UpLink, which amounts to fully one fifth of the company — an enormous minority holding — to Marcus Caine, who we all know hasn't been over to your home for dinner lately?'
It was a setup Richard couldn't resist.
'As part of our overall deal, UpLink will be placing an equal portion of its stock in my hands,' he said, stepping in seamlessly. 'If Marcus Caine wants to make himself an uninvited guest at the table, he'll have to sit across from Roger Gordian and myself from now on, look us both squarely in the eye, and learn it isn't an all-you-can-eat. And let me tell you, people, if Caine tries grabbing anything from my plate, he'd damned well better watch out for my fork.'
A beat of surprised silence from the audience, and then laughter over Richard's quip.
A great, rising swell of laughter.
Gordian looked out at the room, and was embarrassed by the realization that he was grinning himself.
But not too embarrassed.
Boom, he thought. Bombshell delivered.
And dead-on in the crosshairs, no less.
In his office watching C-SPAN, Caine lowered the croissant he'd been eating to his desk, then glanced circumspectly over at his secretary. When Deborah had come in with his coffee and pastries, he'd asked her to stay and take notes regarding the press conference, and she was now sitting on the sofa with her laptop, typing, her gaze fixed on the screen. Perhaps too intently. She'd passed a hand across her mouth a moment ago, briefly shielding it from sight. Had she found Sobel's remarks amusing? he wondered. He would have liked to tear out her throat just on the suspicion. If his belief ever hardened into surety, she could look forward to her walking papers. He would see that she never set foot in an office again, not as an employee.
Caine felt his stomach burning savagely. It was as if he were on fire inside.
Those bastards, he thought incredulously. Those bastards. They should have been dead. Killed when Gordian tried to land that plane. The people he'd sent to work on it had assured him they would be. But somehow.. somehow nothing had happened to them. And instead—
Instead…
He had to credit Gordian's resourcefulness. By segmenting off entire divisions of UpLink, he would almost certainly gain the capital to dispose of his outstanding debts. By parting with the cryptographic operation, he had eliminated the greatest cause of his shareholders' dissatisfaction, and no doubt raised the price of UpLink stock to its highest level in years. And by handing Sobel a chunk of the core outfit — making him White Knight and Squire all in one — he had forged an alliance that would decisively give him control of the company just when it had been within Caine's grasp. In order to overthrow that alliance, or even mitigate its control, Caine — or any buyer of voting stock — would now need to acquire an improbable and newly expensive number of shares.
A terrible, nauseous crashing sensation added itself to the pain tearing at Caine's gut, and he was suddenly afraid he might be sick. Even knowing what he'd set in motion at Gordian's data-storage facility tonight didn't help. Nga and his confederates would get what they wanted… but he…
Think it, an inner voice insisted. At least have the courage to think it.
No. No. No.
His hand shaking, he lifted the plate of croissants off his desk, slipped it into his wastebasket, and stared at the television screen in an agony of his own hatred.
No.
He would not, could not concede that he was beaten.
Chapter Twenty-Three
'— ello, Max? Max, It's Kirsten. Call me on my mobile soon as you can.''
'Max, this is Kirsten again. Still waiting to hear from you.''
'Hello, Max? Same message as before.'
'Max, where are you? It's been four days and I'm getting really concerned. My sister and her husband are telling me to call the police, and maybe they 're right. This is all so confusing for me. So please, if you hear this, get in touch.''
'Max, I've decided to do what Anna wants and contact the authorities—'
Nimec clicked off the answering machine and looked at Nori in silence.
Though it was still not yet full morning in Johor, and both were running on empty, they were in Blackburn's spare, single-room living quarters at the ground station, having decided to check it out for clues to his whereabouts before heading off to bed. There had been nothing to help them on that score, but Kirsten Chu's frequent and increasingly worried messages — the most recent of which had been left two days earlier according to the machine's time/date stamp — at least revealed that she had not completely vanished from the face of the earth as well. And while the messages also seemed to confirm Nimec's feeling that Max had gotten into some kind of serious fix, they ultimately engendered more questions than they answered.
'Sounds like she's staying with her sister,' Nori said after a while.
'Hiding out's more like it,' Nimec said. 'You catch the sister's name or do I have to run through the tape again?'
'Anna,' Nori said. 'No second name, though. And Kirsten mentioned there being a husband, so it'd be a different surname from her own. Makes it harder to track her down.'
'A lot of married women keep their family names these days.'
Nori shook her head.
'You're thinking like an American,' she said. 'Asian societies aren't quite so liberated.'
Nimec sighed.
'Why the hell would she ask Max to call on her cell phone?' he said. 'Wouldn't it have been simpler to just leave Anna's number for him?'
Nori thought about that a moment.
'Simpler for us, absolutely, but her situation's another matter,' she said. 'Put yourself in Kirsten's shoes. Whatever she's been into with Blackburn, it's something her family's probably better off not being enlightened about.'
'For their own safety, you mean.'
'Right,' Nori said. 'The less they know the better. Also, it sounds to me like Max would have been against Kirsten calling the authorities to report whatever happened—'
'Or at least she feels that way,' Nimec said. 'We can figure out why later, but go on, I didn't mean to interrupt.'
'My point is that she seemed to be under pressure from her family to make the call, and would've been torn in two different directions about actually doing it. Could be the sister and her husband had misgivings about Blackburn… why wouldn't they, when you consider the whole situation? If you're Kirsten, you're going to feel uncomfortable about having him get in touch with you on their home phone, maybe kicking off a round of difficult questions from Sis. The other way's a lot more private.'
'Except, as you've already indicated, it stinks as far as we're concerned,' Nimec said. 'Joyce has numbers for Kirsten's home and business phones, but not the cellular.'
'No address?'
'Besides her office at Monolith, no.'
'What about Max's notes on his investigation? The ones he gave to Joyce?'
'I didn't even know they existed until yesterday, when I called to tell her I'd be coming to Johor. They're encoded on his PIM, and it'll take some time to decrypt and go through them.'
She nodded, thinking. 'I assume we want to steer clear of the badges.'
'For the time being, yes. Not that we even can be sure she's phoned them. Or, if she has, that she's told them where she's staying.'
