“Gatorade,” Chavez observed after a second.
“What?”
“It’s a sports drink, water and lots of electrolytes to keep you from getting heatstroke.”
“Ah, yes, we have something similar here. Salt tablets as well. Buckets of the things.”
A few minutes later, they were in the security area. Chavez saw the Australian SAS troops lounging in air-conditioned comfort, their own TVs handy so that they could watch the games-and other sets to keep an eye on choke points. Wilkerson handled the introductions, after which most of the troops came over for a handshake and a “G’day,” all delivered with the open friendliness that all Aussies seemed to have. His sergeants started chatting with the Aussie ones, and respect was soon flowing back and forth. The trained men saw themselves in the others, and their international fraternity was an elite one.
The facility was filling rapidly. He’d been alone on the fourth floor the first day, Popov reflected, but not now. At least six of the nearby rooms were occupied, and looking outside he could see that the parking lot was filling up with private cars that had been driven in that day. He figured it was a two- or three-day drive from New York, and so the order to bring people out had been given recently-but where were the moving vans? Did the people intend to live here indefinitely? The hotel building was comfortable for a hotel, but that was not the same as comfort in a place of permanent residence. Those people with small children might quickly go mad with their little ones in such close proximity all the time. He saw a young couple talking with another, and caught part of the conversation as he walked past. They were evidently excited about the wild game they’d seen driving in. Yes, deer and such animals were pretty, Popov thought in mute agreement, but hardly worth so animated a conversation on the subject. Weren’t these trained scientists who worked for Horizon Corporation? They spoke like Young Pioneers out of Moscow for the first time, goggling at the wonders of a state farm. Better to see the grand opera house in Vienna or Paris, the former KGB officer thought, as he entered his room. But then he had another thought. These people were all lovers of nature. Perhaps he would examine their interests himself. Weren’t there videotapes in his room? . . . Yes, he found them and slipped one into his VCR, hitting the PLAY button and switching on his TV.
Ah, he saw, the ozone layer, something people in the West seemed remarkably exercised about. Popov thought he would begin to show concern when the Antarctic penguins who lived under the ozone hole started dying of sunburn. But he watched and listened anyway. It turned out that the tape had been produced by some group called Earth First, and the content, he soon saw, was as polemic in content as anything ever produced by the USSR’s state run film companies. These people were indeed very exercised about the subject, calling for the end of various industrial chemicals and how would air-conditioning work without them? Give up air-conditioning to save penguins from too much ultraviolet radiation? What was this rubbish? That tape lasted fifty-two minutes by his watch. The next one he selected, produced by the same group, was concerned with dams. It started off by castigating the “environmental criminals” who’d commissioned and built Hoover Dam on the Colorado River. But that was a power dam, wasn’t it? Didn’t people need electricity? Wasn’t the electricity generated by power dams the cleanest there was? Wasn’t this very videotape produced in Hollywood using the very electricity that this dam produced? Who were these people-
-and why were their tapes here in his hotel room? Popov wondered. Druids? The word came to him again. Sacrificers of virgins, worshipers of trees-if that, then they’d come to a strange place. There were precious few trees to be seen on the wheat covered plains of western Kansas.
Druids? Worshipers of nature? He let the tape rewind and checked out some of the periodicals and found one published by this Earth First group.
What sort of name was that? Earth First-ahead of what? Its articles screamed in outrage over various insults to the planet. Well, strip mining was an ugly thing, he had to admit. The planet was supposed to be beautiful and appreciated. He enjoyed the sight of a green forest as much as the next man, and the same was true of the purple rock of treeless mountains. If there were a God, then He was a fine artist, but . . . what was this?
Humankind, the second article said, was a parasitic species on the surface of the planet, destroying rather than nurturing. People had killed off numerous species of animals and plants, and in doing so, people had forfeited their right to be here . . . he read on into the polemic.
This was errant rubbish, Popov thought. Did a gazelle faced with an attacking lion call for the police or a lawyer to plead his right to be alive? Did a salmon swimming upstream to spawn protest against the jaws of the bear that plucked it from the water and then stripped it apart to feed its own needs? Was a cow the equal of a man? In whose eyes?
It had been a matter of almost religious faith in the Soviet Union that as formidable and as rich as Americans were, they were mad, cultureless, unpredictable people. They were greedy, they stole wealth from others, and they exploited such people for their own selfish gain. He’d learned the falsehood of that propaganda on his first field assignment abroad, but he’d also learned that the Western Europeans, as well, thought Americans to be slightly mad-and if this Earth First group were representative of America, then surely they were right. But Britain had people who spray-painted those who wore fur coats. Mink had a right to live, they said. A mink? It was a well-insulated rodent, a tubular rat with a fine coat of fur. This rodent had a right to be alive? Under whose law?
That very morning they’d objected to his suggestion to kill the – what was it? Prairie dogs, yet another tubular rat, and one whose holes could break the legs of the horses they rode-but what was it they’d said? They- belonged there, and the horses and people did not? Why such solicitude for a rat? The noble animals, the hawks and bears, the deer, and those strange-looking antelope, they were pretty, but rats? He’d had similar talks with Brightling and Henriksen, who also seemed unusually loving of the things that lived and crawled outside. He wondered how they felt about mosquitoes and fire ants.
Was this druidic rubbish the key to his large question?
Popov thought about it, and decided that he needed an education, if only to assure himself that he hadn’t entered the employ of a madman . . . not a madman, only a mass murderer? . . . That was not a comforting thought at the moment.
“So how was the flight?”
“About what you’d expect, a whole fucking day trapped in a 747,” Ding groused over the phone.
“Well, at least it was first class,” Clark observed.
“Great, next time you can have the pleasure, John. How’re Patsy and JC?” Chavez asked, getting on to the important stuff.
“They’re just fine. The grandpa stuff isn’t all that bad.” Clark could have said that he hadn’t changed a single diaper yet. Sandy had seized on the ancillary baby-in-the-house duties with utter ruthlessness, allowing her husband to only hold the little guy. He supposed that such instincts were strong in women, and didn’t want to interfere with her self-assumed rice bowl. “He’s a cute little guy, Domingo. You done good, kid.”
“Gee, thanks, Dad” was the ironic reply from ten thousand miles away. “Patsy?”
“She’s doing fine, but not getting a hell of a lot of sleep. JC only sleeps about three hours at a stretch at the moment. But that’ll change by the time you get back. Want to talk to her?” John asked next.
“What do you think, Mr. C?”
“Okay, hold on. Patsy!” he called. “It’s Domingo.”
“Hey, baby,” Chavez said in his hotel room.
“How are you, Ding? How was the flight out?”
“Long, but no big deal,” he lied. One doesn’t show weakness before one’s own wife. “They’re treating us pretty nice, but it’s hot here. I forgot what hot weather is like.”
“Will you be there for the opening?”
“Oh, yeah, Pats, we all have security passes, courtesy of the Aussies. How’s JC?”
“Wonderful” was the inevitable reply. “He’s so beautiful. He doesn’t cry much. It’s pretty wonderful to have him, y’know?”
“How are you sleeping, baby?”
“Well, I get a few hours here and there. No big deal. Internship was a lot worse.”
“Well, let your mom help you out, okay?”