Conquistador Read online

  Still… is the whole company composed of boys barely old enough to shave?

  Rolfe stood about five-ten, lean and athletic, with short-cut bronze-colored hair and level leaf-green eyes, a straight-nosed, fine-boned face with that planes-and-angles look they called “chiseled,” and was probably quite a success with the ladies. No more than thirty at the outside, maybe a bit younger; hard to tell with that weathered outdoorsman’s tan.

  Smooth, too.

  Very expensive but conservative suit: Saville Row, the sort few Englishmen could afford in these days of shabby austerity in London. It contrasted with the hand that shook his, long pianist’s fingers that were also callused and very strong, with a Virginia Military Institute class ring. Southern accent but not “hush-mah-mouf”; he’d have placed it somewhere south of the Mason-Dixon line but within fifty miles of the Chesapeake. Overall, this John Rolfe VI had a sheen like antique beechwood furniture.

  Old money, or at least a family that had had money once. Not at all the type you expected to see at the head of a hungry young firm still clawing its way up the greasy pole in a notoriously rough-and-ready business like mining.

  But RM&M was a new outfit, based out of the East Bay, specializing in buying up and refurbishing minerals properties in the Far East wrecked during the war, with sidelines in Persia, Angola and the Belgian Congo. That was risky with the political turmoil in Asia, but they’d been doing extremely well. He’d heard about some substantial purchases of dredging equipment for riverbed mining, some hard-rock gear, and great job lots of the sort of stuff you’d need for operating in the wilder and hairier parts of the world: bulldozers, heavy trucks, riverboat engines, drilling rigs, generators, fuel storage, construction machinery and prefab housing.

  They’d been holding their cards extremely close to their chests, too, which was only to be expected; the engineer had started out as a roving mining consultant in some of the odder corners of the Earth, and he knew how the game was played. Apparently they didn’t need to go to market for expansion capital, either, which argued that their returns were quick and rich.

  But this…

  He tapped the thick folder in front of him. “Mr. Rolfe, this proposal of yours is simply… bizarre.”

  Rolfe nodded politely, reaching into his jacket and producing a silver cigarette case. He turned to Susan and raised a brow with old-fashioned good manners… and also revealed that he probably knew that she was his daughter, as well as his confidential secretary. A bit of an eccentric arrangement, but she’d worn him down, and he had to admit she was extremely competent.

  Susan nodded frostily. “By all means, Mr. Rolfe,” she said. “Mr. Sorenson smokes. I do not.”

  Rolfe gave a charming smile and flicked the case open with an elegant snap of his wrist; not cigarettes, but cigarillos.

  “I assure you that our check for your firm’s work will be entirely regular, though, Mr. Sorenson,” he said, offering the case.

  The engineer accepted one with a nod of thanks; they were Punch Claritos , about the best there were, and he’d acquired a taste for them a long time ago in Cuba, working on a project in Oriente province. He didn’t let that distract him as he clipped the end, lit, and blew a cloud of fragrant smoke. The young man’s tone had been perfectly polite… but there was an underlying amusement to it, as of a secret joke Rolfe didn’t intend to share.

  “Surveying and plans for a reservoir and hydroelectric project in, of all places, the Berkeley hills? Mr. Rolfe, you don’t own that land; most of it is government property and not for sale. Such a project there would make no economic sense whatsoever and would stand no chance of approval by Sacramento… which I’m sure you know. Hell, a lot of that area’s already occupied by the San Pablo and Briones reservoirs!”

  “I’m fully aware of it,” Rolfe said cheerfully; his smile didn’t reach the cool green eyes. “Consider it… a trial run for a very similar project in an area not under the jurisdiction of the U.S., or the state of California.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense either,” the engineer said, baffled. “You must know that plans like that are extremely site-specific.”

  Rolfe’s voice stayed level, but took on an edge of steel. “Then consider it a rich young fool’s whim, sir,” he said. “Consider it anything you wish. The question is, will you do this survey for us, or shall I walk over to one of your competitors?”

  He waved a hand toward the window, and the harsh bustle of California Street below. The engineer ground his teeth. On the one hand…

  The money was good—even in boom times, a project so close to home would be low-cost. He could get most of the data he needed out of the library, and most of the rest by taking the ferry and driving about; the ground check would be a matter of a couple of afternoons’ hike for his subordinates. The fee, on the other hand, would be nearly as big as something requiring real work—core drillings and seismic soundings, for instance. It was simply too juicy a peach to pass up, even if it did taste a little off.

  So there is no “on the other hand.” It’s not illegal to run a survey and estimates for an impossible project, and if Rolfe wants to waste his money, that’s his lookout.

  “We’ll take it,” he said aloud.

  Rolfe smiled and drew on his Punch Clarito. “I’m sure you won’t regret it,” he said.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Sacramento, California

  June 2009

  FirstSide

  Tom Christiansen finished the series and lifted the bar into the rest, sitting up on the bench and picking up his towel. Bad form to do it without someone spotting for him, but he wasn’t pushing it—only two seventy-five on the weights, well below his maximum. He breathed deeply and easily as he wiped down his face and neck and the parts of his torso exposed by the muscle shirt, considering what he’d do next.

  Some laps in the pool, he thought, rolling his neck as he glanced around the mirror-walled expanse of the gym’s weight room. Important to keep the aerobic side up.

  He’d always rather despised people who pumped iron just for cosmetic purposes without building endurance and heart health, and he always made time for a balanced program, including keeping his hand in at unarmed combat. He did it all because he liked having a well-conditioned body, because it had become a habit, because it was useful in his work, a lot of which was outdoors, and because he couldn’t spend enough time canoeing and hiking and climbing to keep fit for the times he could get away. If you pushed yourself in the wilderness as hard as he liked to, you could end up dead or very, very miserable if the strength and endurance and flexibility weren’t there to match the experience and skill.

  And, he thought with wry honesty, looking at himself in the mirror, you do it because of what you’d look like if you didn’t.

  His elder brother Lars was still strong as an ox at forty—machinery or no, farming took a lot of hard-sweat work—but he had a belly on him like a fifty-gallon keg, and hams like a boar hog. That was the way the Christiansen men went once they were past thirty, if they let themselves, the hard muscle turning marbled with fat like a stall-fed bullock, the chest sagging down to the stomach and staying there, bull neck and jowls…

  Thin wasn’t an option with his genes and bones.

  Plus it was a good way to get the tensions and fatigue-poisons of the office out of his system. That sort of work tricked the body into pumping fight-or-flight hormones into your bloodstream, without giving you a chance to purge them and sweat them out.

  The big brightly lit room had a strong odor of sweat; nothing rank, because Grayson’s Gym and Health Club was respectable if not fancy, but pretty strong. One reason he came here, besides the modest monthly fee, was that it wasn’t tarted up with superefficient air scrubbers, acres of polished metal, or, God forbid, hanging plants and an on-site coffee bar. He had nothing much against gay people, but being hit on by guys got old fairly quickly even if it was polite, and a disconcerting proportion of the men who worked out at the fancier establishments were
gay. The usual selection here was more eclectic, and included the members of an Okinawan-style karate club who time-shared part of the premises; Tom filled in as a substitute teacher occasionally for Sensi Hidoshi , in return for free sparring to keep his edge sharp.

  The weight room was fairly busy, despite it being a Sunday afternoon—downtown Sacramento went fairly comatose on weekends, but the spillover from the weekend karate session just finished kept it full of grunts and whuffles and sharp exhalations, and there were a few people like him in after working irregular hours. He’d been subliminally conscious of a woman in one corner hanging head-down with her feet hooked through a set of padded bars while she did sit-ups with her hands linked behind her head, twisting to touch left elbow to right knee and vice versa. She’d finished a set of fifty, then dropped to her hands, stayed that way for a moment, and lowered her feet slowly to the floor. That was impressive, if a little showy, and gave him a chance to look at the legs and butt, which were extremely nice even through a loose set of sweatpants, which she was wearing over a body stocking. As she came erect, he got a look at the rest of her, and blinked.

  Va-voom, he thought. Thirty-six, twenty-five, thirty-six.

  A nice face too, if in a rather sculpted way—not quite model-or actress-beautiful, a little too harsh—and unusual bright leaf-green eyes; her bronze-gold hair was drawn back in a bun, and she wore a headband as well as fingerless leather exercise gloves that had seen enough use to be a little ragged.

  And in years, about twenty-six, maybe a bit older. Hard to tell, with that tan. Not exactly slender, not with those measurements, but long-limbed and moving very well.

  Altogether too polished for this place, usually—that total-health sheen wasn’t uncommon in California, but usually in circles much higher than the secretaries, state government employees and dental hygienists who frequented Grayson’s.

  “Hi,” she said, coming over to him. “You using this bench?”

  “Just finished,” he said, thinking mock-mournfully, Ah, she only wanted me for my bench space.

  He looked at her left hand anyway as he replied. It was encouragingly ringless, and the mark of his own wedding band had had years to fade. There was a ring on her thumb, a distinctive circle of braided gold and platinum.

  “Thanks!” she said pleasantly.

  She had an accent, though not the flat Californian one with the perky rising inflection on the end of sentences, which he’d always found rather grating. This was more like a very faint Southern tinge underlying General American, a pleasant softening; there was something else too, a lilt and roll he couldn’t place at all. Possibly European of some sort. At a guess, she was Bay Area, or possibly points a bit north. The long-fingered hand in his as they shook was pleasantly solid and strong; she looked like a human being, not a Dresden figurine. Petite women made him nervous, which was a handicap even when it wasn’t mutual. His wife had been a cheerleader when he met her; football was where he got the slight kink in his nose, although the wedding had been long after high school.

  “I’m Adrienne Rolfe,” she went on, holding out a hand. “Just got into town to do some lobbying.”

  Oh-ho! he thought. The game commences, Watson!

  Her eyes narrowed.

  Damn! My poker face isn’t quite as good as I thought.

  “Yes,” she said. “I’m one of those Rolfes—and I did hear about that embarrassing little episode in Los Angeles. As a matter of fact, I was investigating it myself—for the family.”

  He nodded noncommittally. Although it was hard to be entirely detached…

  “Tom Christiansen,” he replied. “Department of Fish and Game. Warden.” That was reflex; in the state capital you established your tribe. She probably knew already.

  “Ah!” she said, her eyes widening in an interest that looked sincere. That was unusual. “I love the outdoors. I fish and hunt myself, whenever I get the time.”

  Better and better, he thought.

  To a lot of people here in California, hunting anything but the wild tofu-lope was equivalent to sacrificing babies to Satan. It was amazing how little contact with real nature a lot of people who thought of themselves as environmentalists had; if there was one thing that was completely natural, it was killing your food.

  “Me too,” he said. “Though not so much recently.”

  She nodded and went on: “I don’t know anyone here. Would you mind spotting for me, if you have the time?”

  “Sure,” he said, grinning; she matched the expression. “What weight?”

  “One-sixty,” she said. “Three sets of twelve reps; just a maintenance program while I’m away from home.”

  He blinked as they rearranged the weights, the cast-iron disks of his program clanking as they unclipped them from the bar and dropped them onto the appropriate pegs and replaced them with hers. One-sixty was awfully heavy; it must be a good twenty over her own body weight, maybe more. She didn’t look like a bodybuilder, though she wasn’t skinny, and the definition on the long straplike muscles of her arms and shoulders was excellent.

  More likely dance training, maybe acrobatics, or just a fitness freak like me, he thought.

  They both looked like human beings, not anatomical diagrams; the “ripped” look required special diets and programs to get rid of the normal thin coating of subcutaneous fat; it was also violently bad for you, not to mention the hormones those idiots stuffed into themselves. Not to also mention that when a woman drove her body-fat content down that far her breasts disappeared, which with Ms. Rolfe was obviously not the case.

  She lay on the bench, breathed in and out sharply three times, and put her gloved hands on the checked grip section of the bar. Tom stood at her head and kept his hands between hers, palm-up but not quite touching the metal rod, ready to grab it if she lost control. She didn’t; instead she lifted the weight smoothly out of the rests, paused for a moment, then lowered it slowly until the bar almost touched her chest. A quicker lift, and then again the slow descent as the breath went out. Tom admired the technique, and admired what the effort did to the woman’s flat stomach and extremely unflat bosom as the pectoral muscles pushed her breasts against the thin sweat-wet fabric. He was careful to keep his face to a neutral alertness; that was polite, which he’d been raised to be, and besides which you didn’t take any chances when people were using free weights. Far too easy to break a bone or rip a tendon if something went wrong.

  When she was finished they went outside, walking around the brick patio-garden behind that linked the buildings to the outdoor handball courts. It was late afternoon, bright and dry and hot, but only in the mid-eighties, not bad for a Sacramento summer, and the breathing was a lot better than it had been in LA.

  “I’m going to run for a few miles,” she said. “Care to join me? Good to have someone around who knows the place.”

  “Delighted,” he said. The pool can wait; and we can have our little talk. Damn, but I’ll be disappointed if this turns out to be all business. “I’d suggest heading for the State Capitol.”

  “I like the park there,” she agreed.

  They turned onto the street in front of Grayson’s, crossed H Street, and went down Ninth past his HQ at the Fish and Game Department headquarters. Traffic was light, and there weren’t many pedestrians to annoy, or too much in the way of detectable pollution to suck into their lungs; one of the most startling things he remembered about his trips to LA was driving in from the airport and seeing someone jogging beside the freeway. With the air dense enough to mine for building blocks, if you had a ripsaw handy.

  He let her set the pace, which was as fast as he’d have chosen, and must be a little more intense for her—she was around five-nine, six inches shorter than he, and while they were both long-legged in proportion to their torsos, there was a good deal more of him to be in proportion to. She ran well, too: lightly, with the weight coming down on the ball of the foot and pushing smoothly off bent knees in a way that made no jarring thuds and put minimal stress
on the joints. After a few minutes he found himself breathing a little harder than he’d intended. That, and dodging people, limited the conversation until they reached the capitol; he learned that she “lived in Berkeley, or the family place up near Rutherford,” that her grandfather had come from a small town near Williamsburg, Virginia, that she’d gone to Stanford and that she’d never been married. That gave him a moment’s worry, until he recalled the unmistakable glance he’d gotten in the gym; he wasn’t what they used to call a lady-killer, but he knew what the female version of the oh-that’s-nice once-over look felt like on the receiving end.

  It didn’t always come to much, women being less enslaved to their eyeballs than men, but you couldn’t mistake it.

  They halted for a moment to catch their breath before the huge wedding-cake pile of the State Capitol, gleaming with white stone. The arched entranceways supported an upper platform fronted by six great Corinthian columns; the architrave above was decorated with a central Athena, flanked by allegorical figures of Justice, Agriculture, Industry and Education. One level up to either side were mounted Indians fighting a grizzly bear on the left and a wild bull on the right; to his eye, the Indians always looked as if they were about to lose. A drum-shaped segment rose above that, with more columns all around, and then a circular wall pierced by tall arched windows and engaged false columns supporting a golden dome. He liked it; it looked just the way a state capitol building erected in the exuberantly self-confident 1870s should.

  “If that had been built anytime recently, it would be a glass shoebox,” she said.

  “Ah, a fellow provincial reactionary with no taste.” He chuckled. “Of course, it could have looked like a collection of frozen intestines or a chemical plant instead, in this progressive age.”

  They turned left; the park around the capitol building covered forty acres. It was more crowded than the streets had been, with in-line skaters, brown-bag picnics, children chasing dogs and the odd derelict; but there was also a welcome shade from an assortment of trees brought from all over the world, and green lawns. They stretched themselves a little more, and he lost himself in the simple enjoyment of breath and muscle, feeling his body like an engine of living springs and rubber. They stopped halfway around to buy bottled water from a vendor. Tom was surprised to see her grimace a little at the first drink; it was perfectly ordinary plastic-bottle stuff, probably exactly the same as the variety that came out of taps, but not bad. He drank down his half in five long swallows. They stood under a tree whose foliage involved long tendrils hanging down with seedpods on the end, and now they were really sweating. He could feel his skin shedding heat as the dry air sucked at the wetness running on it, and was acutely conscious of the clean female smell of hers.