6. CHRISTMAS PRESENT
25 DECEMBER 2008
“Vice-President Castle is here, Miss Red Cloud,” said her secretary to the chairman of Raynes Oceanic Resources, who was staring out across a foggy San Francisco Bay.
Jennifer Red Cloud swung around in her chair and hurriedly moved up to the shelter of the vast teak surface of her desk. “Show him in.”
“Hello, David,” she said dully when the door reopened thirty seconds later. “You didn’t give me much notice.”
“Sorry, my dear,” said Castle, “but this matter came up suddenly, and if I can’t call upon my most beloved friend on short notice, what the hell’s the use of being Vice-President of the United States?” He leaned across the desk to kiss her. But instead of her full red lips, he found himself kissing her cheek, when she casually averted her head. Well, he couldn’t really blame her. Though he could rationalize his neglect, he had treated her rather shabbily.
He had last seen Jennifer Red Cloud at her Tokyo home in July, when he stopped in briefly en route to deliver a personal message to Premier Kawasaki from President Horatio Francis Turnbull. They had touched upon their plans for a November wedding, just after the election that would make him vice-president. But only a few days later she called him in Washington to say that she needed some time to think it over-and in the turmoil of the election campaign he had let the matter slide. He hoped she’d think that he was merely doing the gentlemanly thing, not forcing her hand, though in fact he’d been too busy with his new duties to think much about anything else.
Looking at her now, he wondered how he could have been so callous-and so stupid. She was still, at thirty-eight, the most breathtaking woman he’d ever known, a combination of business brains, feminine beauty, and fiery passion that must have been genetically ordained by her Scots, Norwegian, and Apache forebears. What a marvelous campaign asset, hostess, and wife she would make him. And if she seemed somewhat cool toward him now, her attitude would warm when she saw what he had brought.
“As it is Christmas Day,” Castle said, settling into an easy chair opposite her desk and crossing his legs so that the crease would be bent, not fractured, “I naturally went to your home first. I was shocked when Manuel said you were at your office.”
“I’m always here,” she said. “It’s been bad-very bad, what with Joe Mansour and Ripley Forte holding my notes for more millions than I care to think about. By selling off the OTEC and the Ash-Brown computer subsidiaries, cutting more than sixteen hundred staff, and persuading the rest to take deep salary cuts or early retirement, I’ve managed to pay the interest at the end of every month. So far.”
“It must have been tough.”
“Right adjective, wrong tense. I’m right on the edge of insolvency.”
David D. Castle regarded her with compassion. She had always dressed in sheer, tightly fitting gowns to show off her exquisite figure, and her Filipino makeup man was always nearby to attend to her maquillage and long, lustrous black hair. But today her wool gown hung loose and shapeless, a strand of hair had gone adrift, and her lipstick seemed to have been applied with an unsteady hand. “Marry me, Jennifer, and-”
“You’ll take me away from all this? That’s very sweet of you, David, but I’m not the woman you left in Tokyo six months ago. Then I was rich, successful, independent. Today-well, it’s no use being morbid on Christmas Day, is it? In any case, if I married you now, I’d never know whether it was pity or love.”
“Nonsense! I’ve loved you ever since I was a freshman congressman on the Hill. You know that. Of course, if you prefer, you can believe I want to marry you for your money.”
Jennifer Red Cloud laughed hollowly. She opened the top drawer of her desk and withdrew a slim file. She slid the file across the desk. “The last page will disabuse you, David. The red is not actually written in my blood, though at the rate ROR’s going, it soon will be.”
Vice-President Castle eased the file to one side without looking at it. He withdrew a white envelope from an inside pocket, leaned toward her, and laid it on the desk.
“A Christmas card. How thoughtful of you,” she said.
“A Christmas present-with love and best wishes.”
Jennifer Red Cloud lifted the flap and took out a rectangle of light-green paper. She stared at it. It was a check for $640 million drawn on Banque Fermier et Fils of Geneva. “I guess this is where I say ‘I don’t understand.'”
“You’re not supposed to-not the details, anyway.”
“I don’t suppose this is play money?”
“Oh, no. It’s real, all right.”
“The sum is interesting-just what I need to pay off Mansour and Forte. How did you know?”
Castle smiled cryptically.
“Yes, of course-you have your sources.” She brightened. “Well, David, I don’t have to tell you that it’s the answer to a maiden’s prayer, but I’d better take a rain check on the celebrations until I know a little more.”
“Ask away.”
“Well, I suppose you somehow got together a consortium of bankers to bail me out, hoping that a revived ROR would lock horns with its competition, Iceberg International, Inc., thus breaking Ripley Forte’s present monopoly in the delivery of icebergs. Not only would it make you happy to hurt Forte, but water futures would tumble, and your backers, taking a short position now, would stand to pick up a considerable bundle in two or three years.”
Vice-President Castle looked at her admiringly. “What a devious Oriental mind you have, chérie.”
“Well?”
“You’re pretty close.”
“On the contrary, I’m nowhere near,” she snapped.
“You’re lying in your teeth, David. Swiss bankers don’t believe in female management. If they wanted Raynes Oceanic Resources, they’d have made a deal with Man-sour. And they know that Mansour, a man who believes in fast turnover, would have sold. Furthermore, as vice-president, you wouldn’t dare act as an intermediary for foreign bankers…. It’s government money, isn’t it?”
Castle nodded sheepishly. “Yes, it is.” He didn’t say which government.
“That’s more like it. Now let’s hear the catch: what do I have to do to earn it?”
Castle built a steeple with his thin, bloodless hands. “Not a very great deal, really. As far as the world is concerned, you have negotiated a loan from Swiss bankers, having persuaded them that because you’re a woman, and one whom Forte has bested in business, he will not view you as a threat until it’s too late. Meanwhile, ROR will indeed begin a crash program to develop alternative methods of iceberg delivery.”
“But why should the government want to sponsor alternative delivery methods when Forte’s is working perfectly adequately?”
“It doesn’t. Your ‘secret’ project-and the more secret it is, the better, obviously-is just a cover. What the government needs is that cover. Under the guise of research for alternative iceberg recovery methods, you will assemble some of the most formidable brains in the United States. I have the list right here.” He patted his pocket. “These seventeen young men and women are gifted explorers of operations research, the theoretical sciences, mathematics, and other fields. Right now they’re scattered around the United States, Texas, Japan, and Canada. You’ll offer them facilities and salaries they cannot resist, and when they’re all here, your responsibilities will be at an end.”
Jennifer Red Cloud rose from behind her desk and walked to the window. Castle was shocked once more to see how-how changed she was. She was even wearing low-heeled shoes. He had seen her barefoot before-she seldom wore shoes at home, even at the parties for eighty or ninety people she liked to throw-but he’d never seen her in low heels. She gazed out at the fog drifting in across the bay.
“If I’m not responsible,” she said finally, “who is- your ‘Swiss bankers’?”
“Good heavens, no. I am. The President has initiated a very sensitive project that requires the best minds available. Bringing them together in a government facility would only attract KGB agents. But if these scientists drop out, one by one, and relocate at a well-guarded ex-Marine base in El Centre-which you’re about to buy, by the way-even if they are spotted, they’ll be traced back to ROR, and the Russians will be forced to conclude they’re being used to brainstorm your new iceberg recovery project.”
“When they’ll actually be doing what?” she asked, turning.
“Can’t tell you. Can’t tell anybody. Look, Jennifer, I’m going farther than I should telling you just this much. The President has placed the entire matter-budget, planning, personnel-in my hands on a ‘must-know’ basis. He’s scared as hell it’ll leak to congressional circles, and we all know what blabbermouths they are. So all contacts will be made through me, personally. Lending verisimilitude to the whole operation is the fact that a lot of people know how deeply I am in love with you; that will give me the excuse for periodic trips to California to see you-and pick up my group’s reports.”