Cutting Edge

EIGHT

From Sledge Online (“The Alternative E-zine of News and Opinion”): Hot Briefs

They drove to the airport in an armored Land Rover, DeMarco at the wheel, Wade beside him, Nimec and Scull in the backseat. There were several reasons the group was headed out, their wish to shore up security for Roger Gordian’s arrival the next day top among them, though all they’d felt free to discuss at the Rio de Gabao was their intention to direct a force buildup at their transit warehouse as a precaution arising from the Sette Cama ambush — provisionally labeled an attempted hijack, though they understood the book on that was a far cry from closed.

Another very pressing reason for their drive was one they would not under any circumstances have discussed in the open.

Scull had something he needed to show Nimec. A crucial document he’d extracted from a series of memorandums and correspondences his man Fred Sherman had been tipped to by an inside source at Nautel, and then had pried out of the company’s hands after separately informing three of its highest-ranking executives that UpLink would consider their withholding it from him a flat-out breach of trust and cause for summary abrogation of their as-yet-unsigned outsourcing agreement.

Those statements were no empty threats. The letter had widened Scull’s eyes when it came onto his computer screen at the cyber café, and only now in the protective confines of the vehicle — his laptop in a docking station that had swung out from behind its front seat at the touch of a button, the hard copy generated by a color printer integrated into his armrest — was he even moderately comfortable with the idea of pulling it off his hard drive.

“Here you go.” Scull took the sheet of paper from the printer’s output slot and gave it to Nimec. “A few casts of his line, and Fred got evidence that a mutual pal of ours, identity to be revealed, committed a serious foul.”

Nimec put the document on his lap. He felt totally out of sorts — his head cloudy, his stitched eyebrow tugging under its bandages, his ears still ringing from the combustive blast that had almost finished him just twenty-four hours earlier.

“So what do you think?” Scull said.

Nimec shot him an irritable glance. “Give me more than thirty seconds to look this over and I’ll tell you.”

Vince frowned but didn’t say anything.

Nimec went back to reading what he’d been handed, a scanned copy of a letter written on the executive stationary of Etienne Begela, Port-Gentil’s minister of economic development and the official who had fêted Nimec’s advance team on their arrival. It was addressed to someone named John Greeves II, professional title Principal Claims Investigator, who was with the Risk and Emergency Management Division of a company called The Fowler Group, Ltd.

Nimec looked over at Scull. “Fowler… that’s a commercial insurer, right?”

Scull nodded.

“One of the ultra-biggies,” he said. “Networked with Lloyd’s of London.”

Nimec grunted and continued down to the text of the letter:

Nimec took a moment to digest everything, then looked up at Scull again.

“Gunville was lying outright at the club,” he said. “He told us Nautel didn’t conduct an accident inspection, meanwhile the truth is that it did.”

“That he did,” Scull said. “Himself. Personally.”

“He also told us nobody else wanted to check out the site, when this Fowler Group was pushing the government for permission.”

“And he helped stop them.” Scull was nodding. “I knew it, Petey. That songbird’s chirping was meant to lead us straight into the deep, dark woods. Fucking blindfolded.”

Nimec was thoughtful. He started rubbing his forehead out of habit, touched the bandage over his eye, felt the wound smart. Later, at the hospital, there would be more tests. He hoped they came with painkillers.

“What about Begela?” he said, jerking away his hand. “You think he was being straight with the insurance man about why he nixed the permit apps?”

Scull shrugged.

“Maybe yes, maybe no,” he said. “Could be he’s just a careful guy. But the thing that sticks out at me is how strong he went at Fowler. Real heavy-handed. Begela couldn’t’ve made it any clearer he’d be spreading bad word about their coverage if they didn’t back off, which to me sounds like political blackmail.”

“Agreed,” Nimec said. “That’s pretty sleazy for somebody who writes about his good conscience. Don’t know what kind of fair play laws they have in this country, but in ours, he’d have been pushing toward a serious breach.”

Scull nodded.

“Big time, Petey,” he said. “Big time.”

They rode along in silence a while. The Rover took a sharp turn and swung Nimec to one side, making him a little dizzy as he braced himself in his seat.

DeMarco flicked a glance at him in the rearview.

“Sorry, chief, almost missed our exit,” he said. “Guess I was too busy thinking about what Vince said to you a minute ago.”

Scull leaned forward over the backrest. “About what?”

DeMarco shrugged, his eyes on the road again.

“Gunville trying to lead us into the woods,” he said. “Because I have to admit, it sounds to me like there are more big bad wolves running around in them than we can count.”

“Are you going to come out and say this is the last time, or does it have to be me?”

Roger Gordian paused silently over an open valise on the bed, a starched, pressed, and folded dress shirt in his hands. His wife’s question was not altogether a surprise, and he had no wish to avoid it. While Gordian had trouble sharing his innermost thoughts even with those dearest to him, the days when he’d kept them in a lockbox were long past. The sharing wasn’t always comfortable, but he did it for those he loved, and because in his heart he acknowledged it was important for him, too. With Ashley, now, especially, he tried. Their marriage had suffered too much when he hadn’t.

Sometimes, though, he still needed urging. And if Ashley had intentionally posed her question as an ultimatum to grab his attention, she’d succeeded.

Gordian put the shirt into the valise, then turned to face her. She stood over by the dresser across the room, packing items into a new luggage accessory she’d bought him in one of the designer shops down at the Stanford Shopping Center whose names he could never quite remember. No doubt, the thing was overpriced. Admittedly, it was handy and useful. He wasn’t sure what to call it… a deluxe travel kit, maybe. Black with two clear-plastic zipper pockets and an opaque nylon pouch below them, it was designed to look like a downscaled garment bag, hanger hook and all, when unrolled. Roll it up, buckle the strap, and the bag turned into something that resembled a cross between a standard shaving kit and SWAT fanny pack. Clever.

“Don’t you think we ought to discuss this before either us makes any declarations?” he said.

She gave him a look, her large eyes penetrating.

“We can,” she said. “But whether or not you care to admit it, we both know the way it should be.”

Gordian was quiet again. Ash’s orderliness and thoroughness were, as ever, impressive. She had laid the newfangled travel kit atop their dresser and loaded it with enough personal hygiene supplies to keep him clean and scrubbed for months if he wound up cast adrift on a remote tropical island, assuring he would make an impeccable presentation of himself when rescuers arrived… or the resident cannibals took him to their leader, whichever came first. Filling the upper pocket were a soap bar in a lidded plastic dish, nail clippers, cotton swabs, a deodorant stick, a scissors and tweezer set, a roller-type lint remover, a comb, a hairbrush, a toothbrush, toothpaste, toothpicks, a pack of Kleenex, and a washcloth folded into a perfect compact square. The pocket underneath held similar contents — sunblock, insect repellent, disposal razors, a styptic pencil, a small can of shaving gel, and a Ziploc bag containing smaller bottles of mouthwash, antiseptic, shampoo, and conditioner. In the open nylon pouch under the two clear pockets, Gordian could see an assortment of vitamin, aspirin, and prescription drug containers, including a vial of antimalarial tablets he had begun taking a week ago in preparation for his trip, and the nebulizer he used whenever his breathing gave him difficulty.

He watched Ashley in silence a moment longer, noticing she was holding yet another little glass bottle in one hand. On it was a homemade sticker he could tell had come out of her label maker, the word printed across it in red capitals partially covered by her fingers. In her other hand was a round, dime-size piece of aluminum foil she had cut from a sheet beside the rest of the items on the dresser.

“What have you got for me there?” he said.

“Let’s not change the subject.”

“I wasn’t trying,” he said honestly. “It’s just that I’m curious.”

Ashley shrugged.

“The bottle was a sample giveaway of moisturizing lotion,” she said. “I finished all the lotion and hung onto it.”

Gordian nodded.

“I suppose there’s no sense throwing out good bottles,” he said.

“None,” she said. “That’s a complete waste.”

“What’ve you filled it with now?”

Ashley held it up. “See for yourself.”

Gordian glanced at the label.

“Astringent,” he said, reading it aloud.

Ashley nodded.

“There you are,” she said. “You’ll be glad to have it with you in the hot weather.”

Gordian paused. Impeccably scrubbed and unblemished.

“And the foil?” he said.

“A safety seal to replace the original one.” Ashley said. She carefully fitted it over the neck of the bottle, pressing the edges tight. “If the cap comes loose and there’s a leak, it might ruin something in your suitcase.”

Gordian gave her a look that was perhaps nine parts appreciation and one part amusement.

“That’s very thoughtful of you,” he said.

She nodded, unsmiling. Then she twisted on the bottle cap, took the Ziploc from the second transparent pocket, added the astringent to the rest of its contents, and returned it to the travel kit.

“I have to go, Ash,” Gordian said after a while, nothing amused about his tone now. Her dead-serious expression had made him feel a little guilty. “I couldn’t avoid the trip to Gabon even when it was all about closing with Sedco. But now it’s become about a lot more.”

“You feel you have to make a point.”

Gordian nodded.

“A show of commitment,” he said. “The surveillance on our advance team… that hit-and-run on the supply convoy… whether or not they’re tied together, they make it vital that we move forward as planned. We can’t seem to be intimidated by anyone.”

She looked at him. “Sedco knows what’s been happening to your people in Africa?”

“Dan Parker was briefed, and he’s informed Hugh Bennett and the rest of its company officers.”

“And they’re with you on going ahead with things.”

“All the way. Especially Bennett. On Sedco’s board, he’s got the last word.”

Ashley considered that a second.

“I understand your reasons,” she said. “But what are his? From what you’ve told me, he doesn’t share your particular interest in supporting nation builders.”

Gordian thought a moment.

“King Hughie’s used to doing business in difficult environments. He would realize you can’t be effective in the region, build upon any accomplishments you’ve made, by backing down from threats,” he said. “And our joint venture aside, my guess is that he believes UpLink to be the prime target of hostile interests in Gabon, figures we’ll be the ones to bear the brunt of any escalation.” Gordian shrugged. “I also suppose it’s possible he simply won’t be deterred from staging a corporate tent show with himself as ringmaster. Probably it’s a little of this, and a little of that. I’m sure it doesn’t hurt that we’re providing extra security for everyone and footing the entire tab. In the end, though, it doesn’t make a difference. I can be concerned only with my own motivations.”

Ashley continued looking at him across the room.

“I know,” she said. “And you know better than to think I’d suggest that you cancel. But I’m not talking about now. This conversation is about our future.”

“I’ve never asked my people to do what I won’t.”

“Things have changed, Roger. Sometimes I think everyone knows and recognizes it except you,” Ashley said. “You can admit to your physical limitations, handle them, or choose to pretend they don’t exist.”

Gordian stood by the bed, his gray eyes holding on her green ones.

“I feel fine,” he said. “The doctors gave me their full consent.”

She shook her head.

“I probably know the results of your checkup better than you do. And all things considered, I’m happy with them. But they don’t mean we can erase the damage that’s been done to your body.” She sighed and leveled her voice. “Two years ago I came closer to losing you than I like to remember. But I’m not able to wish away those memories. We can’t afford the luxury. It isn’t for nothing that I packed away a nebulizer of albuterol. There’s scar tissue in your lungs. Fibrosis. You have shortness of breath sometimes—”

“Be fair. It’s generally okay unless I overexert myself. And I’ve tried hard to be careful—”

“Let me finish,” she said. “I’m not accusing you of being cavalier with your health. But you are determined. Protective. When the stakes are high for the things you care about, you tend to push yourself further than you should. Over the last few weeks, you’ve taken how many vaccines? Yellow fever, typhoid, diphtheria, hepatitis A. And I’m sure there are some that slip my mind right this instant. Any one of them can have side effects on people whose immune systems never took anything close to the blows yours did.”

“Ash, you said it yourself. It’s been two years since I got sick.”

“You didn’t just get sick,” she said. “You were almost murdered with a biological weapon, deliberately infected with a virus nobody had ever seen before. A strain grown in a laboratory by a process so sophisticated government scientists are still incredulous.” She paused and waved a hand toward the window. “Whoever created that germ, whoever tried to kill you, is still out there somewhere. We don’t talk about it much these days, I think because you know how it worries me. Maybe we should, though. It’s not a trifling detail we can ignore because it’s convenient.”

Gordian stood there feeling her gaze on him.

“Our marriage is my proudest achievement, what I care about more than anything,” he said. “But I’ve never made you a promise I couldn’t keep, and I won’t now.”

Ashley folded her arms across her chest and gave him a little shrug.

“Then how about trying to make one you can,” she said.

Gordian watched her a while without saying anything. Then he strode across the room, came close in front of her, and put his hands on her shoulders.

“I’ll think about what you’re asking,” he said. “Give me until I come back from Africa, and you’ll have my answer. I don’t know if that does anything to make you worry less. But I want you to feel easier.”

She looked at him, then nodded, her eyes overbright.

“It’s a start, Roger,” she said. “It’s a start.”

There was soft music coming from the jukebox at Nate’s, a saloon on San Diego’s east side that was an exhausted but tenacious holdout against the pressures of neighborhood gentrification, something that also could have been said of the battered rowhouses shouldered around it on the street like allies in a neglected, fading cause.

Tom Ricci and Derek Glenn sat in a mustard-colored booth toward the back, Ricci sipping a Coke loaded with ice, Glenn drinking imported stout from the bottle and taking long hits on a Marlboro in violation of a clean air law the gray-haired barkeep had resolutely disavowed as unconstitutional, or if not that, then at least undeserving of constitutionality. The four or five other people spaced out along the bar were representative of his dwindling client base, which was almost exclusively male, black, working class, and on the far downhill side of retirement age.

“Business isn’t what it was last time I came down to see you,” Ricci said.

“Wasn’t much, even then,” Glenn said. “Notch another win for the civil boosters.”

“You sound mad,” Ricci said.

Glenn tipped the neck of his beer bottle toward Ricci.

“Sounds like, huh?” he said with a faint smile. “Now I see how you earned your reputation for being an astute son of a bitch.”

Ricci watched him take a long pull of the stout. A tall, large-framed black man in his thirties, Glenn headed the bantam security crew at UpLink’s regional offices, established in a single renovated warehouse on the Embarcadero waterfront mainly to handle administrative overflow from its Sacramento data-storage facility.

“No reason you have to stay where you are,” Ricci said. “I could hook you up at SanJo. A command gig, worth a big pay hike. The rapid deployment team program needs somebody to pull it back together.”

A surprised look formed on Glenn’s face.

“I thought that was your baby,” he said.

“Had to put it down when I went into the field.”

“So I heard. But now you’re back, and I kind of figured you’d be picking it up again.”

Ricci shook his head.

“Decided I work better alone,” he said.

“Uh-huh.” Glenn looked at him. “It’s probably none of my business, but what’ve you been doing instead?”

Ricci shrugged.

“Catching up,” he said.

“Uh-huh.”

“Security rundowns.”

“Uh-huh.”

Ricci hesitated. He reached for his glass, rattled the ice cubes inside, but didn’t drink from it.

“And waiting,” he said. “Mostly waiting.”

“You mind me asking what for?”

“No,” Ricci said. “Just not sure I can answer.”

Glenn started to say something, appeared to reconsider, and sat listening to the music on the jukebox, a mid-tempo jazz instrumental carried along by a husky tenor sax.

“I’ve been hearing all kinds of news about Africa,” he said at length. “The hit on that supply convoy, other things besides. What the hell’s going down?”

Ricci rattled his ice cubes some more.

“Maybe it ought to be you telling me,” he said. “Since you hear so much.”

Glenn smiled thinly again. He waited.

“Truth is, I don’t know,” Ricci said. “I haven’t got all the facts yet. A lot of odd stuff’s happening over there. All kinds of questions floating around. But it’s only been a couple days, and so far nobody’s connected anything to anything else. They’re not even clear about what the attack was supposed to accomplish.”

Glenn exhaled, cigarette smoke streaming from his nose and mouth.

“I guess this makes the extravaganza aboard the oil platform a scratch,” he said.

Ricci shook his head.

“Gordian needs to get the Sedco deal done,” he said.

“How can they work out a security plan, decide what protective measures to take, when they don’t have any idea what to expect? Seems crazy to go ahead with it until they do.”

“It shouldn’t,” Ricci said. “The timing of what happened puts us on the spot. You know the game. The territory we cover, you’ll find plenty of uglies who’d love to see us skip out from a threat. That would be giving them what they want.”

“Notice we can be intimidated.”

Ricci nodded.

“This is bigger than Gabon,” he said. “If I were in Gordian’s position, I’d do the same as him. He’s got to hang tough.”

“With some extra manpower to protect him, I hope.”

“A fresh Sword detail’s flying out,” Ricci said. “He’ll be fixed okay.”

“You mean to join them?”

Ricci shook his head again.

“Pete Nimec can handle whatever comes up,” he said. “Better I stay out of his hair, mind the family farm. That way we’ve got all fronts covered.”

Glenn lipped his cigarette, reached both hands into his pants pockets, and fished out a couple of quarters.

“Makes enough sense,” he said. “There’s nowhere you can feel safe these days. Sometimes I think we’re all stuck in the land of Nod.”

Ricci’s face showed incomprehension.

“You know,” Glenn said. “It’s from the Bible. Book of Genesis: ‘And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden.’ ”

Ricci shrugged a little. “Religion’s never been one of my vices.”

Glenn gave him a look.

“I don’t suppose,” he said.

There was a brief silence between them.

“My offer,” Ricci said. “You interested?”

Glenn shook his head no.

Ricci looked straight into his eyes.

“Seems like a fast decision,” he said.

“Fast, yeah,” Glenn said. “That doesn’t have to mean arbitrary.”

Ricci kept watching him across the table several moments, then nodded slightly.

“No,” he said. “Guess it doesn’t.”

Glenn finished off his stout, went to get himself a second. Before returning to their booth he stopped at the juke, dropped in his quarters, and punched in some selections.

“Can’t find many bargains around these days,” he said, sliding back opposite Ricci. “Fifty cents for three good spins on the box is one of the few left.”

Ricci’s lack of response opened out another spell of silence between them.

Glenn drank his beer, swayed a little to the music in the background. A female vocalist sang to the accompaniment of a piano, its fills running smoothly around her nuanced phrasings.

“The song’s ‘When October Goes,’ ” Glenn said after a while. “Singer’s Mary Wells. Lyrics by Bobby Mercer, music by Barry Manilow. Nice.” He paused and took a deep swallow of beer. “I’ve dug Manilow since I was in high school.”

Ricci looked at him.

“You going to explain your turndown?”

Glenn shook another cigarette from the pack near his elbow, lighted it with a Bic disposable, and sat there smoking. The Marlboro’s tip flared on his deep inhale.

“I’ll let you in on a little something,” he said. “I grew up right in this neighborhood. A rowhouse on Fourteenth Street, two blocks south. All my older brothers wore Crip blue. It’s kind of a long story, but I wound up wearing a beret at the opposite end of the color spectrum.”

Ricci nodded.

“The flash was black with a wide diagonal gray stripe, yellow borders,” he said. “Delta Force, attached to Joint SpecOps. I wouldn’t’ve considered you for my replacement without reading your personnel file.”

“I don’t suppose.”

Ricci regarded him through a haze of cigarette smoke.

“Any special reason you joined the service besides wanting a change of scenery?”

“Like I said, long story,” Glenn said. “Maybe we’ll get to it sometime. Meanwhile, you can have one crack at guessing where I choose to live nowadays.”

“Fourteenth Street. Two blocks south.”

“My, you are an astute son of a bitch,” Glenn said.

He drank, smoked, and listened to his music.

“Family ties why you’re back here?” Ricci said.

“Family’s gone, one way or another.”

“Then what’s holding you?”

Glenn’s broad shoulders went up and down.

“Maybe it’s my volunteer work,” he said. “I do a lot with teenage kids.”

“Why the ‘maybe’?”

Glenn finished his second beer, pushed the bottle aside.

“I think part of it’s that I’m just stubborn,” he said. “Civil boosters and quick-kill real estate brokers hate the sight of rowhouses. They’d be glad to sweep everybody out of them like litter and doze them flat to make room for more hotel towers, art galleries for rich people who can’t draw a straight line to hang their junk, and ritzy apartment lofts where the Swells can live. Try moving into one of those pads — you need to show your broker that you earn fifty, even a hundred times the monthly rent in income.”

Ricci looked at him.

“Sounds to me you’re on a crusade,” he said.

“Could be,” Glenn said. “But, you know, the Mexican gangs that smuggle drugs across the border into this city, players like the Quiros bunch we brought down a couple years ago, have a Spanish expression, plata o plomo. The silver or the lead. You’re either a friend and taking their bribes or an enemy taking their bullets.” He shrugged again. “I read a paper by some professors comparing what they do to unfair pressure tactics in business and politics. Fat cat landlords, brokers, and public improvement committees, they just use legal harassment instead of guns. Sometimes to influence each other. Mostly to put the squeeze on tenants. Same principle, different methods.”

Ricci sat without offering any comment. The barkeep had dropped onto a chair behind the counter and was watching a ball game on the television above his head, following its action with the volume down — Seattle Mariners, Oakland A’s, forty-three thousand screaming fans. Although it was not yet nine P.M., his smattering of customers had evaporated and left him to tend only the two Sword ops in their rear booth and a skinny old drunk at the bar. The drunk was slouched over a shot glass, mumbling to himself as he threw left jabs and hooks into the empty air. Ricci watched him a moment or two, noticing the punches had snap. Probably the guy had done some real boxing once. Coulda been a contender.

Ricci shifted his attention back to Glenn.

“Your answer to my proposition final?” he said.

Glenn nodded.

“Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate it. And if you ever need help with something up north, count on me to be there,” he said. “But this town stays my home base.”

Ricci grunted. He was still rotating his glass between his fingertips.

Glenn leaned forward across the table, pointed to the soda.

“Now you need to tell me if you ever intend to start on that, so I know whether to order another beer or call it a night,” he said.

Ricci regarded him quietly, seeming to consider.

“Can’t say why, but you quoting the Bible off the top of your head, reading papers by university eggheads, somehow it’s no stunner to me,” he said. “Explain how you grew up listening to Barry Manilow without the homies kicking your ass every day, maybe I’ll stick around.”

Glenn grinned, waved his hand in the air to catch the barkeep’s attention.

“Settle back and get comfortable,” he said.

Ricci gave him the slightest of nods, then carefully raised his glass off the tabletop and drank.

A high-intensity electric lantern in his hand, Siegfried Kuhl strode slowly around the white station wagon and utility van parked near his cabin in the late-night darkness. What he saw satisfied him. The PG&E logo on their flanks, the racked ladder on one side of the van’s roof, their yellow safety beacons, every exterior feature was convincing. Indistinguishable from the real thing under his scrupulous inspection.

Kuhl opened their doors one at a time and repeatedly leaned inside with the lantern to examine their interiors from front to rear. Again he was quite pleased. He had studied photographs of the power company’s repair fleet and even the upholstery and carpeting matched.

He turned to Ciras and Anton, who stood a few paces from him awaiting his assessment. They had driven the vehicles from a shop outside Monterey where their subterranean customizers had performed the remodeling work.

“Good enough,” he said. Then he went to stand behind the vehicles and motioned toward their rear license plates. “You’ve checked these, too?”

Ciras gave him a quick little nod.

“I was impressed,” Anton said. “It must’ve been quite some trick getting them down right.”

Kuhl regarded the spike-haired Croatian with a kind of fascination. Anton’s speech bore no trace of the thick Slavic accent, with its hard glottal stops and drawn-out vowel sounds, that had characterized it when he’d been inserted into the United States on a student visa two years earlier. And his capacity to absorb dialect was only part of what suited him for the role of forward scout and intelligence gatherer — the ideal sleeper agent. It was as though Anton could plug into any cultural reservoir and saturate his persona with its mannerisms. While his bluff at the animal shelter had been intended to massage useful information from Gordian’s daughter, the performance had gained results that went beyond Kuhl’s expectations and had been pivotal to his fixing an operational timetable.

Returning his attention to the license plate, Kuhl shone his light directly onto its face. The tag’s reflectorized plastic sheeting material glowed bright under its beam so the alphabetical prefix and serial numbers were illuminated. He stepped back from the rear of the van, moved to one side of the bumper, and again turned his lantern onto the plate.

A vertical row of hidden verification symbols became clearly visible, running down the middle of the tag, dark against its surface. Used by law-enforcement personnel to differentiate authentic license plates from counterfeits, they were composed of tiny glass beads in the sheeting which had been coated with a special polymer that made them nonreflective when viewed at a thirty degree slant. Due to the complex polymerization and embedding processes involved in their production, the coded symbols were the most difficult feature of the plate to replicate. But Harlan DeVane’s resources had proven equal to the task.

Kuhl nodded his approval and looked over at the two men. “Move the vehicles into the trees where they can’t be seen,” he said. “Then join me and the others inside.”

He strode back toward the cabin. It was a pleasant night. The air was cool and fresh and the chirping of insects surrounded him. Somewhere in the distance a night bird whooped. He could see Lido watching his approach through a front window, the brute’s head silhouetted against the light of the room beyond. A good night, yes. Something of its atmosphere hinted at the best moments of his long caesura in Europe — those when he had found a kind of peace at the core of his typhonic restlessness. Perhaps, Kuhl thought, this was because it followed a day on which he had accomplished everything necessary in the way of final preparations, and still managed to exercise his curiosity about something of unrelated personal interest.

Before dawn that morning, Kuhl had gotten into his Explorer and driven west across the Ventana wilderness to the San Antonio de Padua Mission. He carried his fraudulent identification documents in his wallet. Beside him on the passenger seat were his camera and a packet of maps and tourist brochures. The cargo section held a bladdered hydration backpack, a length of rope, hiking boots, his electric lantern, and some basic tools that Kuhl had left in plain sight to ensure they drew no suspicion from military guards — a small wood ax, a collapsible shovel, and a Japanese pull saw.

Kuhl wore an open-collared chambray shirt with a Saint Christopher’s medallion on a silver necklace, and had wrapped a rosary around the stem of his rearview mirror. On the vehicle’s rear section were a pair of bumper stickers Anton had obtained for him in the city of Carmel. One of them pictured a small map of the original Camino Reál twining in and out of US 101, the sites of the Spanish missions along the road circled and marked by crucifixes. Splayed across the map in large see-through text were the words FRANCISCAN MISSION TOURS, and, below it in a smaller typeface, the name and telephone number of a local travel agency. The other bumper sticker read: I’M ON A MISSION TO SEE THE MISSIONS. An adhesive plaque with the Greek acrostic IXΘYE engraved within the Christian fish symbol was mounted on the SUV’s tailgate.

Out past the cattle and horse ranches, Kuhl had wound through miles of rolling scrub country on a steady climb into the Santa Lucia Mountains, where he had seen the sunlight wash up over the wooded lower mountain slopes to eventually flush their bare sandstone peaks with orange. By full daybreak he had reached the edge of the valley that overlooked the confluence of the San Miguel and San Antonio Rivers, and made his slow descent into the basin following road signs to the army reservation and mission. At length, he stopped at the guard station mentioned to him by Anagkazo, the dog breeder.

The MP inside the checkpoint booth had politely asked Kuhl for his driver’s license and vehicle registration. As Kuhl handed them to him through his lowered window, a second guard had walked around the Explorer, casting discreet glances first over its body, and then through its rear windscreen.

They had seen nothing amiss and waved the visitor on after returning his papers.

On his way toward the mission quadrangle, Kuhl had passed some branching roads that ran toward a gated cantonment and noticed additional barricaded checkpoints posted with signs reading FPCON LEVEL ALPHA. These indicated an elevated alert for terrorist activity that had been implemented as a rule at all military installations in the United States after the strike on New York City a few years before — a step up from FPCON Normal, but significantly below the Bravo, Charlie, and Delta force protection levels exercised whenever specific threat warnings were issued by federal authorities. Kuhl would not have chanced his trip if any of the higher stages of alert had been in current effect, but his men had determined otherwise, and the mission grounds had been a considerable lure to him — the prospect of an easy penetration spicing the venture with a provocative element of scorn.

It was also a preparatory drill of sorts. The moment approached when Kuhl would have to plunge deeper into hiding than at any previous time in his mercenary existence. Knowing he faced a manhunt of long duration and unprecedented intensity, he had wanted to test his reflexes for survival and subterfuge — smooth any hitches that may have developed over his latent period — in a climate of heightened but nonurgent scrutiny.

More than two hundred years after its founding, a small order of Franciscans still occupied the mission. While some of them chose to live in meditative solitude, others worked in its gift shop and offered guided tours of its grounds on a regular schedule. Kuhl was mostly able to avoid the organized tour groups and prowl the compound alone, stopping to see its olive gardens, its chapel, its cloistered tile-roofed archways, its centuries-old aqueducts and gristmill. Near the end of his wanderings he had found himself in a chamber with simple forms of musical notation painted on the walls. There he studied the instruments on display: a native American hand drum, a violin and cello, a baroque lute and lyre. One wall of the room was covered with a diagram of a huge upraised hand, the front of each finger marked with numbers and Spanish calligraphy. This had caught Kuhl’s attention like a barbed hook, and he had stood taking photographs of the diagram, thinking it would be a fine reference for the construction of a possible scale replica, should he ever choose to resume that pursuit.

As Kuhl stood with his eye to the lens, one of the tonsured monks had noticed him from the outer hall and paused in the entryway.

“The chart you see shows the hand signals our fraternal predecessors used to use to teach their Indian converts Western scales,” he said. “As new believers, they were taught not only to petition the Lord with their prayers, but exalt him with music.”

Kuhl had turned toward the entrance and stared coldly at him over his lowered camera.

“It is good they were given their diversions,” he said. “All God’s prisoners are in need of them.”

Kuhl paid no heed to the monk’s reaction. With a slight bow, he had touched a hand to the Saint Christopher’s charm around his neck and brushed past him into the hall.

Minutes afterward, he had driven west from the compound. It was not yet one P.M., giving him plenty of time to do his work.

In an oak- and pine-forested stretch of rolling highland some thirty miles back toward Big Sur, Kuhl shifted the Explorer into four-wheel drive, eased it off the roadside into the cover of some scrub growth, and cut the engine. Then he went around to the rear section and got out his hiking boots, backpack, and tools. He changed from his loafers into the boots, loaded the tools into the pack, strapped it over his shoulders, closed the Explorer’s tailgate, and started into the brush.

Kuhl had thoroughly scouted the terrain en route to the San Antonio de Padua Mission, concentrating on its prominent rock formations, and was convinced the jutting outcrops would afford the precise geological features he required.

He had searched about for a while before the hollow presented itself to him. At the base of a sandstone rise effaced by weather and the roots of the scrub oak studding its surface, a portion of the hillside had worn away beneath an overhanging ledge to create a moderately deep cave that seemed well suited to his purposes. Here, he believed, was an excellent fallback shelter.

Kuhl had stooped low as he entered the ragged hole of its mouth to investigate, beamed his electric torch into the dark space beyond, and within seconds known his initial impression was correct. The entrance would require covering, but there was an abundance of raw material around him, and he had all the necessary tools in his backpack.

Kuhl found that the long hours he’d spent carving scale miniatures from featureless pieces of wood had yielded a surplus of patience for his work, even a kind of gratification in it, that he would not have known before. Time slipped from his notice as he cut limbs from the trees and underbrush, cleaning the leaves and twigs from the oak branches to form base poles of the proper height, leaving the pine boughs more or less intact, shagged with needles for a rainproof thatch screen. When Kuhl had finished, he sorted the poles and thatching into separate bundles, tied them together with lengths of rope, and brought them into the cave, where they would remain hidden until such occasion as they might be of use.

Returning to his Explorer, Kuhl had checked his watch for the first time since he’d pulled into the thicket. It was just after six o’clock in the evening. The hours had truly gone winging by.

He had been back on the road, headed for his rented cabin, before the last of the sunlight was drained from the sky.

Now midnight had come and gone, and Kuhl could hear the engines of the false power company vehicles awakening as Ciras and Anton started them up and swung away into the darkness. At the door of the cabin, Lido greeted him, licking and sniffing his hand. Kuhl paused to scratch the dog under its muzzle, then strode forward through the foyer. He padded close behind him, treading softly for a creature of its immense size.

Kuhl’s bond with the Schutzhunds had been immediate and was strongest with the alpha.

He entered the living room, Lido at his heels. Four men sat waiting there in silence. On the carpeted floor, the two other shepherds peered up at him with their gleaming, attentive black eyes.

Kuhl looked around at his men.

“Let’s have one of you put up some coffee,” he said. “I want to review tomorrow’s action in detail before we rest.”

Startled awake by the sound of his own prolonged adenoidal snore, Rob Howell lifted his chin off his pillow and realized the baseball game he’d been watching on TV had been replaced by an infomercial.

Rob glanced at his alarm clock in the flickering glow of the set. It was almost two o’clock in the morning. Wonderful, he thought. The Seattle Mariners and Oakland A’s in a match that might very well decide which team won the hotly contested AL West playoff slot, and he’d slipped into dreamland with the score tied at the bottom of the seventh. If that wasn’t evidence of a man suffering from acute overwork, Rob didn’t know what was.

He groped blearily around on his nightstand for the remote, couldn’t locate it, felt for it on the bed, and found it wedged between himself and the vague shape under the quilt that was Cynthia snuggled into a sleeping ball.

“Later for you, Mr. Crap-o-matic Veggie Master,” he muttered to the tube, ready to thumb off the power. Then he reconsidered. There was always ESPN to give him the game highlights.

Rob raised the clicker to change channels, landed on the station just as it cut away from a repeat of some NASCAR tournament to a plug for Sports Illustrated magazine. Sure, why not, what gave him the right to catch a break? He snorted, thinking he could still look forward to the news crawl at the bottom of the screen when the race footage came back on.

Meanwhile, though, his bladder was sending him an urgent newsflash of its own.

He slipped from under the blanket, tiptoed around the humongous doggie cushion where Rachel and Monica slept back-to-back — Ross and Joey preferred his wife’s side of the bed, while Phoebe had taken a shining to a spot near the head of the baby’s crib — and went out into the hall.

It was a chill night — well, morning—and after concluding his urgent visit to the bathroom, Rob peeked into the nursery to make sure that Laurie was covered. She was, indeed, nicely tucked in and curled into a ball like a diminutive version of her mother.

Rob blew her a kiss through the half-open door, saw Phoebe’s head pop up at him from her favorite nesting place on the rug, blew her one for good measure, and was starting back toward his bedroom when he decided to check on one more thing. He would be leaving for his fill-in shift at the Fairwinds before daybreak and wanted to be certain that he’d put his briefcase of ledgers and files on the little chair Cynthia had stood beside the front door for that single, solitary purpose, hoping to avoid another absentminded misadventure wherein he drove off to work without it.

Sure enough, it was there. Waiting conspicuously for him to snatch it up on his way out to the car.

Rob yawned and turned into his bedroom, having forgotten about a ledger he’d been looking at earlier and set down on the kitchen phone stand before hurrying to watch the ball game’s first pitch. Then he climbed back under the blankets with his wife, eager to catch the score — and a few more hours of sleep — beside the familiar warmth of her body.

They would be the last hours Rob and Cynthia Howell spent together in life.