This time it would be different. Heartfelt pleas for worldwide cooperation were useless, they had both agreed. A complete and utter waste of time and breath. Taking up Prothero's suggested title, "The Point of No Return," Ingrid had worked on the speech for months, extracting information from UN files and reports, while Prothero had unearthed material from the archives of the defunct Environmental Protection Agency. This time there was to be no compromise, no half-measures. The finger of accusation was to be pointed at the industrialized nations and their abysmal record of environmental conservation. The billions of tons of noxious chemicals released into the atmosphere. The wanton spoilage of lakes and rivers and forests. The vast amounts of herbicides and pesticides still manufactured and used despite legislated controls. The dumping of toxic and nuclear wastes in the oceans.
More important, each country would be named and its offenses cataloged. In summary, Ingrid would emphasize the vital and desperate need for all nations to forget the old hatreds and enmities: The planet was approaching the point of no return while they squabbled among themselves like greedy, spoiled children.
It was a last-ditch attempt, Prothero realized. At a more personal level he knew that he was laying his head on the political chopping block. The documented evidence he had obtained from the EPA on the strength of his standing as a senator was politically explosive-- especially as it was to be used against his own country. There would be cries of "traitor" and "treason," and it could mean the end of his career in public office. His wife's reaction he didn't care about, but he was afraid of what it would do to his three children.
Ingrid let the last typewritten page flutter to the table and stubbed her cigarette out. She took off her glasses and massaged the bridge of her nose. "I've been through it so many times the words have become meaningless."
"It'll be great, I know," Prothero reassured her. "Drink your drink and relax. There's still a few days in which to look it over."
Ingrid smiled up at him wanly. "Before we get kicked up the ass, you mean."
"They wouldn't dare kick your ass, darling. It's too pretty." Prothero smiled, but the image in his mind, which still haunted him after all these years, had a loathsome dimension. It was of the suppurating mess of skin and bone that had been his brother Tom, a chopper pilot in Vietnam. Pro had been twenty, his brother twenty-six when he died. Agent Orange. Dioxin. Waste. Death. A sick miserable tragedy. What was his career when set against that?
"Pro," Ingrid said anxiously. "You will be there, won't you?"
"Ringside seat. You're going to be terrific, Ingrid, 1 know it. Don't worry!"
"I'm not worried for myself."
"Well, we're both of us in the firing line," Prothero said, thinking he understood her. He realized he was mistaken when Ingrid said:
"These madmen will have marked you down, Pro. You've spoken out more than anyone--even more than Redman or Lautner. They've shown they can get to anyone, no matter who or how well they're protected."
It was the pyro-assassinations that worried her, not their respective political futures. Prothero waved his hand nonchalantly. "I'm too small a fish to fry."
"Don't make such a horrible joke!" Ingrid said, distraught. "They can do it!"
Prothero slid down beside her and took her hand. "Ingrid, honey, I can't crawl under a rock and disappear. I know what the risk is, believe me. These 'madmen' as you call them are going to have to work mighty hard to get anywhere near old Pro." He pulled her close and smelled the faint scent of lavender in the warmth of her neck.
They made love on the long curved couch. The bright pool of light under the lamp made the shadows blacker and more mysterious. Mozart gave way to Sibelius, which Prothero thought entirely appropriate, the sound of chill Nordic symmetry swirling above their heads.
Afterward, Ingrid made sandwiches and coffee while Prothero padded naked to the bathroom. He urinated, patted the underside of his chin in the mirror, stepped in the shower cubicle.
His manicured hand spun the control.
Turning his face upward to receive the hot cleansing water he found himself staring into the convex steel showerhead that contained his own distorted terrified face and elongated body inside the concentric pattern of holes.
For an instant he stared at himself. He saw the holes bubble and burst with water, and the next thing he knew he was enveloped in a warm caressing spray that soothed and subdued the hammering of his heart.
19
From nine thousand feet Starbuck Island resembled a pink coral necklace on plush blue velvet. The pilot of the USAF K-113
"One-third power and full flaps," he rapped out to the flight engineer. "Check yaw and drift stabilization."
