Ruthless.Com

Chapter Fourteen

"You want to what?" Charles Klrby said, gripping the telephone in his Broadway office. "I can't believe you're serious."

"Believe it," Gordian replied from clear across the United States. "I've given some hard thought to the idea."

Not easily jolted, Kirby felt like hanging onto his chair.

"We spoke less than two days ago, and you didn't mention—"

"That's because it hadn't occurred to me yet," Gordian said. "I said I thought hard about the whole thing. Not hard and long." He paused. "Sometimes it's a matter of recognizing when you've gotten a genuine inspiration."

Still trying to recover his equilibrium, Kirby held the phone away from his mouth, inhaled, then slowly counted to ten. He glanced out the window, where many stories below and across the street people were hoisting placards in protest of something or other near the steps of City Hall, a more or less daily occurrence for as long as he'd had his office here. What was it that had brought them out today? He squinted to read the signs, realized he couldn't make out a word they said, and promptly forgot about them as he exhaled.

"Our paperwork for the antitrust suit's already three inches thick," he said. "We're almost ready to file it."

"Then go ahead and do so," Gordian said. "We both know its real purpose is to buy time, and we can use all we can get."

Kirby frowned. "Gord, my job is to give you legal counsel and representation. I can't make decisions for you. But I hope you're aware of the risk you'd be taking by going ahead with this."

"I can accept it," Gordian said. "Talk to somebody with a cold and you might get sick. Stroll past a construction site and a brick might fall down on your head. You can't crawl into a burrow."

Kirby was silent. Breathe. Count to ten. Let it out

"You know, it's always a little scary when you get philosophical," he said after a while. "Just tell me you won't lock yourself on this plan until after you're back from Washington."

"I'd rather get things in motion sooner," Gordian said. "As a matter of fact, I was going ask that you head out here to meet with me and Richard Sobel the morning before we fly."

"But that's Thursday. The day after tomorrow," Kirby said, flipping through his appointment book.

"I'll obviously understand if you can't make it, Chuck. Just as long as you understand that if you have any compelling reasons to dissuade me, it'll be your last chance to offer them."

Reaching for his pen, Kirby crossed a Thursday lunch date with a very attractive female colleague out of the book, and substituted the words "To San Jose."

"So quick bright things come to confusion," he muttered.

"What was that?" Gordian said.

"I said I'll be at your meeting," Kirby replied.

Just as Alexander the Great severed the Gordian knot with a swift and decisive whack of his sword — thereby gaining the favorable auspices of Zeus — so had Megan Breen and Peter Nimec concluded early on in UpLink's worldwide expansion that it needed a similar rapid-response capability, a security team that could cope with crisis situations where both regional stability and the company's interests were threatened, sharing intelligence with host governments, using scenario-planning techniques to defuse most problems before they hatched, and prepared to counter violence with forceful action of its own should that option be unavoidable.

Since their employer had been cooperative enough to have a surname (and bold disposition) that invited comparison with the legendary Macedonian, they had dubbed this arm of their far-flung organization Sword. And because of Nimec's access to the generally inaccessible society of law-enforcement professionals — he'd started out a beat cop in South Philly, moved to Boston in mid-career to garner an illustrious and still-unmatched record of closed cases for the BPD's elite Major Crimes Unit, and after yet a second geographical move wound up Chief of Special Operations in Chicago, all in less than two decades — they were able to lure the cream of the crop away from police and intelligence agencies around the world, staffing their pet project with men and women who were equal to any job.

One of the impressive Young Turks with Sword's New York branch, Noriko Cousins, had been a handpicked member of Nimec's team during the Code Name: Politika investigation of about a year back, and was credited with being a major reason for its speedy progress and successful resolution. After her section chief, Tony Barnhardt, took early retirement due to injuries sustained during that probe, she had been a natural to fill his post, which, in keeping with Pete Nimec's loose-reigned executive approach, allowed her to run her show with very little topside interference. She rarely heard from Nimec unless it was important.

And so, when she got back from lunch this cool autumn afternoon to find three phone memos from him on her desk spindle, every one of them received during the hour she'd been out of the office, it struck her as safe to interpret the repeated calls as a sign that a matter of some urgency had cropped up.

Hustling over to the phone, she punched in his direct number without pausing to unzip her jacket.

He answered at once. "Nori, I've been anxious to hear from you."

No kidding, she thought.

"Is everything all right, sir?"

"I haven't decided yet," he said. "Look, I'm not going to twist your arm, but I'd like you to come out to San Jose, and would rather not explain why until you get here."

Surprised as Noriko was, she only needed a moment to decide. The personal and professional allegiance she felt toward her boss made it easy.

"When?" she said.

"Soon as possible. Tonight, tomorrow, if you haven't got anything else that's pressing."

"Nothing that my assistant can't handle," she said. "It's been quiet in these parts lately, knock wood."

"Good." He paused for several seconds, the prolonged silence somehow conveying the gravity of his mood even more than his tone of voice. "I know this is asking a lot, and apologize for being mysterious. But we really ought to talk in person."

"It's no problem," she assured him. "Let me get off the phone and start making arrangements. I'll get back to you soon as they're set."

"Later, then." Another pause. "And Nori?"

"Yes?"

"I suggest you pack plenty of lightweight clothes. We might be doing some traveling."

She rubbed the back of her neck, thinking that one over. Curiouser and curiouser.

"Will do, sir," she said.

It was what might have been called a perfect equatorial night at Pontianak Harbor, the air warm and clean, countless stars filling the sky, the water stretching off from the rim of the shore lustrous with their reflected light. At the docks, a flotilla of commercial vessels sat anchored amid a silent thicket of cranes and hoists, the off-loaded ships resting buoyantly beside others stacked from stem to sternpost with freight containers, their prows pushed deep into the water under the weight of their transport.

Most nights there was something of a dozing serenity in the quiet before daylight, when the roar and yell of dockworkers, and the constant, rhythmic swinging of booms, would forcibly overpower the soft lap of the current.

Most nights.

Tonight the loud rumble of a cargo truck had shaken the stillness, a muddy tarpaulin flapping over its rear as it rolled up to the transit sheds at the north end of the dock, swung onto the ramp outside their loading doors, and came heavily to a stop.

Moments later a pair of waiting men emerged from one of the darkened sheds and turned toward the big hauler. Looking out from behind its steering wheel, Xiang saw them enter the wide yellow fan of the headlights, their short, slicked-back hair and cherry-blossom arm tattoos marking them as yakuza, barely out of adolescence, yet old enough to have been recruited from the bosozoku motorcycle gangs that were the equivalent of training schools for the Japanese underworld.

Xiang nodded to Juara, who was riding shotgun. Then, leaving the headlights on, he cut the engine, stepped out of the cab, and rounded the front grille to approach the pair of yakuza.

Punks, he thought, regarding them with stony eyes. The smuggling and drug-trafficking alliances Japanese crime families had formed with the Southeast Asian syndicates had not only yielded lucrative results, but had put strutting small-timers like these to good use. The cleanup job they were doing was the sort nobody else would touch.

"You're fucking late," one of the toughs said in Bahasa. "We expected you here an hour ago."

Xiang tipped his head backward slightly, saying nothing. The cargo truck's passenger door flew open and Juara sprang out, an FN P-90 assault weapon in his hands, the tiny lens of a laser aiming system under its silenced barrel. Expressionless, he stood beside the hauler and pointed it in the general direction of the yakuza.

"Never mind that," Xiang said. "I want you to tell me who sent you to meet us."

The yakuza seemed momentarily confused. "Why? We look like 1MB to you?"

"You look like sewer rats who are too stupid to know they're about to get their heads blown out their asses," he said, and motioned to Juara.

Juara angled the small, molded-plastic gun sharply upward to center a red dot of laser light upon the yakuza's forehead.

"Tell me who sent you." Xiang repeated. His eyes locked on the tough's. "Now."

The yakuza blinked, shrugged.

"We're doing this for a man named Kinzo," he said.

"Doing what?"

"Taking a dead gaijin for a trip out to sea," he said. "You satisfied?"

Xiang continued to stare at him without moving for perhaps another half minute, then finally pushed his hand out at Juara. The second pirate lowered his gun.

"The body's in back of the truck, wrapped in a tarp," he said. "Get it out of there and onto whatever ship's taking it away. And don't ask any more questions, you little shitbag."

Trying to conceal his relief, the yakuza shrugged and said something to his partner in Japanese. Then both of them went around the back of the truck to do their work.

As he watched them lift the American's body from the covered flatbed and carry it off into the shed, Xiang suddenly remembered something that gave him a foolish but nevertheless powerful desire to hasten on his way. He turned back toward the truck, briefly pausing to gaze out over the black water licking at the quay — the water that would soon swallow Max Blackburn into its depths — and found himself unable to dismiss the unsetting thought that had occurred to him a moment ago.

Pontianak was named after the Malay word for vengeful spirits.

An involuntary shiver running through his frame, he ordered Juara to return to the truck, then climbed inside himself and drove off into the night.

As with any deadly combustion, the Jakarta massacre was inevitable once its explosive ingredients made contact under flashpoint conditions.

The protest organizers, mainly university students belonging to various political elements loosely gathered under the "pro-democracy" umbrella — and, in fact, representing everything from mendicant Communists to militant ultra-Nationalists — had been planning the demonstration at the Cultural Center for a great many weeks, distributing jargonistic leaflets, fliers, posters, and placards; slogan-emblazoned T-shirts and baseball caps; even compact discs filled with fiery speeches and protest anthems meant to be ratcheted from boom boxes during the rally. On and around Indonesia's largest campuses, movement leaders had sought out converts with the zeal of religious proselytizers, gaining thousands of student supporters and managing to stir up a large percentage of the usually apathetic working class, which had endured four years of grinding deprivation after the Asian economic bubble suddenly burst.

Although the cohesive force binding the groups together was fragile, they possessed unanimity in their weariness with skyrocketing inflation, discontent with a government that had stubbornly resisted economic reforms, and anger with their President, in part because of his see-no-evil attitude toward bureaucratic corruption and waste, and in part due to his refusal to dismantle the state monopoly of key national businesses, all of which were controlled by his seemingless endless multitude of brothers, half-brothers, sons, son-in-laws, and nephews.

Together the dissidents constituted a populist force to be reckoned with.

The government, however, had also prepared itself for a coordinated display of muscle.

Concerned that the unrest spreading through the nation's campuses, villages, and cities would eventually open the door to outright rebellion, many ruling party officials had concluded that strong action was needed to counter a perception of government weakness. All knew that quashing the protest in the manner of the Chinese in Tiananmen Square might provoke international condemnation, and potentially damage relations with their Western and Japanese allies. Yet after weighing that risk against the real or imagined likelihood of a full-scale people's uprising, certain influential aides to the President decided it was worth taking, and gained his approval of a scheme that would show their tolerance with dissidents had finally reached its limit.

According to reliable estimates, the throng of protesters was nearly five thousand strong at the height of the rally, and their complaints ranged from the dead serious to the frivolous. There were men with signs denouncing repressive social policies, demanding industrial privatization, and decrying the lack of variety offered by their cable television servers. There were women campaigning for better educational opportunities, new laws to prohibit workplace discrimination, and the scarcity of cosmetics due to import bans. There were journalists of both sexes crying out for freedom of the press, urbanites lamenting the absence of reliable public transportation, suburbanites complaining about their neglected roads and highways, and environmentalists calling out for the emplacement of stricter pollution controls. There was was even a small but vocal group of gourmands expressing outrage over the recent closings of several four-star restaurants.

While fewer in number than the demonstrators, the military troops deployed to manage and contain them were clothed in body armor, and equipped with a wide range of weapons and crowd-suppression gear that gave them a considerable defensive and aggressive edge.

They also had a dirty little secret up their collective sleeve: plainclothes security agents pretending to be demonstrators and dispersed throughout the crowd. The infiltrators' job was to incite a confrontation with the troops, who of course knew of the plan, and would respond with a swift and violent show of force against the real protestors. It would not matter whether their reaction was criticized as excessive by those with a human rights agenda; quite the opposite, its clear and desired message was that the government was finished with civil disobedience, and would begin to punish agitators in the severest manner regardless of anything its critics might say.

To make things look good, the first staged incidents were kept at the level of pushing and shoving matches, the "protesters" getting increasingly out of control, the soldiers showing restraint and discipline in driving them back. The clashes gained in frequency, following a realistic pattern of escalation, and soon the troops were being pelted with rocks and bottles. Tear-gas grenades, pepper spray, water cannons, and riot batons were used to subdue the rock-throwers, who were dragged from the scene in hand-and leg-cuffs.

Next, several of the government plants at the skirmish line began hurling gasoline bombs, covering the area with orange splashes of flame and dark clouds of acrid smoke. That no more than twenty people were engaged in this conduct went unnoticed in the milling confusion. That every one of the bombs were either intercepted by the soldiers' ballistic shields, or tossed intentionally wide of where they could do true harm to their supposed targets, also escaped detection. The image of the troops being physically assaulted, firebombs rupturing around them, was the excuse they needed to move into full offensive mode.

Shotguns and automatic rifles were brought out of mobile arsenals and chambered with lethal ammunition. Armored personnel carriers rolled into the mob, provoking exponentially greater anger and hysteria. A young man rushed in front of the lead APC, and was run over before its driver could halt or swerve, the vehicle's treads flattening him horribly, leaving him a mangled and bloody corpse. A young woman who had been near his side leaped upon a trooper in hysterical retaliation, cut open his cheek with a shard of broken glass, and was beaten to the ground with nightsticks and brass knuckles. A couple of men who tried coming to her aid were clubbed unconscious. Somebody triggered an automatic pistol, and by that point it hardly mattered whether the person was a uniformed trooper, an undercover provocateur, or an actual protestor who had been driven to a frenzy by the violence.

The troops smashed into the crowd from all directions, letting loose with their heaviest firepower. Live parabellum rounds poured from their guns. People trying to flee were trapped in the press of bodies and fell screaming and crying, swept with gunfire, slipping on their own blood, crawling through pools of blood.

The television crews already on the scene were speedily joined by satellite crews that could provide live coverage of the melee.

Watching the event closely on television, Nga Canbera couldn't decide how to feel about it. He had poured a fortune in rupiahs into financing the demonstrators, caring nothing about most of their issues, but liking to play political games with the administration, largely because he resented the competitive advantage held by the President's businessman relatives — and in particular by one of his sons, a former college classmate who owned a bank that was propped up by government loans and investments, and consistently outperformed his own as a result.

Still, Nga found the rabble crude and undeserving of sympathy. Would the crackdown play to the ruling party's advantage, or further inflame its domestic opposition? And what if the International Monetary Fund withheld the balance of its economic recovery package, or even aborted it entirely in a knee-jerk spasm of humanitarianism? What effect would such a turn have on the Canbera family's holdings.. and most perplexingly, why hadn't he asked himself that before?

It was all very confusing and intimidating, especially when he stopped to consider that his involvement with the students would only be the beginning, the very tip of what would surface if someone started digging around in his affairs… and that his complicity, however indirect, in the killing of the American spy could be the very thing that led to where his secrets were hidden. Kinzo's thinly veiled warning was well taken — there was so much, so much that could bring catastrophe upon him. And what would Kinzo have said if he'd known about his role in what General Kersik and the others were plotting? Nga didn't understand how the game could have gotten so complicated and dangerous, how it could have gotten so big. He felt in over his head.

He stared at the television. At the armored cars, the troopers, the pathetically frightened demonstrators being cut down in their tracks as they tried to scramble to safety. The President and his advisors deserved credit, at least, for having the courage to strike decisively, to chance the repercussions of bold action rather than wait until the wolves were at their door.. and perhaps, Nga thought, there was something invaluable to be learned from that, a clue to what his course ought to be.

Again, it all came back to the words of advice Kinzo had offered. If Max Blackburn's employers began tracing the circumstances of his death, it would inevitably lead to Nga's own door. How, then, to preempt such an investigation? Yes, Marcus Caine eventually would be feeding on UpLink, devouring UpLink — Nga was no less confident of that than before. But as he had tried pointing out at the Thai's dismal hiding place, the process of consumption would take time. Too much time.

Nga continued staring at the TV, but his eyes were no longer focused on the chaotic images flashing across its screen. He was wondering if the problem was not that the game itself had gotten beyond him, but rather that his strategy needed to be broadened. That he had reached the stage where studied and incremental moves would no longer work… and where one swift move could win it all.

Nodding to himself like a man who has suddenly realized the solution to a complex puzzle, he picked up the telephone and called Marcus Caine.

"Hello?"

"Marcus, hello. I'm actually surprised I was able to catch you at home. According to what I've been reading, you're the toast of the town these days."

Caine raised an eyebrow at the sound of Nga's voice. He'd been in front of his television for over an hour watching raw CNN satellite feeds of the Jakarta bloodbath. By the time the footage made it to the regular broadcasts, it would be edited for mass consumption, sparing viewers the more grisly scenes of atrocity — but he preferred his glimpses of the world's ugliness straight up. Diluted reality afforded little in the way of insight.

"Libertine that I am, I occasionally give my follies a rest and try catching up with the news," he said, wondering if the timing of Nga's call was any coincidence. "Speaking of which, what's this madness going on in your country?"

"Our beloved head of state is clamping down on his opposition, it seems."

"Does that distress you?"

Caine heard Nga sigh. "I suppose it depends on how these events come to bear upon my own fortunes."

Caine's eyebrow arched a little higher. He'd expected an earful of Nga's phoney rhetoric… sympathy for the common man, and all that nonsense. The apparently honest answer Nga had given him instead was almost startling.

"As long as your bank continues doing well, I imagine you'd be in a good position regardless of who comes out on top," he said, uncertain whether that was true considering Nga's habit of fucking around in Indonesian politics, and hardly giving a damn in any case. He was just filling the silence, really.

"Marcus, listen to me," Nga said after a moment. "We have to talk about Roger Gordian. Something's arisen that could have damaging implications for us unless it is addressed right away."

Caine stroked his chin, thinking. He had no idea what to make of Nga's cryptic statement, other than that it presumably concerned the takeover.

"I'll be formally announcing my intention to acquire UpLink in today's Wall Street Journal," he said. "The company's lawyers are certain to stall things in court, but I think it will all be smoke. Give me a few weeks and—"

"I said Roger Gordian. Not UpLink."

Suddenly disquieted, Caine thought some more, wishing Nga would just spit it out. "Does this have any connection to the son of a bitch who was nosing around my Singapore branch? I thought you took care of him."

A pause.

"Marcus, are we secure?"

"I can only vouch for my end of the line."

"Then we should be able to speak freely," Nga said. "The one you speak of is dead. And that's where the complications begin."

Caine suddenly realized his heart was beating fast. "I–I don't understand. I mean, what went wrong? And what does it have to do with me?"

"How it happened is a long story, but be assured it wasn't intentional," Nga said. "Really, though, abducting him was a mistake, and I objected to it from the beginning. Had he been released, he would have been able to share information about his captors with the authorities and his employer. His death, meanwhile, is surely going to bring about an investigation. In the end, what is the difference? People are going to want answers, and all roads lead in our direction."

"Wait a second," Caine said. "You're speaking as though I had a hand in this. And I didn't. I didn't even want to know about it. Your friends came up with the brainstorm of taking him, when there had to be an easier way to find out what he was looking for. A sane way."

"Calm down. We can't reverse what's past. The important thing now is that we have the courage to deal with the rest of it."

"Don't give me that bullshit. You fucking deal with the rest, whatever it may be. I've repaid your loans ten times over. I've done everything you asked, like a fucking indentured servant. But this… I want no part of it."

Another pause, this one of longer duration than the first.

"Marcus, I needn't remind you that you've already participated in activities that would be considered treasonous offenses by your government. If your actions come to light you'll be imprisoned for life, if not executed. Why do you think Blackburn had to be stopped? There was no choice—"

"Don't say his name. And don't you dare call me a traitor," Caine protested. His voice had become shrill. "My God, I'm not used to this. Those sons of bitches you consort with, those thugs, it's their problem. What do you expect me to do about it, anyway?"

"Nothing directly. But there are men in the States who've performed certain kinds of tasks for us before. Who can get into and out of places without anyone witnessing anything. You know who they are, Marcus."

Caine was incredulous. "No/' he said. "I won't hear any more—" "Yes, you will," Nga said. "I will tell you what has to be done about Gordian because there is no other choice. And for that same reason you will listen." "No, no, no—"

"I will tell you, Marcus," Nga repeated. And before Caine could interrupt again, he did.