Forte drank his coffee and said nothing.
“Admit it,” she persisted. “He’s not one year old yet. He needs a mother.”
“You said that. And as a matter of fact, I agree.”
“You do?” For the first time a hint of a smile illuminated her eyes.
“That’s right. I plan to get a mother for him. That should take care of your objections.”
Jennifer Red Cloud was speechless. She had stupidly walked into another of Ripley Forte’s nasty little traps. She had cut the ground out from under herself. Now she’d have to retreat to the narrow legalistic ledge she had impetuously abandoned. She’d look foolish, but she’d be safe. “I won’t give him up.”
“I’m not asking you to, you idiot,” Forte said with some exasperation. “Don’t you know a proposal when you hear one? I’m asking you to marry me. You’re a businesswoman, and it’s good business-you get two Fortes for the price of one. You also get two guys who love you more than- than-”
“More than you can say?” said Jennifer Red Cloud. Her expression suddenly softened. Her hand reached out tremulously to caress the edge of his jaw.
“Yes.”
“Well, dammit, if you can’t say how much, you inarticulate ape,” she whispered, “maybe you can show me.:..”
35. SPIROCHAETUM ENCAUSTUM
18 NOVEMBER 2009
He was back in Nicaragua, leading his marine recon platoon through the steamy, matted jungle, when the point man raised his rifle to his shoulder, muzzle pointed in the direction of march, indicating that he had sighted the enemy ahead. Forte sent out flankers, motioned his men to disperse and take cover, and in a crouching run slithered through the underbrush to the side of the point man. Putting binoculars to his eyes, he could discern cami-clad Sandinistas fanning out ahead of them in an enveloping movement, at least a company on either side. Were the Nicaraguan troops guessing that the Marines were ahead, or had they been spotted?
Through a gap in the overhead cover he found his answer: high above them circled an OK-77 reconnaissance aircraft. The foliage was too dense for visual observation, but he knew that his men’s body heat could easily be detected by the spotter aircraft’s infrared sensors. The only course to follow now was to get out- fast. Facing back along the trail, he raised his arm over his head and dropped it to the horizontal, indicating advance to the rear-Marines never retreat. Then he pumped his arm up and down twice to signal “double time,” and was following his point man at an easy lope when the first mortar shell went off with a tremendous roar. A moment later he was caught in a veritable rain of deafening explosions… and an insistent banging at the door awakened Ripley Forte from feverish sleep.
He rolled over on his back and looked at the glowing hands of his watch. One-forty-five a.m. The knocking continued.
“Bug off!” Forte shouted, but the thuds on the door only redoubled.
Forte examined the sleeping form next to him and sighed. It would take the thunder of Armageddon to rouse Jennifer Red Cloud from her sex-saturated stupor. He leaned over and kissed her on the small of the back. She stirred and moaned softly. “Don’t go away,” he said, reaching for his trousers.
Outside an agitated Yussef Mansour awaited him. That made it important: Mansour was the kind of man whose pulse rate would rise about two beats per minute by being thrown in a pit of horned vipers.
“The president is dead,” Mansour said without preamble.
“When-how?”
“The doctors believe it was about six hours ago, one-thirty Houston time. His aide went in with a wake-up call, and-”
“The cause?”
“Heart failure.”
Forte’s eyes narrowed. “I know thirty ways to induce a heart attack, and half of them can’t be detected by the best pathologists.”
“No arguments. He died a couple of hours after dinner. And guess who he dined with?”
Forte shook his head.
“Premier Evgeniy Luchenko… and Deputy Premier Anatoliy Badalovich… and Vice-President David D. Castle…”
“And?”
“That’s the complete list,” said the diminutive Lebanese, who as usual, despite the lateness of the hour, was attired in impeccable Savile Row suiting, as if he were about to take an evening stroll along the Champs Elysees instead of down the dimly lit corridor of the South African submarine Natal, preceding Ripley Forte to the deserted wardroom for a council of war.
“That means big trouble,” said Mansour, accepting a cup of oolong tea from Godolphin, his gentleman’s gentleman, who poured Forte a cup of coffee and silently disappeared. “With the KGB chasing you, you were so hot that it took total immersion in the Pacific Ocean at five hundred fathoms to cool you off. But when President Castle sics the FBI, the CIA, and the Boy Scouts of America on you, as well, there won’t be anywhere to hide.”
“They don’t cut any ice in Texas,” Forte reminded him.
“True,” admitted Mansour. “You’ll be safe there-for a while. But once the word gets out in Washington and Kiev that you’re there, things will heat up. Castle will discover reasons why you must be apprehended and brought to justice, and the Russians who give him his orders will back him to the hilt. Economic pressure and the threat of military measures will force President Traynor to hand you over to the wolves.”
Forte pursed his lips. “When we brainstormed this exchange-of-hostages scenario, how long did we give the central governments to hang on, before local control made them superfluous?”
“Six, maybe eight months. If you’re thinking we can stay down in this submarine until that happens, though, forget it. I happened to be discussing the matter with the captain only yesterday. The sub can cruise for two more years without nuclear fuel rod replacement, but provisions aboard, especially oxygen and carbon-dioxide scrubbing chemicals, will last for only another forty to fifty days….”
The two men kicked the problem around until the sun rose from the empty sea above them, and then went to see the captain, who had been instructed by the South African navy’s chief of staff to assist Mr. Mansour, the nation’s largest businessman and defense industrialist, in any way possible. Ten minutes later the Natal was headed southeast at flank speed for Cape Horn, en route to Galveston, Texas.
In the darkest hours of 29 November, the undersea craft cruised at ten knots the final hundred kilometers from deep water in the Gulf of Mexico, up the submarine trench that Forte Ocean Industries had scooped out of the shallow bottom to accommodate the giant icebergs towed to Texas from the Antarctic, and into Matagorda Bay. At 0330 Forte and Jennifer Red Cloud, now Mrs. Ripley Forte after a marriage ceremony performed by the Natal’s captain, disembarked from the submarine, along with Joe Mansour, in a FOI helicopter. Half an hour later they were descending the elevator shaft to the Houston-Kiev subway terminus at SD-2.
The underground city was considerably larger than when Forte had last been there. More than 18,000 men had been involved in the construction of the underground railway, and their numbers, in addition to mountains of materials that had been brought down a new supply shaft, required not only sizable housing and recreational spaces but extensive electrical generation, transportation, security-no man would be allowed to leave until the tunnel was completed-water and food supply, and warehouse space.
After a vertiginous but controlled drop of more than half a mile, the elevator braked to a stop, and the steel doors whooshed open. Mark Medina stood there, beaming.
“God-you’re a sight for sore eyes,” said the white-haired hidalgo, clutching Forte in a rib-cracking embrace.
“Wrong identity, but right sentiment-which I fully reciprocate.” Forte smiled, peeling himself loose. “Shake hands with our new partner, Mrs. Forte,” he said, stepping aside for Jennifer, who was clad in a tight-fitting orange flight suit.
“Shake hands, hell!” said Medina, grabbing her and squashing his white handlebar moustache flat on her face.
Jennifer sighed in mock chagrin. “‘Marry in haste, repent at leisure,'” she quoted. “I knew I should have waited!”
“Well, you’re going to wait a long time for the next kiss from this old goat,” Forte said severely. “If I ever see him nosing around, I’ll file for divorce, and make him put his money where his mouth was.”
“Married a week, and jealous already,” Jennifer said airily. “I thought you were the modern, understanding type. But it seems you’re the typical male-chauvinist spoilsport, after all.”
“Right on the button,” replied Forte. “However, the sport I intend to spoil is your erstwhile fiance, David D. Castle.”
“With a little help from the staff, of course,” qualified Medina. “Right this way.” And he shepherded his flock of three toward the conference room.
With words and pictures, he and his staff gave the Fortes and Joe Mansour an up-to-date situation report. The project, as outlined in a coded radio message sent by Forte from the submarine nearly two weeks before, was not only on track, but slightly ahead of schedule.