Powersat

Marseille

The Egyptian was too nervous to stay in the makeshift control center, so he went outside into the garden and sat in the shade of an ancient, gnarled olive tree. It was too hot and intense down in the basement with that quartet of bearded young electronics specialists, with their multiple earrings and other piercings defacing their lips and brows. He could barely understand what they were saying, their English was so studded with arcane jargon. Besides, they had turned the basement into a pigsty, littering it with emptied fast-food cartons and crumpled papers and plastic bottles; the floor crunched with crumbs when you walked across it.

It is going well, the Egyptian assured himself as he gazed out on the calm Mediterranean. Below this hilltop villa sprawled the city, dirty, noisy and dangerous. But from up here he could watch the placid sea glittering as the sun set at the end of a lovely springtime afternoon.

It is going well, he repeated to himself. The astronauts have reached their transfer ship. The new antenna was precisely where it was supposed to be, and now they are taking it up to the power satellite. If the American TV news can be believed, the power satellite is already beaming power to Earth.

Soon that power will kill thousands. And the Americans will never know that we caused it to be so. They will think their satellite malfunctioned. They will believe that it is dangerous. They will demand that it be destroyed.

Not a bad result for the cost of three martyrs. And one of them doesn’t even know he will become a martyr.

One should never give news reporters free liquor, thought al-Bashir. He stood in the corner of Hangar A and watched the reporters and camera crews swilling the champagne and harder spirits that Dan Randolph had provided, making asses of themselves as they got gloriously drunk. Dan had wisely made arrangements to have his own security personnel drive the louts to the Astro Motel for the night. No fool, this man Randolph.

Governor Scanwell and Senator Thornton had taken a perfunctory sip of champagne and then flown off to their next campaign stop. The noise level in the metal-walled hangar was becoming intolerable. Al-Bashir finished the plastic cup of cola that he had been holding for nearly an hour, then walked out into the parking lot and got into his Mercedes.

He started up the engine and turned the air-conditioning on high, then pulled out his cell phone and called his office in Houston. They would patch his call to Tunis, where in turn the call would be forwarded to Marseille. The roundabout routing was time-consuming, but al-Bashir wanted to make certain his call would not be traced.

Perhaps I should speak to Garrison, he thought, and inform him of Randolph’s success. With a slight smile, he wondered if the news would give the old man a fatal stroke or heart attack. Not likely. Garrison is made of stronger stuff than that.

His conversation with the Egyptian in Marseille was brief.

“It is a success,” al-Bashir said, without even identifying himself.

“It goes well here,” the Egyptian replied.

“Good. I will arrive there near dawn tomorrow, I should think.”

“We will expect you then.”

Al-Bashir clicked the phone off. Now to find April, he thought. It’s time to take her away with me.

Once Jane left the celebration, Dan decided he’d had enough of it, too. He saw April in the crowd, talking to al-Bashir. Then the Arab went out and didn’t come back, leaving April to chat with a couple of the news people. Some chat, Dan thought. You have to scream at the top of your lungs just to hear yourself think. The noise level was starting to hurt his ears. Vicki Lee was somewhere in the crowd; he’d lost sight of her.

So he made his way through the drinkers to Niles Muhamed and asked his help in loading a carton of champagne bottles and a cooler of ice into one of the company minivans.

“You goin’ to have your own party?” Muhamed asked, his face glowering with suspicion.

“Sort of,” said Dan with a lopsided grin.

With Muhamed in the passenger seat beside him, Dan drove out to the main gate. The state police contingent had gone, but the Astro guards were still there, and a handful of demonstrators were sitting disconsolately on the hoods of their cars, their placards down on the ground.

Dan told the guards to open the gate, then drove the minivan a few yards up the road and pulled over to the side.

Hopping out of the car, he went to its rear hatch and popped it open.

“I thought you guys might like some champagne,” he said brightly.

A short, compactly built man with a sandy ponytail walked up to Dan, suspicion etched on his face.

“Champagne? For us?”

“Why not?” Dan said, grinning. “Just because we don’t agree doesn’t mean we have to be sore at each other.”

Rick Chatham stared at Dan. “You’re Dan Randolph, aren’t you?”

“Right,” said Dan, handing Chatham a bottle of champagne.

“I don’t get it.”

With a quick shrug, Dan said, “Look, you made your demonstration. You did your thing. And we did ours. The satellite’s beaming power and the world hasn’t come to an end. Let’s have a drink.”

Several more of the demonstrators came up behind Chatham, eying the champagne.

“This isn’t over, you knows,” Chatham said. “We haven’t given up.”

“Fine,” Dan replied. “In the meantime, have some bubbly. It’s kind of warm, but there’s a cooler of ice here.”

The demonstrators crowded around the rear end of the minivan, grabbing bottles.