“And why must you have a Mark IX, not that there is the slightest chance that you will get it?”
Forte drummed his fingers on his knees and looked into her eyes as if trying to assess whether she could be made to understand. “Look, Red, the physical forces at work within an iceberg are almost, but not quite, incalculable. The external forces acting on it–the currents, the ocean waves, the salinity of the water and its resultant density, tides, the Coriolis effect, the strains on the tugboat lines, winds, rainfall, vapor pressure, atmospheric pressure, propeller vibration, the heat of the sun–dozens of factors–are even more complex. Unless we know the resultant of all these forces–the same forces, by the way, which destroyed the Salvation–we cannot counteract them to keep the iceberg intact. Towing an iceberg isn’t like pushing an ice cube around in a highball. It’s more like trying to drag a dipper of ice cream through a bowl of warm soup. There are billions of numbers to crunch every second of every day for six months, and only the Mark IX has the capacity to do it. Old Lepoint didn’t appreciate that, and if it hadn’t been for my firsthand experience, I wouldn’t have either.
“So there’s your choice, Red. You can make or break the Alamo right here, right now.”
“The Alamo?”
“That’s the name I’m going to give my berg.”
“You’d better save it for your mobile retirement home, because you certainly aren’t going to get a Mark IX out of me!”
Ripley Forte sipped at his drink and looked out the picture window at the placid Pacific. “I sort of thought you’d say that, Red. But you forget one thing: I’ve got the personal and official backing of the President of the United States. All I need to do is give him a call, and you can bet those lovely lynx eyes of yours that he’ll have an official order on the way by return mail.”
“I’ll refuse. It’s a free country. Brown-Ash is a wholly owned subsidiary of Raynes Oceanic Resources. And I own Raynes.”
“But do you own the Lackland Missile Development Center?”
“Of course not. So what?”
“Well, when I mentioned to President Turnbull you might be a little shirty if I asked to buy a BAM-IX, he said he might be able to persuade Lackland to lend me theirs, seeing us how they needed it primarily for simulation runs on the Titan IV, and the Titan IV is now in production.”
“I see.”
Her expression was savage, but her heart was serene. Better and better. She’d provide Ripley Forte with a Mark-IX, all right, after several minor adjustments had been made to it. For the rest of his days he’d remember the Alamo. “You win,” she said briefly.
“That was my intention.”
“But only temporarily. I am going to destroy you, Ripley. I should have done so when I kicked you out of Raynes.”
“So it was you.”
“Of course. Ned was afraid of you. He got cold feet. And I had a moment of weakness and let you have the money to get back on your feet. This time I will be walking in your shadow from the moment you find your blessed Alamo until it floats away in little pieces.”
“I hope you’re better at walking on water than you are in shadows, because you aren’t going to get near my iceberg, lady.”
“Am I not?”
“Unless you’re going to disguise yourself as a skua.”
“A skua? What’s that?”
“Never mind,” said Forte, realizing that the parallel was uncomfortably close. “You’re welcome to conspire from a distance. Do your worst. But if you get even within spittin’ range of the Alamo, I’m going to fan your bottom good.”
“That should be an experience,” she said, fluttering her long black lashes. “But before you run off to chisel those words in stone, my dear Ripley, I must inform you that yesterday I was appointed assistant secretary of water resources for administration by Secretary Castle. David has assigned me to monitor, personally, the expenditure of every penny of government money devoted to water projects, especially iceberg recovery.”
“I don’t believe it,” said Forte, coloring.
“There’s the phone. Perhaps you’d like to check with David yourself.”
“You can’t do it, Red. No serving member of a corporation board can occupy an appointive post in the federal government. That’s conflict of interest.”
“Not at all. Two hours before the appointment became official, I resigned my directorships and put all my stocks in a blind trust.” She smiled sweetly.
Ripley rose, his face expressionless.
“Don’t grieve, Ripley,” said Jennifer Red Cloud soothingly, sitting in her chair with her feet tucked under her. “Maybe I’ll grow on you.”
Forte looked down at her. “You already have.”
“I beg your pardon?” She seemed truly taken aback.
Score one for Ripley Forte. It was the first time he had actually surprised her. Why stop now? “You must be pretty stupid not to know that I’ve been in love with you from the first time I saw you, the day you married Ned.”
Her hand came up to her face.
“But you–”
“Just shut up and listen, Red. If I had met you a day
earlier, I’d have killed him before I’d let him have you– that’s what you did to me. Then, after Ned died, when I could have had you–”
“The hell you could,” she flared. “I’d never–”
“Kindly be quiet. I could have had you, but not on my terms. You’d want to run the show, just as I finally realized you ran Ned. Well, sister, I’m not the kind of man you can dangle on a string. I’m going to have you, but it’s going to be on my terms.”
She laughed a brittle, hysterical laugh.
“Oh, you are?”
“You’re damned right I am. First I’m going to break Raynes Oceanic Resources. Then I’m going to marry you.”
“Marry?” She laughed hysterically. “An ugly, hairy-handed, bourbon-swilling, tinhorn baboon like you?”
“Ever read the ethologist Konrad Lorenz?”
“Never met him, Ripley.”
“But he met you, and all other females in the animal kingdom who yearn to be dominated but often find no one with enough balls to do so, and out of frustration and rage try to take over the male’s function. They used to call it women’s lib. What they call it now I couldn’t guess, probably something as obscene as the concept.”
“I–I–”
“Lorenz learned about women by studying jackdaws. He observed that at the beginning of each mating season the males would fight to establish a pecking order, the stronger male pecking all the others below him on the ladder. Only then did the females chose their mates, and the most beautiful always chose the man at the top of the status ladder, even if he was old and ugly. The poor bird at the bottom, even though he might be young and handsome, got the least attractive of the females.
“That’s why we see so many rich, fat, disgusting old men married to young, lovely, satisfied females. That’s why a beautiful Apache-Norwegian maiden promises herself to an anemic third-rate politician who imagines he has a shot at the White House. It’s the jackdaw itch, beautiful. Until Lorenz came along, we always thought she married him for his money. We were wrong. She marries him because he is the man at the top of the ladder,
the man everybody respects, the man who, when he speaks, makes people jump.”
“And you think that when you speak, I’ll jump.” Jennifer Red Cloud was cold with fury.
“Not yet, my sweet. When I’ve stripped you bare, and taken away all your playthings, and become king of the hill, then you’ll jump.”
“Get out of here, you goddamn son of a bitch!” she screamed, leaping to her feet.
Forte turned and walked to the door. As he opened it and passed through, he looked at her over his shoulder.
“Just think, sweetheart, I’m going to be captain of the Alamo, and you’re going to be my first mate.”
She threw a counterfeit Ming vase at his departing back. It crashed into the door and shattered into a dozen pieces.
The Filipino Manuel materialized.
“You called, madam?”
“Yes, I did,” said Jennifer Red Cloud without a trace of emotion. “You’re fired!”
18. THE TWELVE WISE MEN OF OYO
15 FEBRUARY 2007
THE REGULAR WEDNESDAY MORNING STAFF MEETING AT the Oyo Experimental Farm Cooperative offices outside Oyo, 175 kilometers north of Nigeria’s capital, Lagos, was devoted entirely to the report of Meyer Horowitz on the iceberg Alamo operation.
Horowitz, a short, rotund man with a bald head and half-moon glasses, rose and cleared his throat. He opened a file and laid it on the table in front of him.
“Fellow members,” he began, “I finally have the information requested. Its accuracy is beyond question. And I believe that if we utilize it to the fullest, we may be able to strike a blow at Russia from which it may never recover. More of that later.