Saucer (27 page)

He was listening to man-in-the-street interviews on CNN when his chief of staff, O’Reilly, came in.

“Roger Hedrick has four groups bidding on the saucer, Mr. President. China, Russia, and Japan arrived yesterday. A group from Europe arrived at Hedrick’s station about ten hours ago. The senior negotiator is Nicholas Pieraut, a senior executive at Airbus. He telephoned the French government two hours ago and reported that he had had a saucer ride. He was very enthusiastic.”

“I thought State said the Europeans wouldn’t bid on the saucer?”

“That’s what their governments told our ambassadors.”

The president turned off the televisions with the buttons on his desk and leaned back in his chair.

“Were they lying, or did they change their minds?”

“They were lying.”

“And we can’t tell them we know they were lying?”

“If we tell them…”

The president waved O’Reilly into silence. The National Security Agency was light-years ahead of the rest of the world in decoding encrypted electronic transmissions; it had been eavesdropping on foreign governments’ conversations for years. Of course, to reveal knowledge gained in this manner would be to compromise the entire decoding operation.

“This mess keeps getting worse,” the president said. He put the palms of his hands over his eyes while he thought. After a bit he removed his hands and regarded O’Reilly with a morose stare. “It will be bad if the Russians or Chinese get the thing, worse if Japan takes it home, but the Europeans would be a disaster. They have the capital and infrastructure to take immediate advantage of the technology.”

O’Reilly looked as wrung out as the president. “I had lunch with the chairman of the Federal Reserve. He said that the saucer’s technology could make Europe the world’s dominant economy.”

“Any chance the Europeans might pay too much?”

“How much is too much? If you expect the technology in the saucer to grow your gross domestic product by five percent a year for the next ten years, how much could you pay Hedrick? Ten percent of that increase? Twenty? Thirty? True, the stimulus might be less than five percent of GDP, but I’ll bet it’ll be more. Perhaps a lot more.”

“And the Australian government?”

“They deny that the saucer is in the country.”

• • •

Rip Cantrell concentrated on staying on his side of the road as he piloted the delivery van out of Bathurst at ten o’clock in the morning and headed west for Hedrick’s station. He was wearing the delivery driver’s shirt and cap. He had left the man in a bar, determined to drink up the Australian equivalent of a thousand American dollars. Rip had solemnly promised to bring the van back that evening. The promise was a sop to the driver’s conscience. He didn’t even ask Rip why he wanted the van. The display of cash had been enough to seal the deal.

So here he was, wearing his new jacket against the morning chill, wearing a shirt that said ‘Fred’ above the left breast pocket and a cap with the market’s name above the bill, driving this old van full of food.

He hummed as he drove, trying to keep his mind off his fluttering stomach. Maybe food would help. After all, two hours had passed since breakfast. Well, why not?

He pulled over and rummaged through the load until he found a box of doughnuts. With the box open beside him and a doughnut in his mouth, he got the van back on the road and rolling westward.

So far so good, he told himself. He was going into Hedrick’s home camp… unarmed. With no plan. To find a woman and steal a saucer.

Chance of success? Damn near zero. But what else could he do?

He didn’t have a gun, wouldn’t shoot anyone if he had one, didn’t know if Charley was there, didn’t know if the saucer was still there—though it probably was since he had seen it airborne yesterday—didn’t know how many guys Hedrick had around him.

He ate another doughnut.

All too soon he came to the long straight stretch. The gate was three or four miles down there on the left. He slowed down, flexed his hands and arms, sped back up.

Well, all he could do was his best. Pray for a little luck.

He brushed the crumbs off his lap and set the cap on his head just the way he liked it, then began slowing for the turn.

Three guys in the guard shack by the gate pole, which was down. He pulled up at the shack and stopped.

One of them came out, looked him over. “Have I seen you before, mate?” he asked.

Rip just shook his head no.

“New man, eh?”

Rip nodded, then said, “Uh-huh.”

“Righto. In you go.” The guard pushed down on the weight on the butt end of the gate pole, and the pole rose.

Rip slipped the clutch and got the van moving. Then he took off the cap and wiped the perspiration from his forehead.

The gravel road ran straight as a bullet for about a mile before it left the flat creek bottom, then it wound over rolling terrain for another two miles. The main station complex sat on a small hill surrounded by a grove of trees. Scattered around the complex were large trucks. Around the trucks were men in uniforms, soldiers. Yes, soldiers in uniforms with weapons. Near one of the trucks he spotted a bunker with a machine gun poking out of the firing slit.

Hedrick didn’t have a private army—he had the Australian army! Rip wondered whom you had to know and how much you had to pay to get the army to guard your house. Guard it? Heck, they had fortified it. Who did they think was going to attack?

He saw the parked airliners and the hangar, of course, and figured the saucer was in the hangar, but he couldn’t just drive down there and walk in. Not past all these troops. He kept going, past the horse barn and main garage toward the main house.

The kitchen, he thought, would be around in back. He drove slowly around the house. Sure enough, there was a loading dock on the back of the building. He backed up to it and killed the engine.

He went through the door, saw a man wearing an apron and chef’s hat. “Food delivery,” Rip said and jerked his thumb in the direction of the truck.

“Cold storage?”

“Most of it.”

“Stow it in the meat locker.” Then the cook hustled off.

The locker was easy enough to find. Rip opened up the van and got busy. He was done in fifteen minutes.

With the bill of lading on a clipboard, he walked through the kitchen. Only two people there, one scrubbing big pots and the other making a cake, a cake shaped like the saucer!

Rip walked on through the swinging door out into the dining area. A maid was arranging place settings. Rip continued into the main hall. He took off the cap, stuffed it into his hip pocket.

He heard voices in one of the rooms and put his ear to the door. Japanese or Chinese, he couldn’t tell. He walked on.

He came to the main entrance. Looking across the porch he could see the hangar. It was several hundred feet away down a gentle grade. Three soldiers were idling by the personnel door on this side of the structure.

Tomorrow. He would come back tomorrow with the delivery driver and bring a set of civilian clothes. While the driver was off-loading the order, he could hide, and after dark, when the coast was clear, he could search for Charley. If he could just find her…

“What are you doing in this part of the house?”

He turned, found himself facing a formidable matron in a maid’s uniform.

Silently he extended the clipboard and a pen.

She glanced at it. “Cook will sign that. Now scat. Back to the kitchen with you, like a good lad.”

He marched, with the housekeeper right behind. As she came through the door behind him, she shouted, “Cook!”

The man with the chef’s hat popped out of an alcove off the kitchen, his office apparently.

“This jackeroo was wandering about the main house. This is your tradesman, Cook.”

“Right, Miss Padgett.”

“Sign the bill and shove him off.” Cook signed. “See you tomorrow, laddie.” With a last glance at the cake, Rip went back to the van. He closed the rear door, started the engine, and drove slowly down the driveway, all the while looking around for any clues as to where Charley might be.

Just before he rounded the corner of the horse barn, he caught a glimpse of her, hair in a ponytail, wearing her flight jacket and flight suit, walking between two men toward the hangar. Charley Pine!

He kept the speed down, took his time, drove slowly by the army guys. He looked back over his shoulder one last time… and saw a tank parked under a tree.

• • •

The soldiers were a surprise for Charley Pine. She had seen only a few armed men prior to last night, perhaps a dozen total, and now this morning they were everywhere, at least a hundred. She too saw a tank sitting under a tree. Another was snuggled down in the midst of a pile of hay bales; all that stuck out was the turret and gun barrel.

As she neared the hangar she could see that troops were digging foxholes at the foot of the slope that led down from the house.

Three soldiers were standing in front of the hangar personnel door, all carrying assault rifles on slings over their shoulders. One of them opened the door for Charley and her escorts, a Japanese engineer and the ubiquitous Rigby. The swelling in Rigby’s face had gone down somewhat, but the yellow and purple splotches were still stunning.

The engineer had his camera bag with him. He wanted more digital pictures of the engineering spaces, which he could then fax via satellite telephone to the big muckety-mucks in Japan. Hedrick detailed Charley to accompany him, escorted of course, which went without saying. Everywhere she went, there was Rigby, with his taped nose and magnificent bruised face. He didn’t look directly at her even when she faced him. Perhaps Rigby sensed that looking into her eyes would be more annoyance than his constitution could stand. It was a fact she noted and filed away.

The saucer sitting in the middle of the empty hangar took her breath away again. It looked as spectacular as it did the first time she saw it, that night in the Sahara by flashlight. Smooth, sleek, dark, and ominous, with complex curves. The sight of the thing made her pause. The Japanese engineer paused too, stood momentarily taking it in, then he walked toward it.

She opened the hatch in the saucer’s belly, stood aside while the engineer climbed up. She followed. Rigby could fend for himself. He entered right behind her, of course, and climbed into the pilot’s seat. His logic was unassailable: Charley Pine wasn’t going anywhere with him in the pilot’s seat. She reached for the reactor knob and pulled it to the first detent, about an eighth of an inch. The saucer’s interior lights came on.

Charley and the engineer got down on their hands and knees and crawled into the engineer bay. The light panels were quite adequate.

The engineer wanted her to help with the tape measure, to hold it against the piece of equipment being photographed while he snapped pictures.

While he was photographing the hydrogen separator and accumulator tank, the thought occurred to Charley that the best place on the ship for a bomb was probably behind the accumulator, against the bulkhead where no one could see it.

She waited until the engineer had snapped his photos and turned his back momentarily to root in his camera bag. She reached behind the accumulator. And touched something attached to the side of the tank. Something with a thin wire dangling from it.

Hell’s bells! That asshole Hedrick did put a bomb in here!

She tugged at the thing. It took a serious pull to overcome the attraction of the magnets, but the bomb came loose in her hand. She lowered it to the deck, shielded it with her body from the engineer’s sight.

It was wrapped in tape, plastique explosive with a hard cap, about four inches by two by two, from which a foot-long naked wire dangled. Antenna. A radio-controlled bomb.

Charley left it there. The engineer was facing this way again. She took off her flight jacket and tossed it over the bomb.

The photographs took another fifteen minutes or so. The engineer was packing the camera equipment when he inadvertently knocked his bag over. He began apologizing and making tiny bows as he picked stuff up and restowed it.

Charley took the opportunity to pick up the jacket and bomb. She slid the bomb into an inside pocket of the jacket, folded the jacket so it wouldn’t show.

The engineer got all his things collected finally, and after three or four more small bows, crawled from the bay ahead of her.

Charley was right behind him. As the engineer’s rump filled the entrance to the bay, she reached behind the reactor and retrieved the bomb he had just placed there. It too went into her jacket.

Ten minutes later, in a ladies’ room of the main house, Charley examined her trophies. Both were radio controlled, both had magnets to hold them to metal surfaces. She picked up the first bomb, the one she had found behind the hydrogen accumulator tank. Who put this one there? Hedrick, the Chinese, the Russians?

Maybe Hedrick’s bomb was still on the saucer.

• • •

The actual auction began after lunch in Hedrick’s library on the ground floor of the house. The room was large, twenty feet by thirty, with a desk for Hedrick and smaller desks scattered about the room for the bidding groups. In the corner near where Charley Pine sat was a large, black safe, a huge thing, which bore the markings of the Brisbane, Sydney and Adelaide Railroad Company, the B, S & A.

Charley settled in to watch with her flight jacket on her lap.

At lunch Hedrick invited her to the table where he and Bernice sat. “When the auction is complete, I wish to hire you to fly the saucer to where the new owner wishes it to go. I will pay you for your time as we agreed and give you enough additional money to pay for airfare back to America. I will also ask that the new owner pay you ten thousand dollars for flying the saucer for them.”

“You keep saying you’ll pay me, but I haven’t seen any money.”

Hedrick reached into his pocket and removed a stack of hundreds. He tossed it in front of her. “There’s ten thousand American there. I’ll pay you the rest when we figure the airfare.”

She tapped her finger on the bundle. “What if I take this, then swear out a kidnapping warrant when I get back to the States?”