Castle Bravo

by Karna Small Bodman

  On the other hand, they did have a ton of things in common. She had been raised in Texas where her dad was in the oil and gas business. She had spent time out in the field with him, knew all about drilling rigs and pipelines, so in addition to the physical attraction, she was kind of like a soul mate when it came to his issues.

  The trouble was, in addition to dealing with Washington, GeoGlobal kept sending him around the world to negotiate contracts with other governments. He had always enjoyed the travel, but now he found himself counting the days when he could land at Dulles Airport and head back to see Samantha. Then again, her job was getting so crazy, she didn’t have as much time for him as she used to, even when he was in town. Since she had been promoted to lead that Homeland Security operation at the White House, her hours were brutal. She was on call 24/7 and it seemed that every time her cell phone rang, some city could be in danger. Talk about pressure.

  He turned right on M Street and drove by a series of shops where students from Georgetown University were peering in windows featuring T-shirts, gold jewelry, and ethnic food of one sort or another. He always wondered how they got enough customers in those stores since there was never any where to park on this stretch. He continued down to Wisconsin Avenue and turned right past the Shops at Georgetown Park. Down the hill, he turned right again on K Street under the Whitehurst Freeway and was amazed to find a guy pulling out of a place just a block down from Samantha’s condo. Rock Star Parking, he mused as he took the spot. They always reserved the best parking space for the rock stars right in front of a stadium, and as he turned off the motor and grabbed the bottle of wine he had brought along for dinner, he felt a stab of the same sort of anticipation he sensed when he went to some of those concerts many years ago. The expectation of great music, camaraderie with friends and, hopefully, a chance to get lucky.

  When she opened the door, Tripp set the bottle of wine down on a small table in the entrance, gathered Samantha in his arms, inhaled the faint scent of vanilla in her hair and lowered his mouth to hers. She wound her arms around his neck and pressed her body close. As he deepened the kiss, he heard a slight moan. God, she tastes good, feels good, smells good. He looked down into those jade green eyes and grinned. “Missed you, Samantha.”

  “Missed you too. I’m so glad you’re back.” She turned and picked up the wine. “Oh, it’s a Pinot Noir. This is perfect. I’ve got veal chops and creamed spinach tonight. C’mon into the kitchen and tell me about your trip.”

  He followed her into a small galley style kitchen with maple cabinets and granite countertops. There was barely enough room for two people to be in the space, but he never minded bumping up against her body. And what a body it was. He tried to push those thoughts out of his mind, though he promised himself he’d get back to them later. He glanced around and reflected on how small her condo was. He knew she had given up space in return for proximity to the White House. People in Washington paid a ton to live in town and not fight the commutes on I-66, the Beltway, 270 or 395. And with her hours, it made sense to have this little place so near the action. At least it was across from a park where they sometimes went running together. And the restaurants at Washington Harbour were just across the street and down two blocks. So all in all, he could see why she picked this building. If they ever got serious enough to move in together though, they’d have to get bigger digs.

  He watched as she reached into an overhead cabinet to retrieve two wine glasses. He liked the way her hips moved, and he began to wish that he could postpone the veal chops and move on to dessert. Her. That’s what he wanted tonight. As if reading his mind, Samantha smiled at him. “Later,” she said and pointed toward the bottle. “Would you open the wine while I toss the salad?” She grabbed bottles of oil and vinegar from a cupboard, sprinkled some bits of blue cheese on the lettuce, mixed the greens and spooned them onto two plates sitting on the counter.

  Tripp pulled out the cork, poured a bit of wine into a goblet and handed it to Samantha. “Here. Try this. Tell me what you think.”

  She took a sip and closed her eyes. “Best thing I’ve tasted all day.”

  “Just wait till later,” he murmured, pouring some for himself. “Well, let’s see now. The trip was okay. Got a deal finalized in Norway. It’s almost summer so you’d think it would warm up. No such luck up there. Glad to be back home. But enough of that. Tell me about things in your shop. That is if there’s anything that’s not classified,” he said with a wry grin.

  “Screwed up. Shifting. Changing,” she said. “One minute I think we need to focus on train security, the next it’s the ports, then it’s a new type of weapon.” She turned to face him. Holding her wine glass she asked, “Remember those kaleidoscopes we used to have when we were kids? You just move them a fraction and all the shapes change. Well, that’s how I feel right now.”

  “Yeah. Kinda creates a new mosaic.”

  “Exactly. The trouble is, I feel like we have to be on top of all of them at once. I don’t know how the president does it. Juggling things not only here but around the world.”

  “But he’s got thousands of people in the government worrying about all that stuff. You’ve got people too, especially all of those bodies over at DHS. That department has, what? Hundreds of thousands of people, analysts, administrators, whatever. You just need to use them.”

  “I know,” she said and gave a sigh. “I never was good at delegating. I’m always afraid somebody’s going to drop the ball or overlook something. And we’re talking about people’s lives here.”

  “I know. Believe me, I know.” He grabbed the wine and followed her into the small living room. There was a round walnut table and two ladder back chairs at one end of the room where Samantha had set their places. An arrangement of low candles had been set to the side. As they sat down, he saw that the reflections from the candlelight gave her face a rosy glow and made her hair kind of shine. Being with her again, after a long trip, made all the hours on all the flights drift away from his mind’s eye.

  But her mood was pretty somber tonight. He wanted to change that. “So, I wanted to tell you about a conversation I had with your dad today.”

  “Oh? What’s the latest?”

  “I’m really glad we took him on as a consultant. He’s been great. Good man.”

  Samantha glanced over at the photo of her family perched on the glass coffee table in front of her sofa. It showed a rugged Jake Reid clad in blue jeans and a striped shirt with the sleeves rolled up, her mother who had died of cancer many years ago, Samantha as a teenager and her little brother clowning off to one side. Every time she looked at that picture, taken at their home down in Texas, she missed her Mom. But the look on her father’s face made her smile. There he was. Big Jake as the wildcatters called him. One of the best in the business when it came to searching out and analyzing the most promising leases, the most likely places to find the precious oil and gas.

  “He’s pretty happy with the arrangement too” she said, “although I sometimes worry that he overdoes it. I mean, ever since he had that heart problem I keep asking him to slow down”

  “That man is never going to slow down. You know that. In fact, he keeps bugging me about traveling to some of our overseas projects.”

  “Overseas? Where? Why?” Samantha asked in a concerned tone.

  “Not sure yet. But you know we’re negotiating exploration deals all over the place, especially in some of the former Soviet states.”

  “Way over there?”

  “Gotta go where the oil is, my dear,” Tripp said tasting the salad. “Hey, this is really good.” He leaned over and poured some more wine into Samantha’s glass.

  “Well, I don’t know,” she said. “It worries me when he goes traipsing around the fields all the time.”

  “That’s what he’s good at. You can’t ask a man to quit. Not at his age.”

  Samantha furrowed her brow. “I guess I can’t. It’s just that I love him, and I don’t want to see anything happen to hi
m. I want him to take care of himself.”

  Tripp reached over and took her hand. “Hey, hon, relax. Jake can take care of himself. You let me worry about him. You’ve got enough to worry about right now.”

  They finished their veal and creamed spinach and almost emptied the bottle of wine. Samantha was feeling a bit of a buzz, a much more pleasant sensation than anything she had felt all day in her chaotic West Wing office. She had missed Tripp when he was away on his latest business venture. She wished he could stay in town more. On the other hand, with her insane schedule, it was always frustrating to know that he was just across Key Bridge, and she was often too busy or too exhausted to be with him. She could look out her picture window and see his building, Turnberry Tower, across the Potomac. At least he didn’t have far to go when he went home after one of their dinners. Would he drive home tonight, or would he stay?

  She glanced over at the tall, muscular man she had idolized back in her college days. He had been on the crew back then, and even now he had the same physique she always associated with guys in that sport. She knew he worked out a lot, and she found herself berating the fact that she had skipped her usual morning runs along the Potomac ever since she got this new job. There just wasn’t enough time in the day. At least tonight she had carved out a few extra hours to concentrate on Tripp, and she gave a silent prayer that her cell phone wouldn’t ring for a good long while.

  She started to clear the dishes when he pushed back his chair. “Here, let me help you with these,” he said, picking up his plate and walking to the kitchen. She blew out the candles and took the glasses and wine bottle off the table.

  “Coffee tonight?” she asked as she put the plates in the dishwasher. “Or how about dessert. I’ve got some sorbet in the fridge.”

  He leaned against the counter and grinned at her. “Guess it’s not made with green tea and lime mousse.”

  “What in the world are you talking about? Green tea and lime mousse? Where did you hear about that?”

  “Just some stuff they were serving on this last trip. It looked kind of weird, so I asked the waiter how they made it. Get this. I wanted to remember so I could tell you about it. Anyway, he said they take essences, now there’s a word for you, essences of tea and lime and pump it out of siphons into a bowl of liquid nitrogen.”

  She burst out laughing. “And you ate that stuff?”

  “No. I took a pass.”

  “Good choice,” she said, rinsing off her hands and turning to face him. “Next time you’re in Texas you should go to our State Fair. They’ve got better things there like Fried Milky Way Bars.”

  He chuckled and shook his head. Enough chatter. He flicked off the kitchen light and pulled Samantha into his arms, lifted her up and carried her down the short hallway to her bedroom. She started to giggle as he somewhat unceremoniously plopped her down on top of the white comforter, sat down beside her and started to unbutton her blouse. “Thanks for the great dinner, but now it’s time for the dessert I’ve been thinking about for weeks.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

  “Great beach weather, right?” Pete asked his new friend.

  “Sure is,” Nurlan replied. “Good you borrow car for day.”

  “Yeah. One of my buddies lets me use it once in a while, and with exams coming up and studying all the time, I figured we could use a break.”

  Pete drove off the UCLA campus on Westwood Boulevard and turned right onto Wilshire. “Ever play volleyball in your country?”

  “Sure. Is Olympic sport. We have television, you know,” he said with a laugh.

  “I just wondered. I mean, I have no clue what you do over there. Well, I did see that dumb Borat movie a while ago.”

  “That movie so bad,” Nurlan said. “We no happy with that one. My country very civilized. We have quarter of world’s oil.”

  “That much? You guys must be rich.”

  “We try. My government bring in good companies to get oil out of ground. People make lots money. Government people make money. Oil people make money. Lots money some places, at least when price is up. But even when price is down, people want oil. So they drill.”

  “So your government is okay?” Pete asked.

  Nurlan laughed. “Is okay some times. We have many bad governments for years, is all … how do you say it? Is all relative. That’s right. My people go all back to Genghis Khan. He started in Kazakhstan.”

  “I didn’t know that. I read about him in history classes but I had no clue he was in your country. I guess I didn’t know where he was. Pretty bad guy though, right.”

  “Bad guy? Sure. He killed many people. But then he had big empire, and he only taxed people half a percent, so after while they think it no such bad deal.”

  “Half a percent? I never heard of that,” Pete said.

  “Compare to what Soviets did when they came. They killed million people when they took over all land and all animals. So you look and Genghis Khan no look so bad. Now we don’t have Soviets running things any more, but our government takes forty-five percent taxes. And I no like president. He no good guy.”

  “I don’t like ours either. In fact, I don’t like anything about Washington. They make promises they don’t keep,” Pete said with a scowl.

  “They’re all a bunch of liars.”

  “You mean when they promise help your people? You told me that,” Nurlan said.

  “Yeah. That and a lot of things. I’ve been sending messages to the White House, to Congress, to everybody. But nobody even bothers to answer.”

  “What you tell them?”

  “I remind them that they’re supposed to vote money for reparations. For health care for our people who were hurt. For everything we need. But they never do. The SAINTS doesn’t have the money to get a big lawsuit together or anything like that. But a lot of our people are so fed up that we’re trying to figure out some other ways to get their attention.”

  “Like what?”

  “Make some threats maybe. I’m not sure yet. I’m working on that,” Pete said as he turned right on San Vincente Boulevard and began to wind through Brentwood. He drove past office buildings and restaurants and finally through a lovely residential neighborhood. A few joggers ran past rows of trees that lined the median, and a pair of bikers rode along the curb.

  “This nice area,” Nurlan said, gazing at a fancy house partially blocked by a stone wall.

  “Yeah. Some people have made it big around here. I’m still trying to live on my swimming scholarship and the few bucks I saved from a job last summer. Until I got laid off, that is. The economy was so bad, the store where I worked had to close.”

  “About summer jobs, I have idea I want tell you about.”

  “Yeah? What’s that?” Pete asked, winding to the end of San Vincente and turning right on Seventh Street.

  “I have good summer job back home. It not in Almaty, that best city. It is way west, over by Caspian. That’s okay because it pays good.”

  “What kind of a job?”

  “It’s with company I try for long time to get into. They making nuclear energy and some people say maybe they make some kind weapons. I watch them, and I think if I get job there I see what they do. If bad, maybe our protest group can find way to shut it down.”

  “So you’re gonna be a spy?” Pete asked, turning onto Pacific Coast Highway.

  “Yes. Good idea, you think?

  “Why would they give you a job? Don’t they check people out?”

  “I am expert with computers. My major here. You know that. They need people like me. So why not take job and watch things while I there?” Nurlan asked.

  Pete thought about that for a while. “So you’ve got this job lined up, and you’re going to spy on them and make money at the same time. Sweet deal.”

  They drove through a tunnel, and on the other side they saw the crowds on State beach. Pete circled around and finally found a parking place with a broken meter. “C’mon. Let’s get our st
uff. There are some guys over there by the volleyball net. I’ve got a ball in the trunk. Maybe we can get a pick-up game. Your legs okay for that?”

  “Sure,” Nurlan said with a shrug. “Maybe not for long time, but I want to play.”

  Pete’s serve just skimmed the net. One of the others spiked the ball back over and Nurlan set it up. They ran, dove, hit and served again for the next half hour and just barely eked out twenty-five points in the first round. “You want to go another round?” Pete asked, swiping beads of sweat off his forehead.

  The sun was high overhead now and gentle waves were lapping at the shore. It was almost noon. “Nah. It’s getting pretty hot. I wanna hit the water. Maybe we can play again later. Okay with you both?” one of their opponents asked.

  “Sure thing,” Pete said with a wave of his hand. “Thanks. Good game.” He retrieved the ball, grabbed their towels and duffel bags stacked at the side of the net and sauntered down the beach in search of some good scenery. “Hey, check out the girls over there,” he motioned to where a half dozen young women clad in skimpy two-piece bathing suits were sunning themselves. How about we hang out right here?”

  “Looks good.” Nurlan spread out his towel and reached inside his bag for a couple bottles of water. He offered one to Pete.

  “Thanks.” Pete was still focused on the women. “See what they’re wearing?”

  “You mean bathing suits?”

  “Yeah. Bikinis. Remember we talked one time about how my grandmother was on an island when a huge bomb was tested? It was the one hydrogen bomb they exploded. A thousand times bigger than the one they dropped on Hiroshima, and radio-active ash fell all over her village?”