VELOCITY - DEE JACOB [31]
“No!” Amy shot to her feet and pounded her desk with her slim hand. “NO! They cannot do this!”
“Well, I’m sorry, but they did,” said Linda.
“Effective immediately? What about tomorrow? We have to go to Rockville!”
“Here are the options: you can fly from here south to Atlanta and then take a flight north to Dulles or BWI. That’s probably your best shot. Or, you can fly west to Nashville–”
“Linda, we need to fly north. Isn’t there an option that flies north, not west or south or east?”
“Well, there is one, but you have to go to Pittsburgh first, and then it’s a three-hour layover.”
Amy slapped her forehead with the bottom of her palm.
“Wait a minute … who was that guy?” Amy asked. “That pilot?”
“Dawson. Dawson Aviation.”
“Call him. See what he can do for us.”
5
From a standing start, as the red light turned green, the silver Porsche Cayman S was doing eighty miles per hour through the apex of the curve down the on-ramp and was well over 100 mph and still accelerating as the car merged onto I-270. The hour was early; there was as yet very little traffic. And the driver, Dr. Viktor Kyzanski, from bitter experience, knew the location of every likely speed trap, as he drove this route almost every day. Where he could do so with reasonable “safety,” Viktor pushed the car several times to 130 or so – two times the legal limit – streaking along under a beautiful blue summer sky through the green Maryland countryside. But within twenty miles, the joyride was over. He was slogging along, bumper to bumper, with all the other commuters, lucky that the traffic was moving at all.
Dr. Kyzanski, as he often introduced himself, was vice president and director of Hi-T Formulation & Design. He hated the “Hi-T” part of his title, despised the company logo, which he thought was ugly, but he could do nothing about those at present – someday, perhaps, but not now. He was relatively young – forty-seven – and extremely well paid, and he assumed he still had ample room to move if he so chose. (The acquisition by Winner delighted him.) Even so, he was in no hurry. For the most part he enjoyed his position and his work. He was very comfortable, and not about to leave.
The two glass-walled, multistoried buildings housing F&D were tucked away in a woods beside the interstate. Viktor made the most of a little S curve on the access road that meandered through the trees. He then parked the Porsche in his reserved spot next to Building One. Several spaces up from his in the empty parking lot, in the spot marked “Reserved for S. Schwick, Chief Chemist,” was a bicycle.
Sarah Schwick was in her office near the chem lab, entering her comments into a spreadsheet containing test data. She was thin, almost bony, and just over five feet tall. Her hair was mousy brown and cropped short – she never paid much attention to it. Her face was dominated by thick glasses with icy-steel frames, but when she took them off, her face was very pretty. Beyond that, the best that could be said about her physically was that she was in shape. She jogged regularly and commuted on her bike – she didn’t even own a car; she rented them when necessary, ordered almost everything over the internet, and had her groceries delivered.
Viktor came quietly into her office and stood behind her. He checked his Rolex; the time was not even seven o’clock. He then put his hands on her shoulders and began to massage them gently.
“You’re here early,” he said.
Without taking her eyes off the numbers on the screen, Sarah said distractedly, “The Highboro people are coming in today. I wanted to get through some of these lab reports before they show up.”
“Was that the only reason?”
He began to kiss the back of her neck. She ignored him, or pretended to, until she had typed in the last of her comments. Then Sarah stood up, went to the door, and peeked both ways to be sure no one was around. She shut the door and pushed in the thumb lock. When she