The Zenith Angle - Bruce Sterling [94]
Jeb had forwarded a first-class flame from some Pentagon rat inside the Joint Chiefs. General Wessler hadn’t signed off on this bureaucratic nasty-gram himself. Wessler wasn’t the kind of guy to be that dumb. Van knew that it had Wessler’s fingerprints, though.
Stingingly, the complaint didn’t even mention Van by name. It was all about “two self-appointed technicians from the so-called Transformational Communications Architecture Office.” Van found himself described as “some know-it-all Beltway buffoon” and “that Ivy League professor in his beard and beret.” A beret, for God’s sake?
Most of the rest of Van’s e-mail centered on the CCIAB’s Virginia event. This was quickly taking on the proportions of a major crisis. The CCIAB was quickly running out of time and leeway.
The CCIAB might be one place where the buck stopped, but they were too small and too temporary to function in the long term. Even the National Security Council was not big enough to run the giant federal government. The NSC just talked to the people, who talked to the people, who ran the federal government. Very soon, fatally soon, the CCIAB would be facing the fate of a million other small blue-ribbon boards and small federal advisory committees. Deliver, and die.
Jeb had bet the farm on this battle in Virginia. It was going to be the CCIAB’s Bull Run and Gettysburg all at once.
Strapped like a bondage victim in his narrow tourist-class seat at thirty thousand feet, Van was grim. He never asked Tony Carew for favors, but now his situation was hitting the fan. In pulling Tony, he was going to be pulling his last trump.
Tony’s ever-eager answering service, a voice-mail jail full of sexy robots, told him that Tony was in Taipei. Van tugged at the aircraft’s phone wire and persisted.
When Van finally managed to appear at Tony’s ear, Tony was very tolerant about it. Jet lag never bothered Tony. Tony was even elated.
The reason for this soon came up. The Indian girlfriend had just fled from Tony’s hotel suite. Tony was insanely thrilled by her visit. Somehow, against all odds, Tony had stolen her from her watchful family in Bombay for one secret, rapturous night, with just the two of them, and none of her relations, servants, managers, or groomers. Tony couldn’t have been prouder if he had magically raised the Titanic.
Tony granted Van his favor without a second thought. Then he went right back to chew and jaw on his obsession.
It sure mattered a whole lot to Tony that this girlfriend of his was supposedly “the world’s most beautiful woman.” Van scowled. After hearing from Dottie about it, Van had changed his mind about Tony’s infatuation. Dottie was right, she was always the voice of good sense. This was not a healthy relationship for Tony, this goofy long-range romance with the constant travel. Tony needed to settle down with a woman that he could depend on.
Why was Tony missing the obvious truth about her? His girlfriend was a movie star from a foreign country. It wasn’t her business to really care about Tony Carew. If he ever went broke, if he ever got sick, that little fortune hunter would be gone from his life like a shot.
Tony ranted on, tirelessly. Van finally excused himself and hung up. He waited ninety seconds, slid a different credit card through the phone, and called Michael Hickok’s cell phone.
“I’m up in a plane,” he told Hickok.
Hickok dropped his cell phone with a clatter. Van heard drunken giggling in the background. Hickok scrabbled the phone up. “Gimme a break. I’m with a lady friend and I’m not even wearing pants.”
Over the roar of the plane’s engines, the giggles sounded a lot like Fawn Glickleister. At least, Van hoped it was Fawn. It was pretty horrible to think that two women in the world would both giggle like that, and that Michael Hickok would sleep with both of them.
“Mike, you’re a pilot, right?”
“I’ve got a pilot’s license,” Hickok said, yawning. “That don’t make me Top Gun.”
“Okay, you remember that AFOXAR device we were working on? The hijacker interface that overrides and controls private