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  Ricci’s gaze held on the dog a long moment, went to the file cabinets. No, he thought. Not there. Case is too fresh, too outstanding.

  He turned toward the desk and noticed a rack holding several plastic clipboards, their neatly labeled tops facing outward. The board with the number and name matching those on the greyhound’s kennel jumped out at his eyes almost at once.

  Ricci pulled it from the rack, hastily inspecting the notations on the attached sheets of paper.

  His eyes widening, he heard his own sharp intake of breath.

  Ricci needed under a minute to take digital snapshots of every handwritten page with his WristLink. After he was finished, he replaced the clipboard, went through the desk drawers, located the tray that held the sealed glass vials and transparent evidence bags referenced in the vet’s notes, and photoed them as well before returning them to the drawer in which they’d been found.

  He had taken a half step toward the entryway when he paused, turned to look back at the wall of kennels, and went over to crouch in front of the wounded greyhound.

  His fingers reached through the mesh and gently, gently touched its snout.

  “Good girl,” he whispered. “You’re a good girl.”

  Then Ricci was up on his feet again, racing from the clinic into the night.

  TWELVE

  VARIOUS LOCALES

  The Chimera’s master bedroom. Wearing a silk robe dyed the shaded grays of twilight by the handloom weavers of Andhra Pradesh, Harlan DeVane sat at his computer in the depths of the African night and appraised the second e-mail to his enemy. He wanted to carefully reread the words he had written and view the animation his technicians had embedded with graphic image files, assuring himself that each component enriched the other, that the entire product met his every criterion.

  In his intense, unmoving concentration, DeVane’s tightened lips were the same noncolor as the rest of his features. He almost could have been a waxwork figure, showing no outward sign of his satisfaction with the message’s wording and form.

  Yet, satisfied he was.

  Here was an example of manipulative power wielded with brilliance. Here was real wallop. How often was a hoodwink conceived to smack the eyes with its falsity… make one aware he was being toyed with?

  It brought a symmetry to things that DeVane did not believe he could have manufactured, but could only have wrested from existing circumstance.

  Pain did indeed cut many different ways; the child that was loved could bring about the father’s fall as surely as the child shunned and hated.

  Locked onto this thought, fascinated by its many ironies, DeVane fired his ultimatum into electronic space.

  * * *

  Palo Alto. Morning. A downcast brow of clouds over the hills threatened another day of chill rain and mist.

  In the Gordian home, Megan Breen had been running on coffee and nervous energy for hours and found her caffeine level in increasingly frequent need of a recharge. She had spent the greater part of the night doing what she could to comfort and support Ashley, and the rest of it conferring with the Sword ops who’d turned the living room into an ad-hoc base of operations. Inside, their surveillance techware occupied every available surface. Outside, their vehicles had crowded the entire drive. The thirty-acre estate had been secured by armed patrols to ensure Ashley Gordian was as safe from physical harm as anybody on earth… but Megan knew her heart could not be protected in similar fashion, and that very deeply worried her.

  The e-mail arrived at the precise tick of eight o’clock. Ash had fallen off into a doze that not even total exhaustion would sustain for too long. Megan was in the kitchen dumping a soggy coffee filter into the waste bin with one hand and scooping fresh grinds into the maker’s basket with another.

  One of the ops — Lehane — thrust his head into the entry.

  “Ms. Breen,” he said. “Something’s jumped into your queue. We think it could be—”

  Megan didn’t hear the rest as she ran past him into the living room.

  The subject line of the e-mail read:

  Aria di Bravura: A Song of Love and Sacrifice

  * * *

  Megan dropped into a chair, started to reach for the computer mouse, and then realized she’d carried the heaping plastic coffee spoon from the kitchen.

  “Will somebody take this damned thing from me?” She passed it off to one of the men without turning her eyes from the display. “Thanks.”

  The op stood with his hand out and glanced downward with mild surprise.

  She had let go of the coffee spoon before he’d managed to reach for it, spilling a small heap of dark roast on top of his shoe.

  * * *

  Roger Gordian watched the e-mail open on the screen of the notebook computer he’d set up in his guest suite at Thomas Sheffield’s place.

  The image that filled most of the display was of a large upraised hand of fire, its glowing orange fingers spread wide. Gradually materializing across its open palm in black text was this message:

  The conditions of Julia’s release are simple. We demand no ransom, no portion of the father’s wealth. Only a promise made to all the ears of the world — and has not reaching them been his lifelong goal?

  At nine o’clock tonight aboard the Sedco oil platform, Roger Gordian is to renounce his dream of freedom through information, declare UpLink International and its subsidiaries utterly and permanently dissolved, and require that its stockholders forsake their shares by legal agreement without any form of compensation, including financial reimbursement from insurers.

  All UpLink’s corporate operations will then cease. All personnel must be evacuated from its facilities worldwide. All its projects must be abandoned, its communications networks dismantled.

  Full implementation of these terms is to occur within a time frame not exceeding 48 hours after the announcement or Julia Gordian will be executed.

  The black text remained in place for thirty seconds and then coalesced into a rotating sphere that rapidly underwent another smooth transformation against the fiery palm, changing colors, reshaping itself into the UpLink logo: an Earth globe surrounded by intersecting satellite bandwidth lines.

  Another half minute passed. The hand clenched into a fist, morphed into an red-orange fireball, and brightened. Then it suddenly plunged to the bottom of the screen like a falling comet, leaving behind an empty white void.

  Gordian turned from the screen and looked over at Pete Nimec in the chair beside him.

  “What’s this about?” Gordian said. His face was ashen. “Say I complied with the declaration to pull up stakes, how could anyone think I’d be able to go about convincing our investors to do the same thing? It’s inconceivable. You’re talking about fortunes. There are thousands of our employees alone who have their life savings attached to our stock. Tens of thousands. They’d be wiped out. I’m not even sure what they’d be expected to do with their shares.” He paused a moment, running a hand through his thin hair. “But I don’t know why I think I can apply sane reasoning to these demands. Not one of them is grounded in reality. There’s no way they can be met… not if I had months available.”

  Nimec took a breath.

  “Nobody expects you to meet them,” he said. “The whole thing’s outrageous. It’s meant to put you through your paces.”

  Gordian was shaking his head. “But if that’s the case—”

  Gordian fell silent. Nimec waited. They exchanged glances.

  “If that’s the case, Pete… and this is all about taunting me… causing me heartache… then what’s going to happen to my daughter?” Gordian stared at Nimec. “What are the people who took Julia planning to do to her?”

  Nimec hesitated, dismissing every hollow word of encouragement that came to mind. Gord deserved better from him.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I really don’t know.”

  * * *

  His name was Fred Gilbert, and he was vocally irate about someone ringing his telephone off the
hook at seven o’clock in the morning. According to what he’d already told Glenn three or four times during his lengthy rebuke, the fact that it was a business call only worsened his unhappiness.

  “This is an outrageous imposition,” he said. “Or don’t we agree a man has a right to choose his own schedule?”

  “Of course, sir,” Glenn said at his end of the line. “And I apologize for having disrupted your routine—”

  “My sleep.”

  “Yes, sir. Your sleep—”

  “Of which I require eight full hours,” Gilbert said. “You took my contact information off the club’s home page, is that correct?”

  “Yes,” Glenn said. That much of his story, at least, had been true. “Mr. Gilbert, I’ve tried to explain—”

  “If the times I’m available weren’t posted on the site, you might have some excuse. But they’re quite clear for anyone to read.”

  “Understood, Mr. Gilbert. Again, though, I did mention—”

  “I know. I have listened. You are here in California on overnight business, flying out to Baltimore at ten o’clock, and need to leave for the airport in an hour,” Gilbert said. “It is still no justification for discourtesy. Rules cannot be ignored simply because they may be inconvenient. Whether you are in town for a day, a month, or a decade, respect and discipline must be observed.” A pause. “Canines no less than humans learn by example, and I suggest you foster these qualities in yourself if you mean to own a Schutzhund trained dog.”

  Glenn sat across the kitchen table from Ricci looking wearily frustrated. Having gone the entire night without shutting his eyes except to blink the crust from them, it was hard for him to commiserate with Gilbert. In the long hours since their arrival at Ricci’s apartment, the two men had worked steadily to upload the digital photos of forensic evidence and notes from the Parkville clinic to a desktop computer, sort through what they’d learned, and decide how to move forward with it. Both had centered on the items that first caught Ricci’s attention at the clinic — a numbered and labeled vial containing strands of black fur, and a cross-indexed handwritten entry on Moore’s notepad that read:

  9/03

  7:00 p.m.

  Canine fur & dermal matter extracted from greyhound’s subgingival maxilla and mandible. Primarily lodged bet. right and left upper canines and lateral incisors, lesser quantity collected from inner cheek and anterior premolar surface (see accomp. dental chart). Prelim: grey inflicted bite wound upon another dog. Unusual, follow w/DNA workup of blood at scene. Visual & microanalysis of fur samples (detailed breakdown t.c.) match shepherd characteristics. Prelim: black longhair possible. Rare. (Attack dog?) Follow w/comparison test. Reference specimen needed (FBI Hair & Fiber File?)

  Showing Glenn the notes, Ricci had pointed to the phrase “attack dog,” gotten an oddly distant expression on his face, and shaken his head.

  “That’s close, but not right,” he had said. “It’d be a Schutzhund. An animal he could totally control.”

  “He?”

  Ricci had glanced at Glenn, looking almost surprised by the question.

  “Whoever took Julia,” he’d said and left it at that. As if no further explanation were needed. “We’ve got to find out who’d sell those dogs in this area.”

  And by six A.M. a relatively swift Internet search had furnished an abundance of material about the classification in general, and some very specific information on the North Bay Schutzhund Club, of which Gilbert was founder, president, and breed warden.

  Now Glenn held the receiver away from his mouth, ballooned his cheeks, and exhaled to release some of his tension.

  “Sir, you can trust I’ll take your advice,” he said after a moment. “I definitely recognize my mistake…”

  “I would hope so.”

  “But since the harm’s been done, and you’re already out of bed, I’m hoping we can turn that mistake… inexcusable as it is… into something productive—”

  “Anagkazo,” Gilbert said abruptly.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You told me you’d seen an individual walking a black German shepherd from the window of a car.”

  Glenn remembered the hastily improvised line he’d fed him. “Yes, that’s right, a taxicab…”

  “Told me it was a longhair.”

  “Right.”

  “Told me you wish to look into acquiring such a dog to guard home and family while you travel on business. Which is commendable.”

  “Right… ah, and thanks…”

  “I try to recognize positive traits in all species,” Gilbert said with no hint of sarcasm whatsoever. “At any rate, if you’d taken the extra time on your computer, you would have found the Schutzhund USA registry’s online genetic database. It lists DNA-based evaluations of each and every certified dog’s pedigree, physical conformation, and susceptibility to hip dysplasia and other health problems going back five or more generations. It also would have shown you that pure black longhairs are quite scarce. Just a handful of breeders sell them in this country. Virtually all have been imported from Europe or sired by imported breeding stock—”

  Glenn wanted to get back to what Gilbert had said at the outset of his lecture.

  “I don’t meant to interrupt, sir, but that word you used a minute ago…”

  “Word?”

  “Started with an ‘A,’ I think… ana-something-or-other…”

  “Anagkazo.”

  “Right, right…”

  “That’s a name,” Gilbert said testily. “John Anagkazo. Good respectful fellow up in the hills. Our homepage has a link to his Web site. If the shepherd is indeed Schutzhund qualified and was purchased in the state of California, you can be guaranteed his farm is where it came from.”

  About eighty miles west of San Jose, the Anagkazo ranch sat on multiple acres of rolling grassy field laid with training tracks, hurdles, agility and obstacle course equipment of various configurations, and a large open pen area for the dogs out back of the main house, a restored wood-frame that might have been a century old.

  Ricci and Glenn found the breeder waiting at his door when they drove up at nine o’clock. As they exited their car, Ricci turned on his cellular and saw a half dozen new voice messages for him. The log showed four with Thibodeau’s office number. The two most recent ones had come from a phone with Caller ID blocking — Breen at Gordian’s house, he would have bet. Ricci wasn’t prepared to return any of them. The Parkville Vet Clinic didn’t open till ten, but he figured the cops outside would have awakened by now. Or if they hadn’t, they’d have been found by their fellow police checking up to see why they hadn’t responded to routine radio checks. Erickson would know the clinic had been broken into, recognize it was a slick job, smell right away it was tied to the kidnapping. But Ricci had left nothing out of place, and that would throw some question marks into his head. Anything Erickson thought couldn’t be more than be a guess. And whoever made Julia disappear would probably top his suspect list. Would UpLink be on it? Not as an organization. Ricci thought he might rate on his own, though. Maybe high enough for Erickson to conduct some inquiries before eliminating him… even if that other detective, Brewer, was too afraid of getting jammed to admit he’d given him a peek at that crime scene diagram. Erickson nosing around UpLink could be trouble, and Ricci couldn’t afford to worry about it until later.

  He turned off the phone, snapped it back into his belt clip, and a moment later joined Glenn at the door.

  “Hi, I’m John Anagkazo.” The breeder smiled through a thick beard, putting out his hand for them to shake. “I saw your car from way down the road… I’m guessing you must be Misters Ricci and Glenn. With Uplink International, is it?”

  Glenn nodded and showed his Sword ID.

  “Corporate security, Mr. Anagkazo,” he said.

  “Sure, sure. You told me over the phone. I hear super things about you folks.” Anagkazo looked curious. “C’mon in… and call me John, please. No need to wrestle with the second name.”
<
br />   Ricci was looking past him through the door at the head of an enormous, large-boned German shepherd.

  “Long as your friend won’t mind,” he said, nodding at the dog.

  Anagkazo smiled.

  “Bach’s fine,” he said. “Won’t bother anybody who doesn’t bother me.”

  They followed him into a living room with a strong Southwestern feel — earth-toned geometric patterns on the rugs and upholstery, hand-crafted solid-wood furniture. The shepherd trailed behind them, waited for Anagkazo to lower himself into his chair, and stretched out beside him, nuzzling a leather chew toy on the floor.

  “It must’ve been quite a ride for you out of San Jose,” Anagkazo said. “I can put up some fresh coffee…”

  “Thanks, we’re okay,” Ricci said. “I’d kind of like to get right to why we came.”

  Anagkazo shrugged. He waited.

  “We’ve been trying to get some information about black longhaired shepherds,” Ricci said. “From what we hear, you’re the only local person who breeds them. And gives them Schutzhund training.”

  Anagkazo nodded.

  “At every level,” he said, “including specialized training. I’ve been at it a while, and about sixty percent of my business nowadays is with police and fire departments all around the country… I’m very proud of that.”

  And the pride looked real. As did his friendly, helpful demeanor. Ricci had studied his face and body language for any changes and seen none indicating he might be on the defensive.

  “So, what sort of questions have you got?” Anagkazo said. “I need to tell you right off there’s a wait on long-coated sables.”

  “They’re that popular?” Glenn said.

  Anagkazo shrugged.

  “It isn’t really about popularity for me.” He reached down over the armrest of his chair and scratched his dog’s neck. “Black-and-reds like Bach here are very well established lines in this country, and we’ve got a wide pool of sires and dams. But I just introduced the sables a few years ago — four generations into it now — and I don’t want to risk overbreeding my stock. That’s how you pass along congenital diseases, temperament problems, a whole bunch of weaknesses you’d rather see go away.” A pause. “A dog has to be at least a year and a half old to qualify for basic Schutzhund classification. There’s a litter of blacks due in January, plus two sixteen-month-olds that are almost ready for placement and have full deposits on them. Which is too bad—”