by Tom Clancy
“Why don’t I pick you up at the airport,” he said. “We could drive there together afterward.”
“Really, Gord, you don’t need to bother. It’s easier for me to arrange for a car.”
“Well ...”
“Besides, some father-daughter alone time might be good for the two of you. And I know you’d like to finish that doggie corral you’re building for Jack and Jill.”
“That I would ...”
“Then knock yourself out,” she said. “I certainly will.”
Gordian pulled his wafer out of his coffee, examined it idly, dunked it back into the cup.
“You win,” he said. “Have fun. And give my regards to your partners-in-buying.”
“Will do on both counts,” she said. “Love you.”
“Love you, too, Ash.”
Gordian hung up the phone, reached for his cup, sipped, and decided the wafer stick had imparted all the hazelnut flavor it was going to. The result wasn’t quite as satisfying as the high-sat-fat coffee blend he’d relinquished at Ashley’s insistence, but having the wafer to snack on with his hot beverage offered something of a consolation.
He took a bite of the end that had been soaking in the coffee, like a man playing Russian roulette without even an inkling that he holds a cocked and loaded revolver in his hand.
This, his second rolled wafer of the day, was not among those Palardy had injected.
Three hours later, Gordian would sneak a third into his daily allotment as a perk to himself after hearing more cries and lamentations from his fueding execs.
That was the bullet that got him.
“You have any thoughts about why I asked to see you here this late on a Friday afternoon?”
“Well, sir—”
“Tom’s fine for now,” Ricci said. After seven months on the job, he guessed he was past due making up his mind how he wanted to be addressed by his subordinates.
“Yes, sir,” Nichols cleared his throat nervously. “Tom.”
Ricci looked across his desk at the kid.
“And what might they be?”
The kid’s face was confused.
“Your thoughts,” Ricci said.
“Oh.” Nichols cleared his throat again. “Well, it’s late Friday afternoon ...”
“Which I already established,” Ricci said.
“Yes, you did, sorry, Tom ...”
Ricci wound his hand in the air.
“My assumption was that you’d waited till the end of this week to complete your evaluation of my actions during last week’s training exercise. And, uh, that you wish to discharge me from the RDT before next week gets under way.”
Ricci looked at him.
“That had occurred to me,” he said.
The room was quiet a moment. In fact, it was dead still. Late Friday afternoon, almost everybody had gone home for the weekend. Even the corridor outside was deserted.
Ricci glanced at the wire-basket penholder on the desk near his left elbow, decided it was situated too close to him, pushed it farther away, decided he liked its original position better, and returned it there.
“We know what went wrong with the office penetration,” he said. “Looking back, you want to tell me how it should’ve been executed?”
Nichols took a few seconds to think and seemed to get steadier and less antsy as he did. The kid had close-cropped blond hair and cheeks that Ricci doubted would have any fuzz on them if he were to miss shaving for a week. But there was a toughness underneath the school-boy looks, a focus. And he had the build of someone who exercised with intelligence, shooting for overall fitness and stamina rather than bulk. Ricci had observed these qualities while working briefly with him in Kazakhstan, and then again during the first-round tryout drills for his RDT.
“Our targets were confined to the room. Without any known means of exit but the door, according to our floor-plan schematics. That was to their disadvantage,” he said at last. “To their advantage, they knew we were outside, and the doorway gave them a narrow, direct, and easily covered zone of observation and fire.” He paused again. “We could have created multiple diversions before and during our entry. A breaching charge could have been placed on the wall adjacent the door. A profusion of chemical incapacitants and distractive tools were available to us. There may have been time for our outside support teams to launch gas projectiles through the outside window. Primarily, though, I should have waited for your specific orders, directions, and countdown before attempting to break through the door.”
The kid sat rigidly in his chair. He seemed to be making a tremendous effort to contain his embarrassment. And somehow that made Ricci feel embarrassed for him.
“You were crackerjack until you swung that rammer,” he said. “Didn’t miss a beat when we were surprised by those guys coming down the stairs. Or when we got into that firefight in the hall. Both of’em were tough situations. What happened at the last? Adrenaline take over?”
Nichols’ smooth cheeks flushed a little.
“Not exactly, sir ... Tom, sir ...”
He shook his head.
“Go on,” Ricci said. “Let’s hear it.”
The kid inhaled, exhaled.
“When you ordered us to neutralize the men in the corridor, your words ... what I heard you say ... was that you wanted it done yesterday.” He breathed again, looked at Ricci. “At the time, I took it to mean you wanted us to directly move on to the next stage and complete the seizure of our target. In hindsight, I think ... that is, I know... I was too eager to please you and make the grade.”
Ricci was quiet a moment.
“I’ve got this theory about mistakes,” he said. “That they’re always waiting for us, sort of like hidden mines or trapdoors. Every step along, we’ve got choices to make. The better ones are usually just enough to get us a little further ahead. The worse ones have this crummy way of being more final. Of doing us in. Which doesn’t make for joyous odds.”
Ricci eyed his penholder, transferred it to his right side, then his left, then more toward the middle of the desk.
“I’ve been a soldier, and I’ve been a cop,” he said, looking up at the kid. “Met guys on both jobs who got into trouble not knowing the difference between obedience and blind obedience. Maybe it ought to be emphasized more. Showing men how to see the line, I mean. It can be thin. Razor sharp. Slippery. But if that’s where you choose to live, you better be wise to the terrain.” He paused. “I’m your commander. My orders are supposed to be clear. You tell me the words I used had a part in your screwup, I’ll take it into consideration, give you a second chance. But there won’t be a third. Because we’re talking life and death. For you and your teammates. And because, on my team, just following orders won’t cut as an excuse. You’ve got to use your head. All your judgment, everything you’ve learned, your understanding of what the mission’s about. Of what we’re about. And keep the line in sight.”
Nichols sat quietly in his chair.
“Thank you,” he said after a few seconds, looking awkward. “I appreciate what you’ve done for me. And I’m sorry—”
Ricci interrupted him with a motion of his hand, looked at his wall clock.
“Go home,” he said. “It’s late on a Friday afternoon. Weekend’s calling.”
“Yes, sir,” the kid said.
Ricci looked at him. Opened his mouth, closed it. Then looked back at his penholder and resumed shifting it around his desktop.
Nichols rose from his chair and left the office.
THIRTEEN
CALIFORNIA/VIRGINIA
NOVEMBER 13, 2001
ROGER GORDIAN AWOKE SUNDAY MORNING CONVINCED he was fending off a bad cold.
To be sure, he’d felt more than a little out of sorts the day before but had attributed that to being wearied from a busier-than-average week at the office, the predictable stresses of running an enterprise that spanned five continents—and, at last count, twenty-seven nations—compounded by Friday’s difficult sales co
nference. And he’d been keeping a close eye on Tom Ricci’s war games at the New Mexico training camp. Although Ricci had been frustrated with their ultimate resolution, his team’s performance had struck Gordian as mostly exceptional. That they’d stumbled at the end wasn’t as important to him as how they’d performed overall and what lessons they’d learned from their errors. Why hold operational maneuvers but to work out the kinks?
Still, a long, draining week. And with Ashley gone off to storm the checkout counters of Los Angeles, it felt incomplete, as though a seam had been left out of its cuff. The house was less of a home when she was away, too quiet, its rooms emptier and larger. Gordian sometimes couldn’t believe how much time they’d spent apart before he’d drifted from the matrimonial through lanes onto those eye-opening rumble strips a few years back.
Also, he’d admittedly gotten used to having Julia around, despite their frequent tense moments. She seemed delighted with her new place, and he was delighted for her. But a part of him selfishly missed fathering her and being trailed at his heels by her lovably annoying greyhounds.
After turning in early Friday night, Gordian spent most of Saturday with a mystery novel on his lap, unable to muster the energy for much of anything else. When he’d warmed the homemade chili Ashley had left in the fridge and its smell failed to charge his appetite, he’d conclusively diagnosed himself as an exhausted and lonesome bird separated from his flock. Nobody to pay attention to him. No eternally ravenous dogs nosing at his plate. Not even his daughter to give him one of those zinging looks that said he couldn’t do anything right.
Gordian had listlessly eaten half a bowl of the chili and picked up his crime novel again, figuring he’d read the last few chapters, discover who murdered whom and why, shower, and go to bed. But after about ten or fifteen minutes, his eyes had felt tired and grainy, and he decided to cut straight to the shower and bed phases of his second wild night of bacheloring. He’d wanted to start out for Julia’s first thing, anyway, eager to attach the spacers and siding strips to the posts of her dog corral. Though he’d already set the posts, and the strips had been cut to size at the lumber yard, it would be a demanding affair to complete just one side of the basket-weave fence. And he was secretly hoping to start on a second section that afternoon.
Then, as he’d risen from the chair in his study, Gordian had experienced a wave of mild lightheadedness. It was over in seconds, and again all he could think was that he was blown out from a rough week, though perhaps more so than he’d guessed. A few extra hours of shut-eye would do him a world of good.
But his sleep was shallow and fitful. Each time he stirred uneasily to glance at the illuminated face of his bedside clock, he’d find only a short time had passed since he’d last closed his eyes. Twenty minutes, forty, no longer than an hour.
At about two A.M. Gordian roused, chilled and sweating. His throat hurt when he swallowed. There was a dull pain behind his eyes. His arms and back were stiff. Whatever was wrong with him, it didn’t feel like a case of simple exhaustion anymore. He felt damn unwell.
He sat up against his pillow and drew his knees to his chest, trembling in the darkness. His mouth was parched, the stiffness in his muscles had become a throbbing ache, and his stomach was unsettled. After a while, he went into the adjoining bathroom for a drink of water. The sudden brightness of the bathroom light sharpened the pain at the back of his eyeballs, and he had to turn the dimmer control down low before going to fill his glass.
As he stood over the sink, it occurred to Gordian that a couple of aspirins might help him. He reached for the bottle in the medicine chest, shook a couple of tablets into his hand, and gulped them down with his water. Then his eye fell on the thermometer inside the chest. He should take his temperature. If Ashley were home, she would insist on it. But a fever would mean he’d probably have to can his visit to Julia’s, and he had looked forward to seeing her and making progress on that dog pen. Besides, Ash would be meeting him there with her purchase-laden suitcases, each doubtless weighing a ton. She was counting on him to help load them into the trunk of the car and drive her home. All he needed was to be sick and useless to everyone.
Gordian made up his mind to take his temperature if his condition didn’t improve by morning. Well, later in the morning, he thought, remembering the hour.
In fact, he’d slowly begun to feel better on his return to bed. The chills abated, and he found that his muscle cramps were likewise easing. Maybe he’d caught some kind of twenty-four-hour bug, and it had peaked overnight. Or maybe the aspirin had done the trick.
At around three-thirty, Gordian again fell asleep and did not reawaken until the alarm buzzed four hours later.
Sunday came on warm and radiantly clear. With his face turned into the golden sunlight flooding his bedroom window, Gordian started to think he might not need that thermometer after all. His lower back was still aching, and his throat hurt a little when he swallowed, but there were no signs of feverishness or nausea.
He got up, went into the kitchen to fill the coffee-maker, then decided tea might be a smarter pick. He carried it to his screened-in veranda and sat looking out at Ashley’s hillside arbor gardens, sipping from his cup, a gentle, rose-scented breeze wafting over him. Perfect weather for working outdoors. He’d finish the tea and then see how he was doing before reaching a conclusion about whether to go on with his plans.
By eight, Gordian felt considerably recuperated from whatever had hit him the previous night. No sense treating himself as nonfunctional. He would push forward on the corral, take it slow and easy, maybe get a bit less of it done than he might like. He’d always believed moderate physical exertion was a better remedy for a cold than lying around the house. Better for him, at any rate.
Gordian went back into the kitchen and rinsed his cup and saucer in the sink, thinking he should have a bite to eat before leaving for Pescadero. Food didn’t tempt him, though. As he turned toward the bathroom for another quick hop under the showerhead, he heard an inner voice argue that skipping breakfast was far from advisable for a person who’d been as sick as he was a few hours ago, and who was looking ahead to a long, active day. But he was sure he’d regain his appetite once he reached Julia’s. He could fix himself some toast, an English muffin, risk incurring her wrath and sneak a morsel or two to Jack and Jill. Like old times.
What he wanted right now was to wash up and hurry into his clothes. He was anxious to get moving with things, and the worst of his illness really did seem to be behind him.
“Megan, I’m wondering if it’s appropriate for us to discuss a matter of Bureau policy under these circumstances.”
“Is my nearness bothering you? Because I can slide over the other way. No offense taken.”
“It isn’t how close you are per se—”
“Then what is it you find questionable? That we’re in a hot tub together? The whole idea of conducting business exclusively in sterile office settings is fossilized, and that isn’t just my opinion. There are a million and one studies that show—empirically prove—relaxed and stimulating environments are the places to confer—”
“Come on, help me out here—”
“I’m trying, Bob. What do you think Bohemian Grove is about except the intersection of government and private af—?”
“Forget Bohemian Grove. We’re both naked, or haven’t you noticed? And I won’t get into the subject of our intersecting the past couple of days.”
That brought a smile to Megan’s face.
“Get into it all you want,” she said.
Her emerald eyes met his gray ones.
Lang looked back at her in speechless silence.
They were sitting shoulder-to-shoulder on the curved bench of the hot tub, neck deep in 108-degree water, steam rising into the 45-degree Shenandoah Valley air around them in vaporous ribbons and curlicues. Over and beyond the lattice rail screening their room’s rear deck, the redwood hot tub upon the deck, and their nude, soaking bodies in the tub from the eye
s of their hosts and fellow weekenders at the Virginia B and B, over and beyond on the forested Allegheny mountainsides across the valley, the hardwoods in autumn foliage were watercolor dashes of cinnamon brown against the sweeping dark green brush strokes of the predominant pine cover.
“Bob?”
“Yes?”
“You seem to have blanked out.”
Lang sighed.
“My problem,” he said, and then paused. “That is, what I believe may be unseemly is that you are making a substantial professional request of me while we’re very busily engaged in an extraprofessional relationship. Asking that, in my capacity as Washington Bureau chief, I seek to waive or broaden existing security classifications to give UpLink International access to privileged investigative files.”
She shrugged. “We were entirely clothed when I made the request. Neither of us had yet seen the other unclothed at the time. Truthfully, I hadn’t begun to entertain the notion that we would, though the fantasy did arise one dark and lonely night.”
He shook his head in consternation.
“Be straight,” he said. “You can see how there might be at least an appearance of impropriety.”
“Sure I can,” she said. “But do you believe I’ve been sleeping with you to cloud your objectivity, compromise your integrity, entice you to violate national security, whichever perception concerns you—?”
“That’s ridiculous—”
“And do you think I’d stop sleeping with you as a consequence of your denying us access, if that proves to be your determination?”
“No, of course not—”
“So why don’t you help me get things straight,” she said. “Give me a rational explanation why the farther along we’ve come in our friendship, the farther away you’ve tilted from opening the databases. Since I know who I am, and you seem to know who you are, I can’t see either one of us violating our principles for a tumble in the sack.”
“Or a splash in the tub, I suppose,” Lang said. “I don’t know. Maybe I don’t have a clear and sensible answer for you. But I’ve always kept my personal life separate from my responsibilities to the Bureau. Mixing them is something new to me. It throws the formula out of whack.”
