The makeshift press conference didn’t have the grandeur of a hotel ballroom or the polished dignity of a corporate auditorium downtown. There was no elevated hardwood stage, no custom-built walnut backdrop, and no formal media riser for the television cameras. Instead, Victor’s people had simply hung a heavy, unpressed blue canvas curtain across a structural section of the back wall of the terminal warehouse. Four high-intensity halogen construction stands had been dragged into the center of the concrete floor, throwing a harsh, bleeding white glare across the fabric and catching the edge of Victor Hawthorne’s silver hair until it looked like a halo of spun glass.
In the basement office below the generator shack, the small cathode-ray monitor on Rafe’s desk was flickering violently, strug
