Ruthless.Com pp-2 Page 18

  She watched him without saying anything.

  "Max would never stay out of contact this long unless something were very wrong," Nimec went on. "He's too dependable a man."

  He took his shot, but his wrist tensed at the last instant and he stroked the cue harder than he'd wanted. The ball missed the hole and caromed off the cushion, too fast, its angle too narrow.

  "The dicey stuff Blackburn was doing," Noriko said in a slow, considering voice. "Is it something we can talk about?"

  "Later, certainly," he said. "First, though, I need to know if you'd be willing to head out to where he is. Or was. And help me track him down."

  "I get a team?"

  "Just me," Nimec said. "If we need support we can get it from the Johor crew."

  She looked at him.

  "I'd understand if you don't want to get involved," he said. "Your participation would be strictly voluntary."

  "And off the record," she said.

  "Right."

  There was a pause.

  "One question," she said. "Was I asked on this job because I won't stick out in a crowd of Asians, or because of my experience in the field?"

  "You sensitive about your ethnicity?"

  "Sensitivity has nothing to do with it. I'm half Japanese. It's a logical question. Was. It my slanted eyes or my ability?"

  Nimec gave her a small, tight smile.

  "Both," he said. "Your background might open some doors a little quicker. It might make certain things easier for us in certain situations, and with certain people. It's a leg up. But I wouldn't want you without knowing absolutely that I could trust you with my life, no matter how thick it gets."

  She looked closely at his face a while, then nodded.

  "I'm in," she said. "What's our game plan?"

  "Step one, we finish playing pool. Step two, I clear our trip with Gordian. Step three, we go get our suitcases."

  "And if the boss doesn't give us the go signal?"

  Nimec considered that a moment.

  "Max is my friend," he said. Firmly. "Which means we'd have to skip right on ahead to step three."

  Early on the day Roger Gordian was scheduled to depart for Washington, he was joined by Chuck Kirby and Vince Scull in the glass-enclosed veranda of his Palo Alto home. The three of them were seated at a large cane table talking seriously over their breakfast, drinks, papers, and open briefcases. The morning was bright and warm, and there was a flower-scented breeze wafting in through the louvered panels. On a freestanding easel near the table was a chart Gordian had prepared for their meeting. His daughter Julia had stopped by to wish him luck in D. C., and brought the greyhounds with her, and she and Ashley were running them outside on the grass.

  Gordian had just finished summarizing his plan, and could already see the unhappiness on Chuck's face. He waited until the attorney wasn't looking and checked his watch, thinking he had a good half hour before his third visitor showed, time enough to deal with Kirby's inevitable objections. Not that it would be easy.

  He glanced out at the yard, bracing himself. Whipping downhill in pursuit of a tossed plastic rabbit, the dogs were curves of graceful motion against the greenness of the sprawling lawn. As usual Jack, the brindle male, had outsprinted Jill, the teal-blue female. Though both had been bred for the dog track, and Jill was sleeker and younger, her skittish temperament had disqualified her from competition, while Jack had run a great many races before he'd been retired.

  Julia had gotten the dogs from a greyhound adoption program out of Orange County about six months ago. Had they not been rescued and placed, they would have been euthanized, which was the common practice of racetrack owners when their dogs were no longer competitive, whether for reasons of age, disposition, or any physical deficit that hampered their coursing performance. Gordian had been originally amazed to learn from his daughter that, on average, unadopted track dogs were retired and put down when they were five years old, having barely reached a third of their natural life expectancy.. and always when he watched their spirited and energetic play, the amazement returned in its fullness.

  After all the acts of inhumanity he'd seen people carry out on other people, all the personal losses he'd accumulated as a result of war and terrorism, Gordian didn't know why such waste — lesser by far in the grand scheme of things — ought to surprise him anymore. But it did, and somehow he felt that was better than if it hadn't.

  He took a sip of his coffee, and listened to Kirby begin arguing that he was about to commit the worst blunder of his life.

  "Gord, I've heard every word you've spoken and tried my damnedest to keep an open mind," Chuck said. "But to do what you've proposed before considering a less extreme strategy—"

  "Sometimes you have to lose a limb to preserve the health of the body," Gordian said. "Sometimes survival itself depends on it."

  Kirby shook his head. "You're talking about wholesale dismemberment," he said. "Not the same."

  Gordian's clear blue eyes were so calm it was almost unsettling. Like Moses after receiving the Ten Commandments, Kirby thought.

  "Chuck, I haven't said this would be painless. And because you're my friend, I believe that pain is the thing you're trying to spare me," he said. "But I've already accepted it, you see. Mentally and emotionally, I've already let go."

  "Let go? Of everything you built up over a decade? Everything you've worked your ass off to—"

  "If you stop for a second you'll realize you're overreacting," Gordian said with unassailable forbearance.

  Chuck turned to Scull. "Vince? Is that what you think? I know your analysis is that Gord's plan is doable, but my question is really whether it ought to be done. Whether you're endorsing it."

  Scull nodded affirmatively.

  "All we're asking is that you give us a chance here," he said. "Listen to what the coach has to say."

  "And look at my graphic while you're at it," Gordian said. "Please."

  Kirby pressed his lips together, breathed deeply through his nose, and looked. It was an organizational chart of UpLink broken down according to the market areas served by its corporate divisions and subsidiaries.

  "As you pointed out yourself, Chuck, we've grown tremendously since the early nineties," Gordian said after letting him study the diagram. "When we secured the contract to provide our GAPSFREE missile-targeting system to the military, I knew the company's future was assured, and realized I was in the position I'd been hoping to reach all my life. I was successful and financially secure… my individual needs were taken care of… and that opened up a whole range of choices. Choices I'd never been able to consider before. Choices about how to put my money and energy into things that mattered to me, into making a positive difference in this world." He rose from the table and approached the easel, gesturing broadly at his chart. "My mistake was trying to do it in too many different ways."

  "Heaven help us, you're sounding like Reynold Armitage," Kirby said. "And that gives me the chills."

  Gordian smiled wanly. "We'd be foolish to discount his assessment of our strengths and weaknesses merely because the language in which he's couched it troubles us," he said. "It's always possible to learn from our enemies, and Armitage's essential point is valid. We need to look at the areas where we're bleeding away resources and liquidate them."

  Kirby searched for a response, but Gordian continued speaking before he could think of one.

  "Chuck, I'd be confident of our expertise in the defense business even if I didn't have the earnings to back me up," he said, placing his hand on the box at the diagram's upper left. "We're the best because I've been guided by my past experience as a combat pilot, and can remember the sort of technological improvements I'd have wanted when I was in the cockpit flying air strikes over Khe San." His hand moved one box to the right. "I also know our communications unit represents UpLink's tomorrow, irrespective of early-stage profits or losses on our investment… and that its potential has yet to be unlocked." He paused. "Those two are our core operations.
The ones that are integral to what I want to accomplish. The ones we have to protect. But ask yourself, do we really belong in computers? Medical tech? Or how about specialty automotive? We only got into that because I wanted to make improvements to the factory-standard dune-hoppers we were using in our more rugged gateway locations."

  "Which you did."

  "And now that we've assembled a large fleet of vehicles, and our competition has incorporated our modifications into their own product — and in some cases outclassed us, if you want my frank opinion — why not release the company to management who can give it proper guidance? After all, its profitability as an UpLink company has been been marginal from the very beginning."

  Kirby rubbed the back of his neck.

  "I don't know," he said. "Putting aside the automotive unit for a minute, you've done well in the other supposedly nonessential areas. Just as a for-instance, the prosthetics subsidiary meets both of your fundamental criteria for an UpLink company. It helps people and makes money. The artificial limbs it produces are first-rate and have captured a respectable share of the global market—"

  "And I'm very proud of that," Gordian said. "But my passion and knowledge don't lay in medicine. I've shortchanged the division in terms of personal attention, and have never quite gotten my market bearings. And the R&D budget for our biotech firm eats up something like forty million a year."

  "Which is not at all excessive," Kirby said. "Your people are working on new drug therapies for everything from male impotence to cancer. Cutting-edge research costs money, but the financial and humanitarian payoff from a single major pharmaceutical advance certainly justifies the initial expenses."

  "I'd agree with you if this were a normal, as opposed to a predatory, business environment," Gordian said. "The fact, however, is that we are under attack and need to focus. Because the medical division is in the red, it is lowering the valuation of UpLink's shares. As it stands, if I want the medical operation to continue, my choices are to either slash its budget or sustain it with the profits we earn from, say, our avionics branch. Money that could otherwise go toward higher-performance transmitters and receivers for our cellular network, or reducing the debts we incurred after the Russian debacle… and face it, Chuck, those are just two of many obvious examples I could offer."

  Kirby drank his Bloody Mary and was quiet a while. On the lawn one of the greyhounds had caught the plastic rabbit and flashed behind an alderberry bush, where it was throttling the toy between its jaws. The sound of its squeaker had apparently gotten the other dog envious, and it was jumping antic circles around the hedge. Standing nearby, Ashley Gordian and her daughter looked like they were having fun.

  He wished he could have said the same for himself.

  "Gord, listen to me," Kirby said at length. "If I read you correctly, your strategy for averting a takeover is based on the assumption that the value of UpLink stock, and thus shareholder confidence, will be boosted once you've gotten back to basics and released capital to your most profitable ventures. Ordinarily I'd agree that it's a sound defensive approach, since a higher corporate valuation will curb sell-offs, force up a hostile acquirer's bid, and make him wonder if his move is worth the trouble and drain on his checkbook. Except this is no ordinary situation. Marcus Caine has already obtained a large chunk of UpLink stock. He's committed. Furthermore, UpLink's market decline has less to do with any real or perceived overdiversification than with investor fears that your stance on crypto will put you way behind rivals who are eager to sell overseas. And since you're obviously not going to sell off your cryptography firm—"

  "Who says?" Gordian interrupted, the patient, forbearing expression back on his face.

  Kirby looked at him a moment, then turned briefly toward Vince Scull.

  "Both of you are shitting me here, right?" he said.

  Scull shook his head.

  Taken aback, Kirby waited a minute before saying anything more.

  "Gord, I don't understand," he said disbelievingly. "You've fought so hard to maintain control of your cryptographic technology… to turn it over to someone else… to chance that it will be distributed abroad…" He spread his hands. "You've never quit a fight before. I can't believe you'd do it under any circumstances."

  "Not just any," Gordian said. "Chuck, I—"

  Gordian broke off, his eyes going to the sliding doors that opened from the house to the veranda. Andrew, his domestic, had appeared with Richard Sobel, the third guest he'd been expecting for breakfast.

  "Sir, I've shown Mr. Sobel in as you asked," Andrew said.

  "Morning," Sobel said, tipping the other men a wave.

  Gordian motioned him to an empty chair at the table. "You're right on schedule, Rich," he said. "Join the party."

  Kirby gave Gordian a level glance, saw his spreading grin, and suddenly understood everything.

  "You can relax now, Chuck," Gordian said* his smile growing even larger. "Our White Knight has arrived to save the day."

  Chapter Eighteen

  VARIOUS LOCALES

  SEPTEMBER 25/26, 2000

  The fax was on Sian Po's desk when he came into work that morning — a dispatch out of Central HQ advising of a nationwide police search for an American named Max Blackburn, and accompanied by a passport photograph and some sketchy details about the circumstances of his disappearance. All personnel were to be on alert for information regarding his whereabouts, and immediately relay it to CID. The same notice, Sian Po knew, would have been forwarded to the divisional headquarters at Clementi, Tanglin, Ang Mo Kio, Bedock, and Jurong, as well as to hundreds of command center and vehicular computer stations over the Incident Based Information System.

  Wishing to remain undisturbed, the commander immediately buzzed his receptionist, instructed her to hold his calls for the next half hour, and read the dispatch over a cup of green tea. It contained only a few brief paragraphs about last week's mysterious scene outside the Hyatt, and they conveyed little that was new to him. However, the material about the parties involved was most intriguing. There were fuller descriptions of the men who had accosted the American… and most importantly, there was the profile of Blackburn himself. Printed beside his photo, it included data about his age, general physical chacteristics, and employer, a satcom outfit called UpLink International operating in the Johor area.

  Sian Po drank his tea and reflected back on his stroll in the park with Fat B. What in the world was the club owner into? His nose told him it was something big.

  He set down his cup, thinking. The report was as interesting for what it didn't reveal as what it did, and had put several questions into his mind. There was nothing to indicate where the facts about Max Blackburn and the other men had come from. And no mention of the woman Sian Po had heard was involved. Why? Could it be that she was the source of the information? That she'd been located and was perhaps being kept under wraps? CID investigators were customarily tight-lipped, quick to mark their turf, and loath to accept assistance from other departments in the Force. It was conceivable those bastards knew where she was or had her in custody — or under police protection, whichever. If they did, they would not share that secret with anyone at ground level. Not as long as they could help it.

  Still, Sian Po had his useful contacts, including a supervisor in intelligence who would be glad to talk to him for a cut of his own payoff from Fat B. And Fat B had strongly hinted the sum would be considerable. He had to be careful, though. Ask what he needed to ask without divulging too much in exchange. The main thing was to find out about the woman, find out where she was. For now that would be a sufficiently juicy morsel to pass along. He would see what else might develop afterward.

  Placing the report on his desk beside his teacup, he reached for the phone and made his call.

  * * *

  Nimec managed to catch Gordian in his office at a quarter past eleven in the morning. The boss was rushed, and expectedly so; he'd arrived late after a business parley at his home, and only planned to stay lon
g enough to take care of some odds and ends before leaving for the airport. Vince Scull, Chuck Kirby, Richard Sobel, and Megan Breen — the four of whom were flying to D. C. as passengers in Gordian's Leaijet — had already driven on ahead in a company car, and the hurried atmosphere had made it all the more difficult for Nimec to tell him about Blackburn… and then persuade him to green-light a trip overseas so he could look into what was going on with Max.

  Harder than either, however, was disclosing that he'd let Max undertake a hidden probe into Monolith-Singapore's books without first seeking Gordian's consent… the unstated but clearly understood reason being that had it been a sure thing the idea would have been scotched out of hand.

  Gordian's reaction to the news about Max — and Nimec's admission — was a predictable mix of anger, dismay, and concern.

  "It's beyond me how you could have been part of something this reckless, Pete," he said. He was leaning forward with his right elbow on his desk blotter, his head tilted slightly downward, rubbing the corner of his eye with his index finger. "Completely beyond me."

  Nimec looked at him from across the desk.

  "I'm sorry," he said. "I won't try to justify it. But consider the big picture. Marcus Caine had been using the crypto bill to impale you in the press. And Blackburn believed Monolith was engaged in a series of illegal business practices and hiding evidence of it in Singapore. It was reasonable to suspect some of those activities might have been aimed at causing damage to UpLink—"

  "So instead of coming to me with those suspicions, the two of you launched a caper that could have easily sunk us in quicksand. And likely has, from what you're saying."

  Nimec was quiet for a minute, then nodded.