by Tom Clancy
He was walking back around to the bed stand when Colon went into another convulsion. All at once, his lips peeled back from his gums in a kind of rictus. The muscles of his neck and jaw began to quiver. A gargling sound escaped his mouth, his chest heaving and straining, the hiss of the ventilator growing louder as his demand for oxygen increased. He arched off the mattress, his right knee springing up to mound the blanket, his foot thrashing from side to side like a captured animal.
Martin gripped his missal closer to his chest and turned to Alvarez.
“Is there nothing you can do?”
The doctor shook his head. “The seizures are unpleasant to watch, but they will pass.” He was observing the life support monitors on the wall. “We give him muscle relaxers. Otherwise, it would be much worse.”
Martin wanted to turn away, but in his mind that would have been an act of selfishness and thus an abdication of his responsibility. In this room, charity was reserved for the dying.
He saw Colón’s right hand sweep across the linen sheet, jump stiffly into the air, then pound down on the mattress several times: rasp, thumpthump-thump. When the arm jerked, it pulled his intravenous lines up over the safety rail, but the finger tubes and strap had sufficiently restricted its movement to prevent the lines from tearing loose.
The spasms diminished after less than thirty seconds, his withered arm falling over the rail, dangling there limply for a moment until the nurse came around to readjust it at his side.
Martin stared down at him. His cheeks felt too hot, then too cold in the air-conditioning. He could hear the intake and expulsion of his own breath over the hiss of the ventilator.
He ordered his legs to move him toward the bed. “Señor Colón,” he said in a low voice. “It is Father Martín.”
There was no acknowledgment.
The priest leaned over the deathbed. The sores on Colón’s face were crusted with yellowish discharge. Martin could smell ointment on him and, underneath, the far more unpleasant odor of infection.
“Do you remember our discussions?” he said. “We have had many of them, about many subjects. About faith. And strength.”
He thought he saw Colón’s eyes twitch under their closed lids.
“Now we will ask God’s grace, and find renewed strength in our unity with his spirit,” he said. “You and I, together—”
Alvarez stepped forward. “Father, he is much too weak.”
Martin shot a hand out behind his back and waved him into silence.
“Mi presidente, ” he said. “Can you take Communion?”
A moment passed. Colón’s eyes flickered more rapidly. And then one of them opened and fastened on Martin.
Its white was swimming in blood.
Martin’s cheeks flushed hot and cold again. He realized they were wet with perspiration.
“Are you able to receive Communion?” he repeated, trying to smooth the tremor in his voice.
Colón strained to answer, managed nothing more than a croak.
“Enough,” the doctor protested. “He mustn’t be—”
This time Alvarez fell silent without any urging.
Colon had declared his wish with a weak but unmistakable nod, his red eye never leaving Martin’s face.
Martin turned to the bed stand, knelt before it a second time, and lifted the communion cloth off the pyx. If the heart of Alberto Colon was weighted with sin, he would have to unburden himself before God almighty; it was not humanly possible for him to give confession in his present state.
Moving to the bedside, Martin put the communion cloth under the dying man’s chin and recited the Confiteor, offering penance in his name, pleading for his absolution from worldly sin: “Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. ”
When he had finished his petition, he took the Host from its receptacle, blessed it, and brought it over to Colon.
“Try to swallow,” he said. “If you have difficulty, a sip of water might help.”
Colon stared at him with his one open eye, the iris uncannily bright, as if all the passion and will that had gained him the presidency—an office he had won in a free election against a powerful league of corrupt influences—was blazing through it.
He produced a groan of effort. Then his cracked lips slowly parted.
The odor of sickness on his breath was even stronger than it had been coming off his pores. Crops of raised, purplish lesions marched across his tongue and palate. His front teeth were smeared with blood where it had leaked from the rim of his gums.
The wafer between his thumb and index fingers, Martin bent to put it in his mouth ... and that was when everything inside him stalled.
He stood there, rigid, his hand inches from the dying man’s mouth.
Those ulcers on his tongue. Open. Weeping fluids.
Martin was unable to budge.
Unable to touch him.
What was it Alvarez had said to him in the anteroom?
“I cannot escape the thoughts and images ... and I am afraid. ”
The priest felt a cutting shame. His resolute dismissal of the doctor’s admonition came back to him now as self-mockery.
I am afraid.
His forehead beaded with sweat, he averted his eyes from Colon long enough to place the wafer on his tongue. But he could not keep his hand from shaking or drawing quickly back, and as he gave utterance to his prayers of viaticum, they seemed to fall away from him, or he from them. The disconnection was like nothing Martin had experienced before. It was as if he were slipping into a dark hole, some forsaken inner recess where all words of faith dissolved into empty silence.
And though he would spend much time trying to convince himself otherwise, right then, betrayed by his fear, praying in secret anguish, Martin knew for a dreadful certainty that his fall had only begun.
THREE
MONTEREY BAY, CALIFORNIA
OCTOBER 28, 2001
ROLLIE THIBODEAU FELT HIS TACKLE JERK HARD AS the giant sea bass erupted from the bay, its spiny dorsal fin raised like a mainsail, foam spraying off its mottled flanks.
He braced himself, his feet planted apart, knowing he couldn’t afford to give the fish any slack. His heavy line stretched taut. The stand-up rod bent in his hands, and its butt pressed into his abdomen. He tightened his grip, his harness straps digging into his shoulders, the muscles of his arms straining against the drag of the line.
Then something gave out inside him. It was less a sensation of pain than a sudden buckling weakness between his stomach and groin. His feet slipped forward over the Pomona’s deck, and he saw the gunwale come closer. Three, maybe four inches, but that was enough tow for the bass. It rushed straight up out of the water, plunged with a tremendous splash, and then broached again, its wide gray head whipping ferociously from side to side.
Vibrating like a bowstring across its entire length, the line snapped just behind the wire leader.
The bass flailed backward, away from the stern of the motor yacht, Thibodeau’s hook still buried in its gaping jaw. For a charged moment it was completely airborne. Its scales seemed to darken and lighten in patches as its great body undulated in the sunlight. Thibodeau guessed it was between five and six feet long.
He was shouting imprecations at the creature as it smacked down into the water, rolled over, and dove beneath the surface, its tail churning up a small spiraling wake before it torpedoed from sight.
Winded, his face red with exertion above his short, brown beard, Thibodeau tossed his rod disgustedly to the planks and leaned over the rail.
“Damn,” he grunted. And kicked the gunwale. “Goddamn!”
Megan Breen stared at his back for a few seconds, then shifted her eyes to Pete Nimec over to her left. Both had raced up behind Thibodeau to cheer him on when the fish struck.
Nimec mimed a basketball handoff. Ball’s in your court.
She looked at him another moment in the crisp, offshore breeze, a thumb hooked into the hip pocket of her Levi’s, her thick auburn hair blowin
g over the shoulders of a tailored leather blouse.
Then she shrugged and stepped closer to Thibodeau.
“It happens, Rollie,” she said. “Everybody has a story to tell about the one that got away.”
He turned abruptly from the rail.
“Non,” he panted, shaking his head. “I had it beat.”
“Seemed to me that it was full of fight.”
“You don’ know!” he said. His cheeks and forehead went a darker shade of red. “Doesn’t matter if that thing was twistin’ like a demon in holy water. It was tired out, and I shoulda had it!”
Her eyes sharpened.
“Cool down, Rollie,” she said. “They call what you were doing sportfishing for a reason. It’s supposed to be an enjoyable activity.”
He shook his head again, took a deep breath, then released it.
“Ca marche comme un papier de musique, ” he said. “All right, everythin’ goin’ smooth, jus’ got me a little frustrated.” He looked embarrassed. “My big mouth ain’ caused no trouble between us, eh?”
She regarded him steadily.
“No,” she said. “No trouble.”
“Then I think I’ll go below, pack away the damn rod, an’ enjoy the boss’s luxury accommodations.”
She nodded.
Thibodeau bent to pick up the angling rod and then strode off across the hundred-footer’s deck, passing Nimec without a hint of acknowledgment.
Nimec came to stand beside Megan.
“I’ve never seen him act like that before,” he said. “You?”
“No,” she said, watching Thibodeau climb down into the stairwell under the vessel’s flying bridge. “And we’ve been friends a lot of years.”
“You think it was his tug-of-war with the fish that got to him, or the one with Ricci at the meeting?”
“Maybe both. I’m not sure.” She sighed, her gaze drifting toward the vessel’s prow. “Speaking of our other global field supervisor, he appears to be in a mood of his own.”
Nimec turned to look. His serious face visible in profile, Tom Ricci stood gazing out over the water.
“I have to wonder if the cooperative arrangement we worked out for those two wasn’t good chemistry,” he said.
“Almost seven months down the road seems kind of late for us to second-guess our decision. We have to make it good.” She put a hand on each of his shoulders. “Your guy,” she said, “your ball.”
Nimec let her aim him toward Ricci and shove him off.
Tall, lean, and dark-haired, his angular features several sharp cuts of the chisel from handsome, Ricci kept staring across the water through his sunglasses as Nimec approached.
“The ragin’ Cajun get over losing the big one?” he said, moving not at all.
Pete stood next to him, his arms crossed over the rail.
“Didn’t think you were paying attention,” he said.
Ricci remained still.
“Old cop habits,” he said. “I pay attention to everything.”
They were quiet. Some yards aft, Megan had settled into a deck chair, reclining it to bathe in the afternoon sun, her long legs stretched out in front of her. Ricci tilted his head slightly in her direction without seeming to take his eyes off the water.
“Those Levi’s, for example,” he said. “They say snug jeans are out, baggies are in. Convinces me they haven’t seen snug on Megan Breen.”
Nimec smiled a little.
“Got you,” he said.
They stood viewing the calm blue iridescence of the bay in silence.
“There’s been a ban on landing giant bass since the eighties,” Ricci said after a couple of minutes. “Thibodeau would’ve had to let it swim, anyway.”
“The payoff’s in the catching, not the keeping.”
“Let me hear you argue that to the fishermen I knew up in Maine,” Ricci said. “Funny thing, you won’t find one of those guys who’ll ever describe the sea in terms of its beauty. For them it stands for waking up in the cold before sunrise and long hours hauling nets on damp, leaky tubs. But it’s the source of their livelihood, and there’s a different kind of appreciation for it.”
Nimec looked over at him. “I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”
Ricci leaned forward over the rail.
“Me neither, exactly,” he said, shrugging. “I’m an East Coast boy, Pete. Grew up ten minutes from the Boston shipyards. I’ve always thought of the Atlantic as a workingman’s ocean. Might not be reasonable, but to me the Pacific coast is catamarans, blond surfer dudes, and blonder Baywatch girls.”
“Ah,” Nimec said. “And you think you might be constitutionally unsuited to temperate waters, that it?”
Ricci started to answer, hesitated, then slowly turned to face him.
“I wasn’t looking to get into it with Thibodeau at the meeting,” he said at last.
“Nobody said you were.”
Ricci shook his head.
“That’s not the point,” he said. “What anyone did or didn’t say isn’t important to me. I don’t need that kind of bullshit.”
Nimec’s expression was reflective.
“Agreed,” he said. “The question is how you choose to handle it.”
Ricci stood in the breeze, his shirtsleeves flapping around his sinewy arms.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Everybody who was at the meeting ... except for me ... has been with Gordian for years. You’ve all got similar ideas about what Sword ought to be. You’re all used to sticking to certain operational guidelines. You developed them.”
“Sounds to me like you’ve already decided you don’t fit,” Nimec said. “Or can’t—or won’t.”
Ricci looked at him.
“I’m trying to be realistic,” he said. “Come on, Pete. Tell me you don’t have your doubts after what happened today.”
Nimec thought about it. Sword was the intelligence and security arm of his employer’s globe-spanning corporation, its title derived from a reference to the ancient legend of the Gordian knot, which had defied every attempt at unraveling its complicated twists and turns until Alexander the Great cast subtlety aside and split it apart with a definitive stroke of his blade. This illustrated Roger Gordian’s own no-nonsense attitude toward the modern day problems that might jeopardize his interests, utilizing country-specific political and economic profiles to help anticipate the vast majority of them before they became full-blown crises, and tackling the unpredictable emergencies that cropped up to endanger UpLink personnel with the most highly trained and well-equipped counterthreat force he could assemble.
Every twelve months before the happy distractions of the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays kicked into high gear, Gordian gathered Sword’s leadership aboard his yacht for a sort of informal year-end review and freewheeling blue-sky session, an open forum at which they could examine the organization’s recent accomplishments and shortcomings, evaluate its current state of preparedness, and hopefully reach a consensus of opinion about its future direction.
This year’s roundtable, however, had produced less in the way of common understanding than acrimonious confrontation, at least between two of its key participants.
The session had convened before lunch amid the plush carpeting and rich mahogany furnishings of the Pomona ’s spacious main salon. Besides Nimec, Megan, Ricci, Thibodeau, and Gordian himself, it had been attended by Vince Scull, UpLink’s chief risk-assessment analyst, freshly returned from a long stint in the South Pacific, where he’d been scouting out locales for new satellite ground facilities and had very noticeably added inches to his belly roll, as well as a tiny but expert helical tattoo to the back of his right hand that, he explained, had been applied by a Malaitan tribeswoman as a lasting souvenir of their acquaintance.
Scull had kicked things off with an endorsement of French Polynesia as a potentially excellent site for a monitoring and relay station, scarcely needing to refer to his copious notes while offering detailed facts and figures about the country’
s natural and industrial resources, trade statistics, governmental structure, etc. After taking several questions about his recommendation, he had moved on to a broader overview of UpLink’s international standing.
Given his deserved reputation for crankiness, Scull’s sanguine tone was remarkable.
“All in all, we can knock wood,” he’d said in summation, rapping his fist twice against the tabletop. “It’s been peace and quiet since that nasty affair last spring. There hasn’t been a single territorial or ethnic flare-up anywhere we’ve committed our resources that couldn’t be defused before it got out of hand, thanks as much to our company’s pull as diplomatic massages. And lots of places that were giving me worries about their internal stability have managed to avoid the coups, genocidal bloodbaths, even your garden variety power plays that usually bite us in the ass.” He had smoothed an errant strand of hair over his increasingly bald pate. “Take Russia as a for instance. With our old drook President Starinov resigning and the nationalist opposition coming on strong again, I figured we might be looking at payback for helping him hang onto his Kremlin office suite awhile back. But what we’re worth in jobs and cash inflow seems to have gotten us past any vendettas.”
“And your forecast?” Gordian asked. “I’m talking about Russia and elsewhere.”
Scull shrugged. “Nothing lasts forever, I guess, but I don’t see any major blips on my screen, bumps on the road, pick your favorite metaphor. Name a spot on the map that hosts an UpLink bureau or is linked to our satcom net, and you’ll see people with a better quality of life. And not even the most balls-on tyrant wants to be known as the Grinch who’d mess with prosperity. Goes to show free market democratization works, folks.”
“And that the fear of political backlash is a viable substitute for conscience with most heads of state,” Megan said. She glanced at Scull. “You’ll notice, Vince, I made my point without a single mention of the lower anatomy.”
