The Switch (3 page)
"I want details," Gillian called back to her as she climbed into her car. "The nitty-gritty."
"Promise. I'll call you as soon as I get home."
A strong wind blew across the desert floor, lifting sand and using it to scour the face of the mountain before scattering it among the scrub brush. At the peak where the air was thinner and cooler, the same wind made castanets of the saffron-colored leaves of aspen trees.
The compound, situated in the midst of the aspen grove, blended so well into its setting that it was almost invisible to motorists on the highway that snaked across the desert floor miles below. The buildings were constructed of granite that had been handpicked and imported from Scotland. The rivers of color streaking through its basic gray background perfectly matched the dun and ocher and sienna hues of the surrounding landscape.
The shaded terrace on the third level of the central building served as an outdoor temple for the one presently at prayer. His knees were cushioned by a maroon velvet pillow that was elaborately embroidered. The gold and silver metallic threads glittered in the sunlight that filtered through the trees.
The cushion had been a gift to him from an admirer. It was said to have been brought from Russia by emigrants at the turn of the last century. A family heirloom, it had been the gift-giver's prized possession, and, as such, a supreme sacrifice, an enormous tribute to the one to whom she had given it.
His head was bowed. His thick blond hair appeared almost white, silky in texture, angelic. His eyes were closed. His lips formed silent words of supplication. His hands were folded beneath his chin. He seemed the epitome of piety. God-touched. God-blessed. God-sanctioned.
He wasn't.
A man wearing a severely tailored dark suit emerged from the wide glass door separating the terrace from the vast room inside. Without making a sound, he approached the man at prayer and laid a sheet of paper beside his kneeling form, tucking the corner of it beneath the velvet cushion to prevent it from being swept away by the wind. Then he withdrew just as noiselessly as he had approached.
The man at prayer suspended his petitions to the sky, picked up the note, and saw that it had been stamped with the day and time. Today. Less than an hour ago.
As he read the typed message, a slow smile spread across his handsome features. His long, tapered hands pressed the note against his chest as though its value to him were inestimable. He closed his eyes again. Seemingly enraptured, he angled his face toward the sun.
He didn't invoke God's name, however. Instead, the name he whispered reverently was "Gillian Lloyd."
CHAPTER 2
As unobtrusively as possible, Colonel Christopher Hart checked his wristwatch. But apparently he wasn't as subtle as he had hoped to be. George Abbott, one of the men seated across from him, leaned forward. "More coffee? Or maybe something stronger this round?"
Christopher—or Chief, as he'd been nicknamed by his NASA cohorts—smiled and shook his head. "No, thanks. There's a press conference prior to the banquet tonight. I need to keep a clear head."
"We won't detain you much longer."
This came from Dexter Longtree, a man of few words, who'd left most of the talking to his partner. Longtree's voice was as smooth and cool as polished rock, and it seemed to land on them with as much dead weight. His smile looked forced and out of place on such a stern, sunburned face. The smile was a jarring misfit with the webwork of lines around his deep-set eyes and the parenthetical furrows on either side of his thin, wide mouth. Only his lips were involved in the smile, and they seemed unnaturally stretched.
Since the meeting began, almost an hour earlier, Longtree hadn't moved except to stir a packet of sweetener into his coffee and then to periodically lift the dainty china cup to his mouth. His rough dark hand appeared capable of crushing the cup and saucer with one moderate squeeze. When he wasn't sipping from his cup, his hands were planted solidly on the tops of his thighs.
Abbott, on the other hand, fidgeted constantly. He'd removed the drinking straw from his glass of iced tea and had reshaped it a dozen times or more, finally tying it into a knot. He fiddled with the matchbook in the clean, empty ashtray. He continually repositioned himself in his seat as though experiencing a hemorrhoidal flare-up. He jiggled his knee. And, unlike Longtree, he was all smiles.
Longtree was forbidding. Abbott was ingratiating. It was a toss-up which of the two Chief mistrusted more.
Wishing to conclude the meeting, he said, "I appreciate your interest, gentlemen. You've left me with a lot to think about."
Abbott cleared his throat nervously. "What we'd hoped, Colonel, was that you could give us something to take back."
"Today?" Chief exclaimed. "You want an answer now?"
"Not anything definitive," Abbott rushed to clarify. "Just an inkling, so to speak, of what your final decision might be."
"That's unrealistic." Chief looked at Dexter Longtree, whose gaze remained implacable. "My retirement from NASA won't be official for another few months, and what I'll do then remains a mystery even to me." He forced a laugh. "I'm not even sure where I'll be living."
"Well, naturally we'd love for you to relocate to your home state of New Mexico," Abbott said in a voice that was too boisterous for the sedate cocktail lounge. "You grew up in New Mexico. We still claim you."
"Thank you," Chief said tersely. His memories of childhood weren't all happy.
"We'll be headquartered in Santa Fe. It would be convenient if you lived nearby."
"Convenient but not necessary," Longtree intoned.
"No, of course not," Abbott concurred. He was a toady who deferred to Longtree on every point. "What Dexter is saying, Colonel, is that with this job, you'd have a lot of freedom to do other things. You'd be able to pursue your own interests—so long as they didn't conflict with ours, of course. It'd be a win-win situation for everybody. Simple as that." He sounded like a used car salesman trying to close a sale, and his toothy grin was just as untrustworthy.
"I'm afraid it isn't at all that simple, Mr. Abbott."
Longtree spoke again, his voice reminding Chief of a snake moving through still water. "Colonel Hart, I sense you have some reservations."
"No pun intended," Abbott chortled.
He was the only one who laughed at his lame joke. Chief's eyes remained on Dexter Longtree, and neither of them smiled.
"I do have some reservations, yes."
"About the organization?"
Chief took his time in answering. He didn't want to offend them, although Chief Dexter Longtree was intimidating. A Jicarilla Apache, he wore waist-length braids that lay like twin plaits of black silk against the lapels of his suit jacket. Except for the occasional blink, he could have been mistaken for a bronze statue in a southwestern art museum. On the other hand, Chief had served under imperious military commanders who could probably curl Longtree's braids.
In response to his question, Chief replied, "My concerns aren't specifically about your proposed NAA."
Native American Advocacy was the name of the group they planned to charter. According to the formal proposal they had sent Chief in advance of this meeting, NAA's services would be available to any tribe or reservation that needed help having its needs met. Those services would run the gamut from legal representation to fund-raising to lobbying for or against congressional bills that would directly affect Native Americans.
The lawyers and other professionals from whom they had already received commitments had agreed to participate without salary on an as-needed basis. NAA was offering Chief
an annual retainer to serve as their point man, their official spokesperson to the media and in Washington.
Budgetary considerations aside, his initial reaction was to decline not with a mere No, but with a definitive Hell, no. Remaining as noncommittal as possible, he said, "I've
heard and read things that I find greatly disturbing." "Such as?"
"Such as a few Native Americans getting rich off mineral rights, gambling casinos, and other profit centers on the reservations, while many continue to live well below the national poverty level. The wealth isn't evenly distributed.
Sometimes it isn't distributed at all. That bothers me. A lot."
Abbott pounced on that. "All the more reason for you to get
involved. You could make a difference. Change things. That's our goal, too."
Chief turned to the hyperactive man. "Aren't there already
other organizations that provide similar services?"
"Yes, and they're good. But we hope to be better. The best. You would make us distinctive."
"Why me?"
"Because you're a national hero, the first Native American astronaut. You've walked in space!"
"Which doesn't qualify me to be anybody's advocate."
"On the contrary, Colonel Hart. When you speak, people
listen. Particularly the ladies," Abbott added with an offensive wink.
Hart looked at him and shook his head in dismay.
"You'd be willing to sign me up before you even know what I'd say in a given forum? Don't my political leanings enter anywhere into
your thinking? You haven't even asked me what my personal
p
hilosophy is."
"But—"
Longtree halted Abbott's rebuttal simply by raising his hand. The other man fell immediately silent. "Let Mr. Hart say what's on his mind, George."
"Thank you."
Further discussions would be pointless because he'd already made up his mind. They'd just as well know that now. "Before I affiliated myself with any self-appointed public service group or organization, I would have to be convinced first that their interest wasn't self-serving. Secondly, I would have to be convinced that the group was interested in me the man. Not me the Indian."
A long silence ensued.
Finally it was broken by Longtree. "Do you disavow your heritage?"
"I couldn't, even if I wanted to. My nickname comes from it. But I've never exploited my Indian blood, either. I wouldn't accept any position where my qualifications are based strictly on my lineage."
Again Abbott laughed nervously. "It's a tremendous advantage to us that you're a descendant of Quanah Parker." "Who was half white."
Abbott had no comeback for that. After another awkward silence, Longtree apparently saw the benefit to beating a timely retreat. He came to his feet, and Chief was suddenly cognizant of how short he was. His demeanor had made him seem much taller than he actually was.
He said, "We've given Colonel Hart enough to think about for one afternoon, George. He has an important banquet to attend this evening."
Chief also stood up. Abbott looked confused, as though there'd been a last-minute change in the program and they'd failed to alert him to it. Finally he stood with them.
"I appreciate the vote of confidence," Chief said as he extended his hand to Longtree. "I'm flattered by the offer. But I'm not ready to commit to anything yet."
"Then it's our job to see that you get ready to commit." He squeezed Chief's hand once, quick and hard, then released it."Would you agree to meet us tomorrow morning so we can continue this discussion?"
"I was planning on returning to Houston fairly early."
"We're early risers. You name the time and place."
Actually, there was nothing else to discuss. Chief had known what his answer would be even before this meeting. He'd agreed to it merely as a courtesy. Listening to their pitch hadn't changed his mind. Longtree looked prosperous, not like an Indian who was barely scraping out a living on the reservation, not like someone who'd be going to bat for the underdog and trying to right all the wrongs heaped on the Indian nations. But the cagey bastard wasn't giving him a graceful way out of a breakfast meeting.
"Oh nine hundred?" Chief asked with military briskness. "Over breakfast here in The Promenade?"
"We'll see you then," the Apache replied. Abbott quickly shook Chief's hand, then trotted after Longtree as he strode from the bar.
Other happy hour patrons had turned to stare. Dexter Longtree cut a distinctive figure, but he didn't exactly blend into the well-heeled crowd of The Mansion's elegant lounge, especially with the beaded and fringed breechcloth he'd worn over his trousers.
"Is he an actor or something?"
Chief turned to the cocktail waitress who had sidled up to him and posed the question. "No, he's the genuine article."
"Really? Wow." Once Abbott and Longtree were out of sight, she smiled up at Chief. "Is there anything else I can get you, Mr. Hart?"
"Not right now, thanks."
"Then I hope you'll drop in again before you leave us." "Maybe I'll come in for a nightcap."
"I'll look forward to it."
He was accustomed to flirtations. He had received shameless propositions through the mail, sometimes with X-rated photos enclosed. He'd had room numbers scrawled on cock tail napkins in hotel bars across the country. And once, during a formal dinner at the White House, a woman had pressed a pair of panties into his palm as they shook hands.