Able One

Bethlehem, Pennsylvania: Lehigh University

Harry Hartunian had never been a fighter. He wasn’t a take-charge guy. Instead, he had a quiet, persistent, relentless determination to finish whatever he started. Born and raised in the Boston suburb of Medford, in high school Harry took a lot of ribbing for his flyaway hair and his passive, almost invisible presence in the classroom and outside. The bullies picked on him, of course, but Harry befriended the biggest guy in the school by offering to do his homework in exchange for his protection. The bullying stopped. And his bodyguard even taught Harry a few moves that were down and dirty but effective in an emergency.

He didn’t go out for sports—the mindless pressure to win turned him off. In his sophomore year Harry made the chess team, barely, but by the time he graduated he was the best chess player in the school.

Engineering appealed to him; Harry liked the idea of building things and making mechanisms work. He got a partial scholarship to Lehigh University and went into its electrical engineering program. On campus he met Sylvia Goldman, who was in the teacher’s college. She was from Media, Pennsylvania. Sylvia was attractive, buxom, with flashing dark eyes. Harry felt flabbergasted that she was interested in him.

For her part, Sylvia saw in Harry a steady, dependable man who could be led rather easily. He had this funny hair that flew every which way at the slightest breeze, but he wasn’t that bad-looking and he was doggedly determined to do well in class and get a rock-solid job after graduation. He was quiet, and so shy he wouldn’t get fresh with her, so after a few dates she got fresh with him. After nearly a year of dating they moved into a tiny studio apartment together.

Harry married Sylvia in a simple civil ceremony in Bethlehem’s city hall. Neither her parents nor his saw fit to attend the wedding. Both families were infuriated by their marriage. Sylvia’s mother feared that this goy boyfriend of hers had gotten her pregnant; Harry’s father asked him why, when there were so many fish in the sea, he wanted to settle so soon for just one of them.

As graduation neared Harry was recruited by a firm in California, Anson Aerospace Corporation. The company was developing lasers and Harry had worked summers in the university’s laser lab to make enough money to support himself and his bride.

With their diplomas in their hands, they moved to Pasadena, leaving their disapproving parents thousands of miles behind them. Sylvia got part-time work as a substitute teacher while Harry threw himself into his job as a laser technician.

Anson Aerospace was a happy haven for the young engineer. All his life he had been an oddball, a nerd, a quiet, studious boy who was shy with girls and respectful to adults and preferred reading books to getting involved in teenaged pranks. At Anson, Harry was surrounded by people just like him. Geek heaven. There was a pecking order, of course: scientists were above engineers, even though the engineers all felt that physicists should never be allowed to touch any of the equipment in the lab.

“It’s easy to make a laser that’s idiot-proof,” the head of Anson’s safety department told Harry. “Making it Ph.D.-proof is just about impossible. Those guys think they’re brilliant, see. They poke into the lab and fiddle with this and twiddle with that until they either give themselves a ten-thousand-volt shock or burn the place down.”

Harry knew he was not brilliant. But he worked hard and steadily for long hours and little recognition. Yet he loved it. He loved the technical challenges, the camaraderie that slowly developed among his fellow engineers, the bowling league he helped to organize, even the physicists who unconsciously lorded it over the engineers as if it was their right to look down on the guys who got their hands dirty. Indeed, Harry was not brilliant, but he was dependable. He got the job done, no matter how difficult it was, no matter how long or hard he had to work at it. Quiet and steady as he was, gradually he was recognized by his supervisors, and even by the scientists who ran the lab. To his own surprise, Harry got salary raises almost every year: small ones, but he didn’t complain.

Sylvia did. They had two daughters now and a sizable mortgage on their home. She felt Harry wasn’t aggressive enough about his salary.

“You should be getting more,” she would say. “Gina Sobelski’s husband hasn’t been with the company half as long as you have and he makes twice as much.”

“Sobelski’s in the legal department,” Harry would counter. “Different pay scale.”

Logic did not move Sylvia.

“You’re dull, Harry. Nobody pays any attention to you. You’re a bore.”

He didn’t argue. He just let her vent and the next morning he went to work, where the only pressure on him was to do his job.

Anson Aerospace landed a juicy contract to build a megawatt-plus chemical laser for the Missile Defense Agency. The whole company was abuzz with the news. Victor Anson himself called a meeting of the entire staff in the company cafeteria to tell them that this program would be the most important contract the firm had ever received.

Harry was surprised when he was picked to be part of the small, select group of engineers who would build the device.

Dr. Jacob Levy was chosen to head the laser group, with Pete Quintana as the chief engineer under him. Monk Delany complained to Harry that Quintana only got the job because he was Hispanic and the company wanted to look good to the affirmative action busybodies.

A couple of the guys began calling Quintana el jefe. Harry and the others went along with it. What the hell? Harry thought. He had no problems with a Hispanic being his immediate supervisor. He liked Pete.

Sylvia took the news of Harry’s new assignment strangely.

“I suppose that means you’ll be working longer hours, doesn’t it?” she asked that evening, after their daughters had gone to their rooms to do their homework. Harry could hear the thumping beat of the music they listened to while they were supposed to be studying.

“Yeah, I guess so,” he said.

Sylvia grumbled and Harry wondered why she got sore at the fact that he was successful at his work.

“Look, Sylvie, I’ve got a big responsibility now,” he tried to explain. “I know I’m not a genius. I’ve got to put in long hours and work as hard as I can. These scientists I’m working for are really brilliant; I’ve got to give it everything I’ve got just to keep up with them.”

Sylvia stared at his earnest face and shook her head.

There were women in the lab, of course: a couple of Caltech grads among the scientific staff; several engineers and technicians. A few of them were even good-looking. The Christmas parties were fun, although Harry always drove straight home afterward. Sylvia would scowl at him the next day as Harry nursed his hangover and thanked whatever gods there be that the Pasadena traffic cops hadn’t stopped him on the way home.

Sylvia had given up her teaching career, such as it was, once she became pregnant with Victoria. Then came Denise. Instead of a career in education, Sylvia pursued Causes. Women’s rights. Neighborhood beautification. Abused children. Political campaigns. Harry thought of them as hobbyhorses. Sylvia always had some Cause or other to keep her busy, as if raising two daughters wasn’t enough of a job. Through her Causes she met people, dragged Harry to meetings and cocktail parties, gave herself a sense of accomplishment.

Harry didn’t mind Sylvia’s hobbyhorses, as long as they didn’t interfere with the increasingly long hours he had to put in at the lab. He settled into middle-class Americana, his wispy hair thinning even more, his kids growing up amazingly fast, his wife slowly becoming more distant. Harry could never understand why Sylvia was resentful that his job absorbed so much of his time and interest, and that he enjoyed it.

“We never go anywhere,” she would complain.

“We took the kids to Disney World, didn’t we?”

“Last year.”

“So?”

“I was thinking about an ocean cruise. Maybe to Hawaii.”

Harry scratched his head. “The four of us? Do you know what that would cost?”

“We could leave the girls with the Sobelskis. Just you and me, Harry. On a beautiful ocean liner.”

He thought about how much time that would take but knew better than to mention that out loud. Besides, she knew he had amassed lots of unused vacation days.

“We’ll see,” he said.

Nearly a year later he finally gave in to her drumbeat of hints and accusations. They took a cruise to Hawaii. It wasn’t really romantic, just a different setting for the same pair of them. Hawaii actually depressed Harry with its obviously phony facade of tropical splendor and the locals debasing their native culture for tourist dollars.

As their cruise liner left Honolulu for the trip home, Harry stood at the rail and watched the pier gradually slipping away, more and more distant, the gulf of oily, trash-laden water separating the ship from the land slowly, slowly widening. Turning to Sylvia, standing beside him with tears in her eyes, he thought that the same thing was happening to them— they had already drifted apart, and the gulf between them was getting wider every day, every year.

Once they got back to Pasadena, Sylvia threw herself even deeper into neighborhood politics, circulating petitions and phoning city hall over this Cause or that. Harry worked longer and longer hours at the lab. The high-power laser project was moving along smartly. They called it the COIL: chemical oxygen iodine laser. Powerful stuff.

He knew he and Sylvia were becoming strangers to each other, but he didn’t know what to do about it. At her insistence they went to a marriage counselor, who recommended they both see a psychologist. Reluctantly, Harry agreed to it, secretly terrified that somebody at the lab might find out.

“You’re boringly normal,” the psychologist told him.

The marriage counselor recommended they take a romantic ocean cruise. Harry stopped going to her, although Sylvia continued weekly sessions for more than a year. Harry wondered what she found to talk about every week.

The years slid past relentlessly. Jacob Levy was one of the more supercilious physicists on the lab’s staff, but he got along pretty well with Harry. Levy knew how to keep his nose out of places where it shouldn’t be.

“I’ll do the thinking,” he often told Harry’s team of engineers. “All you have to do is make it work.”

They made a good team. With Jake’s brains and our hands, Harry thought, we’ll make this laser actually work.

Inevitably the COIL program moved into the testing stage, and they had to transport all the hardware out to the Mohave Desert.

Pasadena, California: Hartunian Residence

Harry sensed Sylvia’s eyes boring into his back as he packed his soft-sided travel bag. He turned and, sure enough, his wife was standing in the bedroom doorway, looking distinctly displeased.

“So you’ll be gone for a week?” Sylvia asked. She had that accusing stare on her face; her district attorney look, Harry secretly called it. In school she’d been on the student council, combining earnestness and winning smiles to gather votes and move molehills. It had been a long time since he’d seen her smile—except when they were out with other couples. Then Sylvia could be the life of the party. At home, though, she was the district attorney.

“Maybe a little more than a week,” he said, feeling almost guilty about it. He brushed a hand through his thinning hair. Maybe I ought to get a crew cut, he thought idly. Save a lot of time trying to keep it looking neat.

“Vickie’s birthday is a week from Wednesday,” Sylvia said. “You’ll be home by then, won’t you?”

“Should be.”

“Should be? What do you mean, ‘should be’? It’s your daughter’s birthday, for god’s sake. Don’t you have any feelings for your own daughter? I know you’d rather play around with your buddies than be with me, but you’d better come back in time for her birthday!”

Harry fought down an impulse to throw something at her. Zipping the travel bag, he said tightly, “I’m not playing around out there. It’s strictly business, and it’s important.”

“Important. Sure. More important than me. More important than your daughters. They hardly ever see you! You’re out of here at the crack of dawn and you don’t come home until after dark. Now you’re traipsing out to the desert.”

“It’s my job, for Chrissakes!” he said, trying to keep his voice down.

“Your job,” Sylvia said, dripping acid.

“It’s important.”

“So important you can’t tell me anything about it.”

“That’s right. The program is classified, military secret.”

“Out in the desert.”

“Right.” Harry glanced at his wristwatch. Monk should be driving up soon.

“Where will you be staying out in the Mohave?”

“The Air Force is putting us up in a motel.”

“A motel?”

“That’s right.” He lifted his bag off the bed and started for the door. Sylvia stood in the doorway like an armed guard.

“What’s the name of this motel? The phone number?”

“I don’t know yet. I’ll keep my cell phone on. You can call me on it if you need to.”

Sylvia looked up into his eyes. He saw resentment smoldering in hers, and anger, and plenty of suspicion.

“So you’re walking out on me.”

“Sylvia, it’s only for a goddamned week! Ten days at most.”

“Leaving me and the girls to fend for ourselves.”

He grasped her shoulder and pushed her back from the doorway, out into the hall. As he reached the stairs he heard the toot of Monk Delany’s car horn.

“I’ve got to go now,” Harry said, starting down the carpeted stairs.

Sylvia stayed in the upper hallway, glowering at him. Harry felt enormously relieved to be getting out of the house and away from her.

Over his shoulder he called, “Kiss the girls for me when they get back from school.”

“How many girls are you going to kiss out there in that damned motel?” Sylvia yelled after him.

Harry was startled by that. She’s worried that I’ll shack up with somebody else? The thought had never entered his mind. Actually, it had, now and then. But he’d never acted on it.

He was surprised again when he saw that Monk was driving a mint-new Mustang convertible, fire-engine red.

“Where’s the Chrysler?” Harry asked as he tossed his travel bag onto the narrow bench behind the bucket seats.

Monk gave an unhappy snort. “The old gray ghost’s transmission crapped out. I’ve got to use the wife’s new car and she’s plenty steamed up about it.”

Harry slid into the seat and slammed the door shut. As Monk gunned the convertible down the street Harry thought again about Sylvia accusing him of shacking up with some other woman. As if I’d ever do that, he said to himself with some indignation.

Mohave Desert: Anson Corporation Test Facility

“Ten-hut!” The seven engineers and test technicians turned from their control boards and, grinning, arranged themselves in a ragged line. Several of them gave sloppy salutes.

As he stepped through the steel hatch into the blockhouse, Brigadier General Brad Scheib smiled tightly at them. “I can see none of you geniuses was ever in the military.”

Harry felt disappointed. “You’re not wearing your star, General.”

Scheib wasn’t even in uniform. He wore a checkered short-sleeved shirt, open at the neck, and comfortable chino slacks.

“I don’t want to look overdressed,” he said. The civilians were all in faded denims and company-issued white T-shirts that read ANSON AEROSPACE across their backs, with the stylized A of the corporation’s logo on their chests. Pete Quintana’s shirt was emblazoned with EL JEFE sewn just above the logo.

Scheib was accompanied by Jacob Levy, the chief scientist on the laser project. Like General Scheib, Levy wore a sport shirt and slacks, although his shirt was sparkling white and crisply starched, distinctly out of place in the baking desert heat. Levy was the man in charge, working directly with the newly promoted General Scheib and responsible only to Victor Anson, who owned the company.

“Are you ready to run?” Levy asked Quintana.

Nodding, the engineer replied, “We’re going through the final checkout. Be ready to fire up the beast in ten minutes or so.”

The control center had been a blockhouse years ago, when the Air Force was testing rocket engines for missiles at this remote desert site. It was unglamorous, strictly utilitarian: bare concrete walls, half a dozen desk-sized consoles with their display screens and keyboards, strip lamps across the steel beams supporting the ceiling, a panel of monitoring gauges fastened to the concrete of the rear wall. The air-conditioning was pitiful: several of the men’s shirts were already sweat-stained, and Taki Nakamura’s shirt clung to her slim bosom.

“Very well, then,” Levy said stiffly as he pulled out a handkerchief and mopped his brow, “let’s get down to business and show the general what our COIL can do.”

One wall of the concrete building had been punched through and a long window of thick safety glass looked out on the laser itself.

The COIL sat in its own open shed beneath a flimsy roof of corrugated metal supported by four steel beams. Pete Quintana picked up a cordless screwdriver and stepped through the blockhouse’s steel door, out into the shed.

“Where are you going, Quintana?” Levy demanded, frowning.

Harry thought maybe Pete went outside because it was cooler there—at least a little breeze was blowing, unlike in here with this crappy air-conditioning.

But Pete answered softly, his voice muffled by the thick glass of the safety window, “Tightening up the mount. Keep the vibration level down.”

“You shouldn’t be out there when we’re counting down,” Levy yelled.

“I’ll be back inside in a minute. Start the countdown, it’s okay.”

Levy frowned but turned to Harry and said darkly, “Start the countdown.”

Harry glanced at General Scheib, then shrugged. Turning to Delany, he said, “Start the sequence timer, Monk.”

The target sat half a mile out on the desert: the sawed-off end of a cargo plane, its fat round fuselage and big tailfin sticking up into the cloudless blue sky. There were several pinpoint holes in the plane’s aluminum skin, blackened from the heat of the laser’s beam.

General Scheib came up beside Harry and looked out at the laser assembly. “We can’t have fussbudgets tinkering when we’re flying that dingus. It’s got to work without last-second adjustments.”

“It will,” Harry said tightly.

“Of course it will,” Levy added. But the slight lift of his brow told Harry he was not happy.

Harry picked up the intercom microphone. “Hey, Pete, you’d better cut it short and get in here.”

Still with his back to the safety window, Quintana hollered, “Yeah, yeah. I’m coming.”

“Now,” Harry said. “We want to start her up.”

“So start her. I just want to check the vibration absorber on the optics platform. I’ll be inside before you get her warmed up.”

Harry looked at Levy, who frowned but said resignedly, “Get on with it.”

Scheib shook his head slightly and thought, These civilians like to play with the equipment.

Engineers—they fall in love with the hardware. But they’ve got to make this beast foolproof, so that tech sergeants can run it without a half dozen geeks tinkering with it all the time.

He heard the whine of the electrical power generator starting up as he peered through the window. Quintana straightened up and planted his hands on his hips, as if admiring the equipment he had helped to build. The COIL looked to Scheib more like a miniature junkyard than a flight-weight laser system. Scheib knew the numbers and understood that these engineers had sized the laser to fit inside the capacious frame of a modified Boeing 747. Barely. But in the eyes of the newly minted general those pressure vessels and pumps and all that piping certainly didn’t look like something that could ever get off the ground.

“Congratulations on the star.”

Startled, Scheib turned to see Hartunian, one of the engineers, standing beside him.

Scheib was tall and trim, his body honed by a daily regimen of exercise and tennis. His face was lean, too, and handsome: sandy brown hair that was just starting to show some gray at the temples, light brown eyes that crinkled when he smiled. Women found him attractive, even out of uniform, something that his stylish, upscale wife didn’t seem to mind in the least. Harry was roundish, almost pudgy, his wispy dark hair terminally unruly. But Scheib thought that Harry was sharper mentally than anyone on the laser team. He was just too self-effacing to push his advantage. Except on the tennis court. Harry beat the general at tennis whenever they played together. Brains over brawn, Scheib thought, although he would never admit it aloud.

“It’s about time the Air Force gave you some recognition,” Harry went on, his voice low enough that the rest of the people in the blockhouse couldn’t hear him.

Almost flustered, Scheib replied, “Thank you, Harry. I didn’t know you cared.”

Harry grinned at him. “If they passed you up and you got reassigned, we’d have to break in a new blue-suiter.”

Scheib nodded, thinking, It always comes down to what’s best for numero uno. Well, I’ve got my star. Now if these clowns can make this contraption work I might even get a second star, eventually.

“Input power ready,” called one of the technicians.

Harry turned away from the general and gave Levy a questioning look. “We’re ready to power up.”

“By all means,” Levy said.

“Pete, get the hell in here,” Delany thundered.

“On my way,” Quintana yelled back.

“Initiate power sequence,” Harry said, plucking his sticky shirt away from his chest.

“Initiating power sequence.”

“Iodine pressure on the button,” one of the technicians called out.

“Electrical power ramping up,” another technician said.

“Optical bench ready.”

“Atmospheric instability nominal.”

“Adaptive optics on.”

“Iodine flow in ten seconds.”

“Oxygen flow in eight seconds.”

“Pressurizing iodine.”

“Pressurizing oxy.”

Pete Quintana opened the door to the blockhouse.

Harry thought that Pete was cutting it awfully close. If anything goes wrong with—

The laser blew up in a spectacular blast that ripped the roof off the test shed. The explosion knocked everyone down; Harry smashed against the back wall of the control room, shattering his ribs against the gauges mounted on the concrete. A jagged piece of metal crashed through the safety window, shattering it into thousands of pellets as a hellish fireball billowed up into the cloudless blue sky. Pain roared through Harry while the heat from the oxygen-fed fire poured through, hot enough to melt the gauges on the back wall.

In the partially open doorway Pete Quintana was enveloped in the flames, screaming, gibbering, flailing in agony. Harry tried to reach out to him, but his own pain was so intense that he blacked out.

Groggily, General Scheib got to all fours, glass pellets crunching beneath his hands and feet. A twisted piece of pipe had embedded itself into the back wall of the blockhouse like a red-hot arrow.

Christ, Scheib thought, if the blast hadn’t flattened me that thing would’ve torn my head off.

Levy and the engineers were all on the floor, knocked flat by the blast. They seemed dazed, in shock, faces and hands burned raw by the heat of the explosion. Hartunian looked unconscious. Scheib got to his feet slowly. The guy who’d been outside lay on the floor of the shed next to the burning, twisted shambles of the laser, a huddled lump of blackened flesh.

Slowly the others got up, coughing, dazed. Somewhere a fire siren was wailing, coming closer. Two of the engineers were helping the woman to her feet. Her face was burned; a trickle of blood ran down her cheek from her scalp. Levy pushed himself up to a sitting position, his shirt and trousers covered with grit. He looked angry, resentful, as if his beautiful machine had somehow betrayed him.

“It shouldn’t have done that,” Levy muttered through chipped teeth.

Yeah, right, Scheib thought.

Through the shattered window Scheib saw what was left of the COIL: twisted, blackened wreckage, wisps of dirty reddish smoke wafting into the sky. And the body of Pete Quintana, burned red and raw.

Hartunian moaned and opened his eyes. “What the hell happened?” he croaked.

My career just went up in smoke, General Scheib thought. That’s what the hell happened.

Pasadena, California: Olympia Medical Center

Harry was sedated and semiconscious while Anson Aerospace medical personnel helicoptered him from the Mohave test site directly to Olympia Medical Center in Pasadena. He went into surgery the next day, then the recovery unit, and finally into a private room paid for by Anson Aerospace. Although Harry didn’t know it at first, a pair of Air Police stood guard outside his room. Later they were replaced by private security people hired by Victor Anson himself.

Sometime during that period of half-wakefulness, an officer in Air Force blue entered Harry’s room and shoved an official-looking document at him. “Security agreement,” he said, his tone as flat and clipped as an air traffic controller’s. “Sign at the bottom line.”

“Security?” Harry mumbled, still fuzzy from the sedatives.

“About the accident. It’s been classified Secret. You can’t say anything about it to anyone who doesn’t have a certified need to know.” He held the document on a clipboard six inches from Harry’s nose and pressed a ballpoint pen into his hand. “Sign it now.”

Moving his arm made Harry wince with pain. He scribbled a parody of his signature on the bottom line and the uniformed officer took his clipboard and left Harry to drift back into a drugged sleep.

When Harry awoke fully, on the fifth day after the explosion, he blinked at the almost-luxurious furnishings of the room in which he found himself. Crank-up hospital bed, he saw, but the rest of the room looked like a first-class hotel, rather than a hospital: cool pastel walls, sleek modern furniture, a big flat-screen TV on the wall. The one window looked out on city buildings. Then he realized there was an IV tube in his left arm, and a bank of monitoring instruments softly beeping on the wall above his bed’s headboard.

Harry tried to raise himself into a sitting position to see more of the outside surroundings, but his ribs flared with pain. He settled back on the bed and the pain subsided into a dulled ache. They must have me pretty well doped up, he guessed.

The door to his room opened and a nurse stepped in. She was a bit on the chubby side, but she looked cheerful. Smiling.

“We’re awake,” she said pleasantly.

“Yeah,” Harry replied, unhappy with her “we.”

“Hungry?”

“No.”

“Really?” She came to the bed, peered at the instruments over Harry’s head. “You’ve been getting nothing but intravenous for the past four days.”

“How bad was I hurt?”

“A few cracked ribs. Superficial burns on one side of your face. Nothing terribly serious.”

She’s a professional nurse, Harry thought. Indifferent to the patient’s pain.

“The others? How bad—”

She shook her head with a slightly disapproving expression on her dimpled features. “I’ll order a breakfast tray for you. See if you can take some nourishment.”

Twenty minutes later a Hispanic orderly came in with a tray of breakfast. He cranked Harry’s bed up to a sitting position slowly, carefully, obviously aware that the patient’s ribs were painful. Harry felt grateful enough to say, “Gracias.”

The dark-skinned orderly grinned at him. “Just doin’ my job, man.”

Harry sipped the orange juice, poked at the rubbery scrambled eggs. Every time he moved his arms his ribs flared up. By the time he’d given up on the breakfast his body felt as if somebody had spent the morning whacking his chest and back with a baseball bat.

A doctor came in briefly, took his pulse, and told him that he’d be fine in a week or so.

“The others,” Harry said. “How bad were they hurt? Pete Quintana?”

The doctor pursed his lips. “I don’t know about anyone else. The medevac chopper brought you in five days ago. You’re my patient. You’re recovering well. That’s all I know.”

It must be bad, Harry surmised. Pete must be dead. Anybody else?

Harry spent the day watching television, banal soap operas, game shows where he knew the answers that stumped the dumbbell contestants, phony courtrooms with idiotic people complaining about one another, psychologists offering advice to young couples and old married folks.

Maybe Sylvia and I ought to go on one of those shows, Harry thought. Then he remembered the marriage counselor they’d seen and the psychologist he’d gone to afterward and how pointless it had all been.

Where is Sylvia? he wondered. Does she even know I’m in the hospital? Did anybody tell her there’s been an accident?

Late in the afternoon Monk Delany came into his room. Harry was glad to see the big, shambling engineer, although he thought Monk looked awkward, sheepish, almost embarrassed.

“How ya doing, Harry?”

“It only hurts when I breathe.”

“Come on,” Delany said. “Seriously.”

“Banged-up ribs. I’ll be okay.”

“Your face is kinda burned. Like you got too much sun.”

Harry nodded. The movement sent a twinge of pain along his back.

“You look okay,” he said to Delany.

The engineer pulled one of the petite wooden chairs from the wall and sat down beside Harry’s bed. The chair looked almost too frail to hold his bulk.

“I got a couple bruises,” Delany said. “The blast knocked me down, that’s all.” “Pete?”

Delany’s face fell. “I told that dumb spic to get his ass inside the blockhouse.”

“Is he dead?”

“Yeah.”

“Anybody else?”

“Naw, they’re all okay. You got it worse than anybody. Except Pete, of course. General Scheib tore out both knees of his pants. Levy got a black eye. A real beaut of a shiner.”

Harry knew that Monk was trying to cheer him up. “What caused the explosion? Any idea?”

“Six dozen guys are going over the wreckage, including a gang of blue suits.”

“And?”

Delany shrugged. “Looks like it mighta been some grease got into the oxy line.”

“We checked that line,” Harry said.

“Yeah, I know. But that’s what it looks like.”

Harry closed his eyes and saw his job going down the drain. Grease in the oxygen line. That shouldn’t have happened. Somebody’s going to get blamed for it. Me. Maybe all of us. Maybe the whole damned program will get shut down.

“The investigation isn’t over,” Delany said. “Maybe they’ll find something else.”

Harry started to shake his head, thought better of it. “What’re they going to find? Spies? Foreign agents planted a bomb?”

Delany sat and stared at him in silence for several long moments, his normally cheerful face looking pensive, almost mournful.

At last he got up from the flimsy chair. “Take care of yourself, Harry. I gotta get back out to Mohave, help with the investigation.”

“Thanks for coming by, Monk.”

“Nothing to it.” Delany stopped at the door. “Anything I can get you, Harry? Anything you need?”

“My laptop,” Harry answered immediately. “I’ll go nuts in here without my laptop to work on.”

“You got it, pal.”

It wasn’t until after Delany had left that Harry wondered when Sylvia would be allowed to visit him. He found that he didn’t really care when she came, or if she came at all. And he realized he wasn’t surprised by his feeling.

Pasadena: Anson Aerospace Corporation Headquarters

Victor Anson sat behind the gleaming broad desk of his private office and gave the three men sitting anxiously on the other side his coldest, hardest stare.

Anson was totally bald but sported a natty little pencil moustache. He was athletically slim and wore an impeccably tailored Italian silk suit of silvery gray, with an off-white shirt and carefully knotted sky blue tie.

Two of the three men before him were corporate executives in proper business suits and ties; the third was Jake Levy, one of his top physicists, dressed in sloppy, unpressed slacks and a white open-necked short-sleeved sport shirt. Typical scientist, Anson thought: every day is casual Friday for them. At least Levy knew better than to wear denims in his presence, Anson told himself.

Looking closer at the physicist, Anson saw that his left eye was swollen and bruised bluish. The man looked faintly ludicrous; Anson had to suppress a smile.

Anson had made the company what it was and he knew it. Starting with nothing but his father’s few millions and a humdrum aircraft-repair operation, Victor Anson had spent his life, his well-known shrewdness, and his single-minded determination to create Anson Aerospace Corporation and make it into one of the most successful industrial research and development organizations in the world.

Now he glared across his desk at the man whom he’d trusted to make that goddamned laser into a winner. All he had to show for six years of work was a tangled mess of smoking wreckage.

“You realize that SDB has already submitted a formal proposal to the Air Force for their version of a high-power laser?”

Before they could do anything more than nod miserably, Anson went on. “And Vickers has its whole Washington team bending the ears of every major congressional committee chairman, telling them that they can take over the laser program. Vickers! They’re British, for god’s sake!”

Jacob Levy, who’d been born in Liverpool, replied in his studied Oxford accent, “Vickers couldn’t possibly handle the task, and everyone knows it.”

“Those congressmen don’t,” Anson snapped. “Those senators don’t.”

The two men sitting on either side of Levy were James Dykes, the corporation’s chief financial officer, and Milton Haas, who headed Anson’s Washington office. Dykes was built like a fireplug: thick torso, short limbs, a thick mop of dirty blond hair. Haas was as slim and graceful as a ballerina, with the most beautiful dark eyes Anson had ever seen on a man.

“It’s not all that bad, V.R.,” said Dykes, his voice rough and throaty, as if he’d been hollering at people all morning. “Our contract isn’t up for renewal until—”

“The goddam Air Force can cancel our goddam contract whenever it goddam wants to and you know it, Jimmy!” Anson snarled.

Haas raised a slim finger. “There’s no movement in the Pentagon to cancel our contract.”

“Not yet.”

“We can rebuild the laser in three months,” said Levy. “Perhaps less.”

“Not until you find out what made it blow up,” Anson replied.

“We know what caused the explosion. A speck of grease got entrained in the oxygen line. Once the oxygen was pressurized it ignited—”

“A speck of grease?” Anson roared. “How in the name of all the devils in hell did a speck of grease get into the oxy line?”

Unconsciously touching his swollen eye, Levy replied with deliberate calm, “The important thing, Mr. Anson, is to look ahead. I’ve instituted procedures that will make certain all the feed lines are purged with nitrogen before we power up the laser. That will ensure that the lines are clear.”

Anson scowled at him. “One of your technicians screwed up. Fire the bastard.”

“I’m not certain—”

“Find out who’s responsible and fire him!” Anson insisted. “You don’t have to be certain. Pick the likeliest chump and throw him out on his butt. Make an example of him so the others shape up.”

“But I can’t simply fire someone at random like that.”

Anson stared at Levy for several heartbeats. Then, “Well, if you can’t—or won’t—I’ll find somebody who can.”

Levy’s face went white.

“Find a scapegoat,” Anson said, his voice cold and hard. Then he smiled thinly. “It ought to be easy enough for you. You Jews know all about scapegoats, don’t you?”

Pasadena: Olympia Medical Center

It wasn’t until Harry’s seventh day in the hospital that Sylvia came to see him. He had the bed cranked up to a sitting position. His ribs ached, but the tight cast they’d put around his trunk made the pain bearable. The head nurse told him that they were weaning him off the painkillers as she changed the plastic bag of his IV drip.

“Don’t want to make a druggie out of you,” she said cheerfully.

Harry grunted, even though it hurt his ribs.

The nurse left, and before the door closed Sylvia pushed through. Harry felt surprised, then a little guilty. He hadn’t asked about his wife, had hardly even thought about her, since waking up in the hospital.

“Hi, Sylvie,” he said. It sounded weak to him, as if he were automatically trying to gain her sympathy.

Sylvia stood uncertainly at the doorway. He was surprised to realize how chunky she’d gotten over the years. The curvaceous girl he’d married had evolved into an almost dumpy matron. Like everything else, Harry thought. Everything goes downhill. I should talk, Mr. Bald Flab Guy.

For a moment Harry thought Sylvia was going to turn around and leave. But she came into the room a few steps, clutching her purse in both hands.

“Are you okay, Harry?”

He tried to smile. “It only hurts when I breathe.”

She frowned at him. “Don’t try to make a joke out of it. The man on the phone said you were seriously injured.”

“Cracked some ribs.”

“What happened?”

Harry hesitated, vaguely remembering the secrecy agreement he had signed. “I can’t tell you.”

She came up to the edge of the bed. “You can’t tell your own wife?”

Harry started to shake his head, but the flare of pain made him stop. Instead he merely said, “Air Force stuff. It’s all classified.”

“Your own wife?” Sylvia demanded. “Do they think I’m a spy or something?”

Harry thought of Ben Franklin’s dictum: Three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead. Then he remembered Pete Quintana.

Sylvia stood at the side of the bed. “Leona Rosenberg told me that one of your crew got killed. That Hispanic guy.”

“Pete Quintana.”

“There was an explosion? Your face looks burned on one side.”

“I’ll be all right,” Harry said. “I should be home in a few days.”

She said nothing.

“How’re the kids?” he asked.

“Vickie’s dating that Vietnamese boy from her class again. I don’t trust him.”

Harry smiled faintly. “But we can trust Vickie. She’s got a good head on her shoulders.”

Shaking her head, Sylvia said, “I don’t like the way he looks at her.”

“He comes into the house, doesn’t he? He doesn’t just toot the horn and expect her to go running out to him. The kid’s got some manners.”

“For god’s sake, Harry! You’d let your daughter get raped just because you think the boy’s polite!”

“Don’t start, Sylvie.”

“I don’t see why Vickie can’t date her own kind of boys,” she grumbled.

Harry tried to change the subject. “How’s Denise?”

“She’s fine. Breezing through school. They want her to come out for the orchestra next term.” “That’s good.”

And suddenly they had nothing more to talk about. Nothing that wouldn’t lead to an argument. Sylvia stood by the bed for a few moments more, looking as if she wanted to get away.

“I’ll be out of here in a couple of days,” Harry said.

She nodded. “Good. Call me if you need anything.”

“Yeah.”

“I’ve got to be going now. The kids will be coming home from school.”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Harry almost said, Don’t bother. But he kept the thought to himself.

Pasadena, California: Hartunian Residence

Harry felt silly in the powered wheelchair, but he had to admit that it was better than trying to walk. Sylvia had come to the hospital and stayed alongside him as he rolled down the hospital corridor, checked out at the admissions counter, and then wheeled himself outside and up to the SUV that Anson Aerospace had provided him for the trip home. The driver and one of the hospital’s orderlies helped Harry into the SUV’s right-hand seat with a minimum of agony and then stowed his wheelchair in the back.

Once home, Harry realized that the world looks a lot different when you’re confined to a wheelchair. The split-level house had only two sets of stairs and they were no more than six steps each, but to Harry they suddenly looked formidable. Carefully, with the SUV’s driver grasping his left arm and Sylvia his right, he got up from the chair. Then he stood there with his daughters staring wide-eyed at him while the driver carried the chair down the little flight as easily as if it weighed only a few ounces.

He walked down the steps like an arthritic old man, Sylvia and the driver holding him again, and settled into the chair once more.

“I’ll be okay now,” he said to the driver. “Thanks.”

The guy dipped his chin in acknowledgment, grinned at the two girls standing there, and left the house. Sylvia stood in front of him, looking him over with a disapproving scowl on her face. Harry nudged the chair’s control stick and wheeled past her, down the carpeted hallway.

As he turned into the bedroom, Sylvia said from behind him, “Not there. I set up the guest room for you.” Her voice sounded edgy. “The doctor said it’ll be better for you.”

Harry spun the chair around. Sylvia looked strained, almost frightened. He started to say something to her, but gave it up. Without another word he turned the chair around and rolled it to the guest room.

Sylvia and the girls fussed around him as he got out of the chair on his own and stretched out gratefully on the queen-sized bed of the guest room. His back throbbed and he felt the beginnings of a headache pinching at the back of his neck.

“You have everything you need right here,” Sylvia said from the doorway. “If you want anything, just holler.”

“You want some juice, Dad?” Denise asked, her eyes full of anxiety.

He made a smile for her. “I’m okay, honey. Thanks anyway.”

Vickie said, “We’ll be your nurses, Dad. We’ll take care of you.”

“Thanks,” he said, thinking that Sylvia would be happy to let them take care of him. Or anyone else. As long as she didn’t have to.

In two days Harry felt almost normal. His doctor came from the hospital to remove the body cast he’d been wrapped in and ordered Harry to make an appointment for an x-ray of his ribs the next week. Denise and Vickie looked in on him before rushing off to school and once again as soon as they got back. The rest of the time Harry spent in bed watching television or pecking at his laptop. Sylvia stayed out of the guest room.

It’s just as well, Harry thought. I sleep better alone. She doesn’t want me near her anyway.

It was then that he realized his marriage was over. Had been over for years. They’d just been going through the motions, staying together for the kids’ sake. This accident broke the bubble.

But where do I go from here? Harry asked himself. How do I tell the girls that I’m leaving them? That their mother wants me to leave them?

Pasadena: Anson Aerospace Corporation Headquarters

“We’ve got a real problem, Victor.” General Scheib looked more worried than Anson had ever seen him before. The two men were sitting in the corner of Anson’s spacious office by the windows that looked out on the parking lot. Scheib was in uniform, although he had loosened up enough to take off his beribboned jacket and toss it on the sofa on the other side of the room. Anson had kept his suit jacket on, his tie precisely knotted at his collar.

It was early evening, the sun was setting, the parking lot was almost empty as a handful of late leavers straggled to their cars and drove home.

Anson had broken out his best scotch and told his secretary she could go home as soon as she set his phone to refer all incoming calls to the answering machine.

As nonchalantly as he could manage, Anson replied, “We’ve identified the cause of the accident and taken steps to make sure it won’t happen again.”

“I know,” Scheib said, avoiding Anson’s eyes. “But there’s a ton of pressure coming down on us. The head of the Missile Defense Agency has never believed in the laser; he calls it ‘Buck Rogers’ fantasy.’ That’s my boss; that’s what I’ve got to work with.”

Anson picked up his glass from the little table between them. He’d poured a generous dollop of scotch for the general; he himself was drinking dry amontillado.

“We’ve made the laser work. The testing program was only a couple of months behind schedule. So we’ll be five or six months behind; that’s no big deal.”

“The laser blew up, Victor.”

“Accidents happen.”

Scheib stared at him for several heartbeats. “Do you know what would happen if your laser blew up when it was flying in a 747? You’d have a dozen deaths on your hands. And my career would go down in flames with the plane.”

“We’ll fix it,” Anson said firmly. “We’ll make it work.”

Shaking his head ever so slightly, Scheib said, “We don’t have just the Air Force and the MDA to deal with here, Victor. There’s the White House, for god’s sake. The President’s cut missile defense again. And the committee people in Congress; that’s where the funding comes from.”

“They’re in favor of the airborne laser.”

“They were in favor. But now… even our strongest supporters are wavering.”

“But we’ve proved the concept,” Anson insisted, feeling more alarm than he wanted to show. “We’ve shown that the laser can destroy a target almost instantaneously. We’ve shown that we can pick up a missile’s signature and lock onto it.”

“In separate experiments.”

“But all we have to do is put them together. Systems integration. Anson Aerospace is good at systems integration.”

Scheib took a healthy gulp of his scotch. “There’s pressure coming from the top. There’s going to be a congressional investigation. We have to show results, Victor, or they’ll cancel the whole damned program.”

Deciding that it was counterproductive to argue with the man who was pushing for the airborne laser in Washington, Anson cut to the chase. “How much time do we have?”

The general toyed with his glass, then answered, “Four months. That’s when the congressional committee will open its investigation of the accident. You’ve got to have that laser working again in four months. Otherwise they’ll cut you off.”

“And then we start the integration work? Boeing’s on schedule with the plane, I take it.”

“Don’t worry about Boeing, Victor. Just get that damned laser working again. And give me enough ammunition to show those old farts that you’ve corrected the problem that caused the explosion.”

Anson nodded. Four months, he thought. Four months to make or break the program. Then he corrected himself. No, four months to make or break the company. If this airborne laser program goes down the tubes, Anson Aerospace goes with it. I’m going to have to push Levy and his people hard. And spend a lot on overtime.

Scheib looked bleak. He’s under as much strain as I am, Anson thought.

“Well,” he said with a forced smile. “At least we’ve got the weekend coming up. Are you staying here in California or heading right back to Washington?”

The young general tilted his head slightly. “I’d like to stay for the weekend…” He let his voice trail off.

Anson leaned back in his chair and said grandly, “Well, why don’t you stay at my place up at Big Sur? Beautiful spot. Looks right out on the ocean. I can have the company chopper take you and put you down right on the front lawn.”

Smiling, Scheib said, “That’d be great.”

“The caretaker won’t be there over the weekend. You’ll have the place completely to yourself.”

Scheib’s grin widened. “Maybe I’ll bring a friend along with me.”

“Do that,” Anson said as he got to his feet. “Have a nice restful weekend. Unwind. Enjoy yourself.”

The two men shook hands and Scheib left the office. Anson refilled his glass of sherry and went back to his desk. Maybe he’ll bring a friend along, Anson said to himself. He knew perfectly well who the friend was: a certain Major Karen Christopher, USAF, who was normally stationed at some Air Force base in Missouri, but just happened to be in California this week.

Major Christopher was up for promotion to light colonel, according to the report in Anson’s private computer files. She’ll make lieutenant colonel, he told himself. But first she’ll make the general. Scheib was a married man, but that hadn’t stopped him from becoming quite involved with the good-looking major.

Anson sat at his desk and told himself that he wasn’t spying on General Scheib for his own personal gain. It was for the good of the company, for the good of all the men and women who depended on him for their livelihoods. For the good of the nation, when you come right down to it. For the good of the entire free world!

Pasadena, California: Anson Residence

“My God.” Sylvia gaped as they got out of their Camry. “It’s huge.”

Squinting up at the eight-story brick building, Harry said, “It’s not all his. He’s only got the top two floors.”

“Only!” Sylvia said with awe in her voice.

Harry had never been invited to Victor Anson’s home before. The invitation had been completely unexpected; it had arrived in the mail two days earlier, on stiff white embossed paper almost as thick as cardboard. RSVP. Sylvia had rushed out in a flurry of shopping. Harry thought she looked pretty good in the light yellow cocktail dress she’d bought; she ought to, after all the time she and the girls had spent fussing over the dress, the shoes, her makeup, her hair.

Harry’s hair was slicked down with a gel that Sylvia insisted he use. It made him feel like a pimp, but Sylvia screamed that he couldn’t go to Victor Anson’s party with his hair blowing every which way, like some nerdy creep. He hated the gel, but he used it.

Now the two of them stood at the front door of the condominium building while a parking valet drove their car down the bricked driveway to the parking lot in back. A doorman in a black uniform was standing by the glass double doors of the entryway. After checking the invitation Harry handed to him, the doorman led them every step of the way to the elevator, as if he was afraid Harry would steal one of the vases that held big bouquets of fresh flowers.

Another guy in a black uniform actually ran the elevator. Harry began to wonder if this was all security that Anson had hired. All the guy had to do was press the button marked PH. For penthouse, Harry figured.

The elevator opened onto a small entryway. Beyond its open door was a big room already crowded with people, buzzing with conversation, men and women standing and chatting amiably while holding champagne flutes or heavy cut crystal old-fashioned glasses. The men were all in suits or at least sports jackets. Harry felt grateful that Sylvia had insisted he wear his one and only suit, an old tweed that he hadn’t taken out of the closet for years. It smelled faintly of mothballs. He recognized a few of the senior scientists from the lab. Moving hesitantly into the crowd, he introduced Sylvia to Jake Levy, who was wearing the kind of dark blue suit that Harry associated with church services. Levy in turn introduced his own wife, a plump graying woman who seemed surprisingly older than Levy.

A big picture window swept along the far wall; Harry could see all the way out to the old Rose Bowl and the hills beyond. It was a beautifully clear day, with brilliant afternoon sunshine streaming down. Harry nodded to himself, thinking, When Victor Anson throws a party the smog isn’t invited.

Anson himself was standing by the curving staircase that led upstairs, General Scheib beside him in his best blues. A woman in Air Force uniform was next to Scheib, the gold oak leaves of a major on her shoulders. She was petite, kind of pretty in a sort of girl-next-door way, but she looked distinctly uncomfortable.

Sylvia fell into conversation with Mrs. Levy as a young waitress in a short-skirted black-and-white outfit offered a tray of drinks to Harry. He took a tulip glass of white wine and handed it to Sylvia, who accepted it without even looking at him.

“And for you, sir?” the waitress asked.

“Urn…” Harry thought about the drive home. It wasn’t far, but he’d never been up at this end of Pasadena, near the country club, and didn’t know the streets very well. He knew the Pasadena police force, though. “I’ll have a club soda,” he said.

Mrs. Levy excused herself and moved away from Sylvia. For a few moments neither she nor Harry knew quite what they should be doing.

“Where’s the other people from your crew?” she asked Harry.

He scanned the crowd. “I don’t see them.”

“Weren’t they invited?”

“Maybe not.”

“Didn’t you ask them?” Sylvia demanded. “Didn’t you tell them you were invited to Mr. Anson’s home?”

He shook his head. The thought had never occurred to him.

Sylvia huffed. “Honestly, Harry.”

General Scheib came up to him, with the good-looking major hanging a step behind him.

“How’re the ribs, Harry?”

“They’re fine,” Harry fibbed. His back still ached, still twinged when he moved too quickly.

“Good,” said the general. “Good.” And he moved past Harry and Sylvia without introducing the major, who dutifully followed after him.

The waitress arrived with Harry’s club soda in a tall glass tinkling with ice cubes. He began to feel edgy. He didn’t really know anybody in this crowd, except for Levy, and Jake was all the way over on the other side of the big room now, by the picture window, deep in conversation with a couple of older men who looked to Harry like bankers or maybe members of Anson’s board of directors: white-haired and balding, big in the middle, flabby in the face.

“Mr. Anson’s coming this way!” Sylvia hissed urgently.

Harry saw Anson making his way slowly through the crowd, stopping to talk to this one or that for a moment, then moving closer to where he and Sylvia stood. There was something strange about his lean face with its high cheekbones and shaved scalp. His skin looked waxy, slick, like the skin grafts they give to burn victims. Still, he looked stylish in his navy blue blazer and white slacks: pencil-slim, his face taut, his scalp shaved, his moustache trim and elegant.

“Where’s his wife?” Sylvia whispered.

Harry shook his head. “I don’t know.” He wouldn’t recognize her anyway; he’d never seen a picture of her.

“She’s very big with the opera society,” Sylvia said, still whispering as though she were passing on military secrets. “I told you we should get involved in the opera society.”

Harry didn’t remember that, but he didn’t say anything. Anson was chatting amiably with the couple standing next to them, but he was glancing in Harry’s direction.

Sure enough, Anson disengaged from the other couple and turned to Harry and Sylvia. “You must be Mrs. Hartunian,” he said, making it sound as if it were a compliment.

“Sylvia,” Harry said.

“A pleasure.” Anson took Sylvia’s hand and bowed over it slightly, as if he were going to kiss it. Sylvia’s face turned scarlet.

Then Anson said, “Sylvia, do you mind if I borrow your husband for a few minutes? I have something important to discuss with Harry. In private.”

“Ce… certainly,” Sylvia stammered.

“Thank you, Sylvia,” said Anson graciously. “I won’t keep him long.”

Anson’s Inner Sanctum

Harry felt mystified as Anson gripped him by the elbow and led him through the partygoers, back toward the stairs. The crowd melted away before them. Like Moses parting the Red Sea, Harry thought.

“Can your ribs do the stairs or should we take the elevator?” Anson asked.

“I’m okay,” Harry said, stretching the truth. “The stairs are fine.”

The staircase curved between walls lined with old, fading photographs. Family, Harry thought. People at the beach, people at formal dinners in tuxedos and evening gowns, a man who looked a lot like Victor Anson shaking hands with President Franklin D. Roosevelt, no less. Some of the pictures seemed to go back to the roaring twenties.

The staircase ended in a single, open, airy solarium. All the walls were tinted windows from floor to ceiling. Harry squinted at the light streaming in despite the tinting; it was almost painful. A big old-fashioned desk of dark mahogany stood on one side of the room, an even bigger, heavy-legged pool table on the other.

“My sanctum sanctorum,” Anson said as Harry looked admiringly around the room, his eyes adjusting to the brightness. “I come up here to do my thinking. And my deciding.”

Harry couldn’t think of anything to say.

A pair of comfortable bottle green-leather wing chairs was in one corner, angled slightly to face each other. A small sherry table stood between them.

Anson gestured to the chairs. “Have a seat, Harry.”

Harry eased himself gratefully into the luxurious chair. It creaked a little. Or is that my back? Harry asked himself.

A bottle and two tiny tulip glasses stood on the table.

“Have some sherry?” Anson asked as he sat facing Harry. “It’s amontillado, my favorite.”

Harry hesitated, then hoisted his club soda as he replied, “I’ve got to drive home.”

Anson nodded. “Smart fellow.”

Harry felt uncomfortable. He didn’t know what to say, didn’t know if it was okay to rest his glass on the inlaid wood of the little table between them.

Anson solved Harry’s dilemma by sliding a thick green marble coaster across the table as he asked, “How’s the rebuilding work going?”

“We’re on schedule, Mr. Anson. A little ahead of schedule, actually.”

“Good,” said Anson. Leaning forward slightly, his slender hands on his knees, he went on. “This laser project is very important, Harry. Extremely important.”

“I know.” Harry hesitated, wondering how Anson would react to being questioned, but worked up the courage to say, “Mr. Anson, is it all right if I ask you a question?”

“Certainly,” Anson replied grandly. Then, with a sly wink, he added, “I don’t guarantee that I’ll answer it, though.”

Harry forced a perfunctory laugh.

“So what’s your question, son?”

Trying not to let his nervousness show in his voice, Harry said, “When… when the accident happened and Pete Quintana died, I thought—we all thought, actually—that you’d pick Monk Delany to replace Pete as program engineer.”

Anson’s face went dour. For several long moments he said nothing while Harry berated himself for going too far.

At last Anson said slowly, “Not Delany. No, Harry, he wouldn’t do. Not serious enough. I needed a man who could get the job done. That man is you, Harry, and nobody else.”

Swallowing before he could speak again, Harry said, “Thank you, sir. I was . . . well, sort of surprised when you picked me.”

With a thin smile, Anson said, “That’s one of your good qualities, my boy. You don’t have a swelled head.”

Harry couldn’t think of a thing to say.

Anson went on. “I’ve talked General Scheib into giving us a go-ahead for flight tests as soon as we prove the rebuilt laser works.”

“Flight tests?”

“Yes. That’s where the real money is, Harry. Systems integration and then flight tests.”

“We’ll have to test the COIL on the ground first, make sure we’ve got all the bugs out.”

“Of course,” said Anson. “Of course. But I want to stress to you, Harry, how important this program is. I’ve sunk a lot of the company’s money into your COIL. I’m swinging for the fences with this one.”

Harry thought, It isn’t my COIL.

Anson went on. “You see, Harry, I believe in this laser idea. The United States is under threat, you know. A grave threat. It’s bad enough that the Russians and the Chinese have whole fleets of ballistic missiles aimed at us—”

“I thought they agreed to retarget their missiles, just like we did,” Harry interrupted. “They signed an agreement, didn’t they? A treaty?”

Anson waved an impatient hand. “They could target them back on our cities in a matter of hours.”

Harry nodded.

“But it’s these other people who really threaten us. The Russians and Chinese know that if they try to hit us we’ll smash them back to the Stone Age with an overwhelming counterstrike. But what about terrorists? What about the crazies in North Korea and Iran?” A blue vein in Anson’s forehead began to throb. “They’re fanatics! They’re not worried about a counterstrike. All they want is to hurt us as deeply as they can! Blow up an American city! Cripple our economy! Bend us to their will!”

“So the airborne laser—”

“Will be our first line of defense. We’ve got to be able to stop their missiles as soon as they fire them at us. And they’ll be firing them at us, never doubt it.”

Harry picked up his glass and took a gulp of soda. “We’ve got a lot of work to do,” he said.

“We do indeed, Harry,” Anson said, nodding grimly. “And I’ll be perfectly frank with you, son: the company’s entire future is riding on that laser. If it fails, if we can’t make it work and we lose the contract, Anson Aerospace could go bankrupt.”

“The whole company?” Harry felt startled.

“The whole company,” Anson confirmed. “I’ve staked just about everything on this one program.”

“Wow.”

Anson took a sip of amontillado, then asked, “Do you know why you weren’t laid off after the accident?”

Harry’s guts clenched. One of the laser team’s technicians, Andy McMasters, had been fired. Harry had expected the ax to fall on his neck, but they had booted McMasters instead.

Without waiting for Harry to reply, Anson went on. “Levy suggested we let you go, you know. He wanted to find a scapegoat to blame for the accident.”

Harry nodded wordlessly.

“But I knew that the rest of your team looked up to you, Harry. I knew the accident wasn’t your fault. I knew we needed you to get the COIL back on track.”

“Me?”

Anson nodded wisely. “You.”

Dumbfounded, Harry mumbled, “Thank you, sir.”

Anson reached out and grasped Harry by the shoulder. “You’re important to us, son. Important to me.”

“But I’m just an engineer,” Harry protested, his back twinging. “Dr. Levy’s the one—”

Waving an impatient hand, Anson said, “Levy’s a scientist. He’s fine in the lab, of course, but what I need now is a man who can make that contraption really work. I don’t need equations and theories, I need performance. I need you, Harry. You’re my program engineer.”

Harry blinked at the man who owned the lab, owned the corporation, owned his future. “I’ll do my best, Mr. Anson.”

Gripping Harry’s shoulder tightly enough to make Harry wince, Anson said earnestly, “I know you will, son. That’s why I want you running the test team every step of the way. When the COIL is integrated into that jumbo jet, I want you to run the flight test program. Wherever that plane goes, you go.”

Harry felt his jaw drop open. “Me?”

“Make it work, Harry,” said Anson. “I’m counting on you. We’re all counting on you. The company’s ass is on the line.”

Santa Monica: Ocean View Motel

“I’ve never lost my temper without regretting it, Harry told himself as he tossed his garment bag on the motel room’s sagging bed. He cursed himself for being an idiot. You pop off at the wrong time and make a mess of everything.

He unzipped the bag and started pulling his rumpled shirts out of it. The room had a bureau and a wardrobe. One hand filled with the shirts, Harry yanked at the top bureau drawer. It stuck and the shirts spilled out of his hand onto the threadbare carpet.

Harry fought down an urge to kick the shirts all across the room. Instead he sat on the bed and buried his face in his hands.

You and your big mouth, he said to himself. You and your stupid temper. You hold it in and hold it in, and then when you let it go you ruin everything.

When Anson announced that Harry was now head of the laser team, Harry had expected Monk to be disappointed, maybe even angry. Instead Delany looked almost relieved.

“You deserve it, Harry,” he’d said. “Anson knows he can trust you.”

Harry thought that what Monk was really saying was that Anson knew he could make Harry jump through hoops. So what? Harry said to himself. Angel Reyes started calling Harry el jefe; Angel even got his wife to sew the title on some of Harry’s T-shirts and coveralls.

Sylvia took the news calmly enough, except to ask, “Does a raise go with it? You’re going to be putting even more hours into the job, aren’t you? You ought to get a raise.”

Harry didn’t have the nerve to ask Anson, or even Jake Levy, if he should expect an increase in salary.

For nearly three months after the accident Harry had been working at Anson’s test facility out in the Mohave, sweating away feverishly to rebuild the COIL. Victor Anson himself had come out to the desert twice to inspect his team’s progress and urge them to move faster.

Harry stayed at the Desert Stars Motel more than he was home, and when he was home Sylvia complained about his being away. He found that he was happy to leave her in Pasadena and dreaded the long drive back home every weekend. His daughters had become strangers to him: teenagers, with lives of their own and friends and school and endless chatter on their cell phones.

The day they fired up the COIL and burned a hole through the target sheet of aluminum half a mile away Harry could hear the relief and triumph in Mr. Anson’s voice over the telephone.

“You did it, Harry! I knew I could count on you!”

“We did it, Mr. Anson. The team. We did it together.”

“You certainly did. Listen, Harry, give the team a party. Take them to the nearest bar and have a celebration. A blast. On me.”

The bar at the Desert Stars Motel wasn’t much, but Harry and his team trooped in and took over the place. It was a wild night.

And Harry found himself walking one of the young barmaids back to his room. She was really pretty, he thought, with a warm bright smile and he hadn’t had sex with Sylvia since the accident and he’d had more to drink than he should’ve and she seemed perfectly willing and Harry thought, What the hell, why not?

He kept the story from Sylvia for more than a month afterward, tiptoeing around the house when he was home, feeling unable to look her in the eye, ashamed of himself yet happy that a good-looking young woman had willingly gone to bed with him. Harry stayed away from the motel’s bar; he didn’t want any entanglements. Monk kidded him about the night and told him the kid was asking about him. Red-faced, Harry went to his room and stayed there.

It all came out during an argument with Sylvia, of course. He couldn’t even remember how the argument had started, but they were yelling at each other and he blurted out the news that other women found him attractive.

Sylvia stared at him, white-faced with anger. She glanced past Harry toward their daughters’ rooms. Both doors were tightly closed. Vickie and Denise had heard plenty of screaming from their parents; they just shut it out of their presence.

“Women find you attractive?” Sylvia asked, the beginnings of a smirk curling her lips. “You? Mr. Dull? Don’t make me laugh.”

“Yeah, me,” Harry snapped. “You’ve probably forgotten it, but I’m not so dull in bed.”

She huffed. “There’s nothing to forget, Harry. You’re a dud and you always will be.”

“Well, you’re the only one who thinks so!”

“Are you saying you’ve gone to bed with other women?”

“Damned right!”

“That’s what you’ve been doing out at that motel? That’s why you stay out there more than you’re home?”

“I’ve got more going for me out there than here,” Harry snapped.

Sylvia glared at him for a long, long moment. Harry waited for her to burst into tears or start throwing things. Instead she almost smiled as she said, very calmly, “Then you’d better pack your things and get the hell out of here.”

“I will,” Harry said.

“Now. Tonight.”

Harry nodded and walked wordlessly to the guest room, where he’d been sleeping since the accident. He pulled his garment bag out of the closet and began packing.

Now, sitting on the bed in the seedy Ocean View Motel in Santa Monica, Harry saw that Sylvia had baited a trap and he’d walked right into it. His marriage was over. Sylvia’s known it for a long time, he realized. She’s always been smarter than me. It’s been over for years, he said to himself. Over and done with.

Still, he felt empty, alone. He had nothing left. No marriage, no daughters—they wouldn’t even speak to him on the phone. Nothing but work. The job.

They’d start installing the COIL in the plane next week, Harry knew. The flight tests were scheduled to begin before the year’s out.

He got up from the bed and began to pick up the shirts that had fallen to the floor. Make the COIL work. Go with the plane wherever it flies.

It was something, at least. Harry had something. A reason to get up in the morning. A job that needed to be done.