somehow.'
Rachel again flashed on William Pickering's concern that she was being used.
Tolland checked his watch. 'We should probably head over,' he said, motioning toward the center of the habisphere. 'They should be getting close.'
'Close to what?' Rachel asked.
'Extraction time. NASA is bringing the meteorite to the surface. It should be up any time now.'
Rachel was stunned. 'You guys are actually removing an eight-ton rock from under two hundred feet of solid ice?'
Corky looked gleeful. 'You didn't think NASA was going to leave a discovery like this buried in the ice, did you?'
'No, but…,' Rachel had seen no signs of large-scale excavation equipment anywhere inside the habisphere. 'How the heck is NASA planning on getting the meteorite out?'
Corky puffed up. 'No problem. You're in a room full of rocket scientists!'
'Blather,' Ming scoffed, looking at Rachel. 'Dr. Marlinson enjoys flexing other people's muscles. The truth is that everyone here was stumped about how to get the meteorite out. It was Dr. Mangor who proposed a viable solution.'
'I haven't met Dr. Mangor.'
'Glaciologist from the University of New Hampshire,' Tolland said. 'The fourth and final civilian scientist recruited by the President. And Ming here is correct, it was Mangor who figured it out.'
'Okay,' Rachel said. 'So what did this guy propose?'
'Gal,' Ming corrected, sounding smitten. 'Dr. Mangor is a woman.'
'Debatable,' Corky grumbled. He looked over at Rachel. 'And by the way, Dr. Mangor is going to hate you.'
Tolland shot Corky an angry look.
'Well, she will!' Corky defended. 'She'll hate the competition.'
Rachel felt lost. 'I'm sorry? Competition?'
'Ignore him,' Tolland said. 'Unfortunately, the fact that Corky is a total moron somehow escaped the National Science Committee. You and Dr. Mangor will get along fine. She is a professional. She's considered one of the world's top glaciologists. She actually moved to Antarctica for a few years to study glacial movement.'
'Odd,' Corky said, 'I heard UNH took up a donation and sent her there so they could get some peace and quiet on campus.'
'Are you aware,' Ming snapped, seeming to have taken the comment personally, 'that Dr. Mangor almost died down there! She got lost in a storm and lived on seal blubber for five weeks before anyone found her.'
Corky whispered to Rachel, 'I heard no one was looking.'
26
The limousine ride back from the CNN studio to Sexton's office felt long for Gabrielle Ashe. The senator sat across from her, gazing out the window, obviously gloating over the debate.
'They sent Tench to an afternoon cable show,' he said, turning with a handsome smile. 'The White House is getting frantic.'
Gabrielle nodded, noncommittal. She'd sensed a look of smug satisfaction on Marjorie Tench's face as the woman drove off. It made her nervous.
Sexton's personal cellphone rang, and he fished in his pocket to grab it. The senator, like most politicians, had a hierarchy of phone numbers at which his contacts could reach him, depending on how important they were. Whoever was calling him now was at the top of the list; the call was coming in on Sexton's private line, a number even Gabrielle was discouraged to call.
'Senator Sedgewick Sexton,' he chimed, accentuating the musical quality of his name.
Gabrielle couldn't hear the caller over the sound of the limo, but Sexton listened intently, replying with enthusiasm. 'Fantastic. I'm so pleased you called. I'm thinking six o'clock? Super. I have an apartment here in D.C. Private. Comfortable. You have the address, right? Okay. Looking forward to meeting you. See you tonight then.'
Sexton hung up, looking pleased with himself.
'New Sexton fan?' Gabrielle asked.
'They're multiplying,' he said. 'This guy's a heavy hitter.'
'Must be. Meeting him in your apartment?' Sexton usually defended the sanctified privacy of his apartment like a lion protecting its only remaining hiding place.
Sexton shrugged. 'Yeah. Thought I'd give him the personal touch. This guy might have some pull in the home stretch. Got to keep making those personal connections, you know. It's all about trust.'
Gabrielle nodded, pulling out Sexton's daily planner. 'You want me to put him in your calendar?'
'No need. I'd planned to take a night at home anyway.'
Gabrielle found tonight's page and noticed it was already shaded out in Sexton's handwriting with the bold letters 'P.E.'-Sexton shorthand for either personal event, private evening, or piss-off everyone; nobody was quite sure which. From time to time, the senator scheduled himself a 'P.E.' night so he could hole up in his apartment, take his phones off the hook, and do what he enjoyed most-sip brandy with old cronies and pretend he'd forgotten about politics for the evening.
Gabrielle gave him a surprised look. 'So you're actually letting business intrude on prescheduled P.E. time? I'm impressed.'
'This guy happened to catch me on a night when I've got some time. I'll talk to him for a little while. See what he has to say.'
Gabrielle wanted to ask who this mystery caller was, but Sexton clearly was being intentionally vague. Gabrielle had learned when not to pry.
As they turned off the beltway and headed back toward Sexton's office building, Gabrielle glanced down again at the P.E. time blocked out in Sexton's planner and had the strange sensation Sexton knew this call was coming.
27
The ice at the center of the NASA habisphere was dominated by an eighteen-foot tripod structure of composite scaffolding, which looked like a cross between an oil rig and an awkward model of the Eiffel Tower. Rachel studied the device, unable to fathom how it could be used to extract the enormous meteorite.
Beneath the tower, several winches had been screwed into steel plates affixed to the ice with heavy bolts. Threaded through the winches, iron cables banked upward over a series of pulleys atop the tower. From there, the cables plunged vertically downward into narrow bore holes drilled in the ice. Several large NASA men took turns tightening the winches. With each new tightening, the cables slithered a few inches upward through the bore holes, as if the men were raising an anchor.
I'm clearly missing something, Rachel thought, as she and the others moved closer to the extraction site. The men seemed to be hoisting the meteorite directly through the ice.
'EVEN TENSION! DAMN IT!' a woman's voice screamed nearby, with all the grace of a chain saw.
Rachel looked over to see a small woman in a bright yellow snowsuit smeared with grease. She had her back to Rachel, but even so, Rachel had no trouble guessing that she was in charge of this operation. Making notations on a clipboard, the woman stalked back and forth like a disgusted drillmaster.
'Don't tell me you ladies are tired!'
Corky called out, 'Hey, Norah, quit bossing those poor NASA boys and come flirt with me.'
The woman did not even turn around. 'Is that you, Marlinson? I'd know that weenie little voice anywhere.
