remained impassive as he listened to the other three men. Only occasionally did he let his fingers run lightly over his close-cropped jet-black hair-an expression of his annoyance at what he was being told. To his right sat Hans Groiter, his chief of security, a Caucasian man whose skin was deeply freckled and nearly hairless. To Groiter's left sat his bespectacled lawyer.
''I am disappointed Herschel would bring them into the compound without consulting us,'' Kenji said.
'Well, now they're about to leave,' Groiter said. 'We'll never know what they know or what they suspect unless we do something, and fast.'
'You have this Dan Young's address?'
'If I get your drift, we can start planting bugs tonight.'
Kenji merely nodded, dismissing him. The ride from the Amada office to Palmer was short. With luck Groiter would get his work done before Dan Young arrived home.
'Why are the damned bats going crazy?' Kenji asked Kim Lee. 'In this country that kind of thing could attract more curious biologists.'
'We know they are an undiscovered subspecies,' his attorney answered. 'And I think we're getting them all killed off.'
'Oh yes, and to find that out, we had to kill a goddamned snoopy biologist who asked too many questions?'
'It was a heart attack.'
Kenji didn't bother replying. It had been stupid to bring in a man they couldn't control. The second week on the job the man had wanted to bring in an army of his brethren. Another one of Herschel's mistakes.
'So when do we know something?'
'About the bats? About our problem in the mine?'
''How about the railroad?' Kenji asked, shifting his attention to a topic only slightly less vexing.
'They won't sell.'
'Why not? For good money they should.'
'If we go to them and hint at big money, what do you suppose they will think?' Kim Lee tried, and failed, not to sound condescending to his boss.
'They'll think we have found something of value. So how much should we offer?'
'Ten dollars per acre.'
'And why should they take that?' Kenji asked.
'It's a place to start negotiating, but I don't hold out much hope. The railroad always keeps the mineral rights.'
'Why we didn't buy everything when we bought this land is a mystery to me.'
The exasperation showed on Kim Lee's face, but he remained silent.
'I know I don't have to remind you of the money that each of you will make if this project is a success.'
Following a helicopter ride to the police station, Dan and Maria had arranged for the recovery of the ruined rental car and for the borrowed truck to be returned to their' 'benefactor.' Then they were ticketed for a trespassing infraction and sent home. After a taxi ride back to the pub, they retrieved Dan's car and drove through Palmer past darkened houses made quiet for the night.
For the hundredth time Maria wondered aloud what secret the men at the compound could be guarding so carefully.
'No clue,' Dan said, 'but Hans, whoever he is, wanted some creative persuasion, and our buddy was pointing out they'd have to kill us if that happened.'
'Maybe we should have told the cops.'
'No. We've got nothing. Nothing that couldn't be explained away. This way we can talk to our clients, get clearance, find some experts, maybe make something of the bats or the equations. Then, if appropriate, convince the cops to go out with a search warrant without warning.'
'I don't disagree.'
They pulled up in the driveway of the Palmer Inn. Although Maria had not planned to stay the night, she had long since missed her flight and had now decided to attend an early-morning telephone conference with Patty McCafferty and Jeb Otran-a discussion she wanted to hear.
'Look,' Dan said, 'why don't you come to my house? You have no luggage. You don't even have a toothbrush. I have a guest bedroom. Pepacita, my housekeeper, is there. You wouldn't be the lone female.'
'Hey, that's a leap across a giant gulf. In the morning you'd wake up and realize this is Maria the enviro under your roof-the enemy. Isn't that what you guys call us?'
'We call you worse than that. But this is an emergency.'
He watched her brow furrow.
'You're going to feel strange walking into the lobby like that. What will you do in the morning?'
'Oh, and you've got a whole size-eight wardrobe?'
'I do.'
'You-you didn't get rid of your wife's clothes?'
'No. Not all of them. Not yet. She was a generous and good person. She would have given you the clothes if she were alive, so why not when she's gone?'
'You've got clothes I could wear to a seven a.m. meeting?'
'Absolutely. Size eight. Tess weighed one hundred twenty-five pounds. She was five foot eight inches tall. Pepacita is a great cook. There'll be dinner whenever we get there.'
'What if we get the clothes and I come back here.'
'You can decide when you get to my place.'
'I am famished.'
'Good. We'll at least get you dinner and a wardrobe.'
''You know, any day now we could be in court on opposite sides of a timber-harvest plan, clawing at each other until our fingernails are hanging from bloody stumps.'
''What happened to the old saying: 'Let us strive mightily but eat and drink as friends.' '
'This is real life. This counts. If you cut down a grove of redwoods a thousand years old-well, they're gone forever.'
He straightened his hat and looked at her as if he had an answer.
'You wanna say something dumb, like they'll grow back.'
He laughed. 'Let's go to my house before we start an all-night fight.'
Hans Groiter liked dried pumpkin seeds. He liked the little ritual of cracking the salted shells between his teeth and sucking out the meat. The trick was that after removing the heart he ate the shell as well.
As he drilled through the sub-floor of Dan Young's house, he ground a shell to a pulp between his teeth. Peering around the edge of the Venetian blind, he had watched a heavy Mexican woman puttering in the family room. Figuring carefully the location of the large couch, he had entered the crawl space under the house and used a hand drill to create a 1/8-inch pilot hole. Although his spike mike had wood-boring threads, he wanted to make it easy and silent.
He worked by the light of a battery-powered lantern, keeping it turned away from the entrance to the crawl space and hoping that some stray beam of light would not penetrate the darkness outside the residence and give him away. With the predrilled hole he easily screwed the mike through the floor with his right hand while his left arm mindlessly brushed aside cobwebs. Around him the pillar and post foundation supported a crawl space that varied between twenty-four and thirty-six inches over uneven ground. Protruding through the plywood floor were the nails that held the sub-floor to the plywood. If he wasn't careful, they would bloody his knuckles.
By the time the mike was screwed through the plywood, the medium-density fiber (MDF) sub-flooring, and the carpet, he had a strong feeling that he better get the hell out before he was caught. He worked with a fierce sense of urgency. If they did come, his men would trigger a quiet beep on his walkie-talkie and alert him to listen. So far, the silence had been reassuring. Once the mike was in place, he inserted a tri-pronged plug to a wireless transmitter.
As quickly and as quietly as possible, he retreated to the small, hinged door in the side of the house, exited
