly realized that Tomlinson didn’t want any extra witnesses to this meeting.

The doorbell chimed. Jake swiftly crossed the thickly carpeted room and opened the door to admit Sinclair and Perez. The professor looked tight-lipped, almost grim. He was wearing a dark brown three-piece suit with a patterned tie of red and gold. Perez, in a flowered shirt, baggy gray slacks, and a sports jacket flapping loosely, had a bemused smile on his thin, swarthy face.

Tomlinson lit up with a smile that could melt glaciers. “Professor Sinclair, I’m so glad to see you.”

Sinclair took Tomlinson’s outstretched hand and made a perfunctory smile back. “How do you do?” Turning slightly, he introduced, “This is Ignacio Perez.”

“Call me Nacho,” said Perez, in his throaty, almost hoarse voice. “Everybody calls me Nacho.”

Gesturing to Amy at the bar by the window, Tomlinson asked, “Drinks?”

“You got any beer?” Perez asked Amy as he headed toward the bar.

Sinclair accepted a glass of tonic water. Tomlinson took a scotch on the rocks and Jake merely shook his head when Amy gave him a questioning look.

As he led Sinclair to one of the room’s matching pair of love seats, Tomlinson said, “Jake has told you that I intend to make MHD power generation a major issue in my campaign for the Senate.”

Sitting on the front three inches of the little sofa, clutching his glass in both hands, Sinclair nodded warily.

“And you have a problem with that.” Tomlinson sat on the facing sofa, his megawatt smile still in place.

Sinclair glanced at Perez, standing near Amy by the bar, then replied, “I think it would be a mistake to oversell MHD at this point. You shouldn’t get the people’s hopes up too soon.”

“But it’s a promising technology. It could mean a lot to this state.”

“We have a long way to go before MHD can be practical,” Sinclair said.

With a nod, Tomlinson replied, “I want to help you to get to that point. When I’m in the Senate I’ll be able to steer federal money your way.”

Jake saw Nacho Perez slink off to a chair in the corner of the room, sipping his beer from the bottle and looking mildly bored. Professor Sinclair looked uptight, almost angry.

“We’re not ready for a massive upswing in funding,” the professor insisted. “We have a long way to go.”

“But wouldn’t additional funding help you to get where you want to go?” Tomlinson asked.

Sinclair fidgeted on the love seat, took a sip of his tonic water, and finally admitted, “Additional funding would be helpful, of course, but only up to a point.”

His smile suddenly vanishing, Tomlinson said, “Let’s cut to the chase, Professor. What’s your problem?”

Sinclair’s eyes flashed, but he immediately regained his self-control. “We pushed too hard last year and it resulted in an explosion that killed one of our technicians. I’m not going to rush things again.”

Tomlinson said, “I can understand that. You’ll be in charge of the program all the way, though. Nobody’s going to rush you or try to control your research, I assure you.”

“That’s more easily said than done,” Sinclair countered.

Tomlinson paled slightly. It was very subtle, but Jake thought that just for an instant Tomlinson took Sinclair’s truculence as a personal insult.

Before either of the men could make things worse, Jake jumped in. “We could revive the state’s coal-mining industry with MHD. There’s a lot more riding on this than who controls the research program.”

Sinclair glared at Jake, but Tomlinson eased back on the little sofa and said gently, “What’s really bothering you, Professor? Just what’s eating at you?”

LOYALTIES

For a long moment Sinclair didn’t reply. Instead, he took a long gulp of his drink. Tomlinson sat stock-still, his face grave, his eyes probing. Jake, standing in the middle of the room, saw that Sinclair’s eyes were on Nacho Perez.

At last Sinclair cleared his throat and said, “I’m … I am committed to support Senator Leeds.”

“I understand that your son works in Leeds’s office,” said Tomlinson.

Wordlessly, Sinclair nodded.

“The senator is holding that over you.”

“No!” Sinclair snapped. “It’s not like that! God, you make it sound as if he’s blackmailing me.”

“Isn’t he?”

“No, he is not.” With some of his usual strength, Sinclair said, “I have supported Christopher Leeds in the past and I see no reason to change that support now.”

Jake heard himself ask, “Has Leeds promised to put federal money into your MHD work?”

Sinclair’s face flushed. “We haven’t discussed that. Not at all. We haven’t even talked about the MHD program.”

“Why not?”

From his seat in the corner of the room, Nacho Perez spoke up. “Hey, the senator’s got a lot of other things to worry about. This MHD stuff is small potatoes.”

“Really?” Tomlinson asked. “Is that Chris’s attitude?”

“He’s not interested in helping the coal industry?” Jake demanded.

“He’s got more important stuff to do,” Perez said.

Turning back to Sinclair, Tomlinson said, “I can’t believe that Senator Leeds hasn’t shown any interest in your MHD work, Professor.”

Squirming slightly, Sinclair replied, “I’ve … mentioned it to him. Once or twice.”

“And he’s not interested?” Tomlinson seemed incredulous.

Recovering his composure, Sinclair said, “I believe the senator has a more realistic attitude about MHD power generation than you do, Mr. Tomlinson. This is a research program, for god’s sake. You can’t go promising people pie in the sky. It’ll be years before MHD becomes practical, if ever.”

Shaking his head, Tomlinson said, “It looks as if I have more faith in your work than you do.”

“That’s because you don’t understand it. You don’t know what the problems are, what obstacles are facing us.”

“Please enlighten me, then.”

Sinclair glanced at Perez, then at Jake, and finally returned his gaze to Tomlinson. “You think we can just order a superconducting magnet from Home Depot? Like a piece of retail hardware? Nobody’s made a high-temperature superconducting coil to the size we’d need in a practical generator.”

Before anyone could react to that, Sinclair went on, “And the erosion rate inside the channel. We’ve lined the channel with the kind of heat shield material NASA uses on the space shuttle, but still the channel burns through. And the electrodes! How do you think we can produce electrodes that will stand up to that stream of five-thousand-degree plasma and the megawatts-per-stere electrical charge in the plasma?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” Tomlinson murmured.

“Well, it won’t be done by a wave of a magic wand,” Sinclair insisted. “It will take years of research, years of hard, hard work.”

“Which will require money,” Jake said.

“Which I will personally guarantee to provide you, once I’m in the Senate,” Tomlinson added.

“You personally guarantee?” Sinclair scoffed. “What about the other ninety-nine senators? What about the White House and the House of Representatives?”

Hunching forward, hands on his thighs, Tomlinson said, “Professor Sinclair, that’s what leadership is all about. When I’m in the Senate, I intend to be a leader. I intend to move ahead—with MHD as well as other programs. I don’t want to be a drone, like Senator Leeds.”

“Hey!” Perez yelled from the corner. “The senator ain’t no drone!”

“What has he done?” Tomlinson challenged. “Except to help the casinos and the highway developers.”

“He’s done plenty,” Perez said truculently.

Sinclair got to his feet. “This is getting us nowhere. I came here to meet you, Tomlinson, out of common politeness. I appreciate your interest in MHD, but I think it’s premature.” He eyed Jake as he added, “It’s misguided.”

Tomlinson rose, too. “I still intend to make MHD an issue in my campaign. Will you come out against that?”

With a glance toward Perez, Sinclair said, “I do not intend to be active in anyone’s campaign. I’m a scientist, not a politician.”

“But would you oppose my proposal to accelerate the MHD program?”

“If news reporters ask me what I think of your proposal, I’ll have to tell them the truth.”

“You’ll tell them your opinion,” Jake said.

Glaring now, Sinclair shot back, “The truth.”

Tomlinson sucked in a deep breath, then put his smile back on. “Well, Professor, I want to thank you for taking the time to talk with me.”

A little more gently, Sinclair said, “I’m sorry we don’t see eye to eye on this.”

“I am, too.” Tomlinson offered his hand, Sinclair shook it limply, and then the professor headed for the door with Perez trailing behind him.

As the door closed, Tomlinson slugged down the remainder of his scotch and headed for the bar. Amy was already pouring him another.

Still standing in the middle of the room, Jake said, “That didn’t go very well, did it?”

“Not hardly,” said Tomlinson.

But Amy said, “Sinclair’s hiding something.”

“You think so?”

Handing Tomlinson his refill, she said, “It just doesn’t make sense. Here you’re offering him the chance to expand his program, to get to where he wants to go, to make MHD a success, and he’s turning you down.”

Jake went to the bar and reached for the fifth of Jack Daniel’s. “He’s an academic. He doesn’t want a big, high-powered program. He’s afraid he’ll lose control.”

Amy shook her head. “There’s something more. He’s hiding something, I’m absolutely sure of it.”

“What could it be?” Tomlinson asked.

“Something about his son?” Jake guessed.

“Whatever it is,” Amy said, “Leeds knows about it and is using it to keep Sinclair in his camp.”

“And if we could find out what it is,” Tomlinson said, his eyes narrowing, “we might be able to swing Sinclair over to our side.”

“Or neutralize him, at least,” said Amy. “Pull his fangs.”

Tomlinson turned and laid a hand on Jake’s shoulder. “Jake, you’re our man on campus. We need you to ferret out Sinclair’s secret.”

Jake started to refuse, but then he thought, Ferret out Sinclair’s secret. Yeah, the sonofabitch must be hiding something. I’ll bet Mrs. Cee isn’t the only forbidden fruit he’s chased after.

FORBIDDEN FRUIT

Jake went home alone and that night he dreamed of Louise again. Nothing erotic. Nothing sad or remorseful. They were at home, in the house they had built together, getting ready to go out somewhere. Jake was putting on a sports coat and Louise had just stepped into the front hallway, beaming her radiant smile, happy, eyes sparkling, alive.

Jake woke up and turned toward her. The bed was empty; he was alone. He sat up and squinted at the red numerals of the digital clock on the dresser: 4:44. That must mean something, he thought. Yeah. It means it’s sixteen minutes before five
A.M.

The bedroom felt cold in the dark. Jake pulled up the covers he had kicked off in his sleep. He thought that if this was a movie he’d pull out a cigarette and puff on it in the shadows. Macho man. Jake had never smoked. As a kid he couldn’t afford cigarettes. Later, he understood the medical warnings about tobacco and never allowed himself to take up the habit.

But now he felt alone and cold and miserable without even a cigarette to light his darkness. What’s the use? he asked himself. What’s the fucking use?

If I’d driven to the store instead of letting Louise go she’d be alive now. Maybe I’d be dead but she’d be alive. She didn’t deserve to die. She was so full of life, so giving and caring. She brought happiness wherever she went. She—

Stop it! he commanded himself. She’s dead and there’s nothing you can do about it. Not a goddamned sonofabitch motherfucking thing you can do about it. Life belongs to the living. Get on with your life.

Yeah. Get on with it. Why? What for? You’ve just been going through the motions for the past year. That’s why Lev pushed you into this Tomlinson business. To give you something to live for. Big fucking deal. Working for a rich bastard who’s playing at being a politician. The wannabe senator. And he’s already thinking about the White House.

Amy. The sex is good with Amy. Terrific, really. Jake shook his head, as if to clear his thoughts. I ought to feel guilty about it. Louise hasn’t been dead for much more than a year and here I’m rolling in the sheets with a chick who looks like a football cheerleader.