The Zenith Angle - Bruce Sterling [120]
“They all are,” said the woman thoughtfully. “Always. But I’ve come to like them, the Americans.”
“They are lovable, in a strange way?”
“All right, I don’t love them. But I love being American. Everyone on earth should be American. I put on my sunglasses. I go to Denver. I’m just a woman, I’m just a normal American woman. No one makes a bother of me, they just sell me whatever they have. ‘Have a nice day.’”
“I also like America very much,” the man confessed. “They know me too much in Bombay, Nairobi, and London. In America no one knows my face yet.”
“They must have noticed that you are very, very handsome.”
“Thank you so very much. But why would beauty make a man happy, Katrina? Duty. Duty is what makes a man happy . . .”
Van listened as Tony set to work to entertain his special guests. Tony’s audience did not fully understand his American English. This forced Tony to speak very slowly. His taut, ranting voice echoed from the top of the observatory vault. “You are about to see . . . the single most astonishing . . . and significant technical development . . . in the modern Revolution in Military Affairs . . .”
The dome’s great double doors opened to the black night sky. The observatory’s strawbale walls spun as lightly as a carousel.
Van hastily picked up another squawking earpiece. The open roof had hit the right vector. He was getting a signal from his cyberwar team.
Wimberley’s frantic voice. “. . . burst of electrical down there! When that wind picked up, they really . . .” Then Wimberley’s signal vanished, and Hickok and Gonzales were still blocked out.
“Now that our roof to the stars is open, I suggest we make our Iridium calls,” said Tony. “Mr. Gupta, you may call your home offices at the Research and Analysis Wing in New Delhi. And, Mr. Liang, perhaps you’ll be kind enough to call the Second Department Analysis Bureau in Beijing. It’s time for a joint understanding.”
An icy mountain draft rushed down from the black night sky. It chilled Van’s flesh as he crouched below the desk.
Overhead lights faded. New lights flashed on, stagily.
Van dared to press his belly to the floor and sneak a look around the desk. The Lady was beautifully lit now, a diva poised in creamy pools of light.
Van climbed to his feet in the thick gloom. His head pounded with the altitude. Tony and his guests were completely seduced by this gizmo. They had no idea that he was standing in a pool of darkness, watching them.
Van silently opened the fabric rifle case. He removed Tony’s gun. An elk rifle. It was loaded. There was a huge brass round already in the chamber.
Van leaned his elbows on the ergonomic desk and stared down the rifle’s scope. He picked their human faces out from the darkness, his crosshairs dissecting their heads. They were civilian targets. Utterly unsuspecting.
A Chinese functionary. He was an older man with thinning hair, a big gut, and a carpetbag. A younger Chinese man at his elbow, some flunky gopher and interpreter. His bodyguard had the stiff back and humorless scowl of an old-fashioned Red Army commissar.
Katrina DeFanti was a pleasant, middle-aged Chinese woman with nicely done hair and a roomy pink Chanel suit. She looked exactly like the kind of woman who should never, ever be shot at.
An Indian film star. Another Indian film star, even prettier. A much older Indian man, with an accordion-sided valise, a white Nehru jacket and whiskers. An impassive Sikh bodyguard, who looked like he was cut from solid teak.
Van had spent time in shooting ranges. He had learned a lot about rifles. He felt confident that he could put bullets into each one of them. But, as a professional cyberwarrior, he also knew that such crude behavior was counterproductive. Why had Tony bothered to hide a rifle inside this building? What on earth did he expect to gain by that pitiful tactic? For a struggle of the kind happening inside here, a simpleminded rifle was an admission of defeat. It was worse than stupid. A rifle was pure despair.
Van climbed back under the desk and returned to his surveillance duties.