Jake looked at his wristwatch. “He should—”

The phone rang. Amy went to the ornate little desk and picked up the receiver. She nodded once, then, as she replaced the receiver, she said to Tomlinson, “They’re on their way up.”

“Good,” said Tomlinson. “Jake, you let them in, please. Amy, you can be in charge of the bar.”

Jake started to ask why he didn’t get the hotel to provide a bartender, but quickly realized that Tomlinson didn’t want any extra witnesses to this meeting.

The doorbell chimed. Jake swiftly crossed the thickly carpeted room and opened the door to admit Sinclair and Perez. The professor looked tight-lipped, almost grim. He was wearing a dark brown three-piece suit with a patterned tie of red and gold. Perez, in a flowered shirt, baggy gray slacks, and a sports jacket flapping loosely, had a bemused smile on his thin, swarthy face.

Tomlinson lit up with a smile that could melt glaciers. “Professor Sinclair, I’m so glad to see you.”

Sinclair took Tomlinson’s outstretched hand and made a perfunctory smile back. “How do you do?” Turning slightly, he introduced, “This is Ignacio Perez.”

“Call me Nacho,” said Perez, in his throaty, almost hoarse voice. “Everybody calls me Nacho.”

Gesturing to Amy at the bar by the window, Tomlinson asked, “Drinks?”

“You got any beer?” Perez asked Amy as he headed toward the bar.

Sinclair accepted a glass of tonic water. Tomlinson took a scotch on the rocks and Jake merely shook his head when Amy gave him a questioning look.

As he led Sinclair to one of the room’s matching pair of love seats, Tomlinson said, “Jake has told you that I intend to make MHD power generation a major issue in my campaign for the Senate.”

Sitting on the front three inches of the little sofa, clutching his glass in both hands, Sinclair nodded warily.

“And you have a problem with that.” Tomlinson sat on the facing sofa, his megawatt smile still in place.

Sinclair glanced at Perez, standing near Amy by the bar, then replied, “I think it would be a mistake to oversell MHD at this point. You shouldn’t get the people’s hopes up too soon.”

“But it’s a promising technology. It could mean a lot to this state.”

“We have a long way to go before MHD can be practical,” Sinclair said.

With a nod, Tomlinson replied, “I want to help you to get to that point. When I’m in the Senate I’ll be able to steer federal money your way.”

Jake saw Nacho Perez slink off to a chair in the corner of the room, sipping his beer from the bottle and looking mildly bored. Professor Sinclair looked uptight, almost angry.

“We’re not ready for a massive upswing in funding,” the professor insisted. “We have a long way to go.”

“But wouldn’t additional funding help you to get where you want to go?” Tomlinson asked.