A strong woman, Cameron thought. Going through what she had gone through and still managing to keep her cool and not fall apart. Guilloux had indeed been a lucky man.
Cameron got up. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“Please be careful.”
Cameron smiled and left the room.
On the second floor, Higgins picked up the phone and stared out the window. “Higgins here.”
“Hello, sir. Rich Potter here. Sorry to disturb you.
“Don’t worry about it. What’s wrong?”
“I might have a problem with one of my operatives. I’m not sure yet.”
“Go on.”
“The name’s Stone — Cameron Stone. He contacted me a few minutes ago and requested immediate cauterization,” Potter said, referring to the recovery of compromised agents.
“His reason?”
“He claims there’s an organization set out to sabotage NASA. Says it’s going to destroy the new shuttle, to be more specific. He also thinks the French police might be involved.”
Higgins inhaled and closed his eyes. He struggled to remain in control. “Did he set a pickup location?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Very well then, bring him in and keep him well guarded. Let me know what he has to say. Got that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. When and where?”
“Botanical Gardens, five P.M. today. That’s an hour from now.”
“I’ll be here. Call me when it’s done, and remember. No mention of this to anyone else.”
“I know, sir. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye, and good luck.” He hung up and pressed a fist against his jaw. Damn! How can it be? How did Stone get that information?
Higgins grabbed the phone and dialed a foreign number he had committed to memory.
Cameron stood next to the window and looked out. The sky was becoming dark and overcast, indicating an impending storm. He inspected the street below. All appeared normal. He checked his watch. An hour before the meeting.
“So, Cameron, you seem to know quite a bit about me. What’s your story?”
Cameron looked at Marie, still lying on the bed. “I’m not sure you want to hear it. It’s pretty boring.”
“It’s okay. Go ahead.”
Cameron smiled. “It all started when I graduated high school and left for the war.”
“Vietnam?”
“Yep. Spent four years there.”
“Why four? I thought you were only required to do one year.”
“True, but after my first tour I went home to find out that there were no jobs. The American people weren’t that sympathetic to soldiers in those days. So I went back, and remained in the military after the war. I was with the Special Forces for a few years before the CIA snatched me, and here I am today.”
Marie sat up and hugged her knees close like a child. “With all that activity going on I guess a private life was out of the question.”
Cameron didn’t respond. He lowered his gaze as the image of Lan-Anh’s charred body filled his mind. “There was someone once. It was a long time ago. I was only a kid. Had just turned twenty. Her name was Lan-Anh. She was killed in Saigon.
Marie left the bed and came to him. Touching his arm gently she said, “I’m sorry.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry about. Like I said, it happened a long time ago.”
“Cameron…”
He lifted his eyes and met hers.
“What was it really like over there?” she asked
He looked away. “You don’t want to know.”
“I lost a brother over there, Cameron. Yes, I want to know.”
Cameron sat against the window sill and stared at Marie. Who are you, Marie Guilloux? What is happening to us? Cameron tried to suppress feelings he had not felt for years. He had felt physical attraction from the day he saw her. But this went deeper than that. He felt comfortable in her presence. He trusted her. She was not just another pretty face but a woman of substance.
Very well, Marie. You asked for it. Cameron began to speak. His voice was ice cold, his words strong. He told her about the pain, the frustration, the sorrow. He explained to her how young soldiers had died useless deaths mainly because of lack of training. Gunfire would erupt and they would just freeze and fall on their faces seconds later, filled with lead. It was madness. Then his tone changed. He dropped his voice by a few decibels and began to speak in between deep breaths. His fists were tight. His body rigid. He was back. The jungle surrounded him. Go, Cameron. Make a run… for it. You have a chance… by yourself. Get help… and come back… God, why did I leave him? But I did come back. I did! But too late. The Vietcong had gutted Skergan like and animal and left him hanging from a tree.
His mind was too cloudy to continue. His words became incoherent. Cameron turned to stare out the window, embarrassed, guilty, unable to face her. Marie was the first person he’d ever told the story.
He felt her hands on his shoulder, her fingers gently pressing. They reached his neck and massaged it. Cameron closed his eyes for a few moments, feeling his body relax.
“It’s all right, Cameron. It’s all right.”
Cameron turned around and stared into her eyes. He saw tears, felt mesmerized by her. She understood the way he felt. She understood his pain.
“Thank you,” he said.
“No. Thank you.”
The long and narrow conference room, built to accommodate the large table covering most of the marble floor, had all of its windows facing the city’s skyline. It fit his image of a world leader’s center of government, noted Frederick Vanderhoff as he scanned the occupants of fifteen of the forty black leather chairs that followed the contour of the oval-shaped mahogany table. The men present that afternoon formed his inner circle, a handful of visionaries who, like Vanderhoff, were among the most powerful financial leaders of the European Economic Community. He considered them the backbone of the EEC’s space agency, Athena, and the only ones willing to risk what it would take to make Europe the leader in space by the end of the century.
But Vanderhoff was more than just an investor. He had started as a scientist with a nose for good business ventures during the seventies and eighties, when he’d made his fortune by using his engineering talents to help develop weapons like the Armbrust man-portable anti-tank system, along with a variety of Heckler & Koch light weapons. He’d then used his negotiating skills and factory contacts to arrange sales of weapons to a number of Middle Eastern, South American, and African countries.
Vanderhoff glanced at an empty seat to his left, the one that had belonged to rocket scientist Claude Guilloux. Although very bright technically, Guilloux had lacked the commitment and resolve needed to achieve Vanderhoff’s vision for the European space community.
After the Challenger disaster, the EEC had invested billions of dollars to modernize Athena’s launching facility in Kourou, French Guiana, and to improve the quality of its rockets. With the large amount of capital available, Vanderhoff had hired the best scientific minds in Europe to design an improved launch vehicle with advanced guidance systems and capable of multi-satellite deployment on a single mission. The end result was the Athena V, a three-stage, 130-foot tall rocket capable of carrying single payloads into geosynchronous orbit or multiple payloads into low Earth orbit. Seven years after its debut, fifty Athena Vs had been launched without a single malfunction, establishing the European space agency’s credibility. With fees of sixty million dollars per low orbit launch and a hundred million per geosynchronous orbit launch, Vanderhoff and his ring of investors had collected a hundredfold on their original investment, and in the process had provided the European economy with an overnight boom in state-of-the-art industries manufacturing everything from satellites to computers for Athena’s rockets.