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“Get the hell outta here,” he said, in no mood for humor.

She repeated herself, motioning for Tony to lower his voice.

“George Milne,” he mouthed. “Are you serious?”

She nodded and handed him the phone.

Tony cleared his throat. “Hello,” he said, trying to sound awake.

“Tony?”

“Yeah.”

“George Milne.”

“Good morning.”

“I’m not getting you at a bad time, am I?”

Basilica looked at the clock again. “Oh, no, of course not.”

“Can you make a meeting?”

“When?”

“Whenever you can get over to Pfizer.”

Basilica paused. “You mean this morning?”

“Yes,” he said, explaining that Claire was already in his office. “We’re here. How about six-thirty or seven?”

Basilica sat up. He couldn’t help thinking they were both nuts. “Would you mind if I bring John Markowicz if he’s available?”

“No, not at all.”

“We’ll see you at seven-thirty or as soon as we can get there.”

Basilica hung up and handed the phone back to Gwen, shaking his head. He could not believe the president of Pfizer and the president of Connecticut College were so intent on acquiring land in Fort Trumbull that they were having a meeting before six on a Saturday morning. He dressed and called Markowicz.

“Hey, how’d you like to go to a meeting?”

“When?”

“Now.”

Markowicz waited for the punch line. Basilica explained. Markowicz didn’t want to go in unprotected. Neither did Basilica.

Markowicz agreed to bring a one-page memorandum of understanding to the meeting. In it, Basilica would agree to ask the Defense Department to suspend the public auction of the navy base in exchange for Claire’s promise to prepare, at the NLDC’s expense, an application to acquire the property under an economic-development conveyance by August 31, 1998. If Claire refused to sign the agreement, Basilica and Markowicz would know that the NLDC and the state had no intention of paying for the navy property. If Claire signed it, then Basilica and Markowicz would be protected legally from any recourse that might come from delaying the auction. And the NLDC would have to pay for the navy property. Either way, both men figured the document would tease out Milne and Claire’s true intentions.

Just after eight o’clock, Markowicz and Basilica arrived at the Pfizer complex in Groton. A security guard escorted them to Milne, who led them to a private office. Inside, they found Claire at the head of the conference table.

Markowicz and Basilica immediately spotted a series of oversized drawings positioned on easels around the room. They depicted a conference center, a five-star hotel, high-end town houses, a health club, and business offices.

What am I looking at? thought Markowicz.

Basilica recognized the area—a ninety-acre swath of land stretching from the railroad tracks to the waterfront, which encompassed the Fort Trumbull neighborhood and the navy base. He noted that the design plans carried the signature of a firm under contract to Pfizer. Yet none of the land in the drawings actually belonged to Pfizer. Basilica wondered why Pfizer had designed plans to redevelop real estate it didn’t own. Markowicz had the same question.

They took seats at the conference table, facing Claire and Milne. A couple of Pfizer employees and an NLDC official filled in the other seats.

While Milne and Claire took turns speaking, Markowicz began connecting the dots. At the committee meeting a few weeks earlier, state officials had asked a lot of questions about how the state could acquire the base property from the federal government without any cost under the public-use provision, suggesting the state might want the land for a marine-education facility. But Markowicz didn’t see a marine-education facility on the schematic drawings; instead, he saw private commercial and residential uses, ones that would directly or indirectly benefit Pfizer.

“The issue that came up at the meeting,” Milne explained, “was whether a public auction would be the best use of what was a key waterfront piece of property. If there was no infrastructure or other things that were going to support that site, would it attract a strong presence