Hot Sky at Midnight

26

davidov said, “we will plant one of the bombs on each spoke, seven in all, each within five hundred meters of the hub. Which is six bombs more than we really need, but redundancy is the key to the success of this enterprise. I have no doubt that the Generalissimo’s counterintelligence is capable of finding two or three of the explosive caches, but finding all seven within the time allotted would probably be beyond anybody’s capabilities. Besides, we want them to find one or two.”

“Why is that?” Carpenter asked.

“To show them that we’re serious,” Davidov said, giving him a bland sunny smile, as though Carpenter were a child.

They were in a small, unpretentious hotel room in the town of Concepci6n, on B Spoke of Valparaiso Nuevo: Davidov, Carpenter, Enron, Jolanda, Farkas. The five of them had come up in installments from Los Angeles over a period of several days, first Davidov, then Farkas in a two-hop move to Kyocera’s research satellite Cornucopia before coming here, then Enron and Jolanda. Carpenter had been the last to arrive, traveling by himself, an innocent research aide officially listed as a Kyocera employee through some hocus-pocus Farkas had arranged. It was about two hours since he had cleared customs at the hub terminal, using a courier named Nattathaniel, also arranged for by Farkas, to shepherd him through.

Enron, sitting on the far side of the room from the others, frowned into his drink It had been a mistake, he had felt from the start, for Farkas to have brought this man Carpenter into the operation, and Carpenter’s naive question now only confirmed Enron’s opinion of him. It was hard to believe that Farkas was capable of such stupidity. Not only was Carpenter a Jonah dogged by bad luck—a loser, a bird of ill omen, dangerous to be around—but he was a fool, besides.

Only a fool would have left those marooned sailors bobbing around alive in the Pacific so that some of them could survive and tell the tale of their abandonment. And only a fool would fail to understand why it would be useful for Colonel Olmo of the Valparaiso Nuevo Guardia Civil to become aware that this was no bluff—to realize that Davidov’s people really had infiltrated the space habitat with a quantity of disassembled bombs disguised as spare parts for machine tools, had assembled them successfully, and had hidden them here and there around the satellite world with the full intention of detonating one or all of them if Generalissimo Callaghan’s excessively long life was not hastened immediately to its overdue finish by his trusted aides.

Of course, Enron thought in sudden surprise, the possibility exists that this Carpenter may not be the fool he seems to be. In which case he may well be something else that is even more dangerous to our interests. And Farkas has drawn him right to our bosom.

Farkas, standing by the window, facing away from the starry night, indifferent to its splendor, said to Davidov, “How soon do you want me to get in touch with Olmo?”

“Tomorrow morning, first thing. You call him, you tell him the scoop, you give him until noon to act.”

“Is that enough time?”

“It’ll have to be,” Davidov said. “The midday shuttle will leave for Earth at quarter past twelve. If something has gone wrong and Olmo is unable to deliver, we’ll want to be on it. Giving Olmo a short deadline will help to focus his attention on the task.”

“It’ll be focused, all right,” Farkas said. “Olmo knows what’s best for Olmo.” He paused a moment. “He knows about this plot, by the way.”

From Enron and Davidov came simultaneous expressions of surprise.

“Oh, yes,” Farkas said. “Rumors of it reached him quite some time ago, I suppose through normal intelligence channels here. Long before I was ever involved in it, he approached me to see if I could help him locate the plotters. That is his job, you know, to protect the government of Don Eduardo Callaghan. But I see no problem. Don’t you think he would jump at the chance to join in the conspiracy, once he realizes that its success is inevitable?”

Jolanda said, “What happens to Olmo after the coup? Do we continue to trust him? Does he really become the new generalissimo?”

“Of course,” said Farkas. “He has had an understanding with Kyocera for a long time now that he would be the successor. Even though this is not entirely a Kyocera project, and we are accelerating by direct interference the end of the Callaghan reign, we think that Olmo is the best choice for the succession. We are not interested in destabilizing Valparaiso Nuevo, naturally, but simply in taking advantage of the resources that are available here. Olmo is one of those resources.”

“You described him earlier as the Number Three official,” Enron said. “Who’s Number Two?”

“A retired bullfighter named Francisco Santiago, Callaghan’s best friend from the old days in Chile. Technically he holds the office of President of the Council of State. Forget about him. He’s ninety years old and senile, and has no real power whatever. Olmo will take care of him.”

“Can we rely on this Olmo to take care of the Generalissimo, though?” Carpenter asked. “Olmo sounds pretty slippery to me. What if he decides to sell us to Callaghan in return for a guarantee of the succession? He could easily be playing both sides here. He stands to inherit the place either way. And that way he doesn’t have to mess around with a coup.”

“Well?” Davidov said to Farkas. “Olmo is your man. Can we trust him?”

“We will be giving Olmo the choice of betraying Don Eduardo and becoming the Supreme Ruler of Valparaiso Nuevo himself by the middle of tomorrow afternoon, or of dying with the Generalissimo and everybody else when we blow the place up. Which option do you think he’ll go for?”

“And if he decides, after it’s all over, that he’d just as soon not continue to do business with a bunch of ruthless criminals and ruffians from Los Angeles, and with the sinister megacorp and the imperialist Jewish state that are behind the criminals and ruffians?” Carpenter asked.

Enron put his hand to his forehead in despair.

Something must be done about this, he thought.

“Don’t you comprehend,” Enron said icily, “that the purpose of bringing Kyocera and the state of Israel into the project was to protect against precisely that? This Olmo is Kyocera’s creature. He knows better than to turn against those who have placed him in power. I suspect he has no desire for trouble with the state of Israel, either.”

“No doubt,” Carpenter said.

“All right,” said Davidov. “So be it. The bombs are being put together right now, and they’ll be installed tonight. Tomorrow at 0700 hours, Farkas, you will be in touch with Olmo. By noon sharp, we are to have confirmation of the death of the Generalissimo from him, code signal IDES OF MARCH, very subtle. We will be waiting at the terminal. Our departure clearances will be ready. If the signal doesn’t come by the deadline, we put ourselves on board the twelve-fifteen shuttle out and leave. Carpenter, your job is to get down to the terminal sometime during the morning and wait for us to show up. The shuttle is not to take off without us, do you understand? That is your responsibility. You will if necessary entangle yourself in some kind of dumb, noisy passport hassle with the authorities there, any kind of distraction that you see fit to create, for the purpose of delaying the departure until we arrive, or until you receive the IDES OF MARCH signal on your flex.”

“What happens with the bombs if Olmo doesn’t come through?” Jolanda asked. “Do they go off?”

“They’ll be set to explode at half past one. That gives us a little leeway for dealing with things if Olmo runs into last-minute problems.”

“And if he does run into problems? Do we just leave, then, and the whole place is destroyed?” she asked.

“All or nothing, yes,” said Davidov easily.

“I don’t like that, Mike. Aside from the moral issue, which is a pretty significant one, because there are thousands of innocent people here: but what profit is there in that for anybody, if we just blow the place up?”

“Olmo won’t disappoint us,” Davidov said. “This is his big opportunity as well as ours.” He stood up. “Meeting adjourned,” he said. “You know where to find me if you need me.”

“Anybody interested in a drink?” Jolanda asked. “There’s a bar downstairs.”

“Let’s go,” Carpenter said.

As they left the room, Enron came up beside Farkas in the corridor.

“May I speak with you a moment?” he said.

Farkas had disliked Enron from the first; and the relationship had grown no warmer as their partnership had developed. He could forgive Enron his arrogance, his stubbornly self-serving persistence toward ends regardless of means, even his barely concealed contempt for anyone who did not happen to be Meshoram Enron. Farkas could understand such attitudes.

But Enron was irritating. He was like a huge bluebottle fly who perpetually droned and buzzed in your face. He never let up; and that was very tiresome. Still and all, they were partners. Farkas valued Enron’s quick and mercurial intelligence, if not his character or his personality or his table manners. So Farkas listened carefully to what Enron had to say, there in the drab little corridor of the unpretentious hotel in the town of Concepci6n on Spoke B of Valparaiso Nuevo.

What Enron had to say was annoying and offensive: for the Israeli’s whole point was that Farkas had casually and negligently introduced a spy for Samurai Industries into this extremely delicate cooperative project. It was an accusation that struck directly at the heart of Farkas’s sense of his own competence and judgment.

The really maddening thing was that Farkas was more than half-convinced that Enron might be right.

“Look at it this way,” Enron said. “We have here a man who committed a very serious error of judgment when he was caught in difficult and complicated circumstances, and got terminated for it, primarily as a public-relations move by Samurai because he stupidly left a bunch of marooned Kyocera people alive to tell the tale, and now has absolutely no future in the megacorp system. So he has turned to a life of crime, right? Right. But when did you ever hear of a Level Eleven salaryman being terminated, cause or no cause, and simply accepting it without appeal? Nobody gets fired from Level Eleven. Nobody.”

“As you have said, what Carpenter did was a very serious error of judgment”

“Was it? He had a skinny little iceberg ship with no room for extra passengers, and here were God knows how many Kyocera people looking to come aboard. What would you have done?”

“I would not have become involved to that degree in the first place,” Farkas said.

“Right. But suppose you had, anyway?”

“Why are we talking about this event now?”

“Because I think Carpenter, having completely and utterly destroyed his career in the corporate world but still feeling that he belongs to that world, may very well be planning to redeem himself with Samurai by selling Don Eduardo your ass and mine.”

“It sounds farfetched.”

“Not to me,” Enron said. “Consider. Who is Carpenter’s best friend since boyhood? The Samurai gene scientist Nick Rhodes. He goes running to Rhodes when he gets into trouble, and Rhodes, who is, let me tell you, a confused, cowardly, insipid man who luckily for him happens to be a genius, says to Carpenter, let us suppose, that his only way to put his life back together is to go into corporate espionage. Two wrongs will make a right Catch Kyocera or Toshiba or someone like that doing something despicable, and bring word of it to the high-level slant-eyes of Samurai so that they can slap the villains publicly across the wrist, and you will be rewarded by restoration to the Company’s good graces, Rhodes says. For example, Rhodes tells him, our dear Jolanda is having a certain Kyocera swashbuckler named Victor Farkas as a dinner guest tomorrow night. You come along, and suck up to Farkas, and maybe you can get a clue to something ugly that Farkas is involved in on Kyocera’s behalf, because the odds are about ten to one that Farkas is involved in something ugly, and—”

“You are building something very great out of nothing at all,” Farkas said.

“Let me finish, will you? Carpenter shows up at the party and eventually you and he are talking, as was intended all along. Carpenter is waiting for an opportunity to seize on something useful. And suddenly you are inspired to take him into our project, this total stranger, this refugee from a wrecked Samurai career. Why do you do this? God only knows. But you do. And for Carpenter it is a miracle. He will expose Kyocera’s role in something truly evil, that makes his own abandonment of a few squid catchers at sea look like a child’s tea party. We will be apprehended by Don Eduardo’s Guardia, and this Carpenter will be a hero. He is given a fresh slate and a promotion of two grades.”

“In my judgment there is no likelihood that this hypothesis is in any way—”

“Wait. Wait. More. Do you know that he’s one of Jolanda’s lovers? The night I first met all these people, Carpenter was with her. He took her back to his hotel that night.”

Farkas was startled by that unexpected thrust. But he covered himself as well as he could.

“What of it? She doesn’t seem to be famous for her chastity.”

“Jolanda was in on this plan before you and I were,” Enron said. “It was she who brought me in, do you realize that? So now she has brought her friend Carpenter in as well, because he is at loose ends and she wants to help him. Jolanda knows that Kyocera is one of the factors behind this coup, and then Jolanda finds out that her friend Carpenter’s balls have just been cut off by Samurai as a favor to Kyocera, and she sees a way for him to get them back again. So she arranges the little dinner party where you meet him and very obligingly take him into your confidence and affiliate him with our project Can it be that she has maneuvered you into doing just that, precisely in order that her dear Carpenter can sell you and me and Davidov—who also have been her lovers, of course, but what does that matter?—to the Guardia Civil, and by so doing regain his career with Samurai?”

“You make her sound like a devil,” Farkas said.

“Perhaps she is,” said Enron. “Or perhaps she is in love with Carpenter, and the rest of us are simply toys for her.”

Farkas gave that possibility some consideration.

He felt profoundly uneasy. Enron seemed to be jumping to a whole host of conclusions. But the more Farkas thought back over this affair, the more clearly he saw that he might well have been maneuvered by Carpenter’s friends into a position of doing something useful for the fallen Samurai man. What reason had he had for embroiling Carpenter in the plan, anyway, if not to win points with Jolanda? She had all but asked him directly to do something to help Carpenter get back on his feet. Well, he had, in that wild moment of spontaneity at Jolanda’s party; and by so doing, he had needlessly made them all—himself, Davidov, Enron, the Company itself—terribly vulnerable.

Could it be, Farkas wondered, that this schoolboy infatuation of his with the overexuberant California woman’s silken thighs and glorious breasts had led him into catastrophic foolishness?

“I think I should talk to Jolanda,” he told Enron.

She and Carpenter were sitting in the bar: on opposite sides of the table, nothing very compromising about that. As Enron and Farkas appeared, Carpenter rose and excused himself, and headed off toward the washroom.

“A good idea,” Enron said. “Will you order a Scotch and soda for me, Jolanda?”

Farkas slipped in beside her as Enron went in the direction that Carpenter had taken. In a low voice, as though Enron might be able to hear him even from halfway across the bar, he said, “Stay with me tonight?”

“I can’t. You know that. Marty would be furious.”

“Are you married to him?”

“I’ve been traveling with him. We’re sharing a room here. I can’t just go off with you like that.”

“You want to,” he said. “I can feel the heat coming from you.”

“Of course I want to. But I can’t, not with Marty here. Especially not tonight. He’s tremendously nervous that something is going to go wrong.”

“As a matter of fact, so am I,” Farkas said. Her refusal angered him; but it meant he would have to try to find out what he needed to know in just the few moments that remained before Enron and Carpenter returned. He hoped that Carpenter would take his time, or that Enron would find some way to delay him. “What worries me is your friend Carpenter,” he said.

“Paul? Why?”

“What do you know about him? How trustworthy is he, really?”

He could see Jolanda’s emanations changing: she was growing wary now, radiating higher up in the spectrum, a jittery ultraviolet signal. She said, “I don’t understand. If you didn’t trust him, why did you bring him in?”

“You asked me to.”

She went farther up the spectrum at that.

“I suggested that you might know of an opening for him with Kyocera,” Jolanda said. “I wasn’t expecting you to invite him into this.”

“Ah. I see.” Still no sign of Carpenter returning. “Do you think we’re at risk, having him here?”

“Of course not. Why are you suddenly so suspicious of him?”

“Nerves, I suppose. I have nerves too.”

“I never would have imagined.”

“All the same, I do. Tell me, Jolanda: how well do you know Carpenter, anyway?”

“A friend of a friend, actually.”

“That’s all?”

“Well—”

Color rising on her face. Farkas could feel the infrared output.

“I’m not talking about bed, now. How long have you known him? A year? Three years?”

“Oh, no, nothing like that. I met him a few months back, when I was out for dinner with Nick Rhodes and Isabelle and Marty. He had just come to San Francisco from somewhere up north and Nick asked me along as a blind date for him. That’s about all there’s been, just that one evening.”

“I see,” Farkas said. “Just that one evening.”

He felt a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach. You have let this foolish woman make an even bigger fool out of you than you realized, he thought bleakly.

“But I certainly don’t think,” she said, “that he’s any kind of risk to us at all. Everything I know about him leads me to think that he’s an extremely intelligent and capable—”

“All right,” Farkas said. “That’s enough. He’s coming back.”

The plan was that they would eat in separate groups that night, Enron and Jolanda together, Farkas and Carpenter by themselves, Davidov with the others of his mysterious Los Angeles crowd. As they were splitting up Jolanda drew Carpenter aside in the hallway and said in a low voice, “Watch out for Farkas.”

“What do you mean? Watch out for what?”

“He doesn’t trust you.”

“He got me involved in this in the first place.”

“I know. He’s having second thoughts. Perhaps Marty said something to him about you.”

“Marty? He’s got no reason to think I’m—”

“You know how Israelis are. Paranoia is their national hobby.”

“What do you think is going on?” Carpenter asked.

Jolanda shook her head. “I’m not sure. Farkas was asking questions about you just now. Whether I think it’s risky having you as part of the group. How well I know you. He said it was just nerves. Maybe so, but I would be careful of him, if I were you.”

“Yes. I will.”

“Watch him like a hawk. He has no morals at all, and he’s terribly quick and strong, and he can see in every direction at once. He can be dangerous. I know what he can do,” she said. “I went to bed with him once, just once, and I’ve never been with anyone like that. So quick, so strong.” Jolanda reached into her purse and drew out three little octagonal yellow tablets. “Here. Take these and keep them with you. If you find yourself in any trouble, these may help you.” She pressed them into the palm of Carpenter’s hand.

“Hyperdex?” Carpenter asked.

“Yes. Have you ever used it?”

“Now and then.”

“Then you know. One will be enough for ordinary circumstances. Two, if very unusual.”

Carpenter said, “Are you sure Farkas is thinking bad thoughts about me? Or are you having an attack of nerves too?”

“I might be. But he was asking questions about you a minute ago. Do I trust you, and things like that. It didn’t sound good, but it might be nothing. Just keep on guard, is all.”

“Yes.”

“Your nerves? They aren’t bothering you?”

“No,” Carpenter said. “I don’t give a damn about anything, any more. I think my nervous system must have shorted out sometime back” He grinned at her and gave her a quick peck on the cheek. “Thanks for the pills,” he said. “And the warning.”

“Don’t mention it.”

An early dinner, alone, at his hotel. An evening of watching videos in his room, by himself. Then to bed. Tomorrow was the big day. Early to bed, early to rise.

I know what he can do, Jolanda had said. I went to bed with him once, just once.

Just once. Surprise, surprise. She got around, that girl.

Well, Carpenter thought, tomorrow would tell the tale.