decade of service with Delta’s Joint SpecOps unit and been doing the community activist bit whenever he had any time to spare, working to rescue his neighborhood from the termite gangbangers and wrecking-ball public developers who’d been moving in on its solid citizens from both ends. He didn’t want or need Ricci as an additional reclamation project, and yet had done nothing to stop the deal from being laid on him.
Glenn kept looking contemplatively toward the back of the plane. After coming up against a wall trying to talk to Ricci earlier, he’d figured it might be best to let him be. However, it seemed to him that now was one of those times when he ought to make another attempt at reestablishing communication. There was a lot about Ricci that he found hard to understand. A lot about him that was even harder to like. But Glenn thought he maybe understood
He expelled another breath, rose from his chair, started to take his whiskey with him, and then abruptly decided against it. The handful of times they’d hung out together at Nate’s Bar in San Diego, Ricci had ordered nothing stronger than a Coke. And though it hadn’t been brought up in so many words, Glenn had always figured he’d been keeping some kind of problem with the bottle in check. He didn’t seem to have too much trouble with it, not then, but it wasn’t the same when a man was slipping down a mineshaft, looking for anything that might slow his fall to the bottom.
Glenn knocked off the rest of his drink with one deep swallow, put his glass onto the lowered tray in front of him, slid into the aisle with the menu, and went on back past a group of four company officers, divisional COOs and CIOs who were sharing the flight east on their way to some sort of telecom industry conference. Gathered around their laptops at a circular table, they didn’t seem to notice him at all.
Neither did Ricci. He was turned toward the window as Glenn approached, still gazing into the layer of turquoise sky through which they were streaking above a thin, vaporous floor of cirrus clouds.
“Got a great menu,” Glenn said, and flapped it once to get his attention. “Want to come on up and order dinner?”
Ricci slowly shifted his attention from the window.
“No, thanks,” he said. “There are some things I want to think about.”
Glenn stood watching Ricci’s impassive face from the aisle.
“You don’t need to make this worse than it is,” he said. “Worse than it has to be between us, anyway.”
“Sure,” Ricci said. “It’s just a big adjustment for me, flying with a babysitter.”
Glenn hesitated a moment.
“Suit yourself, man,” he said. “But I didn’t put you in this predicament. Didn’t ask for this job. We’re on it together—”
“Like it or not?” Ricci said, and looked at him.
Glenn shrugged. The plane’s turbines droned smoothly on around the low conversational voices of the executives behind him.
“My only point’s that talking to each other wouldn’t hurt,” he said.
Another moment passed. Ricci kept looking at him, his eyes as pale and blue as the untouchable sky outside.
“Something needs to be shared,” he said, “we’ll talk.”
Glenn considered how to answer, didn’t take long to conclude there was really nothing more to say. Ricci’s quiet, relentless antagonism could wear you down fast.
He squared his shoulders into another shrug, but Ricci didn’t see it. His eyes had instead gone again to the window and whatever separate space might have drawn their attention.
“Enjoy the view,” Glenn said, his level tone betraying only a fraction of his discouragement as he turned and carried his menu back to his seat.
The sun was at its midday zenith in a cold, sickly gray sky as Hasul Benazir strode from the Kiran building’s front entrance, crossing its paved and landscaped grounds on his way toward the mountain woods. He was covered in full UV gear, wearing a shielded headpiece instead of the sunglasses, hood, and draping face guard he had used on the dusk of his self-exposure. Based on the design of a motocross helmet, the headpiece with its Velcro collar ring and dark pull-down visor sealed him in more completely to provide a superior level of protection.
Hasul would not have dared remove it for a moment this time. Even the bled-out light of a winter’s noon would ravage him, setting cancerous fire to his genes.
Zaheer walked with him, his face clinched with unhappiness over what he perceived as an abrupt change in their plans. Hasul understood his reaction and would not fault him for it — why else had he kept the entire truth from him, but for having anticipated his discontent?
Now they entered the forest growth, took a long slow natural path under the trees and down the slope, and after a time stepped out into a small, frost-browned knoll.
John Earl stood at the far side of the clearing in his black leather coat, a watchcap pulled down over his head, a muffler around his neck. As they appeared he reached into a pocket for a pack of cigarettes, shook one out, slid its filter between his lips, held a disposable lighter to its tip, and smoked, looking straight across the open space between them.
Zaheer turned toward Hasul as they stopped outside the treeline.
“This one, he is dangerous,” he said, and tilted his head in Earl’s direction.
Hasul nodded.
“What we do is dangerous, and it can only increase the likelihood of success to use him,” he said. “Your contribution will not be outshone, rest assured.”
Zaheer looked at him in tentative silence.
“It is not for myself that I ask you to reconsider,” he said.
Hasul reached out and placed a gloved hand on his shoulder. In a ventilator compartment at the back of his helmet, a small battery-powered airflow fan whirred softly to prevent his breath from fogging its visor.
“Trust me and wait,” he said. “I will only be a short while.”
His face dour, Zaheer did not answer.
At that, Hasul lowered his hand, then turned and went over to Earl, the bare winter earth of the field hard and ungiving under the ridged rubber soles of his boots.
“You found your way here without trouble, it seems,” he said, halting in front of him.
Earl slid his cigarette between his lips, absently holding the lighter, rotating it in his hand.
“Just an old country boy in the woods,” he said. “Long as I trust my feet, they’ll bring me to the right place by-and-by.”
Hasul was silent, his attentive expression partially obscured by the UV helmet’s tinted visor.
“Your vehicle,” he said. “You left it without being observed?”
“At a gas-and-food stop about a mile down the mountain and east of here.” Cigarette smoke laced from Earl’s thin smile. “Thank goodness for McDonald’s, don’t know what anybody the wide world ’round would do without them.”
Hasul looked at him. A gust of wind flapped the ultraviolet blocking fabric of his external garments. Overhead, the sun showed through a gap in the fast-moving clouds to send glancing rays off his visor.
“I have more work for you,” he said.
Earl shrugged, took a deep inhale off his cigarette, held his breath a moment.
“I don’t ever like to say no a job,” he said, blowing smoke. “But I’m not half finished with the last thing. The little woman, you know she couldn’t give me what I needed. Didn’t have it in her head.”
Hasul nodded.
“That is why it is crucial to move forward with added urgency,” he said. “The situation is not what I thought it to be. Whether he is dead or alive, Patrick Sullivan meant to betray me the night of his disappearance.”
“You’re sure of it.”
“Certain,” Hasul said. “He had something of mine in his possession when he went to meet his contact. Items I did not suspect he knew existed.”
“How’d he get hold of them?”
“They were stolen,” Hasul said. “I have yet to learn how.”
