Privateers (35 page)

“Show him in. And turn on some lights.”

The robot pivoted noiselessly on the thick carpeting and wheeled toward the door. Lamps recessed into the ceiling threw pools of light against the paintings that decorated the walls. Dan got to his feet and tightened the belt of his robe. His slippers were either under the coffee table or under the sofa; he had no intention of searching for them.

But it was not Nobuhiko who followed the butler’s stubby metal form into the living room. It was Lucita.

“What are you doing here?” Dan blurted.

She was wearing a simple short-sleeved black frock, as if in mourning. Her hair was loose and flowing. In the subdued light, Dan could not make out the expression on her face.

“I came to see … if you are all right.” she said. Her voice was low, uncertain, questioning.

“I’m still alive.”

Lucita took a few hesitant steps toward the sofa. The robot stood immobile, its task accomplished and no new jobs assigned to it.

“It was so horrible,” Lucita said. “Look, my hands are still trembling.”

“Never seen a man killed before?” Dan’s voice sounded harsh, bitter, even to himself.

“No, I-”

“Your boyfriend did it, you know.”

“Vasily? He was trying to murder you, wasn’t he?”

“He’s not that sweet,” Dan said. “He’s killed three friends of mine. He’ll kill more.”

She seemed dazed. “Can I … may I sit down?”

Dan could not understand the anger burning inside him. He crossed the space separating them in three swift strides and grasped her by the shoulders.

“What’s your game, Lucita?” he demanded. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m frightened!”

Now he was close enough to see her eyes glistening in the faint light, filled with tears.

“You’re in no danger. He wants to marry you, not kill you.”

“Frightened for you,” she said. The tears spilled out and she broke into sobs. Dan pulled her to him. She leaned her head against his chest, crying, and let him fold his arms around her.

“One moment he was alive, and then … then …”

“Don’t!” he snapped. “Don’t bring it up again. He’s dead and there’s nothing that words can do about it.”

“But I thought they were trying to kill you. Even as your friend was falling to the ground and the car was speeding away, the only thing in my mind was that they were going to kill you, too.”

“No, I’m safe.” For the time being, Dan added silently.

“I know that Vasily did it. He hates you. He wants you dead.”

“The feeling is mutual.”

Lucita pulled away from him slightly. “You must not let him kill you. You must not!”

“Why not? What difference does it make?”

“Because I love you,” Lucita said, her eyes widening with sudden realization of the truth of it. “I love you, my Yanqui. I could not stand to see you killed.”

Dan’s mind spun. “Love me? You love me?”

“You are the only man in all the world worth loving. How could I love anyone else?”

“Lucita …” He pulled her to him again and kissed her, while a voice inside his head marveled, She loves me! This beautiful, spoiled, fragile girl actually loves me!

“Would you really steal me away?” she asked breathlessly. “Would you build me a palace like the Taj Mahal or a city at the bottom of the sea?”

“Whatever you desire, Lucita mia,” Dan whispered. “We can go off to the Himalayas and search for Shangri-la together. Or build a spacecraft that will take us out among the stars.”

Looking up at him, she smiled, and Dan could feel her warm young body relaxing in his arms.

“I have never seen the Taj Mahal,” Lucita said. “Or the Pyramids. Or the Golden Gate Bridge.”

“You will,” he promised. “You’ll see them all. Sugar Loaf, the Parthenon, the Eiffel Tower, Tahiti, Victoria Falls-I’ll show them all to you.”

“The whole world?”

“Everything. Italy alone can take ten years. And New Zealand: the most beautiful spot on Earth is the South Island. And the Great Wall of China …”

“And New York! Can we see the Statue of Liberty?”

Dan felt his blood run cold. “The Statue of Liberty. Sure.” But the enthusiasm had drained out of him. “If they haven’t torn it down by the time we get there.”

She realized that she had touched an open wound. “I’m sorry,” Lucita said.

As gently as he could, Dan released his grip on her and gestured toward the sofa. “It’s all right, Lucita. Not your fault.” He grinned sardonically, remembering an old cliche. “Being in love means never having to say you’re sorry.”

She sat like a kitten, legs tucked up under her. Dan thought briefly about turning on more lights, decided that he preferred the shadows, then sat wearily beside her.

“Would you really take me all around the world?” she asked, curious as a child on Christmas Eve.

“Forever and ever,” Dan said, trying to recapture the elation he had felt so briefly. “We’ll make our home in a seaplane, a flying houseboat, so that we can go wherever we want to and never leave home.”

“That would be marvelous!”

“Yes,” he quoted, “isn’t it pretty to think so.”

She reached up to touch his cheek. “Dan, I will go with you, wherever you want to go. I do love you.”

He took her hand in his and kissed it. “And your fiance?”

She tossed her head. “I never loved Vasily. No matter how I tried to fool myself, I know that I could never marry him.”

More softly, Dan asked, “And your father?”

“I don’t care,” Lucita said. “He is interested only in his own ambition.”

Dan took a deep breath. “You’re really serious about this?”

“I love you, Yanqui,” she repeated. “I have tried not to, but it did no good. I love you.”

“Lucita …”

“Yes?”

There were a thousand things whirling through Dan’s mind, words that he wanted to speak to her, promises that he wanted to make. But he heard himself say only, “We can have a beautiful life together, Lucita-once I’ve finished this business with Malik.”

Even in the darkness, he could see her eyes widen. Her breath caught, and she pulled back from him.

“Finish your … You mean you’ll fight against him until he kills you!”

“Or I kill him,” Dan said woodenly. “Whichever comes first.”

“While I sit and wait for the victor to claim me as booty!” Lucita’s voice was hot with sudden anger.

Shaking his head, Dan asked, “Do you think he’d just let us run off and-”

He stopped. The thoughts racing through his mind coalesced into one terrible, overwhelming realization.

“What is it?” Lucita asked.

He stared at her, speechless, numb.

“Dan, what is wrong? What? …”

He understood everything now, and the cold numbness that had made him feel so weary, so hopeless, was boiled away in an instant by a rage so intense that his hands clenched into fists and he could feel his heart thundering.

“You’re doing it for them!” Dan said, his voice shaking with fury. “You’re trying to get me out of the way, out of Caracas, away from Astro.”

“What are you saying?”

“While I’m joyriding with you around the world, they’ll be taking over Nueva Venezuela, Astro, all the Third World facilities. While I’m busy giving all my attention to you.”

“No… .”

Dan gripped his thighs as hard as he could, forcing his hands to stay away from her. “A lovely little Delilah: that’s what you are. Lead me off around the world while Malik and your father wipe out everything I’ve worked to create.”

“Dan, no, that is not what I-”

He sprang to his feet, banging against the coffee table and knocking over the half-empty bottle of whiskey.

“And what did they promise you?” he demanded. “Money? The undying gratitude of the Politburo? A good seat at the Moscow Ballet every year? Would Malik still marry you after you’d done your work on me?”

“You’re insane!” Lucita snapped. “How could you think that I would do such a thing?”

“And what happens while we’re jaunting around the world? Do I get bitten by a cobra at the Taj Mahal? Or do I have a skiing accident on the Southern Alps?”

Lucita burst into tears. “I swear … Dan, you are wrong … nothing …”

“No, of course not. I’m imagining the whole thing. You just suddenly decided that you’re madly in love with me and if I’ll just stop fighting against the Russians and run away with you, you’ll be mine forever and ever. Bullshit!”

She got up from the sofa like a prizefighter lifting himself from the canvas after being knocked down. Sobbing, she ran across the dimly lit living room, toward the front door. The robot butler, sensing a human body in motion, rolled after her.

“May I show you to the door?” it asked.

But Lucita was already there, and through, before the robot could open the door for her.

“Good evening,” it said politely.

As the robot gently shut the door, Dan stood silent and immobile. And alone.

The first snowfall of the year. Vasily Malik looked past the stern-faced men sitting across the table from him and out to the long windows and the pewter-gray clouds that pressed down against the spires and domes of the Kremlin.

His soul felt just as dreary as the wintry scene outside. It was barely October, the parades celebrating the beginning of the Revolution and the anniversary of the first Sputnik had hardly cleared Red Square. And it was already snowing. Thick, wet flakes drifted down, as inexorable as the rotation of the world on its axis, as remorseless as the comrades who sat arrayed around this heavy, dark conference table, their displeasure focused entirely upon him.

He thought of Caracas, how sunny and warm it would be, even in October. Even in December. But that was merely geography, climate. There was no human warmth in Caracas, not for him. He and Lucita were to be married in little more than two months, yet she was as cold and distant as the farthest planet. As far as she was concerned, Malik knew, it would be a political marriage, nothing more. But I will make it more than that, he thought. She won’t be frigid with me; I’ll thaw her, even if it takes force.

The ornately carved door at the far end of the conference room swung open, and the Premier shuffled in. How ironic, Malik thought, that the youngest man in three decades to lead the government and the Party should suffer a stroke. It almost makes one believe in God, or at least in fate. But the Premier clung to his power like a shipwrecked sailor clutching a scrap of flotsam. All the ministers got to their feet as the Premier entered, dragging his left foot slightly as he came to his chair at the head of the table. A uniformed guard held the chair for him. He sat, and placed his paralyzed left hand in his lap. Once seated and comfortably arranged, he looked almost normal. The stroke had left scant traces on his face, and his speech had not been impaired. The outside world saw him only thus, either already seated or atop the reviewing stand at Red Square, so far distant from the crowds and photographers that not even his limp could be noticed.

“This emergency meeting of the Council of Ministers will come to order,” said the Premier. His voice had always been soft, almost dulcet. His face, gaunt and lined just after the stroke, had filled out almost to its former healthy condition. The pallor on his cheeks was hidden by makeup, when necessary.

The ministers sat. Malik was easily the youngest among them, flanked on either side by men of his father’s generation. And the ministers across the table from him were even older; especially Marshal Titov, who looked already embalmed, like an Egyptian mummy in a soldier’s uniform. Malik wondered how the old warrior found the strength to stand up, especially under the load of medals he always wore. Even among the aides sitting behind the various ministers and secretaries, hardly any were younger than Malik.

The Premier nodded to the council secretary, sitting at his right.

“There is only one subject on the agenda,” said the secretary. He was a chubby, balding, pink-faced pig of a man, Malik thought, with tiny beady eyes almost hidden in his bloated face. When Malik had been on the rise, the secretary had been his friend and ally. But the past few weeks he had shown his true colors.

“The depredations caused by these so-called pirates,” said the Premier.

Every eye around the table turned to focus on Malik.

He smiled sardonically. “With all respect, Comrade Chairman, they are not merely so-called pirates: what is happening is piracy, pure and simple.”

“And it must be stopped,” growled old Marshal Titov.

The Foreign Minister, who sat at the Premier’s left hand and fancied himself next in line for the top position, held up his hands placatingly.

“The position we find ourselves in is neither pure nor simple,” he said to the Premier, speaking so low that the others had to strain to hear him. “Officially, the Organization of Latin American States, led by the government of Venezuela, has taken the position in the World Court that the Soviet Union has illegally seized the cargo of one of their spacecraft-the one that was carrying samples of rock from an asteroid. …”

“Where is that asteroid now?” the Premier asked, proving that his mind was still quick. “Has it entered a fixed orbit around the Earth?”

“Not yet, Comrade Chairman, but it will,” Malik replied. “Our astronomers have confirmed that it will orbit at the same distance as the Moon itself, nearly four hundred thousand kilometers away.”

“Then there is no danger of it falling on Earth?”

“Not unless someone pushes it out of orbit.”

The Premier nodded, somewhat stiffly, and turned back to the Foreign Minister.

He cleared his throat and resumed, “Our legal position is somewhat …” He groped for a word. “Somewhat contradictory. On the one hand, we maintain that we had the right