by Tom Clancy
The relaxed companionability of the two Sword ops as they walked together would leave observers with scant doubt they were of another place and culture.
Scull had noticed Nimec looking past him.
“See anybody?” he said.
“Yeah,” Nimec said. “DeMarco and Wade.”
Scull grunted and bit into his fry bread. He was sweating profusely, his sparse hair pasted to his head, dark rings of moisture staining the underarms of his shirt.
“Ackerman’s on his way in, too,” he said. “Coming from behind you.”
Nimec gave him a nod. That accounted for everybody except Conners, who was decoying.
He and Scull waited in the pressing afternoon heat and humidity. After a few moments the men reached them.
They exchanged nods.
“Hail, hail, the gang’s all here,” Scull said.
DeMarco looked briefly at him, then turned to Nimec.
“You think we ought to take a walk?” he said.
Nimec jerked his head slightly to indicate the surrounding crush of market buyers.
“I like it where we are,” he said. “Best place to be right now.”
DeMarco nodded his understanding. A congested area offered its own type of cover—the people in circulation around them would present a constant and changing impediment to an observer’s line of sight.
“Okay, let’s compare notes,” Nimec said to him.
“We were tailed.”
“Wheels or heels?”
“Wheels,” DeMarco said. “A-B.”
Meaning he and Wade had been subjects of a two-car vehicular surveillance.
“The lead driver was a cabbie outside the hotel,” Wade said, looking down as he spoke to partially mask his lips from view. “He wasn’t interested in fares, ignored a whole bunch of people at the stand. Pulls out behind us, follows slow and tight. Then he turns off, and somebody else in a regular car picks up the tail.”
“The hack show himself again?” Nimec said.
“Cruises by about five blocks farther on, disappears,” DeMarco said. “I think he might’ve been worried he got burned.”
Nimec stood in thoughtful silence.
“Heels for Scull and me,” he said after a moment. “A-B-C.”
Meaning the surveillance placed on them had consisted of a three-man foot team. And it hadn’t been half bad. There had been a man in an embroidered kufi hat and dashiki talking into a cell phone as he stepped from an apartment building near the hotel. Another two men in casual Western clothes, strolling together on the opposite side of the avenue, moving almost abreast of them. The men across the street had seemed to be conversing with each other, but then Nimec, noticing one of them wore an earbud headset, realized he was also on a cellular. Just as Dashiki had passed Nimec and Scull and turned into a store, Earbud crossed to their side of the avenue, dropping back, taking Dashiki’s position at the rear. A few blocks later they pulled another switch. Earbud quickening his pace, then passing. Dashiki reappearing behind them, trailing them again, a quick shopper that one. Meanwhile, lo and behold, Earbud’s friend had kept pace across the avenue. The leapfrogging had continued almost the entire way to the market.
Nimec glanced at Ackerman.
“How about you?” he said.
“A pair of gendarmes in a patrol car,” Ackerman said. He was shaking his head in the negative, a ploy to confuse hidden eyes. “Right up until I got into the market.”
Nimec kept looking at him. “You sure?”
“Positive. Black uniforms. They split off after Conners.”
Nimec was quiet again. When DeMarco had told him about being caught on camera at the Rio, the first thing to enter his mind was the possibility of corporate espionage. Several Asian and European telecom carriers had been competing to become the African fiber ring’s savior when Planétaire went belly up, and it was conceivable one or more of them could have gotten upset enough to go over the top when UpLink won its contract with the Gabonese government, figuring they could still gum up the deal. There were also various national lobbying groups that had joined in opposition to yet another dominant foreign company moving in its assets and tried to block UpLink’s entry with a passel of legislative maneuvers once they happily bade adieu to Planétaire. A few were still making moves despite the ruling party’s obvious support. Any of these interests, or combination of interests, could have decided to do some peeping.
Except Nimec had nothing but questions about what their game might be. Add them to the questions he’d been left with after talking to Pierre Gunville, and there were more than he could count . . . though bundling them all together in his head was almost certainly a bad idea. He had a vague mistrust of Gunville, but at this stage, it was merely that. Nimec didn’t know whether it meant Gunville was connected to anything he needed to be concerned about, let alone to whoever was messing with UpLink. The truth was he didn’t know what was going on. But the involvement of the gendarmerie was heavy, and he would need to start producing some answers fast.
Nimec took a bite of his fry bread and chewed. Happy, happy business traveler enjoying a treat on his off day . . . and how was he to know talking with a mouth full of food was hell on lip readers?
“The termite that hopped out at you this morning,” he said. “You know the real problem?”
DeMarco indicated he did with a grunt as he shook his head no, borrowing Ackerman’s little mixed signal trick.
“For every one you spot, there’s a hundred more you don’t,” he said. “If they’re infesting us, we’d need a Big Sniffer to find all of them.”
Nimec swallowed perfunctorily. The Big Sniffer was Sword’s most sophisticated countermeasure sweep unit. But the device was hardly inconspicuous. Used with a boomerang antenna for scanning walls and other surfaces, its microcomputer-controlled instrumentation was carried in what amounted to a medium-size hardshell suitcase.
“If the termites on the surface twitch their feelers, they’ll stir up the nest,” he said, wiping his lips with his napkin. “We’d get rid of the soldiers and workers, but the breeding colony would just go deeper into the wood.”
DeMarco nodded.
“I’ve been hashing that over,” he said. “And I haven’t come up with a solution.”
Scull shrugged.
“Think garnets,” he said.
DeMarco looked at him.
“And ilmenites,” Scull said.
DeMarco continued to stare.
“Think what?” he said.
“Garnets. Ilmenites. Diamond hunters look for ’em when they analyze soil samples from termite mounds here in Africa,” Scull explained, as if the termite reference would surely make the pertinence of his declarations clear. “They aren’t worth much by themselves, but come from the same underground layers as diamonds. Termites carry tiny ones up from something like a hundred fifty feet underground, where their breeders live, and deposit them in their little hills. That’s how the Orapa mine in Botswana, richest in the world, got discovered.”
DeMarco remained clueless. As did the others.
“I have to confess, Vince,” he said, “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
Nimec was thoughtful. The fact was, neither did he.
Scull frowned, put an arm around Nimec’s shoulders, turned a hundred eighty degrees to his right, and gestured at random toward a vender’s stall. Nimec squared around with him as though to study an item of mutual interest, gazed absently at a woman selling thick cuts of bush meat. They were laid out on a table in the open sunlight, under netting meant to repel clusters of large black flies. The handwritten signs on the table behind them read: MALLE DE ÉLÉPHANT, SERVEAU DE SINGE.
“Elephant trunks, monkey brains,” Scull said, translating aloud. “In case you’re interested in buying, the monkeys around here can carry ebola.”
“Thanks.”
“Any time.” Scull pursed his lips and spouted air up over his face to dry off some sweat, simultaneously fanning
himself with one hand. “That problem you mentioned . . . it occurs to me the best idea might be we don’t do anything.”
Nimec looked at him in silence a moment. Then his eyes narrowed.
“Leave the termites alone?”
Scull squeezed his arm, his expression that of a teacher who had broken through to a slow but earnest student.
“There you go, Petey. We wait. Keep the lights off. Let those droops keep working away figuring they’re safe in the dark,” he said, using Scullian shorthand for “dirty rotten snoops.” “The stuff they leave behind’s worthless crap, ’long as we know it’s there.”
“But it tells us where to find the diamonds.”
“You got it. When we’re ready, we dig down into the nests where the breeders are crawling around and make sure to bring along our cans of Raid . . . you remember the slogan from those old TV ads?”
Nimec looked at him.
Kills bugs dead, he thought.
DeMarco had joined them in pretending to be interested in the meat seller, comprehension dawning across his features as he listened.
“What do you think?” Nimec asked him.
“If we run with Scull’s idea,” he said, “I’m guessing our execs and engineers would need to be informed.”
Nimec gave him a nod. They would. Informed of everything. So they could know what not to say and do in the false privacy of their hotel rooms or elsewhere.
“It might not appeal much to them,” DeMarco said. “I can testify getting naked in the shower this morning wasn’t a comfortable experience. And the rest of my personal business was even less fun.”
“You don’t need to get graphic on us,” Scull said. “I just ate.”
Nimec looked at them.
“Unless somebody’s got a better solution,” he said, “they’ll have to live with it. The same as we will.”
DeMarco took a deep breath, blew the air out with a long sigh.
“I’d hate to be the one who tells that to Tara Cullen,” he said.
Aboard the Chimera, Harlan DeVane stood looking west over the deck rail as the evening sun swooned into the sea, its sputtering tropical fire reflected in orange dabs on the water’s surface.
DeVane’s fingers wanted to tighten around his black line cell phone, but he resisted the angry urge, willing the hand to remain steady.
“This word you’ve gotten from your source at the newspaper,” he said into the cellular’s mouthpiece. “There is no question about its accuracy?”
“No,” Etienne Begela said from his end of their connection. “A declaration of multiparty government ratification of the telecom licenses is to be announced on the front page of tomorrow morning’s edition. In accordance with the Cangele agenda, they are to be ratified without further review for a minimum of fifteen years. All key members of the president’s parliamentary opposition have adopted a revised stance in his favor, and there is to be a public display of solidarity in the capital.” A pause. “I hold in my hand a facsimile of the article’s first draft. It is to appear in L’Union.”
“The government’s voice.”
“Correct.”
DeVane thought in silence, felt the mild heaving of the deck under his feet. The still air smelled of brine and throbbed faintly with the sound of the offshore pumps.
This would look bad for him, and he could not afford it. Not once more could he afford it. While he had always expected his endeavors here would be of finite duration, he would need time to maximize their profitability. And winning it meant taking a calculated gamble.
“When is the UpLink team to tour the headquarters site in Sette Cama?”
“Also tomorrow.”
“Their head of security will be among those going?”
“As it stands, yes. I’ve readied the contingency plan for implementation.”
“Its threads must not lead to me. Nor anywhere close.”
“That was of highest importance, naturellement. My only concern is its amplitude. That the scope of its enactment will lead them to look beyond appearances.”
Of course it would, DeVane thought. It was what he wanted—something to stagger and confuse UpLink at its moment of success, and foster insecurities among its financial backers. Let them imagine their enemies coming from all sides, and wonder who they were . . . so long as the answers to their questions remained entwined in mystery.
DeVane stared out at the dying sunlight and nodded. Begela made for the perfect functionary; his mind was like an orderly desk drawer in a drab office. Reach inside, and you would find every needed supply in the right place, but never a single surprise.
“Proceed,” he said, and did not wait for a response before terminating the call and going below to send Kuhl his notification.
Big Sur. The balance of the day trembling at midnight’s edge. Occasional breezes blowing across the open canyon from the sea, strong and thick with moisture, blurring the long drop down in kettle swirls of mist.
Siegfried Kuhl sat before his notebook computer, reading an e-mail he had received only moments ago, his rigid features bathed in the amber firelight of a kerosene storm lamp on the living-room mantel. Around his desk, the huge black Schutzhund dogs lay quiet. Two of them slept, their sides rising and falling with their slow, regular breaths. The third watched the cabin door at Kuhl’s back. It was a pack instinct reinforced through training. By turns, one of the shepherds would remain awake and vigilant at all times.
The coded message displayed in front of Kuhl said:
If the cuckoo calls when the hedge is brown, Sell thy horse and buy thy corn.
In European folklore, the song of the cuckoo heard in September or October—when the hedge is brown—is an ill portent to farmers. An omen that the autumn food harvest is imperiled, warning them to be ready to take counteractive measures, and fill their stores with that which is most precious for survival throughout the long, cold months to come.
Kuhl stared at the computer. His time, then, was coming. Coming very soon.
He closed his e-mail program and opened his digital image viewer. Arranged in several rows across the screen now were scrupulously labeled folders of photographic stills. Kuhl opened one of them, selecting an image set of a blond woman he knew to be of early middle age, although his eyes glinted with cold appreciation of her exceptionally youthful appearance. Tall, slender, elegant, and stylishly dressed, Ashley Gordian possessed the refined beauty that came of good genes and exquisite care.
The first series of high-resolution frames showed her lunching with another woman at an outdoor café. In the next, Kuhl saw her through the clear glass walls of Palo Alto’s main library branch on Newell Street, the camera following her as she checked out her pile of books at the loan desk and carried them onto the patio. The next group was taken from outside a clothing boutique. Through its storefront window, she had been photographed at the sales counter signing for a credit card purchase, then smiling at the cashier as she was handed her bags, then carrying them to the door. On the street, she had walked directly to her parked Lexus sedan and driven off with her purchases in the backseat.
There were more images of Ashley Gordian that Kuhl could have examined. Dozens more. Ciras and the others had recorded her movements on camera for almost two weeks, storing and sorting them in computer memory, e-mailing the encrypted files to him in Madrid.
But it was not the wife he leaned toward targeting.
Kuhl reached for his glass of mild wine and drank. Then he closed the folder he had been browsing, moved down a row, and selected another.
In this one, he found the daughter. She was lovely in her own right. Slim, dark haired, a firm well-proportioned body. Kuhl saw echoes of the mother in her—the smooth skin, the large green eyes, a certain underlying confidence in the lift of her shoulders, the straightness with which she bore herself.
He carefully studied the numbered screen shots in front of him. They composed a sequential record of Julia Gordian’s daily patterns of activity. An album of mu
ndane, forgettable events that would allow Kuhl to plan and execute the unforgettable. There were images of the daughter in the company of friends, male and female. There were images of her shopping for groceries, bringing clothes to the dry cleaner, visiting the post office. There were images of her driving out to the canine rescue shelter where she volunteered her services, turning onto its hidden country drive outside the state park’s verdant spread of woodland. There were images of her pulling the vehicle into her garage on her return home. And images taken through her bedroom window. Kuhl studied these for a while, sipped his wine, then moved on. One series of photos followed her as she left the house in jogging clothes, the two race hounds attached to their leash at her side. They seemed to vibrate with tension, their taut whiplike forms emphasizing their predisposition toward flight. Nature had given them swiftness at the expense of courage; their breed was wind without stone. Faced with a threat, they would offer no protection, but attempt to escape from harm. Kuhl could almost see the fear glazing their eyes as they were pounced, their throat-blood spilling over the clamp of toothy jaws.
Kuhl stared at his computer screen and contemplated his mission in silence.
Find what Roger Gordian most loves. Strike at it, and we will have struck at his heart.
