Jim DeFelice - Cyclops One

“If I can do anything for you, I will,” said McIntyre.

Howe watched him recede into the background of the room as the knot of people swelled. They began moving from the reception to a small auditorium.

Megan would have eaten this sort of thing up in her sleek black dress, with her VIP smile. She was used to dealing with these kinds of people, movers and shakers. Why had she fallen in love with him, anyway? Just to use him?

No. He couldn’t let himself believe that — couldn’t let go of that last strand of respect maybe.

She did love him, even though she was a bitch and a traitor, and if that boot they’d found belonged to her, or if some of that charcoaled metal contained her remains, he’d spit on it.

Part of him would. The other part would just shake his head.

Belatedly, Howe realized everyone around him was rising. The President of the United States had come into the room and was approaching the podium.

Howe felt his face flushing, even before the President pointed him out in the front row. Then D’Amici launched into a short, punchy speech about how America had met the challenge and would continue to do so, thanks to the men and women in this building and the armed services beyond. It was a good, uplifting talk, punctuated by enthusiastic applause.

There was no mention of McIntyre: Doing so might embarrass the Indians at a delicate point. Nor, of course, was there any mention of Cyclops One.

There weren’t even any medals. Those would come later, undoubtedly as part of another media event.

Timmy sat a few chairs away from him, beaming like a lightbulb. He was a good kid, a fine aviator — a better pilot than Howe, really, though only time would tell if he had the stomach it took to get into the upper command ranks. Howe thought he did; Timmy even joked with the President when he shook his hand. Good for him.

Howe just smiled and nodded, smiled and nodded.

When the President had left, Bonham came over like a long-lost uncle, congratulating Howe and introducing him to several two-and three-star generals and admirals. He shook maybe three dozen hands, smiled a lot, nodded even more.

“You’re going to go far,” Bonham told him. “Very, very far. I told you. I told you.” The former general leaned close to him. “DNA preliminary result is in,” he said in a whisper. “Megan York’s on the flight jacket. Positive match.”

Bonham pulled back. “You’ll be head of the JCS one day. Maybe President.”

“Great,” was all Howe could think of answering.

Some cases slammed shut, tight as a box, ten minutes after you looked at them.

Others had the look of a crumpled cellophane wrapper stomped on in the mud. They were like overpacked suitcases; no matter what you did to them, something always hung out.

As a general rule, Fisher’s cases fell into the latter category. It was the nature of his assignments. Oh, there had been a few easily solved kidnappings back in his salad days, and the murder of a federal judge that had taken all of two cigarettes to close. But these days he could consume half the tobacco grown in Georgia and still have a twenty-three-sided rectangle.

Not that Jemma Gorman wasn’t doing her best to lop off the extraneous corners.

“With the identification of the remains and a review of the intercepts, we can reach certain conclusions,” said Gorman, holding forth via video from an Air Force base in Alaska. She’d gone there to coordinate the spy flights off the Russian Far East. Either the video reception was lousy or she had managed somehow to get a tan. “ ‘In a nutshell,’ ” she said, curling the first and middle fingers of her raised hands, “ ‘the plane was stolen by parties unknown, but undoubtedly linked to the Pakistani government. It was flown clandestinely to southern Asia, where it was intended to be used against the Indians. Unfortunately, it was shot down and its crew lost during the engagement.’ ”

“I have a question,” said Fisher, pressing the garish green button on the mike in front of his place. He had to hit the green button, then wait for a yellow light on the mike console before pressing a purple button to speak. The gear looked as if it had originally been intended for a Sony PlayStation rig.

“Mr. Fisher?”

“How come you do that quote thing with your fingers when you say in a nutshell?”

“Are there any serious questions?” asked Gorman.

“Yup.” Fisher pressed the button again. “Me again. Why would the original crew get involved?”

“Which?”

“Start with York.”

“We’ve called your agency in to prepare psychological profiles,” said Gorman. “Belatedly, I admit.”

“Yeah, but they’ll bullshit, don’t you think? And, uh, no offense, Colonel, but the FBI’s a bureau.”

“Money’s not a good enough motivator for you?” asked Kowalski, speaking from the Cyclops base.

“Oh, money’s good. I like money,” said Fisher. “I just haven’t seen any evidence of it. And York’s rich.”

“You can’t be too rich,” said Kowalski.

“Or dead,” said Fisher.

“Money is undoubtedly behind this. We’ll find it,” said Gorman. “We have forensic accountants hunting it down as we speak. Are there any real questions?”

Fisher took out a cigarette and lit it. Previous experience had shown that he could consume exactly 1.6 cigarettes in the secure videoconferencing center before setting off the alarm.

One of the CIA people asked about the Russian connection. Gorman handled it with her usual smooth aplomb: She changed the subject.

“There’s still a great deal of work to do. I’d like to reconvene our working groups at the base in three days. Agreed?”

Fisher looked at his watch as one by one the task force members voiced no objections. He was supposed to see Betty McDonald by eleven, but he wondered if he could talk to some of the lab people before then.

“Mr. Fisher, can you be at the base in three days?” asked Gorman.

“Kinda depends,” he said.

“Please try to make it.”

“Please? Did you say please? What happened, somebody gave you a dictionary?”

“Good afternoon, Andy.”

The screen went blank.

Megan leaned against the side of the chair, reading the Web site news report on the computer screen. Still tired from the mission — she’d slept twelve hours straight after getting back — she felt a smug feeling of satisfaction curl around her as she thumbed through the reports.

Everything she’d believed, everything she’d envisioned, had been right.

Luck had played a hand — a large hand. If Cyclops One hadn’t been there, two of the Indian missiles would have gotten through.

Luck…or maybe the Almighty.

You could think in those terms; it was possible, wasn’t it, that God was playing a hand in all this? For surely he’d want the end of war.

There was still much further to go. The augmented ABM system. With or without Jolice, it would be built now.

Thanks to her, and thanks to the weapon. The development teams needed more time, just a little more time, which Congress and the other critics hadn’t been willing to give. They didn’t understand how weapons development, how research, worked. They weren’t willing to give the developers the time they needed to make truly revolutionary systems.

Now they would, assuaged by the first test results and buoyed by the intervention in Pakistan and India. Which had been the point in the first place. Jolice or another consortium, it was all the same to her in the end. Megan knew that for most of the others — for all of them, really — money had been the motivating factor. She didn’t care, though: Motives were not important; results were. Results.