“Friends,” she said, “this is the twelfth harvest supper I’ve hosted as landholder of Seven Oaks. I’d like to thank everyone for the hard work—”
The speech was mercifully brief, and good-humored. The reactions on all the faces he could see were too. He ate—the corn first; he didn’t really like raw fish of any sort—and helped himself to Lucillian salads with scallops and lobster tails, and greens he’d seen being picked that morning, a steak of Angus beef lightly brushed with garlic-steeped olive oil from the grove to the north of the house and grilled over oak coals, cauliflower with mustard and fennel seed, beaten biscuits….
Tully made a production of drinking a glass of wine—an open bottle stood between each two diners, with a simple label reading Seven Oaks, which included a silhouetted oak tree beneath. Tom drank some of his and decided it was extremely good. When it came to wine he just knew what he liked without pretending to know anything about it. Roy went in for the full wine-country vocabulary.
“Black cherry fruit… soft tannins… just a bit of vanilla from the oak… very nice,” he said to Adrienne, after swirling and tilting a glass, looking through the edge at a candle flame, sniffing and sipping. “Basically a cabernet sauvignon, right? But blended. Is it yours?”
“Well, I’m scarcely going to serve someone else’s wine at my estate’s harvest supper, Roy,” Adrienne said, leaning forward to speak to him across Tom. “Yes, it’s a blend, eighty-twenty cabernet and merlot; the ’ninety-two vintage. That was a wonderful year at Seven Oaks, and it just keeps getting better in the bottle.”
“But there’s something… I can’t quite place it. Not bad, just a little different.”
“Probably the fermenting vats,” she said. “We’ve got temperature control, but we use open-topped redwood tanks, not the closed stainless-steel ones they have FirstSide.” A quick urchin grin. “Our motto—‘Malolactic fermentation is for sissies!’”
Tully nodded. “I noticed driving up that you don’t have the piped water system in the vineyards that they use in the Napa on FirstSide either. What do you do when you get a late frost after budbreak?”
“Ahhh… hope next year is better?” she said, blinking at him, and then they both laughed.
Tom suppressed a slightly miffed feeling and waited until Adrienne was talking to someone who’d come up to the head table; she stood and walked aside with the questioner for a moment. Things weren’t crowded, and he could be quasi-private when he leaned close to Tully and asked, “Look, do you think we’re doing the right thing?”
“Well, it ain’t the U.S. of A., Kemosabe, and I’m not real comfortable with this patron-client setup they’ve got either. But on the whole, it’s not too bad—Uncle Sugar had us defending Allah allies who were a hell of a lot more skanky. The anti-Rolfe league definitely looks a hell of a lot worse.”
“I could have told you all that, Roy,” Sandra said, refilling her own wineglass. “How anyone can live FirstSide, from what the video shows, is beyond me.”
Tom looked at her. “What if you didn’t want to work the horses here at Seven Oaks?”
“Why shouldn’t I?” she said, obviously puzzled. “I love horses, and this is my home—I was born here and so was my father.”
“But if you didn’t?”
“If I didn’t like it here, I’d go somewhere else and get a job. We aren’t slaves, and I’m good at what I do. A dozen places would be glad to take me on; and I’ve had more than one guy offer me a ring, you know—men with their own farms, or horse trainers.”
“I don’t suppose you get invited up here for dinner all that often,” Tom said. “When it isn’t harvest supper, that is.”
“Once upon a time—you might be surprised,” she said, with a twinkle in her dark eyes. “But anyway, yeah, that’s true for most people, but how often did you have dinner with… oh…” She stopped, obviously searching for a FirstSide equivalent to Adrienne or her grandfather.
“The governor? Bill Gates?” Tully said, grinning. “All the time, girl. Why, just the other day I dropped in on Bill at home and went into the kitchen and popped myself a brewski. Then I slapped my ass down on the sofa beside Billy-boy and his old lady and I said, ‘Bill, how’re they hanging? And dude, you gotta do something about the bugs in the new—”
Tom waved him quiet. “OK, OK, Tonto, I get the idea. Nice not to have to feel too guilty about my own take on things, you betcha.”
Sandra went on, “And can you call up the governor or this Gates guy and get help or backup if you need it?” she said. “Doesn’t sound like it; from what I’ve heard it’s sink or swim over there. I can go to Adrienne or her dad if I have to—I’m a Rolfe affiliate and so was my dad. We back them up—they back us up.”
Tom nodded; it wasn’t what he’d been brought up to think of as the ideal system, but as Tully had said, it didn’t seem impossibly bad; he’d been in places—Turkmenistan, for instance—where people literally physically broke out into a cold sweat of fear when someone mentioned the Maximum Leader’s name without implying he walked on air, or publicly doubted that he’d earned every one of the votes he needed to come out at ninety-nine percent plus every single election.
Adrienne had turned back and caught the last of that. Her leaf-green eyes were full of an ironic amusement… and real fondness. “Satisfied?”
“No,” he said. “But I’m not completely repulsed, either.” He smiled back at her. “In a manner of speaking…”
“Glad to know I’m not completely repulsive,” she said.
“Roy and I will help you with this… political problem you’ve got,” he went on, and felt an absurd lurch at the brilliance of her smile. “Once the”—carefully unnamed conspiracy, in this rather public venue—“problem is solved, all bets are off, of course.”
“Of course,” Adrienne said gravely. “And now… we can dance.”
The band pealed out a high sustained brass note, then swung into action. Tom led Adrienne out; Tully was already cutting a jitterbug rug on the way over, with Sandra clapping her hands as she followed. A pair of heels and long slender bare legs suddenly appeared over the head of the crowd, as one girl did a daring handstand on her partner’s palms. Tom met Adrienne’s eyes, nodded, gripped her hands and swung her over one hip, over the other, down between his legs, up in an overhead twirl….
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Seven Oaks/Southern California
July 2009
The Commonwealth of New Virginia
“Now, this is the way I like to go on an op,” Tully said. “Landed gentry of goddamned Little Rock, that’s me. Natural affinity for horses. Make way, ye peasants!”
“You’re not falling off anymore, at least,” Sandra replied.
When I stop feeling vaguely guilty, I’m really going to enjoy this place, Tom thought as he watched. And when I don’t have the prospect of a long deadly hike through deserts and savage hostile nomads toward a fortress stuffed full of heavily armed Aztec mercenaries. Of course, if I get a chance to get back, all bets are off. He’d made that clear.
He and the object of his thoughts stood watching side by side, each with a foot on the lowest plank of the board fence, leaning on posts with their elbows—his at breastbone level, hers just under her chin. Tully was staying on better; he didn’t have any particular gift for horses, but he did have good balance, excellent coordination and physical training to draw on. And falls didn’t faze him, which had won him a good deal of respect from Sandra, who had evidently been put on her first pony about the time she graduated from diapers.
Tom wasn’t surprised in the least; he’d never yet met anything in the way of physical danger that did faze Roy. He had the scrappy determination of a terrier.
And if we win, and then there’s no way to get out of here… I won’t die of grief, he thought, breathing in the mixed scent of horses, pepper trees, warm dust and greenery.
He’d miss his brother Lars and his sister-in-law and nieces and nephews, but he didn’t see them mo
re than once a year anyway. And he had no other close ties….
“Elbows in, and don’t flap them!” Sandra called to her pupil. “You’re supposed to hold the reins, not try to fly like a crow!”
Tully grinned and obeyed, turning his mount with leg pressure. It broke into a canter—Sandra called again, telling him to keep his knees bent to absorb the harder gait—then into a gallop, and rose over an obstacle of poles and barrels.
“Not bad,” Adrienne said judiciously. “He’s really a very quick learner.”
“Glad you like him,” Tom said, and found that he was. I keep getting these irrational bursts of benevolence, he thought. Must be love.
“Jim Simmons heard from Frontier Scout HQ this morning,” Adrienne said more softly. “He and his tracker will be taking a coastal schooner down to San Diego—he’s been assigned to look into the tribal raiding there.”
“Convenient,” he said, and she grinned back at him.
“And how are we to make our descent on the southland look casual?” he asked.
“By making it casual,” she said. “Hmmm. Can you fly a light airplane?”
“Yah, you betcha,” Tom said. “Roy too. Fish and Game liked its field people to qualify.”
“Then we’ll—”
One of the stable hands came up and cleared her throat. “Miz Rolfe,” she said. “Fella from the paper wants to talk to you.”
Adrienne muttered an impolite word under her breath. “Fetch him, then, Terry.”
The reporter was a photographer too, carrying the latest digital model. To Tom’s eyes it clashed horribly with the suit and snap-brimmed fedora and pencil-thin trimmed mustache; it was like a computer terminal in It Happened One Night. He looked to be about thirty, with reddish-brown short-cut hair and hazel eyes and a sharp, foxy face.
“Miz Rolfe,” the man said, “you may not remember me—”
“How could I forget?” she said with a charming smile, extending a hand. “Charlie Carson, isn’t it? Society news column for City and Domain magazine? I remember the article you did when I got back from Stanford.”
“Yeah,” he said, flushing a little with pleasure. “That was the first under my own byline. Nice of you to recall. I was wondering if you could give me a few words on the Toni Bosco matter? And maybe a picture?”
Well, I don’t think reporters were ever that polite, FirstSide, he thought.
Adrienne pursed her lips, seemed lost in thought for a minute, and then answered: “I think I might, Charlie… provided you do me a favor and keep quiet about my medium-term plans.” She glanced at Tom. “I have… well, an announcement I don’t want leaking. I promise you’ll get it first, when and if, if you’ll humor me.”
“No problem, Miz Rolfe,” he said earnestly. “I appreciate that.”
“Ask away.”
“The Colletta has asked for a judicial session of the committee to investigate the death of his collateral, Anthony Bosco. Do you have any comment?”
“Just that, with respect, the Colletta should remember that Gate Security has plenary authority when operating FirstSide; that no Commonwealth court has jurisdiction over actions done there; and that that applies to the committee sitting in judicial session as well. I killed Anthony Bosco—and I make no bones about it—while on FirstSide, and while he was resisting arrest by an officer of Gate Security, and while himself shooting at Gate Security operatives. And killing one, in fact: Schalk van der Merwe, who left a widow and three small children. Anthony Bosco endangered the Gate secret and put himself outside the law; he fell on his own deeds. Instead of criticizing the Gate Security Force, the Colletta should be taking measures to exercise a tighter discipline on his collaterals.”
“Can I quote you on that, Miz Rolfe?” the reporter said, nearly slavering.
“You may,” she said.
The questions went on for a few more minutes. The reporter finished with, “And what are your immediate plans, Miz Rolfe? The ones you don’t mind people knowing, that is,” he finished hastily.
“You can say that I’m going on an extended holiday,” she said, then smiled. “Just between me and thee, Charlie, and off the record, I’ll be flying down the coast, and then looking for a crew to take Sea-Witch”—she turned to Tom for an instant—“That’s the family sailing yacht—take Sea-Witch on a cruise to Hawaii, with some friends.”
She made it plain who the friend was in the way she looked at Tom. He felt himself grinning back—this was misdirection, but the look itself was quite genuine.
“Thanks a million, Miz Rolfe!” the reporter said.
“Disinformation?” Tom asked, when the reporter had gone and they were out of earshot of anyone else.
“Precisely.” Adrienne grinned and squeezed his arm. “Charlie won’t publish anything he says he won’t, but he’ll stop gossiping when he stops breathing. Giovanni Colletta will find it a lot more believable coming as a rumor than as a magazine story, which he’d assume was planted. With any luck he’ll really believe I’m off to the islands with my new boyfriend in tow and nothing on my mind but making out like a mad mink under the coconut trees on Waikiki. He’s got that Madonna-whore thing, bad. Give you three guesses which category he puts me in.”
Tom gave her a round of applause, grinning. “And you’ll have this yacht leave, too, won’t you? With arrangements that’ll make it look like we’re on board.”
“Hell, yes,” she said. Then she hugged him and sighed. “Do you have any idea how nice it is to find a man who doesn’t feel scared of a woman who can think?”
“Ah…” Advantages of a FirstSide upbringing, he didn’t say. “The brains are up to the standards of the rest of the package,” he said.
By the light in her leaf-green eyes, it was the right thing to say. She pulled his head down beside hers and whispered, “But while we’re here, why don’t we go make out like mad mink?”
“So,” Tully said, rubbing his hands and looking around like a ten-year-old in a candy store, “what does Santa have for the good little boys and girls?”
Tom looked around the armory too; everyone in the prospective scouting party was there, except for the Indian tracker, who preferred to stick with his native tools. Hunting weapons were in one section of the long room; military stuff was in another, and in the center were workbenches, a reloading setup and a remarkably complete set of gunsmith’s tools. Light came from two small barred windows high up on either wall, and overhead fluorescents. There was a comfortingly familiar scent of Break Free oil, propellant, brass and metal.
“I presume everyone’s got their own rifle,” Tom said, and they all nodded. “Now, we’re going to look, not fight, but it’s always nice to have some insurance—you can sing or make love when you feel like it, but you fight when the other guy feels like it.”
“How about this?” Jim Simmons said, taking down a light machine gun from the rack. He looked at the two FirstSiders. “It’s a Bren, rechambered for the thirty-aught-six round.”
Tom had heard of the classic design, but never used one before. It had a bi-pod at the front, pivoted on the takeoff for the gas cylinder, and a top-mounted thirty-round box. There was an alternative C-mag saddle drum holding seventy-five rounds. Tom hefted it; lighter than the 240s he’d used in the army.
“All right; might be nice to have an authoritative backup… I presume you can use it?” Simmons nodded, and so did Botha and Adrienne. “You can give Roy and me—and Sandra—a quick course on it.”
Adrienne pulled out three submachine guns—he recognized the unorthodox shape of a Belgian PN90, its synthetics and molded shapes an odd contrast with the angular wood and metal of the older designs. These had a built-in handgrip near the front, a laser designator and collimating sight, and a fifty-round magazine of transparent plastic that lay along the top of the boxy weapon.
“These might be handy,” she said.
“Good,” he said. Like any workman, he took a proprietary interest in his tools. They had only a few days to make sure ev
eryone was familiar with all the tools at hand. “If it came to a close-quarter firefight, those would be handy. Now…”
He lifted down a wooden crate and took out blocks of a rubbery plastic substance, timers, detonators and wireless control units.
“Who knows how to handle Semtex?” he went on cheerfully.
“That’s her: the No Biscuit.”
“No Biscuit?” Tom asked, walking around the small twin-prop plane and doing a quick check.
“That’s what my flight instructor said whenever I did something stupid. ‘Bad student! Bad! No biscuit!’”
The little amphibian was parked on a municipal airport just south of Napa town—an X of mown grass strips, a couple of timber-framed hangars, a receiving shed and a rudimentary two-story control tower with a wind sock, all drowsing under a clear blue August sky. The air was warm at noon but still carried a hint of morning’s freshness, the green damp smell of the marshes to the south, sun-dried grass and a tang of gasoline, solvents and varnish. The craft had a tricycle undercarriage and a boat-shaped lower body; the wheel struts had sections of shaped board attached, with rubber gaskets to form a tight seal with the rest of the hull when they were retracted. The wing was high-mounted with pontoons at the tips, and there were two modest radial engines in smooth cowlings stained with streaks of black from the exhausts.
Closer inspection confirmed his first impression: The No Biscuit was built with stone-ax simplicity. The hull was a monocoque of laminated spruce with spruce springers and frames; so was the wing, apart from the main spar. The controls weren’t just nondigital—they were plain old cables, not even any hydraulic assist. There were some modern electronics on the control panel, flatscreen displays for radar and such, but they were extras. He looked around and saw several more just like her, and a few others with tubby cylindrical bodies suitable for a land-based aircraft, but the same wings, engines and control surfaces.
“All designed and made here in the Commonwealth,” Adrienne confirmed pridefully. “Except for some engine parts and the cockpit electronics. We could make the engine parts and do without the digital stuff, at need, even if we’re not up to making a C-130 or Black Hawk from scratch.”
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