by Tom Clancy
More than anything, though, Gordian had a heartfelt desire to help create a better world, and believed to his core that the problem of eliminating global tyranny and oppression required communication-based solutions. Having grown up in an era of Berlin Walls and Iron Curtains, he was convinced that nothing—neither military buildups, nor leadership summits, nor treaties—had done as much to bring those Cold War barriers down as information seeping through their cracks. Information, he believed, was the ultimate key to personal and political freedom. His goal, his vision, was to provide that key to the broadest number of people he could imagine … which, Kirby supposed, made him a pragmatic idealist. Or was that oxy moronic?
Now Gordian began to speak again, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped together.
“Make no mistake. Chuck, I’m not second-guessing my business decisions with regard to the company’s expansion,” he said. “But I do fault myself for not preparing a defensive strategy against a shark attack. And it isn’t as if I haven’t had good counsel. You’ve advised me time and again to implement staggered terms of office on the board of directors. My friend Dan Parker, the congressman, tried to persuade me to lobby more forcefully for specific anti-takeover legislation in this state. I did neither.”
”Gord—”
Gordian raised a hand to silence him.
“Hear me out, please. As I said, this isn’t just a mea culpa,” he went on. “A minute ago, you said something about my needing a crystal ball to predict what’s happened. Well, in a way, I had one. I don’t think Spartus putting its stake on the market comes as a total shock to either of us. Look at the articles in the Wall Street Journal. The endless commentaries on those CNN and CNBC financial programs. Every aspect of my company’s operations has been subjected to criticism and ridicule, a great deal of it originating from a single source. Is it any wonder the value of our stock has gone into the sewer?”
“For the record, my comment related to your expenses, not the devaluation of UpLink shares,” Kirby said. “But I agree that the great and exalted financial prophet Reynold Armitage has done a trash-and-bum number on you in the media. If he’s the source you’re talking about, that is.”
“None other.” Gordian folded his hands on his knees again. “Spartus panicked, and though I figured I’d be able to settle their fears when I called them, they can’t really be blamed for not buying my reassurances. Tell me the truth, Chuck. Have you ever seen anything like Armitage microanalyzing our 10-K information on the air? And then putting such an incredibly negative spin on it? Because I find it damned curious.”
Kirby didn’t say anything, just shook his head. Yes, Armitage was an expert securities analyst, able to sniff the wind for market indicators better than almost any of his peers. What did it matter to the general financial community that he was also a pompous, mean-spirited son of a bitch? Some sons of bitches got listened to without being liked very much—and when Armitage spoke, investors large and small perked their ears.
Which was understandable, Kirby thought. Since becoming a constant presence on the money shows, Armitage had helped many, many stockholders to better understand the market and choose successful ventures. But he had also occasionally hurt struggling firms with imprudent calls, skewing figures to suit his predictions, baiting corporate leaders, seeming to relish making them look foolish. As Gordian had pointed out, you had to be ready to take your knocks when you were playing in the big leagues. And despite his sudden attack of self-doubt, he was a player. . . one of the best. However, what had raised Armitage’s campaign against UpLink—and campaign seemed the only appropriate word for it—to an inexplicable level of viciousness was the timing of his disclosures.
The very day UpLink had released its yearly report to stockholders, Armitage had gone on Moneyline with the firm’s 10-K and charged that there were critical discrepancies between the two statements. That had been untrue. Certainly, the reports presented their data in different lights, but annual reports were traditionally intended to emphasize a company’s strengths and future goals, while the 10-K form was a dry listing of financial statistics prepared for the Securities and Exchange Commission as a matter of law. By presenting those stats out of context— failing to weigh temporary debts and liabilities against projected venture profits, for instance—one could easily give the impression that a business had gotten into much worse shape than was actually the case. And Armitage had gone a giant step beyond that, exaggerating the significance of every expense, minimizing every gain, and analyzing profit-loss ratios in the worst possible light to depict a company on the verge of ruin.
Danmed curious indeed.
Still without speaking, Kirby rose, went over to the wet bar in the opposite comer of the room, and refilled his glass with scotch, leaving out the soda this time. As usual, Gordian’s mind was hitting on all its well-oiled cylinders. Why the constant attacks from Armitage? As far as he knew, Gordian had never stepped on his toes, never even met the man. Why, then? The question had been buzzing around Kirby’s own head for weeks like a nettlesome -wasp, and the only answer that came to him amounted to nothing more than a suspicion. It was one he’d hesitated to share with Gordian, feeling it would be rash to do so without any substantiation.
“Hope you don’t mind me helping myself to more of the expensive stuff,” he said, turning to Gordian.
“Get it while it lasts,” Gordian said with a grim smile, downing what was left of his own drink, then holding it out toward Kirby.
Kirby stepped over with Gordian’s own favorite Beefeater—and splashed a healthy measure into Gordian’s glass.
Their eyes met then, the look that passed between them lasting only a brief moment. Yet it was significant enough to give Kirby all the confirmation he needed that Gordian was thinking the exact same thing he was.
It was, he guessed, time they aired what was on their minds.
“Gord, do you believe this takeover bid was orchestrated?” he asked, the words leaping out of his mouth before caution could prevail. “That Armitage has been going at you with the intention of destroying shareholder confidence and—”
“And provoking a sell-off,” Gordian said, nodding. ‘ This whole thing reeks of behind-the-scenes manipulation.”
Kirby inhaled, exhaled. He could feel the silence of the room pressing down on him with a weight that was almost tangible.
“If that’s true,” he said, “it would at least suggest that Armitage is in somebody’s pocket.”
“Yes.” Gordian’s tone was flat. “It would.”
The two men faced each other soberly, their eyes holding.
“You have any idea who that somebody might be?” Kirby asked.
Gordian sat there quietly while the antique clock across the room ticked off a full minute.
“No,” he replied at last, hoping his sincerity would be accepted without challenge.
He was, after all, lying through his teeth.
THREE
SINGAPORE / JOHOR, MALAYSIA
SEPTEMBER 16, 2000
“TAKE MY WORD FOR IT, TINS HERE COUNTRY WOULD BE the perfect retirement spot for Barney the Dinosaur,” an American expatriate in Singapore once told a visitor from New York City. Or so he was quoted in the press, at any rate.
The comment—which was made in response to an inquiry about where some risque entertainment might be found, and would later become famous throughout the island—was overheard by a magazine writer amid the cacophonous chirping, tweeting, and trilling of innumerable performing birds. It was a Sunday morning, and Singaporean bird fanciers, mostly ethnic Chinese, had brought their thrushes, mata putehs, and sharmas out for the weekly avian singing competition at the intersection of Tiong Bahru and Seng Poh Roads, hanging their bamboo cages from specially built trellises above the public benches and outdoor cafe tables lining the street.
“You want cheap thrills, you got literally two options: dream X-rated tonight, or head on over to Fat B’s, at the east end,” the expat
had continued to the utter mystification of his visiting friend .. . and the gleeful amusement of the eavesdropping writer, who, realizing she’d stumbled upon a perfect opener for her regular Lifestyles column, listened carefully while the birds peeped and cheeped their bright, vacant melodies into the sunshiny air.
Indeed, Fat B’s, a decadent hole-in-the-wall tucked away behind a rotted shop-house facade in a narrow Gey-lang District larong, was unquestionably the seediest bar on the island republic. It was also a very busy place, drawing patrons night after night despite the stringent national morals laws, clinging to its grubby existence like some resistant bacilli on an otherwise scrubbed and sanitized operating room surface. Exactly why authorities tolerated it was anyone’s guess, although there were rumors of ongoing bribes to police officials, and compromising photographs that had been waved over the head of a high-placed government minister as insurance against a shutdown.
With its crumbling walls and ceiling covered with purple foil, bathed in black light, and decorated with giant crepe-paper rafflesias, painted wooden folk masks, blowpipes, bead strings, dragon banners, and century-old human skulls that had once hung in the longhouses of Borneo headhunters, the interior of the bar was outdone in crassness only by its owner. Fat B … who, contrary to what his name suggested, was not fat at all, but physically slight, and had gained a reputation for being a bold exclamation point of a man through a mixture of conspicuously non-Singaporean aggressiveness and flamboyance, characteristics he was supposed to have inherited from his wealthy Straits Chinese ancestors. Those who had business dealings with him also knew of a certain hard, forbidding look that became evident in his eyes when his anger or suspicion was aroused, giving him, at such times, the appearance of a wary crocodile.
Tonight Fat B was wearing a collarless yellow silk shirt printed with colorful explosions of peonies, black sharkskin slacks, a diamond stud in his right earlobe, and jade-encrusted rings on eight of his fingers. His jet-black hair was slicked straight back over his head and had an almost buffed appearance. He sat at his usual table in the rear of the bar, his back to the wall, keeping a watchful eye on every coming and going at the door.
“Here’s what you came for, Xiang,” he said, sliding a brown manilla envelope to the big, long-haired man seated opposite him. “Odd how so much effort goes into providing such a slim package. But it’s just that way when you’re trading in information. It weighs nothing and everything at the same time, to/i.”
Xiang just looked at him, then silently reached out for the envelope and lifted it off the table. Fat B tried not to show that he’d noticed the kris tattoo on the back of his hand, thinking his interest wouldn’t be at all appreciated … not by this retrograde brute. Still, he continued to regard him with hooded fascination. In the old days, his people had run around the Malaysian jungles stark naked—or just about—their skin covered with dragons, scorpions, and the like, flaunting those tattoos as symbols of courage and manhood.
His eyelids half lowered. Fat B wondered if the muscular Iban’s entire body was adorned with such markings, and considered what an impressive sight that would be. Impressive and, no doubt, very painfully achieved.
Seemingly oblivious to the barkeeper’s scrutiny, Xiang unclasped the envelope, folded back its flap, and looked inside.
Fat B watched and waited. Pop music squalled from stereo speakers at the four comers of the room, Eastern lutes, harps, and cymbals looping discordantly over Western-style synthesizers and electric guitars. Strobes splashed the foil-draped walls with violet light. Bar girls in short skirts and tight, swoop-necked blouses, and with too much makeup on their faces, laughed showily with the men who were paying for their drinks. Most of the women carried small purses that opened only after they led their companions into the staircase behind the barroom, or up to the small, private rooms on the building’s second floor. Then they would make their illicit transactions, willing flesh for cold cash, fifty percent of which went into Fat B’s pocket.
For no particular reason. Fat B thought suddenly of an ancient Chinese expression: Everything can be eaten.
His lips puckered thoughtfully, he stared across the room at the pair of men who had arrived with Xiang. They hovered near the entrance in their shabby clothes, one dragging on a cigarette and looking directly back at him, the other gazing upward at the wall, apparently studying the painted folk masks. Both also would have the dagger tattoo on their hands, of course.
Glancing cautiously over each shoulder to make sure he wasn’t being watched, Xiang undipped the envelope and looked inside. It contained a stack of nine or ten photographs. Reaching in with one hand, he pulled them out just far enough to expose their upper borders, and then gave them a quick scan, riffling their edges with his thumb, ignoring the sheet of paper clipped to the last snapshot. Then he returned them to the envelope, closed the flap, and looked back up at Fat B.
“Who’s the girl?” he said in English.
“It’s all in the little fact sheet I enclosed. Her name is Kirsten Chu and she is employed by a company called Monolith Technologies. Very attractive, don’t you think?” Fat B offered the pirate a relaxed smile. “It’s unfortunate her parents stuck her with a Western name, but I believe she was born and educated in Britain. So it goes.”
Xiang stared at him, his eyes flat. ”You know what I mean. I didn’t expect there to be two of them.”
Fat B tried to look as if there was nothing about the envelope’s contents that should have required explanation.
“Listen,” he said. “She’s just a beautiful lure dangling at the end of a very short line, you understand? Her movements are easy to track. Stay on her and she’ll lead you to the American.”
“What’s their connection?”
“I don’t ask, our employers don’t tell.”
“She a national?”
Fat B waited a moment before he replied, listening to shrieky Chinese vocals pierce a loud disco rhythm thudding from the sound system. Ordinarily he enjoyed the ratcheted-up volume and uneasy merging of musical traditions, but now it was all starting to grate on him, the sweeps of electronic sound jangling his nerves, the female rap singer’s falsetto highs tearing into his eardrums like steel spikes.
He’d been optimistic things would go more smoothly.
He took a deep breath, exhaled, then finally nodded, his smile tightening at the comers.
“Don’t make more out of this than there is,” he said. “It isn’t that big a deal.”
“Bullshit. You think I’m stupid? An American with no business being in this country disappears, it’s one thing to clean it up afterward. But a citizen? A woman? You’ve got to be joking. Something goes wrong and we’re caught, I can look forward to a lot worse than six strokes of the rotan.”
Fab B chuckled. “In Singapore, a fellow with my habits and appetites is liable to receive that sort of punishment just for getting out of bed in the morning. It might be said that our system of justice stems directly from Christian notions of original sin.”
Xiang looked at him with his dark, empty eyes but said nothing.
Apparently, Fat B thought, his little stab at humor had gone over the ah beng’s head. In fact, he himself was no longer smiling, his mood having taken a sharp and rather abrupt downturn in the past few seconds. It wasn’t as if the money was coming out of his own pocket, but he didn’t like being interposed between this thug and their mutual employers. Negotiation wasn’t his favorite activity, and he’d hoped—perhaps foolishly—that the pirate would simply take the envelope and leave.
“Really, what’s the problem?” he said. “If you can grab both of them alive, fine. But it’s this Blackburn who’s truly valuable to our employers. Your main concern with the woman should be making certain she isn’t left behind as a witness.”
“If this is so easy, why couldn’t your people take care of it? They followed her. They took the pictures. They could have gone ahead with the next step.”
“We each have different ways of
making ourselves useful. This country is where I live, you understand? I’m here for the long term. You’re in and out, lah.” Fat B shrugged again. “Let’s not waste any more breath discussing it. We’re both already committed, after all.”
Xiang was silent. Fat B stared past him at the door, waiting for him to make up his mind, anxious for their transaction to be concluded. How had he wound up haggling with the brutish creature? The whole distasteful episode had given him a headache.
He waited some more, watching a couple of grimy men step in from the alley and then head over to the bar.
“All right,” the pirate said at last. “But I better get the rest of my money soon as it’s done. You better make sure of it.”
Fat B looked at him with quiet malice.
“Of course,” he said, nodding. “It will be my pleasure.”
The two men regarded each other a moment without exchanging another word. Then Xiang stuffed the envelope containing the photos under his denim jacket, pushed his chair back from the table with his feet, got up, strode to the entrance, and departed, his two companions falling in at his rear.
A small hiss slipping through his front teeth. Fat B sat very still and watched the door swing shut behind them.
Blackburn had picked up the puppet at an open-air bazaar—this was a while back, during Dipvali, the Hindu Festival of Lights. Needing a break from his responsibilities at the ground station, he had taken a few days off and gone to the coast to enjoy the frenetic celebration, taking in the sidewalk dancers, musicians, and magicians, sampling the delicious curries and satays, browsing the crafts stalls, and just strolling at his leisure amid the exuberant banners, floral decorations, sprays of colored rice, and endless strings of candles, lamps, and lightbulbs brightening every door and window.
