Ruthless.Com

Chapter Thirteen

Every weekday morning at 5:30 Roger Gordian left his home outside San Jose, got into his raven-black 1984 Mercedes SE, then headed east along El Camino Real to the San Carlos Street exit and through the downtown area to UpLink's corporate headquarters on Bonita Avenue. Like Gordian, the Benz was in generally fine condition despite showing a few signs of age: a cranky starter here, a clogged line and worn part there, nothing that, in his estimate, couldn't be remedied with regular maintenance and an occasional highway workout.

Still, those around him fretted. Concerned about its reliability, Ashley had been pressing him to drive one of their newer vehicles to the office, but the Land Rover seemed too damn big and the '01 BMW too damn small, lacking substance and character, and resembling an electric shaver or a soap bar. Concerned about his personal safety, Pete Nimec had tried convincing him to hire a driver or bodyguard, but Gordian liked having the solitary time for thought as overflowing rural greenery became neatly fenced suburban yards and then a crowded metropolis, the transition seeming to mirror the thrust of human advancement itself.

And he liked driving along with his hands on the wheel as the big V-8 engine ran with a low satisfying sound that reminded him of a perfect, sustained note coming from deep in the belly of an operatic tenor.

And he liked how there were just enough motorists on the freeway to give him a sense of forward progress, of linkage to other people pursuing their daily objectives, each of them slightly ahead of the pack, moving toward their destinations in lanes that would jam tight only a few hours later.

On his way to work now, he was undeniably pleased that he'd resisted Pete and Ashley's urgings. There were a number of things on his mind, things he needed to sort through without interruption, and the driver's seat of his car was the ideal place to do precisely that.

It always comes down to willt timing, and maneuverability, he reflected. You have to avoid getting stuck on any one battle, and make sure you're ready to exploit any possible chance to take the opposition by surprise.

That was modern combat doctrine in a nutshell, although in this instance Gordian was thinking neither about armed conflict, nor even the martial art of highway driving, but business, which he had long ago learned was its own species of warfare — coldly opportunistic, full of hidden traps, and capable of heaping loss and carnage upon the unprepared, the indecisive, and the inflexible.

The night before, Gordian had gotten his call to war from Chuck Kirby, who had phoned to confirm what he'd already known in his gut, and what legal disclosure requirements would reveal to the public within days: The tender offer for the Spartus holdings had been made by Marcus Caine through a rather thinly disguised corporate surrogate… specifically, a Midwestern concern called Safetech.

Okay, next item, he thought. Having established what Caine wanted, the issue of why he wanted it still remained to be tackled. A takeover seemed the obvious objective, but things were not necessarily that clear. The Williams Act and a whole slew of California securities and antitakeover statutes compelled Safetech to state the reasons for its stock acquisition in a Schedule 13D filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission, and in other documents it was required to exhibit to shareholders. Even playing strictly by the rules, however, Caine had plenty of wiggle room in which to obscure his intent.

His offer-by-proxy left no doubt that he at the very least wished to remain discreet — and one thing Gordian knew about Caine was that he never stayed in the background unless there were some very compelling reasons to do so. While Marcus was often unsubtle, he was not unsophisticated. If he was preparing to mount a raid, he would bide his time until he was in the best tactical position to execute it. Hands down, he would represent himself in the schedule as seeking not to wrest control of UpLink from Gordian and its board of directors, but rather to obtain a substantial minority interest that would give him a say in managing its assets, and allow him to protect his investment. Whether that position would bear up under scrutiny was immaterial, because all the courts were likely to do in the event of false or incomplete disclosures was order that they be revised.

Meanwhile, Caine would be getting exactly what he needed: time to woo other large shareholders to his side, time to sidestep the Williams Act's disclosure provisions by purchasing smaller blocks of UpLink stock on the open market, time to develop and refine any number of additional takeover strategies.. assuming, of course, that a complete acquisition was his goal.

How, then, to anticipate it? Kirby and his trustbusters were already formulating a civil action on the grounds that there were several sectors of the communications and technology industries where Marcus Caine's various interests were in direct competition with UpLink. The lawsuit was a showstopper in that it would keep the lawyers and judges wading through a sea of complicated litigation, but unless the feds climbed aboard with a criminal antitrust suit of their own to bolster UpLink's challenge— something they were typically slow to do — it would result in a long battle of attrition with unpredictable results, and hunkering in had never been Gordian's style. As Sun Tzu once said, the possibility of victory lay in the attack. With all the resources at his disposal, there surely had to be a—

Gordian eased into the left lane to pass a lumbering trailer truck in front of him, a look of deep concentration on his features. Quite unexpectedly, his mind had turned back to the piece he'd read by Reynold Armitage in the Wall Street Journal the other day. What was it he'd had to say about Gordian's resources? The leadoff essentially had been a rant about his corporate diversification having led to wrongheaded management decisions, after which Armitage had drawn his grotesque Siamese twins metaphor, something about mismatched limbs and unsustainable growth. The article had prickled — but could it be Armitage had a point?

Gordian hesitantly had to admit that he might, and supposed part of his irritation over what he'd read stemmed from his having realized it from the beginning, if only on a semiconscious level. He could not afford to let his disdain for Armitage — or suspicions about his motives—

prevent him from intelligently evaluating his assertions. Emotionalism in a fight was blinding and corrosive. Regardless of its ultimate merit, his enemy had unwittingly given him a tip worth exploring.

And if it turns out he's right, what path does that take me down? Gordian thought, knowing full well that wasn't the question he needed to ask himself. The path was there before him, its direction clearly marked, and what he really had to learn was whether he'd have the strength and will to walk it… and accept the painful sacrifices to which it would inevitably lead.

Inhaling deeply, he glanced out the driver's window to see the sun perched fat and lazy above the mountains, as if it had found a comfortable nest where it might linger for all eternity, describing a constant, knowable horizon against which he could steer a warmly lighted path through the world.

Pity indeed life was never that simple.

It would have been a harried and difficult twenty-four hours for Pete Nimec under the best of circumstances. With only a couple of days to go until Roger Gordian and his closest advisors flew to D. C. for their press conference, a million and one security arrangements — everything from personnel selection to the job's involved Beltway logistics — needed to be finalized. In addition, there had been a series of unexplained lapses in the alarm net at the Nevada data-storage facility. And two of his Sword administrators at the Botswana satellite station had let a squabble over authority escalate into a bar fight that left one with cracked ribs, the other in a local jail, and Nimec with the problem of whether both deserved to be canned.

These were all matters requiring prompt attention, but it was Max Blackburn's unaccountable disappearance that had been occupying most of his thoughts… and the phone conversation he'd just had with Max's secretary had done a lot to exacerbate his worried mood.

On his previous call, which he'd placed from the UpLink building at six o'clock Tuesday night — eleven A. M. Wednesday, in Malaysia — Joyce had told him Max still hadn't returned to the ground station or contacted her with any explanation for his absence, making it almost four days since anyone had seen or heard from him. The protectiveness Nimec had detected in Joyce's voice when they'd had their initial talk had been replaced with a disconcerted, anxious tone.

"Joyce, I need you to be straight with me," he'd said. "Has he ever pulled a vanishing act before? Done anything like this at all?"

"No, sir," she answered without hesitation. "That's why I'm so confused. I honestly thought he'd be in touch at some point yesterday."

Nimec paused, thinking.

"The woman he's been dating in Singapore," he said after a moment. "Do you know how to contact her?"

"Well, yes, I'm pretty sure I have Kirsten's home and office numbers on file," Joyce said. "Max left both with me in case I—"

"I need you to do some checking," Nimec broke in. "Call this… Kirsten, is that what you said her name is?"

"Yes, Kirsten Chu—"

"Buzz her at work first, see if she can tell you what's happening. If you don't reach her, try her where she lives. And keep trying till you catch her. Let me know soon as you speak to her, okay? Doesn't matter how late it is here in the States, I'm a night owl anyway. You can take my home number."

"Yes, certainly…"

In the six hours following that conversation, Nimec had attended to countless items of business, gone home, pushed himself through a strenuous shukokai karate workout in his dojo, showered, had a bite to eat, and then settled down in his den to read his E-mail — acutely conscious the entire while that hadn't heard from Joyce. She'd finally called back ten minutes ago, midnight PST, four in the afternoon Johor time.

"Any luck?" he'd said, recognizing her voice the second he picked up.

"I'm sorry, no," Joyce replied. "After we spoke I left several messages for her at Monolith… that's where she's employed, you know—"

Yeah, I know, all too goddamned well, he'd thought.

"— but she didn't return them. It was the same story when I tried her residence."

Nimec waited. He could tell there was more, and didn't think it would be good.

"Sir, I noticed a long pause between Kirsten's outgoing announcement and the tone on her home machine," she'd said at last. "It was the sort you'd get when there are already quite a few messages waiting…."

"As if she hadn't been there to retrieve them for some time," he said, completing the sentence for her.

Another pause. He imagined Joyce nodding at her end of the line.

' 'Just before calling you, I took the liberty of phoning Kirsten's departmental receptionist," she went on. "I said that I was a personal friend, and had been trying to get in touch with her, and was wondering if it was possible that she wasn't checking her voice mail."

"Yes? Go on."

She breathed. "Kirsten wasn't there. She's been gone since Friday and nothing's been heard from her. Everyone at her office is becoming very concerned. They say this is completely unlike her."

Unlike her, unlike Max, unlike both of them. So where are they?

His head starting to ache, he'd thanked Joyce for her trouble, assuring her he'd be in touch, listening to her nervous assurances that she'd do the same the instant she had any news, and signing off.

Now, ten minutes later, Nimec's headache had exponentially worsened, becoming the type nothing but a good night's sleep would relieve. Except he was too wired to sleep, and therefore would have to suffer. Max was one of his most trusted and responsible men, and it was no use telling himself he was merely extending a weekend barn dance with his girlfriend. All signs were that he'd bitten off more than he could chew investigating Monolith… and God only knew what had gone wrong.

Nimec frowned as he stared at the wall opposite his desk, regretting his willingness to let Max go ahead with this thing in the first place. Yes, it had gone bad, he was becoming more convinced of it by the second. Exactly what to do about it would take a little thinking, but do something he would….

And every one of his instincts told him it would have to be soon.

"I'm going to ask you a favor on a rather sticky affair," Nga was saying. "Understand I would not trouble you if there were any other way."

"It is ever my pleasure to be of help to you/' Kinzo lied, though his true pleasure would have been to stay as far from Nga Canbera as possible. But face and money compelled one to do much that was disagreeable.

They were regarding each other across Nga's desk in his office at the Bank of Kalimantan, a sleek, bright space on the building's thirty-third floor that had a breathtaking ocean view, and was decorated in a modernist Oriental style: sparse furnishings, neutral woods, its walls unadorned except for a 17th-century Chinese screen depicting an idealized winter landscape.

"Perhaps you'll want to hold your decision until you hear what needs to be done," Nga said.

Kinzo waited in silence. Thin and small-eyed, with a face like a tight fist, he was vice president of Omitsu Industrial, an electronic components manufacturer in Banjarmasin that had originated as an equal Japanese-Indonesian partnership during the years of the tiger economy, and fallen under majority Japanese control after the tiger leaped too far for its own good and went crashing into a ditch.

This had been the typical story for Southeast Asian businesses in need of financial rescue at the end of the previous decade. While many Western analysts had been gleefully forecasting economic Ragnarok for the Japanese, they had done what they had excelled at doing throughout history — learning from their mistakes, adapting to changed circumstances, and ultimately turning misfortune into advantage. Their rebound strategy had been twofold. First, they had propped up joint ventures with companies in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Phillipines by offering infusions of operating capital in exchange for bigger pieces of the action: i. E., controlling shares. Second, they had reprioritized, shifting away from a dwindling Asian market and focusing on export to cash-rich American buyers.

Japan's shrewd exploitation of opportunity had not only yielded heaping economic dividends to legitimate businessmen, but also kept the sake flasks of yakuza criminal syndicates overflowing, bringing particular rewards to the influential Inagawa-kai, which was entrenched in the Asian banking community, which had itself capitalized a large percentage of the corporate buyouts. Indeed, a graphic analysis of these financial interrelationships might aptly portray a long line of smiling, satisfied men, each with his hand deep in the pocket of the fellow in front of him.

In the case of the Omitsu Industrial resuscitation, the Canbera family had both brokered the deal and provided lending capital to the Japanese investors under exceptionally generous terms of repayment. That the Canberas had myriad ties to the yakuza was something the borrowers knew and accepted from the outset. That they might be called upon to provide a host of illicit favors to their "black mist" creditors was likewise considered a distasteful but acceptable part of their payback agreement.

As the old saying went, Kinzo thought, it was necessary to cross many fjords in passing through the world.

"Let me tell you my predicament," Nga said, cursing Khao Luan and his barbarians for the onerous position in which they had placed him. "There was an accident yesterday involving a foreigner. A white man." He gave Kinzo a meaningful glance. "It was fatal, you see."

Kinzo sat there looking at him.

"I want to make it clear that I had nothing to do with what happened, and would personally choose to report his death to the police," Nga said. "But the circumstances— and the parties involved — are such that I would have a difficult time proving it was unintentional."

Kinzo remailed silent.

Nga folded his hands on his desk, considering his next words. This was the delicate part.

"There's a problem with the body," he said. And met Kinzo's gaze with his own. "With disposal of the body."

Kinzo took a breath, released it, waited another moment. Then he slowly nodded, wondering what sort of infernal madness Nga was flirting with… and dragging him into as a reluctant participant.

"I have a shipload of cargo leaving Pontianak tomorrow afternoon," he said. "It will be crossing the Straits of Melaka en route to points west."

Nga looked at him.

"Ah," he said. "The open sea… is a lonely place."

Kinzo nodded.

"Were a man to fall overboard on such a voyage," Nga said, "I would imagine he might never be found."

Kinzo moved his shoulders. "Even should the currents wash him ashore, the ravages of the sea and fish upon his body would make it hard for anyone to identify him. Or conclusively establish the cause of his death."

Nga smiled a little.

"As always, my friend, you make perfect sense," he said. "Give me the ship's name and exact place of departure, and I can arrange for the luckless one we have discussed to be brought aboard tonight."

Kinzo saw the uneasiness at the edges of Nga's smile, and decided to reinforce it with a cautionary word. He disliked the banker and resented his outrageous imposition… and apart from that wanted to be sure Nga realized this was no minor impropriety of the sort his father had been covering up his entire life.

"Since you seem to value my thoughts, I feel obliged to share some with you," he said. "If a man with no friends were to disappear without explanation, his loss would be a blank space that goes unnoticed and unfilled. But things rarely occur in a void, especially when it comes to human affairs." He paused, then leaned forward. "If there are people left behind to miss him, an investigation is a foregone certainty. Should it turn out to be persistent, even the total absence of physical remains might not be enough to keep the circumstances of his 'accident' from being unearthed. Attention must therefore be given to all possible eventualities. Do you understand?"

Nga stared at him. The smile had fled his lips.

"Don't worry," he said. "I'm taking care of everything."

Unconvinced, Kinzo didn't answer.

Kirsten stood looking at her sister in the kitchen of Anna's home in Petaling Jaya, neither woman speaking, their faces gravely serious. On the butcher block between them were neat piles of chiles, water spinach, bok choy, white radish, and other ingredients for the stir-fry they had been preparing for dinner. A bamboo steamer filled with bean sprouts sat on the stove top, the burner beneath it still unlit. Behind Kirsten, an electric rice cooker worked quietly.

Her face pale, Anna was trembling with distress, the knife she had been using to chop her vegetables forgotten in her hand.

"Maybe you ought to put that down before you cut yourself," Kirsten said, nodding her chin slightly toward the knife. She gave Anna a strained smile. "Or me."

Anna stared at her as if she hadn't heard a word she'd said. The faint hiss of the rice cooker was all that broke the stillness in the room.

Kirsten opened her mouth to say something else, thinking even another tortured attempt at humor would be preferable to the silence… but then she decided to leave it alone. What had she expected anyway? Surely not sympathy. She had been staying with Anna and her family for several days now, having arrived with a concocted tale about needing to get away from things because of a romantic breakup, an emotional situation that had pushed her to the edge, all of it complete drivel.

It wasn't that she had meant to keep the truth from Anna and her husband, certainly not for this long, but whenever she'd started to share it with them, the words had refused to come. And so she had continued the deception until it had gotten out of hand — like everything else in her life recently.

At times, Kirsten had thought her guilty conscience and dreadful worries about Max really would drive her out of her skull, and by this morning had realized she couldn't bear her freight of secrets anymore. Her resolve firmed, she had planned to wait until her brother-in-law got home from work, sit him and Anna down in their living room, and tell them the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help her God.

But as a surgeon at a government hospital in KL, Lin was often detained with some emergency or other, and when he'd phoned to say that might be the case this evening — well, she had feared her determination might crumble before he arrived, and decided it might be best to make her confession to Anna alone rather than chance putting it off again.

Still, Kirsten hadn't been looking forward to it, and choosing the right moment had been difficult. Oddly enough, however, her mind had been on something else entirely as they'd started their dinner preparations a half hour ago, just before she came out with her story… or rather, before it had leaped from her mouth all on its own.

The incident she'd been remembering had occurred the previous day, when she was babysitting Anna's two kids, Miri and Brian. They'd been out in the condominium's small backyard playing, and Miri, who was five, had caught a grasshopper while poking around a flower bed, then started shouting for her older brother to find a jar to put it in. He'd run into the house in search of one, leaving her to stand there with her small hands cupped around the insect… but when he'd taken longer than Miri expected, her initial excitement over capturing it had turned into a sort of jittery dismay.

"It's getting away," she'd yelled, her eyes wide and frantic. "It's too big\"

In fact, it had been very big — that the local bugs were always of the king-sized variety was one of the harder things to which Kirsten had needed to get reaccustomed upon her return from England — even harder than the bloody Singlish — and what had presumably gotten her niece so upset was feeling the creature ricochet wildly around in her hands, beating its hard carapace against her palms as it strove to free itself, something that seemed much too large and alive to be contained for very long without inflicting a painful bite or sting.

Becoming aware of Miri's agitation, Kirsten had dashed over from where she'd been clipping a hedge across the yard, and had reached the poor kid just as she'd thrown her hands wide open to release the grasshopper, which had shot into the air like a rifle shell, escaping with a sort of ticking, clicking, fluttering sound that caused had Miri to jump with a shrill cry of startlement. It had taken Kirsten a while to get her settled down, and she'd only accomplished that after repeatedly assuring her the bug had gone away, far away, and would not be returning to exact some hideous insectile revenge upon her.

In a sense, Kirsten guessed that her own struggle to keep the truth locked up inside her had been akin to what happened to her niece — she had found herself scared and helpless, dealing with something that had proven much, much more of a handful than she'd bargained for.

And what in the world had she feared from Anna and Lin, anyway? How could any reaction be worse than letting them remain ignorant of the confusing, dangerous mess into which she'd gotten herself?

"Anna, please, listen to me," she said now, fumbling for words. "I'm so sorry…"

"Sorry?" Anna emitted a burst of harsh, pained laughter. "What am I supposed to say to that? What am I supposed to do?"

Kirsten was shaking her head.

"I don't know," she said. "All I can tell you is that I never intended to bring any of this into your home. And that coming here was a terrible mistake. I'll be out by tonight if it's what you—"

"Shit, will you stop making things worse?" Anna said sharply. "Bad enough you've been lying to us the entire time you've been here, letting us believe you're nursing a broken heart. Then I hear it's all about you being involved with spying on your employer, and this craziness about men ambushing you on one of the busiest streets in Singapore like something out of James Bond. And now, to make matters worse, you're saying dzai-jyan, good-bye, as if you think we'd be eager to see you walk out the door and get kidnapped, even killed, God only knows. I'm not sure whether to be angry, frightened, or insulted."

Kirsten felt her throat getting thick with moisture, and swallowed.

"May I request," she said, "that 'forgiving' be added to your multiple choice?"

Anna held her gaze for a long, silent moment.

The silence grew.

"Yes," she said finally, nodding. "You may."

Kirsten expelled a ragged sigh. "I'm so mixed up, Anna," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. "Max… he knows my cell-phone number, and promised to be in touch within days. When I got into the cab, he was starting to give me someone's name, a person to call if I didn't hear from him, but I didn't catch it…."

"Kirsten, if you want my opinion, the people you ought to be calling are the police," Anna said. "This Max is the one who got you into trouble in the first place. I understand that you have feelings for him, but how do you know for a fact that he isn't a criminal? That the men who were waiting outside the hotel weren't the authorities?"

Kirsten shook her head vehemently.

"No," she said. "It isn't possible."

"But you've only known the man a few months. Why are you so positive?"

"Because, while I may be five years younger than you, I'm not some little schoolgirl who's got her head screwed on backwards," Kirsten said, her throat filling again. "Look, I won't deny I'm in love with Max. Nor will I deny having had doubts about whether he shares that feeling, or even wondering on occasion whether my position at Monolith made me.. useful to him. But I know… I know… he cares for me." Kirsten wiped her hand across her eyes, and it came away wet. "You can go on arguing about whether he respected me in the morning, but he's not some kind of manipulative crook, or con man, or whatever. He risked his life to lead those men away from me. I can't just turn my back on him now."

Anna sighed. "That isn't what I was suggesting, and if you'd stop being defensive for a second you'd realize it," she said. "All I'm saying is that you — we — are in a very serious situation, and need to get help. What's so terribly wrong with the idea of calling the police? With at least considering it before some harm comes to you, me, Lin, or the children?"

Kirsten opened her mouth to speak, and realized she didn't have a clue what she wanted to say… but no, that wasn't right. That was being dishonest with herself, and she was supposed to be coming clean here. She had more than a clue. She knew, absolutely knew what needed to be said, and she could not allow pride and stubbornness to get in its way.

Suddenly she found herself overtaken by emotion, hitching out uncontrollable sobs.

Anna set her knife down on the counter, then came around to Kirsten's side and took one of her hands.

"Kirst, I didn't mean—"

"No, don't," Kirsten said, furiously swiping tears from her eyes with her free hand, hating the tears as they poured down her cheeks in an unbottled stream. "You did mean it, every word, and you're absolutely right. You let me stay here unconditionally, and in return I've put your entire family at risk. And that can't continue."

Anna stood beside her in silence, looking at her, still holding her hand.

Meeting her sister's gaze, Kirsten leaned forward and kissed her gently on the cheek.

"It's time for me to take some advice besides my own," she said. "I'm calling the police."