“You bet.”
Diane looked out the window and up at the sky, and said softly, “Thank you, Richard.”
Kelly glanced at Diane, shook her head, and said nothing.
Richard, I know you can hear me, darling. We’re going to finish what you started. We’re going to avenge you and your friends. It won’t bring you back, but it will help a little. Do you know what I miss most about you, my love? Everything.
WHEN THE PLANE landed at La Guardia airport three and a half hours later, Diane and Kelly were the first passengers to disembark. Diane remembered Senator Van Luven’s words: When you get to the airport, a gray Lincoln Town Car will be waiting for you.
The car was waiting at the terminal entrance. Standing next to it was an elderly Japanese man in a chauffeur’s uniform. He stood up straight as Kelly and Diane approached him.
“Mrs. Stevens? Mrs. Harris?”
“Yes.”
“I’m Kunio.” He opened the door of the car and they stepped in.
Moments later, they were on their way to Southampton.
“It is a two-hour drive,” Kunio said. “The scenery is very beautiful.”
The last thing they were interested in was scenery. Both were busily thinking about the quickest way to explain to the senator what had happened.
Kelly said to Diane, “Do you think the senator will be in danger when we tell her what we know?”
“I’m sure she’ll have protection. She’ll know how to handle this.”
“I hope so.”
After almost two hours the Town Car finally drove up to a large limestone mansion with a slate roof and tall, slender chimneys, in the style of eighteenth-century England. There were extensive, manicured grounds, and they could see a separate house for the servant quarters and garage.
As the car stopped at the front door, Kunio said, “I will be waiting for you, if you need me.”
“Thank you.”
The door was opened by a butler. “Good morning. Come in, please. The senator is expecting you.”
The two women entered. The living room was elegant yet casual, furnished with an eclectic assortment of antiques and comfortable-looking couches and chairs. On the wall, above a large fireplace with a baroque mantel, were mirrored candle sconces.
The butler said, “This way, please.”
Kelly and Diane followed the butler into a large drawing room.
Senator Van Luven was waiting for them. She was wearing a light blue silk suit and blouse, and her hair was hanging loosely. She was more feminine-looking than Diane had expected.
“I’m Pauline Van Luven.”
“Diane Stevens.”
“Kelly Harris.”
“I’m glad to see you both. It’s taken much too long.”
Kelly looked at Senator Van Luven, puzzled. “I’m sorry?”
Tanner Kingsley’s voice behind them said, “She means you have been very lucky, but your luck has just run out.”
Diane and Kelly turned. Tanner Kingsley and Harry Flint had come into the room.
Tanner said, “Now, Mr. Flint.”
Harry Flint raised a pistol. Without a word, he aimed at the women and fired twice. Pauline Van Luven and Tanner Kingsley watched as Kelly’s and Diane’s bodies tumbled backward and fell to the floor.
Tanner walked over to Senator Van Luven and hugged her. “It’s finally over, Princess.”
Chapter 42
FLINT ASKED, “WHAT do you want me to do with the bodies?”
Tanner did not hesitate. “Tie some weights around their ankles, have them flown out about two hundred miles, and drop them into the Atlantic.”
“No problem.” Flint left the room.
Tanner turned to Senator Van Luven. “That ends it, Princess. We can be on our way.”
She moved up to him and kissed him. “I’ve missed you so much, baby.”
“I’ve missed you, too.”
“Those monthly rendezvous were frustrating because I knew you had to leave.”
Tanner held her close. “From now on, we’re together. We’ll wait a respectable three or four months as an homage to your dear departed husband and then we’ll get married.”
She smiled and said, “Let’s make it a month.”
He nodded. “Sounds good.”
“I resigned from the Senate yesterday. They were very understanding about my grief over my husband’s death.”
“Wonderful. Now we can be seen together freely. I want you to see something at KIG that I couldn’t show you before.”
TANNER AND PAULINE had reached the redbrick building. Tanner walked up to the solid steel door. There was a recess in the center of it. He was wearing a heavy cameo ring with the face of a Greek warrior on it.
Pauline watched as Tanner pressed the ring hard into the recess, and the door began to open. The room was enormous, filled with huge computers and television screens. At a far wall were generators and electronics, all linked together with a control panel in the center.
Tanner said, “Princess, meet Prima. This is ground zero. What you and I have here is something that’s going to change lives forever. This room is the command center of a satellite system that can control the weather in any area of the world. We can cause storms anywhere. We can create famines by stopping rain. We can fog in airports. We can manufacture hurricanes and cyclones that would stop the world’s economy.” He smiled. “I’ve already demonstrated some of our power. A lot of countries have been working on weather control, but none of them has solved it yet.”
Tanner pressed a button, and a large television screen lit up. “What you’re seeing here is a technical advance that the army wishes it had.” He turned to Pauline and smiled. “The only wild card that prevented Prima from giving me perfect control was the greenhouse effect, and you took care of that beautifully.” He sighed. “Do you know who created this project? Andrew. He really was a genius.”
Pauline was staring at the massive equipment. “I don’t understand how this can control the weather.”
“Well, the simple version is that warm air rises toward colder air, and if there is moisture in—”
“Don’t patronize me, darling.”
“Sorry, but the longer version is a bit complicated,” Tanner said.
“I’m listening.”
“It’s a little technical, so bear with me. Microwave lasers, created with the nano-technology my brother produced, when fired into Earth’s atmosphere, make free-forming oxygen that bonds with hydrogen, thus producing ozone and water. Free oxygen in the atmosphere pairs up—that’s why it’s called O2—and my brother discovered that firing that laser from space into the atmosphere made the oxygen bond with two hydrogen atoms into ozone—O3, and water—H2O.”
“I still don’t understand how that would—”
“The weather is driven by water. Andrew found in larger-scale tests that so much water was created as a by-product of his experiments that winds shifted. More lasers, more wind. Control the water and the wind, and you control all weather.”
He was thoughtful for a moment. “When I found out that Akira Iso in Tokyo, and later, Madeleine Smith in Zurich, were close to solving the problem, I offered them jobs here, so I could control them. But they turned me down. I couldn’t afford to let them finish what they were working on.” He sighed. “I told you that I had four of my top meteorologists working on the project with me.”
“Yes.”
“They were good, too. Franz Verbrugge in Berlin, Mark Harris in Paris, Gary Reynolds in Vancouver, and Richard Stevens in New York. I had each of them trying to solve a different facet of weather control, and I thought that because they were working in different countries, they would never put the pieces together and find out what the ultimate purpose of the project was. But somehow they did. They came to see me in Vienna, to ask me what plans I had for Prima. I told them I was going to give it to our government. I didn’t think they would pursue the matter any further, but just to be safe, I set a trap. When they were sitting in the reception room, I put in a call to your Senate office, making sure they could hear me denying to you that I had ever heard of Prima. The next morning, they began calling you for appointments. That’s when I knew they had to be disposed of.” Tanner smiled. “Let me show you what we have here.”
On a computer screen, a map of the world appeared, dotted with lines and symbols. As Tanner spoke, he moved a switch, and the focus of the map kept shifting until it highlighted Portugal.
Tanner said, “The agricultural valleys in Portugal are supplied by rivers that flow to the Atlantic from Spain. Just imagine what would happen to Portugal if it continued to rain until the agricultural valley was drowned out.”
Tanner pressed a button, and on a huge screen appeared a picture of a massive pink palace with ceremonial guards standing watch while its lush, beautiful gardens glimmered in the bright sunlight.
“That’s the presidential palace.”
The picture switched to a dining room inside, where a family was having breakfast.