The Omega Command (27 page)

“He’s what?”

“It came as a shock to me too. I just got the order to move—”

“Thank you,” Sandy broke in, and abruptly hung up.

She grabbed for the receiver again and dialed T.J.’s home phone number. It rang and rang. No answer.

Your assistant is on vacation. …

Sandy felt a dread chill creep up her spine. With the receiver still in her hand, she dialed Stephen Shay’s private number.

“Mr. Shay’s office.”

“Mr. Shay, please. Sandy Lister calling.”

“I’m sorry, Miss Lister, I’m afraid he’s not in.”

“When will he be back?”

“Not for two weeks. He’s gone to Europe for a special conference.”

“Did he leave a forwarding? This is somewhat of an emergency.”

“I’m afraid not,” said the secretary, and Sandy hung up.

Because a man in Shay’s position always left a forwarding address. Unless he had never left at all. Unless it was a front.

Everything was a front.

They had T.J. They had Shay.

Sandy spent the rest of Monday on the phone begging for appointments with a host of NASA officials. None would see her. With two she went so far as to mention
Pegasus
and received only curt denials. No one was talking. So there would be no help from NASA, not immediately, anyway, and immediately was all that mattered.

That left her only with Dolorman, and she had a strategy prepared. A small tape recorder hidden in her handbag would capture the entire interview. After it was over she would go to the FBI. She would tell them about the plagiarized Krayman Chip and the billionaire’s obsession with controlling America. She would tell them about COM-U-TECH’S possession of
Adventurer’s
orbital flight plan and the thing Krayman had sent up into space in the guise of a satellite. When they asked for proof, she would hand them the tape recording of her interview with Dolorman. They could run it through their sophisticated machines to discover how many lies were told in response to her direct questions. Of course, that meant she would have to pose them, and that in itself was a grave risk.

Arriving at the Krayman Tower barely an hour before, she had been escorted up by a security guard in Dolorman’s private elevator. Now the same guard was escorting her down and she felt for the reassuring bulge of the tape recorder in her handbag as she replayed the interview in her mind.

Dolorman’s office was huge and plushly decorated. The wall paintings were originals and there were bookshelves filled with leather-bound editions lining one wall. Dolorman’s desk, though, made the greatest impact on her. It was unquestionably the largest she had ever seen, neat and clean, without a trace of clutter.

“Please excuse me for not rising, Miss Lister,” Dolorman said. “But my back has been a burden for several years now and is growing worse.”

Sandy stepped forward and moved halfway between the door and his desk. “Yes, that turned up in my research.”

They eyed each other briefly as the secretary closed the door behind her.

“Your research must have been quite exhaustive,” Dolorman said.

“Just professional.”

“Please, Miss Lister, sit down.”

Sandy took the Chippendale chair a yard in front of the white-haired man’s desk. As she reclined, her hand located the tape recorder through the fabric of her handbag and switched it on.

“You’ll have to excuse my uneasiness,” Dolorman continued. “I don’t grant many interviews.”

“The network and I both appreciate the exception.”

“But the terms are understood, correct?”

Sandy nodded. “Nothing filmed goes on the air prior to your approval. I’ll have the written agreements prepared before I return with a crew.”

“Now it is I who appreciate the exception.” Dolorman leaned painfully forward. “It would help, though, if I understood what precisely the story is going to entail.”

“It started out as a detailed profile of Randall Krayman, the richest man in the world. …”

“Many would dispute that.”

“It doesn’t matter. I found Krayman to be a fascinating individual, a man incredibly attuned to future trends, with the fortitude to throw vast sums into them. I felt there were a great many unanswered questions about this man whose power and influence touches so many lives. I set out to provide some of those answers in my profile.”

“An ambitious pursuit indeed, since you were aware from the beginning that an interview with Mr. Krayman was out of the question.”

“Actually, for a while I entertained hopes of at least arranging a telephone conversation with presubmitted questions if necessary. I thought I might be able to convince you to set it up for me.”

Dolorman chuckled. “Miss Lister, you overestimate my influence with Randall Krayman.”

“But you are the only man with direct access to him.”

“That I have never denied. I am in constant contact with him, in fact, because he still maintains an active interest in the vast holdings he painstakingly built up by anticipating those future trends you spoke of.”

“Then why did he withdraw?”

“Pressure, I suppose. Randall Krayman loved everything he did, but it reached a point where there was too much to love, too many decisions for any one man to make with the kind of attention and consideration Randall Krayman prided himself on. He just lost patience and wanted to be away from it all for a while.”

“Does five years constitute a while, Mr. Dolorman?”

Dolorman’s face turned contemplative. “Time is the one thing money can’t buy, Miss Lister. I’m sorry if that sounds clichéd, but in Randall Krayman’s case it was the truth. He had reached his forties and suddenly the things lacking in his life seemed greater than his awesome worth. There was never time for marriage or a family. Numerous mansions, resorts, estates, even private islands, but not one thing he could really consider his own.”

“When is a house not a home,” Sandy murmured.

“Something like that, I suppose. And the problem in Randall Krayman’s case is that he treated them more like hotels to pass through when it was convenient.”

“So this five-year sabbatical was taken so he could enjoy his property.”

“It’s far more complicated than that. If it was possible for me to arrange the interview you seek, you’d understand. But Randall Krayman would never agree to it. He has come to loathe public attention. He prefers the status of enigma. I should think that would make profiling him quite a challenge, even for you.”

“I’ve had to proceed on the theory that a man is the sum of his deeds, Mr. Dolorman. And that led to a change in the story’s focus.”

“Oh?”

“Someone I spoke with early in my research said you couldn’t separate Randall Krayman from Krayman Industries, that they were synonymous,” Sandy said, thinking of T.J., and with that a new flood of anger surged through her. “Would you agree with that?”

“To a point I would have to.”

“So I changed the conceptual focus of the story from Krayman himself to his vast multinational holdings, especially those centered around COM-U-TECH.”

“Why COM-U-TECH?”

“Because it’s the most current of his successful ventures. Today’s television viewers don’t want to hear about plastics or oil. They want to hear about computers and technology.
Telecommunications
is the great catchphrase these days, isn’t it?”

Dolorman just looked at her.

“What kind of man would Randall Krayman be judged if that judgment were based on the sum of his deeds dealing with telecommunications, Mr. Dolorman?”

“If you’re speaking of his holdings in cable television, his programming has opened up completely new avenues of broadcasting. It has shown that providing important public services can be accomplished while also turning a profit.”

Sandy felt her heart thumping against her chest. She couldn’t back off now.

“I can’t argue with that, Mr. Dolorman, but what about beyond cable television? What about commercial television stations, network affiliates?”

“Krayman Industries owns several.”

“How many?”

“I don’t have the exact figures in front of me.”

“Just estimate.”

Now it was Dolorman’s turn to square his jaw. “Miss Lister, I know enough about reporters to be aware that they never ask a question they don’t already have the answer to. Why don’t you tell me?”

“My research has found twenty-seven individual franchises.”

“A clear violation of current laws. Obviously, the FCC disagrees with you.”

“Maybe they haven’t looked as hard. I found the ownerships buried within a maze of Krayman holdings.”

Dolorman digested the information and wet his lips. “Our unusual interests in the field of telecommunications have led to mergers and buyouts of other smaller companies with similar interests, though on a much smaller scale. When we absorbed them, it is quite possible a number of television stations strung along, but I assure you there is no pattern in what you have discovered. The action on our part was wholly inadvertent.”

“Would you be willing to say that on camera?”

“I don’t see why not.”

“Because it might lead to questions concerning the Krayman Chip.”

Dolorman simply smiled, and the smile grew into a faint private laugh. “I see the rumors have reached you. I suspected as much.”

“What rumors?” Sandy asked, disappointed by the calm of his rejoinder.

“That we stole the chip from a man named Hollins and called it our own.” Dolorman shook his head, still smiling.

“Pure fabrication, I assure you.”

“I suppose you can prove that,” Sandy said lamely.

“We don’t have to. Miss Lister, there are people who make their livings out of developing good cases for someone else’s patented discovery being a ripoff of their own. They are more devious than clever. They know a long court fight would be far more costly than a modest settlement, and they are experts on gathering enough circumstantial evidence to insure that the fight will be a long one. This man Hollins was the foremost expert of them all.”

“Except the case never went to court. Randall Krayman paid him sixty million dollars for what was then a worthless company, Mr. Dolorman.”

“Then, yes, due almost entirely to Mr. Hollins’s mismanagement and nothing else. Mr. Krayman doubled his initial investment in that company in the first two years, Miss Lister. And if you’re really concerned about accuracy, it might interest you to know that the takeover bid began almost a year
before
the inception of the Krayman Chip. The whole incident was a ruse cooked up by Hollins to jack up the price of his company.”

Sandy felt stymied. She could sit here and poke holes in Dolorman’s answers all day long, but the fact of the matter was they were reasonable and would have stood up even on camera. His coolness under pressure surprised her. She had underestimated him and now she felt beaten. Frustrated, she felt her own strategy of patient prying beginning to waver.

“How many communications satellites does COM-U-TECH have in orbit?” she asked suddenly.

“Three, I believe.”

“Three launched from Houston.” And now the bluff. Sandy steeled her eyes. “And one from France.”

Dolorman’s eyebrows flickered. “Really? I’m afraid I have no knowledge of that.”

“Do you have knowledge about one of your employees who was murdered in New York last week?”

The surprise on the man’s face looked genuine. “I hadn’t heard.”

“His name was Benjamin Kelno, and he was a researcher at COM-U-TECH. He slipped a computer disk into my handbag before he died. The disk contained the orbital flight plan for the space shuttle
Adventurer.
”

Dolorman’s concern looked as genuine as his surprise. “Did you report this to the proper authorities?”

“Would you have wanted me to?”

“Miss Lister, if one of our employees is engaged in something illegal or unethical, I would report him or her myself.”

“Why would COM-U-TECH need that program?”

“COM-U-TECH? I thought you said you received it from Kelno.”

“I was just making an obvious connection.”

“Not to me, it isn’t. Krayman Industries employs almost one million people. We can’t possibly be responsible for the actions of each one.”

“How did you get the disk out of the network office?” Sandy demanded, frustration feeling like an acid pit in the core of her stomach.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“It was stolen. You got it back.”

“Miss Lister, your rudeness is—”

“Was Krayman Industries responsible for the destruction of the space shuttle?”

“
What?
No. Of course not.”

“Does Krayman Industries control something in space
capable
of destroying the space shuttle?”

Dolorman’s face was flushed red with anger. “Miss Lister,” he began, struggling to restrain his voice, “this line of questioning has gone about as far as—”

“What did you do with T.J. Brown and Stephen Shay?”

“Who?”

“Two people I work with at the network who conveniently disappeared. Did Krayman Industries have anything to do with it?”

“I won’t justify that with an an—”

“I think you should.”

“Then the answer to all your questions is no. And let me spare you the trouble of posing any further ones by answering no to all of them now.” Dolorman rose deliberately, the motion obviously causing him pain. “Miss Lister, I agreed to this interview in part due to your reputation for being fair, honest, and nonconfrontational. I don’t know what you hope to gain from these wild accusations, but I will tell you now that no one in the employ of Krayman Industries will provide any assistance in completing this story of yours.” He regarded her with a maliciously bent stare. “I would threaten you with damage to your career, but I won’t because I’m sure you will do plenty of damage all by yourself before much longer. You have tarnished your own reputation this day, and the damage may well be irreparable.”

“Mr. Dolorman—”

“Miss Lister,” Dolorman interrupted louder, “our interview has come to a close. I am going to do you a great favor, though I can’t say why. There is a button under my desk that goes direct to our security department. I am going to wait two minutes before pressing it. If you leave right now, that will give you time to exit the building without an embarrassing escort.”