“No previous or intermediate employment listed?”
“None,” said Harry Meade, suddenly uncertain of the facts he knew to be accurate. “Just a date of birth.”
Sir Derek daintily nipped at his drink. Harry Meade imagined the warmth of the brandy bathing his own tongue and throat.
“Chakra is very concerned about O’Donnell,” said Sir Derek. “It seems that no one knows his purpose on the station. He has been given his own lab in the American module, which he keeps locked at all times. And he appears to be at odds with the American Trikon personnel. In fact, his only friend seems to be the station commander.”
“Doesn’t Roberts know anything?” Meade asked.
“Roberts?” said Sir Derek. “Oh yes, the gullible young man who has fallen into Chakra’s clutches. Even he doesn’t know anything, and he is supposedly O’Donnell’s technician.”
“Maybe O’Donnell isn’t a spy,” said Meade.
Sir Derek treated the comment as if it did not deserve acknowledgment. He finished his brandy and returned to the bar for a second tiny shot.
“How rude of me,” he muttered. He placed a paper cup beside his snifter and poured in an equal amount.
“Chakra has a lead,” said Sir Derek as he handed the paper cup to Harry. “Two to be exact. A Los Angeles lawyer with the inappropriate name of Pancho Weinstein and a woman named Stacey. She is O’Donnell’s ex-girlfriend and is apparently in league with the lawyer against him.”
The thick smell of brandy wafted past Harry Meade’s nose. He knew it was impolite to drink before Sir Derek invited him.
“O’Donnell is aloof,” said Sir Derek, leaning comfortably back in the couch. “Chakra needs to know something about him, preferably something personal. We all know how persuasive Chakra can be when he knows a person’s secrets.”
Meade shuddered; he knew only too well.
Sir Derek abruptly raised his crystal snifter.
“To Trikon,” he said. “The finest multinational effort Great Britain never joined.”
Meade muttered in assent and knocked back his tiny shot in one gulp. The matter was settled. It was his job to invade O’Donnell’s personal life.
Sir Derek flicked the button of the intercom located in the armrest of his couch.
“Turn around. Heathrow.”
The Corniche immediately decelerated, made a sweeping turn to the right, and resumed cruising speed.
“I hope you are not wearing long underwear,” Sir Derek said to Meade. “You are leaving for Southern California.”
In the dead middle of the sleep shift, Dan Tighe followed the dancing circle of a flashlight through the darkened rumpus room. Near the back wall, not far from the bonsai, Russell Cramer bobbed rhythmically in a sleep restraint. His wrists and ankles still were bound by duct tape and he had been drugged into bovine placidity by Lorraine Renoir.
Lorraine. Dan could not think of her without his stomach tightening. She was the exact opposite of his ex-wife: well groomed, subdued, coolly efficient in her approach to life’s routines. He had been attracted to her from the moment they had met at the Cape. But he kept his feelings hidden, like the embers of a campfire at dawn. His bitter divorce and the aftermath of constant bickering had left him uncertain of his ability to understand the female psyche. He denied the signs of mutual attraction and retreated behind his mantle of authority whenever she threatened personal contact.
Now he was disturbed by the memory of Lorraine and Kurt Jaeckle casting sidelong glances at each other while he questioned them about Russell Cramer. Obviously, they shared much more than knowledge of Cramer’s gathering madness. Something passed between them right before his very eyes. Dan felt trapped in a funny little box of his own creation. How could he undo six months of rejecting her without looking like a petulant child?
Dan rolled up one of Cramer’s sleeves and trained the flashlight on the inside of his elbow. Despite his wide hips, Cramer had thin arms with remarkably prominent veins. Dan pulled a syringe out of his pocket and, holding the flashlight with his mouth, attached a fresh needle from an antiseptic wrapper. He stuck a vein on his first try. Cramer moaned softly in his sleep. Dan drew out ten cc’s of blood, then carefully removed the needle. A thread of blood spun in the beam of the flashlight. He blotted it with a piece of gauze and pressed an adhesive bandage to the hole in Cramer’s vein before rolling down the sleeve.
Dan sailed toward the connecting tunnel, wondering whom the hell he could trust to analyze Cramer’s blood.
28 AUGUST 1998
ATLANTA
The space probe Magellan, launched by NASA in May, 1989, was principally devoted to studying the surface geology of Venus. Its findings, however, suggested a dismal future for Planet Earth unless physical processes already set in motion can be reversed.
Although they are astronomical twins, Earth and Venus are environmental opposites. The atmosphere of Venus, composed of carbon dioxide (96%), nitrogen (3%), and trace amounts of other gases such as sulfur dioxide, is completely inhospitable to life. Earth’s atmosphere, of course, is composed of nitrogen (79%), oxygen (20%), and less than 1% of carbon dioxide, water vapor, and other trace gases.
Most astronomers agree that the atmospheres of both planets were once composed of carbon dioxide, water vapor, and nitrogen. The condensation of Earth’s water vapor dissolved the atmospheric carbon dioxide and trapped it in carbonate rocks. As a result, the proportion of oxygen increased to a level capable of sustaining life. Prior to the Magellan Project, the accepted view was that Venus’s proximity to the sun prevented condensation of water vapor and the planet remained a “hothouse” of carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide. Magellan has forced a reassessment of this view.
Geological data now suggests that significant amounts of water once existed on the surface of Venus. Therefore, Venus—with its surface temperatures of nearly 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit, atmospheric pressures 90 times that of Earth, and perpetual, dense cloud cover—does not represent a divergent development but a continuation of processes already occurring on Earth.
The small decade-by-decade increases in the amount of carbon dioxide and sulfuric acid (acid rain) in Earth’s atmosphere must be corrected. // not, there is little doubt that Earth may one day become the environmental twin of Venus.
“Aaron, Aaron.” Ed Yablon smacked his forehead with the palm of his hand, sending a crack through the cold dry air of his office. He swiveled his chair so that he faced the window, turning his back to Aaron Weiss. Twilight steamed over Atlanta. A thin band of dirty orange was all that remained of sunset. Ghostly hulks of skyscrapers were dappled with yellow office lights.
Yablon could see the reflection of his own office in the tinted glass of the window. His cigar stub glowed weakly, like the sun through fog. Weiss paced on the far side of Yablon’s desk like a cat contemplating a leap from a ledge. He twirled his Donegal walking hat from hand to hand. Beyond Weiss, Zeke Tucker was wedged into the only section of couch not littered with papers and boxes. Yablon couldn’t understand how the equable cameraman had tolerated Weiss for seventeen years. He himself had been the reporter’s bureau chief for a mere three and he was certain the experience would launch him toward early retirement, if not a coronary.
“You like the whale story,” said Weiss. He sailed his hat toward a coat rack where a faded cardigan sweater dangled limply. The hat bounced between two hooks, then landed on Tucker’s lap. Tucker brushed it to the floor.