Part 55 (2/2)
Grins and thumbs-up gestures filled the control center; the overhead lights were back to full brightness.
”It didn't go off!” Jinny Anson crowed, exultant, almost jumping up and down.
”Wicksen did it,” said Doug, still only half believing it.
O'Malley got up from the chair beside him. ”I'm going to check out the dust dispersal systems one more time. Looks like we'll need 'em now.' He was grinning broadly as he strode out of the control center.
”Put through a call to Wicksen,” Anson said. ”We ought to congratulate him.”
Doug nodded, but asked, ”How much damage did the warhead do when it hit the ground?”
A technician's voice answered, ”The bird bullseyed on the central solar farm. Knocked out eleven panels and a main feeder line. Our power capacity is down by two percent.”
”We can live with that,” Anson said quickly.
Yes, Doug thought. We can live with that. We can even fight with that.
In the tight confines of the editing booth, Edith had followed the telescope view of the incoming missile warhead, holding her breath, not daring to speak. But when she saw no flash of an explosion and the warhead clunked into the middle of one of the arrays of solar panels spread across the ground, she whooped an involuntary Texas victory yell.
”It didn't go off!” she said into her headset microphone, hovering a centimeter from her lips. ”Moonbase's missile defense system worked!”
She reached out across the control board and activated a chip that held a pre-recorded interview with Wicksen, explaining how the particle beam accelerator at the ma.s.s driver could be turned into a beam gun. While the canned interview played out, Edith checked with Doug at the control center.
”He's on another call,” said the comm tech. From the radiant smile on the technician's face Edith knew that she'd been right; the nuclear warhead hadn't exploded.
”I just want confirmation from him that the nuke didn't go off,” Edith explained.
”It didn't.”
”Yeah, right. But I need to get his handsome face on Global Network for the whole world to see him saying it didn't go off.”
”I'll give him your message.”
”Do that,” Edith snapped, feeling nettled. But then she thought, Doug must be up to his scalp in snakes. He won't have time for the news media.
She put through a call to Wicksen, out at the ma.s.s driver, instead.
”I swear to you, Joanna, I knew nothing of this,” said Ibrahim al-Ras.h.i.+d.
He was perched nervously on one of the upholstered chairs in Joanna's living room. It was two in the morning. Ras.h.i.+d looked baggy-eyed, his clothes hurriedly thrown on. The house was still swarming with police and Masterson Corporation security people. Lev's body had been taken away, zippered into a black body bag. His murderer's body, cut almost in half by the submachine gun bullets that had killed him, remained up in her bedroom while the police and security team took fingerprints and photographs.
”He was a Masterson security guard,” Joanna said, her voice venomously low. ”He was trying to kill me.”
”Joanna,” Ras.h.i.+d said, almost pleading, ”You can't believe that I had anything to do with this!”
”I don't know what to believe,” she replied, staring hard at him. She was sitting tensely on the sofa, still wearing nothing more than the silk robe she had pulled on upstairs.
”He must have been a New Morality fanatic,” Ras.h.i.+d said.
”Or an a.s.sa.s.sin from Yamagata.”
”No! Why would Yamagata want you a.s.sa.s.sinated?”
”I don't know,” Joanna said tightly. ”I intend to find out.”
”I'm so sorry about Lev,” Ras.h.i.+d said, his head drooping. ”I liked him.”
”He looked familiar to me,” Joanna murmured.
”Familiar?”
The security guard, the a.s.sa.s.sin. He'd been around the house for several days and I thought that somehow he looked familiar but I couldn't place where I'd seen him before.”
”Are you sure...?”
”I should have told the security chief then and there,” Joanna said in a choked whisper, speaking more to herself than to Ras.h.i.+d. ”I should have realized something wasn't right.”
”It isn't your fault,” Ras.h.i.+d said.
She focused her gray-green eyes on him, like a pair of guns. ”Then whose fault is it?”
”Not mine!” Ras.h.i.+d fairly yelped. ”Joanna, I know we've had our differences over corporate policy, but I would never - never - I mean, something like this...” I mean, something like this...”
Joanna leaned back against the sofa's soft pillows. ”I want to believe you, Omar. I hope you're telling me the truth.”
Ras.h.i.+d swallowed visibly. There was nothing he could say to erase the suspicion in her eyes.
”Mrs Brudnoy?” Captain Ingersoll called from the dining room doorway.
She looked up at him. ”Yes? What is it?”
Stepping slowly, hesitantly into the living room, Ingersoll held up a hand-sized computer. ”I think we've made a positive ID on the killer.”
”Who is it?”
Aiming his hand set at the Windowall screen above the fireplace, Ingersoll said, ”We ran a computer check on his fingerprints...”
The big screen atop the mantle showed two sets of inky whorls.
”He used to work for the corporation years ago, mostly up at Moonbase.”
The fingerprints were replaced by two photographs: both ID pictures, taken twenty-five years apart.
”Jack Killifer!” Joanna gasped.
”That's his name,” Ingersoll agreed, nodding. ”The photo on the right was taken when he joined our security department, few weeks ago. You can see he trimmed down his hair, darkened it, and grew a moustache.”
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