"da Cruz, Daniel - Republic of Texas 02 - Texas on the Rocks" - читать интересную книгу автора (Da Cruz Daniel)

Or something. She was a bit hazy about the details, but then, that was what engineers were for. More immediately important were the questions of scale and geography. Where ocean warm-surface-cold-bottom conditions prevailed, as in the midocean tropics, there were obviously no customers for electricity, or anything else. In coastal climes markets were abundant, but the water-temperature differentials were too small unless the OTEC facilities were huge, which made them noncompetitive with nuclearor fossil-fuel-generated electricity.

With this in mind, her board of directors had strongly advised against the purchase of Sea Exploration and Development's OTEC patents and factories. Jennifer Red Cloud's instincts told her to ignore the counsel. She seldom argued with her instincts, for they were correct more often than her advisers. She had just resolved that if she could beat down SEAD's price another $5 million or so, she would buy, when a voice intruded on her reflections.

"Madame Red Cloud?"

"What do you want?" she said testily, holding up her hand to shade her eyes from the sun. The staff had strict instructions not to intrude unless it was a matter of life or death--hers.

"Mr. Dan Adamus is on the telephone, madame," replied Luis, her Filipino steward.

Mr. Adamus was Raynes Oceanic Resources vice president for governmental relations. Vice presidents for governmental relations were a dime a dozen, but a good suntan was hard to come by.

"Tell him he's fired."

"Yes, madame."

Luis trudged up the beach toward the house. It was bigger than it looked, consisting of a twelve-room main building with wings concealed behind rows of palms housing her staff, her offices, and her stables. The lawns on all sides were of a deep green as uniform as artificial turf, and the beds of tropical plants were awash with primary colors, blooming strictly according to Mrs. Red Cloud's schedule--or else. Around the periphery of the fourhundred-acre estate ran a high electric fence.

Five minutes after Luis's departure, he was back. Mrs. Red Cloud was now lying on her back, but otherwise her attitude was unchanged.

"Listen, you goddamn Hukbalahap," she hissed, "if I see your face once more today, I'm going to ship you back to Mindinao. Understand?"

"It's Leyte, actually, madame." The steward had been through it all before. "However," Luis went on, "it is not Mr. Adamus who is now on the telephone, madame, but Mr. Gustafson. He is very insistent that he speak with madame."

Jennifer Red Cloud sighed and rose, cursing subordinates who had the bad judgment to incite her to dismiss them. Still, it just might be something important. Randy Gustafson liked that $850,000-a-year salary as president of Raynes Ocean Resources too much to jeopardize it by bothering her with trifles. She strode up the beach, past the tennis courts and the saltwater swimming pool, across the broad veranda with its red-striped awning, into her study. There her secretary, Terence, was holding a white telephone. He pretended to avert his eyes from her stillnude body but failed to impress her: She was well aware he preferred male privates, preferably out of uniform, to female captains of industry.

"This had better be good," she said into the telephone.

"It is. The chance of a lifetime, if you move fast."

"Get to the point, Randy."

"You must come to Washington right away."

"You're not paid to tell me what I must do, Randy," she said frostily. "You may, however, tell me why I should come to Washington."

"I can't. A lot of big ears are probably tuned in to this conversation."

"That's true. Very well, if it's really important, I'll come."

"When?"

Washington, nearly two thousand kilometers distant, was two hours away in the Raynes corporate jet. "Meet me at Dulles in three hours."

"Sooner would be better," said Gustafson.

"Very well, make it two hours and a half."

It meant she'd have to ride shotgun in the converted F-15 courier plane. She hated the cramped rear seat. Worse, the oxygen mask mussed her lipstick.