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.
