April 4: A Different Perspective Read Online Free PDF Page A

you won't be concerned about it," he smiled.
    Otis didn't say anything, certainly didn't ask, "Successful at what?" He did give the man his standard new recruit stare just to cover up his own inner turmoil. It had the desired effect. No matter how they tried to be nonchalant, it was written on their faces these two were afraid of him. Or who they thought he was anyway.
    "Really," the man said visibly regretting the word as soon as he said it. "Not that we expect you to fail or we wouldn't be here. I understand it would be foolish to stiff you."
      Otis looked at the printed teller slip. It was dated two days ago at the Bern Branch of Credit Suisse Bank for twenty million EuroMarks. He tried to think of the exchange rate and couldn't. It was - one hell of a lot of USNA dollars.
    "Here is your key card for the Sheraton. Your room is directly across the hall from a room that will be vacant when President Wiggen is making her dedication speech tomorrow morning. It's a clean shot just under two hundred meters to where she will enter at the back of the building. This is a master key card for the entire hotel," he said offering another. "Wiggen's security may scan the building for thermal sources before or during her speech. Everything above the third floor on that side of the Sheraton is supposed to be kept vacant tomorrow."
    "There are counters for that," Otis assured him. So that's it, he thought in wonder. The bastards are going to put Wiggen out of office in two years, but they can't wait for a sure thing and want to kill her now. He was disgusted. She was just another politician and probably a flaming jackass like most of the big shots they guarded turned out to be. But at least she'd had the guts to surrender to Home last year, when the orbital habitat had waged war on them. Certainly she wasn't the mental case the previous President Hadley was rumored to have been.
    "These are vital to leave behind," Pretty Boy said, giving him a transient alien ID card on a neck chain. It was the black sort that indicated a citizen of Home. He had a small zip seal bag with used tissues and other trash. "This is to be emptied in the room waste basket. It has DNA linking to the ID of the Home national, collected back when he was a USNA citizen."
    The spacers weren't using those ID cards anymore. Did these fellows really not know that? He decided not to ask, instead he said: "Will the ID show on the computers when the press hack or bribe their way in and check the name to see if there really is such a file? Somebody will do that, sure as hell."
    "Don't teach Grandma to suck eggs," Pretty Boy chided him. "It's all scanned in as a valid ID, with a long and detailed history."
    That level of computer access convinced Otis the two sitting there were Patriot Party. It was sort of amusing they didn't, couldn't, wear party pins. Wearing a party pin in public today would be suicide. They had recently tried to pull a coup on Wiggen and been handed their butts. But nobody else who would have the assets and nerve to push through such an assassination, or would really benefit from it. Even those opposed to Wiggen were happy she was in office instead of the Patriots by coup.
    This meant they plain didn't give a damn who knew it was them after the fact, which said a great deal about how they intended to rule. The realization of what danger he was in swept over him like a wave and he was shocked to find he enjoyed the adrenaline jolt. He hadn't felt this alert and alive since he was in the Trans-Arabic Protectorate, being shot at. The feral grin that came to his face at the adrenaline rush didn't have to be faked and made his welcoming committee uncomfortable.
    "Everything you requested is in the rear of the Dunestar. My driver will drop us off at a different parking deck and you can proceed with the Dunestar to the Sheraton. Here is a map, the key card works for the parking entry too. I'm sure you have resources, but here's five thousand in used bills.