7
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Two weeks later, Thrasher sat in the office of his corporation’s chief Washington representative, waiting for the man to return from a conference on Capitol Hill. Thrasher Digital’s D.C. office was distinctly more sumptuous than the corporate headquarters in Houston. It didn’t pay to look seedy in Washington; elegant décor bespoke of money and power. It was a language that political decision-makers understood instinctively.
Thrasher glanced at his wristwatch. After eleven o’clock already. Impatiently, he got to his feet and went to the window. Traffic was heavy down on K Street: cars, taxis, buses inching along in a sluggish clot. Even the sidewalks were jammed with well-dressed pedestrians.
Most of them are employees of the goddamned government, Thrasher thought. They all spend every waking hour trying to figure out how to spend my tax money.
The office door banged open and in breezed Reynold R. Reynolds.
“Sorry to keep you waiting, Artie,” he said, grabbing Thrasher’s hand in a big, meaty paw, then hurrying to his broad, uncluttered desk. “Big pow-wow with Senator Nicholson.”
Widely known as “R Cubed,” Reynolds was a large man, tall and portly, who always wore a crafty expression on his fleshy face, a sort of disdainful smirk that seemed to say, “I know more about the ins-and-outs of this town than you do.”
Thrasher knew that R Cubed was very knowledgeable, but he didn’t know everything. He didn’t know, for example, that someone was trying to buy his way into Thrasher Digital’s board of directors. And Thrasher had no intention of telling him about the subtle raid his stock was suffering. One word to Reynolds and the news would be all over Washington, and then spread like a tsunami across the business world. For the way Reynolds maintained his reputation for knowing things was by telling everyone almost everything he knew. Almost.
“So what’s the chairman of the Senate appropriations committee have to say for himself?” Thrasher asked, sitting himself in front of the desk.
Reynolds took a pipe from the rack on his desk and stuck it in his mouth, unlit. He knit his brow, pursed his lips, and stroked his double chin. “The usual. The Democrats don’t care a rat’s ass about space and the Republicans are only interested because the Democrats aren’t.”
“The next NASA budget?”
“It’ll grow, but only by the inflation index. One percent, maybe a little more.”
“Nothing about Mars.”
Reynolds huffed. “Hell, they even canceled the latest unmanned rover project. NASA’s not going any farther than the International Space Station, not for the life of this administration. And then some.”
“What about that big telescope they want to put into space?” Thrasher asked.
“Barely squeaked through the budget review. It’s years late and a couple billion over budget, but it’s got major contractors in so many different states that the Congress has to keep it on life-support.”
“They’re not worried about the Chinese?”
Another huff. “Chairman of the Senate committee on commerce, science, and transportation—that’s where NASA’s pigeonholed in the Senate’s pecking order, in with airline safety and fisheries—anyway, the committee chairman told me, ‘If the Commies want to put a man on the Moon, I say, good luck to them.’”
Thrasher grumbled, “Idiot.”
“Smart politician,” Reynolds corrected. “There’s no political push for space. No bloc of votes that can toss a politician out of office if he doesn’t vote for bigger space appropriations.”
“What about those grassroots organizations? The Planetary Society? The National Space whatever?”
“Small and powerless. Staff people up on the Hill regard them as a bunch of kooks.”
“I’m supposed to speak at their international meeting in a couple of months.”
Reynolds shrugged. “Might do you more harm than good.”
Thrasher nodded. “Maybe.”
Hunching forward in his oversized desk chair, Reynolds said, “Look: NASA’s being hamstrung. There’s no political push for space.”
“But companies like Boeing, Orbital Science, SpaceX—they’re doing business—”
“Ferrying people and cargo up the ISS and back,” Reynolds interrupted. “Running a bus line to low Earth orbit. At prices the government sets. Hell, Virgin Galactic doesn’t even go that far, they just sell you a ride up about a hundred miles and then you come right back down again.”
“People pay good money for that ride.”
“Piffle. Compared to what you’re trying to do, it’s small change. Nobody in this town has any interest in trying to get the government back into space in a major way.”
Thrasher sunk his head. But he was thinking, Good. Good. Keep the goddamned government out of it.
“How good are you at snooping?” Thrasher asked.
Patti Fabrizio looked up from her champagne cocktail. “Me? Snooping?” A sly smile curved her thin lips.
The two of them were sitting in a corner of the Cosmos Club’s bar, as far from the entrance as they could get. The darkly paneled room was designed to allow people to hold private conversations, safe from prying eyes and ears.
Thrasher had first met Patricia Fabrizio at an embassy party, so long ago that he had still been married to his first wife at the time. Patti had been a reporter for Fox News back in those days, and a good one. She was regally tall, a bit over six feet, and slim as a marathon runner—which she had been in her college days. Born to old Virginia money, she had gone into TV news when she fell in love with Daniel Fabrizio, who taught journalism at the university she attended. Their marriage endured until Danny died in a train wreck just outside of the District of Columbia. She had never remarried, but she stayed with news reporting. She found that she enjoyed prying secrets out of politicians.
Thrasher was having a drink with her in the Cosmos Club bar before flying back to Houston.
Leaning so close that their heads almost touched, he confided, “Somebody’s making a run at my stock. Started a couple of weeks ago and whoever it is is still nibbling away.”
She grew serious. “How do you know it’s a raid? Maybe your stock looks attractive.”
With a shake of his head, Thrasher said, “No more attractive than it was a month ago. And the word’s out on the Street that I’m going to be dumping a lot of the corporation’s assets into the Mars program—”
“What Mars program?”
Nearly two hours later, Patti knew almost as much about the workings of Thrasher Digital as Thrasher himself did. The bar had emptied of its cocktail-hour customers and was slowly filling up again with more serious drinkers. An aging, pot-bellied Senator towed a low-cut blonde up to the bar, where they sat on display, in full view of everyone.
Patti sniffed at the man’s arrogance, then turned back to Thrasher. “So you think somebody’s trying to buy his way onto your board?”
Thrasher nodded.
She fingered her nearly-empty glass. It was her third champagne cocktail, but the liquor didn’t seem to affect her at all.
“And then kick you out?” she continued.
“I own more stock than anybody else, but not an absolute majority. Whoever it is might be able to build up a coalition—”
“A cabal.”
“Whatever. They could bounce me out.”
“Or maybe,” she said, slowly, “maybe they want to acquire a healthy block of your shares, then dump them. Start a panic. Depress the price of your stock. Ruin your company.”
Thrasher felt appalled. “I never thought of that.”
“You’re too much in love with your company to think anybody could stoop so low.”
“But why? Why would anybody want to wreck the company?”
That sly smile returned. “You don’t have any enemies?”
“Nobody who’s that sore at me. I think. Years ago, maybe, when I was just starting the company. But not now.” Again he added, “I think.”
“You haven’t stepped on any toes? Stolen a woman from somebody, maybe?”
“Me?” Thrasher was honestly surprised at the thought.
“I’ve heard stories about some of your lady friends,” Patti said. “In fact, why couldn’t the culprit be some woman you dumped?”
“I don’t dump women!”
“Hell hath no fury, you know.”
“Jeez, Patti. I’m asking you for help and all you’re doing is giving me heartburn.”
She laughed heartily. “All right, Artie, all right. I’ll poke around a little for you.”
“Discreetly,” he said, making a shushing motion with both hands. “Quietly.”
“Like a little mouse,” said Patti.
But Thrasher got a mental impression of a lean, hard-eyed cheetah stalking its prey.