Privateers (30 page)

Dan heard the others chuckle at the Aussie’s evaluation of the situation. But he’s right, Dan thought. We’re the only madmen in this part of the universe. The others, al Hashimi, Vavuniya and the rest, were waiting to see how this first attempt came out. Nobuhiko and his father were sitting safely in Tokyo, surrounded by loyal retainers who would literally put their own bodies between the Yamagatas and any assassin. And Dan’s attempt to win at least a tacit understanding from Jane Scanwell had crashed miserably.

He had realized when the other space industrialists had sat down with him that they would inevitably expect him to gain at least the covert support of the United States. Old habits die hard, and although al Hashimi might sneer at the States openly, even he still half expected some show of resistance from Washington against the Soviets.

And so did I, Dan realized. So did I.

To his surprise, Jane had agreed to see him much more easily than the last time, several months earlier. The American President still would not risk being seen publicly with the expatriate billionaire, but she was willing to spirit him into the White House for a quick, clandestine meeting.

Dan had flown to New York and taken the ancient, crowded, filthy train from La Guardia to Penn Station. Teams of fully armed policemen in helmets and riot armor stood menacingly at each end of every car, glittery-eyed attack dogs beside them. The train was noisy and reeked of sweat and urine. People were jammed in shoulder to shoulder as it lurched and swayed and roared along the elevated tracks. Peering past the shoulders of blank-faced riders who clung to the handbars like immobilized chimpanzees, Dan saw that vast areas of Queens had been burned out, the buildings blackened and hollow, their windows gaping emptily. The Russians didn’t have to bomb New York, he thought grimly. The city is self-destructing.

As the train crossed the sewage-choked stench of the East River on the Queensboro Bridge, Dan got a glimpse of Manhattan: the FDR Drive was practically empty except for armored Army personnel carriers and dilapidated city buses; the midtown towers were grimy with soot from the coal-burning power plants; the UN buildings, abandoned for several years now, looked dirty and uncared-for. Then the train plunged into the subway tunnel with a deafening roar.

At Penn Station, Dan saw that New York had finally produced a modicum of public safety and solved a large part of its unemployment problem at the same time. Police were everywhere, in teams of two or three, armed like strike force commandos with everything from snub-barreled shotguns to gas grenades. And Dan quickly learned how the bankrupt city paid its swollen police force. There were toll desks at the entrance to Penn Station: to get in, Dan had to stand in line for ten minutes and then pay a twenty-dollar admission toll. The policewoman at the desk also checked his passport there. Every person in line had to show some form of identification. Dan noted that the policewoman was just as heavily armed as the men who stood behind her.

Even so protected, Penn Station still had hustlers and thieves prowling through its underground mall. Dan was approached by half a dozen panhandlers within fifty feet of the entrance. He plowed past them, clutching his travel bag closely, but then he felt a hand brushing against his side. He grabbed at it, and found himself squeezing the thin wrist of a frightened, skinny, freckle-faced redheaded kid who could not have been more than ten years old.

“That’s my pocket you’re reaching into,” Dan said quietly, not breaking his stride, yanking the boy alongside him.

The kid said nothing. His eyes were wide with fright.

Dan glanced around, looking for others who might be accomplices. “Do you want to go to jail?” he asked the kid.

“Please, mister … please lemme go.”

A black policeman was watching them, Dan saw, holding a mean-looking electric truncheon and tapping it menacingly into his open palm.

Before Dan could decide what to do about the young pickpocket, a trio of lanky teenagers raced past, dodging through the crowd. In the brief glimpse he got of them, Dan thought they looked Hispanic, or perhaps even Oriental. One of them was holding a shoulder bag by its strap, maybe a woman’s bag, flapping loosely as they ran at top speed toward the exits.

The black cop dropped his truncheon and yanked the pistol from the holster at his hip. Dan dove for the floor, yanking the kid down with him. But before the cop could fire, Dan heard the boom of a shotgun. Twisting his head, he saw two of the teenagers staggering backward and collapsing to the floor, their faces and chests torn into ragged masses of bloody flesh. The third teenager, the one with the bag, skidded to a stop and raised his hands. A white policeman raced up to him and belted him across the face with his truncheon. He went down, too, his body thudding heavily against the dirty tiles of the floor.

“On your feet and on your way,” the black cop bellowed, stuffing his pistol back into its holster. His face was angry, scowling. “Come on, get up and get moving. All of ya.”

Dan got up from the oily, filthy floor, feeling as if he had exposed himself to every disease known to medical science. He released the kid’s wrist and made a silent shooing motion. The youngster faded into the crowd. Nobody stayed around to watch what happened to the three purse snatchers. Dan followed the crowd to the train for Washington.

It was almost midnight by the time the train pulled in to the capital, three hours late. Dan was hungry and irritated. He felt dirty, rumpled, soiled. The train’s air conditioner had not worked at all, and the bullet-proof windows could not be opened, so the only way to get any relief from the heat was to stand in the open, between the cars. But the guards at each end of the car would not let any passenger out onto the platforms. Too dangerous, they said. People throw things at the train. Snipers like to pick off passengers who stand on the platform.

The train stopped for almost half an hour on the outskirts of Washington while special security teams, in smoke-gray uniforms with shiny black belts and boots, searched every passenger and each piece of luggage. “For your own protection,” they said, murmuring the slogan over and over again, like a religious chant, as they moved from one passenger to the next. Dan hoped at least that the stern-looking brunette who seemed to be the team leader would be the one to frisk him. Instead he got a sweet-faced young man who searched him so thoroughly that Dan became convinced he was gay and enjoying himself.

Welcome to the nation’s capital, Dan said silently to himself.

As he stepped off the train, a pair of slim young men met him. They looked alike enough to be brothers. Both were dressed in conservative light suits, both had thick mops of carefully combed light brown hair, both were clear-eyed and smiling the kind of relentlessly cheerful, dazzlingly toothy smiles that Dan always associated with earnest young evangelists who were determined to save your soul whether you liked it or not.

“Mr. McKinley?” one of them asked, using Dan’s prearranged alias. “Come with us, please.”

They escorted Dan into an unmarked light gray sedan, where one of them scanned him and his one travel bag with an electronic sensor as the other drove out into the empty, silent, dark street. Instead of heading directly to the White House, as Dan had expected, they drove along the Mall to the garage under the former Air and Space Museum-which had been “closed for renovation” for more than two years. There they transferred Dan to another car, with another team of security agents, two men and two women this time, who searched Dan and his bag still again. Only then was he driven to the White House.

Even though it was slightly past midnight by now, there was a sizable throng of pickets ringing the White House. In the glare of the police searchlights that played on the crowd, Dan could read their placards as they shuffled glumly along:

WE NEED JOBS

A WOMAN’S PLACE IS IN THE HOME,

NOT THE WHITE HOUSE

STOP POLICE TERROR

FARMERS ARE STARVING!

The woman sitting on Dan’s left glanced at her wristwatch. “I thought they were going to break this up by midnight,” she complained.

“Guess the riot squad’s running late,” said the man sitting on Dan’s other side.

“Or they gave ‘em some extra time to disperse,” the driver suggested.

“They don’t look like they’re dispersing.”

“They will, once the riot squad opens up on ‘em.”

All four of the security agents laughed, and Dan felt an unpleasant chill tingle his spine.

The picketers made no attempt to stop the car, and within a few minutes Dan was passed through the most elaborate security check of all, relieved of his travel bag and ushered by a tall, lithe black woman into a tiny elevator that took him to the upper floor of the White House, the President’s living quarters. His escort was no household servant, Dan knew. She probably had a gun on her somewhere; Dan amused himself for a few moments, speculating on where it might be hidden. She eyed him coldly, like a snake ready to strike.

The elevator door slid smoothly open and Dan stepped into the long Center Hall, warmly decorated in yellow and white, with bookshelves lining one wall and comfortable soft chairs and sofas scattered about the gold carpet.

“Wait here,” said his escort. She went to a door and tapped on it. Dan could not make out the words that came from the other side of the door, but his escort beckoned him with a crooked finger.

She opened the door and motioned Dan inside. Jane was sitting at a tiny wooden desk, talking low and intensely into a telephone, her eyes fixed on the phone’s small picture screen. A man’s face filled the screen, the beefy, red-eyed, overwrought face of a thoroughly angry man. He looked like a cop to Dan. Jane held the phone receiver to her ear, so that Dan could not hear her conversation. He could read the cop’s lips, though: he was complaining about not having enough personnel to do everything that was expected of him.

Dan looked around the small sitting room. It was cluttered with old Victorian furniture, darkish and gloomy. The long windows were completely covered by closed brown paisley drapes. A little chandelier holding seven electrified candles dangled on slim rods from the ceiling. The rosewood coffee table had been set with a tray of liqueurs and two oversized snifters.

“Hello, Dan,” Jane said as she put down the telephone.

“It’s good of you to see me.”

She got up from her chair and crossed the room, both hands extended to him. “It’s good to see you again.”

She was wearing a silk brocade robe of pale pink, almost apricot; very feminine, very alluring as it clung to her tall stately figure. Her rich auburn hair flowed loosely to her shoulders, catching the light from the chandelier with a coppery glow. She looked tired, but her face was almost unlined, her green eyes clear and not as suspicious as the last time they had met.

Gesturing to the settee, Jane said with a slight smile, “I made certain that your favorite brand of Armagnac was brought here.”

“You should try it.” Dan smiled back.

“All right. I think I will.”

They sat side by side on the settee and Jane allowed him to pour a splash of Armagnac into each of the snifters.

“It looks like you’ve got some troubles tonight,” Dan said.

“The picketers? They’re here every night. Usually the police clear them out by midnight. They’re running a little late tonight.”

“Do you think you’ll be reelected?” Dan asked.

“I expect to be.”

He raised his glass to her. “Well, here’s to victory in November, then.”

She nodded once, then sipped at the brandy. Dan took a good swig of his, and let it slide down his throat, smooth and warm.

“The Russians stole your ship,” Jane said, with no preliminaries.

“Yes, but I got my men back.”

“You did lead the raid on Lunagrad yourself.” It was not a question.

He grinned boyishly. “Yes, I did.”

“That was a very courageous thing to do. Foolish, but courageous.”

“I got them into the pickle they were in; it was my responsibility to get them out.”

Jane leaned back in the settee and swirled the liqueur in her glass. “But the Russians still have your ship, and they’re going to claim in the World Court that you’ve endangered the whole world by altering the orbit of that asteroid.”

With a little laugh, Dan said, “They can claim whatever they like. By the time the World Court takes up the case, the asteroid will be in a permanent orbit around the Earth, no more dangerous to us than the Moon is.”

“Unless the Russians alter that orbit.”

Dan hesitated a moment. “Why would they … Oh, sure, I can see why. To discredit me. But they can’t push the asteroid into a trajectory that’ll impact the Earth. It’d be like dropping a hundred H-bombs on the area where it hits.”

“They could drop it into the ocean, couldn’t they?”

“I suppose so,” Dan mused. “What have you heard? Are they up to something?”

The President shook her head. “My scenario analysts have been playing with their computers. The chances that the Russians would push the asteroid into an Earth impact are very small-less than five percent.”

Dan waited for the other shoe to drop.

“But if they do it,” Jane continued, “the chances that they will aim the asteroid at an American city are better than fifty percent.”

“That’s crazy!” Dan snapped.

“Is it? Suppose the asteroid hits New York, or even Washington? What effect would that have on the World

Court? Or on world opinion? Where do you think Dan Randolph could hide from the lynch mobs?”

Dan reached for his snifter and took another long swallow of Armagnac. “Do you have any evidence that the Russians are planning to do this?”

“None whatsoever. But they could, any time they choose to.”

“It doesn’t make sense.”