“Dink. Arthur.” The senator seated himself, putting his half-finished drink on the table beside him. “I hope you’ve got some news for me.”
“Well,” the larger man split agrin, one side of his mouth expressing amusement while the other half looked on, uninvolved, “I’ve got good news and other news.”
Morse regarded him narrowly, disliking this jovial approach to what was very serious business. “Very well, let’s have the good news. They’ll support me?”
“Some considerable support will come your way.” Dink sprawled into a chair, which creaked beneath his weight.
Arthur murmured, “Quid pro quo, of course. I’ve got a list of suggested items here. They’d like you to sneak as many of these through as you can.” He took a sheet of plain paper from his billfold, unfolded it and passed it across the senator’s desk. No heading. No names. Just a list of clauses and short, innocuous-seeming paragraphs that might be added to various bills.
The senator frowned. “It’ll have to be late-night votes for most of these, but I should be able to manage a good bit of it. Nice of them to put it all in proper form.”
“Saves time, is all,” grunted Arthur. “Our friends seem to want things loosened up a little at the INS, the DEA, the ATF.”
“That’s pretty much what I expected.”
“They’ll be grateful,” said Dink.
The large man had risen and was moving around nervously. The senator ignored it, recognizing the restlessness as habitual. He asked, “How grateful will they be, Dink?”
Dink turned, grinning his half grin. “Oh, as much as you need, Senator. Like mega-millions. And then, as much more, if needed.”
The senator licked his lips. “How do they get it to me?”
Arthur gave him a stern look, wagging a finger in admonition. “Soft money, Senator. It goes around you. Some into Lupe’s overseas account. Some to your ex-wife. Some for this, some for that. It never touches you. Just like with the pro-life money. You vote your convictions about the gross immorality of the drug trade just like you vote your convictions about the gross immorality of abortion. Your good friends and supporters from south of the border don’t want to see the drug legalization balloon rise any higher than their ankles.”
The senator sat down, relaxing. He hadn’t known he was tensed up until this minute. Now, everything was letting loose.
He grinned. “Be sure to extend my good wishes.” Arthur smiled. “Oh, they know that, Senator. Our amigos know you wish nothing for them but good, all the way to the bank.”
“And what’s the other news?”
“Something General McVane picked up. It came over from the Air Defense Command. Just a weirdness, but in the light of your committee, we thought . . .”
“Weirdness or not, what?”
“Air Defense has picked up some oddities they can’t explain. Seemingly incoming somethings or other, not the profile one would expect from missiles, certainly no launch data, but things.”
“Satellites,” said Morse, dismissively.
“No. Not satellites. Not space junk. Not decayed orbits ending with stuff burning up. These are flights, they change course, they go from A to B to X.”
“So? What do the eggheads say?”
Arthur shrugged. “Something some other country came up with that we don’t know about. Something some branch of our own government came up with that we don’t know about. UFOs.”
Morse glowered, staring at his clenched hands, thinking. “Where’s X?”
“What do you mean?”
“The X they go to, end up at, where is it?”
“No one place, Senator. East Coast. Florida. New Mexico-Texas area, Oregon.”
“Is there any way we can find out more?”
“Believe me, both the NASA guys and the Air Command are giving it their best shot. They’d vastly prefer not being asked about it until they can explain it.”
Morse almost wished they hadn’t told him about it until they could explain it. He’d been helping cut allocations to NASA every chance he got, a calculated risk, and he didn’t like the idea that something inimical might show up, something that could have been prevented except for the cuts. “You sure McVane gave you everything he knew?”
Dink frowned. “In this case, I think yes. He’s pretty firmly in our side pocket, Senator, and he’s safe. No political ambitions, just big military ones.”