“Thirty-five minutes,” George said.
“Got to allow some time for them to hear what you’ve got to say and decide what to say back to you. Probably an hour, at least.”
“I’ll wait.”
Martin Humphries unconsciously licked at the thin sheen of perspiration beading his upper lip. He hated talking with his crotchety sour-faced father, especially when he had to ask the old man for advice.
“You kidnapped her?” W. Wilson Humphries’s wrinkled face looked absolutely astonished. “A Nobel Prize scientist? You kidnapped her?”
“I’ve brought her here, to my home,” Humphries said, holding himself rigidly erect in his chair, exerting every gram of willpower he possessed to keep from squirming. “I couldn’t let her warn Randolph.”
The conversation between father and son was being carried by a tight laser beam, directly from Humphries Space System’s communication center on the top of Alphonsus crater’s ringwall mountains to the roof of the senior Humphries’s estate in Connecticut. No one could eavesdrop unless they tapped into the laser beam itself, and if someone did, the drop in the beam’s output at the receiver would be detectable.
“Killing Randolph isn’t bad enough,” grumbled the old man. “Now you’re going to have to kill her, too.”
“I haven’t killed anybody,” Humphries said tightly. “If Randolph has any brains at all he’ll turn back.”
It took nearly three seconds for his father’s reply to reach him. “Sloppy work. If you want to remove him, you should have done it right.”
Humphries’s temper flared. “I’m not a homicidal maniac! Randolph is business, and anyway, if he dies it will look like an accident. His ship fails out there in the Belt and he and his crew are killed. Nobody will know what happened and nobody will be able to investigate, not for months, maybe years.”
He tried to calm himself as he waited for his father’s response.
“Gaining Astro Manufacturing is worth the risk,” the old man agreed. “Especially since no one can connect you with the… uh, accident.”
“She can.”
Humphries knew what his father was going to say.
“Then you’ll have to get rid of her.”
“But that doesn’t mean I have to kill her. I don’t want to do that. She’s a valuable asset. We can use her.”
It wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment decision, Humphries told himself. Dr. Cardenas and her knowledge of nanotechnology had been part of his long-range plan all along. It’s just that this crisis has forced me to move faster than I’d originally planned to, he told himself.
“Use her?” his father snapped. “How?”
Waving a hand in the air, Humphries said vaguely, “Nanotechnology. She’s the top expert. Without her it would’ve taken years to build that fusion rocket.”
His father cackled. “You don’t have the guts to take her out.”
“Don’t be an idiot, Dad! She’s much more valuable to me alive than dead.”
“You want her to be part of your team, then,” his father replied.
“Yes, of course. But she’s having this goddamned attack of integrity. She’s got cold feet about Randolph, and if I don’t stop her, she’ll tell everyone about the sabotage, even though she’s a party to it.”
The old man chuckled when he heard his son’s complaint. “An attack of integrity, eh? Well, there are ways to get around that.”
“How?”
It was maddening to have to wait nearly three seconds for his father’s response.
“Make her an offer that she can’t accept.”
“What?”
Again the interminable wait. Then, “Offer her something that she really wants, but can’t agree to. Make her an offer that really tempts her, but she’ll have to reject. Then you’ve shown yourself to be reasonable, and she’s being the difficult one. Then she’ll be more willing to agree to your next offer.”
Humphries was impressed. “That’s… Machiavellian.”
When his father answered, his seamed, sagging face was strangely contorted, as if he were suppressing a guffaw. “Yes, it is, isn’t it? And it works.”
Humphries could only sit there and admire the old bastard.
More thoughtfully, his father asked, “What’s her weak point? What does Cardenas want that she can’t get unless you give it to her?”
“Her grandchildren. They’ll be our hostages. Oh, I’ll do it in a nice, elegant manner. But I’ll let her know that either she works for me or her grandchildren suffer. She’ll do what I want.”