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  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 did
n'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."

  Chapter Fourteen

  VARIOUS LOCATIONS

  SEPTEMBER 23/24, 2000

  "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 th
eir 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."