Free The 4400® Promises Broken by David Mack Page B

side of his plate.
    “Would you like to see a menu, sir?” she asked.
    Enright shook his head. “Not right now, thank you.” She walked away and left the two men alone in the diningroom. His face a cipher, Enright said, “Very well, Dennis.” He folded his hands together. “What are you up to?”
    Dennis smirked as he twirled more spaghetti into a tight coil around his fork. “Business.”
    “But not business as usual,” Enright replied. “What do you really think I’m going to tell you, Miles?”
    Leaning forward ever so slightly, Enright projected a clear sense of menace across the table. “You’re going to tell me why you’re spending two billion dollars of Haspelcorp’s research and development budget without consulting me first.”
    After another sip of wine, Dennis said, “Because I can, Miles. That’s one of the beauties of being promoted to executive vice president of the entire company. I don’t have to answer to people like you.”
    “We all answer to someone, Dennis. Even if it’s only to God, or to our conscience.”
    “Fortunately, I don’t have either of those,” Dennis said. He speared a few chunks of lobster meat and pushed them down into the melted butter pooled in the bottom of his bowl.
    “No, but you do answer to the president,” Enright said. “And to the board of directors—on which I happen to sit.” He mirrored Dennis’s taunting smirk with one of his own. “I imagine the rest of the board would like to know what you did to make NTAC and the NSA go poking through our servers this morning.”
    Feigning nonchalance, Dennis swallowed his mouthful of buttery lobster, then patted his lips dry with the cornerof his white cloth napkin. “Who says their interest had anything to do with me?”
    “Their inquiries all concerned encrypted transactions conducted with your log-in credentials, Dennis. And I have to admit, their curiosity inspired a bit of my own.” He reached to the chilled bucket beside the table, lifted out the bottle of Viognier, and poured a generous measure into his own wineglass. Then he returned the bottle to its chilled receptacle. Lifting the glass, he continued. “I’ve seen some exotic technologies in my time, Dennis, but this project of yours—it’s something else.” He sipped the wine, then pursed his lips and nodded. “Nice.”
    “Glad you like it,” Dennis said.
    “Let’s cut through the bullshit,” Enright said. “Whatever you’re building, it involves some kind of high-energy nuclear fuel that you could only get from CERN. You’re coloring way outside the lines on this one, and you know it.”
    Setting down his fork, Dennis said, “What I know, Miles, is that there are only two kinds of companies in this world: the kind that innovate, and the kind that go out of business. Our business is national security—and sometimes that means classified research.”
    “I know that,” Enright said. “I’ve handled my share of top-secret projects. But I’ve always kept my peers and superiors informed of my efforts. You’re treating this company as if it were your own private lab. Who commissioned this project of yours? If it’s a DOD contract, why didn’t it go through my office? If it’s a spook job, why didn’t you notify the board?”
    Those were good questions. Up until that moment, ithadn’t occurred to Dennis to wonder how his strangely visionary rogue scientists had developed their cutting-edge technology without attracting government attention.
    He leaned back and reached inside his jacket for a pack of cigarettes. He opened it, pulled one out, and put away the pack with one hand while retrieving his lighter with another.
    As Dennis lifted it to ignite his cigarette, Enright said, “You can’t smoke in here.”
    “I can smoke anywhere I damn well please,” Dennis said. “As for my project, and the identity of my client, that’s all being handled on a need-to-know basis—and in my opinion, it’s in your best interest not to