'Shit!'
'Please come with me,' said the Czech, gesturing to the right behind the trip lights. 'I'm to record our conversation but without anyone in earshot.'
'Why don't you tell the boss himself?' objected the overlooked guard on the left. 'He'll be here in a couple of minutes.'
'Because we're never to meet face to face—anywhere. Would you care to ask him about it?'
'More bullshit.'
Once around the corner of the hangar, Varak raised his cupped left hand. 'Would you please speak directly into this?' he said, again pleasantly.
'Sure, mister.'
They were the last words the guard would remember. The Czech sent the hard flat base of his right hand into the man's shoulder blade, following the blow with three chops to his throat and a final, two-knuckled assault on his upper eyelids. The guard collapsed, and Varak swiftly began to remove his clothes. A minute and twenty seconds later he was overdressed in the large man's private security uniform; he cuffed the trouser legs and shoved up his sleeves, pulling the uniform over his wrists. He was ready.
Forty seconds later a black limousine drove down the street and stopped at the base of the asphalt entrance to the hangar. The Czech moved out of the shadows and walked slowly into the chiaroscuro light. A man emerged from the huge car, and although Milos had never seen him, he knew that man was Crayton Grinell.
'Hi, boss!' yelled the guard at the left of the hangar as the overcoated grey-faced figure walked quickly, angrily across the tarmac. 'We got your message; Benny's recording something—'
'Why isn't the goddamned plane out on the strip?' roared Grinell. 'Everything's cleared, you idiots!'
'Benny talked to them, boss, I didn't! Five, ten minutes, they told him. It would have been different if I was on the phone! Shit, I don't put up with no shit, you know what I mean? You should'a told that guy to speak to me, that Benny—'
'Shut up! Get my driver and tell him to move this son of a bitch out! If they can't fly it, he can!'
'Sure, boss. Anything you say, boss!'
As the guard started shouting to the driver the Czech joined the rush of activity and began running towards the outsized car.
'Thanks!' cried the passing chauffeur, seeing Varak's uniform. 'He goes on at the last minute!'
Milos raced around the boot of the car to the street side, yanked open the back door, and leaped inside to a jump seat. He sat rigid, staring at the puffed face of the astonished Eric Sundstrom. 'Hello, Professor,' he said softly.
'It was a trap—you set a trap for me!' screamed the scientist in the dark shadows of the car. 'But you don't know what you're doing, Varak! We're on the edge of a breakthrough in space! So many wondrous things to learn! We were wrong—Inver Brass is wrong! We must go on!'
'Even if we blow up half the planet?'
'Don't be an ass!' cried Sundstrom, pleading. 'Nobody's going to blow up anything! We're civilized people on both sides, civilized and frightened. The more we build, the more fear we instil—that's the world's ultimate protection, don't you see?'
'You call that civilized?'
'I call it progress. Scientific progress! You wouldn't understand, but the more we build the more we learn.'
'Through weapons of destruction?'
'Weapons…? You're pitifully naive! “Weapons” is merely a label. Like “fish” or “vegetables”. It's the excuse we employ to fund scientific advancement on a scale that would be otherwise prohibitive! The bigger bang for the buck theory is obsolete—we have all the bang we'll ever need. It's in the delivery systems—orbital guidance and hookups, directional lasers that can be refracted in space to pinpoint a manhole cover from thousands of miles above.'
'And deliver a bomb?'
