“That would be Drew Teller, from Michigan,” Earl explained, scratching an itch underneath a cuff. “Acts like he’s got a pocketful of GT stock, which might be he does.”

“That his motive?”

“Oh, hell, Teller’s got lots of incentive. Eighty percent of the vehicle will be built in his district. I’d guess about four thousand jobs at stake. He eases this through, he’s a shoo-in for reelection, for life.”

“I don’t know him. How powerful is he?”

“Straight answer? He’s not, at least not very. A big blowhard pretty boy.”

“But…?”

“But he spent the past year dolin’ out favors by the boatload, pandering to ever’body in reach. If you had a bill, he’d vote for it. Actually supported that nutty Rothman bill to ban Easter bunnies and Santa Clauses in department stores. Drove the Christian groups nuts. He’s runnin’ around now, callin’ in the chips.”

“Will it go through?”

A fast nod. “Appears so.”

“What about Orion?”

The old waiter reappeared, hobbling and creaking, bearing a large tray loaded with five orders of food. They stopped talking while he was in earshot. Given the situation, it paid to be cautious.

Earl snatched a beef roll off a plate before the old man could set it down. His thick fingers stuffed it between his lips and he chewed loudly and enthusiastically while the old man laid out the bowls and dishes, then waddled off.

After noisily sucking the grease off his fingers, Earl picked up where they’d left off. “Hell, you know them fellas.”

“Pretend I don’t.”

“Been stuffin’ lots a pockets lately. Bankrolled a few key elections, and they’re lending their corporate jets out like it’s the congressional air force.”

“Have they got the guns behind them?”

“Oh, probably about six or seven former senators and congressmen in their employ. The place is like a retirement home for former Hill staffers, so they know all the tricks. Hosted three big junkets this year. London, the Riviera, Bermuda.” Earl paused and awarded them a big wink. “Did Bermuda myself. Plenty of pretty women, enough champagne and caviar to sink a barge.” He shook his head, apparently reminiscing about the experience.

“How far along are they?”

“ ’Bout six months out, probably.”

“Six months,” Bellweather echoed, almost in disbelief. Six months! The boys from Orion would never know what hit them; two years spent perfecting this goofy little robot, and it was about to become an anachronism.

“Yeah,” Earl rattled on, filling in the now unnecessary details. “Seems their robot’s got a few awkward habits. They did this big test a few months back and invited ever’body. That crazy little robot apparently sniffed gunpowder, and began chasing one of the guards around, threatening to blow him up.”

Bellweather laughed. “And did the test have a happy ending?”

“Oh, he ran all over the place, screamin’ and hollerin’, for ’bout five minutes. It was real entertaining. After a while he got smart and dropped his piece, then, boom-the robot blew it to smithereens.”

After a few obligatory chuckles, the table grew quiet for a moment. Jack stared into his tea. Haggar was smiling. Bellweather was thinking, calculating the odds against him.

Earl looked expectant-with one hand he was snatching and gobbling more rolled-up delicacies from the dim sum plate, while with the other he was drumming his chubby fingers on the table, impatient to hear the deal.

“Focus on GT first,” Bellweather suggested. He popped something loud and crunchy in his mouth.

“Yeah, good call,” Earl seconded as though he’d thought of it himself.

“We’ll lay the groundwork for you.”

“That’s important,” Earl noted. “How?”

“This vehicle… what’s it called?”

“The GT 400.”

“Right. It’s… well… a great idea with fatal flaws,” Bellweather said, mentally forming the idea as he spoke. “Rushed through design and development, hurried through testing. The usual sad story. Haste makes waste.”

“That’s the ticket,” Earl said. “What flaws?”

“Well… uh, it’s top-heavy, for one thing.”

“It is?”

“Sure. A major design snafu, an all too common misstep by combat vehicle designers. They piled on so much armor it’s subject to rolling. Can’t keep its balance on curves. You know, unsafe at any speed.”

Getting on top of the idea, Earl said, “A rolling death trap.”

“Yeah, I like that. It’s catchy,” Bellweather said, beaming at his student. “To achieve a safe distance from underground explosions, they kept raising the chassis off the ground. Now the center of gravity is too high.”

Earl had his fist stuck deep in a bowl of fried shrimp, or something that resembled shrimp. He was fishing around, hunting for the perfect mouthful. “Like that Ford SUV,” he mumbled, his eyes glued to one particular shrimp. “Tippin’ over all the time.”

“I’ll hire a couple of experts to build the case, maybe expound on it a bit to the press.”

Stuffing the piece in his mouth, Earl mumbled, “There’s gonna have to be some hearings, naturally.”

A pat on the arm and a grave nod from Bellweather. “Only responsible thing to do, Earl.”

Earl scratched his head and said, “ ’Course, I’d need ample justification. Y’know, a spark to get it rollin’.”

“Don’t worry, I’m sure one will come along.”

“How you figure to handle that?”

Bellweather thought about it for a moment. “I have a strong premonition that somebody in Defense’s procurement department is about to send you an anonymous letter. An insider, terribly bothered by the shoddiness of the testing. The vehicle was dangerously tipsy but nobody wanted to hear about it. He was brushed aside, and isn’t happy about it.”

Earl shook his head, dismayed by the horror of it. “Hell, that’d have to be looked into.”

“I like your logic. And were you to schedule the hearing for… oh, say about three weeks from now, a lot of critics will be ready to raise a noisy racket about it.”

Haggar, feeling like a third wheel, decided to throw in his two cents. “Make it a last-minute thing, Earl. No warning. In fact, announce an entirely different reason for the hearing.”

“You mean, call it a program review, maybe a cost overview. Something like that.”

“Perfect, something totally innocuous. GT won’t be expecting an ambush. They’ll send over a bunch of accountants and be totally off guard.”

“Great idea,” Earl mumbled, already picturing it in his mind. A bunch of number crunchers armed with spreadsheets and cost analysis proposals, gawking in shock as they were being pilloried about the intricacies of vehicular physics. Get a few staffers to work up a bunch of questions that would stump Albert Einstein. How fun. They’d be frozen in their chairs, peeing in their drawers, totally clueless. “Wonderful. What then?” Earl asked, popping a shrimp between his lips and clamping down hard.

Bellweather tackled this one. “But be careful. An outright program termination would incite too much resistance. Too much heat and noise. GT and the generals will scream murder.”

“Not just them,” Earl observed, sucking on a dim sum roll. “Teller’ll throw a real hissy fit. Don’t get between that boy and a TV camera.”

“So don’t kill it,” Bellweather advised, “delay it. Send it back for another year of rigorous testing until the safety concerns are ironed out and mollified. A good hard scrub before we waste all those billions, a reasonable pause before we expose our boys to uncertain dangers.”

Like that, Bellweather stopped talking. Earl stopped eating. Haggar began scribbling something on a napkin. The meeting seemed to lurch into a new phase. Jack knew enough to keep his face expressionless, his mouth shut.

By unspoken agreement, the ball had slid to Earl’s corner. He wiped his plump lips on a cheap white paper napkin and leaned back in his chair. “I believe it will work,” he concluded with a small, mysterious smile.