by Tom Clancy
“This photo was mailed to guests who’d attended their fortieth wedding anniversary dinner,” Gordian said at length. “Their Ruby Anniversary. Did you know that? The traditional symbol, I mean.”
Nimec shook his head. “Being single . . . it isn’t something I’ve thought about much.”
Gordian looked at him. “For the first fifteen years of marriage, each one is considered a small milestone. The first is Paper. The second Cotton. Then Leather, Flowers . . . and so forth.” He sighed. “After that stretch, the special anniversaries are marked every five years. I’m not sure of the reason. But I know the magic number becomes five. I’ve been married to Ashley for thirty-two years. In another three we’ll be celebrating our Coral Anniversary. Then, a half decade later, knock wood, our Ruby. Next comes Sapphire, Gold, and Emerald. Diamond would be our sixtieth. It’s an interesting question whether etiquette’s caught up with present-day longevity statistics and gone past that. Ash could probably tell us. Women know. Sometimes, I think they know everything the instant they’re born.”
“A head start like that’s kind of hard to beat,” Nimec said.
“I’d be happy to finish with a tie,” Gordian said. “Those anniversary symbols, Pete. Before the Steiners were killed I couldn’t have run them down for you if my fate hung on it. Didn’t have the slightest notion what they were, and I’d been married almost three decades. If Norma hadn’t reminded me with a scolding that still rings in my ears, I likely wouldn’t have known my Silver was coming up. UpLink had consumed so much of my life, I’d forgotten how to share it with the woman I love.”
“And when Art and Elaine died?”
Gordian was quiet, sitting with the picture frame still turned toward Nimec. His gaze seemed at once there and apart, distant and tightly focused, as if telescoped onto some horizon that lay far outside the walls of the room.
“It changed things,” he said. “I recall the day their bodies were flown back to the States. They came aboard a NATO plane. An IL-76 transport. There were twenty-three dead. Many were victims of the attack in Kaliningrad. Others lost their lives in our raid on the terrorist hideaway. Twenty-three human beings arriving in coffins. This was at Kennedy Airport, in New York. Waiting for it to arrive, I couldn’t feel anything but guilt. I’d put them all in harm’s way. Friends, employees. But I couldn’t cover them. Couldn’t do anything besides wait for that plane to bring them home for burial.”
“None of it was your fault,” Nimec said. “People can’t always be protected.”
Gordian nodded.
“I know, Pete. I came to realize it standing there on the tarmac,” he said. “It was sunset when the plane touched down, and the light was golden on its wings . . . gold on gray. Then it deepened to orange. And then violet as the coffins were brought out. I’d arranged for a band to be present, and they were playing Bach, an excerpt from one of his Passions. I remember the music. Solemn, meditative. But something about it, coupled with that majestic sunset, helped lift me above the sorrow and despair. Something that was untouchably hopeful. Or that aspired toward hope. And I remember promising myself I’d re-commit to my own marriage, make it a testament to the love that Arthur and Elaine had had for each other. Remember vowing I’d press forward, continue using whatever resources and influence I had to do some good in the world. I owed it to them. Owed it every one of the people who’d been killed. They can’t always be protected from violence. But we have to keep our watch.”
Nimec stared at the photo and thought for a while. Then he switched his attention to Gordian.
“Meg was clear about wanting me at Cold Corners,” Nimec said.
“Yes.”
“And you’re with her on it.”
“Yes,” Gordian said. “Your thoughts?”
“I have to wonder what difference I’d make. Our staff down there knows the territory. They’re getting an open assist from MacTown. We’ve got to believe they’re doing everything they can.”
Gordian looked steadily at him.
“They’re racing against the calendar,” he said. “The Antarctic winter is just three weeks off. Months of darkness and bad weather. Once they have to bunker in, that’s the end of any sort of investigation. Megan doesn’t want to waste time. And she knows what you can accomplish given very little to spare.”
Nimec suddenly felt thickheaded. Investigation, he thought. He’d misunderstood Megan Breen’s request. This wasn’t about whether his involvement would effect the conclusion of their search. Wasn’t about conclusions at all, but rather undefined suspicions. Megan’s, Gordian’s, and his own. Antarctica was a brutal place. Nobody went there without a keen awareness of that fact. But the back-to-back disappearances of Scout IV and its S&R team equaled a huge, ominous question mark. And a likely tragedy. Something strange was going on out in the dry valleys, and Nimec was being asked to help get to the bottom of it. That was where his participation could be of important benefit.
The problem was that he considered his principal responsibilities to be with Roger Gordian in San Jose.
“I’ve got some questions before I hurry to pack my bags,” Nimec said. “With Ricci deep in the field, who’s left to man home plate? He pressed hard for my go-ahead, and it would be a mistake to pull him back without good cause. In my opinion we don’t have it. Not yet.”
“Ricci can carry on with his assignment. I don’t expect you’ll be gone too long. The last flight out of base is in three weeks. And you’ll have a reserved seat, I promise,” Gordian said. “Meanwhile, Rollie Thibodeau is here to handle things in your absence.”
“The way he’s been acting, I’m not sure Rollie can—”
“I am,” Gordian interrupted. “And I would think you’d have faith in the rest of our local Sword team.”
“Not the issue,” Nimec said. “We’ve had some close calls in the past few months. And the snakes responsible are still holed away underground.”
Gordian kept his gaze on him.
“I don’t need constant babysitting, Pete,” he said. “What are your other concerns?”
Nimec paused. It had taken about five sentences to exhaust his arguments. That left him scuffling for a dignified surrender.
“My Corvette,” he said “You going to take care of her for me?”
The faintest of smiles touched Gordian’s lips.
“She’ll be okay.” He carefully put down the picture frame. “That’s promise number two.”
Nimec sat there looking at Gordian for about thirty seconds. Then he gave him an acquiescent nod, rose from his chair, and started out of the office.
“Pete, one final thing . . .”
He turned to face Gordian.
“An old friend of ours with NASA is due to shepherd a small delegation of reporters and Senators around Cold Corners. The timing couldn’t be worse, but it’s part of a government funding push that can’t be called off,” he said. “At any rate, give my regards to Annie.”
Nimec stood with his hand suddenly tight on the brass doorknob. “Annie?”
“Caulfield,” Gordian said. “You remember her, of course.”
Nimec swallowed.
“Sure, I’ll say hello,” he said.
And strode from the room.
THREE
NORTH HIGHLANDS, SCOTLAND
MARCH 2, 2002
AS HE EMERGED FROM HIS EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ESTATE outside Rosmarkie for his daily predawn walk, Ewie B. Cameron, whose fifth great granduncle was the eldest son of Sir Ewen of Lochiel of the Highland Camerons, could feel nothing of the legendary courage and fierceness of his ancestors, but only an awful nervous gnawing in his stomach that had worsened throughout the long, long night.
If the documents that plant supervisor had slipped him proved authentic . . .
No, no, he thought. Their authenticity was beyond question. He could not seek an out for himself by playing the willful fool. . . .
If his interpretation of them proved accurate despite their many cryptic references, verifyi
ng the supervisor’s story . . .
And if the plant’s key stakeholders could not then provide an acceptable accounting of the transactions . . . which Ewie knew would be nearly impossible given their flagrant violation of Scottish and international regulations . . .
If, if, if . . .
Ewie reached the end of his private lane, where a holly hedge screened his lawn from the narrow country road rolling past, the brightness of its berries muted now in the crepuscular light. Stepping onto the shoulder of the road, he turned left against whatever traffic might happen by at this early hour, and strolled toward the stone embankment where it was his habit to do some leg stretches before intensifying his pace. The morning was cold but not at all blustery, with just enough bite to be invigorating. Though Ewie was prone to be an abstemious sobriety of temperament, it was the sort of weather that would usually lift his mood like the fine mist curling off the mature Archangel firs that rose a hundred feet into the air on either side of him.
Today he was only wishing the twist in his gut would slacken a bit, so he could summon the appetite for a minimal breakfast.
For if the evidence Ewie had obtained was what it seemed on its face, the apprehension he felt about this evening’s meeting was as nothing compared to his dread of its broader consequences. Indeed, his first impulse had been to keep the information to himself until he conducted a quiet personal investigation. But that would have been imprudent. Say word of the alleged goings-on at Cromarty Firth leaked in the meantime? Say his informant grew impatient and brought the hard copies elsewhere—another council member, an Energy Authority constable, some damned English bureaucrat with the Department of Trade of Industry? Lord knows, the man might even rashly trot off to the press. Were his own prior ken revealed, Ewie knew his reputation would be compromised. Or worse. He might well be patsied and have to forfeit his council post. Face civil and criminal prosecution.
It was a mad predicament he’d been tossed into. Absolutely mad.
Ewie had been walking for several minutes, bogged in thought, when he noticed that he’d almost missed the embankment. He frowned at his distraction and stepped off the dirt shoulder for his routine warmup exercises.
Standing close to the rock, he leaned against it with his forearms, rested his head on his hands, then bent his right leg forward and extended the other straight back, holding the stretch until he felt it in his left calf. Then he changed sides. After about a minute, he put one foot up on a projecting ledge and, hands on his hips, bent his knee to relax the hamstring and groin muscles. . . .
Perhaps, Ewie thought, he should have shied away from the plant supervisor. Declined to attend their clandestine meeting at the pub, or at least refused to accept the envelope he was handed under the table. He could then have claimed ignorance with honesty. He was no hero. No warrior chieftain like his namesake Sir Ewen, seventeenth clan chieftain, slayer of the last wild wolf in Scotland, and Jacobite rebel who fought beside Bonnie Dundee at Killiecrankie, where it was said he’d torn the throat out of a ranking English officer with his bare teeth, drinking his blood as it pulsed from the wound. Nor would Ewie compare himself to his great and renowned forebear Major Allan Cameron, founder of the bold 79th Highlanders, which was later renamed the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders, and then merged with the Seaforths to become the Queen’s Own Highlanders.
Ewie was simply Ewie. An estate legatee, resolute bachelor, and minor elected official appointed to the Land and Environment Select Committee, which reported to a policy committee, which in turn was under the higher control of a strategic committee of the district council. His usual issues of concern were sewage improvements, road and bridge repairs, traffic-light placements, and such. Ewie did not pretend he’d inherited the brave disposition of his forebears. Did not share their combative propensities. He was proudly content to have his fabled lineage charted in the social registry, and the family crest and tartan displayed on his mantelpiece.
Finished with his warmups, Ewie tarried by the ledge as the lights of an oncoming vehicle slid over the rise up ahead, on his side of the road. They glanced off the blaze-orange windbreaker he always wore on his morning rambles, a precaution that made it easier for motorists to spot him. The small Citröen that appeared moments later was familiar, belonging to a pretty young woman who owned the bakery just over the Kessock bridge. She slowed as she came closer, pulled out toward the opposite lane to give Ewie a comfortable berth, and exchanged a mannerly wave with him in passing.
Then the road was again empty. Ewie got on with his walk, feeling physically looser, and hoping he’d eased some of his mental tensions as well. But his thoughts soon drifted back to what he’d learned from the plant supervisor, and they were accompanied by unrelieved distress and anxiety.
It would have been easy for Ewie to rebuff the fellow with a smile, a shrug, and a polite tip of his glass before any secrets were divulged. Easy to shut his eyes to the whole scandalous deal. So why on earth hadn’t he?
The answer, Ewie knew, was that he was stuck with an inconvenient sense of responsibility. Both as public servant and citizen. The plant at Cromarty Firth employed almost fifteen hundred people from Black Isle down the coast to Inverness, and accounted for perhaps twenty-five million pounds per year in local wages, with millions more filtering into the economy through secondary commerce—a full thirty percent of the Gross District Product. At present the core workforce was involved in decommissioning prototype fast breeder reactors built in the 1950’s and ’60’s. But with the site a top contender for an experimental JET tokamak fusion laboratory, revenues had the potential to double in the next ten years.
If the disclosures were true, however . . .
That word again, Ewie thought.
If.
If they were true, it was not only the expansion that would be threatened, but Cromarty’s very license to remain operational. The UK Atomic Energy Authority constabulary would shut down the plant in a blink, sending the area’s economic prospects into the deepest of holes.
Ewie started up a moderate incline with brisk strides and rhythmic swings of his arms. He wanted to get his blood circulating, and the oxygen flowing into his lungs. Wanted beyond all else to clear his head.
As he neared the top of the rise, Ewie heard another vehicle coming toward him. A commercial rig, judging from the rumble of its wheels. He reached the downhill side and saw that it was a giant tub of a Unimog. The truck was moving well in excess of the speed limit with its brights on.
Startled, blinking from glare of the headlamps, Ewie stepped further onto the shoulder. The truck kept hauling along as if it were on a speed course. Ewie was sure the driver had his gears in fifth.
Ewie decided to let him go on by before resuming his walk. Probably the driver was some ass who’d fallen behind schedule making a delivery to Inverness, and meant to catch up with the clock by hurtling along this quiet stretch of blacktop with no thought of his or anyone else’s safety. Ewie had a mind to memorize his tag number and report him to the police when he got home.
By the time Ewie realized the Unimog had swerved directly toward the shoulder where he was standing, it was too close for him to get out of the way. Blinded by the headlamps, his ears filled with thunder, he reflexively cast his hands front of his face, thrusting his body back toward the wooded area lining the road.
A split second before the front end of the cab mashed into him, Ewie began to shout something that was part question, part curse, and part expression of fear and anger. But the loud roar of the engine drowned out what little of it escaped his lips, and then everything was over for him, all over, his life crushed out, the truck plunging on down the road, away toward the mainland, the blood spatters on its massive fender unnoticeable to anyone who might chance to see it pass in the semidarkness.
They were lying in bed, the husband on his back with the quilt pulled to his bare chest, his wife on her side atop the quilt, facing him, her right hand flat on his stomach. Her nightgown, a flimsy strip of
lace-edged silk, revealed far more than it hid. Slung across his body, her right leg was long, toned, the flesh of its thigh smooth and creamy white.
Inspector Frank Gorrie of the Northern Constabulary, Inverness Command Area, was thinking he might be envious of the fellow she was snuggled against, if only his gaze hadn’t climbed above the generous swell where the nightie did not quite manage to cover her breasts.
She had a beautiful figure.
Gorrie did not know about the face, would not know until he saw a photograph of her as she’d appeared in life. Most of it was gone, blown away by a .38-caliber bullet, and there was blood all over the rest. The shot that killed the husband was cleaner, a single entry wound in the middle of his forehead. Probably he’d been asleep when it was fired, never knew what hit him. His face was tranquil, eyes closed. There was a dash of foam at the corner of his lips.
Gorrie could see that the pillowcases were soggy and red under their heads, under the pistol clutched in the woman’s left hand, her finger curled around the trigger, its short barrel thrust into what remained of her mouth.
Standing at the foot of the bed, Gorrie experienced a brief twinge of guilt that had nothing to do with his appreciation of the dead woman’s comely shape. In police work, you noticed what you noticed. The best and worst in people often rubbed up close, and he would not damn himself for being human. But whatever had happened to the couple, or between them, their intimate connection was a strong thing in the room, and Gorrie suspected his discomfort came from the peculiar feeling that he’d somehow intruded upon it.