Cutting Edge

FOUR

As he lugged his feet toward the Rio De Gabao Hotel’s atrium and wearily braced for the dinner reception organized by his cultivated Gabonese hosts, Pete Nimec pressed a multifunction button on his wristwatch twice to check its Annie-Meter, which was not what the integrated feature was actually supposed to be called. What the feature was supposed to be called, going by the user’s manual he’d barely skimmed, was either “To-Do List” or “Reminder Calendar” or “Countdown Alarm”… or maybe something else kind of similar he’d given up trying to remember.

There were, Nimec thought, too many brand names and trademarks and jargonese catch words for all the countless gadgets floating around these days. Or possibly it just seemed there were too many when you cruised into your forties, and were old enough to remember a time when the pocket transistor radio was considered a modern marvel, and the black-and-white portable television became an affordable household fixture that would eventually render the behemoth family console obsolete.

Still, the name game seemed complicated to Nimec. Even his digital watch wasn’t a watch, or exclusively a watch if you wanted to be nitpicky. It was, rather, a WristLink wearable minicomputer with a high-res color liquid crystal display panel and infrared data-transfer port, designed and marketed by no lesser outfit than his own employer, and sporting everything from an integrated 5× zoom digital camera with sufficient built-in memory to store a hundred fifty snapshot images, to a personal global positioning system locator, to satellite e-messaging software, an electronic memo pad, address book, onboard video games, and — proving it could still could be used as a timepiece by Cro-Magnon throwbacks such as himself — programmable displays for every time zone in the world and a receiver module that synched it to the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s atomic clock out in Boulder or Denver — Nimec forgot which Colorado city — rendering it accurate to the split second by an official federal government agency. Besides touting these many bells and whistles, the watch, or wearable, was certified waterproof to a hundred-foot depth and furthermore had come to Nimec free of charge, being one of his occasional deluxe perks as Roger Gordian’s security chief.

Yet for him the best of the gadget’s features was its Annie-Meter.

As he called it.

Nimec had set it shortly after leaving Houston for San Jose earlier that week. To be more precise, Nimec had set it fifteen minutes after Annie dropped him off at the airport, where she’d sent him on his way with a deep, sweet, shamelessly immodest kiss through her car’s open passenger door as he’d leaned in across the front seat from the curb… a kiss whose taste had lingered all the while it took Nimec to reluctantly pull himself and his carry-on bag from her car, turn through the terminal entrance, obtain his boarding pass from the clerk at the departure gate, and finally sit himself down in the passenger waiting area to fool with the watch’s push-button menu controls.

The Annie-Meter, so-called, looked to unknowing eyes like an electronic calendar. What you did with it exclusively, if your name happened to be Pete Nimec, was first scroll to the box around the date you left Annie, whenever you left Annie, and record the exact, official NIST time you made your generally romantic farewells. Then you went to the screen that allowed you to specify the expected duration of your time apart from her and entered that information, inserting a little check mark beside the ALARM option — which, thanks to shareware Annie’s son had downloaded from the Internet overriding the WristLink’s preprogrammed selection of beeps and musical tones, would sound a bleeping rendition of the Temptations’ “My Girl” on the day you were scheduled to see Annie again. Next up, assuming once more that you were Pete Nimec, was to open another dialogue box and checkmark the COUNTDOWN option enabling you to monitor, with a quick and convenient glance, the exact, official NIST number of days, hours, minutes, and seconds that were left until you got to hear that blessed melody. Finally you made absolutely sure both your farewell and return-to-Annie dates were highlighted in valentine red on the calendar, push-buttoned your way back to the device’s normal watch face, and that was that.

Nimec had last consulted the Annie-Meter riding the elevator down from his guest suite in UpLink’s reserved upper-story block, and noted he was twenty-three days, one hour, and an odd bundle of minutes from reuniting with his honey bun. Meaning that by the conclusion of the obligatory dinner reception, possibly sooner if it didn’t drag on too long, the number of days would be reduced to twenty-two and change. That was, he acknowledged, parsing things a tad. But as Tom Ricci had advised back when Nimec was entirely confident Ricci had his head on straight, you had to count your gains in small steps.

He entered the atrium now, joining the twenty-five or so attendees who’d gotten there ahead of him. All but one were men in suits, and half of those were UpLink corporate officials and high-level technical consultants focal to the fiber ring deal. The sole woman present was Tara Cullen, the project’s network operations manager… and a sleek, standout blond, as the thick cluster of smiling African delegates around her had clearly noticed. Nimec saw three or four members of his twelve-man security team interspersed throughout the crowd, lapel pins on their jackets — the triangular pins’ engraved and laminated design showing a broadsword surrounded by stylized satcom bandwidth lines.

Everyone from UpLink looked about as zonked as Nimec felt. He had wanted representatives from his Sword contingent at the gathering as a gesture of courtesy, but because they weren’t part of the business delegation had seen no reason to trot out the entire bunch. He’d thus asked for only a handful of volunteers, having allowed those who preferred to skip the festivities do so after their long, taxing haul from California. Starting tomorrow his group would have its work cut out conducting surveys of UpLink’s new onshore and offshore facilities and laying the groundwork for site policies, procedures, and equipment. Let them relax while they could.

Aside from a fleet of black-tuxed, white-gloved servers weaving about the room with trays of hors d’oeuvres and cocktails, the rest of the people Nimec scoped from the entryway belonged to the Gabonese welcoming committee: politicians and administrative appointees led by Etienne Begela, who Nimec’s well-studied contact brief tagged as bureaucratic head of the telecom regulatory agency in Port-Gentil.

Now Begela looked over at Nimec, excused himself from a group of UpLink executives he’d engaged, and approached with his arm outstretched.

Nimec went forward to meet him. The atrium was awash with sunlight even though it was almost seven in the evening. It gleamed off the silver trays and table settings and spilled through the glass-paneled ceiling onto exotic blossoming floor plants, which Nimec didn’t recognize in the least and which seemed almost too outlandishly tall and lush to be genuine.

“Monsieur Nimec, hello, it is a pleasure.” Begela pumped his hand, offered a huge white-toothed smile, and introduced himself in French-accented English. Nimec wondered briefly how the minister had identified him right off, then guessed one of the execs had pointed him out. Either that or Begela had been pretty good about reviewing his own background files. “I hope you are finding your accommodations satisfactory after such a lengthy trip, and would like you to know I’ve personally selected those hotel staffers who will be attending to your party throughout its stay.”

“I appreciate that,” Nimec said. “Everything’s great.”

And the hotel was very nice — elegant, in fact, Nimec mused. Though even a jungle hut and straw cot would have been agreeable to him after his latest marathon global traverse. This one ranked way ahead of SanJo- Malaysia on the all-time fatigue scale, and seemed a close runner up to SanJo-Antarctica. How many hours had it spanned? A glance at his superwatch would of course tell him to the exact, official NIST atomic minute, but Nimec had the sense that knowing the answer to that question would make him feel even more wiped out than he currently did. There had been the United Airlines charter out of San Jose airport — well, playing the name game again, Norman Y. Mineta San Jose International Airport, as the city council had rechristened it a couple of years back in honor of the former mayor — at six thirty in the morning the previous day. That had taken his group to their connection at O’Hare in Chicago, where they had boarded a UA international flight to Paris de Gaulle after a five-hour layover. Arriving in the glorious City of Light around seven the next morning after a full day of travel, they’d barely had a chance to toss back some Mc-Donald’s coffee and hit the terminal restrooms — which had been the high point of that little interlude, and no more glorious than visits to salles de bains the world over — before hustling aboard an Air France A340 for another seven hours in the wild blue yonder, and finally touching down at Leon M’ba Airport in Libreville at around five in the evening. From the nation’s capital they’d flopped onto a waiting Air Gabon Fokker 28 that had shuttled them to Port-Gentil, where they’d hustled into their rooms, and, each in his or her own dog-tired way, prepared for the banquet.

“When you’ve rested up, we shall have to familiarize you with our city,” Etienne Begela was saying now. “You’ll find it delightfully captivating, I’m sure. I’ll show you our government offices tomorrow, and can recommend places to shop, dine, even enjoy some sightseeing if the desire strikes. And I have people ready to assist your group in whatever other ways may be needed.”

Nimec gave the minister a nod.

“I look forward to all that once I’ve recharged,” he said. “We’ll try not to be too much of a nuisance.”

A pair of waiters glided over and surrounded Nimec with their carefully balanced trays of appetizers. One held a selection of pâtés, thin-sliced sausages, truffles, and chilled poached salmon. The other had something hot, what looked like escargot stuffed into sauteed mushrooms. Nimec found himself disappointed. The offerings looked tasty enough. And he’d done his homework about the long French tradition here. Gabon had been visited by trading ships from Marseilles and Nice since before Columbus, was settled by colonial forces right around the middle of the nineteenth century. Still, you could sample French food anywhere. It was the universal posh cuisine, and this affair definitely had a high poshness quotient. Nimec wasn’t big on it, however, and guessed he’d hoped for more regional fare. If you were going to fly a couple of zillion miles to Africa, you wanted to chow down on African.

Nimec sampled the pâté and thought it was blandly decent. But he resolved that he’d have to take Begela up on his offer of guiding him toward some interesting spots to eat.

He noticed Tara Cullen passing by with one of the other Gabonese delegates and waved to catch her attention, figuring it was an ideal chance to provide an intro… as well as an opportune moment to ease himself out of the conversation and into a chair for a while. And maybe see if any of the penguins were serving coffee. He really did feel headachey and bedraggled.

“Tara,” he said, “I’d like you to meet—”

“Ms. Cullen and I have already made one another’s acquaintance.” Begela flashed his big, overpowering smile at Nimec, then beamed it onto Tara and snagged her elbow. “Indeed, though, I feel professionally obliged, and personally delighted, to take this opportunity to expand upon it.” He nodded at the tall, dark-skinned man who’d been walking along with her. “Macie Nze, this is Mr. Pete Nimec, Mr. Nimec, Macie Nze… my friend and fellow in the Ministry of Telecommunications. He can tell you of our recent trip to the capital in support of UpLink’s agenda.” The smile became even more commanding. “And we ourselves must talk later, Macie, no?” he said without elaboration.

Nze gave him a nod and agreed that they should. Nimec thought he looked sort of flustered — or surprised, anyway — wondered about it a second, and then ventured that he probably just didn’t appreciate having his blond companion rustled off by a colleague.

As Begela steered Tara toward the bar, Nimec also decided to forget about his quiet cup of coffee.

“So,” he said, and extended his hand toward Nze for a fresh round of vigorous shaking. “Tell me about that trip of yours…”

Nze did, to neither man’s particular enjoyment.

The old Detecto stand-up scale had originally belonged to a Lousiana country doctor, who had it delivered to Roland Thibodeau’s appearance-conscious godmother as a lagniappe, a little something extra offered for good measure, when she had bought some nice, new-looking furniture at his moving sale… or so Thibodeau recalled her telling him. He had vague memories of his dear Nanaine Adele Rigaud getting many small, pretty gifts from the doctor before he and his wife left the bayou, pulling stakes for New Orleans all of a sudden. These gifts, too, may have been lagniappes. But Thibodeau had been very young back then, and unclear about the ways of adults.

What he did remember clearly was that Nanaine had always kept the scale against her bedroom wall in the modest settler’s house where he was raised from the age of ten, after losing both his natural parents between June and October of 1955—his father to a bewildering freak accident, then his mother in a way that was even more inexplicable to him. Jus’ must’ve got a special prov’d’nce again’ ’em, was a phrase he’d often heard muttered among his schoolmates and their families… the first time from a distant relative at Cecilia Thibodeau’s wake. Then and later, it had been hard for him to disagree. If going from fatherless to orphaned in a single horrible season wasn’t smoking-gun evidence of that special prov’d’nce — of Rollie getting FUBARed from a rear position, as his boys in the 101st Air Cav might have put it — what else in the wide world would qualify?

The scale’s heavy iron upright and platform base were lilac colored, Nanaine Adele having concealed its basic physician’s white under a paint job of her own lively and eccentric preference — a coat of paint that was now chipped, faded, and flecked with rust from top to bottom. Thibodeau had thought about stripping it a time or two, restoring the scale to its original condition. A lilac scale in his office surely did nothing to convey an impression of red-blooded Cajun manliness, and he sometimes felt foolish when he pictured himself on it. Lilac was a dainty color. As Nanaine Adele had been a dainty little bit of a woman. But it had been her favorite shade of purple, favorite flower, beloved fragrance of spring. She had even worn bonnets of homespun, hand-dyed lilac cotton to church on Sunday mornings.

Thibodeau had let the scale remain as it was. And if that cast doubts on his masculinity, well, he owed no explanations to anyone and was sure he’d never left any questions in the minds of vulnerable or designing ladies. On the contrary, another expression to circulate around Thibodeau in the Caillou Bay town where he had grown up (this when he was a teenager) had been le cœur comme un artichaud. Meaning his heart was like an artichoke… a leaf to spare for every pretty girl around.

Thibodeau hadn’t argued that one either. Enough dark-haired, sultry-eyed darlings had been enthusiastic takers at the fais do-dos, village dances, that went on from sun-down to sunup, with the main entertainment occurring in the dark, fenced yard behind the barn where the band played loud.

Rollie Thibodeau’s sentimental attachments were few but strong, and he’d held onto only a handful of keep-sakes from back home. Some black-and-white family photos dulled by time’s wasting touch. Paper flowers his mother had worn on her wedding dress, their colors also diminished. A carton of gear his father had used for fishing shellfish while he threaded among the swamps and marshes in his twelve-foot dugout canoe: tall, wooden oyster tongs, rope nets, a tangle of crab line, the bucket in which he brought home his daily catch, one of the traps he would set on the muddy shore along his route to snare muskrats—“swamp rats” he’d called the nasty furballs, though their hides must have fetched a fair rate at market. There was an assortment of other boxed remembrances. And, of course, the Detecto doctor’s scale. During his tour as a Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol commander in Nam, Thibodeau had rented storage space for the items in Baton Rouge, where they were kept until his return to the States.

After he was done with the war, and the war done with him, Thibodeau moved around a lot, inside and outside the country. For almost two decades he had capitalized on his elite military background by teaching classes on self-defense and firearms use, occasionally handling personal security, hiring out his services to clients ranging from business executives and Hollywood stars to European and Arab royals. Meanwhile, his boxed up this’s and that’s had gathered dust in one warehouse or another. Since 1995 or so, right about when Megan Breen roped him into UpLink International’s developing security force with a pointed inquiry — If you’ve got the ability to do something constructive with your life, why spend the rest of it watching to see that nobody pulls the diapers off spoiled princes and princesses? — everything had been stashed away in a cheap concrete storage unit about the size of a walk-in closet at the head of a dreary, unfrequented parking lot a dozen miles outside Los Angeles.

Everything except Nanaine Adele’s rusty, peeling lilac-colored scale.

Even before UpLink, that scale had gone wherever he did. Thibodeau wasn’t sure why. In his opinion, rearview mirrors were supposed to help guide people forward on the highway of life, not inspect their balky hairs and crooked neckties at its rest stops. He hadn’t been back to Louisiana since breast cancer got Nanaine Adele in 1989, and wasn’t about to waste a minute longing for Acadia. The relics of the past that Thibodeau held close to him were the useful ones, which was probably the main reason he’d made the scale his constant traveling companion. It was a symbol more than anything else, he guessed. A reminder that the only memories worth carrying around were those that made riding out the present, and maybe the future, a little smoother.

Besides, the damn thing was just plain reliable.

Though never preoccupied with his weight, Thibodeau had kept an occasional eye on it, and always managed to stay in good shape despite the limitless pleasure he took from beer drinking and hearty eating. At six feet, four inches tall, he was the bearer of a wide-boned, chockablock physique, and had sustained a steady-as-she-goes 235 pounds for most of his adult life, packing virtually every last ounce of it in slabs of muscle hardened by regular and diligent workouts.

All that had changed about two years ago, when he’d been sucker punched by a submachine gun round while defending an UpLink facility in Brazil against a terrorist hit… a bullet that had gone deep into his stomach, hung a left through his large intestine, and then plowed into his spleen, turning it to mincemeat before finally butting up against the back of his rib cage. There was also plenty of hemorrhaging, and a partial lung collapse to stop the ER personnel who received him from getting too blasé about their task.

For several months after he was shot, Thibodeau’s weakened condition had precluded strenuous exercise. Resistance training wasn’t worth a thought — in fact, he’d had days when simply raising himself out of bed, or from a chair to a standing position, was a torment. And by the time Thibodeau was at last able to get back into the gym, he’d recognized that his body might never regain all of its lost trunkish strength. There was getting shot, and there was getting gut shot. And more often than not gut shot had a way of leaving you permanently damaged goods… special prov’d’nce strikes again.

While on the mend, Thibodeau had been coaxed into accepting what was intended to be seen as a major promotion at UpLink, and gotten a big pay hike consistent with its added responsibilities. He supposed he should have been grateful. That he was wrong to feel privately indignant about a legitimate career advancement. Still, Rollie Thibodeau was nobody’s fool, and understood that his physical deficits had factored into the offer. To what degree, he didn’t know. And maybe didn’t care to guess. Why bother? He had been convinced it was made partly because Megan and Pete Nimec had wanted to remove him from active field duties he could no longer handle with 100 percent effectiveness… and nothing would un-convince him.

Specifically, he would become the administrative overseer of a newly created two-man post dubbed Global Field Supervisor, Security Operations.

They could take the man out of the field, but they couldn’t take the field out of his job description, he had told himself.

That smidgeon of gallows humor had given him zero consolation.

Now Thibodeau stood on the platform of his Detecto and frowned — a deep, disgusted frown that pulled the corners of his mouth far down his bearded face. The beard was a couple of years old and neatly trimmed. Over the past six months he had let it fill out to hide his jowly cheeks and the heavy dewlaps under his chin. For a while after his shooting he’d held at his usual 235 pounds in spite of the changes he saw in the mirror — but that was a deceptive measure. Thibodeau’s muscles had lost weight as they shrank and deteriorated through disuse, even as the extra calories from his unmodified consumption of food and drink turned to fat. This had equalized things on the scale, and he had grown thicker, looser, and chunkier everywhere on his body without putting on so much as an ounce.

The problem was that it got harder to burn off fat as you lost muscle tone, and it would continue piling on unless you dieted, exercised, or got into a disciplined health routine that combined the two. Thibodeau hadn’t. And he’d gained from his 235. The weight had crept up on him slowly, seemed to wrap itself around him like a huge silent slug. The warning signs had been present, of course. His vanishing jaw line, his thickening waist. But as long as he’d hovered within range of that 235 mark, they also had been dismissible. Thibodeau had felt his slacks — and undershorts, to give frankness its due — start to pinch and grab in all the critically, uncomfortably wrong spots. Felt his shirt tighten at the belly, its sleeves constricting around his shoulders and arms. If gradual upward nudges of the scale’s lower indicator slide from 236 to 237, 240, and even 245 pounds balanced it, that seemed to fall well within his personal tolerance zone. Especially when he could lower his measured weight by 2, 3, sometimes a notch below 3½ of those apparent pounds by removing his shoes, his shirt, his shoes and shirt, and maybe some other articles of clothing if necessary — say after a few days of hearty banqueting, for instance.

Another trick Thibodeau had discovered was to step off the scale and recheck that the arrow on the beam and its frame met exactly. If they didn’t, it could throw off his weight reading by a quarter pound or more, and he’d have to fiddle with its balance knob to make an adjustment. And although it distressed him when he’d needed to bump the upper indicator to its 250-pound poise on the bar while standing almost naked on the platform, he’d extended his rather malleable tolerance zone by reassuring himself that he would soon do something to trim down — cut out the andouille sausages and cornbread, switch to a lighter brew, keep his hands from reaching for the refrigerator door late at night.

Soon being one of those dangerous words with a value that was impossible to calculate, and therefore notoriously wide open to interpretation.

According to the scale’s measurement beam, Thibodeau was now up to 299¼ pounds. Less than 1 pound shy of the boldly engraved and enameled number 300 on the beam. A tremendous increase of 54 pounds in eighteen months.

That was 299¼ pounds, with every last stitch of clothing except for his socks and boxers stripped off, flung in a large pile on the chair behind him.

“Gone an’ turned myself into un ouaouaron,” Thibodeau said in a low growl, using a Cajun word for bullfrog that reflected the cultural penchant for onomatopoeia, mimicking the sounds made by the creatures at dawn and dusk. “A fuckin’ ouaouaron,” he repeated, inserting a colorful modifier of his own fancy.

He did not know why he’d chosen this particular morning to take his weight. Having acknowledged the need to drop excess ballast, Thibodeau had gotten onto the scale infrequently over the past couple of months to avoid the comedown of reading premature and discouraging numbers. The truth was, he hadn’t yet gotten full-swing into his diet. Hadn’t really decided which foods would be the best to cut back on or investigated which kinds of beer would be light-bodied, palatable replacements for his favorite malt. He’d been too busy with work, and these decisions took careful forethought. Nobody who rushed into them was ever going to buy a winning ticket.

So why the scale? Thibodeau wondered. Why today? Why climb aboard now, when Tom Ricci, joint holder of the global field supervisor slot, its buck rapid deployment man — and one of Thibodeau’s least favorite people in the world — was due for his briefing on the security upgrades implemented here at SanJo HQ while he’d been away on his solo safari for le Chat Sauvage? Why the hell do it knowing he was in for certain disappointment… and for that matter embarrassment, unless he got off its platform and back into his uniform tout de suite?

Thibodeau stood there on the scale another few minutes, looking down at his sadly fallen build. He had fussed all he could with its knob and indicator slides. He was wearing little more than air. And the measurement beam had gone on hanging in perfect, balanced suspension at 299¼ pounds.

Not that he needed a numeric reading to appreciate the indignities he’d inflicted upon himself. It was evident from the bare, bulging pillow of flesh into which his once-taut stomach had grown, the soft rolls of flab above the hips too kindly known as “love handles,” and, most depressingly for Thibodeau, the pads of adipose tissue over his breastbone that showed early evidence of transforming into what were sometimes — in a much too crass and unkind fashion — referred to as “man titties.”

But he’d killed enough time inspecting himself. More than enough. Ricci would be on his way over from his office down the hall, and Thibodeau damned well wanted to be back inside his pants before he showed up.

His lips still pulled into a scowl, he got off the scale to put on his clothes, disconcerted by the loud, banging rattle of its beam and platform bearings as they were relieved of his prodigious weight.

Thibodeau was trying to stuff the middle button of his shirt through its hole when he heard three sharp, brisk knocks at his door.

Tom Ricci, man of action. Predictably right on schedule.

“Un instant,” Thibodeau called out, working in the recalcitrant button. “Wait just a minute—”

Ricci gave the door another quick knock, then took hold of the outer doorknob and let himself in.

Again, predictably.

His shirttails out over the open waistband of his pants, Thibodeau looked at him with an annoyance he made no attempt to conceal… and a sudden flush of embarrassment that he was hoping could be hidden.

“Thought I asked you to hang on,” he said.

Ricci stood inside the entry, turned the dial of his wristwatch toward Thibodeau.

“Don’t have a spasm on me,” he said. “We’ve got an appointment.”

Thibodeau regarded him another moment, disconcerted. Then he inhaled, holding in the breath — and his stomach — as he tucked, zipped, and hooked himself into his uniform slacks.

“Okay,” he said on his exhale. He nodded toward his desk. “Grab a seat an’ we’ll talk.”

Julia Gordian felt convinced Vivian was a shoo-in for adoption. There was still the cat test ahead, true, but she wasn’t too worried. That was pretty much a guaranteed cinch.

She stood looking out the window of the In the Money Shop at the introduction and walking area next to the center’s dusty parking lot, where Viv, a one-and-a-half-year-old grey whose career as a racer had ended after she’d broken the wrong way out of the gate in two of her first three starts, was being strolled around on a leash by her prospective rescuers, a seemingly nice enough family named the Wurmans — mother, father, and eight-or nine-year-old son — from up around Fremont. The dogs were always brought out to the people who came to look at them, as opposed to the people entering the kennels, which was how it usually worked at animal shelters. This was because, in addition to being weak and malnourished, some of the new arrivals had not yet gotten their vaccinations, were susceptible to canine diseases for which human beings might be unwitting carriers, and were therefore segregated until Rob Howell had gotten them checked out by his regular vet and approved as ready for placement. A small handful of visitors would complain about the policy, wanting to have their pick of all the greyhounds on hand, but Rob tended to send that type on their way as politely as he could — his position being that anybody who couldn’t find a dog to love among the half dozen or so he was willing to show as available candidates wasn’t qualified for greyhound ownership.

Julia supposed Rob’s criteria were about the same as those a child-care worker would apply to couples interested in adopting a baby… although she’d actually had to wonder a couple of times if his rules weren’t even more stringently set and enforced.

“You have to start the screening process the minute people leave their car,” he’d told her on her first day at work. “Look for a good fit, and don’t let your eagerness to place the dogs affect your judgment. Watch how folks act, listen to what they say, get a feel for the vibes they send out to the dogs, and the vibes the dogs send out to them. Much as I want permanent homes for our greys, they’re better off as tenants with us than in a bad home where they aren’t getting proper care.”

Watching from behind the shop’s sales counter, elbows propped on it beside the cash register, Julia had seen encouraging signs that the Wurman-Vivian vibe exchange was tuned to a harmonious cosmic bonding frequency. Vivian’s leash was now in the hands of Papa Wurman, who was smiling over at Mama Wurman, who was beaming right back at him as an excited Junior Wurman crouched beside the dog and gently stroked her sides. Viv, meanwhile, was relishing the attention. A good fit? They appeared to be striking up the very music of the spheres.

Julia realized she’d been humming a melody to herself, recognized it as the chorus to the old Broadway song “Matchmaker,” and was starting to wonder how that archaic musical strain had managed to surface from the junk bin of her post-Boomer memory storehouse when her cell phone suddenly began to tweedle.

She pulled it from the belt case clipped to her jeans, glanced at the Caller ID number on its display, and smiled as she fingered the TALK button.

“Yente’s Canine Dating Service, open sunrise to sunset,” she said. “To Life!”

A hesitant, “Excuse me?” at the other end.

Julia chuckled. Roger Gordian. A biz whiz without parallel, but more than a little humor impaired.

“Hi, Dad,” she said. “Don’t hang up, you’ve got the right number.”

“Oh,” Gordian replied. “For a second there I thought you said…”

“Just amusing myself. My boss is out back feeding the dogs, and I’m waiting to give my maiden cat test. He wants me to get the experience. We really should have given it to Viv… she’s one of our sweetest greys… before a family showed up and fell in love with her, but somebody got their signals crossed. Either they never told Rob they had a cat during their phone interview, or he forgot to make note of it, it’s been so crazy around here we can’t be sure. Either way I’ve got to deal with it.”

“Oh,” Gordian said again. A pause. “If you don’t mind my asking, what’s—?”

“A cat test’s for dogs that may be going to homes where there’s already a kitty-in-residence,” she said. “You know how easygoing greys are, but problems can happen when some of them mistake cats for bunnies.”

“As in rabbits?”

“They’re used as lures on the course,” Julia said. “I think the law in most states is that track owners have to use mechanical ones, and they do during races to keep the police off their backs. But when they’re training the dogs out of sight… well, never mind, I won’t gross you out with some of the nauseating stories I’ve heard. Bottom line, we need to be sure our dogs are compatible with other pets.”

“I hope that doesn’t mean there’s a supply of disposable cats at the center.”

“Nope. Only an ornery old calico named Leona that the people who run this place got from the ASPCA,” Julia said. “They keep her safe and overfed for her unfaltering dedication to the cause, don’t you fret.”

“As long as you tell me not to,” Gordian said. “Anyway, if you’re busy with things, I can call back—”

“No, believe me, I really was just waiting around for man and beast to get acquainted,” Julia said. “What’s up?”

“Well, your mother and I were hoping we could see you this weekend,” Gordian said. “You could come for dinner tomorrow, naturally bring Jack and Jill, and the three of you sleep over at the house. If you want, of course. Then stick around with us Sunday for brunch and pampering—”

“Sounds tempting, Dad. Especially that last part about getting the princess treatment. But the timing’s rotten,” she said. “Rob… Rob Howell, that is…”

“He’s your boss, right?”

“Right, sorry,” Julia said. “Anyway, Rob works the graveyard shift at a hotel called the Fairwinds, I think it’s somewhere on Highway 1. He mainly does audits there, but every so often handles the switchboard and reception desk, too, and I guess he’s offered to sub for one of the day clerks for the next couple of weekends — they’re buddies and the guy has a family emergency. Besides, Rob has a newborn and could use the extra money.”

“Which leaves you running the show at the center.”

“All by my lonesome. I wish there was somebody else. Rob’s looking for more help. With his wife busy taking care of the baby, though, I can’t exactly lay too much on her lap.” She paused. “Any chance of us getting together during the week? I’m off Monday and Wednesday, and could meet you at your office for one of those father- daughter lunches where you lecture me about how I need to find an honest paying job.”

“Now there’s what I call a real temptation,” Gordian said. “Unfortunately, I’m out of town from Monday morning until Thursday or Friday. Washington, D.C. You remember Dan Parker?”

Julia smiled. Was it only her parents, or were all of them always asking their adult children whether they could remember people they’d known their entire lives? With her father, the person in question was very often Dan, whom Julia had practically grown up around and even invited to her wedding. Her mom was likewise constantly astounded that she had any recollection of her Uncle Will, who had been one of Julia’s most dearly loved relatives, and was a frequent visitor to the Gordian home until his death from a sudden heart attack when she was eighteen or nineteen years old. What were they thinking? That their kids went through childhood and adolescence with their memory banks set on auto-delete? That they were oblivious to everything around them until they were, oh, say, forty-five, fifty, or so? Or were these supposed to be trick questions?

“Hmm, Dan Parker,” she said, deliberately keeping any trace of sarcasm out of her voice. “He’s that buddy of yours from Vietnam, no? The one who used to be a congressman in San Jose?”

“That’s right, he was at your wedding reception,” Gordian replied, sounding pleased by her name-recognition ability. “These days Dan’s an executive with Sedco, the energy firm, and we’ll be meeting with the rest of its board to negotiate the final points of a fiberoptic deal.”

Julia looked out the window, saw the Wurmans were leading Viv back from the parking lot. “Guess we’d better hold off on making plans till next week,” she said.

“I guess.”

The shop’s front door opened.

“Have to run,” Julia said. “Good luck with your trip, Dad. I love you.”

“Love you, too, honey,” Gordian said. “Oh… and l’chiam, by the way,” he added.

And then hung up.

Julia looked at the phone and blinked in surprise, a grin of colossal amusement breaking across her face.

Parents, she thought.

The wonders truly, truly never did cease.

The same yet different was how Rollie Thibodeau had been trying to characterize the overall facility security picture at UpLink International, and particularly UpLink HQ SanJo, since Ricci’s departure.

The same, more or less, insofar as its requirements and policies.

Different, slightly, insofar as their implementation, with heightened emphasis on incident readiness and management.

There had also been some modifications to the electronic security systems — what amounted to minor tinkering in the area of general surveillance and countersurveillance operations, with more significant enhancements regarding the detection and control of chemical and biological threats.

“Some of it’s these times we’re living in. Everything going on around the world, you got to take extra precautions,” Thibodeau said now, looking across his desk at Ricci. “Plus we been bitten once, you know.”

Ricci sat motionless. When he answered, it was in an odd, clipped tone.

“Tell me about the techware,” he said.

“There’s operational gear big and small, but we’ll start with the onsite basics,” Thibodeau said. “We got new concealed weapon detectors in most of our buildings. And not just at entries. We been thinking about indoor environments. Walk around any floor here and you’ll pass through a hidden magnetic scanner.”

“I’ve noticed them at the hallway corners,” Ricci said. “I can see where some door frames have been replaced.”

“Figured you would,” Thibodeau said. “Later on, I’m gonna walk you down to the monitoring station, show you right where they all are—”

“Don’t bother,” Ricci said. “They’re okay. Most people won’t spot them. The ones who do would be good enough to make any kind of scanners we install. I just want to know how they perform.”

Thibodeau shifted in his chair. He was suddenly conscious of his uniform’s too-snug fit, of the too-tight waistband of his trousers around his middle, of the chair’s armrests pressing into his fleshy sides. If he pulled up his shirt, he would find little irritated patches of red on his flanks, wouldn’t he?

He wondered what it was about Tom Ricci that had set off the heightened sense of his own ungainliness. Or maybe he was just projecting. Ricci hadn’t said or done anything that could be taken as a reaction to his size. But Ricci was also just as whipcord lean as he’d been a year ago. While he himself had put on half a hundred pounds.

Thibodeau remembered the rattle and bang of the scale when he’d stepped off it. He adjusted his position behind the desk again.

“The scanners,” he said. “They’re… how can I say it?… more discriminating. Walkthroughs we had before weren’t no better than what they using at commercial airports. You know the problems with them. Can’t tell the difference between an Uzi and a set of keys or some pocket change. Can’t find where something is on a person’s body. And they be screwed up easy by electrical fields. Too many computers or cell phones working around them, we get false alarms. Waste time and resources. These CWD systems we installed can tell the object’s size and shape, and pinpoint where it’s located. Whether it be under somebody’s left arm, strapped around his ankles, or stuffed where the sun don’t shine.”

Ricci’s head went up and down.

“All right,” he said. “What else is there?”

“Hate to think about it, but we put a whole response system in place for biochemical incidents,” Thibodeau said. “This whole building been outfitted with sensors. Every room. Every office. Rooftop to basement.”

Ricci looked at him.

“Hell,” he said.

“I know,” Thibodeau said. “Cost us a fortune.”

Ricci kept looking steadily at him.

“I wasn’t talking about what it cost,” he said. “I meant this world of ours is fucking hell.”

Thibodeau was silent. He’d never much liked Ricci, but had developed a certain trust in him. In his abilities, his self-command in tough spots. Now he didn’t know what to think. Ricci hadn’t changed on the outside, it was true. Inside, though, something was very different. It was as if those hard, unsharing eyes of his were mirrored glass surfaces. Thibodeau didn’t know what was going on behind them.

“The sensors,” Ricci said. “They mass spec?”

Thibodeau nodded yes.

“The spectrometry units I’ve seen look like U-Haul trailers,” Ricci said. “They’re too big to cart around offices — the military tows them around with Humvees.”

Thibodeau shrugged.

“Be true for most of them,” he said. “Think it’s because of all the air they got to suck in for accurate samples. There’s hoses, plus a vacuum collector and a separate laser chromatography unit in the housing. Adds up to a lot of space. The laser machine shoots beams of light through the air sample, and that light bends off whatever particles get caught with it. Then a computer tell us what those particles are, depending on the angle it bends at, sort of how our eyes see color.” He paused, pulling at his beard some more. “Far’s the system goes, you’d have to ask our R and D noggins for every detail of how it works. The handle I got is that it’s like an invisible electronic nose, sniffs for germs and chemicals just the way our noses… or to put it better, the nose of a trained bloodhound… can pick up the smell of things in the air. Special cells in the nose, what the noggins call receptors, they be connected to nerves that can tell the brain what those things are. Then the brain translates the info as smells. Our invisible nose, now, it uses them sensors I told you about—microsensors, they called, made of different polymers — exactly like the receptors. But instead of having nerve connections, they attach to optical fibers. Coat ’em, actually. One coated fiber maybe pick up anthrax or smallpox. Another can recognize the sleeper bug that almost killed the boss. A third can catch a whiff of cyanide, sarin gas, or some other nerve agent that been released—”

Ricci made a slicing gesture to check him.

“Let’s skip ahead,” he said. “Say we’re attacked. The invisible nose twitches, we evacuate, get emergency medical treatment for people we know were exposed, make sure everybody else that might’ve been affected is examined. That’s our immediate response. Now how do we conduct decontamination and site inspection? Who takes charge of the investigation? The feebs and CDC? FEMA? Or homeland security people? We supposed to let them walk right on in, go clomping all over each other’s tracks like they did at Gordian and his daughter’s homes a couple years ago? Or when they mucked up that anthrax mail probe in ’01?”

Thibodeau blew a breath out his pursed lips. “Be quite a bunch of questions,” he said. “I guess what happens far as outside agencies depends on the particulars. If there’s a threat of public infection, we need to let them know… and where chembio’s the problem, you have to expect that’s going to be the case. But ain’t nobody can beat us comes to dealing with problems of multiple jurisdiction. So we try to coordinate, hope they have the sense to work with us and not around us. That way we don’t have hassle figuring out how to work around them.”

“What about the first part of what I asked you?” Ricci said. “Same example. The sensors find a trace of something bad. A strain of virus. Bacteria. Is there some way we can clean the place up before it spreads?”

Thibodeau expelled another breath. He really did hate to think about this subject.

“We installed decon fog dispensers with the capacity to wipe out certain bugs,” he said. “Anthrax, that’s one of them. Got a long list of others I can show you… be dozens of others. Once we know the premises’re empty, the fog’s released, goes all the places the bioweapon would. Air vents, the spaces between computer keys, wherever. They tell me the fog particles are ultra-fine, smaller than the spores. Kills them by breaking ’em down right to their DNA.”

“And the bugs it can’t kill?”

“Brings us back around to the issue of readiness, an’ how we apply policies that’re already in place. Somebody walks into the building and we don’t like the looks of him, I want him checked out. That’s whether he’s wearin’ a mail deliverer’s uniform, got his name on a visitor list, or be the head of a senate delegation. He can walk on air right before our eyes, heal the blind and crippled, say he’s Jesus Christ himself in a hurry to announce his Second Coming. We think he looks suspicious, he ain’t getting past the guard station unless he’s ready to wait for us to feel convinced. And if that means we want to search-wand his robes and examine his sandals for plastic explosives, maybe ask him to give us phone numbers so we can call The Blessed Mother an’ Holy Father in Heaven to verify his identity, suite. So be it.”

“There are going to be complaints,” Ricci said.

Thibodeau shrugged.

“Israeli security been handling things that way for years at their airports and main office buildings, and they don’t catch no grief,” he said. “Ain’t nobody’s freedoms bein’ violated. A person does want to object, it’s his or her right to leave. The fancy tech’s great. I’m glad we got it. But me, I’m lettin’ our people be guided by their own eyes, ears, and noses more’n any electronic ones. Puttin’ my stock in the human element.”

“You didn’t hear me argue.” Ricci stared into his face. “I just want to know which element you mean.”

The remark surprised Thibodeau, and his expression showed it.

“Afraid I don’t understand,” he said.

“I think maybe you do,” Ricci said. “We can pick and choose our options, or lay them out across the board. I’m curious how it’ll be for you when the heat’s on.”

Thibodeau was silent. He wasn’t sure how to answer, truly wasn’t sure he’d even gotten Ricci’s inference. But his fixed stare and strange tone of voice were unsettling.

Ricci sat watching him a while longer. Thibodeau was almost glad when he finally rose in front of the desk.

“I guess we’re done,” Ricci said.

Thibodeau looked at him. Done sounds fine, he thought. Except they weren’t.

“We never did talk about the personal field equipment,” he said.

“No,” Ricci said. “Maybe we’ll make some time later.”

Thibodeau wasn’t sure why he found himself opening his desk drawer and reaching into it. He supposed that uncertainty was, in its way, a fitting note on which to end their little let’s-get-reacquainted talk, which had left him wondering about a lot of things… foremost among them the point Ricci had been trying to make, and now his own.

“Might want to keep these handy,” he said, and tossed a couple of aluminum squeeze tubes from the drawer onto his desktop. They were about two inches long — the size of toothpaste samplers.

Ricci picked them up.

“What’s inside?” he said.

“Guy from special development got them to me a couple days ago,” Thibodeau said. “It’s wound closure gel. We’re getting ready to deliver a ton of it to the military — they already issue something like it to their forward combat troops, but this’s supposed to seal the skin better’n any other kind of dressing, keep it clean and breathing until an injured soldier get to a MASH unit. The idea’s for all our field personnel to carry the stuff, too. Case somebody gets his hide perforated way I did a few years back.”

“How come you’re giving them to me now?”

“I got to read over the test reports this week, decide whether to approve ’em for issue,” Thibodeau said. It was a truth that felt like a lie. “Thought you might want to have your say.”

Ricci examined the tubes in his palm a moment, then dropped them indifferently into the pocket of his sport jacket.

“Decide whatever you want,” he said. “I’ll stick them inside my shaving kit in case I nick myself.”

Thibodeau shrugged without response, watched Ricci leave the office, then sat looking at its closed door in silence for long minutes afterward, trying to figure out for sure what had passed between them.

In the end, however, he was only positive that it scared the living daylights out of him.

“Looks like we’re ready to go,” Julia Gordian was saying. “If anyone has questions for me, I’ll be glad to answer them after explaining how this works.”

This being the cat test, which was about to commence in a restrictively small back room at the Peninsula Adoption Center. Besides a couple of plastic chairs and wicker kitty bed in which Leona the Grouch was now curled, it was occupied by Vivian the Grey, the Wurmans, and Julia herself — a close-quarters environment that was no fluke whatsoever, since forcing Viv and Leona to invade each other’s private space would give Julia a very good idea how the dog would behave in a similar, but uncontrolled, household situation.

“There are two parts to the test,” Julia continued, holding Viv close beside her on a short leash. She looked alternately from Mr. Wurman to Mrs. Wurman. “In the first, I’m going to bring Vivian right up to the kitty bed and see whether she displays any aggressive tendencies toward cats, which is pretty rare. Most greys are either curious, indifferent, or, believe it or not, even afraid of them, like my own two babies at home. Occasionally they even get frisky—”

“How come you put that bad thing on Vivian’s mouth so she can’t open it or breathe?” said Junior Wurman… whose name, Julia had learned, was actually Thomas.

Julia glanced over at his accusing face.

“A muzzle isn’t really a bad thing, and Viv can breathe through it just fine,” she said. “Greyhounds are used to wearing them when they race, and I’ve only put it on now to make sure Leona doesn’t get hurt in case she’s snapped at.”

Thomas looked mistrustful. “But you told us that wasn’t gonna happen.”

“I said it probably won’t,” Julia said, and offered a reassuring smile. “We need to be careful, ’kay?”

A halfhearted nod from Thomas. He wedged himself back against his seated parents, still regarding Julia with critical mistrust.

She returned her attention to the adults, feeling a bit like Cruella DeVille. With vampire fangs.

“If all goes well, our next step is to see whether Vivian shows overly possessive traits when one of you holds the cat,” she said. “Some jealousy’s normal between them, and no different, really, from human sibling rivalry. Viv might show it by starting to whimper or getting down in a play position to catch your eye. If that happens, you need to be aware of it, spread around the affection, and everybody’s going to be happy. But it’s important to realize we’re talking about a big, muscular seventy-five-pound dog that can sprint almost as fast as a Thoroughbred horse, compared to an animal that weighs maybe a tenth as much, and is also a whole lot smaller. A cat that gets caught in a dog’s jaws is in serious trouble, and we want to help spare you that kind of unhappy incident—”

“Can I hold Leona when we do it?” Thomas said. Which made it twice now that he’d interrupted.

Julia looked at him. Hadn’t she mentioned she’d take questions after her explanation was finished?

“I think it’s best we leave it to your mom or dad,” she said. “To be on the safe side—”

“But you said that thing’s supposed to be on Vivian’s mouth to stop her from biting anybody!”

“That’s true.” Julia was wishing the kid’s mother or father would chime in and help her out here. “She can jump at Leona, though, and you might get a little startled—”

“What’s startled mean?”

“Ah, a little upset, in other words—”

“Won’t you have her on a leash?”

“Well, yes—”

“Why’d I be upset if Vivian’s on a leash and can’t bite anybody—?”

“It’s okay with us if Thomas wants to hold the cat,” said Papa Wurman, whose first name was Stanley. He put a hand on his son’s shoulder and gave it a doting squeeze. “Desmond, that’s our house cat, belongs to him. And Vivian’s going to be his new best friend. So how about we let him make the choice.”

Julia looked at Stanley. This was not quite the brand of parental mediation she’d had in mind. In fact, the euphonious cosmic vibe Julia had thought she detected in the air earlier was starting to seem more and more like a wild-flying spray of sour notes. She was thinking her emotions might have led her into the very sort of pitfall Rob had warned against — namely getting too enthusiastic about the prospect of finding a home for one of their rescues.

She was quiet a moment. It was Rob who made the final call in a dog’s placement. Standard operating procedure was for Julia to consult with him at the windup of every orientation she supervised and give her positive or negative impressions of how it went. Any doubts she might have about people would measure significantly into his own evaluation, and if need be he’d play the stern heavy, explain why a greyhound wasn’t a suitable pet for them, and send them on their merry ways. But Julia hadn’t completely ixnayed the Wurmans, not yet, and saw no harm in going ahead with the cat test. Nor was there any hard-and-fast rule to prevent the kid from being the cat bearer. Assuming the test got that far, the way he conducted himself might even figure into her recommendation.

“All right,” she said. “Let’s get started.”

Vivian passed step one of the test with flying colors. Her eyes anxious circles, her long tail tucked between haunches still bald and rash-inflamed from crate burn at the track, Vivian stiffened with resistence as Julia led her over to the slumbering Leona’s bed and acquiesced only after some soothing words, a pat on the head, and a couple of firm but gentle tugs of the leash. When Julia unwound the leash from around her hand to give it extra slack, Vivian opted to retreat from the bed rather than approach any farther. When Julia pulled her closer to it, and Leona stirred to give the grey a dozy, half-lidded, let’s-get-this-drill-over-with-so-I-can-get-back-to-my-catnap look, Viv shied off again, turning her head slightly to avert her gaze.

Julia moved away from the bed and the nervous grey eagerly joined her, shivering a little, leaning against her legs for reassurance.

“As everyone could see from her body language, Viv’s reaction to Leona fell somewhere between timid and downright afraid,” Julia said. She stroked the dog’s neck and flank to calm her. “Obviously, that beats aggressive. Now Thomas—”

“Do I get to hold the cat?”

Julia looked at him, bit the inside of her lower lip.

“Yes,” she said, whooshing out a breath. “You get to hold her. What I’d like you to do is carefully pick Leona up, then trade places with one of your parents so you can sit and cuddle her on your lap. When I bring Viv over to you, pretend not to notice us. Just keep petting and talking to Leona. Sound good?”

Thomas responded with one of his impatient, borderline rude half-nods, bent to lift the cat out of her basket, and then sat with it as Mama Wurman — introduced as Ellen — vacated her chair.

Julia shot Thomas’s father a glance. She wasn’t sure why she’d expected Stanley to be the parent to stand up, but he remained glued to his seat, arms crossed over his chest. And though it had nothing at all to do with their eligibility for greyhound ownership, Julia couldn’t help but note that chivalry wasn’t a point of emphasis for the Wurman brood.

She stepped forward again, letting out the leash, guiding Viv toward Thomas.

The kid was a natural for the role of animal provocateur, she had to give that to him.

“I love you, kitty-cat,” Thomas cooed. He nestled Leona in his arms, scratched behind her ear, buried his face in the thick fur of her nape, and gave her a series of smoochy lip-smacking kisses. “I love you best of all, love you so, soooo much—”

All in an instant Vivian launched forward, straining at the leash. She was growling, her teeth gnashing inside the muzzle as she thrust her long snout at the cat. Before Julia could yank her away from him, Thomas screamed and flinched back in his chair, slamming it hard against the wall. Hissing, spitting, her fur on end, Leona took a defensive swat at Viv. Then she sprang out of Thomas’s arms to the floor, went scrambling wildly across the room, and bolted out the doorless entry to the storefront with a loud mewling screech.

“The lady tricked me!” Thomas hollered. His face red, tears bursting from his eyes. “She knew the dog was gonna be bad and she tricked me!”

“Thomas, I’m sorry you got frightened, but that’s not true.” Julia had pulled in the leash, straddled Vivian between her legs, and could already feel her subsiding. “I told you there was a chance—”

Thomas leaped to his feet, and the chair fell over with a crash. Ellen swept him into her consoling arms.

“No you didn’t!” he bawled. He’d clenched his hands into tight, white-knuckled fists and was shaking them at his sides. “You’re a liar! A mean, mean liar!”

Stanley rose from his chair and looked across the room at Julia.

“Under the circumstances, given how my son’s been traumatized—”

“A mean liar lady with a bad, stupid dog…”

“—I feel it’s best we reconsider this adoption,” Stanley said.

Julia somehow managed to arrest her smile.

“Mr. Wurman,” she said, “I have to admit those were exactly my thoughts.”

Macie Nze had done his best to mark the 4×4’s route, and by that guess its general destination. The sounds and smells coming through the open front windows made it apparent that he’d been taken into the bush. Deep into the bush to judge from the long, punishing drive, which already seemed to have gone on for half the night. Though his eyes were covered by a canvas hood or sack, he was convinced his captors had headed south for dozens of kilometers, and then east for dozens more, putting him somewhere near the Wonga-Wongé Preserve, if not within its actual boundaries.

Nze had fought to hang on to his wits, stay alert to surrounding noises, keep track of turns the vehicle had made… lefts, rights, curves wide or sharp. Orienting himself hadn’t been easy. Wherever he’d been brought and held for many hours after his abduction was clearly within the city limits, but he’d been forced to wear the hood the entire time and gotten only a vague sense of his starting point. Yet neither his negated eyesight, his fear, nor his constant discomfort — and occasionally dreadful pain — had stopped Nze from being able to tell when the 4×4 was crossing bridges or stopping at intersections. Or when its tires had left Port-Gentil’s paved streets and thoroughfares for the outlying bush country.

The feel of the unimproved roads he’d traveled ever since had held their own clues to his direction. Even a newcomer to the land could have differentiated between highway macadam and rutted wilderness path, and except for his four years abroad at university, Nze, who was a month shy of his fiftieth birthday, had lived in Gabon his entire life. He could identify the type of surfaces over which he’d been driven, whether coastal sand or laterite, a soft, iron-rich earth that was typical of inland marshes and lagoons, and would hold moisture through all but the harshest dry seasons. For a while now the laterite had been sucking at the vehicle’s wheels, causing it to pitch and yaw, repeatedly bogging it down in claylike red muck.

That continuous rocking was bad enough for Nze, but the jolts he took in the 4×4’s cargo section whenever it was pushed out of a bog were far worse, and had wrung stifled groans of agony through the thick band of duct tape over his mouth. After the abductors walked him from his temporary holding place — hooded, gagged, and at gunpoint — they had forced him to squat on his knees in the 4×4’s cargo section, and then bound his wrists and ankles together from behind with electrical cord. The first rattling bump had knocked Nze off balance onto his left side, flinging his body against a heavy tire stowed in back with him… presumably a spare. He’d remained there since, unable to pull himself up, the grooved pattern of its treads stamping into him through his clothes. Movement just worsened the abominable strain on his neck, back, and legs. And those sudden forward lurches of the vehicle, mon Dieu, they were almost unendurable.

And so the drive stretched on. Nze believed daybreak was fast approaching — for whatever it was worth, the coarse, heavy fabric over his face had not completely blocked his perception of light and darkness. Much earlier, before the 4×4 slipped out of the city, he’d distinguished the glow of traffic signals, streetlights, even the occasional glancing headlamp beams of other motor vehicles. Now he had discerned a faint lifting of the black outside the windows, coupled with the sounds of an awakened jungle. He could hear the discord of overlapping birdsong, and had thought he’d recognized a mangabey’s shrieky primate cry behind him on the forest road.

Part of Nze’s mind yearned for an end to the torturous ride. Another part of him, however, understood how insane a desire that was, what its fulfillment would likely mean for him. He had tried to ignore these emphatic inner warnings, banish them from contemplation, but they had persisted anyway.

Assistant Minister Macie Nze was a man of some fair reason, a trait that would not allow reality to be denied.

If only his capacity for logic and common sense had guided his recent actions, Nze supposed he would never have gotten into this wretched spot. But greed was an imbecilic spoiler that could overcome a person’s best instincts. In his case, it had happened once too often.

As the car rolled on over the dirt roads, Nze’s thoughts suddenly backtracked to when he’d been taken outside his home all those hours ago… and then reversed themselves a little further, to the very moment he was lured into the trap.

The call came shortly after eleven o’clock on what was now the previous night. Seventeen minutes past eleven, to be exact. There was a Berthoud clock on his living-room bureau, and Nze recalled having looked at the antique timepiece as he had reached for the phone, setting down his late-evening glass of wine.

“Bonsoir, Macie.” The voice in his handset had belonged to Etienne Begela. “Ça va?”

“Bien, merci.”

Nze had waited. Begela’s cordial tone had thrown him off guard, as it had at the hotel earlier that night. His superior in the Office des Postes et Telecommunications, and a Beti Fang of maternal family linkage, Begela had not spoken a word to Nze for weeks before the reception… not, in fact, since their tense conversation aboard the Avirex flight out of Libreville after the National Assembly voted its approval of the UpLink licenses. Begela alternately accused Nze of being a bungler and double-crosser for having withdrawn his opposition. Nze countered that political exigency had left him with no choice except to launch a strategic retreat. The Americans’ support among the PDG’s most formidable and senior members was overwhelming, he’d insisted. Continued challenges would merely label both of them obstructionists to their future sorrow.

“Don’t speak to me of sorrow,” Begela said once their plane left the Gamba airport runway. “It isn’t you who must face our backer.”

“He paid us to lobby—”

“He expected us to deliver.”

With that curt interruption, Begela had risen from beside Nze to take an unoccupied seat up the aisle, and afterward had presented him with nothing but silence and his back.

Until the 11:17 telephone call.

Last night.

Nze remembered standing quietly with the receiver to his ear for several moments after their exchange of pleasantries. Studying his ornate centuries-old clock. Noting the swing of its pendulum’s polished brass rod as droplets of light splashed over it from a chandelier overhead.

“We’ve gotten a break,” Begela had said. “I’ve met with the individual we spoke about on the plane. Things went far better than expected.”

“He doesn’t blame us for the vote?”

“Let’s say I’ve managed to raise his consciousness about the Libreville hearing, and our political system in general.”

“How so?”

“Our lack of success was a disappointment to him. As is the arrival of the UpLink advance group. But he understands the complexities we dealt with in the capital, has revised his objectives accordingly, and remains hopeful we can barter influence with our opposition, sway them to rescind their decision.”

Nze had shaken his head. “With the Americans in our country, I don’t see any chance of making inroads—”

“Hear me, mebonto,” Begela broke in, using the familiar Fang term of address reserved for members of a nuclear kin group. “Our associate still asks for our favors, and we should oblige him. He knows it does not come without ample compensation.”

Nze had paused to think. He’d reached for his glass of Clos du Marquis, sipped. Begela’s implication was plain. The foreigner had been a brimming well of profit neither of them was eager to abandon.

“Was he specific about what he wants from us?”

Begela gave an affirmative grunt.

“It’s best we discuss that in person,” he said. “I’ll send over my car to bring you to the office.”

Nze was surprised. “At this hour? I’ve just gotten settled in…”

“Consider it worthwhile overtime,” Begela said. “We mustn’t delay. There are steps we can take in the morning that will reassure our backer, yet are consistent with a phased approach that will satisfy your cautious inclinations.”

Nze had taken another drink from his wineglass, let the warm and mildly bitter flavor of the Saint Julian grape settle over the back of his tongue.

Ample compensation.

“Give me fifteen minutes to get ready,” he’d said at last.

The black Mercedes 500E coupe pulled in front of his colonial townhouse a quarter hour later on the dot, and Nze had noticed nothing unusual approaching it across the empty sidewalk. Begela’s personal driver, Andre, had whisked around to the curb, nodding dutifully as he opened the rear passenger’s side door.

Nze was leaning into the Benz when he saw the man in its backseat — a man the coupe’s double-glazed windows had at first concealed from view. In his dark coverall fatigues, he very definitely was not one of the minister’s regular employees.

For a confused, off-kilter moment, Nze had wondered if he might be an official escort of some kind. But then a scent that was at once recognizable and incongruous wafted over him from the car’s interior… the pungent, leafy smell of khat.

Although the stimulant drug was legal in Gabon — as it was throughout the rest of Africa — Nze knew no ministerial guard would have the effrontery to chew it while on duty.

He’d stopped halfway inside the car, hesitant, suspicion abruptly taking root inside him.

A profanity was husked in his ear: “Encule-tête!”

Powerful hands closed around Nze’s neck from behind, wrenched it backward before he could react. The hood fell over his head and was pulled down below his eyes, his face. Then Nze was shoved into the rear of the car, where his mouth was quickly wrapped with duct tape outside the sack.

Someone pressed into the car after him and the door of the Mercedes slammed shut.

An instant later, Nze heard the driver get inside.

Nze made smothered sounds through the tape, struggled to move, but could scarcely wriggle his body. He’d been crushed between the man in dark fatigues and whoever boosted him into the car.

An object jabbed into his right side. Hard. The blunt barrel of a gun.

“Ça suffit!” The order to stop squirming had been spat by the same gruff, husking voice he’d heard out on the sidewalk. Again, close against his ear.

Nze became still, heard a different voice from his opposite side.

“Dépêche toi, vas-y continue!” the khat chewer shouted at the driver. Urging him to hurry up, get on with it.

The car had jumped forward into the street.

Nze was certain the hideaway to which they brought him was near the ocean harbor — perhaps a storage warehouse, or indoor berthing space. It had taken only minutes to get there. As they pulled him from the car, guiding him roughly along, he had felt the transition from asphalt to old wooden boards under his feet, smelled saltwater and diesel fuel, heard what sounded like the rhythmical knocking of a ship’s hull against its moorings. Then a roll-down security gate being raised on rusty metal tracks in front of him.

He was led indoors. Thrust into a chair. Told he’d be shot if he put up any resistance.

The gate clanged shut.

Nze sat without budging for hours before he was shuffled out into the 4×4. At the time, he had no idea why they had kept him at that interim place… but much later, after his captors passed out of the city, he would conclude they had been waiting for the night to run itself thin. It only made sense. The roads leading into the bush were slow to traverse by daylight, and filled with unseen hazards in darkness, becoming more arduous as Port-Gentil’s outlying townships and settlements were left behind in the distance. They would have wanted to limit the amount of ground that had to be covered before the first rays of dawn came bleaching through the sky.

Now the sun was up, its heat building in the cargo section around Nze as the 4×4 gyrated along over pebbled, foliage-tangled jungle roads and trenches. In September, the days were quick to grow sweltering, and air-conditioners were useless and unused in motor vehicles. He could feel sweat pouring down his face under the canvas hood, feel the tire rubber wedged against his side getting warm. His entire body ached, besides, and his arms and legs were tingling from lack of circulation.

There was no way to be certain how many men were riding with him, but Nze had mentally indexed at least four voices from snatches of overheard conversation. One of them was very soft, belonging to someone who spoke French with a perceptible foreign accent… an American accent, he believed. The khat chewer from the backseat of the Mercedes was also among his hostile, unchosen companions, and Nze did not have to hear the man speak to know it. The combination of his drug of choice’s sickly sweet odor and the stultifying heat inside the cargo section had pushed Nze to the verge of nausea. And his constant tossing about hadn’t helped. With his mouth taped, he’d been afraid he would choke on his own vomit if the trip stretched on much longer, heaving up what little was left of yesterday’s dinner — and fine wine, he recalled miserably, thinking of the glass he had set down to answer the phone.

Nze actually found himself grateful when the vehicle bounced to a halt, its engine cutting off with a shudder… and then was struck by how odious his circumstances must be to evoke such a feeling, the constant realist in him serving up another reminder that having reached his destination could not prove a good thing at all.

Doors on both sides of the vehicle opened, shut, and Nze heard footsteps scrambling over earth and scrub toward its rear. The cargo hatch was lifted. Arid — but fresh — air wafted through, easing the stuporous, khat-smelling heat around him.

This time Nze could feel no gratitude. He had already wasted his meager quota.

Hands seized the back of his perspiration-soaked shirt, pulling him from the open hatch like a trussed animal. Nze landed on his shoulder with a thud that knocked the wind out of him. He felt somebody take hold of the cords around his wrists, heard machetes hacking at foliage as he was dragged blindly over what seemed to be a rough footpath. Pebbles and thorns skinned his hands. A spiny clinging vine caught his left pants leg, raked it upward, and tore the flesh above his ankle. At some point he had lost one of his shoes, the foot that wore it twisting sharply. It had elicited a muffled whimper from him.

Nze did not know how far his abductors pulled him as they tramped on through the brush. Fifteen meters, twenty, perhaps farther. He did not know.

Suddenly, they stopped.

Nze was grabbed by the shirt collar again, pulled up onto his knees with a vicious jerk, and steadied from behind so he wouldn’t keel over, as he had in the four-wheel drive.

The tape around his hood was torn off. Then the hood itself.

Up and off.

Nze’s eyes filled with an explosion of glare. He grimaced as they adjusted to the daylight, blinked away stinging tears.

Swooning from fatigue, his vision a watery blur, Nze still found he could discern a great deal about his surroundings. He was in a small circular clearing, its edges shagged by high thickets of Marantaceae with dark green leaves the size of elephant ears. The clearing’s plainly defined boundaries and trammeled-down carpet of sedge suggested it was man made, slashed out of the forest with machetes like those his captors had used on the trail. Around and underneath Nze, the sawgrass growth was especially scorched, almost black, giving it the appearance of a large stain spread across the ground.

Then he spotted the tire lying in front of him. Doubtless the same tire that had been jammed against him in the cargo section for many hours. A portable metal gasoline can was beside it. A row of men nearby to the right, their knees level with his eyes.

He raised his head for a look at their faces. There were four of them — Andre in his conspicuous chauffeur’s suit, and two Bantu with semiautomatic rifles slung over their shoulders, dressed in coverall fatigues identical to those worn by the khat chewer. Nze could not see the latter, but thought he might be responsible for the shadow falling over him from behind… and realized now that he was not the group’s only user. As the minister knelt there before them, one of the Bantu removed a wad of the drug from a banana-frond wrapping in his hand, passed it to the other tribesman, then got a second wad and put it in his mouth with two fingers.

They chewed and watched him with hyped, bright eyes.

Nze looked away from them to the group’s single white, a lance-thin man in a safari jacket and bush hat. His eyes were pale blue, his skin the color of chalk.

Nze at once saw the camera hanging over his chest from a neck strap. It was a 35-mm with a large objective lens.

The white met Nze’s gaze with his own, studying him. Both hands in the gusset pockets of his jacket.

“Bienvenue,” he said in the lightly accented French that Nze remembered from their trip. “Por le maia distance, se bien regarder aà la lumiè‘re du jour.”

Nze was silent.

“I assume you’ve guessed who I am,” the white said.

Nze gave a slow nod.

The tire, he thought.

The gas can.

The burn-stained ground around him.

He felt himself trembling with fear.

“Let’s hear you say my name,” the white said. “It’s been a grueling ride for everyone. But worn out as we are, we must strive to be polite.”

Nze started to answer and his voice cracked. He wet his parched lips, tried again.

“Gerard Fáton,” he rasped.

The white continued regarding him steadily.

“There you go,” he said. A trace of a smile on his lips. “Monsieur Nze, you should be honored that I’ve come down to say good-bye to you, and capture the moment so that it will be remembered and appreciated.”

Nze’s trembling worsened. He couldn’t make it stop.

“I’ve done nothing…”

“And your doing nothing has cost me.”

Nze shook his head.

“What happened in Libreville… I did my best,” he said. “My arguments were defeated… but your desires weren’t made clear to me until very late. Too late. I had to rush to understand them… to prepare. If I’d had more time—”

Fáton vented a sibilant breath through his teeth.

“Lie to me once more, and I’ll have your hands separated from your wrists to make the burning worse.”

Nze was shaking uncontrollably. There was no denying what was planned for him. He felt his bladder release and hardly cared that his abductors could see the moist stain spreading across the crotch of his pants. He could live with the shame, if he could somehow find a way to live at all.

“You changed your vote to curry favor with some no-rate government connivers,” Fáton said. “Vulgar rustres. Rubes and yokels who play act at being Mandarins.”

“I’ll try again,” Nze said. “I can do better. Much better. I never meant to give up, you must believe that—”

“Stop. Now. You offend me.” Fáton shut his eyes, inhaled through his mouth, stood quietly holding his breath. After a long while he expelled the air from his nostrils, raised his eyelids with a kind of reptilian slowness, and went back to staring at Nze.

“ ‘I don’t see any chance of making inroads’,” he said. “Does that statement ring familiar to you?”

Nze’s face showed the anxious terror of a captured animal. Familiar? Of course it was. Of course. Here was another piece of the trap’s framework. Fáton was simply repeating words that the assistant minister himself had spoken to Etienne Begela over the telephone what seemed a hundred years ago.

Fáton stared at Nze for a brief moment longer before turning to the small group of men beside him.

“Let us necklace this faithless swine and be done here,” he said.

Even as he spoke, one of Fáton’s armed guards went to the tire, crouched over it, and began filling it from the can, working the spout through a hole that had been gouged into the tire’s sidewall. He poured until the can was almost empty, took a handkerchief from his pocket, soaked it with whatever was left of its contents, and wadded it into the hole, leaving a small wick of cloth hanging out. Finally he tossed the can into the brush and was joined by another of the guards, who helped him lift the tire off the ground and carry it toward the patch of blackened sedge where Nze knelt helplessly and watched.

Nze tried to move, knowing it was futile. The khat chewer from inside the Benz — or whichever of his captors was standing behind him — had taken fast hold of the electrical cord that bound his arms and legs. He could only squirm with impotent terror in that solid, unbreakable grip.

The tire was lowered over Nze’s head to rest around his shoulders. Fuel sloshed inside it, the stench overwhelming him.

He sobbed.

“Very good,” Fáton told the pair of fatigue-clad men. Then, to Nze, in a tone of calm gratification: “You were warned about lying twice, little piglet.”

Nze sobbed openly.

Fáton was looking past his shoulder.

“Omar,” he said, “Coupez ses mains, si’l vous plaît.”

Omar, cut off his hands, please.

Nze felt a sudden swish of air, glimpsed the bright sun-sparkle of the rising machete blade. He was already screaming when it came down on him with a quick sweeping motion, his cries loud enough to startle a drove of birds from their perches in the hemming brush. Cold pain sledged up from his wrists as the machete carved into them, penetrating deep, momentarily snagging on something, a resistant knot of muscle or bone. It was wobbled from side to side, and then pushed through with a sickening wet crunch. An instant later the coldness turned to pulsing heat.

Nze howled at the top of his lungs, his blood soaking into the thirsty blackened ground. The shadow of the khat chewer, the machete wielder, the butcher who had maimed him, folded and unfolded as he crouched behind Nze, and rose again, and then dropped both severed hands in front of him, let them fall together inches from his knees, crimson streaming from them, tatters of meat flapping wetly around the stubs of his wrist bones, the second and third fingers of one hand twitching like the legs of a dying crab.

Through a haze of suffering and weakness, Nze watched Fáton slide a fist from his right gusset pocket and hold it out before him like a sideshow magician engaged in an amusing bit of hocus pocus. Then he spread open his fingers to display the wooden matchbox in his palm.

“Allumettes,” he said. Again with that even, satisfied calm. “Here is some humane advice, mon ami. As the diesel oil inside the tire bursts into flame, it might be desirable for you to take good, deep breaths of smoke. This goes against involuntary reflex, I know. The fumes will be quite hot, and are apt to sear your throat and lungs. But if you do manage to control yourself — deep breaths, I remind you — they will render you unconscious before the melted tire rubber and burning fuel start to run over your body. They cling to the flesh, you see. And I imagine it must be quite agonizing when flesh cooks.”

Fáton’s left hand appeared from inside his jacket, produced a match from the box, and flicked it against the striker.

Its head budded orange and he moved to within arm’s reach of Nze.

Nze looked at him, tears streaming down his cheeks, his nose and throat clogged with mucus.

“Please, I beg you—” he began.

Fáton frowned with disapproval, touched his flickering match head to the wad of cloth.

“Here, at least, my labor has not been in vain,” he said, and stepped backward as the makeshift fuse ignited with an audible whoosh.

The fuel inside the tire caught almost at once, fire gushing out the large hole in its sidewall, then gnawing through in other places, rapidly tracing its way around the circumference.

Moments later the whole tire went up with a combustive roar. Nze gasped for air and felt broiling heat fill his mouth. Choking on his own scream, he struggled grotesquely to tear free of his bonds with fingers he no longer had, the blaze ringing him in, raking him with its vicious talons. Blots of diesel fuel and gummy, liquified rubber dribbled over his skin, bonded with his skin, ate their way down and down and down into his skin. He could hear his blood sizzle in that blasting, torching heat as the fiery mix splashed the raw bloody stumps of his wrists.

The lids burning away from his eyes, wilting off in curled, blackened strips, Nze endured several remaining instants of sight before the eyeballs themselves were cooked in their sockets — a brief staring agony of horror in which he could see Fáton through breaks in the sheet of flame, standing with his camera raised, his pale lips drawn into a leer beneath the wide, black circle of its lens.

Then Nze’s throat finally unlocked to release the scream that had been trying to force its way out. His body its own raging pyre, he continued screaming for some time, bellows that went climbing high into the air with the flames and smoke. Fáton was cognizant of them long after he and his men had returned to the 4×4 and swung back around onto the snaking jungle trail.

Nze had not taken his advice about the deep breaths, it seemed… and, in Africa as perhaps nowhere else on earth, one’s mistakes bore the harshest of all possible consequences.