The Gold Coast

50

Stewart Lemon’s sitting at his desk, in a reverie. It’s been another miserable morning, Elsa keeping up the silent treatment and walking around the house mute, like a naked zombie… how long has it been since she stopped speaking? Lemon sits and dreams of leaving her for his secretary, starting a new alliance, free of such a long history of pain. But if he leaves he’ll lose the house. And doesn’t Ramona have an ally? Ah, it’s a fantasy; looked at realistically it falls apart. So that means he has to continue with Elsa.…

Ramona buzzes. Donald Hereford is in Los Angeles on Argo/Blessman business, and has decided to drop on down for a visit. He’ll be here in half an hour.

Lemon groans. What a day! It’s always tense for him when Hereford comes by, especially lately. Given the various troubles LSR is having, the visits can only be in the nature of judgments—check-ups to see whether Argo/Blessman’s aerospace subsidiary is worth keeping.… This is even more true when there is no specific reason for the visit, as in this case.

So as much as he tries to compose himself, he is nervous as Hereford arrives. He leads him into his office and they sit down. Hereford looks at the ocean as he listens to Lemon go over the latest on the various LSR projects of note.

“How’s the appeal of the Stormbee decision coming?”

“The court rules on it end of this week or the beginning of next. Did you see the GAO report?” Hereford shakes his head briefly. Lemon describes the report. “It’s pretty favorable,” he concludes, “but our lawyers can’t tell if it will be enough to sway Judge Tobiason. They think it should, but given Tobiason’s background they aren’t making any promises.”

“No.” Hereford sighs. “I wonder about that case.”

“Whether it was…” Lemon was going to say, “a good idea to protest the decision,” when he recalls that it was Hereford’s idea.

Hereford looks up at him from under mildly raised eyebrows, and laughs. “A good idea? I think so. We had to show the Air Force that they can’t just flaunt the rules and walk over us. But we’ve done that, now, I think. They’ve had to kowtow to the GAO pretty seriously. So that whatever Tobiason says, we may have accomplished our goals in the matter.”

“But—winning the contract?”

“Do you think the Air Force would ever allow that, now?”

Lemon considers it in silence.

Hereford says, “Tell me all the latest about the Ball Lightning program.”

Now it’s Lemon’s turn to sigh. In a matter-of-fact voice he describes the latest round of troubles the program has been experiencing. “McPherson has put them onto tracking the ICBMs longer, in a phased array, so that their defenses can be overcome, and it looks as promising as anything we’ve tried. But the Air Force specs don’t really allow for anything more than the first two minutes after launch, so we don’t know what they’ll make of this.”

“You have asked them?”

“Not yet.”

Hereford frowns. “Now the Air Force already has test results that show we could do it in the two minutes, right?”

“Under certain special circumstances, yes.”

“Which are?”

“Well, a stationary target, mainly.…”

Slowly and patiently Hereford drags the whole story out of Lemon. He gets Lemon to admit that the early test results reported by Dan Houston’s team could be interpreted as fraudulent if the Air Force wanted to get hard about it. And since LSR has gotten hard in the Stormbee matter.…

Lemon, squirming in his seat, gets the strong impression that Hereford already knew all these details, that he has been making him go through them again just to bake him a little. Lemon tries to relax.

“McPherson’s involved with this one too?”

“I assigned him to it to help Houston out. McPherson is a good troubleshooter.” And troublemaker, he thinks. Don’t the two always go together?

Hereford nods. “I want to see the on-site facilities for the Ball Lightning program.” He stands. Lemon gets to his feet, surprised. They walk to the elevator, take it down to the ground floor and leave the executive building. Over to the engineer’s offices, and the big building housing the labs and the assembly plant. It’s your typical Irvine Triangle industrial architecture: two stories high and a couple hundred yards to a side, the walls made of immense squares of coppery mirrored glass, reflecting the obligatory lawns and cypress trees.

They enter and Lemon leads Hereford, by request, through all the labs and assembly rooms that have any part in the Ball Lightning program. Hereford doesn’t really look at any single one very closely, but he seems interested in determining their locations in the building, strangely enough. When he’s done doing that, he wants to survey the grounds outside the plant: the picnic benches in the small groves of cypress, the high security fence surrounding the property… it’s strange. Lemon’s beginning to get a headache thinking about it, out in the bright sun, coffee wearing off, stomach growling.… Finally Hereford nods. “Let’s go have some lunch.”

Orange County just can’t provide the kind of culinary sophistication that Manhattan boasts, which is galling to Lemon when he has to try to impress Hereford. He takes him down to Dana Point, and they eat at the Charthouse over the harbor. Hereford concentrates on the salad bar, eats with obvious relish. “They still can’t do this properly in New York, I’m not sure why.” A couple of young women in bathing suits sit at the next table, and Lemon says, “Yes, there are certain advantages to living in California.” Hereford smiles briefly.

When they’re done eating Hereford asks, “So what do you make of this rash of sabotages against defense contractors in this area?”

Ah ha. Here might be the explanation for the inspection of the grounds. Lemon says, “Our security thinks it’s a local group of refusniks, and they’re working with the police on it. Apparently they won’t attack any place where there are people working, because they don’t want to kill or injure anyone. So we’ve taken the precaution of having several night watchmen in the plant, as well as people patrolling the perimeter of the grounds, and the beach below us. And we announced the fact at a press conference—it was pretty well reported.”

Hereford is disturbed by this. “You mean you’re assuming these saboteurs won’t make a mistake, or change their policy? If it is indeed their policy?”

“Well…”

Hereford shakes his head. “Get all the night watchmen out of the building.”

“But—”

“You heard me. The risk is too great. I don’t like the idea of using people’s lives as a shield, not when we’re dealing with an unknown enemy.” He pauses, purses his lips. “The truth is, we’ve got reason to believe that the sabotage out here is backed by a very large, very professional group.”

Lemon raises his eyebrows in unconscious imitation of Hereford. “Not the Soviets!”

“No no. Not directly, anyway. The truth is it may be one of our competitors, providing the money, anyway.”

Lemon’s eyebrows shoot up for real. “Which one?”

“We’re not sure. We’ve penetrated the organization on a lower level, and naturally the links between levels are well concealed.”

“I suppose it would have to be one of the companies that hasn’t been hit.”

“Not necessarily.”

Now, this statement turns certain tumblers in Lemon’s mind. He’s silent for a time as he considers the implications of what Hereford has said. A company attacks others to harm their work and eventually damage their reputation for efficiency with the Air Force. Then it attacks itself to keep suspicion away from it. And, at the same time, it could use the attack on itself to get rid of something potentially damaging in and of itself. Sure, it makes sense.

But say another company learned it was going to be attacked; and say it had something, say it had a program that was in really serious trouble for one reason or another.…

“Should we increase our security on the perimeter?” Lemon asks, testing his hypothesis.

“No reason to.” Around Hereford’s eyes there is an amused crinkle; perhaps he thinks that Lemon is dense, perhaps he is amused that Lemon has finally gotten it; no way of telling. “We’ve done what we can, I think. Our insurance is in good shape, and all we can do is hope for the best.”

“And… and get the night watchmen out of there.”

“Exactly.”

“Do you… do you have any information that indicates we might become…”

“A target?” Hereford shrugs. This goes too far, it shouldn’t be talked about. “Nothing definite enough to go to the police with.” But his eyes, Lemon thinks, his eyes; they look through the map of the Caribbean on their table, and they know. They know.

Lemon sits back in his seat, sips at his Pinot blanc. He’s been let in on it, really. If he’s smart enough to put it together, then he’s in the know. Maybe he had to be. Still, it’s a good sign.

And this means that maybe, just maybe, something will happen soon that will get him off the hook with the Ball Lightning program. Get LSR off the hook as well. And insurance… incredible. He swallows the wine.