Cutting Edge

FIVE

On his last evening in Madrid, Siegfried Kuhl sat facing his high terraced window above the Gran Vía and watched the sunset bathe his completed scale miniature of the Iglesia de San Ginés in deep burgundy light. Against the wall near the apartment door were his few articles of luggage. Beside his chair was a large paper shopping bag that contained a purchase he had made at an art-supply shop some blocks from La Casa Real.

He had moved with haste to close out his affairs here, and it had now come down to his final act before leaving.

As his eyes took in the miniature, Kuhl thought of the long effort it represented, the concentrated application of his learned skills. Its piece-by-piece construction had been painstakingly slow, but impatience rather than patience had held him to it, an irresistible drive to see the model take on finished shape from its raw makings. He thought of the hours he had spent sketching plans from the digital reference images stored in his laptop computer, of the careful fabrication of its segments with his saws, rasps, files, gouges, chisels, and wood knives. He summoned back to his very fingertips the tactile impressions of working his materials, methodically hand carving unformed balsa to replicate the church’s brick and tile facades; its crests, moldings, and traceries; its every architectural feature and texture — even cutting small pieces of glass to fit its windows.

Inside his church, Kuhl had re-created San Ginés’s three arched naves and the figure of the Virgin Mother in her apparition as the Lady of Valvanera, patroness of remedies, whose grace was sought for healing and protection in war. There, it was said, a group of assassins had once stolen into the vestibule and murdered a young man as he knelt before the Lady in adoration, leaving his headless corpse to be discovered at her feet, and his spirit to haunt the aisles with ghostly elegies to a transgression unpunished… and, Kuhl imagined, a restless anger at reverence scorned and unrewarded.

After detailing the model to his satisfaction, Kuhl had sanded and primed its subassemblies for the paints he had mixed to create the earth tones of its outer walls, the darker colors of rail and roof, dome and steeple, as well as the age-tarnished iron bell in the proud tower of San Ginés, and the crucifix raised high above all. He had applied his coats of paint with precise brushstrokes, done his staining and streaking with a sponge applicator to approximate the effects of age, sun, and soot. Then he had used clever dashes of color to hint at the rare artwork decorating the interior walls — canvases by El Greco, Salvatierra, Nicolás Fumo, and a reproduction of a work by the Venetian master Sebastiano Ricci that had been destroyed in an eighteenth-century fire. Ricci, whose devout paintings commissioned by the authorities in Rome contrasted strongly with his reputation for impiety and willful defiance of religious law.

Kuhl stared at his miniature from his chair across the room, his eyes fixed on the bell tower he had epoxied to its rooftop just minutes before.

Like flames, the westering sunlight boiled through its semicircular arches.

With the dying of the day, Kuhl’s period of latency had also reached its end. Minutes from now he would depart for Barajas airport and exit the country using a fraudulent identity and supporting documents — one of many aliases he’d seeded around the world and kept in reserve for when he received his signal from DeVane. Thousands of miles away, Kuhl’s cell of sleeper agents in America had been activated and made rapid arrangements for his coming. On his specific instructions, they had secured a base that fit his cover and conformed nicely with his tactical imperatives. It would provide crucial seclusion, exploitable terrain, and at the same time place him within close reach of his potential target or targets.

Find what Roger Gordian most loves, and we will know his greatest weakness. Strike at it, and we will have struck at his heart.

Kuhl was confident of achieving those objectives. He had compiled a thorough mental dossier on Gordian, and knew Harlan DeVane’s intelligence was still more comprehensive. His American operatives had also supplied useful information. Much had been readily acquired, for despite his estimable regard for UpLink International’s corporate security, Roger Gordian had put limited emphasis on his individual secrecy. Kuhl had found this unsurprising. Gordian was a prominent businessman, someone who led a highly public life. Whose success depended in part on his accessibility, and a reputation that inspired widespread confidence. His background was common knowledge. His personal and professional linkages were to a considerable extent open, apparent, exposed. Some of them had already come under Kuhl’s pitiless lens, and he believed their order of importance in Gordian’s life to be a relatively simple determination. Once he was convinced beyond doubt of the link best broken, it would be no less simple to assess its vulnerabilities, and learn whatever remaining facts he needed to move with potent, decisive speed.

He moved his glance to the clock on the table next to him, then returned it to the miniature of San Ginés.

The hour and minute had come.

There was only one thing left for him, one thing before he closed out.

Kuhl slid his hand down to the shopping bag he’d leaned against the foot of his chair and took hold of its handle. Then he rose and went over to the worktable where the church of his diligent fashioning glowed bloodred in the ashes of nightfall.

He stood there looking down at it, appraising its every feature, recalling the intensity of his labor with a sense of powerful and intimate connection. Feeling an investment of self that in some indescribable way connected him, in turn, to the old church on Calle del Arenal, after which his exacting replica had been crafted.

Calle del Arenal, the Street of Sand, ancient cemetery of Jews, their dust and bones razed at the order of an inquisitor tribunal.

Kuhl thought of the lustful dancers at Joy Eslava, gathering in the shadow of the cross like freed birds outside a cage that had held them from flight, as if that near reminder of confinement somehow added fervor to their kinetic mingling.

After a moment, he reached into the shopping bag for the sculptor’s mallet he had purchased at the nearby art-supply shop. The iron head did not weigh much — one and a half pounds, to be precise — but it was quite sufficient to do the job intended for it.

He leaned down, placed the shopping bag on the floor next to the table, and opened its mouth wide. Then he straightened, raised his sculptor’s mallet over the church, and with clenched teeth brought it down hard on the newly completed and attached bell tower.

It took only a single blow of the mallet to drive it down through the model’s splintering roof to its inner core. Three additional blows reduced the entire miniature to crushed and unrecognizable scraps of colored wood.

Kuhl did not pause to regard its shattered remnants, merely cleared them from sight with a broad swipe of his right arm that sent them spilling over the edge of the work table into his shopping bag.

Brushing the last pieces of the obliterated church off the table, he lifted the bag again, carried it to the door of the apartment, gathered up his luggage, and vacated without a backward glance.

Kuhl left the shopping bag in a waste receptacle in an alley behind the building, and could feel the tightness in his jaw starting to relent by the time he hailed a taxi to the airport. His existence in Madrid was indeed closed out; he had been released for a mission that he almost believed himself born to fulfill.

Across the ocean, Big Sur awaited.

“I’m telling you, Gord, no qualifications, this is the juiciest steak I’ve ever eaten,” Dan Parker said, and swallowed a mouthful of his food. He had ordered the prime New York strip with a side of mashed potatoes. “I feel like we haven’t been here together in years.”

“That’s because we haven’t,” Roger Gordian said. He had gotten the filet mignon with baked. “Three years, if you’re counting.”

Parker looked up from his plate with mild wonder. “No kidding? That long?”

Gordian nodded, pressing some sour cream into the potato’s flesh with his fork.

“That long,” he repeated. It was a bit hard to believe. Lunch at the Washington Palm on Nineteenth Street was once a regular monthly appointment for them, but that was before Gordian’s illness. It was also before Dan had lost his congressional seat in Santa Clara County, having succumbed to the political fallout for helping Gordian lobby against indiscriminate dissemination of U.S. encryption tech abroad. This had proven a resoundingly unpopular stance among his constituents in Silicon Valley’s software industry, who, with the exception of UpLink International, had not seemed to care a whit whether the al Qaedas, Hamases, and Cali Cartels of the world had access to products that could thwart the best surveillance efforts of global law enforcement, their rationale having been that the terrorists and drug lords could get their hands on similar encoding programs from foreign countries, or bootlegged copies of U.S. programs regardless of legal obstacles. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em for a buck, Gordian thought, even if they’re planning to flood your borders with heroin or level the foundations of Western civilization.

“A lot’s happened to keep us busy,” he said.

“Truer words have never been voiced.” Parker tipped his head toward the good-humored caricature of Tiger Woods on the wall above their formerly usual corner table. “At least Tiger’s still here with us.”

“That he is. And for my money the kid’s a permanent fixture.”

Parker grinned. The sports and political cartoons mounted everywhere in sight were a tradition at the restaurant harkening back almost a century to the original Palm on Manhattan’s East Side. Before Woods rose to fame on the green, his current spot on the wall had for over a decade been occupied by the caricature of a retired star football player who’d been well-loved by fans young and old until he was accused of a grisly double homicide, one of the victims being his ex-wife and the mother of his children. Then the football player’s picture had come down and been replaced by a drawing of a television sportscaster who was soon to be booted from his job after allegations that he’d taken large bites out of his mistress while dressed in women’s clothing, or something of that nature. Woods had replaced the sportscaster on the wall around 1998, and remained there since, even though the sports commentator had eventually found sufficient sympathy among fans and network executives to be restored to his approximate slot on the airwaves.

Now Parker reached for his martini to wash down another chunk of steak, drank, produced an ahhh of sublime relish, and set his glass down on the white tablecloth.

“Okay, Gord,” he said. “We’ve talked plenty about my chronic political hankerings. How are you these days?”

“Very well,” Gordian said thoughtfully. “Older,” he added with a slight shrug. “And…”

His reflective expression deepened but he just shrugged again and cut into his steak.

Parker waited for about thirty seconds, then gave him a vague gesture that meant “What else?”

Gordian studied his friend’s curious face.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to keep you in suspense,” he said. “Couldn’t come up with the exact word. You know how it is with me.”

Parker smiled a little. A brown-haired man of middle age and medium build, wearing a black hopsack blazer, pale blue shirt, and gray flannel trousers, his appearance was unremarkable in almost every respect until you inevitably noticed his eyes. In them was a look Dan had not lost since his days as wing man to Gordian in their hundreds of sorties over Nam, flying F-4 Phantoms through waves of antiaircraft fire as they searched the forested ground for VC entrenchments. It was a look so similar to the look in Gordian’s eyes that people would sometimes mistake the two for brothers.

“Granted, self-expression isn’t your most notable personality trait,” he said. “You want to try taking a stab at it anyway?”

Gordian hesitated, his knife and fork suspended over his plate.

“It’s a kind of feeling. Or my wanting to hold on to a feeling, if that helps at all,” he said. “I don’t think I can explain it any better. But sometimes when I’m getting out of bed on a workday, and my blanket’s tossed off, and I have one foot halfway to the floor, I look over at Ashley, and I’m perfectly content with how things are at that split second. It gives me incredible peace of mind knowing I don’t really have to leave her for UpLink to be okay. More than okay. That everything I’ve built is strong enough to stand, to grow, if I decide to stay right there in that house.” He paused, sipped his drink — mineral water with a lemon twist. “On the other hand, I don’t want to stay put, become complacent. Don’t want to stop. And that’s as essential to the mix as any sense of accomplishment or fulfillment. Wanting to stop and not stop… to keep attaining things and at the same time let go. I honestly don’t know the word for the feeling, Dan. It might sound like there’s some contradiction in it, but I’m not sure. And I want to figure it out, find whatever will let me keep riding it.”

Parker chewed his food quietly a minute, glanced at his martini, and frowned. There was nothing left of it but the rocks. He caught a waiter’s attention, motioned to his glass, and continued eating in silence until his refill arrived.

“The part about not leaving home might have to wait,” he muttered half under his breath, taking a deep sip of the cocktail and swallowing the words with it.

Gordian looked at him. “What was that you said?”

Parker flapped a hand in dismissal.

“Time for that later on,” he said quickly. “Right now, I’ll make you a proposition. After we’re done with business here in the capital, I’ll head back home to Saratoga, think about the word that keeps hiding from you, le mot juste, see if I can draw it out into the open. Meanwhile, you turn that resourceful steel-trap brain of yours to pondering how I can get back to where I belong.”

“Congress.”

Parker shrugged.

“Public service,” he said. “I’m open to broad and innovative suggestions.”

Gordian paused again. Then he reached for his lemon water and held it out across the table.

“Okay, settled,” he said. “Can do.”

They clinked glasses, then sat a moment.

“We should get on to the capital business you mentioned,” Gordian said.

Parker nodded.

“In my opinion, your coming here to make a closing pitch without a whole army of experts was a stroke of inspiration,” he said. “It’s going to make all the difference in the world.”

Gordian smiled. “Dan, we’ve already toasted to our deal—”

“I’m serious,” Parker interrupted. “Sedco’s about oil. It’s no insult to my fellow board members to say that’s what interests them. What they know. They’ve read the UpLink prospectus, the analyses and recommendations prepared by our advisory panel. They don’t need technical lectures on the ins and outs of fiberoptic communications. They don’t even have to appreciate all their properties, advantages, and capabilities. It’s enough for them to understand offshore drilling operations are becoming more computerized practically every day, and that high data transmission from the rigs to our onshore facilities is a necessity. Wiring up our platforms to your African telecom ring isn’t just to our benefit, it’s inevitable.”

“You’re convinced a majority of the board sees it that way?” Gordian said.

“Totally,” Parker said. “The few fence straddlers or outright dissenters might need some help trusting the rest, and maybe themselves. That’s what you’re about, Gord. Inspiring trust and credibility.” He paused. “It’s a very big reason I think your coming here alone was so important.”

Gordian rubbed his chin. “What’s your slant on them? The possible opposing voters?”

“There aren’t many, for one thing. I’m betting Bill Fredericks will need the most persuasion. With him, resistance to progress is a sort of reflexive crusade. He was a Sedco executive when the fossil fuel we sell was still living plants and protozoa—”

“I think it’s made from plants and bacteria…”

“Protozoa, bacteria, flying aardvarks, what-the-hell-ever,” Parker said. “Point is, Bill seems to be the only member with a problem getting a basic grasp on lightwave systems… which is no shocker to me, having been to his home. Don’t even try bringing up video conferencing to him. His phones have hammer and bell ringers, and I swear to God I saw some with rotary dials. He refuses to use e-mail or even check out the Internet. Mention increased bandwidth, and he thinks it’s got something to do with his wife’s rings and bracelets. Doesn’t see anything wrong with sticking to the marine radio links we’ve been using for decades and probably wonders what the hell’s wrong with using Morse code to contact the mainland.”

Gordian laughed.

“I’ll try to be extra attentive while nursing him along,” he said, and finished his lunch. “Who else?”

“Paul Reidman. He’s savvy. Keen on the corporate security aspect, likes the idea that tapping a data stream carried as pulses of light is a damn hard task, going to be almost impossible when we get to practical photon encoding in the next few years.” Parker sipped his drink. “Reidman can be fiscally myopic, worries about short-term unit costs versus a reasonable investment in the future. But his stinginess cuts both ways. He’s seen the reports showing that postinstallation maintenance of undersea fiber systems is relatively cheap. Average is something like two, three major faults every quarter century, right?”

“Three, according to our preliminary risk assessment,” Gordian said. “We should have an update from Vince Scull soon… he flew out to Gabon separately from the rest of the advance team, but should have joined them by now. Also, we’re in the process of contracting a repair fleet for guaranteed rapid deployment.”

“Stress that to Paul. Remind him that Planétaire already had one of those statistical faults back in May, trimmed your odds some,” Parker said. He saw the wry amusement in Gordian’s face. “What’s to laugh at?”

Gordian shrugged a little.

“I was thinking you truly are made for the campaign trail,” he said.

Parker was unabashed. “I’m not trying to exploit anybody’s misfortune. Not gleefully anyway. But it’s the kind of market research that can sway Paul.”

Gordian shrugged again.

“I wasn’t being critical,” he said. “Just making an observation.”

“Good, you know how sensitive I am,” Parker said. He eyed the last morsel of his steak. “While we’re on guarantees, give me UpLink’s capacity timetable.”

“We can promise an initial secure multimedia transfer rate of between one and two terrabytes per second. Phone, video, Internet, or any combination thereof. After a year of upgrades we should be up to four terrabytes. By 2005, we can virtually assure you almost ten. Looking at the startup number, Megan Breen’s favorite example is that it’s equivalent to millions of simultaneous telephone calls, a ten-mile high stack of printed material, and twenty feature films.”

“Every second?”

“Right.”

Parker mouthed a silent wow.

“Make sure to refresh Paul about that, too.” He lifted his fork, then noticed Gordian glancing across the table at his plate. “What is it?”

“If Ash were here, she’d tell you to leave the gristle,” he said.

That elicited a snort from Parker. “To which I’d respond that it’s lean gristle.”

Gordian smiled, watching him eat. “All right. I’ve checked off Fredericks and Reidman for extra hand-holding. Any others?”

“You persuade those guys, you’re in crack-dandy shape.”

“Good,” Gordian said. “Then I’ve only got two more things on my mind.”

“Shoot.”

“I’ve wondered about your being taken to the carpet for a perceived conflict of interest.”

“You mean my urging along the fiber installation?” Parker said, and pushed his cleaned-off plate to the side. “That’d be ridiculous. If anything this is a clear instance of coinciding interests.”

“I know. It’s why I said perceived.”

“Don’t waste another minute thinking about it, Gord. Our friendship’s no secret. And I don’t believe anybody at Sedco would question my integrity.”

Gordian nodded. “All right, next,” he said, “I want you to explain your half intentional slip up. That comment about how my staying home will have to wait.”

Parker cleared his throat.

“I thought I said later on that one—”

“You did.” Gordian looked at him. “I’m saying give it to me now—”

“Gord—”

“Now, Dan. Your conscience is crying out to you, begging to be heard.”

“You sure?”

“Absolutely. You wouldn’t have made that blatant fumble unless you wanted me to ask about it.”

Parker sighed.

“Okay, you win,” he said. “The fact is that the company president and veep, who, as you know, are huge UpLink supporters, met a few days ago and came up with this idea for an event that would celebrate our new relationship. Working on the supposition the deal gets signed and sealed, needless to say, they put in a conference call about their idea to Hugh Bennett—”

“The chairman of Sedco’s board?”

“Right, King Hughie, the board chairman, who is also prepared to advise we move ahead with the fiberoptic system install. And he was seriously taken with their idea.”

“They want press coverage, photo ops,” Gordian said. “Understandable.”

Parker gave a nod.

“Sedco’s got terrific competition for offshore oil prospecting licenses in West Africa,” he said. “Some of the industry biggies involved in the bidding are Exxon, Chevron, Texaco, Elf Aquitain. There are state-owned companies — Petroleos Brasileiros out of Brazil, as a for-instance — and their subsidiaries. They’ve been leasing huge, contiguous blocks of deepwater acreage all down the equatorial coast from Nigeria to Angola. Some of these sites are what geologists call elephants… expected to yield upwards of a billion barrels of petroleum. Two blocks found by Texaco in the Agbami Basin — that’s off Angola — are geared to produce a hundred fifty thousand barrels a day before this year’s over, and might very well double that output when their operations are in full swing. To stay in the game, Sedco needs to raise its stock market profile. A headline-making affiliation with UpLink would accomplish that in a snap. Help us work with the U.S. Department of Energy to secure underwriting loans from OPIC.”

Gordian thought a moment. The Overseas Private Investment Corporation’s political risk insurance to American companies making investments in emerging nations couldn’t be undervalued.

“And if it motivates African governments that want in on our fiber ring to give Sedco’s bids and development proposals added consideration—”

“Then all the more reason for King Hughie to feel enthusiastic… and to do everything he can to make sure his enthusiasm becomes contagious with his boardroom colleagues,” Parker said.

Gordian drank the rest of his water with a twist.

“I gather Bennett would appreciate my attendance at this festive pageant of chief executives,” he said.

“I’d go so far as to say he’s going to hint at how much during tomorrow’s meeting with you,” Parker said.

Gordian lowered his glass. “Any inkling where the festivities would take place?”

Parker looked at him.

“In Gabon,” he said. “On one of our wellhead platforms.”

Gordian stared at him across the table.

“Who’s turn is it to pay for our lunch today?” he said.

“Yours,” Parker said.

“Right answer,” Gordian said. “Now let’s hear who’s actually picking up the tab.”

“Guess I am.”

“And who’s going to pay the next dozen times.” Gordian said.

Parker expelled a breath.

“Ah, me again, I guess.”

Gordian nodded once.

“Shall we call it an afternoon?” he said.

Parker looked around for the waiter, made a scribbling gesture in the air to indicate he wanted the check.

“You know, Gord,” he said. “I would genuinely like my conscience to go screw itself.”

Pescadero, California. Nine o’clock in the morning. Felicitous sunshine greeted Julia Gordian as she left the house for her morning jog, setting off honey gold highlights in the blond streak she’d Clairoled into her dark brown hair. The streak was new, as was her retro sixties’ shag, and she thought the combination made for a pretty spiffy look. It had occurred to her that the streak would bug her father when he saw it for the first time next week, which was unquestionably part of the kick. Immature, yeah, sure. But Julia had been bugging him on a constant basis since she hit puberty lo those many years gone by, and at thirty-two years old, an independent woman, figured she could do so however she wanted without hearing about it. Besides, Dad was at his most adorable when he overcompensated, tripped all over himself trying not to show he was irritated.

Julia could hardly wait until she unveiled her shoulder tattoo, a discreet little Japanese kanji symbol that meant “freedom.”

Accompanying her today, as every day, were her two rescued greyhounds — Jack, a brindle guy, and Jill, a teal blue gal. Julia did her stretching routine in her thickly hedge-rimmed lawn while the greys did their business out back. Then she hooked them onto a retractable leash with a two-dog attachment and started out onto the sidewalk, turning left toward the corner of her residential block.

A Subaru Outback drove by, heading in the same direction, slowing imperceptibly as it passed her.

Click-click-click.

This brilliant A.M. Julia had on black body-hugging athletic shorts, a black sports bra, a waistpack water bottle, Nikes, and a lightweight white pullover top to foil the early chill and neighborhood oglers… particularly Doug, the house dad across the street, who always seemed to be coming out to fetch his newspaper from the doorstep when she trotted past.

And here he was now, right on the mark. Just once, Julia thought, you’d think he’d be changing a diaper or giving the kid a warm bottle.

She ignored him as usual and concentrated on working into a rhythm. The less fretful of the two dogs, and the smoother runner, Jill trotted right along at her side, eager to bask in the gushy praise she would receive for keeping a cooperative pace. Meanwhile Jack was cantering a little ahead of them to show his alpha-ness — and inevitably run himself into a tangle around a tree after getting spooked by the fluttering shadows of its leaves… or, worse yet, buzzed by a winged insect, the most fearsome of all God’s creatures from his neurotic perspective.

Julia got to the end of her block and hung left on Trevor Avenue, which by no coincidence happened to be where her favorite pastry shop was located, its hot cinnamon-raisin muffins beckoning from their giant display basket in the storefront about a third of a mile farther along her route.

Paused at a stoplight on the corner of Trevor, the Outback’s driver waited for the signal to turn green, then made the same left as Julia. His digicam ready, a man in the front passenger seat raised it to his window and snapped off a second rapid series of shots as the vehicle reached her.

Click-click-click.

The vehicle passed Julia again and drove off down the avenue.

Another would pick up her movements later on.

Jean Jacques Assele-Ndaki was one of 35 highly ranked Gabonese officials to find a copy of the photograph in his mail. Of those men, 16, including Assele-Ndaki himself, sat in the parliament’s 120-member lower chamber, or National Assembly. Another 6 held seats in the Senate, its 90-member upper chamber; 4 were secretaries in the presidential cabinet; 4 headed important government agencies. The remaining 5 recipients were ministres delegues, or economic ministers appointed to manage and regulate the partial privatization of national industries that had been under full state control before Gabon’s economic restructuring program commenced in the mid- 1990s.

In each case, the photo was enclosed in a plain manila envelope and neatly taped between two rectangular pieces of cardboard to protect it from damage in shipping. Adhesive labels on the envelope’s lower left- and right-hand corners read “Personnelle et Confidentiele”— Personal and Confidential — so it would be opened only by its intended recipient. Their typeface, and the type on the separate address label, was a common boldface Times Roman font produced by an equally common make and model of computer printer. Even the ink-jet cartridge used was of an ordinary, commonplace variety. None of the envelopes bore a return address. And none included a worded message.

The ghastly picture of Macie Nze was a clear enough communication without one.

Although an inspection of their coded postmarks would reveal they were deposited at Libreville’s main postal center on Boulevard de la Mer sometime after the last batch of mail was sorted and processed on the evening of September 26, and before the first batch was loaded onto delivery trucks early on September 27, not even the most sophisticated forensic tests would have shown evidence of handling on either the photographs or their packaging. There were no latent fingerprints, biological samples, trace fibers, or minute particulate materials from which useful information could be extracted. It was as if the mailings had been prepared under aseptic laboratory conditions.

Of course, few, if any, of the public officials to receive the envelope would have considered informing the authorities about it for a moment. They had far too much to lose from any sort of police investigation into their surreptitious contacts and affairs.

Because Assele-Ndaki’s office headquarters was located near the start of the mail route in the Quartier Louis, his deliveries would generally reach it before he arrived for the day. This pleased the assemblyman, whose bent was to read through his morning correspondence over a cup of strong mocha-flavored coffee and a crème tart bought on his way in, at a patisserie on a side street off Boulevard Omar Bongo.

The contents of the manila envelope, however, had left Assele-Ndaki wishing he had never opened it. Not today, nor ever.

While Assele-Ndaki’s terror on discovering the photograph was characteristic of all those who laid eyes on it, the horror that descended on him went many shades deeper, and his grievous sorrow was something entirely of its own. He and Nze had known a close fraternal relationship that went back to childhood. Born into political families, they had grown up neighbors in Port-Gentil, where their elders had often socialized. As boys they had attended the same primary and secondary schools, played soccer on the same youth league. They had shared a dormitory room at the Sorbonne in Paris, graduated that esteemed historic university with advanced economic degrees, and after returning to Gabon held executive positions with the nation’s largest energy and ore mining firms. Some years afterward they had found their lives again intertwined, as both gained National Assembly seats in the same constitutional election.

And together they had attended a string of secret meetings with Etienne Begela and other principal government figures, gatherings at which they were persuaded to accept handsome financial inducements from the blanc, Gerard Fáton… grafted to thwart UpLink International’s overhaul of their country’s telecommunications system. Begela had drawn Assele-Ndaki and his longtime friend into the conspiracy, just as he had doubtless courted the rest of its participants. But Assele-Ndaki would blame no one except himself for his decisions. They had not resulted from any form of pressure or coercion. Rather, he had been enticed by the easy money… and, to be truthful, succumbed to the excitement of slipping across lines of ethics and legality, a visceral delight in probing his untapped capacity for craftiness.

Now that thrill had been replaced by the sickening realization of how mad his actions had been. Their actions — his and Macie’s, perhaps the actions of the rest as well. It had almost seemed a game until their chamber of parliament convened in Libreville for its vote. The amendment they had drawn up to stall legislation that would ensure the extension of UpLink’s temporary operating licenses for at least the next quarter century contained what they had fancied to be marvelously clever revisionist language. But when the president had gotten wind of their intentions through his cadre of appointed loyalists — Gabon’s constitution, drafted under his sharp authoritarian eye, allowed him to handpick nine assemblymen to chair key law-making committees — the authors and supporters of the proposed amendment had been cautioned to desist in far blunter terms than their artful bill flaunted. The choice presented them was stark. They could move forward with their obstructionist plans and invite the scrutiny of the ministry of justice. Find their government and business dealings, financial records, even their sexual activities open to rigorous investigation. Their every affair delved into without deference to social position or regard for privacy.

Or they could instead go with the existing bill. And also go about their lives unburdened by inconvenient, embarrassing disruptions.

The amendment had been scrapped, and UpLink’s regulatory approvals given easy passage through the Assembly.

What Assele-Ndaki and his friend had failed to grasp — what none of the amendment’s sponsors had understood at the time — was that they were in greater jeopardy of being rolled over by the inexorable force that had driven them on until that point. The blanc would tolerate nothing but their moving forward once they had committed to his agenda, would simply plow them down in their tracks if they dared halt or turn back.

Now Assele-Ndaki felt his skin prickle. Beads of sweat slicked his forehead, gleamed on the broad slopes of his cheekbones. Macie. Poor Macie…

He had been murdered. Made a gruesome example. Inquiry and scandal were the tools of politicians. And the blanc was not that.

Assele-Ndaki shuddered, staring at the photo of Macie on his knees with the blazing necklace around his shoulders. Macie burning like a human candle, his face contorted in dying agony behind licks of gasoline-charged flame. Macie burning with his hands cut off at the wrists, dropped on the ground where he could see them as the fire rose around him and the life broiled from his flesh.

An example, Assele-Ndaki thought again.

Though numb with shock, he retained full command of his instincts for self-preservation. Examples were by very definition meant to serve as warnings, and he would not have been sent the photograph if it was too late for him to avoid sharing Macie’s fate. There was still a chance the telecommunications legislation could be defeated, or become so deeply mired in the parliamentary process that the net result was the same. While it had cleared the National Assembly, its ratification would require Senát passage, normally a rubber stamp vote to satisfy the president’s will. But Assele-Ndaki had many confederates, some of them quietly aware of the blanc’s maneuvers. If the venerable senateurs ruled to overturn the bill after their chamber deliberations—if enough of them could be persuaded to vote against it — it would be kicked back down to the lower parliamentary house and resubmitted to committee for changes. Then the amendments could be reintroduced, the process for all practical intents and purposes started from the beginning.

Assele-Ndaki’s heart was racing. It was a plan of abject fear and desperation, he knew. All those who undercut the president would pay the consequences. They would be probed, censured — their personal reputations impugned, their careers in government run into the dirt. Some stood to lose everything. Were Assele-Ndaki’s wife to learn of his own extramarital proclivities—

Everything, yes, the amendment’s proponents would lose everything.

Except their lives.

Assele-Ndaki gazed at the photo of Macie in his smoking ruff of flame and felt a fresh bout of horror and grief.

Better to walk in disgrace than suffer death. Especially that kind of death.

He set the photo into a drawer, reached a trembling hand out toward the telephone — but his secretary buzzed his intercom before he could lift the receiver from its cradle.

Senateur Moubouyi was on the line with a matter of pressing urgency, she informed him.

Were his mood less oppressively bleak, Assele-Ndaki might have smiled.

He had, it seemed, been beaten on the draw.

Nimec had arranged for them to meet the cable ship’s captain and project manager at ten P.M. in a dinner club called Scintillements. His name was Pierre Gunville, and for some reason Vince Scull was having a hard time with that. Scull also had a problem with the name of the club and the fact that their meeting was not taking place in an office building during normal work hours. Nimec could not say these complaints surprised him. Aggravation was Scull’s emotional springboard. If the day ever came when he wasn’t simmering with annoyance, you had to figure it might be worth consulting Nostradamus to see whether it was an omen of something or other being seriously amiss with the world.

Scull had begun his grumbling the second he met Nimec in the corridor outside their guest suites at the Rio de Gabao Hotel. Stepping into the elevator now, he jabbed a thick finger at the LOBBY button and continued to bitch and moan without respite as the doors slid closed.

“So why the hell doesn’t any of this crap bother you?” he said.

“Which crap do you mean?” Nimec said. “Just so I’m straight about it.”

“This guy with the fucked-up name, this fucked-up place where he made our appointment to meet him, this fucked-up time for it when I’m just off the plane from Paris,” Scull said, recapitulating his whole bilious list of complaints. He rubbed a hand over his scalp to smooth down a strand of his nearly extinct hair. “That’s what crap, Pete.”

The car started on its way down. Nimec tried without luck to think of a convenient blanket response, decided to tackle things in reverse order.

“You could have flown Air France with the rest of us, gotten here a couple days ago,” Nimec said. “Nobody twisted your arm into waiting around for a private jet charter.”

“Is that goddamn right?”

“Right.”

“Well, I’m not going to get into how much I paid for my membership on that service,” Scull said. “An expense the boss might’ve offered to shoulder, incidentally. At least halfway shoulder.”

Nimec gave him a look. “That’s asinine. If you have a fear of flying…”

“How many million times we been through this? I’m not afraid—”

“Okay, we’ll say you’ve got issues with commercial airlines,” Nimec said, loath to step into that sucking bog of dispute. “It’s your problem, you pay.”

Scull sneered.

“My problem, you want to call it that, is with how they run their security,” he said. “You’re the expert. Tell me you feel safe flying the terrorist-friendly skies.”

Nimec leaned against the handrail on the back wall of the car, glancing up at its floor indicator panel. The number twenty-four flicked by. Eleven down, twenty-three to go.

“I don’t waste energy worrying about what I can’t control,” he said. “DeMarco’s got the right take on it, you want to know what I think. If terrorist incidents in the air were the norm, they wouldn’t make headlines. The only reason they’re on the six o’clock news is because they don’t happen every day.”

“Like floods, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions, huh? A guy walking aboard with a Semtex bomb in the heel of his shoe’s just another act of God.”

“Do us both a favor and let it go, Vince.”

“Let what go? It was me who was at those negotiations in Paris all last week, while you were still cooling your heels at the home office,” he said. “If somebody hadn’t sewn things up with the Nautel’s cable-maintenance fleet, we wouldn’t be going to see Captain Gunslinger tonight.”

“The boss had other negotiators there taking care of things,” Nimec said. “You enlisted.”

“That’s where you’re dead wrong, Petey,” Scull said. “I’m the company point runner. The forward scout who’s supposed to go conning for buried mines. The risk assessment man. Which means—”

“It’s your job to assess risks,” Nimec said, completing the familiar mantra. He checked his Annie-Meter. Too long to go. Then he glanced at the floor-indicator panel again. Ten, nine. Almost at the lobby. He would have to settle. “Fact is, Vince, you’re earning the salary that pays for your executive jet plan tonight. We’d need to talk with Gunville even if his outfit wasn’t contracted. Right now our teams just mean to use Nautel for support ops. But two divers from the Africana got killed while making repairs on the same fiber line we’re planning to send our men down to survey. I know the company line about what happened to them. I read the press accounts. And I still want to sound him out. Hear the story straight from his mouth. Because it’s my job to keep our people as safe as can be when they might have to put themselves at risk.”

“Did you hear me say I had a problem with that?” Scull thumbed his chest with indignation. “How about we get back to what I asked in the first place, you don’t fucking mind.”

Nimec shrugged mildly.

“The Gabonese are late eaters,” he said. “Nine, ten o’clock at night’s their usual dinner time. It’s also the custom to invite foreign business guests out for a meal. Entertain them. And the place we’re meeting Gunville is supposed to be pretty decent.” He paused. “You ought to enjoy yourself while you can. Be glad it’s not two days from now, when we have to head into the bush to check out the new ground-station facilities.”

“I’ll be gladder if we could stick to the point.” Scull rolled his eyes. “Scintillements, you know what it means? Sparkles. Probably has those laser lights flying around over the walls and ceiling, make you feel like some nut-case with a big crayon covering them with colored squiggles—”

“I’m not sure that’s how it’ll be. I picked up a tourist brochure in my room, and there was an ad—”

“Come on. Since when are you so gullible? Must be the settled life affecting you.”

Nimec looked confused. “Settled life?”

“I just asked you not to stray off the topic. You want my advice on this love thing you got going in Texas, we can do it later,” Scull said. “The club, Petey. Focus on the club. Think about its name a minute, then tell me you expect good eats. They can be pretentious as they want dressing it up in French, I still say it belongs on the marquee of some poky Brooklyn disco like the one that used to be run by the Russian mob punk you took down… what the hell was it called, by the way?”

“The Platinum Club.”

“Yeah, that’s it…”

“Vince,” he said. “French is the official language here.”

“So?”

“So maybe it’s you who should use your head.” He shrugged again. “Nobody’s dressing anything up. Nothing fancy or pretentious about it to their ears.”

“Still worse,” Scull said. “If the owners of the joint know the customers know what the name means, how good can it be? And speaking of bullshit handles, what’s with this Captain Guns-at-the-hips? If you think you’re gonna find that one on his birth certificate, guess again.” Scull made a rumbling sound. “Reminds me of a guy I met at a party once, introduced himself as John Wildlife. No shit. Right away, I peg him as some dilettante rich kid whose moneybags parents stuffed a fortune into his mountaineering knapsack, or maybe into his kayak when he was about to paddle off down the Snake River. Had to be a fortune. Startup capital to help him found one of those tree-hugger nonprofits in D.C… Georgetown, no less. Guy’s got a whole floor of offices on Sixteenth Street for this foundation — you know what rents are like over there. And the reason? Just so he can take a vacation from his recreational activities every now and then, pull himself out of the white-water rapids long enough to dry off his ass. John Wildlife, will somebody please fucking spare me—”

Their elevator stopped at the lobby with a soft ding. As its doors swished open, Nimec saw the concierge flash a hospitable smile from his desk and expelled a sigh of relief. Scull had ceased his tirade.

“Come on, Vince.” He exited the car. “Let’s find ourselves a taxi.”

Scull followed a step behind him, frowned.

“I’ll be happy if we get a driver who doesn’t take us for a couple of greenhorn suckers,” he said.

The concierge took pains to be helpful as the two Americans came across the lobby from the elevator. Did they need their currency exchanged? he enquired in studied English. Would they like particular directions somewhere? Were there any special room-service orders they might wish to place with the staff in advance of their return?

The first man to pass his desk — Monsieur Nimec, executive suite 9—declined with a polite thank-you. The new arrival — Monsieur Scull, who had insisted on an immediate room change from suite 8 to suite 12 on check-in, stating the former was incommodious and noisy — merely shook his head in the negative and followed the other toward the entrance.

The concierge did not let the second guest’s scowl leach any of the obliging geniality from his expression. He was skilled at his job and knew how to keep his poise.

The concierge’s eyes tracked them as they strode to the hotel entrance and a doorman in a braided, epauletted uniform held open its large glass doors. Then he reached for his telephone, tapped in a number, left a brief message with the person who answered, and hung up.

With their backs to him, the smile he offered the men had fled his face.

Out front, the doorman hastened from beneath the hotel’s regal red-and-gold awning, hailed one of several waiting curbside taxis, and opened its rear door for the UpLink representatives. Then he asked their destination — again in their own tongue — was given it by the tall, narrow-jawed man who had led the way through the entrance, and helpfully communicated where they were going to the driver in his native French.

The taller of the men tipped him and climbed into the taxi. His stocky companion packed himself into the backseat next, slamming the door shut before the doorman could close it for him, albeit in what would have been a much gentler manner.

With his gratuity tucked into the pocket of his colorful uniform jacket, the doorman watched the taxi pull away down the boulevard. A moment afterward, the second in the queue of parked taxis slid up to the hotel entrance.

This time the doorman opened its front passenger door and leaned all the way inside.

“Scintillements,” he instructed the driver.

“Ce voir Gunville?”

“Ce n’est non l’affair.”

They made brief eye contact. Then a silent nod of acknowledgment from the driver, and he faced forward, his hands on the wheel. Who the Americans were meeting was truly none of their affair; it would be best for them to know only what was necessary.

The doorman straightened, pushing the door shut.

A second later, the taxi swung from the curb and slotted into the light traffic a short distance behind the vehicle carrying Nimec and Scull.

The ocean waters of Gabon are blessed with mild currents, and so the Chimera floated gently tonight above the Ogooué Fan, a wide belt of alluvial sediment sloping toward the oil-gorged offshore basins beyond land’s end. Here, four months ago, Cédric Dupain and Marius Bouchard had come to sudden death at three hundred fathoms, but the explosions and pressure that left their bodies in shredded ruin caused no visible disturbance to the surface tranquillity.

Life’s worst acts of violence may be hidden, silent, and deep. Known as the spawning ground of abominations, it is a place where perpetrator and victim meet and witnesses attest to nothing, where crimes committed beget atrocious intimacies, where guilt makes its slippery escape through wormholes bedded in shame.

In his yacht’s stateroom bed, Harlan DeVane lay facing its raised porthole and wished hard for sleep to take him. Though shut tight, his eyes were grazed by the navigational lights of the buoys and platforms outside to the west, and the running lights of the great sluggish fuel tankers at near-rest between them. Some nights their flickering glow would lull DeVane into temporary oblivion, but now, on this night, they only prodded him back from its edge.

The porthole’s thin translucent curtains swirled in drifts of warm sea air. Naked atop his sheets, DeVane felt the satin breeze slide over his legs and chest, felt the soft, rhythmic rocking of his yacht trying to ease him into darkness. But his body remained stiff, unrelaxed. He had tried to keep his thoughts on business, settle himself by planning for imminent discussions with his clients. There had been little to consider, however. His offering of the current information crop would be a take it or leave it proposition. He had lost much of his fortune and face after the Sleeper virus debacle and been put in a ticklish position with the disappointed buyers of its genetic activators. And yet he had misled none of them. The failure had not resulted from a default in supplying the product, nor a deficiency in its performance, nor any misrepresentation of its ravaging potential. In his line of work, there could be no guarantees against countermeasures taken by the enemy. UpLink International had been the stumbling block, and he fully meant to remove that impediment. He would not repair the damaged trust of his clients by becoming a markdown distributor, a light-palmed haggler like the market venders in Port-Gentil.

With these matters determined to his own satisfaction, the memories had been aroused to work their penetrating, uninhibited will on DeVane. Even those that sated were small molestations, arsenic pleasures.

Now they flashed an image of the brownstone in New York City onto the screen of his mind, a vivid memory of how it had looked to him on first sight. This was thousands of miles and two years to the day after he had sat at the long glass table in his father’s tower, hiding his threadbare shirt cuff beneath the sleeves of his cheap jacket. DeVane had known from the moment of his expulsion that important lessons could be taken from it. In the time that passed he had concentrated on extracting every one them, seen that his processing of the information had grown full and complete. None of that time was wasted with idleness.

His appearance had changed… no, he had transformed himself. That was the primary lesson DeVane had learned: Transformation was necessary for those born outside the fortresses of power to succeed. The faceless unknown must fit themselves to suits that would let them belong.

The suit DeVane had worn as he strode toward the brownstone on Manhattan’s Upper East Side was tailored and padded black wool crepe, his shirt woven gray cotton, his silk hand-knit necktie smartly knotted and dimpled. He had walked in his oxfords just once before to give their leather the suppleness of light wear, then polished them to a soft, rich gleam. Strapped casually over his shoulder was a Coach Hudson briefcase.

DeVane had obtained the expensive clothes and briefcase with money from items stolen and fenced in another city. His hands had become skilled at using the lock pick and shim, at gaining furtive entrance to unoccupied homes. The tower had pointed DeVane’s way toward an understanding that his sense of entitlement was a dead skin to be shed… and had eventually led him to appreciate that merit did not open doors, but only gave one a chance at staying in the room. He had realized, too, that there was always more than a single door, a single room. For the faceless unknown, cunning and deception were the true keys to the kingdom.

Hocus pocus.

Pausing in front of the nineteenth-century town house, DeVane had noted its every feature with an obsessive attention to detail. A low wrought-iron fence stood between the small flagstone court and sidewalk. A spindling bamboo plant, striped green and yellow, grew from a concrete bed by the front steps. The leaded casement windows had black-barred gates and interior shutters. The door was dark paneled wood with a heavy horseshoe knocker, brass knob, and a pear-shaped light fixture above it. On the jamb, an intercom. There were ornate floral designs on the projecting cornices.

DeVane had looked up at the light fixture amid the busy brush and bump of sidewalk foot traffic and recalled seeing its photograph in a guide to ornamental antiques written by the homeowner. Her name was Melissa Phillips, and she had authored numerous magazine articles and three books on related subjects. Her most recent book had appeared a decade earlier, shortly before the passing of her husband, an executive editor at a famed and venerable publishing house who had been much older than she.

Before his trip to New York, DeVane had learned everything he could about the widow. She had led a reserved, if not quite withdrawn, existence since the end of her marriage. She was reputed to be a mild eccentric who fancied herself as something of a bohemian. There was a small circle of friends with whom she had regular get-togethers, most of them women, socialites she had known for years. Although she possessed abundant financial means, Melissa Phillips would sometimes rent out luxury suites in the spacious town house she had inherited, placing advertisements in the New York Observer, a weekly Manhattan newspaper with a large upscale readership. The monthly rates were expensive as listed, but Phillips’s leasing of the apartments sprang from a desire for companionship rather than income, and she showed a softness, even a patronlike generosity, toward a certain type of prospective occupant… or house guest, as she preferred to call each of her renters. Young people who aspired to careers in the arts often struck an empathic chord in her. Budding writers, musicians, dancers, and stage performers made for colorful house guests and lively evening conversation, and she would on occasion adjust her rents downward to ease their financial burdens, or in some cases defer its due date when their pursuit of the muse ran them lean.

The widow had shown a special affection for gifted, interesting men in their twenties and early thirties, and it was to them that her kindness was most often and fully extended.

DeVane had learned of this preference after reading an archived article taken from the New York Post’s Page Six, well known for its gossip columns about celebrities and members of Gotham society.

It had seemed a shining gift to him.

On the brownstone’s front stoop, he announced himself to a servant over the intercom and was told someone would be down to admit him in a few moments.

When the door opened, DeVane was not surprised to see Melissa Phillips herself standing in the entry. She was an attractive woman. Small framed, thin, her blond hair just slightly laced with gray.

The widow had appraised him with intent, pale blue eyes.

“Hello, Mr. Nemaine,” she said, and smiled. “I’d thought your appointment at that literary agency might delay you… it can be horrible getting up here from downtown.”

DeVane shrugged, returned her smile with one he had studied on other faces and taught himself to reproduce.

“A playwright’s timing has to be perfect, and I try not to miss my beats,” he said, taking her extended hand. Her fingers were long, slender. “It’s an honor, Mrs. Phillips. You have a distinguished reputation as a benefactress of the arts.”

A glint in the widow’s eyes. They met his own.

“I’m charmed and flattered to know my efforts are appreciated,” she said. “And please call me Melissa… I’m not that much older than you.”

DeVane stood with her hand in his. Behind her, a glimpse of a high-walled entry parlor of palatial dimensions. He was struck by the burnished gold chandelier that hung from its vaulted ceiling, clean white candles in its curved, graceful arms.

She noticed him looking in through the halfway open door, and glanced over her shoulder to see what had caught his attention.

DeVane was quick; he had worked hard at perfecting the cheat.

“I apologize for becoming distracted, but the chandelier is magnificent,” he said. “Gilded wood, isn’t it? I’d imagine it must date back to the English Restoration.”

Melissa Phillips faced him again, impressed.

“Very close,” she said, and opened her door wide to admit him. “It’s British. From the early eighteenth century, though. You’ll find it even more beautiful at night with the candles lighted.”

He had nodded and entered.

As DeVane followed her into the parlor, he had felt almost like a treasure hunter who had unearthed a trove of wealth he had sought for a lifetime — struggling, digging, boring past endless layers of dirt and stone to expose it — and now that he had broken through, now that it was within reach, had discovered it contained an even greater hoard than he had allowed himself to envision.

He wanted to see every prize, take it all in at once…

But here Harlan DeVane’s string of memories broke off like a film reel that had run out inside a vacated projection booth.

In his cabin on board the Chimera, his body had finally released its tension and let him plunge into dreamless sleep.

“I gotta admit, Petey, you were a hundred percent right about the Gabonese having a knack for entertaining their visitors,” Scull said cheerfully, his voice raised above the piano-accompanied singing from the club’s round central stage. “If I’d realized how, you wouldn’t have heard me complain.”

“Great,” Nimec said.

“Also, you should’ve told me the cooking was Senegalese. Didn’t I hear you mention that you been wanting to try African food for the longest time?”

“Could be you did.”

“Well, that goes double for me, believe it or not. Which is why—”

“I would have told you,” Nimec said. “If I’d known.”

“But what about that ad you read?”

Nimec snapped a look at him.

“I suppose I missed the part about the cuisine,” he said. “I had other priorities on my mind.”

“Hey, don’t get defensive on me, I’m just saying it’s too bad you didn’t know.” Scull slurped from his spoon. “Anyway, this fish soup’s delicious. The spices, boy, they’ve got a sneaky kick. The heat kind of creeps over your tongue, front to back. Then wham!”

“Glad you’re enjoying it.”

“I’ll have to remember its name. Better yet, I should ask the waiter to scribble it on a piece of paper for me, tiébou dienn, right?”

“I think so.”

“Because it’s one I don’t want to forget. When you get down to the rice and stuff at the bottom, take my word, it’s freakin’ bliss—”

“I’m glad.”

Scull looked at him. “You already said that.”

“Said what?”

“Forget it. How’s your chicken yassa?”

“Good.”

“So why the long face?” Scull said. “Gunville couldn’t have steered us toward better eats. Doesn’t have a bad set of pipes, either. Though, you want me to be truthful, I’d still prefer he wasn’t singing in French so I could understand the words.”

Nimec didn’t answer.

Scull shrugged, dunked his spoon into his bowl, slurped. Nimec looked at him across the table, trying to decide whether his effusive praise of the food and song offered at Scintillements was authentic, a vaudeville routine intended to needle him, or perhaps a typically obnoxious Scullian mixture of the two. Regardless, Scull had succeeded in wearing his patience down to the thinnest of tatters. Or contributed to it, at least.

He turned toward the middle of the room, which neither sparkled, glittered, nor squirmed with crayon-colored lasers but instead fit the travel brochure description to its very letter. A sedate, softly lit, classic dinner club atmosphere. Around the stage were about thirty tables filled with well-dressed men and women, an appreciable percentage of whom were expatriates from the United States and elsewhere. On stage, Pierre Gunville, crew master of the Africana, sat on a stool beside the baby grand, vocalizing a sentimental ballad he’d introduced as being about love gained, betrayed, and forsaken — speaking French and English for the benefit of his multinational audience. Gunville was clad in a black tux, wing-collared white shirt, and black cravat that had been gradually undone over the course of his performance to reveal a thick, braided gold chain around his neck. It was the most ostentatious thing about the place.

Nimec ate his food, listened, and waited. When he and Scull had arrived at their reserved table earlier, Gunville had come over from the stage — where he was doing a sound check or something — proclaimed his great delight at making their acquaintance, and guided them through the menu, recommending his favorite house specialties. He had then explained that singing at the club was both his joy and sideline, a bit of diversionary moonlighting to compensate for the ennui and accumulated pressures of his hard, extended stints at sea. It was his wish, he’d said, that they enjoy the first of his two half-hour sets during dinner. He would promptly rejoin them for a drink at intermission and be pleased, indeed eager, to discuss whatever matters were on their minds relating to his primary vocation.

By that, Nimec assumed he had meant his captaining of the Africana.

Now Gunville’s sad serenade seemed to be concluding. Or crescendoing. Or whatever the hell love’s-loss songs did when they finally wrapped up. The pianist, whom Gunville had introduced only as “Maestro,” struck a resonating minor chord on the keyboard, added a blue trickle of melody. Then Gunville dramatically rose off his stool, lifted the microphone close to his mouth with his right hand, clenched his left hand into a trembling impassioned fist at his side, and ended his number with a sustained, sonorous note and a dashing full bow. Nimec noticed his lingering eye contact with a woman seated alone at a little table for two near the stage, her hands raised higher than the rest as patters of laid-back but appreciative applause spread throughout the room. She was blond, shapely and had on a sleeveless dress with a plunging back line.

Slipping the mike onto its stand now, Gunville thanked the crowd for their kind and wonderful reception, “Merci, merci beaucoup mes amis!” Then he gave the blond another glance, momentarily touched a hand to his heart, and exchanged intimate smiles with her before stepping off the stage.

An ardent fan, Nimec thought.

He watched the balladeering skipper approach his table and take a chair.

“Gentlemen,” Gunville said, still slightly breathless from capping off his set. “I do hope your reviews will be lenient.”

Scull looked up from his soup.

“You can lay it on me anytime, mister,” he said.

Nimec wondered if murdering a colleague in public would disqualify him from his position at UpLink.

“It was nice listening,” he said, and paused. “As long as we’ve got you out of the spotlight, though, I wonder if we could get right to some things that apply to our immediate business.”

“Of course,” Gunville said. “And these would involve the cable inspection you plan to launch from the Africana when it returns from dry dock next week?”

“Some,” Nimec said. “If you don’t mind, I also want to ask you about the accident back in May. I’m sure it isn’t a subject you much like talking about—”

Gunville raised a hand.

“A difficult affair anyone would choose to leave in the past, but I can certainly understand your concerns,” he said. “Permit me a moment to order a drink, and I’ll try to answer as many questions as possible.”

Nimec gave a nod. Gunville motioned over a waiter, asked his two visitors whether they might care for anything. Nimec declined. Scull ordered a Courvasier. Gunville got himself a scotch on the rocks.

“What occurred was no less unexpected than tragic,” Gunville said after the drinks were served. “Cédric Dupain was the lead diver and one of our best. I believe he had more than two decades of experience between his military and civilian careers, and I’d worked with him in the waters of three continents. He was the first aboard my ship to be trained at piloting single-operator deepwater submersibles—”

“They’re what’s known as hardsuits in the trade, right?”

Gunville nodded.

“Remote vehicles are more often used these days. Machines do not share our susceptibility to the hazards of the deep, and there can be no comparison between losing a piece of hardware and losing a human life should some misfortune occur. But our perception, judgment, and manual dexterity remain irreplaceable qualities that robotic craft cannot share. And the hardsuit’s safety record is impressive in calm conditions. I’ve heard of only a single critical incident before the tragedy that took Cédric and his partner, Marius Bouchard.”

“Was Bouchard as good a diver?”

“He lacked the seasoning, but was a trustworthy professional. We send no one down to work at seven hundred meters without comprehensive training and stringent certification.”

“The day those men were lost,” Nimec said. “What went wrong?”

Gunville drank some scotch, lowered his glass to the table.

“A freak calamity,” he said. “They were troubleshooting for the source of a partial system failure and discovered a fault in the cable, a segment that runs along the bottom of an underwater ridge primarily composed of mud and sediment. We believe the damage had been done by sharks. Soon after they tracked it down, there was the apparent submarine equivalent of an earth slide.”

“Anything like that ever happen before? I mean, without your divers getting hurt?”

Gunville shook his head.

“It is what made the incident so shocking. Had it been a massive collapse, I might have perhaps reconciled myself to their deaths… gotten my mind around it as you Americans say… more easily. When you know someone is in a building that has collapsed, you immediately prepare for the worst. But imagine learning a person has been killed after being struck by a few crumbled bricks or something that has fallen from a construction scaffold. In this case two people. The slide was confined almost to the precise area where Cédric and Marius were working.”

“I wonder what touched it off,” Scull said. He raised his eyes from his soup bowl. “Reports I’ve seen all say the fan’s tectonics are real stable.”

Gunville looked at him.

“That is correct,” he said. “Our best guess is that it was progressive erosion. There are natural interactions that can change the features of the undersea landscape even in salutary conditions. Tidal flows, gravitational effects, storms, scavenging or colonizing creatures. This creates nonconformities. Areas of deterioration that may go undetected, particularly if they are small. Over a long period of time an overhanging portion of the shelf was undermined, fractured, and simply gave.”

Scull grunted. He ran his spoon around the inside of his bowl to clean off the last of the tiébou dienn and put it in his mouth.

“Did you have any seismographs taken afterward?” Nimec said. “Would’ve helped rule out any chance there was a minor quake.”

Gunville shook his head.

“Planétaire Systems saw no reason for it,” he said. “Frankly neither did I. The event was localized. Its causes were apparent from subsequent inspection by divers and ROVs. And we were confident of the seismological data already compiled.” He reached for his drink. “You must also understand my own immediate priority was recovering the bodies of my crewmen.”

“Sure,” Nimec said. “We’re not trying to second guess anybody.”

“Still makes sense to do a comparative geological work up,” Scull said. “With all the offshore rigs popping up in the Ogooué, you want to be sure the drilling hasn’t moved things around, loosened them like people sticking their toes into sand castles.”

Gunville looked at him.

“I agree with your suggestion. If Planétaire hadn’t pulled out of the region, it is likely a new survey would have been conducted by my employers at Nautel. Unfortunately, without their finances…”

“UpLink will get one ordered,” Nimec said.

“Excellent.” Gunville sat quietly a moment, then glanced over at the stage. “I hope you will forgive me, but I must prepare for my next set.” He offered the men a courteous smile. “I’m certain we’ll be talking again over the next several days.”

Nimec nodded.

“You bet,” he said. “We’re very grateful for your time.”

Handshakes around the table, and then Gunville was off across the room.

Nimec saw him move toward the blond at the foot of the stage, dawdle there to speak to her.

“Hot stuff,” Scull said, following his gaze. “If I could sing like him, I’d be picking up broads left and right, too.”

“Don’t remember you having trouble on that score when you were married.”

“Which time?”

“I could probably take my pick.”

Scull shrugged.

“That was all before I lost my boyish good looks,” he said.

They were silent a bit.

“Okay,” Nimec said, and pointed his chin in the direction Gunville had gone. “Give me your impressions.”

Scull pointed to Gunville’s half-full scotch glass. “Didn’t finish his drink.”

“I noticed.”

“Sort of left me feeling he gave us the bum’s rush.”

“Yeah.”

“Meanwhile, he’s over there talking to the blond, plenty of time for her.”

“Yeah.”

Their eyes met.

“Can’t figure what it might be, but I think our fucking crooner Romeo’s got something to hide,” Scull said.

Nimec nodded.

“You and me both,” he said.

Port-Gentil. Headquarters Police Gabonaise. Forty-seven minutes past midnight. His shift long concluded, leaving him drained from overwork and nerves, the normally starch crispness of his officer’s uniform gone as limp as he felt, Commander Bertrand Kilana slouched before a computer screen behind his locked office door.

The air in the room was stale with sweat, ground out cigarette butts, and paper cups of cold, half-drunk coffee. One of the cups on his desk had begun leaking from its bottom, but Kilana had not noticed the spreading brown ring of wetness around it. Nor would he until tomorrow morning, when he returned to the office after too few hours’ sleep. By then the coffee would have partly soaked through a stack of his important case documents and the pages of a favorite investigative reference book, then dribbled down to the floor to leave a dark, permanent stain on his rug. Kilana would find the paper cup empty and curse himself for having neglected to dump it.

On Kilana’s monitor now, a live-streaming Internet surveillance video from the Rio de Gabao Hotel showed two of the Americans under observation exit an elevator that had risen to its luxury suite level and return to their separate rooms.

The commander identified them, tentatively, from his matched listing of UpLink personnel and their suite numbers. This information was stored in his computer’s encrypted database, but for the sake of convenience he’d kept a hardcopy on hand beside his keyboard. According to this printout, the men were Peter Nimec — suite 9—and Vincent Scull — suite 12.

He did not know, or wish to know, where they had been tonight — only that they had left shortly before ten, and stayed out for some three odd hours. He did not know their positions with UpLink, though that information could be easily obtained from departmental sources. He did not even know with absolute certainty why he had been instructed to maintain a constant watch over them.

Kilana kept his eyes on his role in the plot and let its other players worry about theirs. It was what he’d been told to do. It was also what was very much safest for him.

Kilana palmed his mouse, moved the cursor to the toolbar of his Internet Service Provider’s browser and clicked FILE ➞ ARCHIVE ➞ SAVE. When the dialogue box opened to request a file name, Kilana typed in the word hibou, followed by the number twelve.

Hibou is the French word for “owl.”

Now Kilana clicked again, and the hidden camera’s real-time images of the men were stored as a high-resolution, compressed audio/video DivX file on his database. He then took a rewritable DVD from the rack on his desk, slipped it into the computer’s burner drive, and returned to the toolbar.

Several mouse clicks later, he had merged the night’s dozen hibou surveillance files from the hallway outside the Rio de Gabao’s luxury suites into a single large file on the disk. Also on the disk were separate files from inside the suites themselves, designated faucon—“falcon” in French. These included an exceedingly interesting video of Tara Cullen — suite 5—as she showered and prepared for bed, which Kilana had given a number of successive replays, watching it for his personal enjoyment while a freshly lighted cigarette burned down to a charred, unsmoked stub in his ashtray.

With the files copied, Kilana removed the disk from the drive tray, put it into a jewel case, and turned off his computer. Then he rose, made a perfunctory attempt at smoothing down his rumpled, sagging uniform, abandoned all hope of it, and left the office, snapping out the lights as he went through the door.

In the parking lot, a courier waited in the shadows near Kilana’s automobile. The police commander knew this man’s face but not his identity. More willing ignorance; it was well within Kilana’s power to learn everything about him, from his grandmother’s maiden name to his favorite pissing hole.

Passing the jewel case to the courier without a word, Commander Kilana watched him leave the parking area on foot and then disappear into the night.

After a few moments, he got into his car and drove home, ousting from his mind an intrusive guess about the DVD’s eventual destination.

Yes, the less he knew the better.

Except, perhaps, when it came to the beautiful occupant of luxury suite 5 at the Rio de Gabao Hotel.