The Gold Coast

41

Sandy decides that the best thing to do is return immediately to Reef Point and recover the drums, and he calls Bob Tompkins to explain about the delay, also to complain about the apparent information leak. But Tompkins is in Washington to do some lobbying, and that same afternoon Sandy is visited by a worried-looking Tashi. “Did you see the news?” Tashi asks.

“No, what’s up? San Clemente Island blown to smithereens?”

Jim looks up from Sandy’s computer. “Where’d that word come from?”

“Ignore him,” says Sandy. “He’s testing my new drug, Verbality.”

“Verbosity, more like. Here, check out the news.” Tash clicks on the main wall screen and taps in the command for the Los Angeles Times. When it appears he runs through it until he reaches the first page of the Orange County section. The screen fills with a picture of what appears to be a twentieth-century newspaper page, a formatting gimmick that has gotten the Times a lot of subscriptions down at Seizure World. “Top right.”

Sandy reads aloud. “LSR Announces Increased Security For Laguna Hills Plant, oh man, because of recent spate of sabotage attacks, defense contractors in OC, perimeter now patrolled, blah blah blah so what,” so Tashi cuts in and reads a sentence near the bottom of the article: “The new measures will include cliff patrols and boat patrols in the ocean directly off LSR’s seacliff location. ‘Any sea craft coming within a mile of us is going to be under intense surveillance,’ says LSR’s new security director Armando Perez.”

“They must be joking,” Sandy says weakly.

“I don’t think so.”

“It’s illegal!” Panic seeping in everywhere.…

“I doubt it.”

Jim looks up. “What could be the difficulty that is encumbering and freighting your voices with the sounds of sturm und drang, my brethren?”

“Scrap that new drug,” Tashi suggests.

“I will. The difficulty,” Sandy explains to Jim, “is that we have stashed twelve big drums of an illegal new aphrodisiac at the bottom of a bluff now under the intense scrutiny of a trigger-happy private security army!”

“Zounds! Jeepers!”

“Shut up.” Sandy rereads the article, turns it off. The initial shock over, he is again thinking furiously. “I’ve got an idea.”

“What’s that?”

“Let’s go to Europe.”

“Taking the constructive approach, I see.”

“No, let’s go!” Jim says. “Semester break frees me after Wednesday’s class! On the other hand”—crestfallen—“I am a trifle short of funds.”

“I’ll loan it to you,” Sandy says darkly. “High interest.” Actually, he’s short of funds himself. But there’s always Angela’s emergency account. And this is an emergency; he needs to be out of town when Bob gets this news, to give him time to adjust to it. Bob’s like that; he has two- or three-day fits of anger, then collects himself and returns to cool rationality. The important thing is to be out of reach during those first two or three days, so that nothing irrevocable can happen. “Bob’s in Washington for a couple days, so I’ll leave a message on his answering machine outlining the situation. By the time we get back, he’ll have had time to cool down.”

“And you’ll have time to think of something,” Tash says.

“Right. You coming, Tash?”

“Don’t know.”

The news spreads quickly: they’re going to Europe. Jim asks Humphrey for time off work, and Humphrey agrees to it, as long as he can come along. Angela agrees to the use of her emergency account, takes her vacation time, and is coming too. Abe can’t get the time off. Tashi is thinking of splurging for it, but Erica’s angry about it—“I’ve got to work, of course”—and he decides against going.

Humphrey takes over arrangements for the trip and finds them a low-budget red-eye no-frills popper that will put them in Stockholm two hours after departure. After they arrive they’ll decide where to go; this is Sandy’s decree.

Following his last class on Wednesday, Jim tells Hana that he’s off to Europe with friends. “Sounds like fun,” she remarks, and wishes him bon voyage. They make arrangements to meet again when the next semester begins, and happily Jim goes back home to pack.

“Off to the Old World!” he says to his ap. “I’ll be walking waist deep in history wherever we go!” And as he packs he sings along with Radio Caracas, playing the latest by the Pentagon Mothers: