Clive Cussler - Cyclops

"No need to lie, Mr. President. You hired him to track down the `inner core.' "

"I what?" The President acted genuinely surprised. Then he laughed. "You forget who I am. With one phone call I could have the entire capabilities of the FBI, CIA, and at least five other intelligence services on your ass."

"Then why haven't you?"

"Because I've questioned my science advisers and some pretty respected people in our space program. They agreed unanimously. The Jersey Colony is a pipedream. You talk a good scheme, Joe, but you're nothing but a fraud who sells hallucinations."

Hudson was caught off base. "I swear to God, Jersey Colony is a reality."

"Yes, it sits midway between Oz and Shangri-la."

"Believe me, Vince, when our first colonists return from the moon, your announcement will fire the imagination of the world."

The President ignored the presumptuous use of his first name. "What you'd really like me to announce is a make-believe battle with the Russians over the moon. Just what is your angle? Are you some kind of Hollywood publicity flack who's trying to hype a space movie, or are you an escaped mental patient?"

Hudson could not suppress a flash of fury. "You idiot!" he snapped. "You can't turn your back on the greatest scientific achievement in history."

"Watch me." The President picked up the car phone. "Roger, pull up and stop. My guest is getting out."

On the other side of the glass divider, the Secret Service chauffeur raised one hand from the wheel and nodded in understanding. Then he notified the other vehicles of the President's order. A minute later the motorcade turned onto a quiet residential side street and stopped at the curb.

The President reached over and opened the door. "The end of the line, Joe. I don't know what your fantasy is with Ira Hagen, but if I hear of his death, I'll be the first to testify at your trial that you threatened his life. That is, of course, if your execution hasn't already been carried out for committing mass murder in a swank restaurant."

In an angry daze, Hudson slowly climbed from the limousine. He hesitated, bent half in, half out of the car. "You're making a terrible mistake," he said accusingly.

"It won't be a new experience," the President said, dismissing him.

The President leaned back in his seat and smiled smugly to himself. A masterful performance, he thought. Hudson was off balance and building barricades on the wrong streets. Moving up the unveiling of the Leopoldville memorial by a week was a shrewd move. An inconvenience to the veterans who attended perhaps, but a boon to an old spook like Hagen.

Hudson stood on a grassy parkway and watched the motorcade grow smaller before turning on the next cross street, his mind confused and disoriented. "Goddamned mud-brained bureaucrat!" he shouted in frustration.

A woman walking her dog on the sidewalk gave him a distasteful look indeed.

An unmarked Ford van eased to a stop, and Hudson climbed inside. The interior was plush with leather captain's chairs spaced around a highly polished redwood table. Two men, impeccably dressed in business suits, looked at him expectantly as he slipped tiredly into a chair.

"How did it go?" asked one.

"The dumb bastard threw me out," he said in exasperation. "Claims he hasn't seen Ira Hagen in years and couldn't care less if we killed him and blew up the restaurant."

"I'm not surprised," said an intense-looking man with a square red face and a condor nose. "The guy is pragmatic as hell."

Gunnar Eriksen sat with a dead pipe stuck between his lips. "What else?" he asked.

"Said he believed the Jersey Colony was a hoax."

"Did he recognize you?"

"I don't think so. He still called me Joe."

"Could be an act."

"He was pretty convincing."

Eriksen turned to the other man. "How do you read it?"

"Hagen is a puzzle. I've closely monitored the President and haven't detected any contact between them."

"You don't think Hagen was brought in by any of the intelligence directors?" asked Eriksen.

"Certainly not through ordinary channels. The only meeting the President has had with any intelligence people was a briefing by Sam Emmett of the FBI. I couldn't get my hands on the report, but it had to do with the three bodies found in LeBaron's blimp. Beyond that, he's done nothing."

"No, he's most certainly done something." Hudson's voice was quiet but positive. "I fear we've underestimated his shrewdness."

"In what way?"

"He knew I would make contact again and warn him to call off Hagen."

"What brought you to that conclusion?" asked Condor Nose.

"Hagen," replied Hudson. "No good undercover operative calls attention to himself. And Hagen was one of the best. He had to have a good reason for advertising his presence by that phone call to General Fisher and his little face-to-face chat with Senator Porter."

"But what was the President's purpose in forcing our hand if he made no demands, no requests?" asked Eriksen.

Hudson shook his head. "That's what scares me, Gunnar. I can't see for the life of me what he had to gain."

Unnoticed in the downtown traffic, an old dusty camper with Georgia license plates kept a discreet distance behind the van. In the back, Ira Hagen sat at a small dining table with earphones and a microphone clamped to his head and uncorked a bottle of Martin Ray Cabernet Sauvignon. He let the opened bottle sit while he made an adjustment with the voice-tone knob on a microwave receiving set that was plugged into reel-to-reel tape decks.

Then he raised his headset to expose one ear. "They're fading. Close up a bit."

The driver, wearing a fake scraggly beard and an Atlanta Braves baseball cap, replied without looking back. "I had to drop off when a taxi cut in front of me. I'll make up the distance in the next block."

"Keep them in sight until they park."

"What's going down, a drug bust?"

"Nothing that exotic," replied Hagen. "They're suspected of working a traveling poker game."

"Big deal," grunted the driver without realizing the pun.

"Gambling is still illegal."

"So is prostitution and it's a helluva lot more fun."

"Just keep your eyes glued on the van," Hagen said in an official tone. "And don't let it get more than a block away."

The radio crackled. "T-bone, this is Porterhouse.'

"I hear you, Porterhouse."

"We have Sirloin in visual but would prefer a lower altitude. If he should happen to merge with another similar-colored vehicle under trees or behind a building, we could lose him."

Hagen turned and stared upward from the camper's rear window at the helicopter above. "What's your height?"

"The limit for aircraft over this section of the city is thirteen hundred feet. But that's only half the problem. Sirloin is heading for the Capitol mall. We're not allowed to fly over that area."

"Stand by, Porterhouse. I'll get you an exemption."

Hagen made a call over a cellular telephone and was back to the helicopter pilot in less than a minute. "This is T-bone, Porterhouse. You are cleared for any altitude over the city so long as you do not endanger lives. Do you read?"

"Man, you must carry some kind of heavy weight."

"My boss knows all the right people. Don't take your eyes off Sirloin."

Hagen lifted the lid of an expensive picnic basket from Abercrombie & Fitch and pried open a can of goose liver path. Then he poured the wine and returned to listening in on the conversation ahead.

There was no doubt that Leonard Hudson was one of the men in the van. And Gunnar Eriksen was mentioned by his first name. But the identity of the third man remained a mystery.

Hagen was dogged by an unknown. Eight men of the "inner core" were accounted for, but number nine was still lost in the fog. The men in the van were heading. . . where? What kind of facility housed the headquarters for the Jersey Colony project? A dumb name, the Jersey Colony. What was the significance? Some connection with the state of New Jersey? There must be something that could be comprehended, that might explain how none of the information on the establishment of the moon base ever came to the attention of a high government official. Someone with more power than Hudson or Eriksen had to be the key. The last name on the "inner core" list perhaps.