“I see.” It all sounded very well thought out. It must have been, for the government to hand over $640 million without asking for so much as a promissory note. The fact that it had, of course, was an indication that David was telling the truth, for only governments were so cavalier with such immense sums of money. She hated the idea of something going on in Raynes Oceanic Resources that she wasn’t thoroughly briefed on, but if that was the price she had to pay to get back her company, if it was all in the national interest, she supposed she’d get used to it. “Very well, David,” she said with that sad smile he’d seen when he first entered the room, “it’s a deal: I have Raynes Oceanic Resources back, you have your seventeen experts working under ROR cover. I have the nagging female intuition that neither of us knows what he’s letting himself in for, but-”
“Believe me,” he said fervently, “this project is going to change the history of the world. America will never forget you for your part in it.”
7. THE BROWNIAN MOVEMENT
28 DECEMBER 2008
Ripley Forte first met Valerie Vincent, the former wife of a Texas computer tycoon, at the free-for-all annual Christmas party at his El Cabellejo Ranch. He never did remember which of the three-hundred-odd guests she had come with, but by six-thirty the next morning, as the party was shifting into high gear, it was about the only information worth knowing he hadn’t learned.
She was a statuesque woman with a long straight nose, steel-blue eyes, and honey-color hair that spilled to her slim waist. There were more beautiful women at the party than this grass widow in her mid-thirties, perhaps some even with a better figure, but few came close to the sexy throatiness of her voice, the intelligence of her conversation, or the magnitude of her bank balance. From the moment she arrived, regal in an unadorned silver lamé gown cut low in the back, she was the subject of determined pursuit by eligible young males and desiccated old married men alike. Yet, as the evening roared on, more often than chance could explain she found herself in some quiet corner talking with her host, Ripley Forte.
Ripley Forte didn’t question providence, but he was at a loss for her obvious interest. Though he was generally conceded to be the world’s second richest man, with her rumored $30 million in government securities alone she certainly didn’t need more. Nor could it have been his looks that attracted her: at fifty-one, he had spindly legs, more hair on his barrel chest than on his head, a knife scar from ear lobe to the corner of his mouth that gave him the sardonic smile of a man calling two pair with a full house, and the piercing dark eyes of a religious zealot.
Except for his wealth, which impressed others a lot more than it did him, Forte considered himself a fairly ordinary bloke. Though well read, thanks to solitary evenings at remote construction sites, he had too little formal education to qualify for a job sorting mail at the Houston post office. But his four years as a Marine leading men in three nasty little campaigns, and nearly thirty years since as a builder of dams and bridges around the world, had given him the confidence and competence to crown his achievements by bringing back the first iceberg from the Antarctic, a billion-tonner that, even as his guests were quenching their own, was relieving parched Midwest American farmlands of their drought-induced thirst.
Valerie Vincent had asked him an offhand question about iceberg transport, and before he became aware that the others surrounding them were quietly drifting away, he had plunged into the subject, relieved to engage his mind for the first time that evening with a subject more rewarding than the latest sex scandal. Mrs. Vincent flattered him with her rapt attention. Forte warmed. The words that passed between them, lubricated by twenty-eight-year-old bourbon, became less formal, then personal, finally intimate. As the morning sun was struggling to break through the clouds over El Cabellejo Ranch, they found themselves walking arm in arm toward Forte’s private quarters on the second floor, their quickened breathing owing nothing to the steepness of the stairs.
The bedroom was dark, save for a trickle of light leaking from beneath the bathroom door. Forte took her in his arms. One hand circled her shoulders, the other slid smoothly down her bare back until his fingers encountered the zipper. He kissed her, a long, lingering, exploratory kiss. When their lips parted, she shrugged her shoulders, and her gown slithered to the floor. Forte took half a step back. What he saw in the half-light sent the blood surging-in both directions. He grabbed his shirt in both hands and pulled, spraying buttons across the room. His hands were fumbling at his belt buckle when the phone rang.
Her eyes held his. “Don’t answer it,” Valerie whispered.
Ripley Forte let it ring. He kicked off his loafers, stripped off his trousers, and picked her up. He crossed the room with the feline stride of a jungle animal and laid her gently on the bed. Sitting beside her, his hand caressed her cheek, her chin, the silken smoothness of her neck, and her soft upstanding breasts. His hand moved down to her flat hard belly, then-stopped.
He’d been counting the rings. Three rings meant an important call-unless it was really important, his switchboard wouldn’t dare ring at all. If it continued to ring, it was an emergency. He picked up the phone. “Forte.”
“This is Tom.”
“Look, Tom,” Forte said to Cherokee Tom Traynor, the President of the Republic of Texas, “can I call you back at a slightly more Christian hour? I’m still in the sack, and you know my brain doesn’t begin to function until I’ve soaked it in a couple of gallons of hot coffee.”
“This won’t wait-obviously, or I wouldn’t have called you in the middle of-well, knowing the parties you throw, Rip-whoever you’re in the middle of. But this is an emergency. There’s war about to break out.”
Forte sat up and reached for the shirt on the floor. “Not the Russians again, for Christ’s sake?”
“No. It’s our own people. The details are sketchy, but it seems that a couple of dozen men and their families are squatting on some range land out in West Texas, claiming that since the land is unoccupied and unused, according to a Texas Supreme Court decision of 1871- my people are looking into that decision now-they have the right to homestead and incorporate a village on it.”
“Private land?”
“Yep.”
“Then why drag me into it?” said Forte testily. “Call the sheriff and throw them out.”
“It isn’t quite that simple. These are good people. The men are all veterans of either the first Russian invasion or the second, and they’re upstanding, God-fearing folk, from what the Texas Rangers have reported. They have no clear legal right to be where they are, but I can’t allow the law to be flouted, either. On the other hand, they say if the Rangers try to evict them, they’ll light-and they’ve got the hardware to do it. I want to avoid bloodshed.”
“Sure, I understand that. But you say it’s private property. Well, why don’t you get the owner of the property to go talk to these people? Maybe he can work something out.”
“Maybe you’ve got something there, Rip,” said the president. “But what if the owner doesn’t agree?”
“He’ll agree, all right. Any patriotic Texan would.”
“I’m glad you said that. When can you start?”
There was a moment of silence.
“Jesus!” Ripley Forte moaned.
“That’s right, son.” Cherokee. Tom laughed gently. “You own that land….”
Forte put the telephone back in the cradle. “I’ve got to go out.”
“Right proposition, wrong preposition,” she said huskily, running her hand gently down his chest.
He pulled her hand away. “Let’s get something straight, Valerie,” he said. “I want to make love with you. It’d take me about ten minutes just to tell you how much I want to. But about a half hour’s flying time to the west, people are going to start shooting at each other unless I can get there in time to cool them off. Do you understand?”
“Of course. But really, Rip, would ten minutes make any difference?”
“Probably not-not to them. But it sure would to me. What I have in mind is going to take considerably longer, and I intend to enjoy every hour of it-to the hilt.” He got up and took a fresh shirt from the closet shelf. “I don’t know how long this will take-with any luck I can be back by noon. I hope you’ll be waiting, but of course I’ll understand if you’re not.”
Valerie Vincent studied him as he dressed. Not until he pulled on a leather jacket and took a much-cleaned but battered brown fedora from the closet did she move. She slid out of bed and picked up her evening gown. She shook the wrinkles out of it, then hung it on a hanger in the closet. She pulled back the big silk comforter and slipped in between the sheets. “I might as well get some sleep now,” she said with a laugh, “because one way or another, I doubt that I’ll be getting much-sleep, that is-later on.”