by Ben Bova
“No,” he said automatically, realizing that it was not entirely the truth.
“You did not speak to me at all, during dinner.”
“I was discussing business.”
“I thought you were upset with me. Perhaps I said something that upset you.”
“No. Nothing.”
“I see.” Lucita sat silently for a moment. Then she said, “It is merely your custom to ignore a woman when there is business to be discussed.”
He was surprised at the sudden sharpness of her tone. “It is my custom,” he said with a smile, “to conduct business and allow children to find their own entertainments.”
“I’m not a piece of luggage that you can take off your airplane and put in a closet!”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’m not in the habit of being ignored,” Lucita said. “Your behavior toward me was very rude.”
“You seemed to get all the attention you wanted,” he said.
“Teresa and I sat through that wretched dinner while you ignored me!”
“So you got Nobo to take you to your room.”
Her eyes flashed. “He, at least, has some sense of propriety. He knows how to be kind to a woman.”
“Propriety?” Dan almost laughed. “You hitchhike halfway around the world with a man you just met a day earlier, and then march into his bedroom to complain that he didn’t pay enough attention to you during dinner. Some propriety!”
“You’re impossible,” Lucita snapped.
“No, I’m bare-assed naked under this sheet. And if you don’t march yourself the hell out of here, I’m going to get up and drag you back into this bed with me. Will that be enough attention for you?”
She stood her ground. “You wouldn’t dare! My father …”
“Your father probably thinks I’ve kidnapped you. I’m going to have a tough enough time with him. I’m bringing you back with me tomorrow.”
“Never! I won’t go!”
“You’ll go whether you like it or not,” Dan said.
“You can’t force me.”
“The hell I can’t.”
“I’ll tell my father that you raped me.”
“Okay. Fine. Do that,” Dan snarled. “I might as well be hanged for a goat as a sheep.”
He swept the sheet off his body and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. He expected her to turn and flee for the door. But instead Lucita stood there before him, unflinching, unmoving, her jet-black eyes fixed upon him. He stood up, looming over her tiny frame. She did not run. There was no fear in her eyes.
Wordlessly he reached for the collar of her robe and opened the clasp, then began to undo the buttons, one after another. She stood mutely, unresisting. She wore nothing beneath the robe. He slid it off her slim shoulders and let it drop to the floor. Lifting her slender body in his arms, he carried her to the bed and gently put her down on its softly undulating surface.
“We’re both crazy,” he said, his voice a husky whisper.
“Yes,” she said. “Completely insane.” But she laced her fingers into his hair as he slid his body over hers and kissed her with all the longing that a man can have for a woman.
Chapter TWELVE
In the morning she was gone.
Dan awoke slowly, lingering for a long while in that half-dreaming twilight world between sleep and full wakefulness. When he realized that he was alone in the bed, though, he sat up abruptly, sending waves spreading through the waterbed.
Lucita and her duenna aunt had left the house just after dawn, Nobuhiko told him over a Western-style breakfast of eggs, fruit and coffee.
“My father had already departed for Osaka,” he told Dan from across the breakfast table, “so I had one of the chauffeurs drive them to the airport and see that they got the accommodations they desired.”
“Where did they want to go?” Dan asked.
Nobo took a long sip of black unsugared coffee before answering, “It would not have been polite of me to ask. But I believe they intended to go to Rome. That is what I gathered from what they said.”
Rome. Easy enough to check it out, Dan thought. He laughed inwardly. Left without so much as a good-bye kiss.
Not even a note. At least there’s no entanglement. No tears, no scenes. Wham, bam, thank you, sir. Except she didn’t even say thank you. Nobuhiko looked much more upset about her abrupt departure than Dan felt.
“Well, Nobo, that’s women for you. Unpredictable.”
The young man nodded, sighing. He could not hide his emotions any more than his father could. Saito was the least inscrutable Oriental that Dan had ever known.
“Are you ready to come to work in Caracas?” Dan asked.
Brightening, Nobo bobbed his head eagerly. “I am prepared to leave whenever you wish.”
“Might as well come back on the plane with me.”
“Hai!” said Nobo.
Rafael Hernandez was furious, of course. Dan had expected it, and was hardly surprised when his redheaded secretary told him in her apologetic singsong way that the Minister of Technology had been on the phone constantly for the past day and a halt.
“He wants you to come to his office?” she said, standing before Dan’s desk with her electronic memo pad clutched tightly in both hands. “He said he expects you there as soon as you return?”
Dan looked up at her. “Honey, 1 don’t go to other people’s offices. Especially if they’re going to try to put me on the carpet. They conic to me. You tell Senor Hernandez that I’m back from my business trip-and be sure to say business trip. Tell him that I will be happy to see him here, in my office. At his convenience. Tell him that I’ve instructed you to change my schedule to accommodate him. Whenever he wants to come over here, I will be happy to see him.”
The redhead got it all down on the memo pad, which recorded voices and transcribed them automatically onto computer tape.
“What’s he so all-fired worked up about?” she asked.
Dan grinned at her. “His daughter. She hitched a ride to Japan with me.”
The secretary’s mouth pursed into a round little “Ohh.”
“The Latin father, upholding the honor of his family,” Dan said. “You’d better have security check him out for weapons when he gets here.”
“D’you mean that?”
“You bet I do! But have them do it discreetly. Use the remote sensors. I don’t want them patting him down; he must be pissed off enough as it is.”
“He certainly was angry,” she said.
Dan felt impressed. It was the first time he had ever heard the redhead speak a declarative sentence.
He had spent the two hours in flight from Sapporo getting Nobo squared away with living quarters, employment forms and briefings on his new duties as an employee of Astro Manufacturing. All done by computer linked to Astro’s office systems in Caracas. By the time they landed in Venezuela it was evening, and Dan spent most of the night at the desk in his apartment, catching up on the work that had accumulated while he had been away. A dozen separate messages from Hernandez were waiting for him, amid all the other things. Zachary Freiberg had sent back his employment contract, signed, with a salary figure written in that was about fifteen percent less than Dan would have been willing to offer him. And an official notification, on paper embossed with the red hammer and sickle of the USSR, that prices for lunar ores would be increased across the board by twenty-five percent, starting the first of the month.
By one A.M. Dan was ready for a few hours’ sleep. He entered his office that morning slightly before nine. The redheaded secretary was already at her station, reaching for her memo pad as he breezed past her and entered his own office.
After she left, and Dan gulped down his first cup of coffee from the gleaming stainless-steel automatic brewer on the side table in the corner behind his desk, he instructed the phone to set up a conference with the chiefs of his engineering, research, cost accounting and security departments.
“And add Nobuhiko Yamagata
to the conference,” he said. “He’s a new hire.”
“Understood,” said the phone. “Is this to be a telephone conference call or a personal meeting?”
“Personal meeting,” Dan replied instantly. “Top priority and top security.” He had no intention of risking a leak to the Soviets about his plans for an asteroid mission.
His secretary’s pretty face appeared on the phone screen. “Mr. Hernandez will be here in fifteen minutes?”
“Fine,” Dan said. “Show him right in when he arrives and then hold all calls. I don’t want us to be disturbed.” With a slight chuckle, he added, “Unless you hear a gunshot.”
Her eyes widened. She did not laugh.
“And one other thing,” Dan added. “Get Ambassador Andrews and set up a private meeting for me, preferably this evening at his home. Informal. I don’t want to be seen at his office or have him seen coming here. Got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
Hernandez was half an inch short of being livid with rage. His eyes blazed, his nostrils flared, his mustache bristled. Even his stiff-backed posture and abrupt, angry pace radiated fury as he crossed the carpeted floor of Dan’s office and took the chair in front of his desk.
“Could I get you some coffee, sir?” the secretary asked.
“No. Nothing. Thank you.”
Dan waved her away. She closed the door softly behind her as Hernandez sat silently, ramrod-straight, glaring at Dan.
“She’s gone to Rome with her aunt,” Dan said, without preliminaries. “She was properly chaperoned. She and her duenna were the guests of Saito Yamagata, the head of Yamagata Industries and one of the oldest and most respected families in Japan, at his home in the mountains of Hokkaido, roughly eight hundred kilometers north of Tokyo. She was not on the Ginza visiting nightclubs.”
Hernandez blinked, took a deep breath, but before he could speak, Dan added:
“Yamagata’s son came back with me to start employment here with Astro Manufacturing. He was at dinner with his father and me, and your daughter and her duenna two nights ago. You can ask him about it, if you like.”
“You have made a fool of me,” Hernandez said in an angry whisper.
“I had no intention of doing that. Your daughter came to me and asked for a ride. …”
“You knew that I did not want her to leave Caracas!”
Dan put on a careless grin. “All I knew was that a lovely young child asked me for a favor. Your own daughter. How could I refuse? I didn’t ask her why. I’m not interested in your family disagreements.”
“You did not have to ask her. You knew!”
Dan shrugged.
“You slept with her, didn’t you?”
The smile faded. “A gentleman does not discuss such matters, not even with the lady’s father.”
“You did! Don’t deny it!”
“Are you afraid that the Russian won’t accept her?” Dan asked. “From the information I’ve heard, that won’t matter to him. He’s quite a liberal fellow, for a Russian.”
Hernandez’s eyes narrowed. “It is a mistake, Senor Hamilton, to make an enemy of me.”
“I certainly agree,” Dan said smoothly. “I don’t want to be your enemy. I’m not your enemy. Your daughter is a very headstrong, willful young lady. If I had refused her request, who knows what she might have done? It would have been easy enough for her to take her car and drive to Georgetown, in Guyana. Or rent a boat at La Guaira and go to Trinidad. Who knows what would have happened to her?”
“You-”
“This way,” Dan continued, “she was safe from strangers, and stayed in the home of a highly respected and honorable family. She flew in a commercial airliner to Rome, where she is registered in a first-class hotel. With her duenna.”
“So I should thank you, is that it?” Hemandez’s face showed bitter scorn.
“No. I should apologize to you. I realize that now.”
The Venezuelan huffed disdainfully.
“To tell the truth,” Dan admitted, “I never even thought of the distress this escapade might cause you. Your daughter told me that she wanted to get away from the Russian, and the idea of spitting in his eye was too much for me to resist.”
Closing his eyes as if struggling to maintain his self-control, Hernandez said, “You have placed me in an impossible situation.”
“You know your daughter better than I. Wouldn’t she have gone anyway?”
“Nevertheless, the fact is that she went with you. Both Comrade Malik and I hold you responsible.”
Dan leaned back in his desk chair and ran a finger across his chin. “I suppose you’re right. If Malik is that eager for her, though, he’ll fly out to Rome and surprise her there. Might do him some good.”
“He must return to Moscow today.”
“He could stop off at Rome. That’s what I’d do, if I were in his place. That’s what you would do, wouldn’t you?”
Despite himself, Hernandez almost smiled.
“But I do feel responsible,” Dan admitted. “If your daughter is incurring expenses that are a burden to you, I would be happy to help you. …”
“That will not be necessary,” Hernandez replied stiffly.
Dan hunched forward, leaning one arm on the desk, and the older man leaned toward him slightly without consciously realizing that he was unbending a little.
“Rafael,” Dan said earnestly, “I am truly sorry that this matter has come between us. We should not be enemies. That can bring nothing but pain to both of us.”
“What you did was not the act of a friend.”
“It was unthinking, I agree. But I did not intend to hurt you. We have too much in common; the great goals that we share should not be endangered by this misunderstanding.”
“She is my only daughter.”
“She has not been compromised,” Dan insisted. “And it would be a shame to allow this Russian to drive a wedge between us. That could do nothing but damage our chances to make Venezuela the most important nation in space industry.”
Some of the stiffness seemed to go out of Hemandez’s back.
“The Russians would like nothing better than to make the two of us enemies,” Dan went on. “That would destroy the Venezuelan space program. And that would mean the end of your dream.”
Hernandez said nothing.
Swiveling slightly away from him, Dan pointed toward the view through his window. “The rainstorm wreaked havoc with the squatters’ shacks. You can see where they’ve been washed away.”
“More than a hundred were killed,” Hernandez said.
“I would like to donate some money to help them.” Dan said, turning back to face the older man again. “Perhaps a hundred thousand bolivars?”
Hemandez’s mud-brown eyes had lost their angry spark. Now they went flat as he made a quick mental calculation.
“A hundred thousand would hardly make a dent in the problem. A quarter of a million would be necessary, at least.”
Dan hesitated just long enough to let him feel that he was getting the better of the deal. “A quarter of a million.” He pursed his lips, scratched his chin, swung the chair around toward the window again and then back to face the minister.
“All right,” Dan said at last. “A quarter of a million it is.”
Hernandez nodded once in silent acknowledgment of Dan’s generosity. They spoke for a few minutes more, but they both knew that the words were merely formalities now. Dan had made the best of a bad situation. It had cost a quarter million bolivars, approximately half of which would go into
Hernandez’s own pocket. God knows where the rest will end up, Dan thought. Those poor bastards in the shacks on the hillsides will never see any of it.
Hernandez left, mollified. He was embarrassed that his daughter had disobeyed him, but satisfied that her reputation had not been tarnished. But Dan had no illusions about Hernandez. He had made an enemy out of the Minister of Technology, there was no doubt in his mind about that. Taking the bribe merely con
firmed the fact: Hernandez was now solidly on the side of the Russians.
“It was a very foolish thing to do,” said Quentin Andrews. “Extremely foolish.”
He, Dan, and Andrews’ wife, Millicent, were sitting in the ambassador’s library, a snug little room lined with bookshelves and dark oak paneling. The rest of the ambassador’s residence was light, open and airy, but Andrews had created this little refuge for himself, this room that simulated the feeling of his family home in snowy Buffalo, New York.
Lissa, sitting on the plushly cushioned love seat with her feet tucked under her and a snifter of brandy in one hand, eyed Dan craftily. “You didn’t fly her all the way to Japan just to spite that Russian, now did you, Dannie boy?”
Dan gave her a shrug. “Actually, yes, I did.”
Andrews was standing between the love seat and the armchair where Dan was sitting. He had a cut-glass tumbler in his hand, half-filled with whiskey. Dan realized that he had not seen Andrews without a glass in his hand for the better part of the past year.
“It was extremely foolish,” he repeated. “Stupid, even. Relations with the Soviets are difficult enough, these days, without you throwing romantic entanglements into the equation.”
“Our relations with the Russians aren’t that difficult,” Dan countered. He was drinking sherry, amontillado, his favorite ever since he had read Poe’s tales when a teenager.
“Not difficult? Do you have any idea-”
Dan interrupted, “Come on, Quentin. The Russians tell us what to do and we do it. What’s so difficult about that?”
Lissa made a snorting, laughing sound. Andrews frowned at her, then turned back toward Dan.
“It’s all well and good for you to be so smug about it, but the fact of the matter is-”
“The fact of the matter,” Dan said, unwilling to listen to another one of the ambassador’s pointless speeches, “is that I have to see Jane, and I have to see her right away,”
“The President? What makes you think she’ll have time to see you?”
“It’s important,” Dan said.
Sitting up straighter on the cushions, Lissa said, “I thought you two were finished for good.”