"I'm waiting. The chances of you delivering a nuke, which is what I assume you have, are about the same as Washington being hit by a meteorite. The odds are a lot better that you'll just blow yourself up. Criminals like you are long on tough talk and short on technology."
"This conversation is getting us nowhere. So just to make sure we understand each other, let me repeat the terms once again. The eight hundred million must be wired to the accounts I listed at the Geneva branch of Banco Ambrosiano within the next five hours. If it is not, the consequences will be more terrible than I hope you are capable of imagining. The loss of life and property will be staggering."
"Keep him talking," Briggs whispered across. "Keep a line open. Dialogue the fucker till—"
Hansen cleared his throat and nodded. "Look, if you'll just hold off a few more hours, maybe something can be done about the problems with the money. You have to try and understand it's not that easy . . ." His voice trailed into silence and he looked up. "The bastard cut the line, Ed. He's gone." He cradled the hand piece. "Shit."
Will the son of a bitch be ruthless enough to use one of those nukes? he was wondering. You can't really know, he answered himself. With a lunatic, you damned well never know.
12:40 a.m.
Bill Bates was still in his office, trying to do some heavy thinking and put his problems into sequential order. The first problem was that the bastards were killing his people, mostly just to make an example and instill terror. The next one he wasn't so sure about, but from what he had seen in his occasional glimpses of Control, Cally was missing. Apparently she had gone off with the fucker who called himself Number One and hadn't come back. Was she down at Launch? Doing what?
Well, Calypso Andros was a tough cookie. They might pressure her and threaten her, but she would stand up to them. These terrorists were just cowards with automatics; he could smell that much a mile away.
The next problem was SatCom itself. He hated to find himself thinking about it at a time like this, but the company was built on a pyramid of short-term debt—construction loans that could be rolled over and converted to long-term obligations only if the test launch proceeded as scheduled. It already had been postponed once, and the banks were getting nervous. If these thugs derailed the Cyclops for any length of time, the banks were going to move in and try to foreclose on all the computers and equipment. The litigation would stretch into the next century.