winning it meant taking a calculated gamble.
“When is the UpLink team to tour the headquarters site in Sette Cama?”
“Also tomorrow.”
“Their head of security will be among those going?”
“As it stands, yes. I’ve readied the contingency plan for implementation.”
“Its threads must not lead to me. Nor anywhere close.”
“That was of highest importance,
Of course it would, DeVane thought. It was what he wanted — something to stagger and confuse UpLink at its moment of success, and foster insecurities among its financial backers. Let them imagine their enemies coming from all sides, and wonder who they were… so long as the answers to their questions remained entwined in mystery.
DeVane stared out at the dying sunlight and nodded. Begela made for the perfect functionary; his mind was like an orderly desk drawer in a drab office. Reach inside, and you would find every needed supply in the right place, but never a single surprise.
“Proceed,” he said, and did not wait for a response before terminating the call and going below to send Kuhl his notification.
Big Sur. The balance of the day trembling at midnight’s edge. Occasional breezes blowing across the open canyon from the sea, strong and thick with moisture, blurring the long drop down in kettle swirls of mist.
Siegfried Kuhl sat before his notebook computer, reading an e-mail he had received only moments ago, his rigid features bathed in the amber firelight of a kerosene storm lamp on the living-room mantel. Around his desk, the huge black Schutzhund dogs lay quiet. Two of them slept, their sides rising and falling with their slow, regular breaths. The third watched the cabin door at Kuhl’s back. It was a pack instinct reinforced through training. By turns, one of the shepherds would remain awake and vigilant at all times.
The coded message displayed in front of Kuhl said:
If the cuckoo calls when the hedge is brown, Sell thy horse and buy thy corn.
In European folklore, the song of the cuckoo heard in September or October — when the hedge is brown — is an ill portent to farmers. An omen that the autumn food harvest is imperiled, warning them to be ready to take counteractive measures, and fill their stores with that which is most precious for survival throughout the long, cold months to come.
Kuhl stared at the computer.
He closed his e-mail program and opened his digital image viewer. Arranged in several rows across the screen now were scrupulously labeled folders of photographic stills. Kuhl opened one of them, selecting an image set of a blond woman he knew to be of early middle age, although his eyes glinted with cold appreciation of her exceptionally youthful appearance. Tall, slender, elegant, and stylishly dressed, Ashley Gordian possessed the refined beauty that came of good genes and exquisite care.
The first series of high-resolution frames showed her lunching with another woman at an outdoor cafe. In the next, Kuhl saw her through the clear glass walls of Palo Alto’s main library branch on Newell Street, the camera following her as she checked out her pile of books at the loan desk and carried them onto the patio. The next group was taken from outside a clothing boutique. Through its storefront window, she had been photographed at the sales counter signing for a credit card purchase, then smiling at the cashier as she was handed her bags, then carrying them to the door. On the street, she had walked directly to her parked Lexus sedan and driven off with her purchases in the backseat.
There were more images of Ashley Gordian that Kuhl could have examined. Dozens more. Ciras and the others had recorded her movements on camera for almost two weeks, storing and sorting them in computer memory, e-mailing the encrypted files to him in Madrid.
But it was not the wife he leaned toward targeting.
Kuhl reached for his glass of mild wine and drank. Then he closed the folder he had been browsing, moved down a row, and selected another.
In this one, he found the daughter. She was lovely in her own right. Slim, dark haired, a firm well- proportioned body. Kuhl saw echoes of the mother in her — the smooth skin, the large green eyes, a certain underlying confidence in the lift of her shoulders, the straightness with which she bore herself.
He carefully studied the numbered screen shots in front of him. They composed a sequential record of Julia Gordian’s daily patterns of activity. An album of mundane, forgettable events that would allow Kuhl to plan and execute the unforgettable. There were images of the daughter in the company of friends, male and female. There were images of her shopping for groceries, bringing clothes to the dry cleaner, visiting the post office. There were images of her driving out to the canine rescue shelter where she volunteered her services, turning onto its hidden country drive outside the state park’s verdant spread of woodland. There were images of her pulling the vehicle into her garage on her return home. And images taken through her bedroom window. Kuhl studied these for a while, sipped his wine, then moved on. One series of photos followed her as she left the house in jogging clothes, the two race hounds attached to their leash at her side. They seemed to vibrate with tension, their taut whiplike forms emphasizing their predisposition toward flight. Nature had given them swiftness at the expense of courage; their breed was wind without stone. Faced with a threat, they would offer no protection, but attempt to escape from harm. Kuhl could almost see the fear glazing their eyes as they were pounced, their throat-blood spilling over the clamp of toothy jaws.
Kuhl stared at his computer screen and contemplated his mission in silence.
But if his heart’s utmost love were shared in equal measure by wife and child? Where then to deal the piercing blow?
The wife was a viable prospect, yes. Because she was often in the hardened security of Gordian estate, or with Gordian himself, she would be the lesser target of opportunity as a practical matter. But Kuhl’s surveillance also indicated she regularly ventured off alone — and on those instances there would be openings.
Practicality, however, could not be a determinant. Kuhl had studied Gordian for years now. Hard target or soft, he would go after whichever won him the ultimate objective. And for that reason he was leaning toward the daughter for maximum effect.
Gordian’s marriage stood on a commitment made by two. On assumptions of mutual responsibility; paired choices, hopes, and dreams. And paired risks. Take the wife, and some part of the foundation they had built together might survive, leave Gordian with the spirit to recover. But the child was meant to carry the future on her wings. The risks they had chosen for themselves were not hers to bear. And
With his daughter held hostage, Gordian would be paralyzed, unable to function. And when her wings were crushed, and the hopes and dreams she embodied died in Kuhl’s clenched fist, it would irreparably break Gordian, ruin him in every way.
Kuhl sat silently in the lamplight as the marine fog crawled up against his cabin windows and unsettled gusts of wind whipped across its roof. Eyes alert, ears pricked, the watchful black shepherd canted its head up toward the creaking beams and rafters.
After a time Kuhl tapped the keyboard of his laptop and once again accessed Harlan DeVane’s secure e-mail server. Then he typed:
A robin red-breast in a cage, Puts all heaven in a rage.
The message sent, Kuhl turned off his computer and sat still again.
Outwardly, he appeared to be relaxed in his chair.
At his center, he felt Destiny’s great spoked wheel rumble heavily through a momentous turn.
