“Is anything wrong, Francisco?” DeVane said. “You seem disconcerted.”
Rojas shook his head. He heard the noisy rumble of the Beech’s engine starting up, and looked out toward the head of the airstrip. The cocaderos had emptied their trucks and were moving them back onto the dirt road as the plane prepared for takeoff. His general practice of never traveling with a shipment aside, he almost would have preferred to be on board. He did not think his nerves could stand the company of these men much longer.
“I should be leaving,” he said. “There are very few flights out of the country and their schedules are erratic.”
DeVane nodded, then signaled to one of his bodyguards with a wave of his fingertips. The guard nodded slightly and spoke into a handheld radio.
“Your car is on its way,” he said. “We wouldn’t want you to be stranded here.”
Rojas manufactured a smile.
“Muito obrigado, you are most kind,” he said, sickened by his own toadying subservience, and thinking with disgust that the example of the tin miners was one he had followed for some time without allowing himself to acknowledge it.
Like them, he had ventured into a place where it was hot and dark, and learned all too well how to appease its gods.
SEVEN
PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA APRIL 18, 2001
THE THING WAS, SHE NEVER PLAYED MUSIC BEFORE having her morning coffee, and that puzzled him.
In the veranda of his Palo Alto home after many long hours on the telephone, Roger Gordian sat with an untouched plate of scrambled eggs and toast on the table in front of him, a steaming cup of coffee near his right hand, and his cordless within fast reach of his left. Making decisions was for him an adaptive reflex, a coping mechanism that pressure only honed and energized, and he’d reacted to the news from Brazil as he would to any emergency, gathering whatever information was available, then digesting as much of it as circumstances allowed before settling upon a logical and systematic plan of action.
In this instance, the information-gathering process had kept him in his study all night. There had been a string of updates from Cody, interspersed with his own calls to advisors and political contacts, including one to a high-placed official in the Department of State, and a subsequent late-night conversation with his close friend Dan Parker, who had been the congressman from California’s 14th District until his recently lost reelection bid, and was somebody whose opinion Gordian never failed to solicit in times of crisis.
With each of them pursuing intelligence about the Brazilian situation through his own respective channels, Gordian’s next order of business had been to contact Charles Dorset, the top executive at NASA. The call had had two purposes. The first was to inform Dorset of events at the ISS compound before news reached him from other, unpredictable sources whose accuracy might be questionable—the media being foremost on Gordian’s mind. The second involved a slew of matters relevant to the Orion investigation, which Gordian was continuing to view as a separate affair for the present, although the close timing of the episodes in Florida and Brazil, and the fact that both would have damaging repercussions for the ISS program, made it impossible to avoid the possibility of some connection between them. While he was not about to jump to conclusions, he was also unwilling to push such thoughts aside. Distressful as they might be, the Machiavellian conspiracy to bring UpLink down the year before had been a costly and agonizing reminder that they were never to be ignored.
Thus, his final call of the morning had been made to Yuri Petrov, Dorset’s counterpart at the Russian Space Agency, through a Sword translator, its purpose having been to keep him abreast of unfolding developments and strongly advise that security around the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan—and other RKS complexes in his directorate—be placed on heightened alert.
Right now, however, his phone had gone silent, giving him a chance to poke his head out of his study and sample the morning. Dorset had promised to get back to him within the next hour with word on an especially important issue, and Gordian had delayed heading out to the office until then, wanting to be certain he was absolutely free to take the call.
He looked over his plate, shifted around a forkful of eggs without raising it to his mouth, then decided to wait for Ashley’s return before getting started on breakfast.
He sat back, noting that his daughter Julia had fared just slightly better than himself in working up an appetite. Across from him were the vestiges of her own half-eaten meal—a picked-apart blueberry muffin and a cold and mostly full cup of coffee. Tied up in knots, she’d rushed off for her first painful meeting with a divorce attorney just as he’d stepped into the sunlight, leaving her dishes where they were, and her grayhounds in his and Ashley’s care. Actually, Gordian’s exclusive care at the moment, since his wife had sprung up from the table and gone into the house to put a CD into the stereo, something that he could not for the life of him recall her doing in over twenty-five years of marriage, and which was particularly baffling because of the abruptness with which she’d abandoned him, her muffin, and her coffee to do it.
Wondering what had gotten into her, wishing he could clear his mind of distractions and relax, Gordian glanced to one side of him, then the other, and frowned at the utter impossibility of it. The dogs tended to favor him at mealtime, and were flanking his chair like bookends, staring up at him with their bright, brown, pleading eyes.
He reached for a wedge of his toast, broke it in half, and gave each of the dogs a piece. As usual Jack, a brindle male and the larger of the two, sucked his down whole and went back to staring at him. Considerably more high-strung, Jill excitedly sprang onto all fours and spun in a full circle while gobbling her portion, slamming her backside into the legs of the table.
Gordian’s breakfast settings rattled and bounced, coffee sloshing over the rim of his cup and flooding the saucer underneath it.
He released an aggravated breath.
“That’s how you always get yourself in trouble, you know.”
Gordian turned, and saw Ashley reappear from inside the house to the recorded accompaniment of Fats Waller’s stride piano.
“Hmmph,” he said, dabbing up the spilled coffee with a paper napkin. “What do you mean?”
“I mean feeding the dogs off the table,” she said. “Besides being against Julia’s orders, it’s sure to cause a disaster.”
He frowned.
“You know how these poor dogs were treated at the track? Before Julia got them from the placement center? They were literally running for their lives.”
“Yes, I do know, but that’s not the point—” she said.
“Grayhounds are given six chances to either win, place, or show before being ‘retired.’ Which is generally a euphemism that means they’re put down, unless the rescue people can get hold of them first.”
“Roger, that’s still beside the—”
“They spend all their days penned up in something like a three-by-three-foot crate, except for when they’re turned out to eat or relieve themselves. Wind up with pressure sores, swellings on their joints, bald spots from rubbing against the walls of the crates, not to mention—”
“Roger—”
“And besides, I’ve seen Julia break her own ‘no table scrap’ rule at least a dozen times this week.”
Ashley gave him a long-suffering smile and sat in the chair to his right.
“She’s their mother,” she said. “Which makes that her prerogative.”
Gordian watched as she reached for the thermal pitcher on the table, and freshened her coffee. She was wearing an open blue denim shirt over a peach-colored T-shirt, jeans, and white tennis sneakers. The smart angular cut of her light brown hair was the latest fashion collaboration between herself and Adrian, her stylist, accenting her high cheekbones and sea-blue eyes in a way that seemed like nature’s consummate design.
“I wouldn’t feed them off the table if they didn’t beg,” he said.
“And they wouldn’t be begging if you
didn’t feed them. Or haven’t you noticed that they never park themselves anywhere near me while we’re eating.”
He looked back down at the dogs. They had resumed their positions on either side of his chair, Jill sitting barely at rest and shifting her weight from one front paw to the other, Jack staring at him in rigid and unblinking expectation, his snout tilted upward.
“It’s a vicious circle,” he said.
“Or maybe just you being a pushover for any creature in need.” She picked up her muffin and nodded her chin at his plate. “You ought to have some of that food yourself.”
He turned toward his dish and ate without enthusiasm, still unable to muster an appetite. On the stereo, Waller had launched into “Cash for Your Trash,” his left hand swinging between octaves to lay down rhythmic bass and chord patterns, his right hand running up the scale with a bright introductory melody line.
Gordian found himself listening to the opening vocals.
“Haven’t heard this one for ages,” Ashley said, waiting until midway through the song to comment.
He nodded, took a bite of his eggs.
“I believe,” she said, “that no other performer has ever been quite so up about being down. If you catch my meaning.”
Gordian turned and looked at her.
“I do,” he said. “When you consider that he was a black man in a time of obscene racial inequality, then take into account everything his generation lived through... the first World War, the Depression, World War II. If memory serves, he made his final recordings just as we were about to send our boys to Europe.”
“Stormy weather,” she said.
He nodded.
“His music’s all about surviving bad times with a kind of resolute good humor,” she said. “About having confidence that just being here, and alive, gives us the chance to see better times ahead ... trite as that may sound.”
He nodded again.
“Yes,” he said.
“To the trite part, or the other?”
“Both,” he said. “But mostly the other.”
They ate quietly and listened to the personnel on the various recordings—Benny Carter, Slam Stewart, Bunny Berigan, and others, in addition to Waller himself—roll through driving versions of “Lulu’s Back in Town” and “I Ain’t Got Nobody” and “Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter.”
Ashley watched him awhile, then gestured toward the phone on the table.
“So,” she asked. “Care to tell me what’s going on?”
“I’m expecting to hear from Dorset at NASA,” Gordian said. “We’ve been working to get the Orion inquiry up and running. I’ve given a lot of attention to its procedural mechanisms, but Alex Nordstrum talked to me yesterday about another aspect of the probe that ought not be neglected.”
“Alex?” Her eyebrows rose with surprise. “I thought he was busy stroking off on the fairway.”
Gordian gave her a thin smile.
“I think you mean teeing off,” he said. “Anyway, I asked him to come to the office as a favor and he did.” He shrugged. “You know.”
She looked at him.
“No, I don’t, but I’m assuming it’s a male thing that you can explain to me later,” she said. “Tell me what the two of you discussed.”
“In a nutshell, he reminded me that we need to earn the confidence of the American people rather than sit back and take it as a given. I’ve got some very definite ideas about how to accomplish that based upon his suggestions, and don’t intend to let this turn into anything resembling the debacle where an outside commission appointed by the White House went head-to-head against the space agency because of skepticism about its in-house probe.”
“Well-deserved skepticism, as I recall,” Ashley said.
“Yes,” he said. “There are going to be doubts about the credibility of this investigation’s findings no matter how thorough a job is done. But if we can’t manage to cut them down to size, I don’t think the program will ever recover.”
She swallowed some of her muffin. “How’s Dorset feel about your input? People get territorial.”
“Thus far, we’re in synch. Chuck is a reasonable man and has the best interests of NASA at heart.” He turned to face her. “Also, he’s got very little choice but to be receptive to my suggestions. Without UpLink’s technology and access to foreign governments there’s no ISS. Period.”
She smiled at him.
“Hard to imagine anyone trying to ignore you when you get that steely look in your eyes,” she said.
He cleared his throat, lowering his head to study his plate, a boyish sign of embarrassment that Ashley pretended not to notice.
She decided to wait a few seconds, then asked, “Which of your specific recommendations is Dorset supposed to call about this morning?”
“I told him who I’d like to head up the investigative task force. Unequivocally.”
“And?”
“And his only real problem—or concern, I should say—was that he didn’t want anybody in his organization to feel resentful about being bypassed for the job.”
“Understandable,” Ashley said. “Turf again. You know how it can be.”
“I do, Ash. But there’s no time to worry about NASA’s bureaucratic harmony right now. The faster we get things done, the better. There’s the Russian launch at the end of the month, and I want to see it come off without postponement. Because I am concerned about what’ll happen if my old blowhard friend Senator Delacroix, or somebody equally good at being on the wrong side of every issue, starts calling the entire cooperative effort into question on the talk shows.”
“Delacroix,” she said. “He the one you saw wrestle that big stuffed bear in the hammer-and-sickle trunks?”
“On the Senate floor.” He exhaled slowly. “Anyway, Dorset’s going to let me know if the person I want is even interested in the appointment. If this pans out the way I’m hoping it will, we’ll have taken a huge step toward gaining the public trust. And it’ll be a deserved step.”
“Any reason you haven’t named your pick to me?”
He shrugged, looking slightly awkward.
“Pure superstition. Another mark of an old flier,” he said. “I’ll tell you if you insist, but—”
She held up her hand. “Far be it from me to lay on the jinx. Being an old flier’s wife, I know how to sit back and keep my fingers crossed until you’re ready. Just don’t forget that I’m waiting for the dish.”
They were silent for a bit, eating their breakfasts, Jack and Jill watching Gordian’s fork with undeviating involvement. On the stereo, Fats Waller belted out a line about someone’s pedaling extremities being obnoxious. Gordian smiled almost imperceptibly and ate with increasing relish.
All at once, Ashley wanted to reach over and hold him tightly in her arms. But she refrained, just as she had chosen not to ask him any questions about what had occurred in Brazil. She would not do that, not yet, though what little she already knew made her suspect it represented an impending threat to her husband’s safety that, like others he’d had to face in the past, would keep her tossing restlessly in bed tonight and for many nights to come, fearing it might take him from her forever.
Their breakfasts finished now, they sat listening to the stereo in the fresh grass-scented air and sunshine pouring through the veranda’s open louvers. His plate cleaned off except for a single wedge of toast, Gordian glanced down at each of the dogs and then gave Ashley a questioning glance.
“I don’t think you should,” she said. “But if you go ahead and do it, there’d better be no complaints about the rotten, hungry hounds to me or Julia afterward.”
He lifted the toast from his plate and portioned it out between the dogs—Jack consuming his half with what appeared to be a single inhalation, Jill accepting hers somewhat more demurely, and then licking Gordian’s fingers as if to make up to him for having bashed the table.
“Such salivating adoration,” Ashley said.
He wiped hi
s hand on his pants and looked at her.
“Mind if I ask you something now?” he said.
“Sure.”
“I was wondering why you put on the stereo.”
Their eyes met.
“Easy,” she said with a shrug. “I suddenly remembered that Fats Waller’s always been one of your favorites.”
He kept looking at her.
“Well, that explains your choice of music,” he said. “Not your uncharacteristic timing. Since you always say you enjoy your morning peace and quiet.”
She smiled.
“Surely you’ve guessed,” she said.
“No,” he said honestly. “I don’t have a clue.”
She moved closer beside him.
“It’s a female thing,” she said, leaning her head against his shoulder. “Now be still, dear husband, and maybe I’ll explain it to you later.”
EIGHT
NORTHERN ALBANIA APRIL 18, 2001
AS THE GROANING, RUST-SPOTTED CITROEN NEARED the rendezvous point on the high Balkan pass some thirty miles outside Tirana, Sergei Ilkanovitch considered his two fellow Russians in the car, and suddenly and unexpectedly remembered his father’s oft-repeated maxim that one could always judge a man by the shoes he wore. Rich or poor, it made no difference, he had insisted. A vagrant in rags would take pains to keep his shoes in the best possible condition if he had any character at all, while the most elevated member of the Presidium would be oblivious to their scuff and wear if he were of an inferior caliber.
The person he’d frequently pointed to as an example of the latter had been Khrushchev, someone he’d held in the lowest esteem, calling him a simpleton who was overly impressed with American capitalism, a coward for yielding to Kennedy’s bluff during the Cuban missile standoff, and an economic and political bungler responsible for the Black Sea uprising of 1963 and America’s early lead in the arms race. When he’d theatrically banged his shoe on the desk before the United Nations General Assembly, it was clearly seen to be shabby and run-down at the heel, providing a repellent insight into his character, and demeaning his country before the eyes of the entire world. In his boyhood, Sergei had heard his father complain endlessly about the Premier’s supposed faux pas and had no idea what to make of it. He had seen the grainy black and white news footage of the event and been able to tell nothing of the shoe’s condition. Nor had he known what it could have signified about Khrushchev or anything else.
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