Cutting Edge pp-6 Read online

  With his gratuity tucked into the pocket of his colorful uniform jacket, the doorman watched the taxi pull away down the boulevard. A moment afterward, the second in the queue of parked taxis slid up to the hotel entrance.

  This time the doorman opened its front passenger door and leaned all the way inside.

  “Scintillements,” he instructed the driver.

  “Ce voir Gunville?”

  “Ce n’est non l’affair.”

  They made brief eye contact. Then a silent nod of acknowledgment from the driver, and he faced forward, his hands on the wheel. Who the Americans were meeting was truly none of their affair; it would be best for them to know only what was necessary.

  The doorman straightened, pushing the door shut.

  A second later, the taxi swung from the curb and slotted into the light traffic a short distance behind the vehicle carrying Nimec and Scull.

  The ocean waters of Gabon are blessed with mild currents, and so the Chimera floated gently tonight above the Ogooué Fan, a wide belt of alluvial sediment sloping toward the oil-gorged offshore basins beyond land’s end. Here, four months ago, Cédric Dupain and Marius Bouchard had come to sudden death at three hundred fathoms, but the explosions and pressure that left their bodies in shredded ruin caused no visible disturbance to the surface tranquillity.

  Life’s worst acts of violence may be hidden, silent, and deep. Known as the spawning ground of abominations, it is a place where perpetrator and victim meet and witnesses attest to nothing, where crimes committed beget atrocious intimacies, where guilt makes its slippery escape through wormholes bedded in shame.

  In his yacht’s stateroom bed, Harlan DeVane lay facing its raised porthole and wished hard for sleep to take him. Though shut tight, his eyes were grazed by the navigational lights of the buoys and platforms outside to the west, and the running lights of the great sluggish fuel tankers at near-rest between them. Some nights their flickering glow would lull DeVane into temporary oblivion, but now, on this night, they only prodded him back from its edge.

  The porthole’s thin translucent curtains swirled in drifts of warm sea air. Naked atop his sheets, DeVane felt the satin breeze slide over his legs and chest, felt the soft, rhythmic rocking of his yacht trying to ease him into darkness. But his body remained stiff, unrelaxed. He had tried to keep his thoughts on business, settle himself by planning for imminent discussions with his clients. There had been little to consider, however. His offering of the current information crop would be a take it or leave it proposition. He had lost much of his fortune and face after the Sleeper virus debacle and been put in a ticklish position with the disappointed buyers of its genetic activators. And yet he had misled none of them. The failure had not resulted from a default in supplying the product, nor a deficiency in its performance, nor any misrepresentation of its ravaging potential. In his line of work, there could be no guarantees against countermeasures taken by the enemy. UpLink International had been the stumbling block, and he fully meant to remove that impediment. He would not repair the damaged trust of his clients by becoming a markdown distributor, a light-palmed haggler like the market venders in Port-Gentil.

  With these matters determined to his own satisfaction, the memories had been aroused to work their penetrating, uninhibited will on DeVane. Even those that sated were small molestations, arsenic pleasures.

  Now they flashed an image of the brownstone in New York City onto the screen of his mind, a vivid memory of how it had looked to him on first sight. This was thousands of miles and two years to the day after he had sat at the long glass table in his father’s tower, hiding his threadbare shirt cuff beneath the sleeves of his cheap jacket. DeVane had known from the moment of his expulsion that important lessons could be taken from it. In the time that passed he had concentrated on extracting every one them, seen that his processing of the information had grown full and complete. None of that time was wasted with idleness.

  His appearance had changed… no, he had transformed himself. That was the primary lesson DeVane had learned: Transformation was necessary for those born outside the fortresses of power to succeed. The faceless unknown must fit themselves to suits that would let them belong.

  The suit DeVane had worn as he strode toward the brownstone on Manhattan’s Upper East Side was tailored and padded black wool crepe, his shirt woven gray cotton, his silk hand-knit necktie smartly knotted and dimpled. He had walked in his oxfords just once before to give their leather the suppleness of light wear, then polished them to a soft, rich gleam. Strapped casually over his shoulder was a Coach Hudson briefcase.

  DeVane had obtained the expensive clothes and briefcase with money from items stolen and fenced in another city. His hands had become skilled at using the lock pick and shim, at gaining furtive entrance to unoccupied homes. The tower had pointed DeVane’s way toward an understanding that his sense of entitlement was a dead skin to be shed… and had eventually led him to appreciate that merit did not open doors, but only gave one a chance at staying in the room. He had realized, too, that there was always more than a single door, a single room. For the faceless unknown, cunning and deception were the true keys to the kingdom.

  Hocus pocus.

  Pausing in front of the nineteenth-century town house, DeVane had noted its every feature with an obsessive attention to detail. A low wrought-iron fence stood between the small flagstone court and sidewalk. A spindling bamboo plant, striped green and yellow, grew from a concrete bed by the front steps. The leaded casement windows had black-barred gates and interior shutters. The door was dark paneled wood with a heavy horseshoe knocker, brass knob, and a pear-shaped light fixture above it. On the jamb, an intercom. There were ornate floral designs on the projecting cornices.

  DeVane had looked up at the light fixture amid the busy brush and bump of sidewalk foot traffic and recalled seeing its photograph in a guide to ornamental antiques written by the homeowner. Her name was Melissa Phillips, and she had authored numerous magazine articles and three books on related subjects. Her most recent book had appeared a decade earlier, shortly before the passing of her husband, an executive editor at a famed and venerable publishing house who had been much older than she.

  Before his trip to New York, DeVane had learned everything he could about the widow. She had led a reserved, if not quite withdrawn, existence since the end of her marriage. She was reputed to be a mild eccentric who fancied herself as something of a bohemian. There was a small circle of friends with whom she had regular get-togethers, most of them women, socialites she had known for years. Although she possessed abundant financial means, Melissa Phillips would sometimes rent out luxury suites in the spacious town house she had inherited, placing advertisements in the New York Observer, a weekly Manhattan newspaper with a large upscale readership. The monthly rates were expensive as listed, but Phillips’s leasing of the apartments sprang from a desire for companionship rather than income, and she showed a softness, even a patronlike generosity, toward a certain type of prospective occupant… or house guest, as she preferred to call each of her renters. Young people who aspired to careers in the arts often struck an empathic chord in her. Budding writers, musicians, dancers, and stage performers made for colorful house guests and lively evening conversation, and she would on occasion adjust her rents downward to ease their financial burdens, or in some cases defer its due date when their pursuit of the muse ran them lean.

  The widow had shown a special affection for gifted, interesting men in their twenties and early thirties, and it was to them that her kindness was most often and fully extended.

  DeVane had learned of this preference after reading an archived article taken from the New York Post’s Page Six, well known for its gossip columns about celebrities and members of Gotham society.

  It had seemed a shining gift to him.

  On the brownstone’s front stoop, he announced himself to a servant over the intercom and was told someone would be down to admit him in a few moments.

 
When the door opened, DeVane was not surprised to see Melissa Phillips herself standing in the entry. She was an attractive woman. Small framed, thin, her blond hair just slightly laced with gray.

  The widow had appraised him with intent, pale blue eyes.

  “Hello, Mr. Nemaine,” she said, and smiled. “I’d thought your appointment at that literary agency might delay you… it can be horrible getting up here from downtown.”

  DeVane shrugged, returned her smile with one he had studied on other faces and taught himself to reproduce.

  “A playwright’s timing has to be perfect, and I try not to miss my beats,” he said, taking her extended hand. Her fingers were long, slender. “It’s an honor, Mrs. Phillips. You have a distinguished reputation as a benefactress of the arts.”

  A glint in the widow’s eyes. They met his own.

  “I’m charmed and flattered to know my efforts are appreciated,” she said. “And please call me Melissa… I’m not that much older than you.”

  DeVane stood with her hand in his. Behind her, a glimpse of a high-walled entry parlor of palatial dimensions. He was struck by the burnished gold chandelier that hung from its vaulted ceiling, clean white candles in its curved, graceful arms.

  She noticed him looking in through the halfway open door, and glanced over her shoulder to see what had caught his attention.

  DeVane was quick; he had worked hard at perfecting the cheat.

  “I apologize for becoming distracted, but the chandelier is magnificent,” he said. “Gilded wood, isn’t it? I’d imagine it must date back to the English Restoration.”

  Melissa Phillips faced him again, impressed.

  “Very close,” she said, and opened her door wide to admit him. “It’s British. From the early eighteenth century, though. You’ll find it even more beautiful at night with the candles lighted.”

  He had nodded and entered.

  As DeVane followed her into the parlor, he had felt almost like a treasure hunter who had unearthed a trove of wealth he had sought for a lifetime — struggling, digging, boring past endless layers of dirt and stone to expose it — and now that he had broken through, now that it was within reach, had discovered it contained an even greater hoard than he had allowed himself to envision.

  He wanted to see every prize, take it all in at once…

  But here Harlan DeVane’s string of memories broke off like a film reel that had run out inside a vacated projection booth.

  In his cabin on board the Chimera, his body had finally released its tension and let him plunge into dreamless sleep.

  * * *

  “I gotta admit, Petey, you were a hundred percent right about the Gabonese having a knack for entertaining their visitors,” Scull said cheerfully, his voice raised above the piano-accompanied singing from the club’s round central stage. “If I’d realized how, you wouldn’t have heard me complain.”

  “Great,” Nimec said.

  “Also, you should’ve told me the cooking was Senegalese. Didn’t I hear you mention that you been wanting to try African food for the longest time?”

  “Could be you did.”

  “Well, that goes double for me, believe it or not. Which is why—”

  “I would have told you,” Nimec said. “If I’d known.”

  “But what about that ad you read?”

  Nimec snapped a look at him.

  “I suppose I missed the part about the cuisine,” he said. “I had other priorities on my mind.”

  “Hey, don’t get defensive on me, I’m just saying it’s too bad you didn’t know.” Scull slurped from his spoon. “Anyway, this fish soup’s delicious. The spices, boy, they’ve got a sneaky kick. The heat kind of creeps over your tongue, front to back. Then wham!”

  “Glad you’re enjoying it.”

  “I’ll have to remember its name. Better yet, I should ask the waiter to scribble it on a piece of paper for me, tiébou dienn, right?”

  “I think so.”

  “Because it’s one I don’t want to forget. When you get down to the rice and stuff at the bottom, take my word, it’s freakin’ bliss—”

  “I’m glad.”

  Scull looked at him. “You already said that.”

  “Said what?”

  “Forget it. How’s your chicken yassa?”

  “Good.”

  “So why the long face?” Scull said. “Gunville couldn’t have steered us toward better eats. Doesn’t have a bad set of pipes, either. Though, you want me to be truthful, I’d still prefer he wasn’t singing in French so I could understand the words.”

  Nimec didn’t answer.

  Scull shrugged, dunked his spoon into his bowl, slurped. Nimec looked at him across the table, trying to decide whether his effusive praise of the food and song offered at Scintillements was authentic, a vaudeville routine intended to needle him, or perhaps a typically obnoxious Scullian mixture of the two. Regardless, Scull had succeeded in wearing his patience down to the thinnest of tatters. Or contributed to it, at least.

  He turned toward the middle of the room, which neither sparkled, glittered, nor squirmed with crayon-colored lasers but instead fit the travel brochure description to its very letter. A sedate, softly lit, classic dinner club atmosphere. Around the stage were about thirty tables filled with well-dressed men and women, an appreciable percentage of whom were expatriates from the United States and elsewhere. On stage, Pierre Gunville, crew master of the Africana, sat on a stool beside the baby grand, vocalizing a sentimental ballad he’d introduced as being about love gained, betrayed, and forsaken — speaking French and English for the benefit of his multinational audience. Gunville was clad in a black tux, wing-collared white shirt, and black cravat that had been gradually undone over the course of his performance to reveal a thick, braided gold chain around his neck. It was the most ostentatious thing about the place.

  Nimec ate his food, listened, and waited. When he and Scull had arrived at their reserved table earlier, Gunville had come over from the stage — where he was doing a sound check or something — proclaimed his great delight at making their acquaintance, and guided them through the menu, recommending his favorite house specialties. He had then explained that singing at the club was both his joy and sideline, a bit of diversionary moonlighting to compensate for the ennui and accumulated pressures of his hard, extended stints at sea. It was his wish, he’d said, that they enjoy the first of his two half-hour sets during dinner. He would promptly rejoin them for a drink at intermission and be pleased, indeed eager, to discuss whatever matters were on their minds relating to his primary vocation.

  By that, Nimec assumed he had meant his captaining of the Africana.

  Now Gunville’s sad serenade seemed to be concluding. Or crescendoing. Or whatever the hell love’s-loss songs did when they finally wrapped up. The pianist, whom Gunville had introduced only as “Maestro,” struck a resonating minor chord on the keyboard, added a blue trickle of melody. Then Gunville dramatically rose off his stool, lifted the microphone close to his mouth with his right hand, clenched his left hand into a trembling impassioned fist at his side, and ended his number with a sustained, sonorous note and a dashing full bow. Nimec noticed his lingering eye contact with a woman seated alone at a little table for two near the stage, her hands raised higher than the rest as patters of laid-back but appreciative applause spread throughout the room. She was blond, shapely and had on a sleeveless dress with a plunging back line.

  Slipping the mike onto its stand now, Gunville thanked the crowd for their kind and wonderful reception, “Merci, merci beaucoup mes amis!” Then he gave the blond another glance, momentarily touched a hand to his heart, and exchanged intimate smiles with her before stepping off the stage.

  An ardent fan, Nimec thought.

  He watched the balladeering skipper approach his table and take a chair.

  “Gentlemen,” Gunville said, still slightly breathless from capping off his set. “I do hope your reviews will be lenient.”

  Scull l
ooked up from his soup.

  “You can lay it on me anytime, mister,” he said.

  Nimec wondered if murdering a colleague in public would disqualify him from his position at UpLink.

  “It was nice listening,” he said, and paused. “As long as we’ve got you out of the spotlight, though, I wonder if we could get right to some things that apply to our immediate business.”

  “Of course,” Gunville said. “And these would involve the cable inspection you plan to launch from the Africana when it returns from dry dock next week?”

  “Some,” Nimec said. “If you don’t mind, I also want to ask you about the accident back in May. I’m sure it isn’t a subject you much like talking about—”

  Gunville raised a hand.

  “A difficult affair anyone would choose to leave in the past, but I can certainly understand your concerns,” he said. “Permit me a moment to order a drink, and I’ll try to answer as many questions as possible.”

  Nimec gave a nod. Gunville motioned over a waiter, asked his two visitors whether they might care for anything. Nimec declined. Scull ordered a Courvasier. Gunville got himself a scotch on the rocks.

  “What occurred was no less unexpected than tragic,” Gunville said after the drinks were served. “Cédric Dupain was the lead diver and one of our best. I believe he had more than two decades of experience between his military and civilian careers, and I’d worked with him in the waters of three continents. He was the first aboard my ship to be trained at piloting single-operator deepwater submersibles—”

  “They’re what’s known as hardsuits in the trade, right?”

  Gunville nodded.

  “Remote vehicles are more often used these days. Machines do not share our susceptibility to the hazards of the deep, and there can be no comparison between losing a piece of hardware and losing a human life should some misfortune occur. But our perception, judgment, and manual dexterity remain irreplaceable qualities that robotic craft cannot share. And the hardsuit’s safety record is impressive in calm conditions. I’ve heard of only a single critical incident before the tragedy that took Cédric and his partner, Marius Bouchard.”