Weapons of choice

The room felt like a museum piece, or perhaps a bedroom display in a department store that hadn't seen a paying customer in eighty years. Kolhammer's nose wrinkled at the smell of stale cigarette smoke. It was everywhere, blending with the body odor of a thousand previous guests, and the diffuse reek of old socks, sour perfume, and greasy, broiled meat. He found it hard to believe that the past stank so badly. It was a sick joke, really. He'd never thought he could be nostalgic for blank glass towers and thousands of miles of ribboning freeway. But he was.

Gazing out of the window, across Wilshire Boulevard to a diner shaped like a derby hat, and beyond that to blocks of low-rise, brown brick art deco apartments and office buildings, Phillip Kolhammer felt his mind drifting again toward disintegration.

He'd arrived before dawn in a DeSoto, been driven into the basement parking area, and shepherded up to his room by a Secret Service agent. The drive in had been like a carnival ride at first. The DeSoto was the real thing, a great cavernous chunk of heavy metal with leather seats that looked like they could have been taken right out of the hotel lobby. But he quickly tired of his fellow passengers, who smoked the entire time, and of the steel springs that dug into his back. Not to mention the lack of anything he'd recognize as a decent suspension system.

He'd tried to grab a few hours' sleep on the bed, but the uncomfortably dense and inflexible mattress felt wrong, and the air in the room tasted dead in his mouth.

A wardrobe full of civilian clothes awaited him, but Kolhammer had found them to be too heavy and prickly. He'd feel like he was in costume, wearing the dark, double-breasted woolen suits. Instead he'd showered and changed into a clean uniform that he'd brought in a travel case, stored in the small luggage bay on the in-flight refueler. LA was full of uniforms. And not just Americans. Contingents of Canadian, British, Australian, New Zealand, Free French, and even Dutch officers were quartered on the West Coast. He wouldn't stand out.

Kolhammer thought of his own people stuck at Edwards AFB-or Muroc as it was currently known. He hoped they were being treated well. You had to figure that facilities were pretty primitive out there.

He checked his watch. Two hours until he was to meet with Roosevelt again. He was supposed to rest, but instead he picked up the heavy handset of the phone on his bedside table. It wasn't even an old dial phone. The face was completely blank.

A male voice answered. "Yes, sir."

"I'd like to go for a walk, clear my head."

"We'll be right there."

He waited. The door wasn't locked, and he could have left anytime he wanted to, but he accepted the need to maintain strict security. The papers were already full of rumors out of Hawaii. A copy of the old Examiner that had been pushed under his door had a lead story about the Japanese being driven away from Midway by a secret navy superweapon.

The real story was going to break soon. Everybody could feel it. The embedded journalists were screeching like caged baboons back in Pearl, demanding to be let off the leash. Personally, he would have let them go well before now. He was used to working with the embeds. They'd generally do the story you wanted, as long as you spoon-fed it to them. But the locals were still trying to get their heads around the reality of the Transition and the destruction of the Pacific Fleet. They wanted to keep the lid on a little longer. And Kolhammer could feel the pressure building.

Somebody rapped on the door, twice, softly. "Admiral?"

"Come in."

The special agent who'd led him up to the room entered with another man. From the generic cut of their clothes, and a common air of high-tone thuggery, Kolhammer took the new guy to be another special agent.

"Agent Stirling will secure your room and equipment, Admiral," said the first man, confirming the assumption.

"You mind if we call on Professor Einstein?" Kolhammer asked. "I'd like to talk to him before the meeting."

The agent shrugged. Clearly it meant nothing to him.

They padded along the thickly carpeted corridor to a room six doors down. The whole place put Kolhammer in mind of an expensive bordello. The thin squeal of a violin behind the door told him that Einstein was up and about.

"I'm sorry, Agent," Kolhammer said quietly. "I've forgotten your name."

"Agent Flint, sir," the Secret Service officer replied as he rapped on the door, twice, firmly, to be heard over the violin.

The sound of the instrument ceased with an abrupt, atonal note.

The door opened and the sight of that famous shock of hair greeted them. Standing there in his boxer shorts, Einstein looked a little ticked off, until he saw Kolhammer.

"Ah! Come in, come in. Good morning to you, Admiral."

"Actually, I was wondering if you'd like to come out for a short stroll, Professor. Maybe we could grab a coffee."

Einstein laughed, a short sharp bark.