Jezebel's Ladder (34 page)

“Precisely five minutes before you
arrived, the International Space Station exploded. We have no data on the cause
or the casualties,” Bell said, watching my reaction. “One of the old Axis of
Evil countries claimed we had weapons of mass destruction on board.”

“Actually, they might be right. The
general may have planted a nuke on board the shuttle as a failsafe. Did the Phoenix crew make it?” he asked in a panic.

She nodded. “Your friend ordered
them to blow the airlock and leave immediately; however, we still don’t know
who made it out alive.”

“There goes the cover story we
planned about international brotherhood and cooperation.”

Bell hammered him with a hundred
more questions, but now that the sun was down, he didn’t have the energy for
elaborate answers. Her last question was, “News vans are starting to arrive
early for a nine o’clock news conference, some big announcement that the folks
on the space station were supposed to make. Do you know anything about that?”

“That would be hard to do without
the space station,” he said.

Amy was still answering questions
when he went inside. PJ found himself a big, cushioned chair in a glassed-in
office and caught a nap.

PJ was rudely awakened by a persistent buzzing in his jacket
pocket. It was dark in the room, but florescent light leaked in from the main
floor through the Venetian blinds. He pulled the phone out of his pocket and
gawked at it like an idiot. It shook again like an electric razor. He finally
mustered the brain cells to push TALK. “Yellow,” he said through a sleep-filled
haze.

“PJ?”

“Nick. Are you okay? You had us
worried.”

“Are you alone?”

“Yes. Everyone else is trying to
contact the crew of the Phoenix mission. What time is it?”

Nick sounded really rough. “I
couldn’t sleep. I’m shaking, and when I close my eyes, I see horrible things.”

His friend tried to make his voice
as soothing as possible. “Listen. It’s probably the drugs they gave you in the
hospital. The withdrawal is probably tearing you apart.”

“The sky is falling. I see the
faces, straight out of those Biblical paintings in the National Museum, the ones of the people in the Great Flood and in Revelation. I’m going to be
responsible for starting it. I brought down Wormwood,” he ranted.

PJ tried more small talk, but it
didn’t work. He had to nip this in the bud quick, because the next step in this
parade was a suicide. “Would you stop being so blasted egotistical? The fate of
the world does not rest solely on your shoulders. I happen to think that God
does this like the Greeks did democracy. Each person only carries the world for
one day. Yours was last Wednesday. Mine was yesterday. Today is Crupkin’s.”

“Why, what is he doing?” Nick
asked.

“I can’t tell you all the details
over the phone, but he’s part of the Phoenix mission that’s going to try to
stop your nightmare from becoming reality. I came up with a plan, but the
scientist who did the design work left us suddenly. We can’t trust any of the
ones we have left here.” PJ paused before asking the big question. “Since you
can’t sleep anyway, do you think you could lend us a hand?”

“After what you’ve done for
me—years of friendship, your help with my escape, and the plan to fix my
mistake—you could ask for anything. Where’s here?” Nick asked.

“Ground control at the Cape. I can meet you at the gate.”

Nick paused at the other end,
struggling with a dozen replies, choked betrayals, and questions. “You’re
working for the bastards?”

“No,” PJ said, a little annoyed. “I
don’t have a job thanks to you. But I’ve got this girl now who likes the
vagrant type, so I’m going to let you off on that one. I’m just trying to
support the shuttle crew so they can keep the rest of our asses on this side of
the pearly gates.”

“You’re letting them approach that
satellite in a shuttle?”

“It’s not like they can get out and
walk,” PJ responded.

“We programmed that laser to shoot
down anything traveling at a relative speed of over 100 miles an hour within
its kill zone!” Nick shouted.

“This proves how much we need you.
If you don’t want to come here, at least give me a list of the people on your
project who might have finked out your raid to Paulson and stabbed Wilkes in
the back before he knew what hit him. We can’t trust anyone until we find the
spy. You’re about the only one left alive who can do that.”

He rattled off five candidates,
which PJ scribbled on the back of a boarding-pass envelope.

With prodding, Nick added more
names of people who might personally hate him or Wilkes enough to kill. PJ had
to flip the envelope over, there were so many suspects. Then they moved on to
people who were suspicious because Paulson had personally brought them onto the
team.

“Thanks. I’ll deliver this list to
the FBI right after we contact Quan, but they’ll have a whole lot of questions
that only you can answer.”

Nick went silent for a time. “We’ll
see.” Then he hung up.

From his watch PJ could tell that
his nap had only lasted about an hour.

****

When PJ found the senior NASA
official at the scene, they had been in voice and video contact with Quan for
twenty minutes. However, they were forced to keep the communications specialist
under constant watch. Nearly every question the Feds asked was answered with
security stonewalling. The most Quan would say was, “Thanks for the advance
warning, Control. Next time, could you give us more than a few minutes?”

There had been no people aboard the
space station, but they were forced to leave important equipment behind and
blow their external airlock to escape in time. Evidently, shrapnel from the
explosion or a botched evacuation left the shuttle with a hole or two in the
hull, and not every compartment could hold air anymore. Commander Quan spoke
from inside a spacesuit.

Unfortunately, the Cape technicians who had been called in late on a Sunday night were still adapting to the
unusual situation and had to answer a number of Quan’s requests with delays,
ignorance, or refusals of their own. The people most qualified to be running
the show were still under suspicion of espionage; only four or five had been
interviewed since the arrival of the FBI, and there were about twenty left to
go. This was a recipe for disaster. PJ introduced himself and pulled the NASA
shift supervisor into his private office.

His name was Bruce “Buzz” Palaczek,
and he was sweating in spite of the air conditioning. His superiors were out of
contact. He had no idea what was happening with the Phoenix mission and very
little information about the espionage investigation. He was forty, dressed in
a thin, white, short-sleeved, dress shirt, and had a haircut and glasses
straight out of the 1950s.

“Buzz, since you’re the only person
who could make this mission work. I’ve decided to raise your clearance level.” PJ
proceeded to give him the essentials of the Phoenix mission as fast as he
could. The background data cleared up several mysteries, including repeated
offers of assistance from Russia’s atmospheric tracking network. After swearing
him to secrecy about Icarus, PJ told him what Nick had said about the approach
speeds, and his mood brightened visibly.

“Hell, that we can do something
about! If the Bureau didn’t have most of my people penned up, I could have an
optimum course plotted for them in under an hour.”

“I…came up with a filtered list of
suspects.” PJ handed over the boarding pass, and Buzz scratched off the people
who were off-site. They were left with only four suspects for the killing and
sabotage.

“This will help, but we still don’t
have enough administrators. I’ll be too busy managing the trajectory team to
wrestle with the red tape with the FBI,” Buzz complained.

PJ snorted. “A certain regional
director said they had to help me, but my official capacity here ended with the
hostage crisis.”

Buzz leaned back a little. “What is
it exactly that you do, Mr. Smith?”

“I’m currently between jobs.”

“Tell you what. I’ll write you up a
piece of paper making you Federal Security Liaison for Project Phoenix, and you
can deal with the Bureau,” he said, tapping out an official letterhead memo on
his office computer.

PJ’s first victim among the Feds
was Bell. She wasn’t too keen on letting all those people go, until PJ showed
her the NASA memo and reminded her of the magic quote from the regional
director. She grumbled a little and went to see the counter-espionage team. The
people would all still need to be interviewed eventually, but those other than
the prime suspects could be released from confinement.

Within half an hour, word got to
Quan. “Good news and bad, Phoenix.”

“Bad news first, then, Control. I
don’t want people up here to get too optimistic,” said Quan.

“Roger that. Approach vector on the
satellite must be made on the following trajectory. Transmitting. If you come
in too fast, the satellite will track you as a hostile. Too slow, and you will
not intercept in time.”

“There has to be a mistake,
Control. This will take forever. We won’t have more than a few hours of spare
oxygen. If we do this, we might not even have enough to reenter,” Quan
complained. “What’s the good news?”

“In a few minutes, we’ll have your
specialists for you.”

After double-checking the list
against the results of their investigation, the Feds freed up all but three of
the people from the NASA hostages. The fourth suspect had been visible on
security cameras for the entire shift and, thus, had an alibi. The remaining
suspects would be questioned for another two hours or so, and then the Feds
planned to leave the Cape. Unfortunately, about half of those released had been
up too long under these stressful conditions to be of any help. Some outright
refused to aid authorities who had detained them without due process. Though
the remainder filled out the ground crew nicely with the help of the remote
links to Brazil, Russia, and several observatories paid for by Fortune
Aerospace.

Even with experts recomputing the
approach path and the Phoenix pilot pushing the tolerances to the last decimal
point, their progress was agonizingly slow. A small complement of FBI agents
stayed behind at Buzz’s request to help increase security. The new liaison was
issued a photo-ID badge to hang on his borrowed suit jacket. Someone handed PJ
an electric razor, and he took the hint. Meanwhile, one more suspect was
released when eyewitness testimony accounted for her whereabouts the hour
before and after the murder. The final two suspects were fingerprinted and
taken to a local jail to await vindication by crime scene evidence.

PJ made himself useful by finding
out where the vending machine snacks were stored and keeping a steady supply of
refreshments flowing to everyone who was actually working. Buzz eventually
remembered his computer experience and put him to work analyzing a local
network glitch along with a few junior technicians.

****

Fortune pulled Daniel aside at
lunch time. “You know that Professor Sorenson wasn’t your real father.”

“Duh. I went into high school at thirteen.
It’s hard to hide things from a kid like that when he’s learning about Mendel
in biology,” said the teenager. “The Sorensons told me when I was a freshman.”

“This may come as a shock, but…”

“You’re my biological dad? Again,
I’m not stupid.” Fortune was dumbfounded, so the boy continued. “I could tell
by the DNA echo we were related. I just didn’t know how closely till now. My
guess is you were a sperm donor when your biotech firm was strapped for
cash—Nobel short-list swimmers, get ‘em while they’re hot!”

The billionaire turned red. “It was
a little more complicated than that. This isn’t easy for me.”

“Oh, now you’re Mr. Sensitivity.
When you were telling your driver in the front of the house that Trina was a
glorified hand puppet, that’s the Dirt Bag I know.”

“Calm down. I didn’t…”

“Know she could hear you? We had
the windows open.”

“What do you want? I can give her
more money for her horses…”

“Screw money, how about some
respect!” People stopped eating to stare. Even Claudette paused in her feverish
work. “You owe her an apology. Because if I have to choose between you and her,
you know how that story ends.”

Fortune fish-mouthed, at a loss for
words. Wheezing, he grabbed an inhaler. Doc Vader stepped closer. Daniel
lowered his voice. “I shouldn’t have yelled, but when people say those things
about her, I can feel what she feels.”

“You’re right,” Fortune whispered.

“Are you going to need my
wheelchair?” Daniel asked jokingly.

“Soon, son,” he said in all seriousness.
Fortune walked over to Trina. “My dear, you rival any of the models I dated in
my bachelor days. Daniel is a lucky man. I know you are much more intelligent
than you ever let on. Jezebel always tells me I’m being a sexist pig. A man who
did what you had would probably be my new head of security. Alas, I have become
what Vonnegut calls a barnacle.”

Trina blinked, then looked at
Daniel. “You said that the gypsy woman who gave you the Oobie page was a friend
of your ‘father.’ I think she was purposely vague. Jez found financial records
from the time to indicate her benefactor was Fortune, not Sorenson. He’s the
biggest shithead I know, but he loves you. That means he’s not a total waste of
protoplasm. Let him talk.” Then she went back to her bean-curd and
alfalfa-sprout wrap.

Calmer, Daniel asked him, “What did
you want?”

“Maybe an invitation for Christmas
and birthdays, as well as a chance to tell my side.”

Daniel nodded.

“You were right about the timing.
Sorenson’s sister, Brenda, was one of my lab assistants. She had a case of hero
worship where I was concerned; even I could see it. I never took advantage of
her. Then, when I got my eviction notice and the FDA refused to return my
calls, I crumbled. You have no idea the depression I felt; for an entire year,
I couldn’t even get an erection.”

The teen raised both eyebrows at
this.

“Brenda was an angel, convinced me
never to give up. Her faith changed me. I stayed one night with her. I wanted
to spend more, but felt like a dirty old man. The next day, I got the idea for
my X-Ray specs program. I became obsessed. I disappeared, vowing not to see the
light of day again until I could save my company.”

Fortune stared at the wall where
sticks and balls made an increasingly complex mathematical figure. “Brenda had
post-partum depression and killed herself before I knew she was pregnant. Your
uncle took custody. I was only a name on the birth certificate. I got a letter
about the paternity in the mail but I thought it was another collection notice.”

The billionaire handed over a
wallet photo of a young woman in a lab coat. “Is this Claudette as a teenager?”
Daniel guessed.