Wild Card

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“I understand how you feel,” he said at last. “I’d have to be cold and ungrateful not to feel that way myself. But we need to put personal feelings aside here. No doubt, Tom Ricci has proven he’s capable of being the best at what he does. On the other hand he’s shown a contempt of authority that makes him a serious wild card. From an organizational perspective, his… I don’t know what to call it except insubordination… has brought on a world of trouble.”

Julia inhaled, held the breath a moment, then blew it out to disperse the thin filaments of steam curling from her drink.

“I’ve been thinking about when you, Megan, and Pete cooked up a name for UpLink security all those years ago,” she said. “Sword, you decided to call it. And I felt that sounded so hokey and pompous, remember?”

Gordian nodded, smiling a little.

“I remember,” he said. “You’ve never been shy about your opinions.”

Julia gave him smile of her own.

“Or you about your opinion of my opinions,” she said. “I can still see the annoyed look on your face. And hear you explaining that the name was a sort of play on words. That it referred to the legend of the Gordian knot, and how Alexander the Great was supposed to have solved the problem of untwisting it with one swift hack of his sword, and how that perfectly described the approach your people would take to solving problems. Realistic, direct, practical, determined… those were the exact words you used.”

Gordian looked straight into her eyes.

“We don’t forget much,” he said.

“No,” Julia said. “We hardly forget anything.”

Gordian nodded, and for a while the only sound was the rattling of rain on the windows.

“If your point is that the actions Ricci took are somehow in keeping with the premise behind Sword’s formation, I don’t think I’m able to bite,” he said then. “It’s based on taking that premise to a reckless extreme. And it’s judging those actions by results that could very well have been calamitously different.”

“That’s what I keep hearing, but where’s the proof?” Julia said. “Think about it a minute, Dad. Somebody infects you with a germ hatched in a lab, almost kills you. A year later this head case has me kidnapped. And then another psychopath with a mission tries to wipe out New York. What situations could be more extreme? How do you deal with any of them without taking risks? Tom Ricci’s always been ready and he’s come up a major stud every time.”

Gordian looked at her again. “A major stud?”

“Blame them.” Julia nodded at the dogs. “You live in a house full of animals, you start thinking in animalistic terms.”

Gordian’s brow had crinkled with amusement.

“If you say so,” he said.

They spent a few minutes quietly drinking their hot chocolates. Then, his cup emptied, Gordian pushed it slightly to the side, leaned forward, and massaged the back of his neck.

“You make a better case for Ricci than I could,” he said. “Unfortunately his attitude doesn’t help. Because of him UpLink’s under pressure from all sides, and from what I hear he’s dropped out of contact. If he wants trust, he’s got to show some. In somebody. How can Megan and Pete go to the mat for him, buy him a chance, when he won’t give himself one?”

Julia considered that and realized she didn’t have an answer. She sighed, finished her own drink, and glanced at the clock on the wall.

“It’s after midnight,” she said, and stretched. “Suppose the dogs ought to be getting in their Z’s.”

Gordian nodded.

“A little sleep wouldn’t hurt us, either,” he said.

A moment later Julia rose, pushed in her chair, and gathered their cups and spoons onto a tray. She was carrying it between three wet, sniffing black noses toward the sink when she turned back to face her father.

“Do we do anything for him?” she said.

Gordian looked at her from the table, smiled gently.

“We’re thinking about it,” he said.

LOS RAYOS DEL SOL, TERRITORIAL TRINIDAD

Pete Nimec hadn’t been able to fall asleep and that puzzled him. It should have been easy, he thought. Certainly easier than staying awake. He ought to be dead tired after everything he’d done in the past forty-eight hours or thereabouts, starting with having to pick up his mother-in-law at the airport, then practically turning right back around in the car with Annie to catch their flight to the Caribbean, followed by the trip itself, and the dinner invite by Henri Beauchart that had barely given them time to settle into their villa before drawing them out again. And all that rushing only accounted for last night, the first they’d spent here at Los Rayos. Up with the sun today, Nimec and Annie had climbed onto a pair of silver Vespas they’d discovered along with a Mustang soft-top in their villa’s attached garage — the transportation provided without fanfare by their hosts — and then zipped off to see about getting him signed up for kiteboarding instruction at a beachfront water sports shop Annie had highlighted in her resort guide.

The shop owner was a jaunty bronze-skinned titan from Australia named Blake. As advertised, he offered a beginner’s course and a full assortment of gear rentals. Prominent on the wall behind his counter was a certificate that declared him an “official skyriding instructor” but failed to particularly impress or encourage Nimec. How, he’d wondered, did somebody become an official skyrider, instructor or otherwise? What standards were applied to earning a cert? And by whom?

Nimec hadn’t had the foggiest notion. On the other hand, Blake was enthusiastic enough and seemed to know his stuff. And Annie was determined to get Nimec airborne. Urged on by her along their way to the beach, he’d acquiesced to possibly scheduling a session toward the middle of the week, but as it developed Blake was booked solid — except for a slot which had opened that morning due to a sudden cancellation.

Not quite feeling ready, Nimec had started to decline.

Before he could, Annie accepted on his behalf.

Minutes later, Nimec had been rushed into a dressing room and suited up in a board shirt and shorts, water booties, a buoyancy vest, and an impact helmet with a molded foam liner that made it hard for him to hear his own grumbled complaints. A couple of hours and several dry runs over the sand after that, he was floating on his back in the warm ocean shallows with a harness around him, his feet in the straps of a plane board, and his hands on the control bar of the rig that connected him to a bright red-and-white foil hovering in the air overhead. And then the kite had scooped wind, and Nimec had been pulled to his feet by the tautened lines, and the next thing he’d known he was airborne, swept into an updraft, looking some fifteen or twenty feet down at Blake the Bronze astride the jet ski they’d ridden from shore.

Blake had shouted a few words from below and behind him that sounded like: “You’re blowing away!”

Asked about it when their session was over, however, he had only recalled praising Nimec for “doing great.”

Whatever he’d said, it had proven to be a lasting thrill for Nimec. Between the six or seven dunks he took — each of which had brought Blake to his rescue on the fleet little jet ski — he had spent about half an hour soaring above the flat blue water in defiance of gravity. Nimec would remember his periods of flight seeming longer, and the heights he’d reached feeling higher, than they actually were. He would remember having an incredible, dizzying sense of mental and physical lightness. Perhaps most of all, he would remember looking back toward Annie on the beach, where she had stood watching him ride the wind, repeatedly raising her arms high above her head to wave from the edge of the lapping surf. Though he hadn’t been able to see her face from his distance, Nimec had known she was smiling at him, felt her smiling at him, and taken an undeclarably boyish pride in having evoked that smile.

Back at the villa that afternoon they’d decided to scrub up, change their clothes, and then grab some lunch at a restaurant. As Annie prepared to run her shower, Nimec had found himself looking quietly out a large bay window at the exotic flowers planted one story down in the courtyard, cruising along in a carefree and contented mood that had seemed almost foreign to him.

“You know,” she’d said, poking her head through the half-open bathroom door, “that seat in the shower stall