he will not attend it, or offer any comment on it. He will visit the Chinese premier and the president of Taiwan privately. That is absolutely as far as we can go.”
“It’s pretty far,” said Chastain.
“Anything else, gentlemen?” said the President, rising.
There was, of course, nothing else.
“Feeling better?” he asked the national security advisor as Freeman and Jed started to leave.
“Getting there,” said Freeman. “No cigars for a while.”
“Your wife must be glad of that,” laughed Martindale. He turned to Jed. But instead of joking, his voice was once more dead serious. “I want you to tell Dreamland to nail this down.”
“Yes, sir. But—”
“I don’t like buts, Jed.”
“Um, they’re going to want to go in-country and look around,” said Jed. “Colonel Bastian already suggested it.”
“Tell them to do so,” said Martindale. “Quietly. Very quietly.”
“If the Taiwanese have such a weapon, what do we do?” asked Freeman.
“We worry about it when we’re sure they have it,” said Martindale.
IV
Duty
Rubeo laid the printouts flat on the table, pulling the two pages close together so that the lines he had highlighted were next to each other.
“I don’t expect you to understand,” he told Cortend. “But to anyone with a modicum of knowledge of the systems involved, it’s obvious what’s being done. There’s a repeater system that takes bits of captured information and rebroadcasts it. You can see here, here, and here. That’s why the signal seems to be ours. It is ours. This”—he took the two sheets from the folder, laying them side by side—“shows the intercepts and our own flight communications from the other day. Incontrovertible. That word is in your vocabulary, is it not?”
Cortend glared at him. Rubeo realized that he had made exactly zero progress with the old witch.
Then again, he hadn’t come here to convince her. He’d come for the satisfaction of showing her to her face that she was an idiot. And he had accomplished that.
“Now that I know what’s going on, we can easily strip out the signals that are being beamed back, and then determine the actual signals. I would explain how we do it,” he said, gathering up the pages, “but you don’t have the clearance to hear it. Let alone the IQ to understand it.”
He had nearly reached the door when Cortend spoke.
“Just a minute, Doctor,” she said.
Rubeo couldn’t resist one last look at her constipated face writhing in the torment of ignorance unmasked. He turned around. Cortend pointed at her two assistants, dismissing them with flicks of her finger. The lieutenants scurried away.
“You think I enjoy questioning the integrity of your people?” she said.
“In a word, yes.”
Cortend said nothing for a moment. “My father’s name was Harold Bernkie. Does that name mean anything to you?”
“Hardly,” said Rubeo.
For the first time since she had come to the base, Cortend smiled. “It shouldn’t. In the 1950s, he was a very promising scientist. And then his name was linked with the Communist Party. He was blacklisted and couldn’t get work. He’s my father, so obviously I think he was a genius, but of course that really isn’t for me to say. I only know that he eventually became an electrician. A very good one, in my opinion, though I suppose that too is neither here nor there. This hasn’t been a witch hunt. I’ve been extremely fair.”
“That’s a matter of opinion.”
Cortend shook her head. “No. I believe that you will find that I have been thorough, that I have been a stickler for details, and I have pursued any and all leads. Those were and remain my orders. As far as your Miss Gleason goes, I never charged her with a crime or recommended any disciplinary action against her.”
“That’s because your investigation wasn’t complete,” said Rubeo. “Don’t banter definitions around.”
“You are a scientist. You’re precise in your work. I am precise in mine,” said Cortend. “No charges were filed against your coworker. I was here on an informal basis precisely to spare you and your people the ordeal of a full- blown inquiry. Believe me, it would have been ten times worse.”
“I doubt that is possible.”
Cortend took a long, labored breath. “I’ve been informed that there are explanations for what appeared to be omissions concerning the conferences. Given those explanations, I see no need to make any recommendation concerning her to the commander.”
Rubeo wasn’t sure exactly what to say. He remained angry — extremely angry. This idiot had cost him one of the top scientists in the world, who even now refused to get out of bed, claiming to be sick.
“The data that you have gathered would appear to exonerate Dreamland completely,” said Cortend. “Coupled with the information about the aircraft’s physical characteristics, it would appear very convincing.”
“You’re not going to imply that we created it,” said Rubeo.
“I’m sure you’re clever enough to do so,” said Cortend. “But no, Doctor, I don’t believe that for a moment. And more importantly, there is no evidence suggesting that you did. There is no evidence suggesting that anyone at Dreamland is anything less than a dedicated and patriotic American. Good day.”
That was it? She was giving up?
She was giving up.
Truth and reason had won?
Truth and reason had
Rubeo, unsure exactly what to say, turned and left the room.
“Are you awake?”
Danny Freah floated for a moment, caught in dream limbo between sleep and waking. He saw his wife, he saw the hard-assed Colonel Cortend, he saw two brown eyes staring down at him asking whether he was awake.
“Yeah,” he said, pushing up in the seat.
“The pilot is asking everyone to put their seat belts on,” said the stewardess.
“Oh. Thanks.” Danny smiled and pushed his head forward, as if trying to swim away from the back of the seat. Bits and pieces of the dream fluttered away, just out of reach of his conscious mind.
Jemma and Colonel Cortend — God, what a combination.
“It’s beautiful from the air, isn’t it?” said the woman next to him. Her name was Alice something-or-other, and she was a programmer for a computer firm who traveled a lot between LA and Asia.
No, she worked for a company that manufactured rubber boots. The programmer thing came from his dream.
“Yeah,” said Danny, leaning forward to see past her. Their arms touched and he felt a shock go through his body; he jerked back, as if the touch had been something else.
“Temperature’s only eighty degrees, Fahrenheit,” said Alice. “Humidity is supposed to be pretty low. I don’t remember the percentage.”
“That’s good.”
