This time Farkas noticed a definite brightening of Enron’s image, a distinct increase of gleam.
“Where do you want to meet?” Enron asked.
“A town called El Mirador, on Spoke D,” Farkas said, picking the site randomly out of his memory. “The Cafe La Paloma, right on the central plaza, in forty-five minutes.”
“Make it sooner.”
“Half an hour, then,” Farkas said.
Enron was already there when Farkas arrived, five minutes before the appointed time. The plaza, at this hour, was quiet, far emptier than it had been the day Farkas and Juanito had gone there to find Wu Fang-shui. Enron was sitting at one of the front tables, as motionless as a piece of sculpture, betraying no sign of restlessness at all. But he was tight, tight as a coiled spring: Farkas could see that from thirty paces away.
Sitting down opposite him, Farkas said at once, “There is this California project, involving a change in government. You spoke of it last night.”
Enron said nothing.
Farkas continued: “A joint effort might be the best way to bring off such a project, you said. A large corporation and a prosperous country, putting up the needed funds, fifty-fifty.”
“Go on,” Enron said. “You don’t need to remind me of what I said.”
“All right, then. The point is this: Were you making an offer? Are you people willing to have the enterprise be a partnership?”
Now Enron was leaning forward, alert, intent. The rhythm of his breathing had changed. Farkas knew he had struck the right place.
“We could be,” the Israeli said. “Are you?”
“It’s very possible.”
“What level are you, Farkas?”
“Nine.”
“That’s not high enough to authorize anything this big.”
“High enough to initiate it, though.”
“Yes. Yes, I suppose. And of course you already have the authority to go as far as you’ve gone.”
“Of course,” Farkas said, without hesitation.
“I need to go back down to Earth and talk to people,” said Enron. “It isn’t a question of authority, it’s a question of information. I need to have some more. Then you and I can get together again and maybe we can strike a deal. I can tell you, Farkas, this is precisely why I came to Valparaiso Nuevo.”
“Excellent,” said Farkas. “We are traveling on converging lines. I like that. We will talk again soon.”
“Very soon, yes.”
The conversation was over, but neither of them moved. Enron still seemed tightly coiled: more so than before, possibly. There was just enough of a pause to allow for a change of subject.
Then Enron said, “Jolanda is really fascinated by you, you know. Does that happen often, women falling for you that way?”
“Often enough.”
“I would think, with your eyes that way, and all—”
“Quite the opposite,” said Farkas. “Many seem to find it attractive. You aren’t annoyed, are you?”
“A little,” Enron said. “I admit it to you. What the hell, I’m a normal competitive male. But no, no, it doesn’t really bother me. It isn’t as if I own her. And I was the one who told Jolanda to make a play for you in the first place. By way of getting your attention, of setting up contact with you.”
“I’m grateful to you, then. I don’t mind being fished for, with bait of that quality.”
“I just didn’t think she’d be so enthusiastic about it, that’s all.”
“She strikes me as the sort of woman who is very quick to become enthusiastic,” Farkas said. This was making him uncomfortable. Perhaps that was the Israeli’s intention. He stood up. “I will wait very eagerly to hear from you again,” he said.
Jolanda was in the room when Enron got back to it. He had left a note for her to let her know that he had had an unexpected call from Farkas and had gone off for a meeting with him on another spoke.
“What did he want?” she asked. “Or is it all secret spy business that I’m not supposed to hear about?”
“You already know plenty,” said Enron. “You may as well hear a little more. He invited me to go into partnership with Kyocera on the coup d’dtat.”
“Invited
“You know what I mean,” he said. “Israel. He came right out and said it: asked me if we were willing to go into the deal on a fifty-fifty basis.”
“And what did you tell him?”
“That we were, of course. That this was precisely what I had come to Valparaiso Nuevo to arrange. But first, I said, I had to go back to Earth and get some further information. He will assume that I mean from my government, a confirmation of interest. But in fact I meant I had to speak with your Davidov. It is important for me to know what kind of an understanding he has with Farkas, before I take any of this to Jerusalem.”
“You won’t need to go back to Earth for that,” said Jolanda. “I had an unexpected call this morning too.”
“What? Who?”
“He’s still here,” she said, preening for him, glowing in what struck Enron as a deeply self-congratulatory way. “Davidov. He said he saw us yesterday, having dinner with Farkas in that restaurant in Cajamarca.”
“He saw us?” Enron repeated, in complete stupefaction. “He was
“He’s here, Marty. He told me so. I talked with him half an hour ago. It was his face on the visor. It’s almost as distinctive a face as Farkas’s, in its way. I told him that you wanted to see him, and he said that would be fine, you could meet with him at a place on Spoke A, one of the farms. I wrote the coordinates down.”
“He is gone,” Enron said. “So Kluge swore to me. All those names, all those hotels, and then he and his three friends were on the shuttle back to Earth.”
“Kluge may have been telling you lies,” Jolanda said. “You ought to consider that possibility.”
Enron struck his forehead angrily with the flat of his hand. “Yes. Yes, I should. It is Kluge who has been searching for Davidov and failing to find him, and giving us this story and that one about his comings and goings. Why was it so hard to find him? Why was Davidov always one step ahead of this supposedly clever and trustworthy courier? Either Kluge has been lying to me or Davidov is a magician who can deceive all the scanning equipment this habitat has. Let me have his number, fast!”
Reaching Davidov was the easiest thing in the world. Enron put through the call and there he was an instant later, centered in the visor: the bull neck, the colorless hair, the Screen-blemished face, the glacial eyes.
“Nice to hear from you,” Davidov said to Enron. His voice was high and light and soft, a gentle Californian voice altogether out of keeping with his coarse, heavy-featured Slavic face. “Any friend of Jolanda is a friend of mine.”
“I would like to speak with you in person,” Enron said.
“Come right on over,” said Davidov pleasantly.
With Jolanda in tow, Enron made the journey down to the hub and back up Spoke A into one of the agricultural zones, where everything was green and sparkling, a land of milk and honey. They passed farms of wheat, of melons, of rice, of corn. Enron saw banana trees heavy with yellow fruit, and coconut-palm groves, and a citrus orchard. It reminded him very much of the bountiful, ever-fruitful groves of his own country, flourishing in the twelve-month growing season and abundant rain of the eastern Mediterranean region. But all of this was built on artificial foundations, Enron reflected. The trees here grew in styrofoam, vermiculite, sand, gravel. Remarkable. Absolutely remarkable.
The coordinates Davidov had provided were those of a rabbit ranch. Hordes of the furry little animals were skittering around in fields of alfalfa, gray rabbits and brown ones and white ones, and various combinations of colors. Davidov was standing in the midst of them, just outside the farmhouse, talking to a slender, bespectacled man in farm clothes.
Davidov was immense, a great mountain of a man who seemed as broad as he was tall. His eyes were cold
