swimmer that he was.
“Is Ryan all right?” Carl asked as he joined the three men holding each other up.
“He’s breathing. I think his nose is broken.” Will looked around to get his bearings.
At that moment they became aware of eyes upon them. Jack looked to his left and that was when he saw a man and two small boys. They were staring at the strange scene before them with fishing poles in their hands. Their eyes were wide and they didn’t notice that the smallest child was getting a large strike on his pole.
Jack waved his hand at the three fishermen, and then out of the corner of his mouth said, “I think now may be a good time to get the hell out of here.”
Rev. Samuel Rawlins paced the floor with the cordless phone held tightly in his hand. He was irritated at the two-second delay in the voice signal caused by the scrambled transmission. That was just another thing James McCabe, or Mr. Smith as he was called, had installed that had become an incredible waste of time.
“And what do your people say? Who is this man?” he asked the person at the other end of the line. He waited in frustration for the scrambled reply.
“We don’t really know. We have a background check running right now and so far all we’ve come up with is that he was the highest-ranking student ever to come out of Harvard and MIT. After graduation in 1985, this Compton just fell off the map. That fact makes me suspect he’s CIA.”
“Mr. Vice President, you of all people should know that top MIT graduates do not go to work for low-paying intelligence agencies.” Rawlins wondered why he dealt with men who had to have the smallest things explained to them. “Now, what did their visit consist of?”
The silence on the other end of the line was far longer than the scrambling could account for. Rawlins squeezed the handset even tighter.
“They were asking questions about how fast the United States could get to the Moon.”
With the vice president’s answer, the whiteness of Rawlins’s hand on the phone increased and blood was forced out of it with the pressure he brought to bear.
“And?” he said, gritting his teeth.
“I don’t know. All of this information was passed to me as the head of the space program, but I’m being kept at arm’s length as far as the president is concerned. He’s not taking me into his confidence.”
“If that is the case, Harry, why the hell am I paying you so much money?”
“Look, this Compton can’t get any information that won’t eventually get back to me. Obviously the president has chosen this man to formulate a plan of some kind, possibly as a contingency only, so all we have to do is watch him.”
“No, we can’t take that chance. I want this man eliminated.”
“What? He works directly for the president of the United States, Reverend. I think that would cause some very serious consequences.”
Rawlins moved out from behind his desk and strode to a large couch fronted by an ornate coffee table. On the couch was a woman reading a magazine with her legs tucked underneath her. Rawlins placed his hands on her blond hair. The softness seemed to calm him considerably. He looked down at the family portrait sitting on the coffee table. It was a photo of Rawlins and his two daughters. The elder of which was sitting right in front of him.
“Use your imagination. If he is indeed on his way to Houston, as you say, any number of things can go wrong in flight. Am I correct?”
The young, beautiful woman on the couch, his daughter Laurel, lowered the Esquire and turned her head toward her father. She had a questioning look on her face. He smiled down at her.
“I wouldn’t even know how to go about ordering something like that. I can’t be caught committing what amounts to an assassination. That’s tantamount to treason, no matter what you-”
“Do you really think I would put such an assignment into your lap, Harold? I’m not a fool. Just keep me informed about what this Niles Compton learns on his trip to NASA. That will give me time to make the arrangements. With luck, NASA and DARPA will tell him the same thing you’ve told me for years, that our space program is tits up in the water.”
“Look, Reverend, we need to think this out. We need-”
Rawlins pushed the disconnect button on the phone and lowered it to his side. His hand continued toying with his daughter’s blond hair until she finally became irritated enough to push him away.
“Are you going to keep me in the dark forever, Daddy?”
Rawlins looked down at his eldest daughter and smiled. “Just the usual incompetence with employees. You know the drill. They just can’t see the things I do.” Rawlins leaned over the back of the couch. “God’s will can be an angry and ugly thing.”
“I love your euphemisms for murder, Daddy, I always have.”
“I will assume you mean that in the most respectful way, daughter.” Rawlins straightened and walked back to his desk, tossing the phone into its cradle.
Laurel Rawlins stood and walked to her father’s desk, perching on the edge. Her shapely right leg swung back and forth as she tilted her head low so that her father could see her eyes.
“I told you, you need more dependable people on your payroll. Now, give me your wish list and I’ll get things done. I have the people, and I have the contacts. You said it yourself. Mr. McCabe will have his hands full in the coming days and weeks and can’t be every place he needs to be. And we don’t need the Mechanic getting himself killed before his usefulness is at an end, do we?”
Rawlins looked up at his older daughter. Her blue eyes were as blue as his own. Unlike his younger daughter, Laurel was all him. She was a woman who even as a child knew what made her world go around and that was the money her father could provide her. She had so much of it that her nighttime activities were a mere hobby to her. That fact alone should have concerned him, but he knew she had to have excitement in her life.
“I do things for the love of my God, daughter, but never for myself. Of course, the money is always nice, but it never seems to be enough.”
“The money is good. And I have no doubt that you do what you do for the love of God,” Laurel said, reaching out and touching his cheek. “And I do what I do for the love of you.” She smiled broadly and batted her eyes. “And the money too, of course.”
“I suspect that is not all you do it for. I believe I should be worried about your wicked ways, Laurel-for instance, your little affair with Mr. McCabe.”
The young woman slid off the desk, hopping gently to the carpeted floor and straightening her skirt. “Believe me, Daddy, when I say that my relationship with our former Army friend had its little perks. I’ve met people who will be a benefit to us, even if our dear Mr. McCabe has to, well, even if he suddenly has to leave our employ.”
“For now, I need him like no other. He devised a brilliant plan that will shift blame away from our actions to where it belongs. It’s ingenious really. And he chose the perfect man in the Mechanic, a man who will set us on the road to everlasting glory.”
Laurel raised her eyebrows, knowing that her father was as crazy as they come, but she still loved him in her own special way. She returned to his desk and became serious.
“Now, if I heard you right, you spoke of a Niles Compton?”
“Yes.”
“And he’ll be in Houston this afternoon?”
Rawlins saw the gleam in his daughter’s eyes as she demurely took a notepad from his desk and wrote down the pertinent information.
“Yes, the Johnson Space Center.”
“Now,” she said, lowering the writing pad, “I take it you want him to cease his activities, whatever they are?”
Rawlins looked through the large window. His eyes fell on the smoggy afternoon outside his offices.
“Fine, if you want to know about the ugly side of God’s work, I may have something even more thrilling for you when you finish with this. If what is happening is truly going to happen, we will not only be out many valuable patents on the technology in the mines, but the world could turn against the word of God for those damnable
