time we get back to base if you don’t let go of your dick and tell me what the damn problem is.”
At this the corporal came to attention. Hall’s lip curled at the corner. That was better.
“Sir, our guests have yet to arrive. Base reports they haven’t arrived there yet, either. Team needs an A-OK to continue without the VIP.”
Well, wasn’t that typical. A test order arrives with hardly any notice at all from the Department of Defense, with a whole lot of nonsense about a liaison from Atoms for Peace, and then the VIP in question hadn’t even turned up on time.
“Maybe she stopped off at the Statue of Liberty,” said the General.
“Sir?”
Hall shook his head. “The VIP doesn’t arrive at T-minus zero-six we’re closing this circus down. I’ve got better things to do than freeze my fanny in the Lower Bay.”
“Sir,” said the corporal. He slinked away.
Hall glanced around, towards the transport choppers sitting on the other side of the island. He presumed the VIP was coming by helicopter too, but the air was silent. There was no way she was going to arrive in time. He would have a word with the Secretary about this. There was work to be done, important, scare-the-Soviet-shitless work. He didn’t have time for this.
And as for the VIP, well, he wasn’t impressed by the so-called Director of Atoms for Peace. He’d never met her, but she sounded like a right PITA. In all the communications he’d seen that mentioned her, it was always in a strange, almost abstract way, like someone was hiding something. Probably embarrassed some civilian pencil-pusher had managed to land the top job, and a woman at that. If the work of this Atoms for Peace was so important, it should have had some brass in charge, someone from the Pentagon, a man who knew what he was doing. Even the name didn’t gel. Atoms for Peace? Some Commie-appeasing BS from Eisenhower… to think that man had led the US to victory in both Europe and the Pacific less than ten years before, too. Jesus.
Hall went to spit into the grass, but his mouth was dry again. He was going to meet Evelyn McHale and… and he felt nervous. He didn’t like it and he tried to ignore the growing anxiety in his chest. But truth was, he’d heard other things about the Director. Rumors, mostly, tall stories he’d dismissed without a second thought.
Until now.
He coughed and checked his watch.
“OK, show’s over. Pack it up. We can go bird watching some other time.”
“General Fulton Hall?”
The General sucked in a breath and turned. Standing behind him, under the marquee, was a woman in a smart dress suit, hat and veil, like she’d just stepped off Fifth Avenue. Fifth Avenue, 1947, that is.
She was also blue, monochrome behind a glowing aura that made Hall’s eyes vibrate like he was drilling concrete. A glowing blue woman floating six inches from the ground.
Hall remembered the whispers, the stories, and at the back of his mind something broke. His ears were filled with the roaring of the ocean and the memory of his mother.
He coughed again. Around him, his staff were staring at the woman who had not been there and was then there.
“Ma’am?” General Hall’s voice was a dry croak.
The woman glided around the trestle table at the back of the marquee and looked out across the water, oblivious to the reaction of those around her. There, Swinburne Island was a silhouette, the test rig a dark outline against the pale sky.
“Commence countdown,” she said, her voice full of something that made Hall want to cry and leap off a tall building.
Hall didn’t move; he just watched her. After a moment, some of his staff appeared to come to their senses.
“Sir?” The corporal again, his eyes fixed on the Director.
The General nodded, and tried to swallow, but his throat was parched.
The corporal spun on his heel and made a circular motion in the air with his index finger. At once, the assembled team sprang to life, sitting at desks, manning binoculars and telescopes, while several sat themselves behind a large bank of high-powered radio equipment and began murmuring into close-fitting headsets.
A PA squawked.
“T-minus six, zero-six, to test commencement.”
“What exactly am I looking at here?”
Someone had produced coffee out here in the middle of nowhere; General Hall had drained three paper cups of the stuff already, but his throat felt drier than ever.