Wild Card

while to confirm this from our photos — bad angle. The bird didn’t pull overhead until right at the last minute, and he was wearing a dread bag that made it difficult to see his features.” He paused. “A dread bag, that’s one of those knitted caps some of the locals wea—”

“I was born and raised on this island,” Jean Luc interrupted. “My time away didn’t result in severe loss of memory.”

Eckers didn’t speak. A warm mid-morning breeze ruffled his loose-fitting guayabera shirt.

“I think we were already clear about who was out there,” Jean Luc said. “A man doesn’t head full-tilt for the open sea at two A.M. without some pressing reason. Not from where he did, and not on a crap motorboat.”

Eckers stood there uneasily another moment, then nodded.

“Yes,” he said. “Of course.”

“We know it was Lenard, and we know he took a dive out of the boat… to everybody’s surprise but mine,” Jean Luc said. “The question is, Toll, can we say what happened to him afterward?”

Eckers shook his head.

“I’m sorry, sir, we can’t with absolute certainty,” he said. “Our general feeling is that he drowned, though. The current’s pretty strong over near the lower tip of the peninsula. There’s soft riverbank — a mix of clay and sand — for a stretch that runs several miles up and down the channel from the point where Lenard abandoned the outboard. Vegetation’s weeds and cattails, some scrub growth. Our trackers are familiar with this kind of surface geography, and they’d have likely discovered evidence if he made it ashore. Footprints in the mud, bent or snapped rushes, something of that nature—”

Jean Luc cut him off. “I assume the scuba teams are on this.”

“Since last night.”

“And they’ve found nothing? No sign of him?”

Eckers hesitated. Jean Luc looked at him, waiting.

“The dread bag was retrieved from the water about a half mile down from where the son of a bitch took his plunge,” Eckers said. “That’s it.”

“The dread bag.”

“Right.” Eckers inhaled. “Again, the search is in its initial stages. We’ve got experience with this sort of thing and the resources to back it up.”

There was a brief silence. Jean Luc’s eyes remained steady on Eckers.

“Lenard’s from that village,” he said.

Eckers nodded.

“I see what you’re thinking,” he said. “Those people know their way around the island. And they’re protective of their own.”

“Aren’t they?”

“As far as that first goes, without a doubt,” Eckers said. “They’ve been there for generations. But a lot of them live in poverty or near poverty and won’t need much incentive to give up what they know.”

Jean Luc watched his face another moment. Then a smile crept across his strong, full-lipped mouth.

“Take me back to Bonasse,” he said, and reached behind him to open the Rover’s passenger door. “We’ll talk more on the way home.”

They got in, Eckers behind the wheel, and drove along the dirt vehicle path across the production fields to the Southern Trunk Road. On their left, pump rods moved up and down over the established wellheads in steady rhythmic fashion. On the right, enormous derricks soared above the newer drill sites, their various mechanical systems powered by humming diesel engines and generators. Beyond these were the storage and refinery tank farms, and further to the northeast the delivery terminals on the Gulf of Paria, barely visible now in the bright blue- green reflectiveness of Caribbean morning sunlight and seawater.

Jean Luc sat in the Rover’s comfortable air-conditioning and waved a hand toward the fields as they bumped along.

“You know, when I look out at all this, it would be easy to see two hundred and fifty years of family accomplishment,” he said. “But it isn’t my perspective. It wasn’t my father’s, or my grandfather’s, or great- grandfather’s. I’m a now kind of person. I focus on each opportunity as it’s presented. That’s how I was raised, a sensibility that’s been instilled in me. It’s how I run my life and business.” He gestured out the window again. “What I see out there are separate parts of a whole, individual projects at distinct, ongoing stages of development. I look at a well that’s ten, fifteen years old, ask myself whether it’s almost tapped out, or peaking, or somewhere in between, and then ask whether its efficiency can be improved. I see a thumper rolling over a particular location, or possibly a rig going up, and make a mental note to have the latest seismological and core sample data on my desk toot suite… Can you appreciate where I’m coming from, and how it relates our current problem, Toll?”

Eckers made a quick turn to put them on the main route.

“You’re saying not to lump sum it,” he said, nodding.

Jean Luc looked across the seat at him and grinned.

“Nicely put,” he said. “And right on. Experience is always helpful, but you can be lulled by past success. What we need is to reset our priorities, focus on today instead of”—his grin widened—“our master plan, if you’ll pardon my being cute.”

Eckers gave another thoughtful nod.

They rode in silence for the next forty miles, crossing the peninsula on the Trunk, a smooth multilane blacktop that dipped inland from the constellation of industrial towns around the petroleum fields and then swung southwest through undisturbed woodlands toward the beaches, sugar plantations, and fishing villages of Cedros.

Just short of an hour after they had left oil country behind, Eckers made the long, curving turn off the road that brought them within sight of the estate grounds and, high on a hill behind a spread of cedar copses, topiary, and ornamental gardens, the grand Colonial mansion with its witch’s hat turrets wrapped in balconies of stone.

“I’ll reset and reorganize the search,” he said, passing through the electronic entry gate. “See that our men — our assigned specialists—understand Lenard has to be their first priority.”

“As if our world stands or falls on finding him,” Jean Luc said. “In the meantime, I’d better massage our partners at Los Rayos. With their having gotten confirmation that the visitor from UpLink will be coming, this episode’s bound to have made them uptight.”

“Beauchart’s given them his reassurances.”

“They’ll want to hear from me anyway,” Jean Luc said. He paused. “Suppose I might as well make a call to Washington while I’m at it.”

Eckers glanced at him.

“Are you surprised?” Jean Luc said.

Eckers shrugged a little.

“Some,” he said. “I wasn’t sure you’d need to do that.”

“I don’t. Not absolutely. Not yet. But there’s the history. The connection between our families. Respecting it’s another of my ingrained traits.” Jean Luc paused again; Eckers’s silence betrayed his reservations. “No fear, Toll, I haven’t contracted the honesty bug… I suppose you could say fair’s fair between Drew and myself, though,” he said. “If I expect him to play by my rules of the game, I have to respect his.”

Eckers looked as if he was about to say something, but then moved on without another word. He went up the drive to where it rimmed the mansion’s front court, pulled over to the low curb, and stopped the vehicle.

“Do you want me to stay on the grounds?” he said as Jean Luc got out.

Jean Luc leaned his head back in the door and shook it once.

“That’s okay, I’d prefer you get back to the hunt,” he said. “And don’t forget our chat. Take one thing at a time, Toll. One thing at a time and we’ll be fine.”

Eckers nodded and became very still, staring out the windshield through his dark lenses again. Jean Luc studied him a moment, withdrew his head from the Rover, pushed the door shut, and turned up the courtyard toward the house.

A moment later Eckers spun away from the curb and started back down the drive to the gate.

SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA