Like a wildlife refuge?
That's a good one. It's a refuge, all right. But the wildest thing about Moby Bay is Wardella's poker night.
Oh, yeah.
"Good morning. You didn't sleep as long as we thought you might. Would you care for breakfast, Eden?"
Eden stood fast, staring at him.
"Do you mind answering my question?"
"This
shamba
is called the Flaming River Ranch. Sheep, dairy cows, some horses. You're in central California, or so I was told. I'm new here myself. Kenya is my home, much of the time. The Flaming River comes by its name from the colors the setting sun paints the waters on lovely days like this one. A man named Buck Hannafin owns it. The ranch has belonged to his family for a hundred and forty years. Buck is also the United States Senate's Majority Leader." Eden nodded tersely; everyone in California knew that. "Buck is out riding, but he should be back soon." Sherard smiled sympathetically at her still-angry expression. "Come on, now. I know you must be hungry. We couldn't get you to eat a thing on the way down last night."
"Why am I here?" Eden asked, not budging.
"Have you enjoyed the attention you've received for most of the past two days?"
"
No
."
"You're here to rest up and try to put all that behind you."
"Why should I trust any of you?" Eden said, shooting a look past him at Bertie and the Oriental men. They were Chinese, she decided.
"For one thing, we're entirely sympathetic to the ... difficulty you find yourself in."
"Yes? What is that?"
"There are people who have an almost psychotic fear of you, of what you represent."
"Me!"
"One or more of them probably were responsible for the murder of your mother."
"Oh, Jesus! Betts . . . is
dead
?"
"No. I'm sorry, I didn't think before IâI'm happy to say that your Betts is on the mend and safe now, thanks to Buck Hannafin. She's not far from here, in a private hospital where security is of the utmost concern. It will also be quite safe for you to visit her today. I was talking, not about Betts, but about your natural mother, who also was my wife for twelve years. Her name was Gillian. You look very much like her, Eden. In a little while I'll show you some photos of my wife. You and I should have a lot to talk about. But try to eat something first, get some sun, recover your strength."
His voice was kind; his compassion, she hoped, was genuine. She responded with a rush of tears. Sherard put an arm around her.
"I'm sorry," Eden sobbed. "It has just been so goddamned
hellish
."
"I can assure you things will be a great deal better for you from now on.
She tensed in his embrace.
"You think so? Well, you don't know the dreams I have! And I had another, last night. The third in the series. After the third dream, it
happens
."
B
uck Hannafin rode his big bay gelding to the gazebo with his dogsâtwo Border collies and a tawny Rhodesian Ridgeback in addition to the black-and-tan Great Daneâall gliding around him and clamoring for treats after their outing. He handed out Milk-Bones from a saddlebag. Two stable hands came running frantically to take his horse from him. Buck wore a white shirt unbuttoned over his tanned chest and white jeans with a pair of canary-yellow leather riding boots. Cut quite a figure, in or out of the saddle. He walked up to Eden, swept off his rancher's straw hat, and greeted the startled girl with a grandee's bow. Then Buck straightened up a little creakily, saying, "For a minute there I thought I was seeing Miss Audrey Hepburn herself, just the way she looked when she paid the ranch a visit back in '58, maybe '59 it was."
"Audrey Hepburn?" Eden said; the name but not the face familiar. But obviously Buck Hannafin believed he had paid her a great compliment, so she smiled back at him. "Thank you." Hannafin himself was totally familiar; she'd seen him on television and in the newspapers often while she was growing up. Riley and Betts had been scornful of most politicians, but Betts had done volunteer work for two of Hannafin's campaigns. If he was okay with Betts, thenâEden put out her hand, and Buck Hannafin took it tenderly, looking into her eyes. "And thanks for . . . looking after Betts."
"She's in the care of some excellent people. We got a Northern District judge out of bed at three in the morning to contravene the FBI's protected witness writ, put Betts aboard a chartered flying ambulance to Nevada, then switched aircraft for the trip down from Tahoe. Single engine, no flight plan, pilot's one of my nephews. She's resting comfortable right now where nobody could get to her even if they knew where she was. Easier to crawl naked through a storm drain full of barb wire. And you have the same guarantee, with Buck Hannafin's seal on it." He took Eden gently by the elbow, walked her up to the gazebo. "Here come the T-bones and easy-over eggs. Let's sit. I assume you know everybody by now."
"No, I don't."
"My old friend Chien-Chi from San Francisco and his son Danny. They had a little misfortune at their place two nights ago."
Danny Cheng was wearing his blindman's shades. Their fingers barely touched; Eden withdrew her hand quickly.
"Oh, my God.
Your
house?"
"Well, they saved most of it," Danny said with a curious smile. "You barely touched me. What else did you see?"
Eden gave her head a quick shake, but her eyes had glazed. Danny sought to grip her hand again. Bertie reached up and blocked his hand away from Eden.
"Hey, Danny," she said. "You want news, watch TV and give us poor psi-actives a break. It's work, and it can be hard on a girl."
Eden looked at Bertie, her vision clearing. Questions in her eyes. Bertie shrugged, smiling.
"Yeah, me too," she said. "But we'll have a chance to compare notes later."
E
den was still claiming a big share of media attention on this Memorial Day. So was the disappearance of FBI Director Robert Hyde, who, the Bureau reported, had accompanied an elite but unnamed task force on a "training mission" in northern California. A huge search and rescue operation was under way. No further details.
And President Clint Harvester had returned to the White House from Camp David after a lengthy period of recuperation following his stroke. The President's personal physician, R. Traynor Daufuskie, read a brief statement for the press proclaiming Clint to be "champing at the bit" and "one hundred percent" in his desire to get back to work. It was breezy in the Rose Garden where Daufuskie made his appearance. Sunlight sparkled on the lenses of his reading glasses. He had to hold his tie down to keep it from whipping him across the nose. When he finished reading he looked up unsmilingly, somewhat like a man watching his firing squad line up ten paces away, and abruptly turned the podium over to White House Press Secretary Val Domingues, who announced that the President would address the nation and the world at nine o'clock Tuesday night from the Oval Office. It would be a major address. Meanwhile the President and Mrs. Harvester were enjoying a quiet holiday, relaxing together in the residence. Steven Spielberg had sent a print of his latest, as yet unreleased movie to the White House, and they planned to watch the film after dinner with a few close friends. That was all. No questions.
The network they were watching in the shade of the gazebo switched to a correspondent outside the White House grounds, who pitched in to fill the time by selecting well-wishers from the crowd assembled on Pennsylvania Avenue hoping for a glimpse of the First Couple. Everybody was in an upbeat mood, cheering for the panning camera. Their President was back, and now the Bad Things that had the country jittery would soon stop. Clint would have the answers.
"Lying sonsabitches," Buck Hannafin commented, rubbing the ears of
Â
Roskilde's Pardon My Fancy, his Great Dane. "I can't imagine how they hope to pull this off. Address the nation? Clint couldn't tie his shoelaces the last time I saw him and that was barely five weeks ago."
"If he was brain-locked," Bertie Nkambe volunteered, "he could have recovered spontaneously."
"So you've told me. Would you bet those odds?"
"No, sir."
Hannafin shifted uneasily in his cane chair, staring at the TV screen. The satellite picture was sharp. "Something's up," he said. "Some scheme of Rona's. Being as how she's never demonstrated scruples or restraint in her life, it may have extremely tragic consequences for us all."
Eden sipped from a second glass of orange juice. "What do you mean by 'brainlocked'?" she asked Bertie.
"Reversal of the polarities of the brain's electrical field. Screws up the mind something awful. Like a jolt of lightning, only more precise in its aim. But I don't believe what happened to the President was a naturally occurring phenomenon."
Chien-Chi said, "It is a discipline that can be mastered, but only by a very small number of the adept. A matter of directing the Life Force in precise focus. Somewhat akin to the discipline of giving form to one's mirror image. But this is only possible if the adept is left-handed." He smiled at Eden. "As I have observed you to be."
Eden winced as if she had left her own mind carelessly open to the wry and reserved old man, and was silent. She wasn't sure that she wanted to be friends. With any of them.
"How can they risk putting Harvester on TV if he's not competent?" Sherard asked Hannafin, who shook his head in bemusement.
Danny Cheng said, "It can be done. Undetectable, which means no risk at all. I have friends in the computer business. All they need is the President's voice, some tapes of past speeches, and a camera in his empty office. They can give him any look they want, have him say anything, and it will be seamless, like a live feed."
"Maybe the American people can be fooled by camera tricks for a little while," Hannafin said. "But the President's business revolves around meetings and phone calls; otherwise he can't do business at all. Right now there's a conspiracy of silence about the condition he's in, but that conspiracy
will
be broken. Rona can only go so far with this. Question is, has she totally lost her own mind? Or does she believe with Victor Wilding's complicity and resources that she can get away with anything? What are the limits? Where are we headed? The day Rona Harvester set foot in the White House, I had real fear for our country. And I'm not the only one on the Hill who feelsâ"
Eden scraped her chair back, muttered "Excuse me," and walked swiftly away from the table, her head down. Bertie started to go after her. Tom Sherard gestured for her to stay put. Bertie thought about it, shook her head at him, and followed Eden.
When she caught up the two young women walked silently the half mile to the river. They took turns throwing sticks into the water for two of the ranch's Border collies to retrieve. After about ten minutes of this Eden sighed and glanced at Bertie.
"I'm sorry. That was rude, leaving like I did. I couldn't listen to any more of it."
Bertie shrugged. "Sensory overload. I've had some bad moments myself the last few hours."
"Right now I don't ... I can't care about everyone else's problems. I'm all raw inside. I just want to see Betts. Put my arms around her. Hold her. Be held."
"I'll drive you," Bertie offered.
PLENTY COUPS, MONTANA ⢠MAY 30 ⢠5:45 A.M. MDT
W
hile Eden had slept and dreamed, the planes arrived, as they did every day at this time. Because it was a National holiday the work force at MORG's Plenty Coups facility, nine miles east of the ramshackle town and twenty-two miles southwest of Billings, Montana, was reduced by one-third. Only four of the 216-passenger planes from the Airbus fleet landed at three-minute intervals on one of the two long runways. There was a control tower at Plenty Coups, a maintenance center with fire trucks and snow-removal equipment, six big hangars, and a cargo terminal. MORG also had its own cargo fleet, consisting of 747s and a couple of Russian-built air freighters. Everything used or discarded at the facility came and went by air, including the garbage. U.S. military and civilian aircraft seldom landed there; they needed high-security clearances to enter a rigidly enforced no-fly zone. The planes were painted a light gray and had no markings except for FAA buzz numbers. In the beginning, during construction of the facility, the windows of each Airbus were blacked out. This caused anxiety for many passengers and cases of vertigo, so the practice was discontinued.
Two of the planes came from their maintenance base at the little-used municipal airport in Billings. Another flight originated in Denver, a daily round trip of two and a half hours. The fourth came from Silicon Valley. Everyone at Plenty Coups worked a thirteen-hour day, three days a week, which made the longer commutes, from California, Colorado, or Washington State, tolerable. The pay scale, even for maintenance personnel, was very high, well above Civil Service levels. The pay compensated for minor inconveniences such as being grounded by weather for an extra shift or two. Multiphasic Operations and Research Group paid extremely well in return for absolute silence from its forty-one hundred Plenty Coups employees.