A Time for War (24 page)

What Utako did not mention, of course,
Richard Hawke thought as he eavesdropped on their conversation through a computer chip on the young woman's uniform,
was that
Hi-Lite
was equipped on all sides with components of the Squarebeam technology.
The gun-like devices could deactivate the electronics of any threatening vessels as well as emit a blinding light that rendered any opponent incapable of seeing the yacht as Hawke sped away from danger.

Back on the speedboat, Jack was amused that he had merited the information about the former
Spetsnaz
. Hawke had a high opinion of his abilities, apparently. “How many guests are there now?” Jack asked.

Her short, black hair blowing behind her, the young woman said, “I believe you are the only guest.”

Jack had not expected her to answer. That meant Hawke wanted him to know they would be alone except for his loyal crew. Make him alert, guarded, worried, defensive, carelessly offensive—any number of small, destabilizing reactions.

“The yacht was especially designed by Mr. Hawke for dining on the topmost deck,” she went on. “That assures privacy from other vessels, from the dock, and also from the crew, and maximizes views from the finished wood alfresco dining table and wraparound seating.”

Which means we're having dinner,
Jack thought.
A courtesy or a coercion?

They arrived aft of the large white vessel in five minutes flat, climbed the few steps to the main deck. The captain was waiting for them.

“Russ Browning,” the uniformed man introduced himself, smiling.

The captain was about forty-five with salt-and-pepper hair showing under his hat. He had a rich tan, a big smile, and perfect teeth. He stood like a seaman, legs slightly apart for balance, spine ramrod straight. Captain Browning radiated the same kind of formal perfection as the Hawke women. Jack wondered which came first, the perfect captain's bearing or employment by Hawke.

“Would you care to visit a cabin before meeting Mr. Hawke?” Browning asked.

“I did everything I needed on his plane,” Jack said, looking around. “This is quite a setup, too.”

“She is the loveliest vessel in the water,” Browning declared.

Jack had no way of knowing whether or not that was true. But based on just the mini fridge in the limousine, he was not about to question the captain. At the same time, he thought of the
Sea Wrighter.
It was small by comparison, cramped, and you felt every buck and heave of the water. But it was home. It was personal. He suddenly missed it very much.

They made their way through the main salon, which was the size of his Union Street apartment. It had a wet bar, a spotless white carpet, big picture windows, more black-and-white leather sofas, and a pair of Renoirs on the wall. The lamps were by Tiffany, the captain mentioned. Jack didn't think he meant the singer.

They continued up to the bridge deck, all the while Jack feeling less and less as though he were on a boat. Even when he saw the bay, he felt like he was in a beachfront hotel. The sway was that minimal, the trappings so un-boatlike.

Jack wanted to ask Captain Browning about his experiences before joining Hawke—they might bond over their love of smaller boats that one could actually pilot, and that relationship could prove useful—but he didn't think there was time and he wasn't sure the seaman would be any more forthcoming than the women had been. It wasn't a life Jack aspired to, but he could imagine workers not wanting to leave surroundings like the jet and yacht if they didn't have to.

From there they went to the sundeck, where Richard Hawke was lying on a black hammock with an e-reader and a clip-on light. The hammock was clearly custom-made, with a wide base made of what looked like matte-black carbon. There was a strange, pinched joint in the middle of the head and foot supports; on the head rail of the hammock was what looked like a photoelectric sensor. The captain explained that the unit “read” the sun, communicated with small, silent motors in the two joints, and kept the hammock facing the sun at all times. It was still oriented to the western horizon and would reset in the morning.

Jack was overwhelmed rather than impressed.

Hawke was dressed in a white robe and reading glasses. When he rose, Jack was surprised how stooped and thin he was. He had read about the man's battle with throat cancer. Even the best doctors and healthiest sunshine could not undo the pallor of what he had endured. As his host walked around the six queen-sized sunning beds built in a large marble well, Jack noticed the Hawke logo embroidered on the back of his robe in black and gold.

Like a fighter's robe,
Jack thought.

There was a point at which excess became comical self-mockery. The hammock had come indulgently close; the robe crossed the line.

“Mr. Hatfield,” Hawke said quietly as he approached.

“Call me Jack,” Jack said.

“Like Ishmael?” Hawke replied.

“Helluva question to ask on a boat,” Jack said.

“Why?” Hawke said. “Ishmael survived.”

Hawke offered his hand and Jack shook it. The man's grip was firm enough.

“It's odd we've never met,” Hawke remarked.

“We don't exactly move in the same social circles,” Jack pointed out.

“True, but we're nearly neighbors.”

“Your place in Carmel?”

“I come to a lot of public events in San Francisco,” Hawke said. “The kind you used to attend.”

“You mean, when I mattered.”

Hawke laughed. “Your modesty is unexpected.”

There was a false, frustrating informality to the greeting. Part of that was the awkwardness of any first meeting; part was the fact that this was bound to be adversarial. Jack had expected that. But it made Jack wonder if anything about the man was real, honest, off-the-shelf. Jack had always been able to put his TV guests at ease with a few jokes and his naturally easygoing style. But then, most of them were tense about going on TV and wanted to be relaxed. Hawke was guarded but he did not seem tense. And he had the home court advantage.

“What would you like to eat, drink?” Hawke asked.

“Nothing, thanks.”

“Just the facts, ma'am,” Hawke laughed.

“I
am
a reporter.”

“So I was just reading,” he held up the e-reader and wigwagged it. “Your articles on the Hand of Allah. Fascinating.”

Jack thanked him. Hawke said that if his guest didn't mind he'd like to go to the dining room. Jack agreed and followed him down a different set of stairs from the one he'd come up.

The dining room was gently air-conditioned.

“We don't get much of a breeze this side of the island, and that sun cooks the roof for the entire day,” Hawke said, waving a hand at the ceiling. It was covered with a Renaissance-style mural of great inventors and their creations, in the guise of saints. “What do you think of my faux Italian masterwork? It was painted by the gentleman who was arrested five years ago for creating fake Michelangelos.”

Nothing real, honest, off-the-shelf …
Jack thought. “Did you commission this before or after?”

“After,” Hawke admitted. “I paid for his defense team. Talent like this should not be doing chalk drawings on a prison wall. He got six years, served three. This took him two years. I didn't bother him the way Pope Julius kept after Michelangelo. Art can't be bullied.”

Ironically, it was probably not much smaller than the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

They sat at a corner of the Louis XVI dining room table.

“This is not a re-creation,” Hawke tapped it as he sat in one of the matching, cushioned chairs. “It was made for Versailles but never delivered. Marie Antoinette felt it wouldn't be large enough for the room she had in mind.” He pointed to a painting behind him. “That is she, in hunting attire. It's by her portraitist, Joseph Krantzinger. She didn't like the background, insisted he do the whole thing over.”

“Royalty,” Jack said as he sat. “What can you do with someone who has so much power?”

Hawke smiled as water was poured by a young male steward. “Behead them, of course. But you never know what will take their place. Was Napoleon any better?”

“No,” Jack agreed.

“Was Lenin an improvement over Czar Nicholas II? Did Cuba fare any better under Fidel Castro than it did under Batista?”

“Those are either-or situations,” Jack said. “Not everything is so black or white.”

Hawke took a long drink of water as he sat back in his white chair. He didn't answer.

He didn't have to.

The industrialist smiled. There was something unhealthy in his expression. Not just in the flesh but in the poison that lay beneath it. Like a snake trying to hypnotize prey.

“Do you own one of these?” Hawke asked, holding up the e-reader.

“I just got a tablet a few weeks ago,” Jack said. “I'm not an early adaptor.”

Hawke continued to smile. He spoke one word, quietly. “Pierre.”

A young man trotted silently up the staircase. Jack just now noticed a small bulge in the frame of Hawke's glasses, just over each ear. An embedded Bluetooth, he surmised. Pierre was carrying a plastic cylinder, which he handed to Hawke. The way the young man bowed to make sure his boss didn't have to reach far for it or even look over reminded Jack of a bas relief he had seen of a quaestor presenting Tiberius Caesar with a writing tablet. Pierre removed the e-reader and remained by Hawke's elbow.

The cylinder was actually a flexible display nearly two feet across. Hawke spread it on the desk with both hands. The display remained flat.

“Our latest commercial application of proprietary military technology,” Hawke smiled. “The tablet you purchased is already obsolete. This device utilizes our own patented semiconducting material with eight times the current modulation rate of existing organic thin film transistors.” He smiled triumphantly. “Instead of employing electronics based on conventional solid chips in archaic plastic containers, we've created a display driver just twenty microns thick and integrated it into the pane itself. Only dedicated Hawke electronics function on board the
Hi-Lite.
”

“You mean I had myself wired up for nothing?”

Hawke laughed, but not at the easy victory. It was an expression of joy. The man seemed prouder showing off that little screen than he did his jet and yacht.

His legacy is more important than what it has bought him,
Jack thought.

Hawke gestured toward Jack. Pierre brought him the display screen, laid it out before him, tapped an icon on the plastic sheet, then left.

“You will recognize this, I think,” Hawke said.

Jack looked down at the surprisingly bright and lifelike image. It was an episode of
Truth Tellers
from 2010, the one with Dr. José Colon of Caltech and press officer Rebecca Walsh of Squarebeam. The audio came from speakers that were hidden in the ceiling and walls around the table. It began at the point when Jack was saying, “… what you were describing sounds a lot like the protection rackets run by the mob.”

“I don't need to see or hear it,” Jack said. “I remember what I said.”

“Do you remember every show you've done? Or just that one?”

“A call from the Vice President of the United States tends to stick in one's memory,” Jack told him.

“What did he tell you?”

“That's between me and the Vice President.”

“Do you know the definition of a lonely man, Mr. Hatfield? A man of ideals in a selfish world.”

Jack shrugged a little. “I'd call him a beacon.”

“Like a solid old lighthouse or a candle in the window,” Hawke said with a flourish. In the process of saluting them he mocked them.

“I would say more like a pole star,” Jack said.

“Of course you would,” Hawke said. “You know, though, that pole stars are true
only
at the poles. And they change over time.” He leaned forward. “The Vice President told you that you were overstating the danger of Squarebeam technology. He informed you that we were on the verge of making a significant deal with the Chinese government that would provide work for my laboratories in Connecticut, in Florida, and in California. He suggested that the President would like to be able to talk about the thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars this relationship would bring to America. Does that sum it up?”

“Except for one thing,” Jack said. “He didn't answer my question about what kind of technology you were selling to China.”

“Did you expect him to? What is your security level, Jack?”

“The word of a journalist is the only security level he needs,” Jack said. “That's why the public never heard about D-Day before June 6 and Joe Voter did not know about JFK's back pain or mistresses.”

“Ideals again,” Hawke said.

“They always come back, just like spring,” Jack said. “Why do you hate them so much?”

“Because they lack any connection with reality, any use in an evolving society. They are the ultimate form of narcissism.”

“Not this?” With a sweep of his hand, Jack moved from the flexible display to the boat. “Everything in your colors, black and white. Everything with your zigzag line cutting through it. Your predatory bird logo on every employee.”

“You must learn the difference between vanity and uniformity,” Hawke said. “I don't announce to the world, as you do, that my ideals are correct. These trappings—and that's all they are, accessories to a life—are proof that my judgment is correct. I understand what people need, from ordinary citizens to government leaders.”

“And when they succumb, you brand them,” Jack said.

“You're wrong,” Hawke said. “It's a partnership.”

“So your employees keep telling me. Each of them stamped from your mold, articulating your dogma, surrendering self for comfort and access.”