where we might have to send in teams. You spent over a year in Brazil dealing with their government and law enforcement agencies—”
“An’ way before that, a couple back-to-back tours of duty with the Air Cav commandin’ a long range recon patrol in Vietnam,” Thibodeau interrupted. “Choppers would drop us into enemy territory, we’d search and destroy. My units knew our mission an’ were the best at what we did. But the bigger mission, one sunk us into the war, that wasn’t so clear, an’ we both know how it ended.” He’d snorted with disgust. “Lesson learned, least by me.”
Nimec was undeterred. “What I was about to say, Rollie, is we were hoping you could draw on your experience. Help to define the circumstances that would warrant launching an RDT into the field, stipulate the rules and constraints it would operate under to avert political incidents, and so forth. Give us a total strategic framework.”
Thibodeau shook his head.
“Say I ain’t willin’,” he said. “What then?”
Nimec had looked him straight in the eye.
“Then I walk out of here and into Gord’s office and report that the plan’s DOA,” he replied. “I said ‘unanimous,’ and I meant it.”
Thibodeau was quiet. Nimec’s embracing reasonability was hard to argue with, but he couldn’t stop himself from trying.
“An’ where’s Tom Ricci fit into the plan?” he asked. “What’s he supposed to do while I’m cookin’ up strategy?”
Nimec had seemed prepared for the question. “My idea is for Ricci to concentrate on tactical issues,” he said.
“Tactical.”
“And on training,” Nimec added.
Thibodeau wondered why that stung him. And tried not to show it did.
“You discuss that with him yet?”
“No, but—”
“So how you know he gonna take to it?”
“I don’t think he’ll object. The field’s where his talents would be best applied and where he’s most at home,” Nimec said. “It’d be a kind of dual-path approach, with Megan and yours truly coordinating.” He paused. “I recognize that you two have had trouble meshing, and for the present it seems like the most balanced, workable arrangement.”
More silence from Thibodeau. Again he’d felt that he was groping for a reason not to cooperate.
Nimec had moved forward in the chair opposite him, his hands on the edge of the desk, his gaze unwavering.
“Come on, Rollie,” he’d pressed. “Give it a try.”
Thibodeau waited another few seconds to answer, then expelled a relenting sigh.
“Go ahead an’ count me in,” he said. “But I got my doubts. Mighty ones.”
“Understood,” Nimec said.
Thibodeau shook his head. “Maybe, maybe not,” he said. “This ain’t nothin’ between me an’ you, but I want my feelings on record.”
Nimec responded with a quick nod.
“It’ll be easy enough for me to note them in my memo to Gord and carbon copy it to you,” he said. “Settled?”
After a moment’s further hesitation, Thibodeau had told him it was, more or less concluding their parley on a note of accord. Although that had done nothing to resolve the inner conflict he was experiencing — and still didn’t fully understand.
He snapped back to the present, puffing on his Montecristo. As always, he enjoyed the rich flavor of its tobaccos, the mild tingle it left on his tongue. But why wasn’t it having its usual calming effect on him? Lifting away his cares in puffs of aromatic smoke?
He pushed himself out of his chair, feeling a sudden need to get out from behind the desk. Fragments of his conversation with Nimec refused to leave his mind — one in particular — and he wanted desperately to shake it. To quiet the mingled resentments swirling around inside him like some sort of nebulous cloud, now swelling in his gut, now sending flares of heat into his chest.
Thibodeau strode around the desk and paced the office with his hands behind his back, the cigar thrust straight out between his lips, smoke pouring upward from the corners of his mouth.
Then, abruptly, he ceased to pace. He realized he was standing in front of his desk, staring at his heaping in box.
Staring at it with eyes that burned fiercely with anger and frustration.
His hand shot out with sudden violence, sweeping the in box off his desktop. It struck the wall with a crash, papers spilling from it, littering the floor. Thibodeau felt the vicious urge to take a giant rushing step over to the box and kick it across the room like a soccer ball, to stamp it to pieces before getting down on his knees and tearing up its scattered contents as he came upon them, flinging the tiny shreds of paper into the air, watching them drift down on his office furniture like tiny bits of confetti….
And then he got hold of himself. All at once, got hold. The red haze of anger peeled from his vision to leave him looking at the strew of forms and documents that had flown from the overturned in box, his expression marveling and horrified, hardly able to believe his eyes.
What had he done?
What in God’s name was
Thibodeau stood there as if waiting for an answer.
When it didn’t come after a long while, he knelt and slowly began gathering the papers off the floor.
In his navy blue blazer, olive golf shirt, and dark khaki slacks, Enrique Quiros might have been a particular brand of contemporary executive: Ivy League, thirtyish, perhaps the founder of some Internet-based corporation. The cut of his wavy black hair was short, neat, and un-fussy. The glasses through which his intelligent brown eyes peered out at the world were lightweight tortoise-shell with wire stems. His slender build was that of a careful eater and dedicated exerciser.
He was, indeed, an alumnus of Cornell Business School. The prismatic lettering on the door of his third-floor office suite in downtown San Diego read Golden Triangle Services, a corporate name apparently referring to the area northeast of La Jolla, where it was clustered in among many of the city’s upstart, high-tech businesses.
The office decor was bright and open, with smooth plexiglass surfaces, beige carpeting, some muted abstract prints on the walls, and a spacious conference corner where a pair of his bodyguards now sat on a raw-sienna leather sofa, looking respectable and respectful, eyeing Quiros’s visitor indirectly, as feral wolves might to signal cautious nonaggression.
The slight bulges of the firearms hidden under their sport jackets would have been unnoticeable to the average observer, but Lathrop had discerned them immediately as he arrived for his appointment. He wasn’t at all bothered. The guns were solely for their employer’s protection, and Lathrop intended no threat. Also, he himself was carrying and had confidence he’d be able to take both men out before their hands got anywhere near their weapons, in the unlikely event of a problem.
“Nice new office, Enrique,” Lathrop said, approaching his desk. “You’re moving up.”
Quiros smiled and indicated the chair opposite him.
“The economy chugs along, whistle blowing,” he replied. “Like everyone else, I try my best to ride the curve and, if possible, stay a little ahead of it.”
Lathrop sat. He could remember when Enrique’s speech had been thickly accented with what they called Spanglish on the peninsula. This was before he had gone off to school, when his father was still alive and running the operation. Now he sounded like a TV news announcer, having acquired the flavorless pronunciation and intonation that was known as General American Dialect in college diction courses, absent any trace of ethnicity or
