by Tom Clancy
Yet for him the best of the gadget’s features was its Annie-Meter.
As he called it.
Nimec had set it shortly after leaving Houston for San Jose earlier that week. To be more precise, Nimec had set it fifteen minutes after Annie dropped him off at the airport, where she’d sent him on his way with a deep, sweet, shamelessly immodest kiss through her car’s open passenger door as he’d leaned in across the front seat from the curb… a kiss whose taste had lingered all the while it took Nimec to reluctantly pull himself and his carry-on bag from her car, turn through the terminal entrance, obtain his boarding pass from the clerk at the departure gate, and finally sit himself down in the passenger waiting area to fool with the watch’s push-button menu controls.
The Annie-Meter, so-called, looked to unknowing eyes like an electronic calendar. What you did with it exclusively, if your name happened to be Pete Nimec, was first scroll to the box around the date you left Annie, whenever you left Annie, and record the exact, official NIST time you made your generally romantic farewells. Then you went to the screen that allowed you to specify the expected duration of your time apart from her and entered that information, inserting a little check mark beside the ALARM option — which, thanks to shareware Annie’s son had downloaded from the Internet overriding the WristLink’s preprogrammed selection of beeps and musical tones, would sound a bleeping rendition of the Temptations’ “My Girl” on the day you were scheduled to see Annie again. Next up, assuming once more that you were Pete Nimec, was to open another dialogue box and checkmark the COUNTDOWN option enabling you to monitor, with a quick and convenient glance, the exact, official NIST number of days, hours, minutes, and seconds that were left until you got to hear that blessed melody. Finally you made absolutely sure both your farewell and return-to-Annie dates were highlighted in valentine red on the calendar, push-buttoned your way back to the device’s normal watch face, and that was that.
Nimec had last consulted the Annie-Meter riding the elevator down from his guest suite in UpLink’s reserved upper-story block, and noted he was twenty-three days, one hour, and an odd bundle of minutes from reuniting with his honey bun. Meaning that by the conclusion of the obligatory dinner reception, possibly sooner if it didn’t drag on too long, the number of days would be reduced to twenty-two and change. That was, he acknowledged, parsing things a tad. But as Tom Ricci had advised back when Nimec was entirely confident Ricci had his head on straight, you had to count your gains in small steps.
He entered the atrium now, joining the twenty-five or so attendees who’d gotten there ahead of him. All but one were men in suits, and half of those were UpLink corporate officials and high-level technical consultants focal to the fiber ring deal. The sole woman present was Tara Cullen, the project’s network operations manager… and a sleek, standout blond, as the thick cluster of smiling African delegates around her had clearly noticed. Nimec saw three or four members of his twelve-man security team interspersed throughout the crowd, lapel pins on their jackets — the triangular pins’ engraved and laminated design showing a broadsword surrounded by stylized satcom bandwidth lines.
Everyone from UpLink looked about as zonked as Nimec felt. He had wanted representatives from his Sword contingent at the gathering as a gesture of courtesy, but because they weren’t part of the business delegation had seen no reason to trot out the entire bunch. He’d thus asked for only a handful of volunteers, having allowed those who preferred to skip the festivities do so after their long, taxing haul from California. Starting tomorrow his group would have its work cut out conducting surveys of UpLink’s new onshore and offshore facilities and laying the groundwork for site policies, procedures, and equipment. Let them relax while they could.
Aside from a fleet of black-tuxed, white-gloved servers weaving about the room with trays of hors d’oeuvres and cocktails, the rest of the people Nimec scoped from the entryway belonged to the Gabonese welcoming committee: politicians and administrative appointees led by Etienne Begela, who Nimec’s well-studied contact brief tagged as bureaucratic head of the telecom regulatory agency in Port-Gentil.
Now Begela looked over at Nimec, excused himself from a group of UpLink executives he’d engaged, and approached with his arm outstretched.
Nimec went forward to meet him. The atrium was awash with sunlight even though it was almost seven in the evening. It gleamed off the silver trays and table settings and spilled through the glass-paneled ceiling onto exotic blossoming floor plants, which Nimec didn’t recognize in the least and which seemed almost too outlandishly tall and lush to be genuine.
“Monsieur Nimec, hello, it is a pleasure.” Begela pumped his hand, offered a huge white-toothed smile, and introduced himself in French-accented English. Nimec wondered briefly how the minister had identified him right off, then guessed one of the execs had pointed him out. Either that or Begela had been pretty good about reviewing his own background files. “I hope you are finding your accommodations satisfactory after such a lengthy trip, and would like you to know I’ve personally selected those hotel staffers who will be attending to your party throughout its stay.”
“I appreciate that,” Nimec said. “Everything’s great.”
And the hotel was very nice — elegant, in fact, Nimec mused. Though even a jungle hut and straw cot would have been agreeable to him after his latest marathon global traverse. This one ranked way ahead of SanJo- Malaysia on the all-time fatigue scale, and seemed a close runner up to SanJo-Antarctica. How many hours had it spanned? A glance at his superwatch would of course tell him to the exact, official NIST atomic minute, but Nimec had the sense that knowing the answer to that question would make him feel even more wiped out than he currently did. There had been the United Airlines charter out of San Jose airport — well, playing the name game again, Norman Y. Mineta San Jose International Airport, as the city council had rechristened it a couple of years back in honor of the former mayor — at six thirty in the morning the previous day. That had taken his group to their connection at O’Hare in Chicago, where they had boarded a UA international flight to Paris de Gaulle after a five-hour layover. Arriving in the glorious City of Light around seven the next morning after a full day of travel, they’d barely had a chance to toss back some Mc-Donald’s coffee and hit the terminal restrooms — which had been the high point of that little interlude, and no more glorious than visits to salles de bains the world over — before hustling aboard an Air France A340 for another seven hours in the wild blue yonder, and finally touching down at Leon M’ba Airport in Libreville at around five in the evening. From the nation’s capital they’d flopped onto a waiting Air Gabon Fokker 28 that had shuttled them to Port-Gentil, where they’d hustled into their rooms, and, each in his or her own dog-tired way, prepared for the banquet.
“When you’ve rested up, we shall have to familiarize you with our city,” Etienne Begela was saying now. “You’ll find it delightfully captivating, I’m sure. I’ll show you our government offices tomorrow, and can recommend places to shop, dine, even enjoy some sightseeing if the desire strikes. And I have people ready to assist your group in whatever other ways may be needed.”
Nimec gave the minister a nod.
“I look forward to all that once I’ve recharged,” he said. “We’ll try not to be too much of a nuisance.”
A pair of waiters glided over and surrounded Nimec with their carefully balanced trays of appetizers. One held a selection of pâtés, thin-sliced sausages, truffles, and chilled poached salmon. The other had something hot, what looked like escargot stuffed into sauteed mushrooms. Nimec found himself disappointed. The offerings looked tasty enough. And he’d done his homework about the long French tradition here. Gabon had been visited by trading ships from Marseilles and Nice since before Columbus, was settled by colonial forces right around the middle of the nineteenth century. Still, you could sample French food anywhere. It was the universal posh cuisine, and this affair definitely had a high poshness quotient. Nimec wasn’t big on i
t, however, and guessed he’d hoped for more regional fare. If you were going to fly a couple of zillion miles to Africa, you wanted to chow down on African.
Nimec sampled the pâté and thought it was blandly decent. But he resolved that he’d have to take Begela up on his offer of guiding him toward some interesting spots to eat.
He noticed Tara Cullen passing by with one of the other Gabonese delegates and waved to catch her attention, figuring it was an ideal chance to provide an intro… as well as an opportune moment to ease himself out of the conversation and into a chair for a while. And maybe see if any of the penguins were serving coffee. He really did feel headachey and bedraggled.
“Tara,” he said, “I’d like you to meet—”
“Ms. Cullen and I have already made one another’s acquaintance.” Begela flashed his big, overpowering smile at Nimec, then beamed it onto Tara and snagged her elbow. “Indeed, though, I feel professionally obliged, and personally delighted, to take this opportunity to expand upon it.” He nodded at the tall, dark-skinned man who’d been walking along with her. “Macie Nze, this is Mr. Pete Nimec, Mr. Nimec, Macie Nze… my friend and fellow in the Ministry of Telecommunications. He can tell you of our recent trip to the capital in support of UpLink’s agenda.” The smile became even more commanding. “And we ourselves must talk later, Macie, no?” he said without elaboration.
Nze gave him a nod and agreed that they should. Nimec thought he looked sort of flustered — or surprised, anyway — wondered about it a second, and then ventured that he probably just didn’t appreciate having his blond companion rustled off by a colleague.
As Begela steered Tara toward the bar, Nimec also decided to forget about his quiet cup of coffee.
“So,” he said, and extended his hand toward Nze for a fresh round of vigorous shaking. “Tell me about that trip of yours…”
Nze did, to neither man’s particular enjoyment.
* * *
The old Detecto stand-up scale had originally belonged to a Lousiana country doctor, who had it delivered to Roland Thibodeau’s appearance-conscious godmother as a lagniappe, a little something extra offered for good measure, when she had bought some nice, new-looking furniture at his moving sale… or so Thibodeau recalled her telling him. He had vague memories of his dear Nanaine Adele Rigaud getting many small, pretty gifts from the doctor before he and his wife left the bayou, pulling stakes for New Orleans all of a sudden. These gifts, too, may have been lagniappes. But Thibodeau had been very young back then, and unclear about the ways of adults.
What he did remember clearly was that Nanaine had always kept the scale against her bedroom wall in the modest settler’s house where he was raised from the age of ten, after losing both his natural parents between June and October of 1955—his father to a bewildering freak accident, then his mother in a way that was even more inexplicable to him. Jus’ must’ve got a special prov’d’nce again’ ’em, was a phrase he’d often heard muttered among his schoolmates and their families… the first time from a distant relative at Cecilia Thibodeau’s wake. Then and later, it had been hard for him to disagree. If going from fatherless to orphaned in a single horrible season wasn’t smoking-gun evidence of that special prov’d’nce — of Rollie getting FUBARed from a rear position, as his boys in the 101st Air Cav might have put it — what else in the wide world would qualify?
The scale’s heavy iron upright and platform base were lilac colored, Nanaine Adele having concealed its basic physician’s white under a paint job of her own lively and eccentric preference — a coat of paint that was now chipped, faded, and flecked with rust from top to bottom. Thibodeau had thought about stripping it a time or two, restoring the scale to its original condition. A lilac scale in his office surely did nothing to convey an impression of red-blooded Cajun manliness, and he sometimes felt foolish when he pictured himself on it. Lilac was a dainty color. As Nanaine Adele had been a dainty little bit of a woman. But it had been her favorite shade of purple, favorite flower, beloved fragrance of spring. She had even worn bonnets of homespun, hand-dyed lilac cotton to church on Sunday mornings.
Thibodeau had let the scale remain as it was. And if that cast doubts on his masculinity, well, he owed no explanations to anyone and was sure he’d never left any questions in the minds of vulnerable or designing ladies. On the contrary, another expression to circulate around Thibodeau in the Caillou Bay town where he had grown up (this when he was a teenager) had been le cœur comme un artichaud. Meaning his heart was like an artichoke… a leaf to spare for every pretty girl around.
Thibodeau hadn’t argued that one either. Enough dark-haired, sultry-eyed darlings had been enthusiastic takers at the fais do-dos, village dances, that went on from sun-down to sunup, with the main entertainment occurring in the dark, fenced yard behind the barn where the band played loud.
Rollie Thibodeau’s sentimental attachments were few but strong, and he’d held onto only a handful of keep-sakes from back home. Some black-and-white family photos dulled by time’s wasting touch. Paper flowers his mother had worn on her wedding dress, their colors also diminished. A carton of gear his father had used for fishing shellfish while he threaded among the swamps and marshes in his twelve-foot dugout canoe: tall, wooden oyster tongs, rope nets, a tangle of crab line, the bucket in which he brought home his daily catch, one of the traps he would set on the muddy shore along his route to snare muskrats—“swamp rats” he’d called the nasty furballs, though their hides must have fetched a fair rate at market. There was an assortment of other boxed remembrances. And, of course, the Detecto doctor’s scale. During his tour as a Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol commander in Nam, Thibodeau had rented storage space for the items in Baton Rouge, where they were kept until his return to the States.
After he was done with the war, and the war done with him, Thibodeau moved around a lot, inside and outside the country. For almost two decades he had capitalized on his elite military background by teaching classes on self-defense and firearms use, occasionally handling personal security, hiring out his services to clients ranging from business executives and Hollywood stars to European and Arab royals. Meanwhile, his boxed up this’s and that’s had gathered dust in one warehouse or another. Since 1995 or so, right about when Megan Breen roped him into UpLink International’s developing security force with a pointed inquiry — If you’ve got the ability to do something constructive with your life, why spend the rest of it watching to see that nobody pulls the diapers off spoiled princes and princesses? — everything had been stashed away in a cheap concrete storage unit about the size of a walk-in closet at the head of a dreary, unfrequented parking lot a dozen miles outside Los Angeles.
Everything except Nanaine Adele’s rusty, peeling lilac-colored scale.
Even before UpLink, that scale had gone wherever he did. Thibodeau wasn’t sure why. In his opinion, rearview mirrors were supposed to help guide people forward on the highway of life, not inspect their balky hairs and crooked neckties at its rest stops. He hadn’t been back to Louisiana since breast cancer got Nanaine Adele in 1989, and wasn’t about to waste a minute longing for Acadia. The relics of the past that Thibodeau held close to him were the useful ones, which was probably the main reason he’d made the scale his constant traveling companion. It was a symbol more than anything else, he guessed. A reminder that the only memories worth carrying around were those that made riding out the present, and maybe the future, a little smoother.
Besides, the damn thing was just plain reliable.
Though never preoccupied with his weight, Thibodeau had kept an occasional eye on it, and always managed to stay in good shape despite the limitless pleasure he took from beer drinking and hearty eating. At six feet, four inches tall, he was the bearer of a wide-boned, chockablock physique, and had sustained a steady-as-she-goes 235 pounds for most of his adult life, packing virtually every last ounce of it in slabs of muscle hardened by regular and diligent workouts.
All that had changed about two years ag
o, when he’d been sucker punched by a submachine gun round while defending an UpLink facility in Brazil against a terrorist hit… a bullet that had gone deep into his stomach, hung a left through his large intestine, and then plowed into his spleen, turning it to mincemeat before finally butting up against the back of his rib cage. There was also plenty of hemorrhaging, and a partial lung collapse to stop the ER personnel who received him from getting too blasé about their task.
For several months after he was shot, Thibodeau’s weakened condition had precluded strenuous exercise. Resistance training wasn’t worth a thought — in fact, he’d had days when simply raising himself out of bed, or from a chair to a standing position, was a torment. And by the time Thibodeau was at last able to get back into the gym, he’d recognized that his body might never regain all of its lost trunkish strength. There was getting shot, and there was getting gut shot. And more often than not gut shot had a way of leaving you permanently damaged goods… special prov’d’nce strikes again.
While on the mend, Thibodeau had been coaxed into accepting what was intended to be seen as a major promotion at UpLink, and gotten a big pay hike consistent with its added responsibilities. He supposed he should have been grateful. That he was wrong to feel privately indignant about a legitimate career advancement. Still, Rollie Thibodeau was nobody’s fool, and understood that his physical deficits had factored into the offer. To what degree, he didn’t know. And maybe didn’t care to guess. Why bother? He had been convinced it was made partly because Megan and Pete Nimec had wanted to remove him from active field duties he could no longer handle with 100 percent effectiveness… and nothing would un-convince him.