Peacemaker. Gordon Kent

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      Han looked up at him and they stared at each other. Han dropped the pen. “Come on, I’ll show you around.”

      They started at the top floor of the three-story building, where there was a suite of offices and meeting rooms that would have suited one of the new high-tech, high-risk companies. Suter thought that there was something vaguely pushy about the place, a bit too much of a good thing. “We entertain up here,” Han said. Our friends in Congress, he meant. At least that was the way Suter had heard it from Shreed.

      The next floor down was a work floor, endless cubicles, an outer ring of small offices, some sort of atrium that looked down at the security desk and the lobby and up at the rain that was falling on a glass dome. In the back was a big, windowed cafeteria where people were already sitting drinking coffee. Again, there was the feeling of a start-up, lots of very young people, jeans and T-shirts, few neckties. “We hire them for their brains,” Han said. No explanation.

      There were three floors below the surface. Each had its own security check and a security lock where, for a few seconds, they were held between closed gates. “If you’re claustrophobic, you’re not for us,” Han said. He held up a card to a television camera while they waited inside the lock, and a voice said, “Now the other gentleman, please.” Han moved Suter forward with pressure on his arm, and Suter turned his face up to be seen and then held up the temporary pass he’d been given. “Thank you,” the voice said. Suter couldn’t tell whether it was a human voice or a computer.

      Down there, attempts had been made to disguise the fact that it was underground, but you couldn’t make windows where the outdoors was solid earth. It was bright and colorful, but at the end of a day a lot of people would breathe fresh air with real hunger. The spaces, as if to try to compensate, were larger, the cubicles fewer. The people were older, more male than female; Suter thought he recognized the look of ex-military. Uniforms, he knew, were not allowed.

      The second below-ground level had at least two laboratories and a model-making shop. Han made this part of the tour pretty perfunctory, as if these were nuts-and-bolts places, not where the real work went on. Then they got in the elevator and started down to S3.

      “So,” Han said. “What do you think?”

      “Where’s Peacemaker?” Suter said. “It’s the reason I’m here.”

      They got out of the elevator and went through the security check and into the lock. When they stepped out of the lock, Han said, “I think I’ll take you right to the general and let him explain Peacemaker to you.”

      Suter asked a couple of questions as they walked along the central corridor, but Han didn’t answer. He didn’t like pushy questions, was what he was saying.

      A few women could be seen down here. Suter eyed them, looking for a hit. He had been married, now was not. In fact, it was the end of the marriage that had freed him to leave the Navy—no, actually, freed him to let loose the ambition he had been holding in check. She had never liked the ambitious Suter. She made me a different person. Limited me. With her, I was just another nice shmuck. It never occurred to him to wonder what she had thought about it, or if she had been another person in the marriage, too. He was simply terribly glad to be rid of her. Except for the sex, so he was now looking around.

      “The general” was Brigadier Robert F. Touhey, USAF, a small, round man about fifteen pounds over a healthy weight, with shrewd blue eyes, a sidewall haircut, and just a touch of the Carolinas in his voice. He was wearing a white, short-sleeved shirt and a blue tie, as if it was summer; when he stood up, he was several inches shorter than Suter, but he had a handshake like a Denver boot. They made polite sounds, and Touhey let go of Suter’s hand, and Han muttered something that caused Touhey to give him the briefest of cold looks before he said, “Sure, okay, you take off, Jackie.” Then he motioned Suter to a chair.

      Suter sat, opening his coat. The room was hot. Touhey plopped back into his desk chair and said, “What’d you do to old Jackie? He don’t like you.”

      “No idea. What makes you think he doesn’t like me?”

      “I can tell.” Suter leaned back. Touhey’s face was made for smiling, and, even in repose, it seemed to have the beginnings of a smile. Touhey seemed to be smiling at Suter now—but was he? “So,” Touhey said. “How’s my old buddy George Shreed?”

      Suter nodded, smiled. “He sends his regards.”

      “Regards!” Touhey laughed. “What’d George tell you about me?”

      “He said you were the best empire-builder in the American military.”

      Touhey guffawed. “And you better believe it! Alla this—” Touhey waved a hand that included the office, the building, the idea “—is my empire. I grabbed it; I rule it; and I’m gonna go on ruling it. Administrations come and go; Touhey endures. How’d you connect up with Shreed?”

      “He got in touch with me.”

      “What about?”

      “Somebody who was going to serve under me.”

      “Good or bad? Come on, George don’t dick around; what’d he want?”

      “He wanted to warn me.” In fact, George Shreed of the CIA had wanted to tell him that Alan Craik was a thorough-going shit, and Suter should be careful. Shreed really hated Craik. “We had lunch, hit it off.”

      “He recruited you?”

      “I guess.”

      “Don’t guess, okay? I don’t like vague shit. I’m a scientist and a politician, call me a scientific politician. Vagueness is for people got time to dick around. I don’t. George recruit you?”

      “Yes.”

      “Right there, one lunch? Man, you came cheap. So, what—he pulled strings, got you outa the Navy quick-time? Musta wanted you. If George Shreed wanted you, I better watch my ass.” Touhey smiled.

      “He was moving up to a new responsibility. He wanted to reorganize.”

      “Right. ‘No contingent trails.’ Okay. He sent over a file on you; you look okay. The impression I get is, you’re the kinda man can always go into the woods and find a honey tree—am I right about that? I think I am. Divorced. No kids. You a loner, Suter?”

      “Maybe. I never thought of it that way.”

      “‘He travels the fastest who travels alone.’ Kipling. Okay. Whatta you know about Peacemaker?”

      Suter was sweating. Could he take off the suitcoat? He wasn’t quite sure how to handle this highly intelligent redneck. He decided to wear it and sweat. “I know it’s just coming out of the closet. That it’s a low-earth-orbit satellite system. That it’s part of an intelligence-communications effort. That it’s controversial. That it rang Colonel Han’s bells when I mentioned it before he did.”

      “Go on.”

      Suter shifted his weight and a rivulet of wet trickled down his right side. “Shreed told me it’s a weapon.”

      “Ri-i-ight! By which you mean, it’s a weapon in this room, but you say it anyplace else and it’s deny, deny, deny. Old George СКАЧАТЬ