Zero Hour

“Tomorrow.”

Duncan blinked.

“That’s impossible,” he said. “I’ll push for, say, four, five days—”

“I can wait two.”

“Three.”

“Two,” Malisse insisted. “Two at the very most.”

Duncan continued to look unbelieving. “You’re sure you don’t want to check the phone book for a while- you-wait snoop shop?”

Malisse snapped him a glance.

“Do not scoff at me, Brian,” he said. “My man has been very active.”

“Still—”

“There is an old children’s tale,” Malisse said. “A brother and sister enter a deep, dark forest. The boy leaves a trail of bright pebbles to mark their way home. But when they next set out, the boy forgets the stones and instead drops only breadcrumbs from his knapsack. These are eaten by hungry birds, and the trail is lost to those who might follow in search. As are the children, who, as it happens, have stumbled upon a witch’s hoard, but are nowhere to be found with the jewels.”

Duncan looked at him.

“You think you’re onto something big,” he said.

Malisse shrugged over his box of treats.

“Once, African diamonds led us to terrorists and gun runners,” he said. “We must always remember a trail of shining stones can lead anywhere, and bear in mind how quickly it may turn to crumbs that are snatched away by whatever is in the air.”

* * *

“You want me to do what?” Lenny Reisenberg said from where he sat behind his desk.

“Assist in my investigation of Kiran,” Noriko Cousins said from where she stood in front of him.

He looked at her, groping for a response, his mouth a speechless O of surprise.

She looked back at him, waiting. Dressed in a black skirt, tights, boots. Black leather GI dress gloves stuffed halfway into a side pocket of her zippered black biker jacket. A leopard Carnaby hat tucked down over her straight, dark hair adding some Swinging Sixties flash to the ensemble.

It was a scant two minutes after she’d come barging into Lenny’s office.

“I’m a shipping officer,” he said at last, “not an investigator.”

“And I’m a corporate security agent, not a volunteer for the National Missing Persons Helpline,” Noriko replied. “Which, sad to say, didn’t give me the choice to stay out of something I didn’t want any part of.”

Lenny felt heat rush into his cheeks, thinking he could have kicked himself. That was one great answer he’d given her there. Some mighty original words popping out of his mouth. Or was his memory playing tricks by reminding him they were the very same words he’d used when Mary Sullivan had showed up to drop her little burden on his lap only a week, ten days ago? And how effective had they been for him then?

He realized his mouth was hanging open and shut it. His fate might be inevitably sealed, but he could still hold on to a little dignity.

“Go ahead,” he said. “Tell me how I’m supposed to help.”

“You can start by tracing every one of Kiran’s export shipments from point of origin to final destination,” Noriko said. “Look at cargo manifests, modes of transport, travel routes, receiving terminals… pull together every available detail and give them a comprehensive evaluation. Any time-charters or tramp vessels should be red- flagged. The same goes for transshippers here or abroad, outfits you remotely suspect may be cutouts. If something smells fishy, I want to know before anyone else — meaning the police.”

There was a pause of several seconds.

“I’d need access to confidential filings to get anywhere,” Lenny said, then. “Nobody’s going to just hand them to me—”

Noriko stopped him with a slicing motion of her hand.

“That’s bullshit,” she said. “I was working the case when those lunatics blew up a piece of our city. You’ve got sources. Friends in the Customs office. I know you reached out to them for information.”

Lenny was shaking his head.

“Different circumstances,” he said. “You make it sound like it was easy—”

“Wrong,” Noriko said, interrupting him again. “What you hear is me sounding like I know what has to be done. How is up to you. Easy, hard, somewhere between, I don’t care. As long as it’s right away.”

More silence. Lenny exhaled. He was thinking that the next time he was mulling an important decision, he might have to stay away from kosher delicatessens. He was also thinking that the next time Noriko Cousins showed up at his office without notice, he’d be sure to instruct his admin to tell her he was out sick… which suddenly led him to wonder why she hadn’t lowered the boom over the phone.

“Kneeesh, kneeesh, ought to go back to school,” he muttered to himself. “Damn right.”

“What?” Noriko said.

“Never mind.” Lenny produced a defeated sigh. “I’ve got one question you could maybe answer. A condition of surrender.”

She nodded.

“Did you walk all the way here just to watch me squirm?”

Noriko pinned him with a look, cut a little smile.

“Of course not, Lenny,” she said. “I took a cab.”

* * *

His husky six-foot-four, hundred-ninety-five-pound frame outstretched in the passenger cabin of a custom Learjet 45, Derek Glenn was studying the menu on his lap, nursing his third Dewar’s Special Reserve on the rocks, and musing that there were certain rare and satisfying instances when the high concentration of melanin in his skin bequeathed by his African ancestors gave him a distinct social advantage over white men, one such being that it was tough to get pinned as red-in-the-face drunk when your face just so happened to be darker than chestnuts roasted on an open fire.

This fringe benefit of Glenn’s blackness was by no means the only enjoyable part of his flight from Santa Clara to New York. In fact, Glenn had been too busy marveling at the preposterous abundance of luxuries aboard the UpLink bizjet to even think about it until a few minutes ago. Get a little sample of its plump leather seats and expansive leg room, not to mention the fully stocked and flowing wet bar, the catered lunch of marinated chicken and greens, the hors d’oeuvre platters of fresh seafood, overstuffed finger sandwiches, imported cheese, and sliced fruit, and now the lavish dinner menu he’d just been handed with its main-course offerings of fettuccini Alfredo, rib-eye steak, veal in wine sauce, beef stroganoff, or blackened swordfish… get yourself a taste of these high-flying extravagances, and the next time some flight attendant on a commercial airliner offered you a rubbery cold-cut sandwich and pretzel nuggets from his or her food cart, you might be pushed into talking serious smack to the poor dupe.

Undecided between the veal and pasta dishes, Glenn glanced over his shoulder at Ricci, who had been sitting alone toward the rear of the cabin since takeoff, staring out his window into the blue. If there had been a single damper on the trip thus far, it was his complete and utter inapproachability. But Glenn was not so stupid that he didn’t realize Ricci’s worrisome state of mind was the reason he’d been pulled from his San Diego security detail for their current assignment, regardless of the spiel Pete Nimec had given about the two of them making a crackerjack team. For that matter, Glenn’s entire reason for having flown from his hometown roost without too much complaint was an awareness that Ricci had been in a slide since Big Sur, maybe even longer, and that he’d once been the closest thing on earth the guy had to a friend.

Glenn sighed. He had to admit helping Ricci did fit his pattern, this goddamned masochistic compulsion to take desperate causes upon himself. Born and raised in San Diego’s east side, Glenn had returned there after a