Endworlds - Nicholas Read [9]
“You’re going to get to know it. Pack a bag.” Eisman leaned forward from behind the huge desk. “We’re leaving tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” Hills mentally weighed the task of unthreading any of the strings that bound Eisman’s calendar. “But you have meetings this week in London, then Ramstein with the military, Toulouse with Airbus . . .” He trailed off.
A thin smile crossed Eisman’s face. “Toulouse? You forget, I don’t like to lose, Bill. They’ll manage without me.”
Ever watchful of his friend’s welfare, Hills did not smile back at the quip. “Yes sir. That’s what worries me. If I might ask—why this sudden interest in Micronesia?”
“It’s not sudden.” Whirling in his chair, Eisman let one hand drag across an inbuilt set of controls. A three-dimensional map of the Earth materialized as lenses strobed through hidden grates in his desk. In tandem, electrochromic smartglass turned the wall-sized windows opaque.
The globe expanded as Raef reverse-pinched thumb and forefinger in midair, zooming in on water, water, more water, until he stabbed a finger and the image settled on a small island. Even at high magnification it was an insignificant speck.
“Pohnpei, Bill. We were over it, or nearly so, when that energy flash hit the plane and Paige disappeared. That’s Pohnpei in Micronesia, Bill, not Pompeii in Italy. Easy to get the names mixed up. And yes, I’m calling it an ‘energy flash’ because I believe something man-made caused this to happen, and not simple lightning. Maybe something with a military application. So as a father and as a CEO, you see, I have to investigate further.”
“Sir.” Hills swallowed, snatching at a dozen thoughts. This demanded tact, but firmness. “When your daughter—when Paige was last seen on the plane—it was at thirty thousand feet. Raef, we’ve been over this, old boy. Even if she was somehow knocked outside the aircraft without depressurizing the cabin and setting off every single alarm, the fall alone . . .” He shook his head sadly, not for the first time.
Eisman waved a hand over the controls, the globe vanished and the windows became transparent. He grinned at the prototype projector: “It sure gives Google Earth a run for its money.” With greater focus he turned back to his executive assistant.
“I don’t know what it is, Bill. I’m not crazy. I know it’s against the odds. But I’m looking for closure here. Answers. Do I believe thermal updrafts or an angular fall through the forest canopy could have cushioned her impact? From that height, as you say, it’s doubtful. And nobody can say if the girls would have landed in the water or on the island.
“I am a realist. But I need closure, answers, and that tiny island was directly below us when it happened. So we’re going to go look there, Bill, because even if what I find is unthinkable, at least I can bring her home to be beside her mother. Let me at least do that, Bill. For Jade.”
Hills paused, taken aback by the rare vulnerability. Yet despite his loyalties to the man he also had responsibilities to the company Raef and his forefathers had built.
He tried one more time.
“Your meetings, sir. Let’s plan this with a little more notice. The Board . . .”
“Come on. What can they do?”
He cocked an eyebrow. “Stop trying. Go pack.”
ONLY THREE FLIGHTS landed each week at Pohnpei3, bringing tourists and workers bouncing onto the twin strips of mangrove-buttressed, stunted runway that grazed the entire length of tiny Takatik Island. It was the only stop between Majuro and Chuuk and didn’t see many private jets. Especially not any as sleek as the Dassault Falcon 900EX, flagship of Burroughs Labs’ corporate fleet.
Buckled in for landing, Raef Eisman had his face all but pressed to the glass as he studied the green-swathed, reef-haloed island below. William Hills was not studying the scenery. He was watching his boss. Utilizing the company’s premier plane for business was one thing. Commandeering it for what everyone else regarded as a futile exercise in bathos was something else again.
Subordinates had kept Hills reasonably