Susan sat in the Jet Terminal thinking about Jack, who had somehow managed to slip by her emotional defenses and had been silently rearranging the furniture in the private, ruminative part of her head. Worse still, he was nothing like what she had been looking for. His list of superficial negatives seemed mind-boggling. He was a broken warrior who ignored, or seemed to laugh at, most of her important beliefs. He didn't belong in her temple of dreams, yet there he was dripping sarcasm and disrespect all over her carefully constructed value system. To her amazement, he seemed a perfect fit. Now he had been kidnapped, possibly was in mortal danger, and she couldn't get her mind to stop spinning or her heart to stop pounding. Her father had once told her that when you worry, you define your weakness, and when you dream you define your goals. She wondered how these feelings defined her.

Susan had a strange sense of impending disaster. She had been pushed into an unfamiliar role, not knowing if she would be able to hold up her end. She felt tiny and overwhelmed.

At a little past 10:30 a private jet landed; a green-and-white, forty-million-dollar Global Explorer. The main door hissed down and Donald Trump was standing in the threshold dressed in a perfect New York ensemble-a black three-piece suit, yellow silk tie and matching pocket square. His blonde comb-over flapped slightly in the light L.A. breeze. He came down the steps and across the tarmac toward them, smiling as he approached.

"Herman! You've gained weight since you stopped suing me. You need better adversaries." Trump was referring to a suit Herman filed against his casino division a year earlier, when they had tried to build a hotel in Tahoe, cutting down trees and adversely impacting the environmental resources of that small community. In the end Herman and Donald had compromised and found to their amazement that they liked one another.

Herman smiled. "Thanks for coming, Donald. I'm kind of in a crack here. You're the only person I know who can dig me out."

"Hey, this could be great for me. Are these guys ready to meet?"

Herman said, "They're gathered and waiting."

"Then let's go," The Donald said, smiling while his blue eyes danced with excitement.

When Susan and Herman escorted Donald Trump into Chief Ibanazi's den, the room was at standing-room-only. Thirty members of the tribe were present. It may have been billed as a tribal lodge meeting, but Chief Ibanazi was looking very record-industry chic in Gucci and Rive Gauche. He couldn't believe that Donald Trump was standing in his temple of creativity-the very room where he laid down his grooves and slammed on the Yamaha Sound Machine.

"My God, it's you," he started off, shaking Trump's hand. "It's really you."

"Yep. Me," Donald said.

"I mean, you're Donald Trump."

"Yep, sure am. No doubt in my mind," he chuckled.

"I mean, "The Donald' is in my house. Amazing… I can't believe you're really here."

"Yep… in the flesh. It's me."

It went on like that for two or three more rounds, until Herman stepped in and broke it up.

"I'm Herman Strockmire," he said to Russell Ibanazi and the rest of the people in the room. "I'm the one who called you six hours ago. I think you know my daughter Susan."

"You mean, Lois," Russell corrected, smiling at her. "How's Clark? Did Mimi like the background stuff we did?"

"Uh…" She shot a look at Herman, whose eyebrows had climbed up somewhere in the middle of his forehead.

Susan stammered: "Uh, Izzy, I'm afraid that wasn't exactly all true, what we told you about 213 Magazine.. ."

"What part of it wasn't true?" His handsome face wrinkled in distress.

"Well, more or less… all of it."

"Clark doesn't want to do the 'L.A. Sound' cover story?"

"Well, he would if he could, but since there is no Clark Lane, and no 'L.A. Sound' cover, and since we're not with the magazine at all… I don't think you should count on it."

"Not with the magazine?" Distress morphed into depression.

"No. We were just trying to find out more about the reservation and what was going on out there. It's why Mr. Trump is here now."

Russell Ibanazi looked at Donald, then at Herman.

"Okay," he said. "Then what's going on?"

Donald stepped forward, dropping his cashmere overcoat over the back of a large club chair. He looked at the faces of the rest of the Ten-Eyck tribe that included men and women of all ages, as well as half a dozen teenagers and a few children. They were handsome, black-eyed people, all dressed in the best Rodeo Drive had to offer.

"As you undoubtedly know," Donald began, "I'm involved in some big casino developments in Atlantic City and elsewhere…"

"Yes, of course we've heard," Russell Ibanazi said, leaning forward respectfully.

"I understand from Herman that you've voted in a government administrator to run your reservation and that he now has total control," Tramp went on. "Is that pretty much the gist?"

"Yes, sir, that's exactly the situation. Correct." Russell was measured and precise-no more show-biz buzzwords. He was back to being tribal chief.

"I also understand that the government pays you around forty million a year for the use of your seventeen-hundred-acre reservation east of Indio."

Russell Ibanazi looked at Susan, then nodded. "It nets out at a little over two thousand dollars an acre a month."

"I hate to be blunt," Donald said. "But you're being screwed. Who negotiated that deal?"

"We… well, I set it up, and the entire tribe approved it at council." Concern shadowed his features.

"Since California passed the Native American Casino Gaming Bill, I'm sure you're aware that your reservation can now host a full-service gambling casino. That reservation is a tremendously valuable asset. Seventeen hundred acres could be worth a fortune if developed correctly. However, it can't be done if the government is fouling the land, dumping toxic waste into illegal ground fills." Trump had them all listening intently.

"There can't be much waste yet, Donald, it's only been eighteen months," Herman said quickly.

"Look, I can most likely deal with the toxic waste issues. I can probably force the government to clean it up at their expense or face a shit-storm of negative publicity. What I can't deal with is this non-Indian administrator hired by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency," Donald said. "He will block any attempt of mine to redefine land usage."

"Don't worry about him. We can vote him out anytime we want," Izzy said. "We could even have an election tonight and reinstate me as administrator. It's in the Tribal Charter."

The rest of the men and women in the room nodded and mumbled their assent.

"But the res is way the hell and gone, out in the desert twenty miles east of Indio, almost at the Mexican border. The choice reservation properties for casinos are the ones in and around Palm Springs. Why would you want to build a casino way out there?" Izzy said, trying not to look stupid for recommending the DARPA deal in the first place.

Trump didn't seem worried. "I'm not concerned about its remote location. That's one of the reasons I'm gonna get it for a good price, but I'll offer you a great percentage of my back-end profits in return. Even at my up-front lease rate, you're going to do three times better than the government is paying now."

The room murmured with excitement.

"The second reason it doesn't matter," Donald continued, "is that we will make this casino absolutely magnificent. There will be pools and fountains, solariums and traveling walkways, trams and amusement parks. Seventeen hundred acres of holiday fun with an airport to service it. It doesn't matter if it's twenty miles east of Indio on the Mexican border or twenty miles east of Egypt." Then he smiled, his white teeth and blue eyes glistened. "Because, in the words of my favorite actor, Kevin Costner: 'If we build it, they will come.' "