Gambit

by Karna Small Bodman

  “I have a modification,” Wen Hu announced. “Perhaps we could add a pulse modulation. This could handle any counter-measure that a missile may have built into it.”

  “And a pulse laser could work with our computer program to have that CLIRCM capability,” she said.

  “Yes. Closed loop infra-red counter measure.”

  Cammy jumped up and hugged the man. He looked completely startled. She said, “This is so exciting. This could be it. This could really be the solution. That is if we’ve actually figured out the problem. At least it’s a start. A really good start.” she said, her face glowing.

  Wen Hu took her by the shoulders and looked into her eyes. “I always said I would enjoy working with a genius!”

  She laughed out loud and reached over to grab her shoulder bag. “Tell you what. We need more work to perfect this thing, but what say we take a quick break to celebrate?”

  “I’m sorry I don’t drink, you know.”

  “I don’t mean champagne or wine or anything. How about coffee or ice cream or something?”

  “Good idea. There is a Starbucks about a block down, right around the corner. They opened it the year after you left here. Do you want me to go?”

  “No, I’d like a short walk. Write down everything we just said, give me ten minutes, and I’ll be right back with a mocha smoothie or something else equally sinful.” She shoved her notes into her purse and left the building. She was happy. Buoyant. What a day.

  After so many months working on the laser, weeks of missing Hunt, days of tragic news about the crashes, now, finally, she felt she just might be on the right track.

  She couldn’t wait to get back to the White House and tell Jayson Keller about their new ideas. She didn’t know how Stan Bollinger would react. He’d probably complain about the cost of setting up new tests. She mused that her boss was the type who kept expanding his bandwidth of bitching. Or was it that he was narrowing his bandwidth of approval?

  At this point, she couldn’t care less. How in the world could the man object when it might mean a major increase in their defense contracts to say nothing of possibly saving thousands of lives in the future?

  She almost skipped along the sidewalk and then spied the big Starbucks logo with the “Help Wanted” sign in the window. She went inside and stood at the back of a long line. She checked the board to decide which drinks to order, looked at her watch and saw that she still had another two hours before she’d have to head to the station for the long ride back to Washington. The line wasn’t moving very fast. She watched the clerk behind the counter who didn’t seem to understand a couple of the orders. She stood there for several more minutes and thought to herself, why do I always get the trainee?

  Fifteen minutes later, armed with two Java Chip Frappuccino’s, she headed back to the lab. She had been thinking of a few more variations on their idea and couldn’t wait to get back to her friend. She was walking quickly now and had just reached the small walkway leading to his building when suddenly, she heard a loud explosion.

  The blast shattered windows, sending shards of glass and concrete out into the street. The force knocked her down, along with several other students who had gathered on the sidewalk. Screams were heard inside the building as people started streaming out the front door, some covered with blood, others holding a hand to their mouths, or limping on injured knees.

  Cammy couldn’t believe the sight. She scrambled back onto her feet, the Frappuccino’s rolling away creating a foamy mess on the nearby grass. She ran to help a woman who had tiny pieces of glass embedded in her arm. People came racing toward the scene. Students on bicycles rode up, drivers slammed on their brakes, and a few hellish moments later, sirens could be heard in the distance.

  She moved toward the door. More people were trying to get out. They were bunched up at the opening, coughing as smoke billowed through the small set of doors. She saw fire down the hall and grabbed a student who had just run out of the building, holding his hands over his face. “Can you tell me … where … what happened? What was it … do you know?”

  The student stumbled. She reached for his arm to guide him to the safety of the street. “Please. Can you tell me what it was? I mean, where did it happen? Do you have any idea?”

  The young boy blew his nose, his eyes still watering as he tried to talk. He muttered in a strained whisper. “It was the lab. The lab of Dr. Wen Hu.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  The two men meeting in the private Abraham Lincoln suite in the historic Willard Hotel couldn’t have looked more different. Stan Bollinger, CEO of Bandaq Technologies, was a short, wiry, somewhat reclusive accountant, elevated to the top position by impressing the board with his cost-cutting and dedication to building shareholder value for their stockholders. He hardly ever stood still, his nervous energy obvious as he paced around the room examining paintings of old Washington landscapes.

  Dr. Nettar Kooner was tall, outgoing and almost ebullient in his better moments. He had emigrated from India to work for Sterling Dynamics. Now, as its chairman and CEO, he relied on hand-picked teams of young highly-educated men brought over from New Delhi’s top schools along with a bevy of Washington insiders to advise him on every aspect of their product lines, contracts with the Pentagon, sales to favored allies, relations with Congress and the general state of the economy.

  The Willard seemed like the perfect place for Kooner’s company to maintain an account since the term “lobbyist” was coined by General Ulysses S. Grant right there in the foyer. Kooner wasn’t only trying to gain favoritism with Congress, he was always looking for a new patent, a new opportunity, or a new deal. And it was a possible deal he had come to investigate during this secret luncheon meeting with one of his key competitors.

  As Kooner welcomed his guest into the spacious living room area with its off-white walls, deep blue and gold carpet and dark blue drapery, he remarked, “After all these years trying to wrest contracts away from your outfit, I guess it’s high time we got together to see if we could somehow pool our resources and gain an advantage when it comes to dwindling tax dollars.”

  Bollinger stopped and sat down on the sofa in the massive suite reserved for the occasion. He reflected that this was an apt setting for their discussions, a place on Pennsylvania Avenue half way between the White House and Capitol Hill, where Presidents Lincoln, Grant, Coolidge and Harding, among others, had stayed, and where any number of high level conferences had been held over the years. He recalled that Lincoln had agreed to meet with members of the so-called Peace Conference back in 1860 in a futile effort to avoid the Civil War. He wondered if this meeting would be more successful.

  “You’re right,” Stan said. “I’ve been thinking a lot about things we could do together rather than competing all the time. For one thing, I’m sure you’re ramping up your R&D on that DHS contract for the airports.”

  “Indeed. We’re getting pressure not only from Franklin Thorne, who calls almost hourly, it seems, but the vice president is now riding herd on our contract as well.”

  “I’ve been reading about that. On the other hand, you have your other line of ground-based missile defense systems that you’ve been selling to Taiwan and other countries, I believe.”

  “Yes, we’re in the process of shipping our latest systems over to Taipei for initial testing, though they performed flawlessly here in our test areas.”

  “So I’ve heard,” Stan said. “And you know about our Q-3 system which was developed to take control of cruise missiles.”

  “Who doesn’t? Ever since that Dr. Talbot of yours pulled off the trick in New Delhi, my country has been in your debt. Her Q-3 system must have turned into quite a cash cow for you boys,” Kooner remarked. “Then again, our ballistic missile defense platforms might turn out at least to be cash calves,” he said with a laugh.

  “And on that subject,” Stan observed, “it occurs to me that if we were able to work out some sort of merger agreement, we
could combine our missile defense systems and be able to offer package deals to any number of countries concerned about ballistic as well as cruise missile threats.”

  “A very interesting idea,” Kooner said. “Then we’d both have some skin in the game.” A knock on the door prompted him to get up and usher in a waiter pushing a large cart laden with dishes of lobster bisque, medallions of veal in a mushroom and Marsala wine sauce and a bottle of Nuits-Saint-Georges. “I don’t usually drink at lunch,” Kooner remarked as he motioned to the waiter to open the wine and pour him a sample, “but under the circumstances, I thought we could relax a bit while we talk.”

  He watched as the waiter began to set up their lunch in the dining area, complete with a table that could comfortably seat eight. Kooner added, “I thought about ordering corned beef and cabbage because I heard that’s what Abe Lincoln had here for his lunch right after he was sworn in as president, but I figured the veal might be more tender.”

  “Good thinking,” Bollinger replied.

  The waiter lit the gold chandelier, laid a crisp white linen cloth over the large table, quickly set out the two place settings, napkins, goblets and glasses of ice water and proceeded to ladle the soup into wide bowls. A single rose in a narrow crystal vase was placed next to the sterling silver salt and pepper shakers, along with cream and sugar and a silver carafe of steaming hot coffee.

  He kept the main course in the warming oven in the cart, placed a bill on the table, which Kooner quickly initialed after adding a twenty-five percent tip, which would all go onto his corporate account. The waiter then discretely left the room.

  “Now then,” Kooner suggested, “won’t you join me?”

  Bollinger sat down in one of the Hepplewhite chairs and put a napkin on his lap. “So as I was saying, if we combined Q-3 with your latest ground systems, we could offer quite a package deal to a number of countries, if we can get the export licenses, of course.”

  “I think we can manage that. My boys are on top of those little details. And quite frankly, I’d like to get my hands on Dr. Talbot’s invention. By the way, what’s your computer genius up to lately?” he asked as he poured the wine for his guest.

  “She’s working on some other programs. I can’t go into the details just yet, but the lady does keep busy.”

  He could hardly tell Nettar Kooner about Cammy’s latest laser idea. He still thought it was a complete fiasco, and he had no intention of letting Kooner know about any of their weak spots. In fact, if he were going to negotiate favorable terms for this merger or acquisition or whatever it turned out to be, he’d like to find some weak spots in Sterling’s business plan. Then he could drive the price down a bit.

  “Back on your DHS contract,” Stan said, “this whole put-a-dome-over-the-airport idea is rather clever, but even if you could get enough money out of that department to deploy your system throughout the United States, what about airports overseas? Terrorists just might decide to shoot down our planes, or anybody’s planes from foreign locations and many of those are almost advertising for easy access. Take Bangkok, for example. It’s so simple to get near enough to shoot down a place, it’s amazing. They have a golf course within the airport grounds. All you have to do is text in a request to play golf, show an ID, and you’re inside.”

  Kooner finished his soup and reached into the little oven for his plate of veal. “You have a point there. Right now we have to concentrate on American airports, of course, and the way we figure it, if we can get an additional appropriation out of DHS, we can add several more personnel to the dome project, get it up and running and start deploying within a few weeks.”

  “Additional appropriation? How the hell are you going to pull that off with the deficits they’re running right now?”

  “In this atmosphere with those three crashes, I figure Congress will be willing to write checks for just about anything.”

  “Write checks? There have been so many requests for add-ons, earmarks and God knows what, so much fighting going on it’s like the Donner party up there.”

  Kooner chuckled, “Don’t worry, Stan, I’ve got it wired. Now, getting back to your Dr. Talbot, I figure you gave her a big promotion when she pulled off that Q-3 deal, right?”

  Stan paused, thinking about his difficult relationship with the brash young scientist. He had given her a bonus and let her play around in her lab for a while, but he was afraid she was more of a one-trick pony than real executive material. So, so instead of a major promotion, he had given her a nice bonus and upped her title a bit.

  Just that morning he was trying to figure out a way to fire the woman, but for now, until the merger was complete, he wanted to be sure that Kooner didn’t hire her away in case she actually came up with something that worked. “Quite frankly, I’m not sure if she’ll ever have the same level of success,” Stan said. “I did give her a better title though. From project director to senior project director.”

  Kooner laughed. “That’s all? That’s like appointing someone to the job of press spokesman for the CIA.”

  Stan shrugged. “It’s just that she’s probably best working alone in her lab. Not being promoted to a higher position. I just haven’t seen the potential in her, or any of our other women, to take to top jobs, if you know what I mean.”

  “How can you say that women don’t have executive skills? What about Mary Barra, who’s been CEO of General Motors? Ginnie Romatty of IBM? Indra Nooryi at Pepsico? You even have a woman heading up a defense contractor, Lockheed Martin’s Marilyn Hewson.”

  Bollinger seemed momentarily taken aback and wanted to change the subject. “Yes, I take your point. Perhaps we just don’t have enough of the right kind of females on our staff. However, we have other teams that are on the cutting edge of a new system for Navy helos. It’s similar but even better than what they’ve got on the new Sikorsky.”

  “You mean the ones they’re using for Marine One?”

  “Yes. Ours is going to be next generation critical.”

  “You sure about that?” Kooner asked.

  “Absolutely. You can take it to the Federal Reserve.”

  They continued their negotiations for the next two hours, agreeing that no one, not their boards, their employees or their shareholders should learn one detail about their meeting or possible joint action. If they did, they’d figure out pretty quickly that with a merger of this magnitude, they’d have to down-size, get rid of comparable job descriptions and any number of people would be out of a job. And fast.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE WHITE HOUSE

  Dozens of tourists pressed against the wrought iron fence surrounding the fifty-five thousand square foot White House, many holding small cameras between the balustrades to capture the flowers, fountains and action at the North Portico.

  As Cammy presented her driver’s license to the guard at the Northwest Gate, she wondered if she’d ever develop an absence of awe about this place. As he checked his log, handed her a security pass and instructed her to walk through the metal detector, she doubted she ever would.

  She took the walkway to the entrance to the West Wing where a uniformed guard turned, opened the door and said, “Good morning, ma’am.”

  Inside the reception area she again checked in. An aide to the NSC advisor escorted her down the hall, then left to the door of the Roosevelt Room where Austin Gage and the vice president were standing in front of the white fireplace, a visage of Teddy Roosevelt looking down over their shoulders. They both walked over, shook her hand and invited her to take a seat at the long oval conference table surrounded by brown leather chairs, decorated with brass trim tacks around the edges.

  She hadn’t been in this room before. Her previous trips had been to the Oval Office. She got her bearings and figured out that another door across the room must lead out to the hallway directly in front of the president’s office. She wondered if he would be joining their meeting.

  After her horrible experience in Cambridge watching the police and
firemen rushing to the scene of the blast and carrying out the body of her colleague, We Hu, she had escaped the chaos, not wanting to reveal anything about her collaboration on the laser.

  It was a secret project, and there was nothing she could to do help at that point. Besides, she was scared. She had hopped into a nearby taxi, taken the train back to Washington and had several hours to try and figure out what to do next.

  Now she was in the quiet comfort of the West Wing. At least she felt safe here. She glanced over and saw four flags in brass stands lined up along one side wall. A wide cherry wood cabinet stood at the end of the room, while an arrangement of light rose upholstered furniture, a camel back couch and two side chairs offered a comfortable spot off to the side for a more intimate gathering. But since they all had a lot of notes to review, she figured they’d stay at the big table.

  She was anxious to hear about the progress of the other defense contractors. Had they done any more testing or could they be moving ahead so quickly that she’d be aced out of this competition to equip the airlines? Just as she was taking her seat and putting her notes together, the door opened and Hunt Daniels walked in.

  Cammy caught her breath and tried not to stare at the handsome man with the square jaw, sandy hair, chiseled features and deep blue eyes. When he saw her sitting there, he stopped in mid-stride and looked like he was forcing a smile.

  Damn him, she thought, as he slid into a chair across from her and uttered a greeting to Jayson Keller and his boss, Austin Gage. Then his eyes met hers again and he said, “Good morning, Dr. Talbot. Good to see you again.”

  I’ll bet. The man has to come in here looking like an advertisement for Brooks Brothers, straight-lined grin, and he thinks I’m just going to sit here and act like nothing ever happened between us. Well, I can play that game as well as he can.