The Trikon Deception

27 AUGUST 1998 NEW YORK

Fabio Bianco convened a teleconference of the directorates of the three arms of Trikon International before leaving Lausanne. There was little resistance to his proposal to take personal charge of the research operation on Trikon Station. The vote was nearly unanimous.

Bianco thought wryly that they were probably hoping he would stay on the space station and out of their way.

He then leaned on the European Space Agency to use its good offices to obtain him a pass on one of the American aerospace planes. Although the space-plane fleet was slated to begin regular commercial flights to orbiting installations later in the year, passes were available to space agency employees, government officials, politicians seeking reelection, and well-connected members of the media.

Within twenty-four hours, every aspect of Bianco’s trip to Trikon Station was arranged. His only problem was with his nephew Ugo, who told him upon boarding the Venice-bound train in Ouchy that flying into orbit with his ailments was suicidal.

“Nonsense,” said Bianco, “Micro-gee will cure me.”

He waved until the train went out of sight.

The aerospace plane was scheduled to depart from Edwards Space Center in California. Bianco decided to fly to New York, where he would receive final clearance for the flight and spend the intervening two days at Trikon International’s offices near the United Nations.

He rose from the galley proofs spread across his desk and shuffled to the office window. Smoke from a New Jersey waterfront fire combined with a temperature inversion to paint the sky a flat gray. A tugboat chugged up the East River, its sluggish wake barely disturbing the purple oil slick that extended from shore to shore. Directly below, traffic on First Avenue was snarled by a bus-and-truck accident. Shirtless cabbies stood on the hoods of their taxis and yelled curses at the emergency workers trying to pry the vehicles apart.

The long, awkward galleys were for an article due to be published in an obscure Canadian scientific journal the following January. Bianco had heard rumors of the article while he was still in Lausanne, and upon his arrival in New York had ordered the Trikon staff to fetch him a copy. The article was as interesting as it was frightening. The media had been full of stories about a mysterious series of whale beachings a week or so ago. Now a research scientist had come up with a theory about the cause of the whale deaths. Bianco shuddered at the implications.

“Jonathan Eldredge is on the line,” a female voice announced over the intercom.

Bianco turned away from the window just as Eldredge’s image snapped onto the telephone monitor. Eldredge was a youthful-looking man with stylishly coiffed blond hair and an eternal tan. He was an expert in international finance rather than a scientist, and had been wooed away from the economics department of Stanford University shortly after Trikon International’s founding to serve as president of Trikon’s North American arm.

“I received a memo from Thora Skillen,” said Bianco after the two men had exchanged pleasantries. “She complains about a man named Hugh O’Donnell. She says that he is uncooperative and disregards established laboratory procedures. She also says that her lab module is too small to accommodate two separate projects. Two separate projects? What does that mean? Someone is using Trikon facilities and is not contributing to our toxic-waste microbe project?”

Eldredge’s normal smile faded from his tanned face. “Hugh O’Donnell is an independent scientist using the American/Canadian module by special arrangement with Trikon NA,” he said. “The arrangement is similar to that of Trikon International with the Mars Project.”

“It is not similar to the Mars Project if he is using Trikon facilities,” said Bianco.

“It is part of the arrangement.”

“Who is this arrangement with?”

“Fabio, it’s a bona fide—”

“Who is it with?!”

Eldredge’s beach-boy features darkened.

“If you want to know, I’ll have to patch in someone else,” he said. “Hold the line.”

The screen went blank, although the subtle hum meant the connection still held. Goddamn these Americans, thought Bianco. How can they lease away precious lab space?

A split image formed on the monitor. Eldredge occupied one side; the other showed a man seated in a room with a blank white wall behind him. Eldredge introduced the man simply as Mr. Welch. The man nodded in acknowledgement. He had a bulldog’s chin beneath a thin nose and narrowed eyes. His dark business suit was tight on his shoulders.

“You want to know about Hugh O’Donnell,” said Welch. “He was specially selected by us to work on an extremely sensitive project. Trikon NA agreed to cooperate.”

“Who are you?” said Bianco. “Besides being Mr. Welch.”

“An employee of the United States government. That is all you need to know.”

“Jonathan—”

“It doesn’t matter who they are,” said Eldredge. There was a strained tone in his voice that implied Trikon NA’s cooperation was not completely voluntary.

“What is the nature of this project?” said Bianco.

“That is none of your concern,” said Welch.

“It is my concern when my project suffers for his presence. And it is my concern when my space station is being misused.”

Welch rolled his eyes as if mugging for a television camera.

“Another prima donna scientist who thinks he owns Trikon Station,” he said. He focused his attention squarely on Bianco. Even in the tiny telephone screen his eyes looked ruthless, dangerous. “I don’t know where you come from, but we have a saying here that possession is nine-tenths of the law.”

“What are you driving at?” said Bianco.

“I don’t give a good goddamn who holds title to that aluminum shitcan. It’s crewed by Americans. It’s maintained by a support system based in the United States. And if any accidents happen up there, you can blame the Americans.”

“Are you suggesting—”

“I’m suggesting you don’t push me,” said Welch.

Was this Welch really saying that the station would be destroyed if Trikon refused to cooperate? The thought raised a pinch of angina beneath Bianco’s breastbone.

“Do either of you know about this?” demanded Bianco. He held up a handful of galley pages. “’A Chemical Assessment of Ocean Pollution and Its Long-Term Effects on Marine Flora’. Do you have any idea how serious this is? For everyone?”

Eldredge started to make placating sounds, but Welch cut him off.

“We know all about it,” he said. “We are both doing important work, Professor. Unfortunately, there is only one station suited to both our tasks. You will have to work around O’Donnell. And don’t try to interfere with him during your visit. He is being supervised.”

The images disappeared.

Bianco stared at the suddenly blank screen. Mother of God, he thought, even Trikon Station is not beyond the grasp of an overreaching government. A stab of angina sent him crumpling into a chair. It was more necessary now than ever to journey to the station, for himself and for Trikon.

“Where the hell have you been?”

The connection was poor. Bob Rodriguez sounded as though he were speaking through a plastic bag.

“Working,” said O’Donnell.

“You’ve been working ever since I’ve known you,” said Rodriguez. “But you hardly ever missed a meeting, and when you did you called.”

“Isn’t that easy.”

“Where the hell are you that you can’t call? The clubhouse has a speakerphone. You installed it yourself.”

“I know, I know,” said O’Donnell. “Can you keep a secret?”

“That’s all I fuckin’ do,” said Rodriguez.

“I’m on a space station,” said O’Donnell. There was a long silence from the other end. “Bob?”

“Hugh, if you’re having problems, the club can help. That’s what it’s for.”

“This is no joke. I’m not in trouble. I’m on a fucking space station.”

“Doing what?”

“Working.”

“I didn’t know you were an astronaut.”

“Neither did I.”

“So what’s it like?”

“Weird,” said O’Donnell. “Some people handle it. Some don’t. A guy completely snapped today. He thought the station was burning up. He wrecked part of a module and beat up another guy.”

“That just happened out of the blue?”

“Nothing just happens, Bob. The rumor is that he suffered from Orbital Dementia. That’s a high-tech version of cabin fever.”

“You don’t like being shut in.”

“You’re right. But somehow I don’t mind it here. I actually feel content. Maybe it’s my work.”

“Is there any sort of therapy for you there?”

“Yes, Mother Bob. I report to the medical officer every morning. I talk. She threatens to draw my blood. It’s very therapeutic.”

“A she, huh? Nicer than looking at our mugs.”

“She’s a bitch. Cuts me no slack.”

“Glad to hear it,” said Rodriquez. “You had a strange visitor the other day. A woman named Stacey. She said you owed her money. Wanted to know if your bike was around. Said she had a court order said she could take it.”

“Did you give it to her?”

“They need something stronger than a fuckin’ court order for me to sell out a club member,” Rodriguez snarled. “One funny thing, she called you by the name Jack O’Neill.”

“She probably made a mistake. O’Neill, O’Donnell, all those names sound the same.”

“Nope. Described you to a T.”

“Did you tell her anything?”

“I was so confused—”

“Bob, did you tell her anything?”

“You know the rules. Nobody divulges anything about any club member.”

“Damn right. Now if she comes back, you don’t know me or this Jack O’Neill. Okay?”

“Okay,” said Rodriquez. There was a long silence. “Why don’t you call in during a meeting sometime? Sounds like you might need some support.”

“Bob, I’m on a space station! You think there are extraterrestrial dope dealers hiding outside the airlocks looking to making a sale?”

“All right. Just don’t kill yourself.”

“Thanks for the advice, pal.”

O’Donnell hung up the phone and made a beeline to the ex/rec area. Goddamn that Stacey! How the hell did she find him? Where did she get the balls to go nosing around the club? For the bike. The goddamn bike. Couldn’t she just leave everything the hell alone?

He grunted a curt greeting to Dan Tighe and yanked his set of darts from a compartment. He tossed his first round quickly, completely missing the board with two of his three shots.

“Something wrong?” asked Dan as he chased a tumbling dart through the exercise equipment.

“No. Does it look like something’s wrong?” O’Donnell snapped. He shot himself toward the dart board, striking the far wall with a thump. Chakra Ramsanjawi raised his eyes from his eternal chess game.

“What the hell are you staring at?” snapped O’Donnell.

“Easy, Hugh,” Dan said. “I already had to rope one psychotic today.”

Dan’s jaw was swollen from his struggle with Russell Cramer. His fists were knobbed with jagged knuckles that reminded O’Donnell of spikes on a medieval mace. They could do some damage.

“Sorry,” said O’Donnell.

Ramsanjawi laughed and removed Oyamo’s rook.

O’Donnell calmed as the dart game began in earnest. There was none of the usual banter, and Dan was content to let the silence linger. O’Donnell seemed intent on some inner struggle, going through the motions of the dart game mechanically while his mind fought its battle on its own interior landscape. Dan hoped that O’Donnell was gathering himself for a revelation. He didn’t want to disturb the process.

O’Donnell knew that relating the conversation with Bob Rodriguez could open up a facet of his life he should keep buried at all costs. But sometimes you couldn’t go it alone. Sometimes you just had to get things off your chest.

“Stacey,” he finally said. “My old girlfriend. Every time I try to get past her, she stirs something up.”

“You want to go back with her?” said Dan.

“Hell no! I want to fucking kill her!” O’Donnell said in an intense semiwhisper. “See, after my money problems began, but before Stacey went off with Pancho Weinstein, I wanted to buy a motorcycle. I couldn’t put it in my name because I had lost my license and couldn’t get insurance. So I put it in Stacey’s name. I left it with a friend when I came up here. I just got off the phone with him. He said Stacey came looking for it the other day, saying I owed her money.”

“Pancho Weinstein the lawyer?” asked Dan. Talking with O’Donnell was like piecing together a puzzle.

“You have a damn good memory,” said O’Donnell. “Stacey doesn’t want the money. What the hell could they get for my bike? Eight hundred? A grand? But Stacey knows that the bike is my salvation. That’s why she wants it.”

“How is a bike your salvation?”

O’Donnell looked at Dan as if he had lost his train of thought.

“You just said your bike is your salvation,” said Dan.

“I did? Oh, well obviously you haven’t ridden up the Pacific Coast. Highway on a bike.”

“Obviously not,” said Dan.

“Riding it on a bike compares with driving it in a car or tour bus like being in this station compares with a space walk.”

And that is your salvation, thought Dan as a few more pieces of the puzzle fell into place. Nice recovery, O’Donnell, but not good enough.

Kurt Jaeckle pressed a strip of rubber seal along the edge of the blister’s door. The new hinges were so stiff he could set the door at any angle without it flapping like a wing. The Mars module was quiet except for tiny bits of debris occasionally pinging against the ventilator grids. He didn’t notice Lorraine Renoir until she was at his shoulder.

“The chief scientist of the Mars Project is reduced to menial repair work?” she said, with a slight smile.

Jaeckle let his eyes meander from her toes to her hair, taking every possible moment to think of a clever rejoinder. She was barefoot. Her flight pants had been altered into shorts that clung to her hips like a second skin. Her breasts rose beneath her blue Trikon T-shirt with each breath.

“This isn’t repair work,” he said. “I’m a parent healing my child.”

“Tres corny, Professor.”

“I thought it was romantic,” said Jaeckle, reaching for her.

Lorraine shrugged and slipped away from Jaeckle to peer into the open mouth of the blister. The clamshell was retracted and the blister was bright with Earthglow. She felt a sense of vertigo, as if she could dive through that doorway and not stop falling until she landed on the tiny cotton swabs three hundred miles below. She looked again at Jaeckle. His brown eyes were piercing, penetrating. Maybe it wasn’t vertigo.

She always had been too analytical. She had never believed in Santa Claus. She never even believed in Bonhomme, which was astounding for a child growing up in Quebec City. During one Winter Carnival, she refused to join a group of classmates in front of the Ice Palace for a photograph with the seven-foot snowman who served as the carnival’s traditional master of ceremonies. He’s a figment of our imagination, she had said in English to her teacher.

Ever since Jaeckle had asked her to assist him on television, she had tried to look beyond the media personality that cloaked him like Bonhomme’s costume. She knew of Jaeckle’s reputation with women. She knew he wanted more from her than the TV show. Very deliberately, she decided to stop trying to analyze Jaeckle’s motives. She was finished with analysis. It hadn’t worked in her relationships on Earth, and it hadn’t worked on the station with Dan. She was constantly waiting for moments when the music would rise, the lights would dim, and the unseen audience would hold its collective breath. Russell Cramer’s episode and her accidental alliance with Jaeckle stripped away her complacency. This wasn’t theater, this was life. Time to meet Kurt Jaeckle. Time to find out what he’s really like—what I’m really like.

Lorraine flipped herself into the blister. Jaeckle followed, pulling the door closed behind him. The soft colors of twilight played through the dome.

“A parent healing your child,” Lorraine murmured to him. “Perhaps that is romantic, after all.”

“Am I a father figure to you?” he whispered back.

Before she could reply, his hands moved up her legs. His fingers were roughened from the repair work, and the scratchiness added to her excitement. He pulled her pants below her knees and kissed the insides of her thighs.

“Are you a naughty little girl?” Jaeckle crooned softly. “Do you want to be naughty for Daddy?”

Lorraine clutched at a handhold over her head and tried to move away from him, but Jaeckle held her legs firmly in the fading light as his tongue darted between her thighs.

The Rolls-Royce Corniche sped west from London on the M4. Early morning sunlight filtered weakly through clouds that bellied over the nearby hillocks. Rain hammered the pavement in a steady drone, punctuated by occasional cracks of thunder.

The Rolls was as large and sturdy as a fair-sized truck. Inside it, Harry Meade had no sense of the rainstorm lashing the south of England, hardly any sense of motion at all, the car rode so solidly on the smooth highway. The spacious rear compartment was completely soundproof and the windows were so darkly tinted that the streaking raindrops were invisible. He shifted his large frame within the cramped confines of the jumpseat. Sir Derek Brock-Smythe, dressed in a waistcoat, riding pants, and boots, reclined on a miniature leather chesterfield. A low mahogany table separated the two men.

Sir Derek traced esses in the air with a delicate finger as he speed-read several pages of typescript. On a shelf above the wet bar, brandy lapped gently in a Tyrone crystal decanter. Harry Meade licked his lips.

“Splendid,” said Sir Derek. He removed a fountain pen from his jacket pocket and drew neat circles around certain words on the pages. “This touching conversation between Chakra and his wife contains the key to neutralizing two particularly dastardly toxic-waste molecules. Hisashi Oyamo has no inkling how intelligent and accommodating he can be.”

Sir Derek hummed gaily as he continued extricating coded words from the transcript. Harry Meade pressed his face against the dark window glass. Within his pale reflection, there was only the barest hint of the Berkshire Downs. The island of hair left by his receding hairline looked scraggly. He wiped it with the palm of his hand.

Sir Derek’s humming stopped like the disconnect tone of an old English phone box. Harry Meade had only a general knowledge of the complex code Chakra Ramsanjawi employed to smuggle biochemical information out of Trikon Station over unsecured phone lines. But he knew enough to have recognized that the latter portion of the conversation was devoted to Hugh O’Donnell. Sir Derek was reading that portion now; he did not appear happy.

Meade returned his attention to the window. But instead of searching for landmarks in the dim countryside or features on his lined face, he concentrated on the reflection of Sir Derek flipping through the transcript. After several minutes, Sir Derek cleared his throat.

“Ring up the lab and transmit these pages posthaste,” he said as he tapped the first portion of the transcript into a uniform pile on the knee-high table.

Harry Meade scuttled off the jumpseat and took the pages in hand. Bending over double in a space tailored to Sir Derek’s proportions, he opened the jumpseat adjacent to the limousine’s communications center. The Lancashire lab’s fax number was stored in the machine’s memory. Harry secured a connection quickly. As he fed the pages into the machine, he cast an occasional glance at the window. Sir Derek was again busy circling words with his pen.

Sir Derek abruptly dropped the pages onto the table and got up from the leather couch. He was so tiny that he could almost stand erect inside the Corniche. Leaning forward over the mahogany table, he took the Tyrone decanter and a snifter from the shelf and poured a shot of brandy. Then he sat again facing Harry Meade, the snifter twinkling in his hands, the starched cuffs of his white shirt perfectly placed on his wrists, his booted heels pressed together on the exquisite Persian carpet, barely swaying as the Rolls negotiated a sweeping curve.

“What have you learned about Hugh O’Donnell?” he asked.

Meade heard the static that seemed to buzz between his ears whenever Sir Derek confronted him with the slightest bit of displeasure. What was the latest word on O’Donnell? He felt his fingers involuntarily gripping the lip of the jumpseat as he tried to gather his thoughts.

“We hacked into the computerized personnel files of Simi Bioengineering,” said Meade. “It doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know. He graduated from the University of Oregon in 1984 and has been working for Simi since ’96.”

“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.