by Tom Clancy
"Happens when you're a parent," Nimec said, thinking he could have cited any number of comparable situations from when his own children were young and his wife was not yet his ex-wife.
Ricci shook his head.
"You don't know Dex," he said. "Ask him to recommend a local bar, he'll rattle off the names of two dozen watering holes from here to New Brunswick and tell you every kind of beer they have on tap. Ask him his kids' birthdays, he'd be stumped."
"So you think he arranged for you to be driving by yourself when you got stopped," Nimec said.
Ricci turned his coffee cup but said nothing.
Nimec sighed. "Was it the warden who pulled you over?"
"Yeah. Cobbs is one of those down-easters I told you about resents outsiders ... and just about everybody and everything else besides, but that's just his endearing personality. I move here from Boston, earn a decent buck, it's like I'm taking something away from him. Add that I'm a cop ... an ex-cop... and he gets even more bothered."
"He feels intimidated and threatened by you, and that translates into a sort of competitive hostility," Nimec said. "Common equation in places where they don't get much new blood. Especially when it's coming from the big city."
Ricci shrugged.
"There's all that, and with Cobbs it goes even further," he said. "He's a weasel and he's dirty. I'd heard stories about him from divers as well as lobstermen. Give him a skim of your profits, he'll let you operate without a license or outside your zone, even look the other way if you row out at night and raid somebody's lobster traps. Up until now, you didn't play along, he'd hassle you for the slightest infraction of the rules, but wouldn't actually squeeze anybody outright. The stunt he tried to pull on me takes him to a new level."
"Claiming he'd seen you dive outside your zone so he could confiscate your entire catch," Nimec said. "That it?"
Ricci snapped his pointer finger out at him and nodded.
"Like you said, times are rough," Nimec said. He exhaled, deciding to take another stab at a question Ricci had already angled past twice."I want to try this with you again... you think Dex and Cobbs have something going?"
Ricci stared at his cup, still turning and turning it in his hands. It was no longer steaming.
"Been trying to work that out in my own mind," he said in a hesitant tone. "Cobbs and his deputy dog were waiting for me on the road, and I doubt it's a coincidence that they knew exactly when I'd be driving out to the market, and what route I'd take. Also bothers me that the day they chose to pull me over happened to be the one and only day Dex wasn't around to keep me company."
"Wouldn't it have been better for him if he came along for the ride?" Nimec said. "To act surprised, I mean. The way it went down just makes him look suspicious."
Ricci moved his shoulders. "Dex is no genius. Assuming the worst about him, could be that he was only worried having to look me in the eye when I drove into their little setup. Or maybe he doesn't care what I suspect. Maybe with Cobbs he gets a better than even slice of the action, and all that matters to him is running me out of it."
"And out of town in the process," Nimec said.
Ricci nodded. "Like I said, assuming the worst-case scenario. But right now that's all just for argument's sake."
They sat in silence for a while. Megan watched them, feeling strangely like an observer. She sensed the easy intersection of their thoughts, the unspoken communication of men who had done police work for much of their lives, and all at once thought she had an inkling why Nimec wanted Ricci for Max's position.
"Let's stick to Cobbs for the moment," Nimec said finally. "He's not going to just leave things as they are. You know his type. The way you embarrassed him, he'll be twisting like a corkscrew until he can get back at you. And that's probably going to happen sooner than later. He'll lick his wounds, convince himself you got lucky today."
"I know," Ricci said.
"Being hooked into the sheriff's office, he'll think he can get away with whatever he wants. Your warning about getting in touch with outside agencies won't stop him. Far as he's concerned, they're a world away."
"I know."
Nimec looked at him.
"What are you planning to do?" he said.
Ricci grunted indeterminately. He took a drink of coffee, frowned, and set the cup down on the table.
"Flat," he said, and pushed it away from him.
More silence.
Megan's gaze wandered briefly down to the bay. The sunlight was fading, and white patches of sea smoke had begun rising from the water as dusk's cold breezes slipped over its warmer surface. The birds had returned with the eagle's departure, bearing out Ricci's prediction. She could see rafts of ducks near the shoreline almost straight below, and further off, gulls descending through the mist to alight on shoals exposed by the receding tide. Broad-chested and gray-patched, they seemed instantly to enter a state of repose, puffing out their feathers against the dropping temperature.
Suddenly it seemed very late in the day.
"We should talk about why Pete and I came to see you," she said. "You still haven't given us your feelings about it."
Ricci looked at her. "Now that you mention it, why did the two of you come?"
Megan blinked.
"You don't know," she said. It was a statement rather than a question.
He shook his head.
She turned to Nimec. "You didn't tell him?"
Nimec shook his head. "I thought we'd wait until we got here," he said without explanation. "Discuss it face-to-face."
She rubbed her eyebrows with her thumb and forefinger, shook her head a little, and sighed resignedly.
"We'd better go inside after all," she said. "Seems this is going to take longer than I expected."
A little past five-thirty in the afternoon P.D.T., two urgent calls were placed from the Brazilian space station facility to UpLink's corporate headquarters in San Jose.
The first was to Roger Gordian.
Standing near his office window, looking out at the rain that had just started pouring down on Rosita Avenue, Gordian was about to leave for the day when his desk phone chirruped. He stared at it a moment, tempted to let it remain on the hook, one arm halfway inside his trench coat. Whoever it was could leave a message.
Chree-eep!
Ignore it, he urged himself. Ashley. Dinner. Home.
The phone rang a third time. On the fourth, the caller would be automatically transferred to Gordian's voice mail.
Shrugging out of his coat, he frowned in acquiescence and grabbed the receiver.
"Yes?" he said.
The man at the other end identified himself as Mason Cody from the Sword operational center, Mato Grasso do Sul. His voice seemed to come out of an odd, tunneling silence that put Gordian in mind of what it was like holding a conch shell up against his ear--listening to the ocean, they'd called it when he was young.
He sat behind his desk, realizing immediately that he was on a secure digital line. And that the call was therefore anything but routine.
"Sir, there's been an incident," Cody said in a tone that made his back stiffen.
Gordian listened quietly as the violent events at the ISS compound were outlined for him in a rapid but collected manner, his hand tensing around the receiver at the news of injuries and fatalities.
"The wounded men," he said. "How are they doing?"
"They've all been medevaced from the scene," Cody said. "Most are in fair shape or better."
"What about Rollie Thibodeau? You said he'd been pretty badly hurt."
"He's still in surgery." A pause. "No word on his condition."
Gordian willed himself to be calm.
"Has Pete Nimec been told about this?" he asked.
"My feeling was that I should brief you first, Mr. Gordian. I plan to call him the moment we sign off."
Gordian rotated his chair toward the window, thinking about what he'd just been told. It was all so difficult to absorb.
"Is there
anything else?" he said. "Any idea who was behind the raid?"
"I wish I could tell you we know, sir," Cody said. "Maybe we'll get something out of the prisoners, though right now I'm not even sure how long we can hold onto them."
Gordian inhaled, exhaled. Cody's meaning was clear. As members of a private security force that operated internationally, Sword personnel were obliged to abide by stringent rules of conduct, some of them preconditions set by host governments, some internal guidelines, occasionally complicated formulations premised on the simple reality that they were guests on foreign soil. While adjustments for different cultural and political circumstances were built into their procedural framework, it would be pushing beyond acceptable bounds to interrogate the captured attackers even if the on-site capabilities to detain them existed--which was doubtful. Moreover, an incident on the scale he'd been told about would have to be reported to the Brazilians, assuming they hadn't already learned of it through their own domestic intelligence apparatus. Once the prisoners were in their custody, it was impossible to guess whether Brazilian law enforcement would share any information obtained from them. The politics of the situation were going to be touchy, and the last thing Gordian wanted was to start stepping on toes.
"Have you been in contact with the local authorities?"
"Not yet," Cody said. "Thought I ought to hold off, see how you wanted that handled. Hope that was the right thing."
"It was exactly right," Gordian said. "I suspect they'll be showing up without word from us, but notify them as soon as possible anyway. Tell them that we mean to provide our absolute cooperation in terms of whatever questions they have. And that we're confident they'll reciprocate. It's in our common interest to get to the bottom of this." I assume, he thought, but did not add. "You have my home telephone number on file?"
Gordian heard the tapping of computer keys.
"Yes, it's right up in front of me."
"Okay. Keep me posted on any developments. Doesn't matter what hour it is."
"Understood," Cody said.
Gordian took another breath.
"I suppose that's it," he said. "Hang tight, I know you've got hell on your hands."
"We're doing our best, Mr. Gordian," Cody said.
His voice dropped into that hermetic tunnel of silence again.
Gordian cradled the receiver and sat looking out his window in sober contemplation. Rainwater splashed against the glass, washing down its surface in long rippling streams. From his angle, he could see nothing of the street below, no pedestrians scurrying through puddles for someplace dry, no cars crawling along with their windshield wipers on. Mount Hamilton too seemed beyond the reach of his vision, rendered a gray, featureless blur by the heavy curtains of moisture blowing across the sky.
It was, he thought, as if the world was made of rain.
Only rain.
As Gordian had been assured, Cody's next call was to Pete Nimec. He was not in his office, and the recorded greeting on his voice mail said he would be away overnight and checking his incoming messages regularly. His cell phone number was given for emergencies.
Cody quickly terminated the connection and dialed it.
"So you want me to be your, what, eyes and ears around the world," Ricci said. He crouched and put a log into the woodstove opposite the comfortable leather sofa where his visitors were seated. "That about it, Pete?"
"Not quite, if I may interject a point or two," Megan said, glancing at Nimec.
He gave her a shrug. They were in Ricci's spacious living room, a mid-1980's rear addition to a Colonial home built a century earlier, with natural wood plank walls and glass sliding doors that gave onto the water-front deck where they'd been talking until a few minutes ago.
"The person we select will be responsible for implementing and coordinating security functions at UpLink's various international and domestic sites," she said. "He or she will be second in authority only to Pete. But I want to stress that we're primarily here so you and I can get acquainted, and to gauge your interest in us."
"And yours in me," Ricci said, facing her.
They exchanged looks.
"Yes," she said. "It's a unique and demanding job. We naturally want to see if you've got what it takes to meet its challenges."
Ricci considered that a second, then nodded.
"Fair enough," he said. "You still assembling your candidate list?"
"The only other person whose qualifications we're presently weighing is a current member of our Brazilian team named Roland Thibodeau. And to be frank, his interest in the position hasn't yet been determined. I plan on speaking to Rollie sometime within the next couple of days."
Ricci turned to Nimec. "How come you wouldn't tell me anything about the reason for this visit over the phone?" he said.
"If I'd tried, I would have heard a click in the receiver before the words were finished leaving my mouth. Figured it would be best to come and talk. See how you felt about it face-to-face."
Ricci silently took three sheets of newspaper from a shallow wine crate beside him, crumpled them, and pushed them underneath the grille of the stove. Then he struck a match and held it to the newspapers to start them burning. Flames crackled up and licked at the bottom of the log.
When the log had caught, he carefully shut the glasspaneled door of the stove and looked at Megan again.
"I figure you've heard the long sad story of how I lost my badge," he said.
"Pete gave me his take on it," she said. "I'd already gotten another from the papers."
"You can see why I like using them as tinder then," he said.
She smiled a little.
"The thought had occurred to me," she said. "In light of today's events, it also strikes me that you have a knack for making enemies in the wrong places."
Ricci hesitated for the barest moment. "You read the version where they say I'm an uncontrollable maverick, or the one where I'm called an outright disgrace to the Boston police department?"
"Both, actually, but I tend to ignore the descriptive nouns and home in on the bare facts," she said. "A kid falls to his death from an Ivy League campus rooftop. The group of frat boys who were up there with him claim it's a terrible hazing accident. Too many beers, reckless behavior. As the city's chief homicide detective, you head what everyone expects to be a perfunctory investigation, until the coroner's report reveals there was no alcohol in the deceased's bloodstream. You start digging around, find out the boys who were on that roof are heavily into dealing drugs and other unsavory after-school projects, then find out there's been some bad blood between the group leader and the kid who was killed. The alpha gets charged with first-degree murder; his friends deal down in exchange for their cooperation as state's witnesses. There's a trial and he's found guilty, which should mean a mandatory twenty-five-to-life sentence. But the jury's verdict is overturned by the judge and he walks on a technicality. Something about an error in how certain evidence was processed by the medical examiner's office." She paused. "How am I doing so far?"
Ricci's eyes held to her firmly.
"You don't mind, I'll wait for the next part before rating you," he said.
Megan nodded. The log in the woodstove popped and spat sap, flames flaring brightly around it.
"Next you do a spate of media interviews repudiating the judge, arguing that the error shouldn't have been enough to get the case into Appellate Court, let alone warrant nullification from the bench," she said. "Even more seriously, you allege that the judge was bought and paid for by the killer's father. They go on television with their counterclaims, say you have some kind of personal ax to grind. A number of details from your departmental records are leaked to the press, including information that you'd received counseling for problem drinking and depression while on the force. There are stories that you have a bad attitude. When it's all over, the kid is still free and you've turned in your badge. The general impression is that you were given the choice of either resigning or being discharged without pen
sion."
She sat quietly again, watching him.
"That's not bad, far as it goes," Ricci said. "But there's also what you left out."
"I didn't want to sit here giving a recitation," she said. "It might be better to hear the rest from you. If you care to tell it."
Ricci nodded. "Sure," he said. "In the interest of good public relations."
She waited without comment.
"The murdering little prince's father was a Beacon Hill millionaire," he said. "I learned during the trial that the judge belonged to the same A-list country club as Dad, which in my opinion ought to have been enough to have him removed from the case. Prosecution could've taken it up in district court, but didn't, and since it's their call I couldn't let myself worry about it. After the trial's over, though, I hear from a couple of staffers at the club that there were three separate meetings between Dad, the judge, and the oak wainscoting while the jury was in deliberation. One of them's the manager, a solid guy who's been working there forty years and has no reason to be spinning tall tales. Came forward out of feeling guilty, like the other two." He shrugged. "They denied it later on, when I went public."
"Somebody cured their guilt," Megan said. "Money and power being the prescribed remedy. If I'm to believe your version."
Dead silence. Ricci looked hard at her, the fire tossing shadows across his angular features.
"What is it exactly that bothers you about me?" he said at last.
His blue eyes level and probing.
She opened her mouth as if to reply, closed it, and merely stared back at him without saying anything.
"I believe it," Nimec said, breaking into the silence. "His account, that is."
Ricci turned to Nimec, leaving Megan surprised by her own relief at being out from under his steady gaze.
"I don't need an advocate," Ricci said.