Starman (2 page)

“It’s right where Arcebio said it would be.”

“Crazy.” Two more dots came to yellow life, extending the line still further. If the line kept growing it would soon intersect the irregular red line on the left-hand side of the screen. That would be very significant, because the red line indicated the coastline of the state of Washington.

Other men and women glanced over from their positions in front of smaller, console-mounted screens. They badly wanted to join Matthews and Ford but could not leave their own posts. A third figure who was not constrained by such considerations joined the first two in eying the screen. He was short, old, and didn’t have much hair left. Instead of hair, an aura of power clung to him.

“What do you think, gendemen?” he finally asked Matthews and Ford. “Is she Soviet?”

Ford considered. “Possible. North Pacific origin, high-level atmospheric entry, radical angle of descent, and it’s up there all by its lonesome. Maybe they’re probing us with a dud to see if they can slip one through.”

“ICBM?”

Matthews shook his head. “That’s what’s crazy, sir. It’s moving much too slowly. I don’t figure it at all. What’s more, it appears to vary its speed.”

“What about a variable-orbit reconnaissance satellite?”

“If so, it’s full of stuff we’ve never heard of. I’ve never seen anything behave like this before. Weird.”

“I don’t need weird. I need what it is.”

“No can say, sir,” Ford told him.

“But it’s definitely not ours?”

Both men shook their heads. “Not unless some agency’s running one hell of a clever test,” Ford added.

“No, it’s no test,” said their superior. He watched the screen in silence. Another yellow light appeared, crossing the red coastline. That was enough. He turned, crossed to a desk, and picked up a telephone. He didn’t have to dial the number he wanted. The phone had no dial. But everyone in the room watched him anyway. No one spoke.

“Beautiful night, George.” The general was in an ebullient mood and not at all adverse to letting his fellow concert-goers know it.

George Fox, the director of the National Security Agency, smiled back at his friend, took a sip of his martini, and gazed out across the Potomac. There were only five minutes of intermission remaining. He was going to have to hurry the martini if he wanted to finish it. That was a shame, because he was enjoying the relaxed evening. For a change, the world tonight was a relatively peaceful place. The Mozart had soothed him and he was looking forward to the stimulating Janaček to come.

He could simply dispose of the remainder of his drink, but that would be painful. He hated waste. It was one reason why he’d risen as high within the government as he had.

“Yes, it is pretty out,” he agreed. “How’re the kids?”

The general shrugged. “Same. I’m trying to wean Debbie away from M-TV. She’s sixteen.”

The naval flag officer who formed the third member of the triumvirate commiserated with his colleague. “That’s going to be tough. You know, for the price of one guided-missile frigate we could beam the stuff to every household in Russia. End the cold war inside a month.”

“Not a bad idea,” the general admitted. “Think they’d accept Michael Jackson as the new tsar?” Both men laughed quietly. Fox did not. He didn’t laugh much.

The out-of-breath lieutenant finally spotted them standing on the outside promenade, turned toward them. He was trying to move quickly through the crowd without attracting attention.

“Mister Director?”

Fox turned to the newcomer. He betrayed only the slightest hint of the irritation he felt. He had this sinking feeling he wasn’t going to be allowed to enjoy the rest of the concert.

“Yes?” The lieutenant handed him a manila envelope. Fox slipped the seal and studied the message contained within. As was the nature of such communiqués it was brief, to the point, and full of implications. He read it over a second time before slipping it back into the envelope. The two senior military officers standing nearby studiously diverted their attention elsewhere.

The general did his best to sound casual. “Something important, George?”

Fox replied with a thin smile. “I don’t think so, but you know how these things are. Somebody else does, and so I’m stuck with soothing frazzled nerves. It comes with the territory. Let me know how the rest of the concert went, will you?”

The naval officer nodded sympathetically. “Sure, George.”

Both men watched as their companion turned and walked rapidly toward the nearest stairway.

“What do you suppose that was all about?” the general wondered aloud.

His colleague shrugged. “Like he said, it’s probably the usual much ado about nothing.”

“Yeah.” The general was silent a moment, then added, “I wouldn’t have his job for all the diamonds in South Africa.”

The corridor was spotlessly clean and well lit by numerous overhead fluorescents. Doors were identified only by numbers. There were no windows. Fox and his assistant walked briskly, ignoring the occasional passing pedestrian.

“Sounds like Russian space-garbage to me, Brayton. If it was an accidental launching we’d have heard from them pronto, and if it was deliberate we’d know by now. Our sources aren’t that bad. So it’s got to be their junk.”

“The Molink people say no.” Brayton was thoughtful, precise, and not particularly imaginative. Fox found him very useful.

“What does the Kremlin say about it?”

“Naz drovya
and how’s the weather out your way? They don’t know from nothin’.”

Fox grunted. “If it is theirs they might have plenty of reasons for not wanting to claim it. If the Molink people still say it ain’t and if it’s still behaving as erratically as it was when we first picked it up, it could still qualify as some new kind of surveillance job. Or it might be another worn-out military satellite with its reactor intact, like the one that came apart over Canada a few years back. If either case is true, our Soviet friends will declare their innocence until we can slap some hard evidence in their faces.”

They reached the end of the corridor and pushed through the door at the far end. Beyond lay an auditorium alive with teletypes, oversized video screens, monitoring consoles and mildly frantic attendant personnel. Brayton and Fox headed straight for a center console around which several NSA people were clustered. One of the group noticed their approach and informed the others of the director’s presence.

“What’ve we got?” Fox asked curtly.

“Bunch of F-16s from McCord picked it up over the mountains, sir,” the man informed him. “It didn’t respond to multiple hailings. They tried calling it on all the standard frequencies. No response. Went right over the Trident sub base at Bremerton and at that point the local brass went through the roof. A couple of the fighters made a pass at it without getting a look-see—it was going too fast—but they claim they got a hit.”

“They would. Independent confirmation?”

“No apparent damage, so nobody knows yet if the pilots were lucky or just guessing, but whatever the reason, we’ve got another change of course.”

Fox’s eyebrows rose. Next to him Brayton mumbled, “Space-garbage doesn’t change course once it hits lower atmosphere.” His boss ignored him.

The operative turned back to the console, studied the constantly changing readouts. “Got a new estimated point of impact.” He looked up, gestured toward a map of the United States outlined in glowing colors on the big screen that dominated one wall of the auditorium. “Northern Wisconsin someplace.”

“Crap,” Fox muttered, staring at the electronic map. “If it lands in one of those big lakes up there we’ll never find it.” He said almost offhandedly to Brayton, “Get ahold of Mark Shermin.”

The image on the television screen in the apartment living room was oversized, as was the player dribbling the basketball. Crowd noises spilled out of the stereo speakers and filled the room. The play-by-play announcer was barely audible above the roar of the fans:

“. . . and the score is New Jersey one-oh-one, the Washington Bullets one hundred. If Ruland can hit these two free throws that’ll be five in a row at home for the Bullets!”

There was nothing remarkable about the appearance of the man who walked into the living room. What marked him as unusual was not visible. He had a mind of exceptional depth and was particularly noted for an ability to assimilate reams of seemingly unconnected facts and reduce them to one or two simple, obvious conclusions that everyone else wondered why they hadn’t seen in the first place.

Right now that mind was wondering whether or not Jeff Ruland, one of the better free-throw shooters in the NBA for a big man, was going to crack under the pressure of having to make a pair of potentially game-winning charity tosses.

Mark Shermin used his right forearm to sweep his desk clear of debris. He had to do it that way because both hands were full: one with a sloppy sandwich on old french bread and the other with a bottle of beer. The beer was Hinano Export. He got an occasional case from a friend whose job it was to fly blackbirds over the French National atomic-testing site at Muroroa Atoll in the South Pacific.

As he sat down the swept-away papers went flying. Some of them were marked in bold stenciled letters
SECRET
and
CONFIDENTIAL
. Shermin’s casual treatment of them made sense if one realized that only a few people in the world could make up or down of their contents. His cleaning lady wasn’t among that small elite.

His attention was focused on the screen as he took a mouthful of sandwich and a swig of beer. Meat sauce trickled down his chin. He wiped it away with the back of one hand.

Ruland made the first free throw, tying the score. The crowd went wild. When he missed the second, thereby sending the game into overtime, a collective groan issued from the speaker. Shermin added his own opinion and started in seriously on the sandwich.

The damnphone rang. Always to Shermin it was the damnphone; never the damn phone. It continued to ring, insistent, demanding, like an electronic mistress. Eyes still locked on the TV he growled softly and picked up the receiver.

“Call back in twenty minutes, I’m . . .”

Whoever was on the other end managed to slip a word in before Shermin could break the connection. He made a face, reached for the remote control and muted the sound on the TV. Not many callers could make him do that. Not with the Bullets heading into overtime.

“Yes sir? What? Sure, no problem. No, I was just watching the Bullets’ game. Overtime. Yeah, I’m sorry too. Chequamegon Bay? Where the hell’s that, up near Baltimore? Wisconsin?” He sighed, set the sandwich aside. “Yes sir, whatever you say, sir.”

He hung up, sat thinking for a long moment. Then he turned the sound back up. Whatever it was could wait a few minutes longer. It couldn’t possibly be as important as the outcome of the game.

The cabin was small and contemporary, woodsy without being primitive, cozy but not cramped. It fit the young woman in her twenties who was sitting in the middle of the living-room floor. Her name was Jenny Hayden and she was equally engrossed in the home movies unspooling on the screen in front of her and the bottle of wine she was drinking. The bottle was nearly empty and Jenny Hayden was more than full. But she kept watching and she kept drinking because she didn’t know how to stop doing either.

The picture on the screen was grainy but the bay outside the cabin was easily recognizable. The camera was watching a man only slightly older than Jenny herself. He was paddling toward the camera in a canoe, mouthing amiable inanities as he approached.

Suddenly he stood up, turned his back toward the camera, pulled down his pants, and bent over. This complex maneuver proving too much for his sense of balance, if not his sense of humor, he promptly went overboard, waving his arms wildly as he went into the lake.

The camera searched the empty surface when without warning a face erupted in front of it and spat a mouthful of water straight into the lens. This was followed by a cockeyed, if somehow endearing, grin.

Jenny watched silently until the screen turned white. The trailer ran through the projector gate and began to flap repeatedly against the takeup reel. She was blinking away tears by the time she shut off the machine. The light faded, along with something less immediately visible. Putting the heels of both hands against her eyes, she pushed firmly and rubbed in opposite directions. Then she clasped her arms across her chest and drew in a deep, shuddery breath.

As she stumbled toward the bedroom she fought to convince herself that she hadn’t done anything as immature as having gotten drunk. Her depression was due not to excessive consumption of alcohol but to the loss of something deeply felt. As yet she wasn’t sure whether watching the movies again had been a good idea or not. The wine muddled both her thoughts and her emotions, which was just as well for her peace of mind.

She closed the bedroom door behind her more out of habit than necessity, crossed to the bed. A bottle of sleeping tablets waited on the nightstand. She dumped a couple into her left hand and found herself hesitating, staring at the bottle. The thought passed quickly. She put the bottle back on the table, screwing the cap back in place with careful deliberation.

The pills went down without a chaser. The wine was too tempting. Besides, she wasn’t thirsty anymore. She staggered a little as she wrestled her jeans off and flopped down onto the bed. She started to remove her sweater, wondered why she was bothering, and fell back on the sheets. Consciousness fled with blissful speed.

Far out on the lake a loon cried out uncertainly. There were uncomfortable rustlings in the reeds and bushes when a sudden, unnatural breeze sprang up around them. Owls raced for the safety of their trees while nocturnal gatherers sprinted for their burrows. Something fast and white-hot was streaking across the sky, heading for the forest.

It came in low over the treetops, tumbling unsteadily. It went through the first trees as though they were made of papier-mâché, igniting the tops of those it merely brushed while incinerating the ones it struck head-on.