Power Play

1

We got trouble."

I recognized Zoл's voice, but I didn't turn around from my computer. I was too absorbed in a news report on the website AviationNow.com. A competitor's new plane had crashed a couple of days ago, at the Paris Air Show. I wasn't there, but my boss was, and so were all the other honchos at my company, so I'd heard all about it. At least no one was killed.

And at least it wasn't one of ours.

I picked up my big black coffee mug-THE HAMMOND SKYCRUISER: THE FUTURE OF FLIGHT-and took a sip. The coffee was cold and bitter.

"You hear me, Landry? This is serious."

I swiveled slowly around in my chair. Zoл Robichaux was my boss's admin. She had dyed copper hair and a ghostly pallor. She was in her mid-twenties and lived in El Segundo not too far from me, but she did a lot of club-hopping in L.A. at night. If the dress code at Hammond allowed, I suspected she'd have worn studded black leather every day, black fingernail polish, probably gotten everything pierced. Even parts of the body you don't want to think about getting pierced. Then again, maybe she already did. I didn't want to know.

"Does this mean you didn't get me a bagel?" I said.

"I was on my way down there when Mike called. From Mumbai."

"What's he doing in India? He told me he'd be back in the office today for a couple of hours before he leaves for the offsite."

"Yeah, well, Eurospatiale's losing orders all over the place since their plane crashed."

"So Mike's lined up meetings at Air India instead of coming back here," I said. "Nice of him to tell me."

Mike Zorn was an executive vice president and the program manager in charge of building our brand-new wide-bodied passenger jet, the H-880, which we called the SkyCruiser. Four VPs and hundreds of people reported to him-engineers and designers and stress analysts and marketing and finance people. But Mike was always selling the hell out of the 880, which meant he was out of the office far more than he was in.

So he'd hired a chief assistant-me-to make sure everything ran smoothly. Crack the whip if necessary. His jack-of-all-trades and U.N. translator, since I have enough of an engineering background to talk to the engineers in their own geeky language, talk finance with the money people, talk to the shop floor guys in the assembly plant who distrust the lardasses who sit in the office and keep revising and revising the damned drawings.

Zoл looked uneasy. "Sorry, he wanted me to tell you, but I kind of forgot. Anyway, the point is, he wants you to get over to Fab."

"When?"

"Like an hour ago."

The fabrication plant was the enormous factory where we were building part of the SkyCruiser. "Why?" I said. "What's going on?"

"I didn't quite get it, but the head QA guy found something wrong with the vertical tail? And he just like shut down the whole production line? Like, pulled the switch?"

I groaned. "That's got to be Marty Kluza. Marty the one-man party." The lead Quality Assurance inspector at the assembly plant was a famous pain in the ass. But he'd been at Hammond for fifteen years, and he was awfully good at his job, and if he wouldn't let a part leave the factory, there was usually a good reason for it.

"I don't know. Anyway, like everyone at headquarters is totally freaking, and Mike wants you to deal with it. Now."

"Shit."

"You still want that bagel?" Zoл said.

2

I raced over in my Jeep. The fabrication plant was only a five-minute walk from the office building, but it was so immense-a quarter of a mile long-you could spend twenty minutes walking around to the right entrance.

Whenever I walked across the factory floor-I came here maybe every couple of weeks-I was awestruck by the sheer scale. It was an enormous hangar big enough to contain ten football fields. The vaulted ceiling was a hundred feet high. There were miles of cat-walks and crane rails.

The whole place was like the set of some futuristic sci-fi movie where robots run the world. There were more machines than people. The robotic Automated Guided Vehicle forklift zoomed around silently, carrying huge pallets of equipment and parts in its jaws. The autoclave, basically a pressure cooker, was thirty feet in diameter and a hundred feet long, as big as some traffic tunnels. The automated tape layers were as tall as two men, with spidery legs like the extraterrestrial creature in Alien, extruding yards of shiny black tape.

Visitors were always surprised by how quiet it was here. That's because we rarely used metal anymore-no more clanging and riveting. The SkyCruiser, you see, was 80 percent plastic. Well, not plastic, really. We used composites-layers of carbon-fiber tape soaked in epoxy glue, then baked at high temperature and pressure. Like Boeing and Airbus and Eurospatiale, we used as much composite as we could get away with because it's a lot lighter than metal, and the lighter a plane is, the less fuel it's going to use. Everyone likes to save money on fuel.

Unfortunately, the whole process of making planes out of this stuff is sort of a black art. We basically experiment, see what works and what doesn't.

This doesn't sound too reassuring, I know. If you're a nervous flyer, this is already probably more than you want to know.

Also like Boeing and Airbus and the others, we don't really build our own planes anymore. We mostly assemble them, screw and glue them together from parts built all over the world.

But here in Fab, we made exactly one part of the SkyCruiser: an incredibly important part called the vertical stabilizer-what you'd call the tail. It was five stories high.

One of them was suspended from a gantry crane and surrounded by scaffolding. And underneath it I found Martin Kluza, moving a handheld device slowly along the black skin. He looked up with an expression of annoyance.

"What's this, I get the kid? Where's Mike?"

"Out of town, so you get me. Your lucky day."

"Oh, great." He liked to give me a hard time.

Kluza was heavyset, around fifty, with a pink face and a small white goatee on his double chin. He had safety glasses on, like me, but instead of a yellow safety helmet, he was wearing an L.A. Dodgers cap. No one dared tell him what to do, not even the director of the plant.

"Hey, didn't you once tell me I was the smartest guy in the SkyCruiser Program?"

"Correction: excluding myself," Marty said.

"I stand corrected. So I hear we've got a problem."

"I believe the word is 'catastrophe.' Check this out." He led me over to a video display terminal on a rolling cart, tapped quickly at the keys. A green blob danced across the screen, then a jagged red line slashed through it.

"See that red line?" he said. "That's the bond line between the skin and the spars, okay? About a quarter of an inch in."

"Cool," I said. "This is better than Xbox 360. Looks like you got a disbond, huh?"

"That's not a disbond," he said. "It's a kissing bond."

"Kissing bond," I said. "Gotta love that phrase." That referred to when two pieces of composite were right next to each other, no space between, but weren't stuck together. In my line of work, we say they're in "intimate contact" but haven't "bonded." Is that a metaphor or what?

"The C-scan didn't pick up any disbonds or delaminations, but for some crazy reason I decided to put one of them through a shake-table vibe test to check out the flutter and the flex/rigid dynamics, and that's when I discovered a discrepancy in the frequency signature."

"If you're trying to snow me with all this technical gobbledygook, it's not going to work."

He looked at me sternly for a few seconds, then realized I was giving him shit right back. "Fortunately, this new laser-shot peening diagnostic found the glitch. We're going to have to scrap every single one."

"You can't do that, Marty."

"You want these vertical stabilizers flying apart at thirty-five thousand feet with three hundred people aboard? I don't think so."

"There's no fix?"

"If I could figure out where the defect is, yeah. But I can't."

"Maybe they were overbaked? Or underbaked?"

"Landry."

"Contaminants?"

"Landry, you could eat off the floor here."

"Remember when some numbskull used that Loctite silicone spray inside the clean room and ruined a whole day's production?"

"That guy hasn't worked here in two years, Landry."

"Maybe you got a bad lot of Hexocyte." That was the epoxy adhesive film they used to bond the composite skin to the understructure.

"The supplier's got a perfect record on that."

"So maybe someone left the backing paper on."

"On every single piece of adhesive? No one's that brain-dead. Not even in this place."

"Will you scan this bar code? I want to check the inventory log."

I handed him a tag I'd taken from a roll of Hexocyte adhesive film. He brought it over to another console, scanned it. The screen filled up with a series of dates and temperatures.

I walked over to the screen and studied it for a minute or so.

"Marty," I said. "I'll be back in a few. I'm going to take a walk down to Shipping and Receiving."

"You're wasting your time," he said.

I found the shipping clerk smoking a cigarette in the outside loading area. He was a kid around twenty, with a wispy blond beard, wearing a blue knit beanie, even though it had to be ninety degrees out here. He wore Oakley mirrored sunglasses, baggy jeans, and a black T-shirt that said NO FEAR in white gothic lettering.

The kid looked like he couldn't decide whether he wanted to be surfer dude or gangsta. I felt for him. During the eighteen months I'd once spent in juvie-the Glenview Residential Center in upstate New York-I'd known kids far tougher than he was pretending to be.

"You Kevin?" I said, introducing myself.

"Sorry, dude, I didn't know you weren't supposed to smoke back here." He threw his cigarette to the asphalt and stamped it out.

My cell phone rang, but I ignored it. "I don't care about that. You signed for this shipment of Hexocyte on Friday at 1:36." I showed him a printout of the inventory log with his scrawled signature. He took off his sunglasses, studied it with a dense, incurious expression, as if it were Sanskrit. My phone finally stopped ringing, went to voice mail.

"Yeah, so?"

"You left early last Friday afternoon?"

"But my boss said it was cool!" he protested. "Me and my buddies went down to Topanga to do some shredding-"

"It rained all weekend."

"Friday it was looking awesome, dude-"

"You signed for it and you pulled the temperature recorder and logged it in, like you're supposed to. But you didn't put the stuff in the freezer, did you?"

He looked at me for a few seconds. My cell started ringing again.

"You picked a lousy weekend to screw up, Kevin. Heat and humidity-they just kill this stuff. There's a reason it's shipped packed in dry ice, right from the Hexocyte factory to here. That's also why they ship it with a temperature sensor, so the customer knows it was kept cold from the minute it leaves the factory. That's an entire week's work down the tubes. Dude." The cell finally stopped ringing.

The sullen diffidence had suddenly vanished. "Oh, shit."

"Do you know what would have happened if Marty Kluza hadn't caught the defect? We might have built six planes with defective tails. And you have any idea what happens to a plane if the tail comes apart in flight?"

"Oh, shit, man. Oh, shit."

"Don't ever let this happen again." My cell started ringing for a third time.

He gave me a confused look. "You're not telling my boss?"

"No."

"Why-why not?"

"Because he'd fire you. But I'm thinking that you'll never forget this as long as you live. Am I right?"

Tears came to the kid's eyes. "Listen, dude-"

I turned away and answered my cell phone.

It was Zoл. "Where are you?"

"Oahu. Where do you think I am? Fab."

"Hank Bodine wants to see you."

"Hank Bodine?"

Bodine, an executive vice president of Hammond Aerospace and the President of the Commercial Airplanes Division, was not just my boss. He was, to be precise, my boss's boss's boss. "What for?"

"How the hell do I know, Landry? Gloria, his admin, just called. He says he wants to see you now. It's important."

"But-I don't even have a tie."

"Yeah, you do," she said. "In your bottom drawer. It's in there with all those packages of instant oatmeal and ramen noodles."

"You've been in my desk, Zoл?"

"Landry," she said, "you'd better move it."

3

I'd met Hank Bodine a number of times, but I'd never actually been to his office before, on the top floor of the Hammond Tower in downtown Los Angeles. Usually I saw him when he came out to El Segundo, the division where I worked.

I waited outside Bodine's office for a good twenty minutes, flipping through old copies of Fortune and Aviation Week & Space Technology, wondering why he wanted to see me. I kept adjusting my rumpled tie and thinking how stupid it looked with my denim shirt and wishing I'd taken a couple of minutes to change out of my jeans and into a suit. Everyone here at Hammond world headquarters was wearing a suit.

Finally, Bodine's admin, Gloria Morales, showed me in to Bodine's office, a vast expanse of chrome and glass, blindingly bright. It was bigger than my apartment. I'm not exaggerating. There was even a wood-burning fireplace, which he'd had installed at enormous expense, though there was no fire burning in it just then.

He didn't get up to shake my hand or anything. He sat in a high-backed leather desk chair behind the huge slab of glass that served as his desk. There was nothing on it except for a row of scale models of all the great Hammond airplanes-the wide-bodied 818, the best-selling 808, the flop that was the 828, and of course my plane, the 880.

Bodine was around sixty, with silver hair, deep-set eyes beneath heavy black brows, a high forehead, a big square jaw. If you'd met him only briefly, you might call him distinguished-looking. Spend more than two minutes with him, though, and you'd realize there was nothing distinguished about the guy. He was a bully, most people said-a big, swaggering man with a sharp tongue who was given to explosive tirades. Yet at the same time, he had a big, bluff charisma-a kind of Jack Welch thing going on.

Bodine leaned back, folding his arms, as I sat in one of the low chairs in front of his desk. I'm not short-just over six feet-but I found myself looking up at him as if he were Darth Vader. I had a feeling the setup was deliberate, one of Bodine's tricks to intimidate his visitors. Sunlight blazed in through the floor-to-ceiling glass behind him so I could barely make out his face.

"What's the holdup at Fab?"

"No big deal," I said. "A bonding problem in the vertical stabilizer, but it's taken care of."

Was that why he'd called me here? I braced myself for a barrage of questions, but he just nodded. "All right. Pack your bags," he said. "You're going to Canada."

"Canada?" I said.

"The offsite. The company jet's leaving from Van Nuys in five hours."

"I don't understand." The annual leadership retreat, at some famously luxurious fishing lodge in British Columbia, was only for the top guys at Hammond-the twelve or so members of the "leadership team." Certainly not for the likes of me.

"Yeah, well, sorry about the short notice, but there you have it. Should be plenty of time for you to pack a suitcase. Make sure you bring outdoor gear. Don't tell me you're not the outdoors type."

"I do okay. But why me?"

His eyes bored into me. Then the ends of his broad mouth turned up in an approximation of a smile. "You complaining?"

"I'm asking."

"Jesus Christ, guy, didn't you hear about the Eurospatiale disaster?"

The crash at the Paris Air Show, he meant. "What about it?"

"Right in the middle of the aerial demonstration, the pilot was forced to make an emergency crash landing. An aileron ripped off a wing at thirty thousand feet and smashed into the fuselage."

"An inboard flap, actually," I said.

He looked annoyed. "Whatever. The piece landed smack-dab on the runway at Le Bourget about six feet from Mr. Deepak Gupta, the chairman and managing director of Air India. Almost killed the guy."

"Okay." That I hadn't heard.

"Mr. Gupta didn't even wait for the plane to crash," he went on. "Pulled out his mobile phone and called Mike and said he was about to cancel his order for thirty-four Eurospatiale E-336 planes. Said those guys weren't ready for prime time. Wanted to talk business as soon as the show was over."

"That's about eight billion dollars' worth of business," I said, nodding. "Give or take."

"Right. I told Mike not to leave Mumbai until he gets Mr. Gupta's signature on the LOI." An LOI was a letter of intent. "I don't care how sick of curry he gets."

"Okay."

He pointed at me with a big, meaty index finger. "Lemme tell you something. It wasn't just one damned E-336 that crashed at Le Bourget. It was Eurospatiale's whole program. And Air India's just the first penny to drop. This is a no-brainer."

"Okay, but the offsite-"

"Cheryl wants someone who can talk knowledgeably about the 880."

Cheryl Tobin was our new CEO and his boss. She was the first female CEO in the sixty-year history of Hammond Aerospace and, in fact, our first female top executive. She'd been named to the job four months before, after the legendary James Rawlings had dropped dead on the golf course at Pebble Beach. Bodine must have been as stunned as everyone else when the board of directors voted to hire not just an outsider-from Boeing, yet, our biggest competitor-but a woman. Ouch. Because everyone thought the next CEO was going to be Hank Bodine. Hell, he even looked like a CEO.

"What about Fred?"

"Fred's doctors won't let him travel yet." Fred Madigan, the chief engineer on the SkyCruiser, had recently had a triple bypass.

"But there's plenty of others." Granted, I probably knew more about the plane, overall, than anyone else in the company, but that didn't make any difference: I wasn't a member of the executive team. I was a peon.

Bodine came forward in his chair, his eyes lasering into mine. "You're right. But Cheryl wanted you." He paused, lowered his voice. "Any idea why that might be?"

"I've never talked to Cheryl Tobin in my life," I said. "She doesn't even know who I am."

"Well, for some reason, you've been asked to go."

"Asked or ordered?"

I thought he'd smile, but he didn't. "It's not optional," he said.

"Then I'm flattered to be invited." A long weekend in a remote lodge in British Columbia with the twelve or thirteen top executives of Hammond Aerospace? I would have preferred a root canal. Anesthesia optional.

His phone buzzed, and he picked it up. "Yeah. I'm on my way," he said into the mouthpiece. He stood up. "Walk with me. I'm late for a meeting."

He bounded out of his office with the stride of an ex-athlete-he'd played football at Purdue years ago, I'd heard-and I lengthened my stride to keep up with him. He gave Gloria a quick wave as we hurtled through his outer office.

"One more thing," he said. "Before we reach the lodge, I want you to find out why that plane crashed in Paris. I want Mike to have every last bit of ammo we can get to trash Eurospatiale and sell some SkyCruisers."

The executive corridor was hushed and carpeted, the walls mahogany and lined with vintage airplane blueprints in black frames.

"I'll do what I can."

"Not good enough. I want the facts before we get to Canada."

Some other executive I didn't recognize passed by, and said, "How's it going, Hank?" Bodine flashed a smile and touched two fingers to his forehead in a kind of salute but didn't slow down.

"I doubt I can call Eurospatiale and ask them, Hank."

"Are you always this insubordinate?"

"Only with people I'm trying to impress."

He laughed once, a seal's bark. "You're ballsy. I like that."

"No, you don't."

He smiled, flashing big, too-white teeth. "You got me there." Then his smile vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

We stopped right outside the executive conference room. I sneaked a glance inside. One entire side of the room was a floor-to-ceiling window overlooking downtown L.A. On one wall was a giant screen on which was projected the Hammond Aerospace logo, which looked like some 1960s corporate designer's vision of the future.

Ten or twelve people were sitting in tall leather chairs at a huge O-shaped conference table made of burnished black wood. The only woman among them was Cheryl Tobin, an attractive blonde in her early fifties wearing a crisp lavender suit with crisp white lapels. Everything about her seemed crisp and composed and efficient.

Bodine looked down at me. He was a good four inches taller than I and probably seventy pounds heavier. He narrowed his eyes. "I'll be honest with you. You weren't my choice to fill in for Mike."

Like I want to go? I thought. "I'm getting that feeling."

"Cheryl's going to ask you all sorts of questions about the SkyCruiser. She seems determined to shake things up, so she's going to want to get involved in every little detail-the weight issue, the software glitches, the quality testing on the fuselage section, all that crap. And I just want to make sure you're going to give her the right answers."

I nodded. The right answers. What the hell did that mean?

"Look, I don't want any trouble from you this weekend. We clear?"

"Of course."

"Good," he said, putting his hand on my shoulder. "Just keep your head down and stay in your own lane, and everything should work out okay."

I wondered what he was talking about, what kind of "trouble" he was referring to.

Then again, I don't think Hank Bodine had any idea, either.

4

Right after leaving Hank Bodine's office, I drove the twenty miles to my apartment in El Segundo to grab some clothes. I don't travel much for work-unlike my bosses, who are constantly flying somewhere to meet with customers-but my dog, Gerty, understood at once what the black suitcase meant. She put her head down between her paws and watched me gather my clothes with a stricken, panicked look.

When I broke up with Ali a year or so ago, the first thing I did was get a dog. I guess I'd gotten used to having someone else around, and so I went to the animal shelter and adopted a golden retriever. For no good reason I named her Gertrude. Gerty for short.

Gerty was all skin and bones when she first moved in, but she was beautiful, and she took to me right away. To be honest, if her new owner was a serial killer and rapist, she'd have bonded with him instantly, too. She's a golden.

She was also sort of a head case: She followed me everywhere I went in the apartment, couldn't be more than two or three feet away at any time. She'd follow me into the bathroom if I didn't close the door; when I came out, she'd be right there, waiting. Gerty was needy, and extremely clingy, but no more so than some of the women I'd gone out with since Alison Hillman.

Sometimes I wondered whether her last owner had abandoned her because she was so clingy or whether she got that way because she'd been abandoned. Whatever the reason, her separation anxiety wasn't in the range of normal. She was like a Vietnam vet with post-traumatic stress syndrome who hears a lawn mower and thinks it's the last chopper out of Saigon taking off from the roof of the American embassy.

"Chill," I said.

Dogs are underrated as girlfriend-substitutes, I think. Gerty never complained when I came home late from work; if anything, she was even happier to see me. She didn't mind eating the same thing day after day. She never insisted on watching Desperate Housewives when I wanted to watch football, and she never asked me if I thought she looked fat.

At least, that's what I keep telling myself ever since I screwed up my relationship with Ali. Call it rationalization. Whatever works, right?

And whatever kept me from dwelling on the first time I saw her.

Jake Landry?"

I turned around in my cubicle, almost did a double take. A beautiful woman was standing there, looking angry.

"Yes?"

Did I mention she was beautiful? Big green eyes, auburn hair. Small and slender. Really cute. Her arms were folded across her chest.

"I'm Alison Hillman. From HR."

"Oh-right. I thought you wanted me to-"

"I had to be here anyway, and I thought I'd track you down."

I spun my chair around. Stood up, trying to be polite.

An Alison Hillman from HR had sent me an irate e-mail, told me to come see her in the headquarters building immediately. I hadn't expected her just to show up.

I also hadn't expected her to look like this. "You wanted to see me for something?"

She looked up at me, her head cocked to one side. The light caught her eyes. Golden flecks in her irises. Sunflowers, I thought. They look like sunflowers.

"Your name is on Ken Spivak's ERT form as the hiring manager." An accusation, not an observation.

I hesitated for a second. "Oh, right, the transfer form." I usually didn't do that kind of paperwork, was unfamiliar with the acronyms. "There a problem?"

"A problem?" She looked incredulous. "I don't know what you're trying to pull off, but a Cat C ERT has to be filed with the Hourly Workforce Administration as well as the QTTP and LTD administrators."

"Do you speak any English?"

She stared at me for a few seconds, shook her head. I wasn't sure, but it looked to me like she was trying to suppress a smile, a real one. "You put through a lateral transfer on this machinist, from the Palmdale plant to the El Segundo assembly plant, is that correct?"

"Yeah, so?"

"You can't do that. It doesn't work that way."

I tried to look innocent. "What doesn't work that way?"

"You're kidding, right? You don't have the power to just-just move an hourly employee from one division to another. You can't hire outside the candidate pool. There's a whole posting process that's mandated by the union collective bargaining agreement. There are extensive protocols that have to be followed. So, I'm sorry, but I have to cancel this transfer. He's going back to Palmdale."

"Moment of candor, please?"

She looked puzzled. "Yes?"

"You and I both know that we're about to sell the Palmdale division to some buyout firm, only the news hasn't been made public yet. Which means this guy's going to be laid off."

"Along with everyone else who works at the Palmdale plant," she said, folding her arms across her chest. "And most of those workers will find other jobs."

"Not him. He's too old. He's fifty-seven, he's been with Hammond for almost forty years, and he's a good man and a hard worker."

A half smile. "Moment of candor? We make it hard for a reason, Mr. Landry. It's about doing things the right way."

"Yeah, well, Ken Spivak has five kids, and his wife died last year, and he's all they've got. And it's Jake."

She seemed to be avoiding my eyes. "I-I appreciate what you're trying to do, but I really don't have a choice here. Do you realize what kind of legal nightmare we're going to face when the word gets out in Palmdale that one lucky guy got a transfer and everyone else gets laid off-including people with higher performance ratings? The union's going to be all over us."

I said quietly, "You know what kind of legal trouble you're going to be in if you revoke his job?"

She stared at me for a few seconds, didn't reply. She knew I was right.

I went on: "Don't transfer him back. Don't you do it."

"It's about doing things the right way," she repeated quietly. "I'm sorry."

"No," I said. "It's about doing the right thing."

She didn't say anything.

"You have lunch yet?" I asked.

I didn't know what to pack. "Outdoor gear," Hank Bodine had said, whatever that meant. I collected a couple of pairs of jeans, my old Carhartt hunting jacket, a pair of boots. Then I went online and looked up the resort, saw how high-end it was, and threw in a pair of khakis and a blazer and a fancy pair of shoes for dinner, just in case. I quickly changed into a blazer and tie to wear on the corporate jet.

Then there was the question of what to do with Gerty for the four days I'd be gone. Someone had to feed her and take her out two or three times a day. I called one of my neighbors in the apartment building, a widowed older woman. She had a black Lab and loved Gerty and had taken care of her a few times. Her phone rang and rang. Called a bunch of my friends, who all begged off.

They knew about Gerty.

This could be a major problem, I realized, because I really didn't want to board Gerty at a kennel, even assuming I could find one at this point. I glanced at my watch, realized I had about two hours before I had to be at the Van Nuys airport. Just enough time to race over to the office and download the latest files on the 880 and try to find out what caused the crash of that plane in Paris.

As long as I got Hank Bodine what he wanted, I figured, everything would go fine.

5

On the short drive over to the office, I kept thinking about that strange meeting with Hank Bodine and wondering the same thing that he'd asked me: Why had the CEO of the Hammond Aerospace Corporation, who didn't even know who I was, put me on the "guest list" for the offsite? And what was Bodine so concerned about-what trouble was he afraid I might cause? If he wanted to make sure I gave her the "right answers," then what were the wrong ones?

As soon as I got to my cubicle, I shifted into multitasking mode-plowed through my e-mail while copying files onto a flash drive. Most of my e-mail stack I could safely ignore. One was from the Office of the CEO, concerning the importance of ethics and a "culture of accountability" at Hammond. I saved that one to read later. Meaning: probably never.

Zoл was watching me. "So what'd Bodine want?"

"I thought you knew everything."

"Sometimes the admin gossip network is slow. Let's hear it."

"He told me I'm going to the offsite in Canada."

"Get out! For what, to carry their luggage?"

I gave her a look, then went back to copying files. "Cheryl Tobin specifically requested me," I said with a straight face. "To stand in for Mike."

"Uh-huh. Like she even knows who you are."

"Not by name, exactly," I admitted. "She wanted someone who could talk knowledgeably about the 880."

"And you're the best they could come up with?"

This was why Zoл and I got along so well. Since she worked for Mike, not for me, she could pretty much say whatever she wanted to me without fear of getting fired.

"Don't you have work to do?" I said.

"So you actually agreed to do it."

I gave her another look. "Think I had a choice? It wasn't a request. It was an order."

She shrugged. "Like that ever made a difference to you. 'Kick up, kiss down'-that's your MO, right? Piss off as many people above you as you can."

"I still have a job, don't I?"

"Yeah. For now. Shouldn't you be at Van Nuys already?"

"The jet leaves in about an hour and a half," I said. "I gotta ask you a huge favor."

She looked at me warily.

"Would you mind taking my dog?" I said.

"Gerty? I'd love to. It's like rent-a-dog. I get a dog for a couple of days, then return it when it stops being fun."

"You're the best." I handed her the keys to my apartment. "Don't let her hump you," I said.

"What?"

"She likes to hump people's legs."

"Isn't she a female?"

"It's a dominance thing. Don't let her do it."

"No one dominates me," she said.

"It's the same way wolves establish the hierarchy in their pack."

"Wolves? Are we still talking about Gerty the Emo Dog?"

"Dogs and wolves are genetically the same species, you know."

"What do you know about wolves, Landry?"

More than you know. "Don't you watch the Dog Shrink on TV?"

"Don't need to. I do my own field research. All men are dogs-even the ones who act like wolves."

"Forget it," I said. "One more favor?"

Her look was even more suspicious. She had this great cold stare that she must have perfected at the clubs when she wanted guys to stop hitting on her.

"Bodine wants to know how the Eurospatiale crash happened."

"The wing fell off or something."

"A little piece of the wing, Zoл, called the inboard flap. The question is why. It's a brand-new plane."

"You want me to find out?"

"E-mail some of the journalists on the good aviation websites-ask them if they've heard anything. Rumors, whatever-stuff they might not have reported. And try to grab some photos."

"Of the plane?"

"If you can. Pictures of the inboard flap would be even better. Gotta be a couple somewhere-there were a bunch of photographers in the crowd taking pictures of the aerial demo. I'll bet you when that piece hit the tarmac, someone shot some close-ups. I'd love to get some high-res photos if you can find any."

"Why does Bodine care?"

"He says he wants Mike to have all the dirt on Eurospatiale he can get."

"It's not enough that their freakin' plane crashed?"

I shrugged.

"When do you need it? By the time you get back from Canada?"

"Actually, Bodine wants the info before we get there."

"That doesn't give me much time, Landry. Mike needs me to do a spreadsheet for him, and theoretically I do work for him, you know. I could get to it in a couple of hours."

"That should work if there's Internet access on the company plane."

"There is. Wireless, too. Just make sure you do it before you get to the lodge."

"Why?"

"The place is off the grid. No cell phones, no BlackBerrys, no e-mail, nothing."

"You're kidding."

"Uh-uh. Mike was dreading it. You know how addicted he is to his e-mail."

"I thought this was real high-end. You're making it sound like some kind of shack with no indoor plumbing."

"It's totally high-end. But it's so remote they don't have landline phones. This year, Cheryl's not letting anyone use the Internet or the manager's satellite phone. She wants everyone to be off-line."

"Sounds great to me. But those guys are all going to go apeshit."

"And you're actually going to have to talk to them."

"Not if I can help it."

"You don't get it, do you? That's the whole point of these stupid offsites. Team-building exercises and morale-building and all that? A lot of outdoor sports? Even ropes courses, I hear."

I groaned. "Not ropes courses."

"Well, maybe fancier than that. I don't know. But it's all about breaking down barriers and getting people who don't like each other to become friends."

Going kayaking together was supposed to make all those EVPs into friends? All those supercompetitive Type A personalities? They were far more likely to garrote each other.

"Somehow I don't think it's going to make Bodine like Cheryl Tobin any better."

Zoл gave me a long, cryptic look, then moved closer. "Listen, Jake. Not to be repeated, okay?"

I looked up. "Okay."

"So, there's this chick, Sophie, works at headquarters in Corporate Security?"

"Yeah?"

"I ran into her at the Darkroom on North Vine last night, and she told me she'd just finished doing this huge, totally top-secret job for the general counsel's office."

She paused, as if she was unsure whether to keep going. I almost said, Couldn't be all that top-secret if you know. But instead, I nodded, said, "Okay."

"Going into people's e-mail accounts and archiving their e-mail and sending it to some law firm in Washington, D.C."

"For what?"

"She didn't know. They just told her to do it. Kind of creeped her out. She knew it meant something serious was going on. Some kind of witch-hunt, maybe."

"Everyone's e-mail?"

She shook her head. "Just a few of the top officers." She waited a few seconds. "Including Hank Bodine."

"Really?" That was interesting. "You think Cheryl Tobin ordered it?"

"Wouldn't surprise me."

I thought for a few seconds. I'd heard that one of the reasons the board of directors had brought in an outsider to run Hammond was to clean house. There were all sorts of rumors of corruption, of bribes and slush funds, but to be honest, our business is sort of known for that. "No wonder Bodine wanted to know if I was a buddy of Cheryl Tobin's."

"If I were you, I'd be careful," Zoл said.

"Careful? What, I might get rope burn?"

Zoл grimaced. She seemed a little pissed off that I seemed to be dismissing her hot gossip with a stupid quip. But I figured that whatever was going on between Hank Bodine and the CEO had nothing to do with me.

"No," she said. "Four days of all that face time with the corporate bigwigs, I'm afraid you might speak your mind and lose your job. Those guys aren't going to take crap from you."

"No?"

"No. You may know dogs, Landry, but you don't know the first thing about wolves. It's a dominance thing."

6

As I cruised down the 405 Freeway to Van Nuys, making unusually good time, a police cruiser came out of nowhere: blue strobe lights whirling, siren whooping. My stomach clenched. Damn it, was I speeding? Sure; who wasn't?

But then the cop raced on past me, chasing down some other poor sucker, leaving me with only an afterimage burned on my retina and a memory of a time I rarely thought about anymore.

The bailiff took me into the courtroom in handcuffs.

I wore a white button-down dress shirt, which was too big on me-sixteen years old, lanky, not yet broad-shouldered-and the label made my neck itch. The bailiff, a squat, potbellied man who reminded me of a frog, took me over to the long wooden table next to the public defender who'd been assigned to me. He waited until I sat down before he removed the cuffs, then took a seat behind me.

The courtroom was stuffy and overheated, smelled of mildew and perspiration and cleaning fluid. I glanced at the attorney, a well-meaning but scattered woman with a tangle of frizzy brown hair. She gave me a quick, sympathetic look that told me she wasn't hopeful. I noticed the file on the table in front of her wasn't my case: She'd already moved on to the next one.

My heart was pounding. The judge was a fearsome black woman who wore tortoiseshell reading glasses on a chain around her neck. She was whispering to the clerk. I stared at the plastic woodgrain nameplate in front of her: THE HONORABLE FLORENCE ALTON-WILLIAMS engraved in white block letters.

One of the fluorescent lights was buzzing, flickering. The huge radiators were making knocking sounds. Voices echoed from the hall outside the courtroom.

Finally, the judge turned toward me, peered over the tops of her half glasses. She cleared her throat. "Mr. Landry," she said. "There's an old Cherokee legend about a young man who keeps getting into trouble because of his aggressive tendencies." She spoke in a stern contralto. "The young man goes to see his grandfather, and says, 'Sometimes I feel such anger that I can't help it-I can't stop myself.' And his grandfather, who's a tribal elder and a wise man, says, 'I understand. I used to be the same way. You see, inside of you are two wolves. One is good and kind and peaceful, and the other is evil and mean and angry. The mean wolf is always fighting the good wolf.' The boy thought about it for a moment, then said, 'But Grandfather, which wolf will win?' And the old man said, 'The one you feed.'"

She picked up a manila folder, flipped it open. Cleared her throat. A minute went by. My mouth had gone dry, and I was finding it hard to swallow.

"Mr. Landry, I have found you guilty of criminally negligent homicide." She stared at me over her glasses. The public defender next to me inhaled slowly. "You should thank your lucky stars that you weren't tried as an adult. I'm remanding you to a limited-secure residential facility-that is, juvenile detention-for eighteen months. And I can only hope that by the time you've completed your sentence, you'll have learned which wolf to feed."

The radiators knocked and the fluorescent light buzzed and somewhere out in the hall a woman's laugh echoed.

7

Hammond Aerospace had four corporate jets, all of which were kept at the company's own hangar at Van Nuys airport, in the San Fernando Valley, about twenty-five miles northwest of downtown L.A. "Van Noise," as the locals grumpily called it, was farther from Hammond world headquarters than LAX, but since it didn't service commercial flights, it was quicker and easier to get in and out.

Not that I'd ever flown on the corporate jet before-whenever I traveled for work, I flew commercial. The company planes were only for the elite.

I parked my Jeep in front of the low-slung terminal building, grabbed my suitcase from the back, and looked around. The jet was parked on the tarmac, very close by. This was the biggest and fanciest plane in our corporate fleet, a brand-new Hammond Business Jet with the space-age Hammond logo painted on the tail. It glinted in the sun as if it had just been washed. It was a thing of beauty.

No one had told me where I was supposed to go when I got there-whether I should go directly to the plane or not. I knew you could drive right up to the aircraft and board. But I could see, through the plate-glass windows of our "executive terminal," a cluster of guys who looked like Hammond execs, so I rolled my suitcase up to the building and walked in.

The passenger lounge was designed to resemble a 1930s airport, with marble-tiled floors and low-slung leather couches. It reminded me of one of those fancy airport "clubs" just for the first-class passengers, the kind of place you sometimes catch a fleeting glimpse of as you trundle by, before the door slams shut to the likes of you. Out there in the overcrowded airport, you're dodging speeding electric passenger carts that beep at you hostilely, and being jostled on the moving walkway by overweight women clutching Cinnabons, while inside the hushed silence of the Ambassador's Club or the Emperor's Club, rich, well-dressed passengers are clinking flutes of champagne and scarfing down beluga on toast points.

I looked around. There were ten or so men here. Not a woman among them. There were no women at the top of Hammond Aerospace. Except for the new boss, of course.

They all resembled one another, too. Their ages ranged from early forties to maybe sixty, but they all looked vigorously middle-aged, virile, and prosperous. They all had a certain gladiatorial swagger. They could have been relatives at some jocky family reunion.

Also, unlike me, none of them was wearing a tie. Or even a blazer. They were all dressed casually in sportswear or outdoor gear-cargo shorts and pants, golf shirts, Patagonia shells, North Face performance tees. Brand names all over the place.

I sure hadn't gotten the memo.

A couple of them were wandering around, talking to themselves, wearing Bluetooth earpieces that looked like silver Tootsie Rolls with flashing blue lights on them. Hank Bodine was standing near the entrance. He was wearing a navy short-sleeved knit shirt and talking to someone I didn't recognize.

Since he was the only one here I knew, I figured I should go up to him and say hi. I didn't want to break in on anyone's conversation, but I also didn't want to stand around like a mannequin. I may not be the most outgoing guy you'll ever meet, but I'm not socially stunted, either. Still, I couldn't help feeling like the new kid in grade school, peering around the cafeteria at lunch, holding my tray, looking for a familiar face so I could sit down. The same way I'd felt when I'd arrived at Glenview, when I was sixteen.

So I left my suitcase near the door and tentatively approached him. "Hey, Hank," I said.

Before Hank had a chance to reply, a tall, wiry guy came up and clapped him on the shoulder. This was Kevin Bross, the EVP of Sales in the Commercial Airplanes Division. He had a long, narrow face and a nose that looked like it had been broken a few times. Probably playing football: Bross was another Big Ten football jock-he'd played at Michigan State.

"There he is," Bross said to Hank Bodine.

Bross didn't even seem to notice me standing there. "You read that bullshit e-mail Cheryl sent around this morning?" he said in a low voice. He wore a black Under Armour T-shirt, tight against his broad, flat torso like a superhero's costume. "All that crap about 'guiding principles' and 'a culture of accountability'?" He stared at Bodine, appalled. I couldn't believe he was dissing the CEO so brazenly, and within earshot of the others.

Hank Bodine smiled, shook his head, unreadable.

Bross went on, "Like she's our den mother or something?"

Bodine just winked, and said, "Guess we didn't have any guiding principles before. You know Jake Landry?"

"How's it going?" Bross said without interest. He gave me a quick, perfunctory glance before turning back to Bodine. "Where's Hugo?"

"He should be here any second," Bodine said. "Flying in from D.C."

"So Cheryl didn't fire him yet, huh?"

"Cheryl's not going to fire Hugo," Bodine said quietly. "Though by the time she gets done with him, he'll probably wish he got fired."

They didn't explain, of course, but I knew they were talking about Hugo Lummis, the Senior VP of Hammond's Washington, D.C., Operations. In plain English, he was our chief lobbyist. Hugo was a Southern good ol' boy, a real Capitol Hill creature. Before Hammond hired him, he'd been a deputy secretary of defense under George W. Bush, and before that he'd been chief of staff for some important Republican congressman. He was on back-slapping terms with just about everyone in Congress who counted.

There were rumors around the company that he'd done something funky, possibly illegal, to land Hammond a big Air Force contract a few months ago. But just rumors-there'd been no charges, nothing concrete. Now I wondered whether that was why the girl from Corporate Security to whom Zoл had talked had been ordered to search through Bodine's e-mails.

"She's just gonna let him twist slowly in the wind, huh?" Bross said.

Bodine leaned close to Bross and spoke in a low voice. "What I hear, she's hired one of those big Washington law firms to do an internal corporate investigation."

Bross stared. "You're shittin' me."

Bodine just looked back.

"You got to stop this," Bross said.

"Too late. It's already wheels up."

"Hank, you're the only one who can persuade this chick you don't shit where you eat."

I was sort of embarrassed to be standing there listening to their conversation. But I guessed that, to these guys, I was just some functionary so far down the totem pole I might as well have been below ground. Since Bodine had reassured himself that I wasn't part of Cheryl's faction, I clearly wasn't a threat. He hadn't even bothered to explain to Kevin Bross who I was or why I was here.

"Well, my daddy taught me never to talk that way to a lady," Bodine said. He smiled and winked again. "Anyway, what I have in mind doesn't involve persuasion."

My cell phone rang. I took it out of my pocket and excused myself, though the two men barely realized I was leaving.

"Hey," Zoл said. "You having fun yet? Let me guess. You're kissing butt all over the place, sucking up a storm, and you're already the new golden boy."

"Something like that." I stepped outside the terminal building and stood in the sun, admiring the gleaming Hammond plane.

"Are you talking to anyone, or are you standing by yourself, too proud to hang with your superiors?"

"You got something for me, Zoл?"

"I just talked to a reporter from Aviation Daily about that plane crash. He said it was a composites problem that caused the whatchamacallit to break off."

"The inboard flap. What kind of composites problem, did he say? A joint?" I felt the sunshine warm my face.

"Do I look like an engineer to you? I can't even figure out my TiVo. Anyway, I took notes and put it in an e-mail to you. I also attached some close-up shots of that piece of the wing."

"Great, Zo. I'll download them after we board. Thanks."

"De nada. Oh, and, Jake?"

"Yeah?"

"The Aviation Daily guy also told me that Singapore Airlines just canceled their deal with Eurospatiale. Like, they totally freaked out over the crash."

"Really?" That was a major contract. Almost as big as the Air India deal. "Is that public information?"

"Not yet. The reporter just got the news himself, and he's about to put it on their website. So no one else knows yet. You're, like, fifteen minutes ahead of the curve."

"Hank Bodine's gonna squeal like a pig in shit."

"Hey, Jake, you know-you might want to tell him yourself. Break the good news."

"Maybe."

"You're hesitating. You don't want to look like you're sucking up. Yeah, well, you might want to start making friends with all the big dogs. Especially since you're about to spend a long weekend with them. You're probably going to be doing 'trust falls,' you know."

"In that case, I'm likely to get a concussion."

"I hear you."

"Okay, I'll break the news to Bodine. And thanks again. I owe you one."

"One?" Zoл said. "One squared, more like."

"That's still one, Zoл."

"Whatever."

I clicked off and headed back inside.

8

A big, rotund bald man with large jug-handle ears pushed through the glass doors of the terminal right in front of me. Someone called out to him, and he replied in a booming voice with a Southern accent, erupting in a big, rolling laugh. He started hailing people as if this was a frat party, and he was the rush chairman. His double chin jiggled. He wore a silvery gray golf shirt stretched tight over an ample potbelly.

This had to be the famous Hugo Lummis, our chief lobbyist. The man Cheryl Tobin was hanging out to dry, according to Kevin Bross.

He went right up to Bodine and Bross. I hung back a bit. Lummis checked his watch, a huge, extravagant-looking silver thing not much smaller than a Frisbee. Then Bross checked his watch, too, a gold thing just as big. They seemed to be concerned about the time, which I didn't quite get. Who cared what time we got to the offsite?

As I came over to Bodine's rat pack, Bross, who had a Klaxon voice you could pretty much hear anywhere, said, "IWC Destriero." Lummis rumbled something, and Bross went on, "Got it in Zurich in December. World's most complicated wristwatch. Seven hundred fifty mechanical parts, seventy-six rubies. Perpetual calendar with day, month, year, decade, and century."

So they were comparing wristwatches. "In case you forget which century you're living in, that it?" Lummis shot back. "Twenty-first, last time I checked, unless that watch of yours knows different."

"The moon phase display is the most precise ever made," Bross said. "Split-second chronograph. The tourbillon has an eight-beat-per-second escapement. Take a listen-the minute repeater chimes every quarter hour."

"Excuse me," I said. I tried to catch Bodine's eye, but he didn't see.

"That would drive me crazy," Bodine said.

Lummis held up his own watch, and announced: "Jules Audemars Equation of Time skeleton. Grand Complication."

"How the hell can you tell time on that thing?" Bodine said. "I just want to know what time we're going to leave already."

"No one's going anywhere until Cheryl shows up," Lummis said. He looked at his wrist Frisbee. "I guess Cheryl's gotta make an entrance. Fashionably late. Being the CEO and all."

"Nah," said Bross, "women are always running late. Like my wife-it's always hurry up and wait."

Bodine was smiling faintly, neither joining in their mocking nor disapproving of it. "Well, the plane's not gonna leave till she gets here," he said.

Hugo Lummis noticed me, and said, "Wheels up?"

"Excuse me?" I said.

"We about ready to leave?"

"I-I don't know."

He squinted at me, then guffawed. "Sorry, young man, I thought you were a flight attendant." The men around him laughed, too. "It's the tie."

I stuck out my hand. "Jake Landry," I said. "And I'm not a pilot, either."

He shook my hand without introducing himself, looked down at my watch. "But you got yourself a nice pilot's watch there, I see. That an IWC, young fella?"

"This?" I said. "It's a Timex, I think. No, Casio, actually. Twenty-five bucks."

Lummis chortled heartily, turned back to the others. "And I was about to ask the young man to carry my bag onto the plane for me." Peering at me, he said, "You a new hire?"

"I work for Mike Zorn."

"Cheryl wanted an expert on the 880," Bodine explained.

"Hell, I've got hemorrhoids older than him," Lummis said to the others, then added to me, mock-sternly: "Remember, young fella, what happens in Rivers Inlet stays in Rivers Inlet." Everyone laughed uproariously, as if this were some kind of inside joke.

"Hank," I finally said to Bodine. "Singapore Airlines is in play."

It took him a minute to realize I was talking to him, but then his eyes narrowed. "Excellent. Excellent. How do you know this?"

"Guy at Aviation Daily."

He nodded, rubbed his hands together briskly.

By then they were all staring at me. Kevin Bross said, "They had eighteen 336s on order from Eurospatiale. That's five billion dollars up for grabs. I gotta call George."

"He's in Tokyo, isn't he?" Bodine said. George Easter was the Senior Vice President for Asia-Pacific Sales.

"Yeah," Bross said. "They're seventeen hours ahead of us." He stared at his watch. "What time is it, anyway?"

Bodine laughed, then they all did. "Three thirty in the afternoon. Makes it, let's see, seven thirty in the morning in Tokyo." He turned to me, flashed his watch. "Good old-fashioned Rolex Submariner," he said with a wink. "Nothin' fancy."

"Comes in handy when you're diving at four thousand feet, I bet."

Bodine didn't seem to hear me. He said to Bross, "Tell George to touch skin with Japan Air and All Nippon, too, while he's at it. This is our big chance. A no-brainer. Get to 'em with a bid before the other guys move in."

Bross nodded, then whipped out a handheld from its holster, a quick-draw BlackBerry cowboy. He punched in numbers as he turned away.

I was about to tell Bodine about the suspected cause of the crash, but then I decided to read Zoл's e-mail first so at least I knew what I was talking about.

"Let's get this show on the road," Bodine muttered, while Kevin Bross talked on his cell loud enough for everyone to hear. "There's billions to be made in the next couple of weeks, and she's got us playing games in the woods."

"Speak of the she-devil," Lummis said, and we all turned to the door.

Cheryl Tobin, wearing the same lavender suit I'd seen her in earlier, entered the lounge. She bestowed a beatific smile on the assembled.

Right behind her came another woman, who I assumed was her administrative assistant or something. An elegant, auburn-haired beauty in a navy polo shirt and khaki slacks, holding a clipboard and moving with a dancer's grace.

It took me a few seconds to realize that I knew her. I drew a sharp breath.

My stomach flipped upside down and turned inside out.

Ali Hillman.

9

Her apartment, in an old Art Deco building in Westwood, was like Ali: the unexpected corners, the skewed lines, stylish and a little mysterious and glamorous and sort of exotic.

"The rumor is that this apartment used to belong to Howard Hughes," she said as she led me inside the first time. We'd been spending nights at my apartment, so coming here felt like a new stage, like I'd passed some sort of test.

"He used it as a love nest for his girlfriends. That's what the landlord says."

"Either that, or he needed another place to store his mason jars." It was on the second floor, and you could hear traffic noise from the street, trucks roaring by, car horns.

"But I need to move. Too noisy. I can't sleep at night."

"Move in with me."

"El Segundo? It's a commute."

"I'm worth it."

"We'll see."

She put her mouth on mine, ending the conversation.

"Mmm," she said after a couple of minutes. "Yeah, I'm thinking you just might make the cut."

She didn't see me. She was immersed in conversation with Cheryl Tobin as the two of them swept into the room, parting a Red Sea of middle-aged men. An electric force field seemed to surround them, crackling and radiating through the room. Like it or not, this was the boss.

And-what?-her assistant? Was Ali working for the CEO now? If so, when had this happened?

I felt the electrical charge, too, but of a different sort. It was the voltage generated by all sorts of little switches going off in my brain, circuits closing, thoughts colliding. I hadn't seen her in months, had assumed she was still in HR. But I'd lost track of what she was doing, exactly. Another guy might have kept tabs on her on the company intranet, asked after her. Googled her. She was the kind of woman who could turn men into stalkers.

I wish I could say I'd moved on, had the coldhearted ability to shift over to the next woman without looking back. The truth is, I knew that if I allowed myself to mope or obsess, I'd never get over her. I wasn't sure I ever would anyway. So as much as I thought about her after the breakup, I didn't let myself wallow in the sweet misery of tracking her from afar.

And now Ali was working with, or for, Cheryl-you could tell from the body language-and she was probably going on the offsite, too.

For a moment it felt as if I were inside a freeze-frame: I couldn't hear or see anyone around me except for Ali. The loud chatter and laughter dissolved into meaningless babble.

Ali.

I knew now who'd put me on the guest list for the offsite. One mystery solved. But it only created a new one.

Why?

Yet before I could go up to her, she was gone. She said something to Cheryl and, holding a cell phone to her ear, disappeared down a side corridor.

Gradually, I returned to the room, became more aware, more present. I heard Bodine mutter to Bross, "Notice she said no staff, no assistants, no admins. Yet she brought one of hers."

Ali wouldn't be Cheryl Tobin's administrative assistant, of course; she was a rising executive in HR. But was it possible that she'd become an assistant to the CEO of some kind?

Cheryl worked the room like a master politician. She circulated among the twelve or so guys, smiling and touching them on the shoulders in a way that was warm but not too intimate.

Most of the men responded the way you'd expect. They gave her smiles that were too wide and too bright. They shifted their stances so they could watch her out of the corners of their eyes while she talked to others. They tried to suck up without being too transparent about it.

Not all of the guys, though. Hank Bodine's little clique seemed to be making a point of ignoring her. Kevin Bross said something under his breath to Bodine, who nodded, his eyes alert but unrevealing. Then Bross turned and headed toward Cheryl. Not right toward her, but meandering in her general direction. As he got close, she must have said something-I couldn't hear-because he turned and smiled right at her.

"I admired your e-mail this morning," he said, his voice louder than he no doubt intended.

Bodine and Lummis were watching the exchange from across the room.

I could see Cheryl's pleased smile. She said something else.

"No, I was really impressed," Bross said. "People need to be reminded about the culture of accountability. We all do."

Cheryl smiled and touched his shoulder. Bross nodded, gave a sort of contorted, embarrassed smile. His face was flushed. Then he turned and looked at Bodine and gave him a wink.

Not until we all began boarding the plane did Ali see me.

She was at the top of the metal stairs leading into the jet, just behind Cheryl Tobin, as I started to climb the steps. She turned around, looked down as if she'd forgotten something, and her eyes raked mine.

Then, abruptly, she looked away.

"Ali?" I said.

But she pretended not to hear me and entered the cabin without turning back.

10

By the time I boarded, Ali was nowhere to be found, and I was left feeling as if I'd been kicked in the solar plexus. Or someplace a little lower.

She'd seen me: No question about that. And whether she'd put me on the guest list or not, she had to know I'd be here.

Why, then, the cold shoulder?

I've always thought that living with a woman is like visiting a foreign country where no one speaks English and the signs are all in some strange alphabet that almost looks like English, but not quite. If you want to buy coffee or order dinner or get a seat on a bus, you have to learn a few basic phrases of the local dialect.

So in the year and a half that Ali and I went out, I learned to read the nuances in her voice. I became reasonably fluent. I stopped needing to consult the Berlitz book. And I still hadn't lost the ability to speak Ali.

But her reaction was baffling.

I assumed she'd gone off to work with Cheryl in the CEO's private lounge. It took all the restraint I could summon to keep from walking down there and asking her what was going on.

Instead, I took a seat in the main salon. Most of the seats were taken by the time I got there, but I found a chair off by itself, next to where Hank Bodine was holding court with Hugo Lummis, Kevin Bross, and someone else. I was close enough to hear them talking, but I'd sort of lost interest in hearing them compare watches, as fun as that was, so I tuned out.

Anyway, my mind had been derailed. As much as I tried not to, I couldn't stop thinking about Ali. And it wasn't just her strange behavior. It was simply seeing her after so long. I was like a parched man lost in the desert for weeks who'd just been given a thimbleful of water. My thirst hadn't been slaked; it had been whetted.

I thought about Ali, presumably sitting with Cheryl Tobin in the executive lounge, which included a private office, bedroom suite, exercise studio, personal kitchen, even a shower. Even among the superprivileged who got to fly on private corporate jets, there was first class. I loved that. You finally claw your way to the top only to discover there's still one more rung above you, a rarefied VIP echelon you'd never even heard of.

The rest of us weren't exactly in steerage, though. The main salon looked like an English gentleman's club, not that I'd ever actually seen such a thing. It certainly didn't look like any airplane I'd ever been in before. The cabin walls were paneled in Brazilian mahogany. The floors were covered with antique-looking Oriental rugs. Huge, cushy, black leather club chairs were arranged in little "conversation groups" around marble-topped tables. There was a burlwood standalone bar.

Two beautiful blondes were circulating with trays of little Pellegrino bottles, taking drink orders. I wanted a real drink, but I was at work, after all, so I decided I'd better just get a Pepsi.

My chair swiveled and tilted. All around me was wide-open space. There was no seat six inches in front of mine that would tip back into my knees. Very nice. I could get used to this.

Granted, the furnishings were a little much-all that dark wood and antique rugs and black leather-but the plane was pretty great. The Hammond Business Jet was far and away the best on the market. It left the Gulfstream G450 and the Boeing Business Jet and the Airbus Corporate Jetliner in the dust. The Hammond had the widest body and the largest cabin of any private corporate jet on the market. Even configured as luxuriously as it was, it easily held twenty-five people.

The pitch we used to convince companies to spend fifty million bucks for one of our planes was that it wasn't simply a means of transportation. Oh, no. It was a productivity tool. It allowed an executive to make good use of his travel time. And a relaxed and refreshed executive could seal a deal much more effectively than his travel-worn counterpart.

Yeah, right. You can always justify any obscene luxury on the grounds of productivity, I've found.

In addition to the CEO's executive suite and the main salon, this plane also had a conference room (with videoconferencing capabilities), a small office suite, and three lavatories with showers. People sometimes called it the "flying penthouse" or the "flying boudoir." Or the "mile-high palace." The dйcor, someone once told me, was the legacy of our previous CEO, James Rawlings. The story was that he and his wife had flown on some other company's jet as the guests of the CEO and were both blown away by the way the cabin was outfitted, which made Hammond's jets look shabby by comparison. Mrs. Rawlings hounded her husband until he gave in and let her hire her favorite interior designer to overhaul one of the Hammond jets, the same designer who'd also done their house and their yacht.

While I waited for the waitresses, or the flight attendants, or whatever they were called, to take my drink order, I took out my laptop and powered it on. I had work to do-I had to download the files Zoл had sent so I could try to get Bodine the answers he wanted-but I was finding it hard to concentrate.

My computer located the wireless Internet signal, and I logged on to my e-mail. Opened Zoл's e-mail and read it over twice. Then I opened the zipped folder containing the Aviation Daily photos, eight high-resolution close-ups of the Eurospatiale crash, including the part that had ripped off, the inboard flap. They were big files and took a while to download.

Meanwhile, I could hear Hugo Lummis saying to the others, in his booming voice and mellow Southern accent: "You gonna tell me that's a level playing field? Uh-uh, no sir. So I'm having dinner at Cafй Milano with the Secretary of the Air Force just last week, and he keeps talking about 'the Great White Arab Tribe' and I finally say to him, 'What in God's name are you talking about?' And he says, 'Oh, that's just our nickname for Boeing.' So how does Cheryl think we're supposed to compete with that kinda favoritism if we don't grease the skids a little?"

I looked at him, without meaning to, and Kevin Bross noticed my glance. He made some kind of a quick, subtle hand gesture, and then Lummis's voice suddenly died down.

After a while, I started smelling cigar smoke, and I looked over and saw Bodine and Lummis smoking a couple of big ugly stogies. Thick white tendrils of smoke wreathed their heads. I guessed this wasn't a no-smoking flight.

When one of the beautiful blond flight attendants finally came over to me, I decided to order a Scotch. Seeing Ali had set me back, I realized; I really did need a drink. So I asked for a single-malt Scotch, and she wanted to know what kind. Apparently I could get whatever brand I wanted. I said Macallan. She asked me how old. I asked what my choices were.

"Would you like the eighteen?" she said.

I told her I would.

Just then, someone made an announcement over the speakers that we'd be taking off momentarily and asked us to fasten our seat belts. It was a polite, almost apologetic request, not the sort of imperious demand they make when you fly commercial. No one ordered me to turn off all electronic equipment. No one said anything about stowing our bags in any overhead compartments. Not that there were any overhead compartments to jam our stuff into.

The flight attendant apologized profusely that I'd have to wait for my drink until after takeoff. She asked me to fasten my seat belt, then excused herself so she could do the same.

I could feel the idling engines roar to life-two Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 turbofan engines, with a three-shaft layout-and we began the takeoff roll. Seventy-five thousand pounds of thrust lifted us off the ground; but for all that power, you could barely hear any noise. One of the reasons it was so quiet is that the big fan in the engine moves a lot of air around the turbine, and that acts like a muffler. Plus, the engine nacelle inlet is lined with a one-piece acoustic barrel to absorb sound.

Airplane geek: who, me?

That baby could go Mach 0.89, and even when it was up against the barber pole-cruising at max speed-it was so solidly built that nothing ever squeaked or rattled. It had a range of almost seven thousand miles, partly because it was so light. The airframe was made of lightweight improved aluminum alloy, and the engine cowlings and all the control surfaces, the rudders and ailerons and elevator, were made out of advanced composites.

I learned to fly when I was in college, wanted to be a pilot but was disqualified because my vision wasn't totally perfect. But at least I got to work with planes, and when I'm a passenger on a well-built plane, I'm always watching and listening, noticing things most people don't.

Once we started our ascent-we'd be cruising at forty-five thousand feet, I knew, well above commercial airline traffic-I turned back to my laptop and began studying the photos. Which was when something caught my attention. I enlarged the photo to the full size of my computer screen, then zoomed in on one small area of the picture. A piece of the plane's wing was lying on the asphalt. The inboard flap, I could tell right away.

I zoomed in still closer. I could see where the aluminum hinge had ripped out. It was pretty dramatic looking, and sort of surprising, too.

The wings and the wing flaps on the Eurospatiale E-336 were made out of composite materials, just like our own SkyCruiser. But the hinges that attach the flaps to the wings are made of a high-grade 7075 aluminum.

And somehow those aluminum hinges had just ripped clean off the wing flap. How, I had no idea. I needed to study the pictures some more. Maybe do some more research.

My Scotch arrived, in a cut-glass crystal tumbler on a silver tray, with a dish of warm mixed nuts under a linen napkin. Next to it was a small envelope.

A bill? The Hammond private jet didn't exactly have a cash bar. So what could it be?

The envelope was made from very thick, expensive-looking stock. It was blank on the outside. Inside was a folded note, on a matching sheet of paper.

I recognized the handwriting at once. It said, simply:

Landry-

Please come to the executive lounge as soon as you get this. BE SUBTLE.

– A

I closed my laptop and got right up.

11

The inner sanctum-the CEO's private lounge-was even more opulent than the main salon.

If I'd just come from an English gentleman's club, then this was the club's private library. The walls here were paneled in a rich, antique wood, though I knew they had to be veneers, since real wainscoting would be too heavy. The lighting was indirect, from tiny ceiling pinpoints trained against the paneling, and gave the cabin an amber glow. The antique carpets were even finer. There were cabinets that looked like family heirlooms (though not my family, of course, whose oldest piece of furniture had been Dad's Barcalounger). A flat-screen TV hung on one wall, tuned to CNBC. A steel-clad galley kitchen with an espresso machine. A couple of overstuffed couches, upholstered in an off-white brocade.

And sunk down in the middle of one of the couches, facing the door, was Ali. She was reading a folder, but she put it down when I entered.

"Landry."

"There you are," I said, as casually as I could manage, walking up to her. "A private summons, huh? And I thought you'd forgotten who I was."

"I'm so sorry about that. I really am. It's just really important for us to be discreet." She got up off the sofa and put her arms around me. She had to stand on tiptoes to do it. "Hey, I've missed you."

She spoke with a slight Southern twang, the residue of her years living in Fort Benning, Georgia, and Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

"Me, too." If I was perplexed before, by this time I was even more confused. She looked great, of course. Even more beautiful, which I found disconcerting. Ali was petite and slender-people tended to call her "pert" or "perky" or "spunky," words she hated, because she thought they were all basically synonyms for "short." When we were going out, she wore her hair short. Now it was long and flowing, down to her shoulders, and looked like she spent a lot of money getting it cut in some fancy salon. She'd done something to her eyebrows, too, made them sort of arched. She wore glossy lipstick with lip liner. The old Ali didn't wear much makeup; she didn't need it. She was beautiful, but you'd never call her stylish. She was like a tomboy who'd grown up. The new Ali was willowy, elegant, polished.

I liked the old Ali better, even if the new one was more striking.

"You look good," I said.

"Thanks. I like your jacket."

"You got it for me."

"I remember."

"It's the only decent blazer I own."

"No argument there. You did have the worst clothes."

"I haven't changed."

"That doesn't surprise me, Landry. You never liked change."

"That hasn't changed either," I said.

It's time," I said, clicking on the remote.

Sunday nights at nine; we never missed it. My favorite TV show. The Dog Shrink: an Australian canine therapist who specialized in helping troubled dogs, invariably with a happy ending.

This week's show was about a vicious Presa Canario/Cane Corso/pit bull mix owned by a frail-looking old lady. The dog was highly territorial and fiercely protective and was about to be put down after horribly mauling a neighbor boy.

The Dog Shrink called Missy-that was the dog's name-a "red-zone dog" and said, "Missy was not born a killer. Monsters are made, not born. Her aggressive behavior was created by her caretakers. I'm sure Missy was abused at an early age."

Ali lay on the couch doing paperwork, manila folders arrayed on the old steamer trunk that served as my coffee table. "I always wanted a dog," she said. "But my dad wouldn't allow it. He liked everything to be 'trig,' as he called it. Totally clean and neat and squared away. He said dog hairs get all over everything, and you never ever get them out."

She was an Army brat: Her dad had been a drill instructor, then a master sergeant. My father had been a Marine, so we had that military-family thing in common, too. She used to tell me all about her dad, how she loved shining his shoes and polishing his belt buckle and ironing his handkerchiefs and his uniform and all that. How proud she was of him. And yet how distant he was. If you're not an Army brat, she once told me, you'll never really understand. She liked to talk all about her background, her childhood, her brothers, her parents' lousy marriage. I never talked about that stuff at all.

"Don't forget the poop," I said.

"How come you don't have a dog, if you love dogs so much?"

"I'd consider it if they'd take turns picking up my poop."

"Seriously."

"It's a real commitment."

"Right. They just take and take and take, don't they?"

I shrugged, admiring her dry sarcasm but not taking the bait. "Someday I'll get one."

"Did you have a dog, growing up?"

I shook my head. "My dad didn't like them."

"Why not?"

"Who knows. Probably because dogs didn't like him. They're really good judges of character."

"And what did they see in him?"

"Remember the dad on The Brady Bunch?"

"Vaguely. What about him?"

"Well, my dad was kinda the opposite."

On the TV, the Dog Shrink said, "Missy is a very protective dog. Anytime she thinks her owner is being threatened, she'll attack." There was scary footage of Missy frothing and baring her fangs.

The Dog Shrink said, "Missy just needed to understand that not everyone is a threat to her owner. She had to learn not to be so protective. And do you know what her secret was-the real secret of her aggressiveness?" He stroked the dog under her chin. "She was frightened! That's what made her overcompensate. That's what made her so aggressive. So I had to show her there was no reason to be so afraid."

Cut to Missy after six weeks of intensive dog therapy, lying on her back, puppylike, licking the Dog Shrink's hand. "Now we see her in a state of calm submission," said the Dog Shrink.

"Aw, look at her," said Ali. "How cute is that?"

"Yeah," I said. "Look at that dog the wrong way, and I bet she still rips your throat out."

Ali laughed.

"Let me tell you something. Nobody ever really changes."

She laughed again, gave my face a playful slap. "Landry, no one makes me laugh the way you do."

She thought I was kidding.

What's going on?" I said. "You don't want these guys to figure out we used to be involved, is that it?"

"Yes."

"But so what?"

"Sit down, Landry. We need to talk."

"Words a guy never wants to hear."

She didn't seem to be in a lighthearted mood, though. She didn't laugh the way she normally might have.

"It's important," she said.

I sat next to her on the couch.

"How long have you been working for Cheryl Tobin?" I said.

"Since about a month after she started. So, almost three months."

"How'd that happen? I thought you were in HR."

"Only we call it People now," she said. "Cheryl heard about how I brought in this fancy new information-systems program to keep track of payroll and benefits, and she invited me to her office to talk. We just hit it off. She asked me to join the Office of the Chief Executive Officer. As her Executive Assistant in charge of Internal Governance, Internal Audit, and Ethics."

I could understand why Cheryl Tobin would have been impressed by Ali. She was not just smart but whip-smart, Jeopardy!-contestant-smart. She had what my dad used to call a "smart mouth," only when it came from him, it was never a compliment. She was quick-witted; her mind cycled a lot faster than most. She always said that came from growing up the only girl in a family with four brothers: she learned to talk fast and to the point in order to get what she wanted. As a guy who tends to be better at listening than at speaking, I always admired her ability to express herself at such lightning speed. If I'd been another kind of guy, we could have had the sort of verbal-sparring relationship that Spencer Tracy had with Katharine Hepburn. Instead, it was more like Katharine Hepburn doing a one-woman stage show.

"Last time I checked, we already have an Office of Internal Governance." I was never sure what the Office of Internal Governance did exactly-I imagined it as sort of like Internal Affairs in a police department. Checking up on the company to make sure all the procedures are followed, maybe.

"Sure. And an Office of Internal Audit. But she wanted me to directly oversee them."

"Meaning she didn't trust them to do their job right without supervision."

"You said it, not me."

I nodded. She smelled great. She always smelled great. At least her perfume hadn't changed-something by Clinique, I remembered. I'm not a guy who remembers the names of perfumes, but I once went out with a woman briefly who smelled just like Ali. It messed with my head, and I'd asked her what it was called. Then I asked her to stop using it. That pretty much ended that relationship.

"Where's your boss?" I said.

She pointed at a set of leather-covered double doors a few feet away. Cheryl's private office, I assumed. "On a call."

"Can she hear us?"

Ali shook her head.

The door to the outside corridor opened, and a flight attendant peered in, a beautiful Asian woman. "May I get you or your guest anything, Ms. Hillman?"

"Landry?" Ali said.

I shook my head.

"We're fine, Ming," she said. "Thank you." Ming nodded and shut the door.

"You like working for Cheryl?"

"I do."

"Would you tell me if you didn't?"

"Landry," she said. She tipped her head to one side, an expression I knew well, which meant: How can you even ask?

Ali never lied to me. I don't think she even knew how to be less than honest. Even if it risked offending me or hurting my feelings. Which was another thing I liked about her. "Sorry."

"If I didn't like it, I wouldn't do it," she said. "Cheryl's one of the most impressive women I've ever met. One of the most impressive people I've ever met. I think she's amazing."

I nodded. I wasn't going to ask her at that point if Cheryl was really as much of a bitch as everyone said. Probably wasn't the best time.

"And yes, I know how all these guys talk about her." She waved in the general direction of the main salon. "You think she doesn't know?"

"It's just grumbling," I said. "They're probably freaked out by having a woman running the show for the first time. Plus, they're nervous they'll get canned, too."

She lowered her voice, leaned in closer to me. "What makes you think she has that power?"

"She's the CEO."

"The board of directors won't let her fire any more senior or executive vice presidents without consulting them. And believe me, all these guys know that."

"You're kidding."

"After her first round of management changes, riots almost broke out on the thirty-third floor. Hank Bodine went to one of his buddies on the board and had a little talk, and the board met in emergency session to limit her hiring-and-firing authority. It's practically unprecedented. And it's outrageous."

"If Bodine has so many buddies on the board, why didn't they make him CEO instead of Cheryl?"

She shrugged. "You can bet he wonders the same thing. Maybe he didn't have enough supporters on the board. Maybe they thought he'd be too much of a bully-a bull in a china shop. Or maybe they wanted to bring in someone new, an outsider, to try to clean up the mess here. But whatever the reason, it wasn't a unanimous vote, I know that. Plus, they all know how valuable Bodine is to Hammond, and they don't want to lose him. Which was a real risk when they passed him over. So a fair number of board members are watching closely to see if she screws up. And if and when she does, they'll get rid of her, believe me."

"Does any of this have to do with why I'm here? Why am I here?"

"Well, Mike Zorn said no one knows more about the SkyCruiser than you. He said you're-how'd he put it?-a 'diamond in the rough.'"

Just then I was feeling more like a golf ball in the rough. "But he didn't recommend me as his stand-in, did he?"

Ali hesitated. "He did say you might be a little…junior."

"Hank Bodine was convinced that Cheryl put me on the list herself," I said. "She didn't, did she?"

"No, of course not," said a voice from behind us. The leather-clad double doors had opened, and Cheryl Tobin emerged. "I'd never even heard your name before. But Alison Hillman tells me you can be trusted, and I hope she's right."

12

She extended a hand. I stood and shook it. Her handshake was excessively firm, her hand icy cold.

"Cheryl Tobin," she said. She didn't smile.

"Nice to meet you. Jake Landry."

I'd never seen her up close. She was better-looking from a distance. Up close, she seemed all artifice. Her face was smooth and un-lined, but unnaturally so, as if she'd had a lot of roadwork-Botox or plastic surgery. Her makeup was a little too thick, masklike, and it cracked around her eyes. She gave me a steady, appraising look. "Alison tells me good things about you."

"All lies," I said.

"Oh, Alison knows better than to lie to me. Sit, please."

I sat down, more obedient than my golden retriever. She took a seat on the couch facing us, and said to Ali, "That was Hamilton Wender."

"And?" Ali said.

Cheryl lifted her head. "We'll talk." Then she turned to me. "I'll get right to the point. I'm sure you read my e-mail."

"Which one?"

She widened her eyes a bit. She was probably trying to raise her eyebrows, too, but Botox had frozen her forehead. "This morning."

"Oh, that. About the ethics. Yeah, it sounded nice."

"Sounded nice," she echoed, her voice as frosty as her handshake. You could almost see the icicles hanging down from her words. "Hmph."

"I always thought that Enron had the finest code of ethics I ever heard," I said, and immediately wished I'd kept my mouth shut.

She looked at me for a few seconds as if she wanted to scratch my eyes out. Then she smiled with her mouth, though not the rest of her face. "Quite the brownnoser, I see."

"Not working, huh?"

"Not exactly."

I shrugged. "I guess that's the advantage to being a low-level flunky. I'm not a member of the team. You know what they say: The nail that sticks up gets hammered down."

"Ah. So you don't stick up. That way you can say whatever you want. Even when you're face-to-face with the CEO."

"Something like that."

She turned to look at Ali. "You didn't tell me what a charmer he is, Alison."

Ali rolled her eyes, and said to me warningly, "Landry."

Cheryl leaned forward and fixed me with an intense stare. "What I'm about to tell you, Jake, is not to be repeated."

"Okay."

"Absolutely no one must know what I'm about to tell you. Is that clear?"

I nodded.

"I have your word on this?"

"Yes." What next: a pinkie swear, maybe?

"Alison assured me you could be trusted, and I trust her judgment. A few months ago I hired a D.C. law firm, Craigie Blythe, to conduct an internal corporate investigation into Hammond Aerospace."

I nodded again. I didn't want her to know that I'd already overheard Bodine telling Bross about it. Or that Zoл's friend in Corporate Security had revealed how they'd been going through the e-mails of a few top officers in the company. I couldn't help thinking, though: For a brand-new CEO to launch an investigation of her own company-that was almost unheard of. No wonder everyone hated her.

"Do you remember the trouble that Boeing got into a few years ago with the Pentagon acquisitions office?"

"Sure." That was a huge scandal. Boeing's CFO had offered a high-paying job to the head of the Air Force acquisitions office if she'd throw a big tanker deal their way. The woman they'd co-opted, or bribed, or whatever you want to call it-everyone called her "the Dragon Lady"-had power over billions of dollars in government defense contracts. She decided which planes and helicopters and satellites and such the Air Force would buy. "Didn't he go to prison?"

"That's right. So did she. And Boeing's CEO was forced to resign. Boeing had to pay a massive settlement, lost a twenty-three-billion-dollar deal, and their reputation was damaged for years. I was at Boeing at the time, and I remember it well. So you can bet that I'm not going to let anything like that happen at Hammond-not on my watch."

I just looked at her, waited for her to go on, not sure why she was telling me all this. Ali was watching her, too, but it looked as if she was waiting for a cue to start speaking.

"I'm sure you've heard the rumors about something similar going on here," she said. "That someone at the Pentagon-presumably the current chief of acquisitions-was given a bribe by someone at Hammond."

"To lock in that big transport plane deal we signed a few months back," I said. "Yeah, I've heard that. Sounded to me like Boeing got a way better deal than us."

"How so?"

"All the lady at the Pentagon got from Boeing was a two-hundred-fifty-thousand-dollar job that she actually had to show up and do. But what I heard, Hammond gave her successor-I don't know, they say it was a million bucks."

"Be that as it may," Cheryl said, unamused. "At first I dismissed these reports as just sour grapes-you know, how in the world did a second-tier player like Hammond Aerospace beat out both Boeing and Lockheed? But after I got here, I was determined to make sure there was no truth in the rumors. Alison?"

Ali shifted on the couch so she could address both of us at the same time. "The investigators at Craigie Blythe have already turned up some interesting things," she said.

"Such as?"

"What looks like a pattern of improper payments, both here and abroad."

"We're talking bribes, right?"

"Basically."

"Who?"

"We don't have names yet. That's one of the problems."

"Hey, you've got the name of whoever the Air Force acquisitions chief is now-why don't you just lean on him-or her?"

Ali shook her head. "This is a private investigation. We don't have subpoena power or anything like that."

"So why don't you tip off the government and have them take over?"

"No," Cheryl broke in. "Absolutely not. Not until we know who at Hammond was involved. And not until we know we have prosecutable evidence."

"How come?"

"It's tricky," Ali said. "Once the word spreads at Hammond, people will start destroying documents. Deleting evidence. Covering their tracks."

Cheryl said, "And the moment you bring in the U.S. Attorney's Office in a situation like this, it becomes a media circus. I saw that with Boeing. Their investigation will go on forever and become front-page news, and it'll do immeasurable harm to the company. No, I want this inquiry completely nailed down. Only then will we turn it over to the government-names, dates, documents, everything."

"That's why this whole thing has to be done under the radar," Ali said.

"Come on," I said, "you're telling me you have a team of lawyers flying in from Washington and interviewing people and combing through documents and poking around the company and no one's going to find out? I doubt it."

"So far, everything's been done remotely," Ali said. "They've got computer forensics examiners going through backup tapes of e-mail and financial records. Huge amount of stuff-gigabytes of data."

"Our in-house coordinator," said Cheryl, "is our general counsel, Geoff Latimer, and he's been tasked with keeping everything under wraps. He's one of only four people at Hammond who know. Well, five, now, counting you."

"Who else?" I said.

"Besides us and Latimer, just Ron Slattery." That was the new CFO, whom Cheryl had brought over from Boeing. He was generally considered to be her man, the only member of the executive council loyal to her. Which was another way of saying that he was her toady. Her hood ornament, some people called him. Her sock puppet.

"Oh, there's more than five who know about the investigation," I said.

Ali nodded. "The head of Corporate Security," she said, "and whoever he assigned to monitor e-mail. And probably Latimer's admin, too. So that makes eight people."

"More than that," I said.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Cheryl said.

"The word's out. I heard Hank Bodine tell Kevin Bross about the investigation."

"When was this?"

"This morning."

Cheryl gave Ali a penetrating look. "I suppose that explains why he's suddenly being so circumspect in his e-mails and phone calls."

He, I assumed, was Hank Bodine.

To me, she said: "You were in Hank Bodine's office?"

I nodded.

"Interesting. Do you go there often?"

"First time I've ever been there."

"What was the reason he asked you?"

"I think the real reason was to find out why you'd put me on the offsite list. He seemed awfully suspicious. He wanted to know if I knew you."

"Was he aware that you and Ali are acquainted?" Cheryl asked.

How much, I wondered, did she know? Had Ali told her about us?

I shook my head. "I don't think so. He would have said something."

For a few seconds she seemed to be watching the flat-screen TV. She wrinkled her nose, and said to Ali, "Do you smell cigars?"

Ali shook her head. "Cigars? I don't think so."

"The 'real reason,'" Cheryl repeated softly. "So there must have been an ostensible reason he asked to see you. A cover reason."

I was impressed: She was awfully smart. "He wanted me to find out why the E-336 crashed." I added, realizing she probably didn't know what I was talking about, "At the Paris Air Show, the-"

"I know all about it, believe me," she interrupted. "He wanted to know why, huh? That's also interesting. Did he tell you why he was so desperate to know?"

"Well, I wouldn't say he was desperate. He said he wanted to give Mike Zorn ammunition against Eurospatiale to help him 'trash' them."

"As if Mike needs that," she said, more to Ali than to me. "That's curious, isn't it?"

"How so?"

Cheryl glanced at Ali, then at me, obviously unwilling to answer my question. "Do you know who Clive Rylance is?"

"Of course." Clive Rylance was an Executive Vice President and the London-based chief of Hammond's international relations. That meant he oversaw all eighteen of our in-country operations around the world.

"Hank Bodine's planning to have a little chat with him at the lodge. To talk about some things he didn't want to put in an e-mail. I can't tell you how we know this." I had a pretty good idea, but I said nothing, waited for her to go on. "I want you to find out what they talk about."

I stared at her. "How?"

"Eavesdrop. Keep your eyes and ears open. Hang out at the bar with the rest of the guys. And feel free to bash me, if that helps you get in with them."

I smiled, didn't know what to say to that.

"I assume you get along with Hank, don't you? You seem to be a real guy's guy." She said it with obvious distaste, like I was an alcoholic or a pervert.

"Get along?" I said. "He barely notices me."

"Jake gets along with everyone," Ali said.

I gave her a raised-eyebrow look that I knew she got at once: Everyone but you, maybe. She shot me a playful scowl.

"If he doesn't notice you, that's actually a good thing," Cheryl said. "You're not a threat to him. You're invisible. He's not likely to be as careful around you as he might be with a member of the leadership team."

"You're asking me to spy," I said.

She shrugged. "Call it what you will. We need corroboration. We need to know where to point the investigators. Also, I want to know whether he mentions Craigie Blythe. Or Hamilton Wender, our lead attorney there."

I was momentarily confused. Hamilton Wender, Craigie Blythe-which was the law firm, and which was the lawyer. Finally, I said, "That's it?"

"Jake," Ali said, "it would be really helpful if you could find out whether Bodine or any of the other guys are talking about the Pentagon bribe thing. Even in some vague, indirect way. You know, sounding worried, warning each other, talking about deleting e-mails, like that. Because if we can narrow it down to certain individuals, the forensic investigators can use keywords and string searches and all that. Install applications that watch network traffic. Maybe we can speed things up."

"Anything that might indicate an illegal proffer of employment," Cheryl put in. "Any violation of policy that could conceivably get us in trouble. Any talk of 'gifts' offered as inducements to secure deals. Any mention of a 'special purpose entity.' Anything that strikes you as wrong. Anything."

I thought about Lummis's remark about greasing the skids and the way Bross signaled him to shut up. But I said, instead: "Like, if someone removes a mattress tag?"

Ali glared at me, but I could see the flicker of a smile she was trying to suppress.

"I think we understand each other," Cheryl said, little dabs of red appearing on each cheek like cherry syrup on a sno-cone.

I didn't like this at all. What Cheryl was asking me to do sounded like nothing more than serving as her stool pigeon-finding out who was talking about her behind her back, who was disloyal. I was beginning to wonder if all this high-flown talk about law firms and internal corporate investigations was just a cover for turning me into her ratfink. I thought for a while, didn't speak.

Cheryl said to Ali, "I definitely smell a cigar."

"Do you want me to check it out?" Ali said.

"Oh, no," Cheryl said. "I'll take care of it."

"You know," I said, "there's a complete change of cabin air every two to three minutes."

Cheryl looked at me blankly. She didn't seem impressed. I guess I couldn't blame her. Then I said, "Is this spy stuff supposed to come before the team-building exercises or after?"

Now she gave me a look of seething contempt, or so it appeared. It sure wasn't love and admiration, anyway. I could tell she was regretting that she'd ever been introduced to me.

"You may not hear anything," Cheryl said. "Then again, you may overhear something that helps us crack the case."

I remained silent.

"I'm sensing reluctance on your part," she said.

Ali, I noticed, was avoiding my eyes.

"I'm a little uncomfortable with it, yes," I admitted.

"I understand. But this could be a very good thing for you. An opportunity, if you take my meaning." She probably would have arched her brows if her forehead still worked.

I didn't quite get what kind of "opportunity" she was hinting at, but I knew she was offering me her own kind of bribe. "I don't know," I said. "Being a spy isn't really a skill set I was hoping to develop."

"Are you saying you won't do this for me?"

"I didn't say that." I stood up. "I'll think about it."

"I'd like an answer now," Cheryl said.

"I'll think about it," I repeated, and walked out.

I returned to my seat and went back to inspecting the photos of the plane crash. Bodine and his buddies were still toking on their stogies. The cabin was dense with smoke. My eyes started to smart.

And I thought about Cheryl Tobin and Ali and what they'd just asked me to do. It wasn't as if I felt any loyalty to Bodine or Lummis or any of those guys, but I didn't much like being recruited as a spy. I didn't like knowing that this was the real reason Cheryl wanted me here. But I trusted Ali's judgment, just as Cheryl did, and I knew she wouldn't have asked me to do something that she didn't think was important.

Just then I saw someone stride into the lounge at top speed, like a heat-seeking missile. It was Cheryl Tobin, her face tight with anger. She went up to Bodine's circle. I could see her talking to the two men, but I couldn't hear what she was saying. Her head was inclined. She was speaking calmly, whatever she was saying. The anger had suddenly vanished from her face; instead she looked almost chummy. She smiled, lightly touched Hank Bodine's forearm, then turned and walked calmly back to her cabin.

Then I watched as Hank Bodine, a broad unperturbed smile on his face, extinguished his cigar in his single malt. I couldn't see Hugo Lummis's face, but I saw him crush his cigar out in the mixed nuts.

I smiled to myself, shook my head, and went back to mulling over that whole scene with Cheryl and Ali. I was willing to do what they wanted, but only because Ali had asked. Still, I didn't like it. I was gradually becoming convinced that there was a lot more going on than anyone was telling me. By the time the plane landed, half an hour later, I'd gone from a low-level dread about the next four days to an uneasy suspicion that something bad was about to happen at the lodge.

I had no idea, of course.

13

The lodge was built on the side of a steep hill and rose above us, massive and rustic and beautiful. It was basically an overgrown log cabin, grand and primitive, probably a century old. It reminded me of one of those great old solidly constructed lodges you see in Yellowstone or the Adirondacks. The exterior was peeled logs, probably spruce, and the gaps between the logs were chinked not with cement mortar but creosote-treated rope. It was two stories, a steeply pitched roof shingled in salt-silvered cedar. A large front porch connected to a wooden plank walkway that wound down the hillside to a weathered dock.

The King Chinook Lodge was located on the shores of an isolated body of water called Shotbolt Bay, off Rivers Inlet, on the central coast of British Columbia, three hundred miles north of Vancouver. The only way to reach it was by private boat, helicopter, or chartered seaplane.

When they said the place was remote, that was an under-statement. This was as close to the middle of nowhere as I'd ever been.

"Remote," to me, described the little town in upstate New York where I grew up, fifty miles from Buffalo, in rural Erie County. The nearest shopping mall was twenty-five miles away, in West Seneca. The biggest event all year was the Dairy Festival, I kid you not. The most important event in the history of my town was when a school bus was hit by a northbound B & O freight train in 1934. No one was killed.

But my town was Manhattan compared to where we'd arrived.

The Hammond jet had landed on the northwest tip of Vancouver Island, at Port Hardy Airport, where we transferred to a couple of small seaplanes. After a quick flight, we landed on the water in front of a simple dock. The sun was low in the sky, a huge ochre globe, and it glittered on the water. The setting was pretty spectacular.

We were met by a guy around my age, who introduced himself as Ryan. He was wearing a dun-colored polo shirt with KING CHINOOK LODGE stitched on the left breast. He greeted us with a big smile and addressed everyone but me by name: obviously he remembered them from the year before, or maybe he'd brushed up. I almost expected him to hand us umbrella drinks, like this was Club Med.

"How was your flight?" He was a slight, lanky fellow with a thick thatch of sandy brown hair and clear blue eyes.

"Flights," Kevin Bross corrected him brusquely as he stepped onto the dock and walked past.

Hugo Lummis needed an assist onto the dock. He'd donned a pair of Ray-Ban Wayfarers and needed only a porkpie hat to look like one of the Blues Brothers. "Fish biting?" he asked the guy.

"Timing couldn't be better," said Ryan. "The Chinook are staging right now. I caught a forty-pounder yesterday, not two hundred feet from the lodge."

Another two dun-shirted guys, who looked Hispanic, were pulling crates of perishable foodstuffs from the back of the plane and unloading suitcases from the baggage hold.

Lummis said, "Last summer I caught a ninety-some-pounder with a Berkeley four-point-nine test line. I do believe that was a line-class record."

"I remember," Ryan said, nodding. Something very subtle in his expression seemed to indicate skepticism. Maybe Lummis's memory was exaggerated, but Ryan wasn't going to set him straight.

"This is one of the best sports-fishing lodges in the world," Lummis told me. "World-class."

I nodded.

"You fish?"

"Some," I said.

"Well, it don't take a lot of skill out here. Nor patience. Just drop the line in the water. But reeling 'em in ain't for wussies. Chinooks-that's what they call the king salmon-they're monsters. They'll straighten out your hook, break your line, tow your boat sideways. Tough fighters. Am I right or am I right, Ryan?"

"Right, Mr. Lummis," Ryan said.

Lummis gave Ryan a pat on the arm and started waddling up the steps to the lodge.

"First time here?" Ryan said to me.

"Yep. Didn't bring any fishing gear, though."

"No worries. We provide everything. And if you're not a fisherman, there's plenty of other things to do when you're not in your meetings or doing your team-building exercises. There's hiking and kayaking, too. And if you're not the outdoors type, there's the sauna and the hot tub, and tomorrow night it's the Texas Hold'em Tournament. So it's not all fishing, don't worry."

"I like fishing," I said. "Never gone salmon-fishing, though."

"Oh, it's the best. Mr. Lummis is right. We've got incredible trophy king salmon fishing. Forty-pound salmon's average, but I've seen 'em fifty, sixty, even seventy pounds."

"Not ninety?"

"Never seen one that big," Ryan said. He didn't smile, but his clear eyes twinkled. "Not here."

14

The long, deep porch was lined with rustic furniture-a long glider, a porch swing suspended by chains, a couple of Adirondack chairs-that all looked handmade, of logs and twigs. A different staff member held the screen door open for me as if he were a bell captain at a Ritz-Carlton, and I entered an enormous, dimly lit room.

I was immediately hit by the pleasant smells of woodsmoke and mulled apple cider. Once my eyes adjusted to the light, I realized I'd never seen a fishing lodge like this before.

I'm not the kind of guy who goes to hunting or fishing lodges. When my friends and I used to go hunting, we'd stay in someone's tumbledown shack. Or an outfitters tent. Or a cheap motel. So it wasn't like I was an expert in lodges.

But I'd never seen anything like this. A fishing lodge? This was the kind of place you might see in some big photo spread in Architectural Digest titled "The World's Most Exclusive Rustic Hideaways" or something.

There wasn't any check-in desk that I could see. I was in a so-called great room with walls of rough-hewn timber. The floors were wide cedar planks, mellow and worn. At one end was a giant, three-tiered fireplace made from river stone almost twenty feet wide and thirty feet high. Above it was a giant rack of six-point elk antlers. On another wall was a huge bearskin, its arms outstretched like Jesus on the cross. More tree-branch furniture here, but the couches and chairs were plump and overstuffed and upholstered in kilim fabric.

Our luggage had been collected in the center of the room and was being carried off by staff. Obviously we weren't supposed to schlep our own suitcases. We were the last load of passengers to arrive. Everyone else seemed to have checked in to their rooms.

A man with a clipboard came up to me. He was middle-aged, balding, had reading glasses around his neck.

He shook my hand. "I'm Paul Fecher, the manager. You must be Mr. Landry."

"Good guess," I said.

"Process of elimination. I remember all our returning guests. But we've got three new people, and two of them are women. Welcome to King Chinook Lodge."

"Nice place you got here."

"Glad you like it. If there's anything at all I can get you, please let me or any of our staff know. I think you've already met my son, Ryan."

"Right." The kid down at the dock.

"Our motto here is, the only thing our guests ever have to lift is a fishing rod. Or a glass of whiskey. But the whiskey's optional."

"Later, maybe," I said.

He looked at his watch. It was a cheap plastic quartz diving watch. I'd never really noticed watches before. "Well, you've got a couple of hours before you all get together for the cocktail party and the opening banquet. Some folks are taking naps. Couple of guys are working out in our gym downstairs. We've got a couple of cardio machines, a couple of treadmills, and free weights. Very well equipped. And if you just want to take it easy, we've got a traditional wood-fired cedar sauna." He gestured over to a bar at one end of the room, where Lummis was drinking with Clive Rylance. "And, of course, the bar's always open."

"I'll keep that in mind."

"Now, you're in the Vancouver Room with Mr. Latimer."

Geoffrey Latimer, the general counsel, was supposed to be a total stiff, straightlaced and humorless. He was also the one coordinating the internal investigation for Cheryl. That was an interesting choice. I doubted it was a coincidence.

"Roommates, huh?"

"There's twelve of you, and only seven guest rooms. You'll enjoy it. Take you back to summer camp." I never went to summer camp.

After I did the math, I said, "Twelve people and seven rooms, doesn't that mean not everyone gets a roommate?"

"Well, your new CEO, of course, gets her own suite."

"Of course." That meant that Ali got her own room, too.

Sharing a room with one of these guys. What a blast.

"Sounds like fun," I said.

15

Yeah, just like summer camp. Except that some of the campers got suites with Jacuzzis.

As I climbed the stairs, I glanced into one of the suites. Its door was open, and I could see that the room was pretty big. Ali was in there, unpacking her suitcase. She looked up as I passed by, gave me a smile.

"Hey," she said. "Cool place, huh?"

"Not bad. So, you get your own room, huh?"

She shrugged. "Yeah, well, Cheryl-"

"And I thought you'd be sharing a room with Hank Bodine."

"Yeah, right. Why don't you come in for a second?"

I did, and she closed the door behind me. I felt that tingle of anticipation down below that I used to get when we were alone behind closed doors together, but of course I banished all those impure thoughts from my mind. As much as possible, anyway.

"Listen, could you sit down for a second?"

I shrugged, sat in a rustic, tree-branch chair with a tapestry cushion, and she sat in one just like it, next to me.

"You think it's safe?" I said.

"Safe?"

"My being in here, I mean. I thought you didn't want any of the guys to know we're friends."

"Just be careful when you leave. Make sure no one sees you walk out of here."

I liked the furtive thing. It was kind of sexy, actually. If only there were sex involved. "Gotcha." Then I added, with a straight face, "I sure wouldn't want anyone to think we were having an affair."

She gave a faint smile. "Listen, about that meeting with-on the plane. You seemed a little pissed off."

"A little put off, maybe. Being a ratfink for the boss isn't exactly the career path I had in mind at Hammond."

"But that's not what she's asking you to do," Ali said, looking uneasy. "Just keep your ears open, see what you hear. That's all."

"So why do I get the feeling Cheryl's got an ulterior motive?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Can't really blame her. She's got the board of directors looking for an excuse to get rid of her and Hank Bodine stirring up trouble like some deposed shah, right? But now he and his buddies suspect their e-mail is being monitored, so wouldn't it be convenient to press some junior guy into service as your own private informer-your double agent?"

I could see the flush in her porcelain skin, and I knew right away I'd struck a nerve. I'd forgotten how transparent her emotions were. She really couldn't hide what she was feeling; her face was like a mood ring. Or maybe a billboard. For her sake, I hoped she didn't have to do much negotiation in her new job: She had a lousy poker face.

She shook her head. "Boy, do you underestimate that woman," she said. "She can handle any crap those guys throw at her, believe me. This is about flushing out evidence of a crime."

"Not about flushing Hank Bodine down the crapper?"

"It's about protecting the company from a huge legal nightmare, Landry." Her tone was peevish, even brittle.

"And if that ends up with Hank Bodine wearing an orange jumpsuit and handcuffs, doing the perp walk, so much the better."

"I wouldn't mind it. Admit it, you wouldn't, either."

"I don't really give a shit about the guy, frankly."

"The point is, if he or Hugo Lummis or Upton Barlow or anyone else in the company bribed a Pentagon official to get a contract, it's going to blow up in our faces. Just like it did at Boeing."

I paused. "Is this important to you?"

"Uh-uh, Landry. Don't do this for me."

Don't do it for me," she said.

Her voice was muffled, her head under the pillow.

"You've got that big meeting in the morning," I said. "Seven thirty, isn't it?"

She was right: Her apartment was noisy, and lately it had gotten even worse. A couple of gangbangers had begun to hang out on the street almost directly below her window, jeering and laughing and taunting each other, late into the night.

A cool night: the windows open. We lay, naked, under a goose-down duvet. We'd just made love, so I was groggy, but neither one of us could fall asleep now.

"I really need to move," she said.

"Move in with me."

She didn't reply.

"They're just kids, Ali. I'll go down there and tell them to shut up. For me, not for you."

She pulled the pillow off her head, stared at me. "You're serious? Landry, don't be crazy. They'll go after you."

"I can deal."

"No way."

I was silent.

"They're assholes, Landry. Never let an asshole rent space in your head." She got up, padded over to the bathroom, returned with some orange foam earplugs, handed me a couple. They looked like little nipples. She rolled the other pair into thin cylinders, put them in her ears.

In ten minutes, she was asleep. Not me.

A beer bottle smashed on the sidewalk. A shouted obscenity.

Inside me, the bad wolf was growling, wanting to be fed.

When I was sure she was deep asleep, I got up, dressed, went down to the street.

In the yellow streetlight, the two BGs-Baby Gangsters, as they were called-were laughing, punching each other, posturing. Shaved heads or backward baseball caps, sagging jeans. I walked up to them. One of them laughed, said something obscene; the other just looked at me. Maybe they were sixteen, seventeen. Aspiring members of some Latino street gang. I'd learned to handle kids like that at Glenview.

I said nothing. I just stared them down.

The two of them backed away, instinctively. They'd seen something in my face.

I slipped back between the cool sheets, my heart thudding. A close call, I thought. Far too close. As long as I felt the need to protect her, I knew the bad wolf was going to win.

Ali mumbled in her sleep and turned over.

Oh, come on, Ali," I said. "You know that's why you brought me in. You knew I could never say no to you. Given our history."

She stared at me for a few very long seconds. "Given our history," she said softly, "I was taking a big risk you'd tell us both to go to hell." She saw me about to protest, and she quickly went on, "I suggested you to Cheryl because you're the only one I trust."

I didn't know what to say, so I said nothing. She looked down, then suddenly brushed her hand along my pant leg, down my outer thigh. "You've got dog hair all over your pants."

I felt a jolt, even though I knew she didn't mean anything by it. "I should probably buy a lint brush," I said.

"My dad always said-"

"I remember. But I don't mind. It's like smelling a woman's perfume on your sweater. A nice reminder."

She smiled as if secretly amused by something. "You still going out with that blonde with the big tits?"

"Which one?"

"The one who looks like a cheap slut."

"Which one?"

"The one I saw you out to dinner with at Sushi Masa."

"Oh, her. No, that's over." I tried not to show my surprise. I didn't know she'd seen me out on a date. Was I hearing some kind of vestigial jealousy in her voice?

She nodded. "I thought you hate sushi."

"I'm not really into blondes either."

"You seemed to be into both that night. You know how many times I tried to get you to go to that place?"

"You should take it as a sign of respect and intimacy that I didn't go with you. I felt safe enough with you to reveal my true, deep inner dislike of raw fish."

"That's nice," she said dubiously.

"So, are you in a relationship these days?"

"It's been too crazy at work. You?"

I nodded.

"But not a blonde."

"Oh, this one's a blonde too, actually."

"Huh. What's her name?"

"Gert."

"Gert?"

"Short for Gertrude."

"Sounds real sexy. What does she do?"

"Loves to run. And eat. Loves to eat. She'd never stop if I didn't limit her to two meals a day."

"Are we talking eating disorder here?"

"Nah, it goes with the breed."

She gave me a playful punch, but it landed hard. A strong girl. "So, you're still working for Mike Zorn."

"Of course."

"Yeah," she said, "you wouldn't want to move up or anything. Since a promotion is a kind of change, huh?"

"He's a nice guy. It's a good job."

"I bet you still have that junky old Jeep, don't you?"

"Still drives great."

"Probably didn't even replace that front right quarter panel, did you?"

"Doesn't affect the ride," I said.

"Looks like crap, though."

"Not from behind the steering wheel."

She smiled, conceded the point. Then she said, "You never congratulated me, by the way. On my new job."

I arched my eyebrows. I can do that. I haven't had Botox.

"Right," she said. "I'd forgotten about Jake-speak. No need to say what you know I know you know, right? Like, obviously you're happy for me, why should you say it out loud? Why waste words?"

"Talk's overrated," I said. "Of course I'm happy for you."

We fell silent for a few seconds. "Is this going to be-I don't know, complicated for us?"

"Complicated? You mean, you and me?"

I nodded.

"Because we used to sleep together?"

"Oh, right-we did, didn't we?"

"I don't think it'll be complicated, do you?"

I shook my head. Of course it would. How could it not? "Not at all," I said. "So, do we know each other?"

"Huh?"

"When we run into each other next couple of days. Are we supposed to pretend that we've never met?"

She dipped her head as if thinking. "Maybe we've seen each other around. But we don't know each other's names. We've never been introduced."

"Gotcha."

We sat there for a few seconds in silence. I didn't want to leave. I liked being around her. Looking at her. Being in her presence. Inhaling her smell. Then she stood up. "I should get back to work. I have to go over Cheryl's remarks with her. So, just be careful leaving here, okay?"

I nodded, got up, and went over to the door. I opened it slowly, just a crack. I looked out, saw no one in the hall. Then I slipped out-and saw a couple of guys standing a few feet away at the top of the landing, whispering. On the other side of the door, where I hadn't seen them.

I recognized both of them, though I'd never met either. One was the corporate controller, John Danziger. He was tall and lean and broad-shouldered, around forty, with thinning blond hair and gray-blue eyes. He looked like an all-American preppy jock from an Abercrombie & Fitch catalogue. The other was the treasurer, Alan Grogan, around the same age and height, but slighter of build. He had thick, wavy dark brown hair touched with gray, hazel green eyes, a wide mouth, a sharp chin, and a prominent, aquiline nose.

As soon as Danziger noticed me, he stopped whispering. Grogan turned around, gave me a sharp look, and the two men parted abruptly, without another word, walking in separate directions.

Very strange.

16

The door to the Vancouver Room was open. The walls and ceiling were unpainted, rough-hewn pine boards; the floorboards, smooth wideboard pine. All the furniture-the two large beds, armoire, and desk-was rustic and looked handmade. Big puffy down comforters on the beds. A window overlooked the ocean.

Geoffrey Latimer was already in there, unpacking. He looked up as I entered. He looked around fifty. He had warm, sincere brown eyes, the trusting eyes of a child. Graying light brown hair, perfectly Brylcreemed and combed into place and parted on the side. His face was reddened and chafed, like he had psoriasis or something. "I don't believe we've met," he said. "Geoff Latimer."

He shook my hand, his grip firm and dry. His fingernails looked bitten. He was a worrier.

Latimer was thin and wore chinos and a navy-and-gray-striped golf shirt. His clothes looked like they came from the men's department at Sears. He also gave off the faint whiff of Old Spice, which reminded me, unpleasantly, of my father.

"Jake Landry. I'm filling in for Mike Zorn."

He nodded. "Those are big shoes to fill."

"Do my best."

"Just don't let the turkeys get you down."

"How so?"

"They're just middle-aged frat boys."

I gave him a blank look.

"Lummis and Bross and those guys. They're bullies, that's all. Take it with a grain of salt."

I was surprised he'd even noticed. "It's no big deal," I said.

He turned back to his suitcase, working methodically, like a surgeon, transferring impeccably folded clothes from a battered old suitcase to dresser drawers. Even his T-shirts and boxer shorts were folded into little squares.

"You'll see the same posturing when it comes to the silly team-building exercises," he said. "Those guys are always competing with each other. Who can climb higher or pull harder, that kind of thing. They don't want you showing them up."

"Show them up how?"

"Outdoing them. Climbing higher or pulling harder. You can't win either way. But you seem to take it well."

I smiled. Latimer was shrewder and more insightful than I'd expected. I knew he was coordinating the internal corporate investigation, but I wasn't sure whether he knew that I'd been told about it. Or that I'd been asked to help. So I decided I'd better not let on that I knew about it. Maybe wait for him to bring it up.

I unzipped my suitcase and started unpacking, too. My clothes were a jumbled mess. I'd tossed them in there in about five minutes. We unpacked in silence for a while. I noticed him take a handful of syringes out of the suitcase, an orange plastic kit, a couple of vials of something, and put them all in a dresser drawer. I didn't say anything. Either he was a heroin addict or a diabetic. Diabetic seemed a little more likely.

He looked over at me. "That all you brought?"

I nodded.

"Travel light, huh?" Latimer said.

What?" Ali said. "I travel light."

She'd started unpacking a duffel bag. Not her usual small overnight bag-a change of clothes, a toothbrush, the mysterious arsenal of cosmetics-but things that signified a longer stay.

"Not as light as usual," I said, keeping my tone casual.

She stopped, a couple of pairs of silk panties in her right hand. "Hey, Landry, correct me if I'm wrong here. But aren't you the one who keeps telling me to just move in?"

"Ah, okay." Spoken with more conviction this time. I gave her an encouraging, if forced, smile.

"Just the essentials," she said, putting the panties in an empty drawer in my dresser, patting them in place. "So I don't have to keep lugging all my stuff around, like a Gypsy."

"Great."

Her back was turned to me now, but she heard it in my voice. "You don't want me here, Landry, just say the word."

"Oh, come on," I said.

Later, in bed, her legs twined around mine: "How come you never talk about your childhood?"

"There's nothing to talk about," I said.

"Landry."

"It's not interesting."

"I'm interested."

"I'm not."

She made a quiet hmmph sound. "You're hiding something, aren't you?"

A jolt in my stomach, maybe more like a little twinge. I turned, a bit too quickly. Saw the playful gleam in her eye. "I'm in the Witness Protection Program."

"Mafia informer," she said, nodding sagely.

"Drug cartel," I said.

She ran her fingers along the bridge of my nose, down my lips, tracing a straight line to my chin. "The plastic surgeon did a nice job."

"Good enough for government work."

"Of course, for all I know, you really are in the Witness Protection Program." Her eyes told me she was no longer joking. "Given how little you talk about yourself. I feel like I don't know any more about you than what's on the surface."

"Maybe that's all there is." I started feeling uncomfortable. "Isn't it almost time for my dog show?"

"That's on Sunday nights, Landry."

I snapped my fingers. "Rats."

"You know what you remind me of? Remember when we went to Norman Lang Motors to buy your Jeep, and we saw that huge black SUV with those opaque tinted windows? Totally blacked out?"

"The Pimpmobile. Yeah, it was a Denali. What about it-I'm a pimp? I'm gangsta?"

"You see a car like that in traffic, and you turn to look at who's inside, but you can't see in. So you stare, longer than you usually might. For all you know, they're staring back at you. But you have no idea who's in there. That's you."

"Ali, I think you've been spending too much time watching Pimp My Ride," I said, suppressing a surge of annoyance. "I'd say I'm more like the sign they had on the Jeep's windshield. Remember what it said?"

She shook her head.

"It said AS IS. Okay? That's me. What you see is what you get. Don't go looking for hidden secrets. There aren't any."

"I think there's a lot more to you than you want me to see."

"Sorry," I said. "Deep down, I'm shallow." I clicked on the TV. "Today's Monday, right?"

You married, Jake?" Latimer said.

"Nope."

"Planning on it?"

"No danger of it happening anytime soon."

"Hope you don't mind me saying, but you should. You need a stable home life if you want to make it in business, I've always thought. Wife and kids-it anchors you. It's a safe place. A refuge when work gets stressful."

"I just drink," I said.

He looked at me keenly for a second.

"I'm kidding," I said. "You got kids?"

He nodded, smiled. "A daughter. Twelve."

"Nice age," I said, just because that seemed like the thing to say.

His smile turned rueful. "It's a terrible age, actually. In the course of a month I went from a guy who couldn't do anything wrong to a guy who can't do anything right. A loser. Uncool."

"Can't wait to have kids, myself," I said with a straight face.

We changed into dinner clothes. Latimer's boxer shorts were white with green Christmas trees and red candy canes on them. "Christmas gift from my daughter," he said sheepishly. He was scrawny, with a smooth, pale, hairless belly and spindly legs. His skin was milky white, like he'd never been in the sun.

He put on gray dress slacks, a white button-down shirt, a black belt with a shiny silver buckle. When he'd finished changing, he took out a BlackBerry from his briefcase. A few seconds later, he said, "Oh, right. I keep forgetting. No signal here. I'm addicted. You know what they call these things, right? Crackberries?"

I'd only heard that about a hundred thousand times. "That's good," I said, and smiled.

"Don't know if you're a gadget guy like me, but here's my latest toy," he said proudly, pulling out an iPod. "Ever see one of these?"

Not one that old, actually. "Sure."

"My daughter got it for me. I've even learned how to download music. You like show tunes?"

I shrugged. "Sure." I hate show tunes.

"Feel free to borrow it whenever. I've got Music Man and Carousel and Guys and Dolls and Kismet. And Finian's Rainbow-you ever see Finian's Rainbow?"

"I don't think I have, no."

"The best ever. Even better than Man of La Mancha. We love musicals at home. Well, mostly it's my wife and I, nowadays. Carolyn only listens to bands with obscene names like The Strokes, I think they're called."

"Maybe I'll take a listen sometime."

"You know, I've always thought that so much of what goes on in the business world is like a musical. A stage play. A pageant."

"Never thought of it that way."

"Much of it's about perceptions. About how we perceive things, more than what's really going on. So Hank and Hugo and Kevin and all those guys look at you and think you're a kid, you're too young to know anything. Whereas in truth, you could be every bit as smart or qualified as any of them."

"Yeah, maybe. So what happens tonight?"

"The opening-night banquet. Cheryl gives a talk. The facilitator gives a rundown on the team-building exercises tomorrow. I talk at dinner tomorrow night. Lot of blabbing."

"What's your talk about?"

"Ethics and business."

"In general, or at Hammond?"

He compressed his lips, zipped up his suitcase, and placed it neatly at the back of the clothes closet. "Hammond. There's a win-at-any-cost culture in this company. An ethical rottenness, sort of a hangover from Jim Rawlings's hard-charging style. Cheryl's doing what she can to clean it up, but…" He shook his head, never finished his sentence.

Latimer was a real type: the clothes, the hair, the packing, everything conservative and by the book. A real rules-loving guy. I guess every company needs people like that.

But I was a little surprised to hear him criticize our old CEO. Rawlings had, after all, named Latimer general counsel. They were said to have been close.

"What's she doing to clean it up?" I said.

He hesitated, but only for a second or two. "Making it clear she won't tolerate any malfeasance."

"What sort of 'malfeasance' are you talking about?"

"Anything," he said, not very helpfully.

I didn't press it. "You think Rawlings encouraged that sort of stuff?"

"I do. Or he'd look the other way. There was always this feeling that, you know, there's Boeing and there's Lockheed; and then there's us. The predator and the prey. We were the little guy. We had to do whatever it took to survive. Even if we had to play dirty."

He was silent. He seemed to be staring out at the ocean.

"The big guys play dirty sometimes, too," I said.

"Lockheed cleaned up their act quite some time ago," Latimer said. "I know those guys. Boeing-well, who knows? But even if Boeing plays dirty, that doesn't justify our doing it. This is something Cheryl's really concerned about. She wants me to rattle some cages."

"That's not going to make you very popular around here."

He sighed. "A little late for that. I'm probably going to ruin some people's dinners tomorrow night. No one wants to hear doom-and-gloom stuff. But you've got to get their attention somehow. Like I always say, pigs get slaughtered."

He went quiet again. Then he said, "Look at this," and beckoned me to the window.

I crossed the room to the window. Off to the left, the sun was low on the horizon, a fat orange globe. The ocean shimmered. At first I didn't know what he was calling my attention to-the sunset, maybe? That seemed somehow, I don't know, sentimental for a guy like that. Then I noticed a dark shape moving in the sky. An immense bald eagle was dropping slowly toward the water. Its wingspan must have been six feet.

"Wow," I said.

"Watch."

With a sudden, swift movement, the eagle swooped down and snatched something up in its powerful talons: a glinting silver fish. Predator and prey, I almost said aloud, but that was just too self-evident to say without sounding like a moron.

We watched in silent admiration for a few seconds. "Boy," I finally said, "talk about symbolism."

Latimer turned to look at me, puzzled. "What do you mean?"

So maybe he wasn't all that insightful after all. "Then again, it's just a fish," I said.

17

Geoff Latimer announced that he was going downstairs and invited me to join him, but I told him, vaguely, that I had a couple of things to finish up. When he'd left the room, I pulled out my laptop to take another look at those photos of the crash that I'd downloaded on the flight over.

Theoretically, I guess, I was doing it because Hank Bodine had asked me to. But by then I'd become curious myself. A brand-new plane crashes-at an air show, of all places-you can't help wondering why.

And then there was Cheryl's remark, which was pretty much what Zoл had said: What difference did it make, really, what the reason for the crash was? We didn't need to know why it had gone down in order to sell more of our planes. It was, as Bodine liked to say, a no-brainer. Every airline in the world that had ordered the E-336 had to be a little freaked out by the crash.

So why did Hank Bodine want to know? I had a feeling, based on Cheryl's expression and the way she'd looked at Ali, that there had to be something else going on.

And, of course, I was determined to get to the bottom of that crash. If for no other reason than to figure out what was really going on.

And here was the weird thing: According to one of the reports Zoл had sent me, the E-336 had made maybe twenty test flights before the Paris Air Show. That's the high-altitude equivalent of a new car. When you take delivery of a new car, it's always going to have a few miles on the odometer, from the test drive at the factory to the predelivery inspection at the dealership. Twenty test flights-that was nothing. That was brand-spanking-new.

So there had to be something wrong with the plane, and I knew that the Eurospatiale consortium sure as hell wasn't going to admit it. They'd blame the weather or pilot error or bad karma or whatever they could get away with claiming.

All I could tell from examining the photographs was that the hinges had ripped out of the composite skin of the flap. But why? The hinges were cut into the flap and glued on with a powerful epoxy adhesive. They sure as hell weren't supposed to rip out. After twenty years, maybe. Not after twenty short hops between Paris and London.

For a couple of minutes I stared at the damaged flap, until something itched at the back of my mind. A pattern was starting to emerge. A possible explanation.

I zoomed in as close as I could before the photograph disintegrated into pixels. Yes. At that resolution I could see quite clearly the cracks at the stress concentration points. And the telltale swelling in the composite skin. "Brooming," it was called. It happened when moisture somehow got into the graphite epoxy, which had a nasty habit of absorbing water-sucked it up like a sponge. And that could happen for a number of reasons, none of them good.

Such as a design flaw in the plane itself. Which was the case here, I was convinced.

I knew now why the plane had gone down, and I was certain Hank Bodine wouldn't want to hear the explanation. He'd regret ever asking me to look into it.

Unless…

Unless, say, he already knew the cause and wanted me to find it out for myself. But that was too complex, too convoluted, and I couldn't see any possible logic in that. I wondered whether Cheryl knew more about the crash than she'd let on. Was it possible, I wondered, that she already knew what I'd just found out?

With a sinking feeling, I realized, too, that as much as I wanted to steer clear of the power struggle between Cheryl Tobin and Hank Bodine, I was already deeply embroiled in it.

I went downstairs to find Bodine and tell him what I'd learned.

18

As I came down the stairs I heard loud voices and raucous laughter emanating from the bar. Hugo Lummis was clutching a tumbler of something brown and seemed to have a real buzz on. He was talking to a guy I recognized as Upton Barlow, the chief of Hammond's Defense Division. Barlow was tall, with sloped shoulders, looked like an athlete. Deep lines were etched around his mouth, a stack of parallel lines carved into his forehead. He had receding gray hair, little black eyes like raisins, a pursed mouth.

The two of them seemed to be trading travel horror stories. They were both members of the million-mile frequent flyer club, and it sounded like they didn't much like Europeans.

"Ever notice the crappy plastic toilet seats?" Lummis was saying. "Even in the good hotels? And the weird way they flush, like with metal plates on the wall or whatever?"

"No, it's the showers that are the worst," Barlow put in. "They're made for midgets."

I looked around the huge main room, saw Geoff Latimer sitting by himself in a big overstuffed chair, reading the Wall Street Journal. I didn't see Hank Bodine, though, or Clive Rylance.

"Good luck finding an ice machine in your hotel," Lummis said. "Ask for Coke and you get it as warm as a bucket of spit. Must be some European Union law against ice."

"You can't even watch the news in your hotel room," Barlow said. "You put on CNN, and it's all different. You get, like, a forty-five-minute report on Nairobi or Somaliland or something."

I had a feeling the Europeans didn't like them much, either.

"Why don't you join us, fella?" Lummis said to me.

I hesitated for an instant. Having a drink with these old goats was just about the last thing I wanted to do. If Hank Bodine was going to have a talk with Clive Rylance, I should probably find some way to eavesdrop. If they weren't down here, maybe I could find Ali and pretend to introduce myself so I could spend some more time with her.

But then I reminded myself that if I was really going to help Ali uncover evidence about a bribe paid to the Pentagon, the two guys at the bar were exactly who I should be hanging out with. If a bribe had really been made to someone in the Pentagon, it would be surprising if these two didn't know about it. Both of them schemed night and day to sell planes to the Air Force and were willing to do anything to make the sale. If there was a conspiracy, they'd have to be two of the key players.

Upton Barlow picked up on my silence, and said, "Aw, he doesn't want to sit with us old farts."

"Sure, that would be great," I said, walking down the bar and sitting in the stool next to Upton Barlow. I introduced myself.

"I'm sure I've gotten e-mails from you," Barlow said, shaking my hand. "Mike Zorn's assistant, right?"

"That's right." I was surprised he remembered who I was.

"But Mike's not going to be here, is he?"

I started to answer, but Barlow turned away to greet someone else who'd just come down the stairs. It was Clive Rylance, an intense-looking, dark-haired, handsome man who looked as if he'd been carved out of a block of granite. He had an oblong head and a square jaw. He had a heavy beard that he probably had to shave twice a day. He should have been cast in the James Bond movies instead of the guy they have now.

"Well, if it isn't Clive Rylance, international man of mystery," Barlow said.

Rylance put one hand on Hugo's shoulder and, with the other, reached over and shook Barlow's. Actually, they seemed to be trying to crush each other's hands. "Gentlemen," he said.

"Speak for yourself," said Lummis. "You know everyone here, right? Don't know if you've met…Golly, what's your name again?"

"Jake Landry," I said, shaking with Rylance.

"Clive," Rylance said. "So are you a new member of the executive team?"

"Just filling in for Mike Zorn," I said.

"Good," he said. He looked around at the others and laughed. "Phew. I was starting to feel real old there for a second."

"You just fly in from Paris?" said Barlow.

"Yesterday," Rylance said. "I had a dinner in New York last night."

"Oh yeah? Where'd you eat?" Lummis said. I had a feeling Hugo Lummis dined out a lot, judging from his girth.

"Per Se."

"You actually got a table?" Barlow said.

Rylance shrugged. "Come on, man."

"Yeah, what am I saying? If anyone can wangle a reservation, it's you," Barlow said. "So you have that risotto with the truffles from Provence?"

"The Kobe beef with the marrow," Rylance said. "Fantastic."

"I don't know why everyone says it's not as good as French Laundry," Hugo Lummis said. "I think it's even better. But I think we're leaving our friend Jake out of the conversation, aren't we?"

"Not at all," I said. "Never heard of French Laundry, but I'd put it up against Roscoe's House of Chicken 'N Waffles any day."

"Chicken and waffles?" Rylance said, disgusted.

Lummis wheeled his stool around to look at me, and said, "Say, I love that place."

"Admit it," I said, "given a choice between some microscopic piece of beef at that Laundry place and Herb's special at Roscoe's, you wouldn't hesitate, would you?"

"Roscoe's, for sure," Lummis agreed. "Ever had their candied yams?"

But Rylance wasn't interested. "Anyone seen Hank around?" he said.

"Last I heard, he was hot on Cheryl's trail," Barlow said. "Had something he wanted to raise with her."

"Raise all the way up her ass, I suspect," said Lummis. "So, Jake, you ready to be inspired and motivated by our fearless leader?" He fanned his hands in the air like a preacher rousing his flock. "The symbol of our company is the lion," he said in a falsetto, not a bad imitation of Cheryl Tobin. "And I'm here to make that lion roar."

I laughed politely, and both Rylance and Barlow guffawed loudly, then Barlow leaned in close to the guys and muttered out of the side of his mouth, "It is a goddamned gynocracy around here these days."

The bartender took my order-another Macallan single-malt, only he didn't ask me how old-and Rylance pulled up a stool on Lummis's other side. Then Kevin Bross passed by, wearing black workout shorts and a black sleeveless shirt that showed off his sculpted physique. He was drenched with sweat. The watchband of his heart-rate monitor was beeping rapidly. Bross had broad shoulders and a narrow waist and looked like he spent a lot more hours in the gym than at the office. As he walked behind me, he bumped up against my only good shirt with his slick arm, dampening my shoulder.

"Good workout, Coach?" Clive Rylance said. "Hey, did someone strap a time bomb on you or something?"

"Huh?" Bross said.

"Sounds like you're about to explode."

"Oh, that," Bross said, and he reached under his shirt and tugged at a chest strap. It came off with a Velcro crunch. "Heart-rate monitor. What about you, big guy? Brits don't exercise?"

Rylance hoisted his tumbler of Scotch. "Just my left hand," he said.

"Guess your right hand doesn't need the exercise, huh?" Bross said.

They both laughed.

"We gonna do Zermatt again this year, Kev?" Barlow said. "I want to see you wipe out doing the slalom again. That was a blast."

"Cram it, Upton," Bross said jovially, "or I'll tell them what happened to you at the top of the Blauherd lift."

Barlow tipped his glass and laughed. "Touchй. So, is the sauna coed this year?"

"Clothing optional, I hope," Rylance said, and everyone cracked up.

Just then I saw Hank Bodine-or, to be accurate, I heard him. He was standing in one of the alcoves on the other side of the room, hands on his hips, talking to someone.

No, actually, he was yelling at someone.

As soon as I realized that the person he was chewing out was Ali, I jumped up from my seat and, without thinking, bolted across the room.

19

Ali was sitting in a chair while Bodine stood right in front of her, obviously trying to intimidate. She'd changed into a white skirt and a peach-colored silk blouse, cut just low enough to emphasize the swell of her breasts, and she looked stunning.

She also looked angry.

I could hear Bodine saying, "You want me to take this up with Cheryl, that it?" He was clearly holding back a great deal of anger and was on the verge of letting loose.

"Obviously I can't stop you from talking to Cheryl," she said. "You can do whatever you want. But not before the meeting starts. Sorry. She's busy."

I stopped a ways off, not wanting to barge in. Ali had put on a fresh coat of lipstick and lined her lips, too. She had gold bangles on her wrists and a necklace of tiny gold beads interspersed with large teardrops of polished green turquoise. Matching gold-and-turquoise earrings.

"This sure as hell isn't the offsite agenda I cleared," Bodine said.

"The agenda changed," Ali said. "You're not the CEO. You don't get to clear the agenda."

"Well, sweetheart, I never heard a single goddamned mention of anyone giving a speech here called 'Hammond and the Culture of Corruption.'"

Ali shrugged. "I'm sorry…Hank." I could tell she was about to counter that "sweetheart" with something acerbic but thought better of it. "That was a last-minute addition."

"You don't make last-minute additions without running them by me first. That's how it's always worked."

"I guess things have changed, Hank." Ali folded her legs. I thought I saw a ghost of a smile flit across her face, as if she were enjoying facing him down.

Bodine rocked back on his heels. He took his hands off his hips and folded them across his chest. "Correct me if I'm wrong, young lady, but isn't this your first year here? So I don't think you know the first thing about how things are supposed to work."

"I know what Cheryl asked me to-"

"Let me tell you something," Bodine said. "You are making a serious mistake. I'm going to do you a favor and pretend none of this ever happened. Because I am not going to have my team demoralized by unsubstantiated accusations and rumors about 'corruption' in this company. And if the board of directors gets wind of the fact that your goddamned boss is trying to throw mud and level charges that have no basis, heads are going to roll. And I don't just mean yours. You hear me?"

Ali gave him a long, styptic look. "I hear your threats loud and clear, Hank. But the agenda stands."

"That's it," Bodine said, raising his voice almost to a shout. "What room is she in?"

"Cheryl's preparing her remarks," Ali said. "She really doesn't want to be disturbed."

I could no longer hang back and watch Bodine talk to her that way. He was really starting to piss me off. I walked up to him, tapped him on the shoulder. "What's that your daddy always told you about how to talk to a lady?" I said lightly.

Bodine looked at me with fury. I said, "I got you the information you wanted. About the E-336."

"You," he said, jabbing his index finger into my chest. His voice rumbled, and his cheeks were flushed. "You might want to watch your ass." Then he strode away.

As soon as he was gone, I leaned forward and extended my hand to Ali. "I'm Jake Landry," I said.

20

I guess he's just not that into you," I said.

"What'd you do that for?" I could tell she was secretly pleased but didn't want to let on.

"Because I don't like bullies."

"I didn't need your help, you know."

"Who says I was trying to help?"

"You butted in. You shouldn't have."

"I didn't like hearing him talk to you like that."

"Thanks, but I can handle Hank Bodine. I don't need a protector."

"That's obvious."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It's called a compliment. You handled him great. Way better than I could have."

She looked momentarily appeased. "Anyway, the idea was for you to get on his good side. Not alienate him."

"I don't think he has a good side. Plus, alienating him is more fun."

"He could get you fired."

"Your boss can overrule him."

"Not if she gets fired herself."

She had a point. "I could always move back to upstate New York and get a job with the cable company again. Maybe the vent-pipe factory."

"The factory's probably out of business by now. Just like every other company there."

"True."

She glanced at her watch. "I think Cheryl needs me. The reception's about to begin." She stood up. "Nice to meet you, Jake. It was really great."

It was really great, the note read. I'm sorry.

One of her cards-ALISON HILLMAN in engraved letters on thick cream stock-propped on the bathroom sink. Where she knew I'd see it when I got up.

It was only a couple of days after she'd first brought the big suitcase over to my apartment. Her toothbrush was missing, her silk panties, her extra set of work clothes.

When I finally reached her on her cell, later that morning, she sounded harried. She said she couldn't talk: She had someone about to come in for a meeting. She said she wasn't angry or anything, she just thought this was for the best. We wanted different things, that was all.

Then I heard her speak to someone in the room, a different Ali voice: welcoming and warm. I could hear her big radiant smile. When she got back on the phone with me, she was all business.

That night I called her again.

"I don't know, Landry," she said. "Sometimes I think there's something frozen inside you. I don't know. But now I get it about the 'As Is' sign."

I sent her a couple of long, heartfelt e-mails-I found it easier to express myself through the impersonal machinery of the keyboard and the computer monitor. Her answers were polite but brief.

I figured that she'd seen something in me, something that didn't sit well with her. Over the years, since the nightmare of my teen years, I'd been building a tall privacy fence inside me, using the finest lumber, making sure the boards butted right up against each other so no one could see between the cracks.

But maybe she could. Or maybe she just didn't like my carpentry.

A month or so later I was at an Irish bar in downtown L.A. with some friends-the motto in the window, in pseudo-Gaelic lettering: "We pour, you score"-when I spotted Ali sitting by herself at a small table in the back. She was dressed in black, a tall glass of black liquid in front of her: Guinness stout. I sat down in the other chair.

"Hey," I said.

"Hey." A note of melancholy? Maybe I was imagining things.

Then I noticed the second glass, the bottle of Rolling Rock. "Oh, sorry-someone's sitting here."

"He's in the bathroom." She smiled. "He likes the mural."

There was a legendary mural in the men's room of a buxom nude blonde, laughing and pointing down toward the urinal. "In case he's not sure where to aim, huh?" I said. The old joke. "How long have you been going out?"

She shrugged. "We're not, really. This is, like, our second date."

"Huh." A long, awkward silence. "Band's not very good tonight, is it?"

"Pretty bad," she agreed.

Another beat of silence. I picked up her date's Rolling Rock bottle, turned it around. "Huh," I said.

"What?"

"It says, 'Latrobe Brewing Co., St. Louis, Missouri.'"

"So?"

"Used to say 'Latrobe Brewing Co., Latrobe, Pennsylvania.' But Budweiser makes it now. In Newark."

"That's pretty sneaky."

"Not really. Hell, if you're really interested, it's all there on the label, actually. Printed right on the glass. Everything you could ever want to know."

"Except it says St. Louis, not Newark," she said, a mysterious glint in her eyes.

The bar band launched into a postpunk rendition of "On the Street Where You Live." Or maybe it was Metallica's "Bleeding Me." It was kind of hard to tell with those guys.

"But who cares where it comes from anyway?" I said. "If you like the beer, isn't that enough?"

Ali gave me a funny look, tilted her head a few degrees. "You are talking about beer, right?"

I smiled and was about to reply, but then a tall, good-looking, black-haired guy came up to the table.

He cleared his throat. "Sorry, this seat's taken," he said.

21

The predinner cocktail reception was held in a smaller room off the great room. A big banner hung from the low ceiling that said WELCOME HAMMOND AEROSPACE.

They were serving blender drinks and mojitos and flutes of champagne, and voices got steadily louder, the laughter more raucous, as the guys got increasingly soused. The exception seemed to be Hank Bodine, who was talking to Hugo Lummis, looking really pissed off. Ali had gone to Cheryl's suite to talk through the evening's schedule. I stood there holding a mojito and looking around when someone sidled up to me. One of the guys I'd seen whispering in the hall upstairs-caught whispering, I thought.

"You're Jake Landry, right?"

This was the blond one, which meant he was John Danziger, the corporate controller. The other one was Grogan.

"And you're John Danziger," I said. We shook hands, and I went through what was by then my standard pitch about how I was Mike Zorn's stand-in. But instead of giving me the expected response, about how big the shoes were that I had to fill and all that, Danziger said, "I'm sorry if I was rude to you upstairs."

"Rude?"

"That was you in the hall upstairs, right? When Grogan and I were talking?" He had a pleasant, smooth baritone voice, like an NPR radio announcer.

"Oh, was that you? Looked like an intense conversation." That meant he'd seen me coming out of Ali's room. If, that is, he knew it was Ali's room.

"Just work-related stuff," he said. "But sort of sensitive, which is why Alan overreacted."

"No worries." But it wasn't Alan Grogan who'd noticed me in the hall and suddenly broke off their conversation. It was Danziger. I couldn't figure out why he was making such a big deal out of something so trivial. Maybe he was afraid I'd overheard something. Whatever it was, he and Grogan had probably been too preoccupied to pay much attention to me or where I'd just come from. "So can I ask you something?"

Danziger gave me a wary look. "Sure."

"What does the corporate controller actually do, anyway?"

He looked to either side, then came closer. "No one actually knows," he said conspiratorially.

"Do you?"

He shook his head. "Don't tell anyone."

"Seriously," I said. "I have no idea what a controller does. Besides…controlling things."

"I wish I could tell you."

"You mean, if you told me, you'd have to kill me?"

"If I told you, I'd put us both to sleep," Danziger said. "It's too boring."

Someone tapped Danziger on the shoulder. It was Ronald Slattery, the Chief Financial Officer. He was a small, compact man, bald on top, with prominent ears, wearing heavy black-framed glasses. Slattery was wearing a blue blazer and a white shirt. This was the first time I'd ever seen Slattery not wearing a gray suit. He was the sort of guy you could imagine going to bed in a gray suit. Danziger excused himself, and the two men turned away to talk.

"Hey, there, roomie." Geoff Latimer grabbed me by the elbow. "Having a good time?"

"Sure," I said.

He faltered for a few seconds, looked as if he was searching for something to say. Then: "Everyone already knows everyone else. It's kind of a tight circle in some ways. Would you like me to introduce you to some people?"

I was about to tell him thanks but no thanks, when there was a tink-tink-tink of silverware against glass, and the room quieted down. Cheryl Tobin stood under the banner with a broad smile. She was wearing a navy blue jacket over a long ivory silk skirt and big jewel-studded earrings. Ali stood close behind her, studying a binder.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Cheryl said. "Or maybe I should just say, gentlemen." Polite laughter.

Clive Rylance said loudly, "That rules out most of us," and there was a burst of laughter. Kevin Bross, standing next to Rylance, leaned over and said something mildly obscene to him about Ali. He probably meant to whisper, but his voice carried. I wanted to slam the guy against the peeled-log wall and impale him on a set of antlers, but instead I let the anger surge with a prickly heat and subside. Bodine and Lummis and Barlow were all standing together. I could see Bodine whisper something to Lummis, who nodded in reply.

"Well, you know me by now," Cheryl said smoothly. "I always expect the best. I'd like to welcome everyone to a Hammond tradition I'm proud to join. The annual leadership retreat at the remarkable King Chinook Lodge. It's great to be out of the L.A. smog, isn't it?"

She smiled, paused for the laugh. When it didn't come, she went on, "Well, I for one can't wait. From the minute I arrived at Hammond Aerospace I've heard stories about this place." She paused. "Some of which I can't repeat."

Some low chuckles.

"What's that you guys say-'What happens at King Chinook stays in King Chinook'? I guess I'm about to find out what that's all about, huh"?

"You know it," someone said.

"It's not too late to escape," someone else said.

"Not too late to escape, hmm?" she repeated. Her smile had grown thin. "Easier said than done. It's a long swim to the nearest airport."

She was making a good show of pretending to enjoy the testosterone-rich rowdiness, but at the same time you could sense the steel. As if she were willing to be a good sport, but there was a point beyond which she wouldn't go. You really didn't want to push this woman too far. She also looked as if she wanted to get the hell out of there. Back to corporate headquarters, back to her big office where she could sit behind her big desk and receive important visitors and be the CEO instead of one of two sorority girls at a frat party.

"And believe me, I've thought about it," she said. "Especially after hearing about the courses that Bo's about to take us through."

She looked across the room toward a giant of a man with a shiny-bald head and a big black mustache. That had to be Bo Lampack, the team-building coordinator. He stood in the back corner with his arms folded across a great broad chest. His shoulders were the size of ham hocks. He looked like a cross between G. Gordon Liddy and Mr. Clean, only without the gold earring.

Lampack gave a conspiratorial grin. "We haven't lost anyone." He paused for dramatic effect, then added, "Yet."

A burst of raucous laughter, laced with cheers.

"What about Gandle?" Kevin Bross shouted.

"Come to think of it," Lampack said, "I don't see Gandle here this year."

More loud laughter. Larry Gandle was the old CFO, whom Cheryl had replaced with Ron Slattery. He'd gotten some huge golden parachute early retirement package and moved to Florida.

Cheryl held up her hands to quiet everyone down. "Well, we'll hear more from Bo at dinner. And tomorrow, you guys are all going to see that we women can keep up with men-not just in the office but on the ropes as well." She looked around, then held up an index finger. "I'm not just the first outsider to lead Hammond Aerospace, but I'm the first woman. And I know that makes some of you guys a little uncomfortable. I understand that. Change is always difficult. But that's one of the…challenges…I hope we'll get a chance to work through this weekend."

The room had gone quiet but for a few pockets of restless stirring. Both Bodine and Barlow stood watching her in identical poses: their right arms folded across their bellies, supporting their left elbows. Their left hands clutched tumblers of bourbon. Like babies holding bottles of formula.

"If not," she said, "I hope you're all strong swimmers." She looked around for several seconds. No one laughed. So she continued, "You know, they say a general without an army is nothing. I need each and every one of you in there pulling-not for me, but for this great company. Let me remind you that the symbol of the Hammond Aerospace Corporation is the lion. And with your help, together we're going to make that lion roar."

Lummis elbowed Upton Barlow so hard that Barlow dropped his glass of bourbon. It crashed against the hard plank floor and shattered into a hundred shards.

A few minutes later, as we all filed into the great room for dinner, Hank Bodine put a hand on my shoulder. Upton Barlow was at his side. "So you have some information for me," Bodine said. He'd cooled off some, though his tone was curt.

"I'm pretty sure I've figured out why the E-336 crashed," I said.

"Well, let's hear it." His hand came off my shoulder.

Barlow's raisin eyes regarded me curiously.

"Maybe we can talk in private, later on," I said.

"Nonsense. We have no secrets. Let's hear it." To Barlow, Bodine said, "Jake here says he knows why that Eurospatiale plane wiped out at Le Bourget." There was something smug, almost defiant in his tone, as if he didn't believe me, or was daring me, or something.

I paused. Cheryl and Ali were approaching from behind Bodine. "How about later?" I said.

"How about now?" said Cheryl. "I'd like to hear all about it." She extended her hand. "I don't believe we've met, actually. I'm Cheryl Tobin. Will you sit next to me at dinner?"

Bodine gave me a look of pure, unadulterated loathing.

22

A long table had been set up in a bay of the great room that overlooked the ocean. Night had fallen, and the windowpanes had become polished obsidian, reflecting the amber glow of the room. You couldn't see the ocean, but you could hear the waves of Rivers Inlet lapping gently against the shore.

Cheryl Tobin was seated at the head of the table. I was at her immediate left. On my other side was Upton Barlow, then Hugo Lummis, whose potbelly was so big he had to push his chair way back from the table to make room for it.

Lummis was telling some long-winded anecdote to Barlow. Meanwhile, Cheryl was talking with her CFO, Ron Slattery. His bald head shone: oddly vulnerable, a baby's. He was saying, "I thought your speech was absolutely masterful."

The table was covered with a stiff white linen cloth and set with expensive-looking gold-rimmed china and gleaming silverware. An armada of cut-glass wine and water glasses. Next to each place setting was a narrow printed menu listing six courses. A white linen napkin, folded into a fan, on each plate. A little card with each person's name written in calligraphy.

There was nothing spontaneous about Cheryl's decision to seat me next to her. If she wanted me to spy for her, I really didn't get it.

I buttered a hot, crusty dinner roll that was studded with olives, and wolfed it down.

Hank Bodine was down near my end of the table, but in no-man's-land, if you believed in close readings of dinner-table placement. Ali was on the other side, between Kevin Bross and Clive Rylance. Both Alpha Males seemed to be putting the moves on her, double-teaming her. She smiled politely. I caught her eye, and she gave me a look that conveyed a lot: amusement, embarrassment, maybe even a secret enjoyment.

A couple of Mexican waiters ladled lobster bisque into every-one's bowls. Another waiter poured a French white wine. I took a sip. It tasted fine to me. Not that I had any idea.

Barlow took a sip, grunted in satisfaction, and pursed his moist red lips. He said out of the side of his mouth, "I don't have my reading glasses-this a Meursault or a Sancerre?"

I shrugged. "White wine, I think."

"Guess you're more the jug-wine-with-a-screwtop type."

"Me? Not at all. I like the gallon boxes, actually." Might as well give him what he wanted to hear.

He laughed politely, turned away.

Ron Slattery was keeping up his line of sock-puppet patter. "Well, you've got the entire division running scared, and that's a good thing." His mouth was a thin slash, barely any lips. The small fringe around his shiny dome was shaved close. His heavy black-framed eyeglasses might have looked funky, ironic, on someone like Zoл, but on him they were just nerdy.

"Not too scared, I hope," Cheryl said. "Too much fear is counterproductive."

"Don't forget, a jet won't fly unless its fuel is under pressure and at high temperature," he replied.

"Ah, but without a cooling system, you get parts failure, right?"

"Good point," he chortled.

Then she turned to me, raised her voice. "Speaking of which, why'd it crash?"

How had she put it before? I know all about it, believe me. She knew the reason; she had to. But she wanted me to tell her in public, in front of everyone else.

"An inboard flap ripped off the wing at cruise speed and hit the fuselage."

"Explain, please." She really didn't need to speak so loudly. Her eyes glittered.

"A three-hundred-pound projectile flying at three hundred miles an hour is going to do some serious damage."

"Obviously." Exasperated. "But why'd it rip off?"

"Chicken rivets."

"Chicken rivets," she repeated. "I don't follow." People around us were listening now.

Maybe she didn't know as much about the crash as she'd claimed. But whether she did or not, she wanted me to explain, which was tricky: even though she'd been the EVP for Commercial Airplanes at Boeing before she came to Hammond, I had no idea how much she actually knew about building airplanes. Lots of executives rely on their experts to tell them what to think. I didn't want to talk over her head, but I also didn't want to condescend.

"Well, so Eurospatiale's new plane is mostly made out of plastic, right?"

She gave me a look. "If you want to call carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer 'plastic' instead of composite."

You got me there, I thought. So she did know a thing or two. "Most of the senior guys still don't trust the stuff."

"The 'senior guys' at Hammond?"

"Everywhere."

She knew what I meant, I was pretty sure-the senior execs at all the airplane manufacturers were inevitably older, and what they knew was metal, not composites.

"So?"

"So all the flaps on the wings are made of composite, too," I said. "But the hinges are aluminum. On the wing side, they're bolted to the aluminum rib lattice, but on the flaps, they're cut in."

"The hinges are glued on?"

"No, they're co-cured-basically glued and baked together. A sort of metal sandwich on composite bread, I guess you could say. And obviously Eurospatiale's designers didn't quite trust the adhesive bond, so they also put rivets into the hinges, right through the composite skin."

"The 'chicken rivets,'" she repeated, unnecessarily loud, I thought. "Called that why?"

I glanced up and saw that more and more people around the table were watching us. I tried not to smile. "Because you only do it if you're 'chicken'-scared the bond won't hold. Like wearing belts and suspenders."

"But why are 'chicken rivets' a problem?"

"When you put rivets through composites, you introduce micro-cracks. Means you run the risk of introducing moisture. Which is clearly what happened in Paris."

Barlow signaled one of the waiters over and told him he wanted to try whatever red wine they were pouring.

"How can you be so sure?" she said.

"The photographs. You can see cracks at the stress concentration points. You can also see the brooming, the-"

"Where the composites absorbed water," she said impatiently. "But the plane was new."

"It made maybe twenty test flights before the show. Flew out of warm, rainy London up to subzero temps at forty thousand feet. So the damage spread fast. Weakened the joints. Then the flap tore off its hinge and hit the fuselage."

"You're sure."

"I saw the pictures. Nothing else it can be." Ali looked at me, a glint of amusement in her eyes. Kevin Bross put his hand over hers, making some point, and she delicately slid hers away.

The younger of the two Mexican waiters poured red wine into Barlow's glass. It was deep red, almost blood-red, and even at a distance it gave off the smell of a horse barn. I guessed that meant it was good.

Then the waiter's hand slipped. The neck of the bottle struck the glass and tipped it over. Wine splashed on the tablecloth, speckling Barlow's starched white shirt.

"Hey, what the hell?" Barlow cried.

"I sorry," the waiter said, taking Barlow's napkin and daubing at his shirt. "I very sorry."

"For Christ's sake, you clumsy ox!"

The waiter kept blotting his shirt.

"Will you get the hell out of here?" Barlow snapped at the kid. "Get your goddamn hands off my stomach."

The waiter looked like he wanted to flee. "Upton," I said, "it's not his fault. I must have knocked into it with my elbow."

The waiter glanced quickly at me, not understanding. He couldn't have been twenty, had an olive complexion and close-cropped black hair.

The manager came out of the kitchen with a small stack of cloth napkins. "We're so sorry," he said, handing a few to Barlow and laying the others neatly over the stained tablecloth. "Pablo," he said, "please get Mr. Barlow a towel and that spray bottle of water."

"I don't need a towel," Barlow said. "I need a new shirt."

"Yes, of course, sir," the manager said.

As Pablo the waiter left, I said to the manager, "It wasn't Pablo's fault. I hit his glass with my elbow."

"I see," the manager said, and kept blotting.

Cheryl watched with shrewd eyes. After a minute, she said: "Well, at least Hammond would never do something so stupid as to use chicken rivets, of course."

I glanced at her quickly, then caught the sharp edge of Hank Bodine's menacing stare. "Well, actually, we did," I said.

"We did…what?"

"Put chicken rivets on all the wing control surfaces. Other places, too."

"Wait a second," she said. She sat forward, intent. If this was performance art, she was Meryl Streep. "Are you telling me our SkyCruiser team didn't know this might cause a serious problem?"

The frightened waiter returned with a stack of neatly folded white towels and handed them to Barlow. "I said I don't need any damned towels."

"Excuse me," I said to Cheryl. Then I touched the waiter's arm. "Mira, este tipo es un idiota," I said softly. "Es solo un pendejo engreнdo. No voy a dejar que te meta en problemas." The guy's a jerk, I told him. A pompous asshole. I'd make sure he didn't get blamed for it.

He had an open, trusting face, and he looked at me, surprised. Maybe even relieved.

"Gracias, seсor. Muchas gracias."

"No te preocupes."

"You speak fluently," Cheryl said.

"Just high school Spanish," I said. I didn't think she needed to know that my "teachers" were a couple of cholos, or at least Latino gangstas-in-training, at a juvenile detention facility.

"But you've got the idiom down well," she said. "I spent a few years in Latin America for Boeing." She lowered her voice. "That was sweet, what you just did."

I shrugged. "Never liked bullies," I said quietly.

She raised her voice again. "You're not seriously telling me that we made the same stupid mistake, are you?"

"It's not a matter of being stupid," I said. "It was a judgment call. Remember a couple of years back when Lockheed built the X-33 launch vehicle for NASA?"

She shook her head.

"They made the liquid fuel tanks out of composite instead of aluminum. To save some weight. And during the tests, the fuel tanks ripped apart at the seams. A very public disaster. So our people looked at that, and said, man, throw in some rivets just in case the adhesive fails like it did with Lockheed."

"'Our people.' Meaning who? Whose…'judgment call' was it? Some low-level stress analyst?"

"I'm sure the decision must have been made at a higher level than that."

"How high a level? Was it Mike Zorn?"

"No," I said quickly.

"Surely you know who made the decision to put in the…chicken rivets?"

"I don't really recall."

"But the name of the engineer who signed off on it is a matter of record, isn't it?" she said. "I'll bet you've got the spreadsheet on your computer. With the CAD number, listing the employee number of the stress analyst who stamped and signed off on the chicken rivets." She smiled thinly. "Am I right?"

Man. She knew a hell of a lot more than she was letting on. The guy who signed off on all the wing drawings was a stress analyst who'd been with Hammond for more than fifteen years, a very smart engineer named Joe Hartlaub. I remembered how he argued, long and hard, against putting rivets through the composite skin. Remembered the e-mails between him and Mike Zorn. Zorn took Joe's side-then Bodine jumped in and overruled them.

Bodine, who'd been building metal airplanes for decades, considered composites "voodoo." And he had the power to overrule both Zorn and the stress analyst. Bodine was the boss. He always won.

"I'm sure one of our stress analysts stamped the drawings, but it couldn't have been his decision," I said. "It would have had to be made at a higher level."

"By whom?"

"I don't know."

"Surely you do."

"I don't want to speculate," I said.

"Meaning that you know and won't tell me?"

"No. Meaning I'm not sure."

"Probably an old-line metal guy, as you put it. Right? A senior executive?"

I shrugged again.

"Because now it's clear, based on what happened in Paris, that the wings are going to have to be scrapped and rebuilt from scratch. A design change, partial-scale integrated testing, tooling and fabrication and touch-and-gos. Which will delay the launch of the SkyCruiser by six months, even a year."

"That would be a disaster. A delay like that, we could lose billions of dollars."

"And if we sell planes that we know to be defective, we're criminally negligent. So we don't have a choice, do we? Which is why I want to know who made that idiotic decision that's going to cost us so dearly."

My theory was right. She was determined to use the Eurospatiale crash to undermine Hank Bodine, then get rid of him. And I'd just gotten trapped in the maws of that battle.

I just nodded.

"Well, I intend to find out who it was," she said. "And when I do, I will cut him out like a cancer."

23

The waiters cleared away the bowls and the gold-rimmed service plates and began setting out a battalion of fresh silverware and steak knives with curved black handles and sharp carbon-steel blades.

Then the food came. And came. And came.

Raw oysters served with a pungent ponzu sauce. Tiny braised wild partridges seasoned with juniper berries on a bed of cabbage laced with tiny cubes of foie gras. Sautйed rapini and black-walnut-filled Seckel pear and cipollini coulis. Saffron-buckwheat crepes with a ragout of lobster and chanterelle mushrooms. Saddle of venison stuffed with quince. Ya de ya de ya.

Of course, I didn't know what half the stuff was, so I studied the menu like a lost tourist clutching a street map. I was full before the main course, and I didn't even know what the main course was.

At the foot of the table, Bo Lampack, the guy who looked like Mr. Clean, stood up and cleared his throat. The hubbub didn't subside until he clinked on his water glass for a good fifteen seconds.

"I don't know, think there's enough food here tonight?" he boomed. "Might have to go out to McDonald's for a Quarter-Pounder later on, huh?"

The laughter was boisterous.

"Oh, yeah, right. No restaurants around here for a hundred miles. So I guess you better eat up, folks. Hey, I'm Bo Lampack, from Corporate Teambuilders. Your team-building coordinator. As most of you remember, since I worked with most of you adventurers before." He paused. "Then again, alcohol does kill brain cells."

More raucous laughter.

He looked sternly around the table. "And after that banquet on the last night…" He paused again, and let the guffaws crescendo. "…I'm surprised you gentlemen have any brain cells left."

He surfed the waves of laughter like a pro. "Looks like we got some ladies with us this year, huh? Two beautiful ladies. You ladies think you can keep up with all these tough guys?"

I stole a glance at Cheryl. An enigmatic smile was frozen on her face like a mannequin's. Ali smiled bashfully, nodded.

"Actually," Bo said, "maybe the real question is, can you tough guys keep up with the ladies? See, in case you guys are thinking you're old hands and you got a head start on the ladies-sorry. Doesn't work that way. Because I always like to shake things up. Get you out of your comfort zone. So we're going to be doing some new things this year. Some fishing-only not the kind you're used to. Some kayaking. A great new GPS scavenger hunt. Even extreme tree climbing-and lemme tell you, it ain't like when you were a kid."

Kevin Bross grinned.

"Right, Kev? You've done recreational tree climbing, haven't you? Rope-secured, with harnesses and carabiners and all?"

"Got certified in Atlanta," Bross said.

"Why does that not surprise me?" said Lampack. "How about you, uh, Upton? It's wild, isn't it?"

Upton Barlow shook his head. "Haven't tried it yet, but I'm looking forward to it," he said. Obviously he wasn't happy that Bross knew a sport he didn't. "We doing the fire walk again this year?"

"Uh, we've stopped doing the fire walk," Lampack said. "Insurance problems."

Some nervous titters.

"Guy from Honeywell got hurt pretty bad, few months back."

"I guess he wasn't a positive thinker," Bross said. "It's all about mental concentration, you know."

"Tell that to the guy from Honeywell with third-degree burns on the soles of his feet," said Lampack. "Had to have skin grafts. See, this isn't all fun and games, kids. Now, this year's program is called Power Play, but it's not going to be like any play you've ever done before. You're all going to have to sign liability waivers as usual. There are dangers. We don't want any of you executives falling off tightropes in the ropes course and bashing your heads and delaying the launch of your new plane or anything."

There was a weird, hostile edge to Lampack, I was beginning to see. Like he secretly resented the corporate executives he worked with and took a kind of sadistic pleasure in taunting them.

"I won't lie to you," he said. "There's gonna be scary moments. But it's moments like that that tell you who you really are. When you're thirty feet off the ground you learn what you're really made of, okay? You learn to confront your fears. Because this is about personal growth and self-discovery. It's about breaking down inhibitions. Knocking down those office walls so we can build team spirit."

He reached down and picked up a large reel of rope. He pulled out a length: half-inch white rope, blue threads woven through it. "You know what this is? This is not just your lifeline. This is trust." He nodded solemnly, looked around. "When you're walking across a cable thirty feet off the ground and some-one's belaying you, you've got to trust him-or her-not to drop you, huh?"

He set the spool down. "You'll be challenged mentally and physically. And you're all going to fail at some point-our courses are designed to make you fail. Not our rope, though. Hopefully." He chuckled. "These tests are some of the most brutal trials you'll ever go through." He paused. "Except maybe one of Hank Bodine's PowerPoint presentations, huh?"

Bodine clicked a smile on and off. No one laughed.

"See, I'm going to get you all out of your comfort zone and into your learning zone."

A sudden explosion came from somewhere outside: the loud pop of a gunshot.

But it made no sense. This wasn't a hunting area. Everyone turned.

Lampack looked both ways, shrugged. "Guess a grizzly must've got into someone's garbage."

"Really?" Ali said.

"Happens all the time. Tons of grizzlies and black bears in the woods. Not supposed to shoot 'em, though people do. Get up early in the morning, and you might even see one washing himself down by the shore. Just leave 'em alone, and they'll leave you alone." He nodded sagely. "Now, we'll be evaluating the progress of your team development at the end of each day using the Drexler-Sibbet Team Performance Model-"

Another loud pop, then a door banged: the front door of the lodge, it sounded like.

A large man in a hunting outfit, camouflage shirt and matching pants, and a heavy green vest, traipsed into the room. He was well over six feet, wide, and heavyset: a giant. He was around forty, with a powerful build that had gone somewhat to fat. He had short jet-black hair that looked dyed, dark eyebrows, a neatly trimmed black goatee. Mephistopheles, I thought. There was something satanic about his short black goatee, his jutting brow.

He stopped in the middle of the room, looked around with beady dark eyes, then approached the dining table.

"Man oh man," he said. "What do we got here?" His teeth were tobacco-stained.

Lampack folded his arms. "Private party, friend. Sorry."

"Party?" the hunter said. "Jeez Louise, don't it look like a party, though. Ain't you gonna invite me in?"

He spoke with a Deep South accent so broad and drawling he sounded like a hillbilly, some backwoods rube. But there was something cold in his gaze.

He took a few steps toward the sideboard, where some of the serving dishes had been placed, his brown smile wider, greedy black eyes staring. "Christ, will you look at that spread."

"I'm sorry, but you're going to have to leave," Lampack said. "Let's not have any trouble."

"Chill, Bo," warned Bross quietly. "Guy's probably drunk."

The hunter approached the table, arms wide as if awed by the opulence of the spread. "Man, looky here. Christ on crutches, look at all this food."

He shoved Ron Slattery aside and grabbed a partridge right off his plate with grimy hands. Slattery's eyeglasses went flying. Then the intruder stuffed the partridge whole into his mouth and chewed openmouthed. "Damn, that game bird's good," he said, his words muffled by the food. "No buckshot in it, neither. Do I taste a hint of garlic?"

Grabbing Danziger's wineglass, he gulped it down like Kool-Aid, his Adam's apple bobbing. "Mmm-mmm! Even better than Thunderbird."

Hank Bodine said, "All right, fella. Why don't you just go back to your hunting party, okay? This is a private lodge."

Bo Lampack folded his arms across his chest. "If you're hungry, I'm sure we can get you some food from the kitchen."

The giant leaned over the table, reached for Cheryl's plate. He dug his soiled stubby fingers into the mound of porcini-potato gratin.

"Oh, God," Cheryl said in disgust, closing her eyes.

"Mashed potatoes, huh?" He made a shovel out of his forefingers, scooped up a wad, and eyed it suspiciously.

"The hell's all these black specks doing in it? I think the potato mush is rotten, folks. Don't eat it." He cackled, crammed it into his mouth. "Not half-bad, though. Dee-licious."

"Where the hell is the manager?" Cheryl said.

From the far end of the table, Clive Rylance said, "All right, mate, just get on your way, now there's a good fellow. This is a private dinner, and I'm afraid you're outnumbered."

Inwardly I groaned. Outnumbered. Not the right thing to say. The hunter gave Clive a stony look. Then a slow grin.

"You a Brit, huh? Limey?" He leaned over between me and Upton Barlow, jostling us aside. He smelled of chewing tobacco and rancid sweat. Grabbing a crepe from Barlow's plate, he said, "You folks eat flapjacks for supper, too? I love flapjacks for supper." Then he took a bite, immediately spit it out onto the tablecloth. "Nasty! Jee-zus, that ain't syrup, that for damned sure."

Barlow's face colored. He pursed his lips, exasperated.

"Will someone get the manager already?" Cheryl shouted. "My God, are you men just going to sit here?"

"You folks having fun? Celebrating something, maybe? Way out here, middle of nowhere?"

Another door slammed. It sounded like it came from somewhere in the back of the lodge.

A second man now entered the great room from a side hallway. This one was maybe ten years younger, also tall and bulky. He, too, wore a camouflage outfit, only the sleeves of his shirt had been sloppily ripped off, exposing biceps like ham hocks, covered in tattoos. His undersized head was shaved on the sides, a blond thatch on top. He had a big, blank face and a small, bristly blond mustache.

"Wayne," the first hunter called out, "you ain't gonna believe what kinda situation we just lucked into."

The second one smiled, his teeth tiny and pointed. His eyes scanned the table.

"Get your butt over here, Wayne, and try one of these here game birds. But stay away from the pancakes. They're nasty."

"Bo," Cheryl said, "would you please get Paul Fecher right this instant?" Cheryl said. "We've got the cast of Deliverance here, and the man's nowhere in sight."

Obviously she didn't see what it meant that the manager still hadn't emerged. When the waiter had spilled wine on Barlow, he'd popped out of the kitchen like a jack-in-the-box. He had to have heard this commotion; the fact that he wasn't here meant that something was very wrong.

"We don't need to shoot no deer," the goateed hunter said. "Never liked venison anyway."

Bo, relieved to get out of there, ran toward the kitchen.

"Hey!" the goateed guy shouted after him.

With a shrug, he turned to his comrade. "Wait'll he meets Verne."

The blond guy snickered.

Bodine rose slowly. "That's enough," he said.

I whispered, "Hank, don't."

The goateed giant looked up at Bodine, and said, "Sit down."

But Bodine didn't obey. He walked down the length of the table slowly, shaking his head: the big man in charge. He could have been running a staff meeting, that was how confidently he asserted his authority.

"Back to your seat, there, boss man."

As Bodine passed me I reached out and grabbed his knee. "Hank," I whispered, "don't mess with this guy."

Bodine slapped my hand away and kept going, a man on a mission.

Lummis muttered to Barlow, "Gotta be a hunting party that got lost in the woods."

"We're in a game preserve," Barlow replied, just as quietly. "Great Bear Preserve. Hunting's against the law."

"I don't think these guys care about the law," I said.

24

Bodine stood maybe six feet away from the black-haired guy, his feet planted wide apart, hands on his hips, obviously trying to intimidate him.

"All right, fella, fun's over," Bodine said. "Move on."

The goateed guy looked up from the food and snarled, mouth full, "Siddown."

"If you and your buddy aren't out of here in the next sixty seconds, we're going to call the police." Bodine glanced over at the rest of us. He was playing to the crowd. This was a man used to being obeyed, and there really was something about the sonorous authority of his voice that made most people want to do whatever he told them to do.

But the black-haired hunter just furrowed his heavy brow and gave Bodine a satanic smile. "The po-lice," he said, and he cackled. "That's a good one." Then he looked over at his comrade, potato mush on either side of his mouth. "You hear that, Wayne? He gonna call the po-lice."

The second intruder spoke for the first time. "Don't think so," he said in a strangely high voice. His eyes flitted back and forth. His arms dangled at his side, too short for his bulky torso.

Everyone had gone quiet, staring with frightened fascination, as if watching a horror movie. I said, "Hank, come on."

Without even looking at me, he extended his right arm and waggled his index finger dismissively in my direction, telling me without words, Stay out of this. None of your business.

From the kitchen came a cry. A man's voice.

I saw the realization dawn on people's faces.

Bodine moved just inches away from the goateed man. He was doing what he must have done hundreds of times: invading an adversary's personal space, intimidating him with his height, his stentorian voice, his commanding presence. It always worked, but right now it didn't seem to be working at all.

"Let me tell you something, friend," Bodine said. "You are making a serious mistake. Now, I'm going to do you a favor and pretend none of this happened. I'm giving you an opportunity to move on, and I suggest you take it. It's a no-brainer."

Suddenly the man pulled something shiny and metal from his vest: a stainless-steel revolver. The table erupted in panicked screams.

He took the weapon by the barrel, and slammed the grip against the side of Bodine's face. It made an audible crunch.

Bodine let out a terrible, agonized yelp, and collapsed to his knees.

Blood sluiced from his nose. It looked broken. One hand flew to his face; the other flailed in the air to ward off any further blows.

The reaction around the table was swift and panicked. Some seemed to want to come to Bodine's assistance but didn't dare. Some screamed.

Cheryl kept calling for the manager.

If he could have come, he would have.

"God's sake, somebody do something!" Lummis gasped.

I sat there, mind racing. The second hunter, the one with the blond crew cut, hadn't moved. He was speaking into a walkie-talkie.

The goateed man, muttering, "Call me a goddamned no-brainer," held the weapon high in the air. It was, I noticed, a hunter's handgun, a.44 Magnum Ruger Super Blackhawk six-shooter. Gray wood-look grips and a barrel over seven inches. A big, heavy object. I'd never used one: I didn't like to use handguns for hunting.

Then he slammed it against the other side of Bodine's face. Blood geysered in the air.

Bodine screamed again: a strange and awful sound of vulnerability.

He fluttered both of his hands in a futile attempt to shield his bloodied face. He cried hoarsely, "Please. Please. Don't." Blood gouted from his nose, seeping from his eyes, ran down his cheeks, spattering his shirt.

I wanted to do something, but what? Go after the guy with a steak knife? Two armed men: it seemed like an easy way to get killed. I couldn't believe this was happening; the suddenness, the unreality of it all, froze me as it must have done everyone else.

"Buck!"

A shout from the front door. The black-haired man paused, handgun in the air, and looked. A third man entered, dressed like the other two, in camouflage pants and vest. He was tall and lean, sharp-featured, a strong jaw, around forty. Scraggly dark blond hair that reached almost to his shoulders.

"That's enough, Buck," the new man said. He had a deep, adenoidal voice with the grit of fine sandpaper, and he spoke calmly, patiently. "No unnecessary violence. We talked about that."

The goateed one-Buck?-released his grip on Bodine, who slumped forward, spitting blood, weeping in ragged gulps.

Then the long-haired guy pulled a weapon from a battered leather belt holster. A matte black pistol: Glock 9mm, I knew right away. He waved it back and forth at all of us, in a sweeping motion, from one end of the table to the other and back again.

"All right, boys and girls," he said. "I want all of you to line up on that side of the table, facing me. Hands on the table, where I can see 'em."

"Oh, sweet Jesus God," Hugo Lummis said, his voice shaking.

Cheryl said imperiously-or maybe it was bravely-"What do you want?"

"Let's go, kids. We can do this the hard way or the easy way, it's up to you. Your choice."

25

We gonna do this the hard way?"

Dad's shadow fell across the kitchen floor. He loomed in the doorway, enormous to a ten-year-old: red face, gut bulging under a white sleeveless T-shirt, can of Genesee beer in his hand. "Genny," he always called it, sounded like his mistress.

Mom standing at the kitchen counter, wearing her Food Fair smock, chopping onions for chili con carne. His favorite supper. A snowdrift of minced onion heaped on the cutting board. Her hand was shaking. The tears flowing down her cheeks, she'd said, were from the onions.

I didn't know how to answer that. Stared up at him with all the defiance I could muster. Mother's little protector.

"Don't you ever hit her," I said.

She'd told me she'd slipped in the shower. The time before that, she'd tripped on a wet floor at the Food Fair supermarket, where she worked as a cashier. One flimsy excuse after another, and I'd had enough.

"She tell you that?"

Blood roared in my ears so loud I could barely hear him. My heart was racing. I swallowed hard. I had to look away, stared at the peeling gray-white paint on the doorframe. It reminded me of the birch tree in the backyard.

"I told him it was an accident." Mom's voice from behind me, high and strained and quavering, a frightened little girl. "Stay out of this, Jakey."

I kept examining the peeling-paint birch bark. "I know you hit her. Don't you ever do that again."

A sudden movement, and I was knocked to the floor like a candlepin.

"Talk to me like that one more time, you're going to reform school."

Tears flooding my eyes now: Not the onions. What the hell was reform school?

"Now, say you're sorry."

"Never. I'm not."

"We gonna do this the hard way?"

I knew what he was capable of.

Through eyes blurry from tears, I examined the ceiling, noticed the cracks, like the broken little concrete patio in back of the house.

"I'm sorry," I said at last.

A few minutes later, Dad was lying back in his ratty old Barcalounger in front of the TV. "Jakey," he said, almost sweetly. "Mind fetching me another Genny?"

Slowly we all began to gather on one side of the table. Except for Bross and Rylance, I noticed. They both seemed to be edging away, as if trying to make a sudden break.

"Where's Lampack?" Slattery said.

"Let's go, kids," the long-haired man said. He pointed the Glock at Bross and Rylance. "Nowhere to run, compadres," he said to them. "We got all the exits covered. Get over there with the rest of your buddies."

Bross and Rylance glanced at each other, then, as if by unspoken agreement, stopped moving. I looked for Ali, saw her at the far end of the table. She appeared to be as frightened as everyone else.

Was this guy bluffing about having the exits covered? How many of them were there?

And what were they planning to do?

The man took out a walkie-talkie from his vest, pressed the transmit button. "Verne, you got the staff secured?"

"Roger," a voice came back.

"We got a couple of guys itching to make a run for it. You or Travis see 'em, shoot on sight, you read me?"

"Roger that."

He slipped the walkie-talkie back into his vest, then held the gun in a two-handed grip, aiming at Kevin Bross. "Which one of you wants to die first?"

Hugo Lummis cried, "Don't shoot!" and someone else said, "Move, just move!"

"Don't be idiots!" Cheryl shouted at the two men. "Do what he says."

"Makes no big difference to me," the long-haired man said. "You obey me, or you die, but either way I get what I want. You always have a choice." He shifted his pistol a few inches toward Rylance. "Eeny, meeny, miney, mo."

"All right," Bross said. He raised his hands in the air; then he and Rylance came over to the table.

"What do you want from us?" Cheryl said.

But he didn't reply. He wagged his pistol back and forth in the air, ticking from one of us to the next like the arm of a metronome. He chanted in a singsong voice: "My-mother-told-me-to-pick-the-very-best-one-and-you-are-not-it."

His pistol pointed directly at me.

"You win."

I swallowed hard.

Stared into the muzzle of the Glock.

"It's your lucky day, guy," he said.

My reaction was strange: I wanted to close my eyes, like a child, to make it go away. Instead, I forced myself to notice little things about the gun, like the way the barrel jutted out of the front of the slide. Or the unusual keyhole-shaped opening machined into the top.

"Huh," I said, trying to sound casual. "Never seen one of those up close."

"It's called a gun, my friend," he said. His eyes were liquid pewter. There seemed to be a glint of amusement in them. "A semiautomatic pistol. And when I pull this little thing here, which is called a trigger-"

"No, I mean I've never seen a Glock 18C before," I said. "Pretty rare, those things. Works like an automatic, doesn't it?"

Humanize yourself. Make him see you as someone just like him.

He smiled slowly. He was a handsome man, except for those eyes, which were cold and gray and didn't smile when his mouth did. "Sounds like you know your weapons." He kept his gun leveled at me, aiming at a spot in the middle of my forehead.

"Of course, seventeen rounds on auto won't last you very long," I said, then immediately regretted saying it.

"Well, why don't we find out?" he said in a voice that, in any other context, you might describe as gentle.

Everyone was quiet, watching in mesmerized terror. The air had gone out of the room.

"Do I get a choice?" I asked.

26

He looked at me for a few seconds.

Then he grinned and lowered the gun. I exhaled slowly.

"All right, boys and girls, here's the drill. I want all of you to empty your pockets, put everything on the table right in front of you. Wallets, money clips, jewelry. Watches, too. Got it? Let's go."

So it was a holdup. Nothing more than that, thank God.

"Buck, some backup over here," he said.

"Gotcha, Russell," said the goateed guy, taking out his.44. I noticed he was no longer speaking in that hillbilly accent. He'd been putting it on.

"When these folks here are finished emptying out their pockets, I want you and Wayne to search 'em. Pat 'em down."

"Gotcha."

Buck began orbiting the table, watching everyone drop wallets and money clips onto the table. Ali and Cheryl unclasped their necklaces and bracelets, took off their earrings. The men removed their watches.

Hugo Lummis, next to me, unbuckled his watchband and slipped it into the back pocket of his pants. I wondered if anyone else had seen it. I didn't think so.

I whispered to him, "Careful. They're going to search us." But he pretended not to hear.

Russell holstered his gun and began strolling nonchalantly around the room, picking up objects, examining them with idle curiosity, then putting them down. He walked with the loose-limbed stride of someone used to a lot of physical activity. An ex-soldier, I thought, but of an elite sort-a Navy SEAL, maybe, or a member of the Special Forces. There were crow's-feet around his eyes and deep lines etched in his leathery skin: He'd spent a lot of time in the sun. Not, I suspected, on the beach.

He stopped at a long table on which one of the hotel staff had stacked blue loose-leaf Hammond binders. He picked one up and leafed through it for a minute or so.

His two men were preoccupied, too-Buck was making a circuit around the table, his back to me, and Wayne was frisking Geoff Latimer. So for a moment, no one was watching us. I moved my hand slowly across the tablecloth, grabbed the handle of a steak knife, slid the knife along the table toward me.

Then I lowered it to my side, held it flat against my thigh.

I gripped its smooth black handle and ran my thumb along the knife edge. It would slice through human skin as easily as it dissected saddle of venison. Against a handgun it wouldn't do much, but it was the only weapon I had.

Russell ripped out a sheet of paper from one of the notebooks, folded it neatly, and put it in his vest pocket.

Hank Bodine was now struggling to get to his feet. His face was slick with blood; he was badly wounded.

"You can just stay put," Russell told him. "I don't think you're going to get up and dance anytime soon." He grabbed a handful of linen napkins from the table and dropped them in front of Bo-dine. They fluttered to the floor like bird's wings. Bodine looked at them dully, then squinted his bloodied eyes at Russell, not understanding.

"You got a choice, too," Russell said. "You can try to stop the bleeding or hemorrhage to death. All the same to me."

Now Bodine understood. He took a napkin, held it to his nose, moaned.

I flexed my left knee and brought my leg up behind me. Moving very slowly, I slid the knife carefully into the side of my shoe.

Barlow turned to look at me. I glared back as I lowered my foot to the floor.

The lights flickered for a second.

"What the hell's that?" Russell said.

No one answered. Had one of his guys hit some central switch by accident?

"It's the generators," Kevin Bross muttered.

"What's that?" Russell approached Bross.

"This place is powered by generators," Bross said. "One of them's probably failing. Or maybe the system just switched over from one generator to another."

Russell looked at Bross for a few seconds. "You almost sound like you know what you're talking about." Then he turned to Upton Barlow. "I like your wallet."

Barlow just stared back, his expression fierce but his eyes dancing with fear.

"Guy gives you a compliment, you say 'thank you,'" Russell said. "Where's your manners?"

"Thank you," Barlow said.

"You're quite welcome." Russell picked up the wallet, flipped it open. "What's this made out of, alligator? Crocodile?"

Barlow didn't answer.

"I'm going to say crocodile." Russell peered closely at the wallet. "Hermes," he said.

"Air-mez," Barlow corrected him.

Russell nodded. "Thank you. Why, look at this." He pulled out a black credit card. "Bucky, you ever seen one of these? A black American Express card? I don't think I've ever seen one before. Heard about 'em, but I don't think I've ever actually seen one up close and personal."

Buck approached, looked closely. "That can't be real," he said. "They don't make 'em in black." Now that he'd dropped the phony bumpkin accent, he spoke with the flat vowels of a Midwesterner.

"Sure they do," Russell said. "Friend of mine told me about it. It's one step higher than platinum, even. You can buy anything with it, I heard. Sky's the limit. Yachts, jet fighters, you name it. But you can't apply for this, my buddy told me. You only get one if you're important enough. If you're a big cheese. You a big cheese, uh-" He looked closely at the card. "Upton? That your first name, Upton?"

Barlow just stared.

Suddenly Russell had his pistol out and was pointing it at Barlow's heart.

"No!" Barlow cried. "Christ! Yes, yes, that's my first name."

"Thank you," Russell said. "Upton Barlow. Hammond Aerospace Corporation. You work for Hammond Aerospace, Upton?"

"Yes," Barlow said.

"Thank you kindly." Russell reholstered the pistol. "I've heard of Hammond Aerospace," Russell said. "You guys make airplanes, right?"

Barlow nodded.

"Probably flown in some of them," Russell said. "You make military transport planes, too, don't you?"

No one spoke.

"Been in one of those for sure. Never had one crash on me, though, so you must be doing your job. Good work, Upton."

He chuckled, low and husky, and advanced along the table to Kevin Bross. He leaned over, picked up Bross's watch. "Good God Almighty, look at this thing, Buck," he said. "Ever see a wristwatch like that?"

"Ridiculous piece of crap," Buck said.

Bross was gritting his teeth, breathing in and out slowly, trying to maintain control.

"Well, I kind of like it," Russell said.

"It's a replica," Bross said.

"Could have fooled me," Russell said, dropping it into a pocket in his vest. "Thank you, kind sir." He picked up Bross's wallet. "This isn't a…Hermиs," he said, pronouncing it right. He shook it, scattering the credit cards across the tablecloth, and picked one up. "This guy only gets a platinum," he said. "Kevin Bross," he read. "Hammond Aerospace Corporation. You all with the Hammond Aerospace Corporation, that right?"

Silence.

"You all must be here for some kind of meeting. Right?"

No one said anything.

"I saw those notebooks on the table back there," he went on. "Said something about the 'Executive Council' of the Hammond Aerospace Corporation. That's you guys-excuse me, you ladies and gentlemen-right?"

Silence.

"No need to be modest, kids," he said. "Bucky, I think we just hit the jackpot."

The lights flickered again.