"Yes," he said in a faint, cracked voice. "I--I understand."

DeVane sat back in his chair and put his fingers together in a steeple again, resuming the relaxed, self-a.s.sured posture in which Eduardo had first seen him.

"Good," he said. "Then you should finally understand something else. I am here, now, as a gesture of respect for Vicente, for whom I know your punishment will be difficult. Were it not for him, it would have been unworthy of my attendance. I would have ordered it done from the comfort of my home, and devoted no more thought to it than I do to blinking my eyes."

With that, he looked at Kuhl, who had turned partially in his direction. There was an unspoken interaction between them--a brief meeting of their gazes, barely perceptible nods.

Then Kuhl reached back around his right hip and pulled something from his wide leather belt. Squinting in the semidarkness, Eduardo could see that it was some sort of wooden club or nightstick.

He looked beseechingly at DeVane, but he was staring at his own hands as if contemplating some unrelated matter. Beside him, Vicente sat with his head still lowered.

Kuhl stepped toward him, his hand gripping the stick.

"Please," Eduardo said. He cowered backward, came up against Ramon's solid body and the unyielding gun-metal pressed to his neck. "Please." "Please."

Kuhl was on him an instant later. Even as Eduardo raised his hands in defense, Kuhl struck a sharp, precise blow to his right arm with the end of the stick. His wrist bone broke free of the long bones of his forearm with a clean and audible snap. Kuhl swiftly brought the stick to the right and down again between Eduardo's neck and collarbone, then swung it across his middle. Eduardo simultaneously crumpled to his knees and vomited on himself.

Kuhl hit him three more times with the stick, smashing his nose with one blow, then striking him twice in the head. Eduardo collapsed further, curling his knees up into his chest. Blood gushed from his pulverized nose onto the rough concrete floor.

His eyes rolled blearily upward. He could see Kuhl standing above him, holding the stick in a vertical position, pulling at its upper end. And then the stick's handle detached and the long length of a knife blade slid from inside its bottom segment.

Kuhl stood there without expression, the knife in his right hand and the remaining portion of the stick in his left, looking as if he were about to plunge the blade into Eduardo's body. But instead he turned and pa.s.sed it to someone who had come up beside him.

Eduardo shifted his head as far as he could, saw the man standing next to Kuhl, through a haze of pain, and released a low, tormented groan.

Vicente stared down at his nephew a moment, his eyes solemn, the lines around his mouth deepening. Then he knelt over him with the knife and sliced its edge across his throat to deliver the coup de grace. coup de grace.

Eduardo jerked, made a gurgling noise, and expired.

Rising, the old man gave the weapon back to Kuhl, turned toward DeVane, and bowed his head a little.

"I am sorry for your loss, dear friend," DeVane said gently.

Vicente nodded again but remained where he stood.

DeVane rose from his chair as Kuhl approached him, the knife dripping in his hand.

"Have Vicente driven out of here so the others can sc.r.a.pe that garbage off the floor," he said. "The Albanians have come through for us, and you and I have matters of vital importance to discuss."

ELEVEN.

SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA APRIL 19, 2001.

"ANY WORD ON THIBODEAU?" GORDIAN ASKED.

"He's still in ICU, but his condition's been upgraded from critical to serious," Nimec said. "The doctors are encouraged. They say he's alert. Also told me he's already getting on their nerves."

"How so?"

"Asking a lot of questions."

"Good sign."

"And demanding they find him a Stetson." demanding they find him a Stetson."

"Even better."

"Exactly my thought."

"Either of you care to explain?" Megan said. "About the Stetson, I mean."

Gordian looked at her. "Thibodeau was Air Cav in Vietnam. It was their tradition to wear Stetsons as part of their military wardrobe when they received awards and decorations. Still is, I think."

"Ah," Megan said. "So he's presumably of a mind that there's something to celebrate."

Gordian nodded.

They were in a sub-bas.e.m.e.nt meeting room at UpLink's corporate HQ that looked much like any other in the building--beige carpet, oval conference table, recessed fluorescents--but differed from them in many important respects. The most apparent to the handful of top-tier executives permitted access were the electronic security panels outside the door incorporating voice-activated key-code software and retina-fingerprint scans, and the total absence of windows once they got inside.

The most substantive differences involved the interst.i.tial matrix of comint technology that had been subtly worked into the room's design and construction. Layers of two-foot-thick concrete and acoustical paneling soundproofed its walls to human ears. Steel reinforcements, white-noise generators, and other counter-surveillance systems had been imbedded within them to block the tapping of conversations and electronic communications. Adding to security were twice-weekly sweeps for bugs, and spectrum and X-ray scans of all electronic equipment coming into or out of the room. While continual advancements in eavesdropping technology made it unrealistic to guarantee that any s.p.a.ce on earth was strongboxed against droops droops--a word meaning "dirty rotten snoops" coined by UpLink's risk-a.s.sessment man, Vince Scull--its occupants could feel a comfortable degree of a.s.surance in the inviolability of their discussions.

These occupants presently being limited to Gordian, Nimec, and Megan Breen, who had convened in this high-tech sanctum sanctorum to see what they could make of Brazil.

"Thibodeau's doctors mention the sort sort of questions he's been asking?" Gordian said now. of questions he's been asking?" Gordian said now.

"No, but Cody did. He's the guy Rollie insisted on talking to," Nimec said. "It's pretty much as you'd expect. Who, what, why. And how the invaders knew as much about our perimeter security and grounds plan as they did."

"The answer to the last part seems painfully obvious."

"A mole," Megan said.

"Or moles," Nimec added.

"Anybody look good for it?" Gordian asked.

"Not yet, and I expect it'll take a while before we find solid pointers," Nimec said. "There's no evidence our internal defenses were compromised in the sense of systems shutdowns or restricted databases being hacked. The reconnaissance that was gathered wouldn't have required a high level of clearance, just a familiarity with the complex and the time and incentive to do a thorough job of mapping it out. My guess is there are over a thousand administrative, R&D, production, building construction, medical, maintenance, and even kitchen staffers who could've provided the information."

"Nor can we rule out Sword personnel," Megan said.

Nimec looked at her. "That's right," he said. "We can't."

Gordian glanced from one to the other. "Impressions?"

"The invasion force was well organized and armed to the teeth," Nimec said. "It had land and air elements that performed with exceptional tactical coordination and were equipped with a French integrated weapon/helmet-mounted targeting package that gave them the equivalent of our country's Land Warrior system--ordnance that's technically still in field trials. The airborne teams that we think took out the robots made their insertion using high-alt.i.tude-high-opening para techniques. Again, we're looking at skills, experience, and equipment generally a.s.sociated with elite commando units. They made the terrorists who hit us in Russia a couple years back look like toy soldiers."

"I a.s.sume none of the men we captured gave up information about who sent them?"

"There hardly would have been a chance if they'd wanted to," Megan said. "Brazilian federal police scooped them out of our hands within an hour after we notified them of the strike."

"Which is pretty much what I expected. Have we made official inquiries of the gendarmes since then?"

"Several, but they haven't exactly been eager to respond. n.o.body we've contacted even seems sure where the prisoners are being detained."

"And I'd be willing to bet they're never seen or heard from again." Nimec rubbed his thumb over his fingers. "Whoever could launch an operation of the kind we saw the other night has got to have plenty of grease. The hinky b.a.s.t.a.r.ds that pa.s.s for lawmen down there would be just the ones to soak it up. Mark my words, Gord, we'll get zero disclosure from them."

"We have our own intelligence resources. The ground units would have needed to stage from positions somewhere relatively close to the plant."

"The key word being 'relatively,' " Nimec said. "There are hundreds of miles of wilderness in the Mato Gra.s.so. Territory where you could hide a fair-sized encampment if you have the know-how. As those people clearly would."

Gordian rubbed the back of his neck.

"They've got concealment and cover, we've got the Hawkeye," he said. "Let's put our new bird through its paces and see who wins the Kewpie."

"What I was just about to suggest," Nimec said. "I'll order the satellite jogged into position soon as I get to Brazil."

Gordian shook his head. "You can do that from a ground station right here in the states, Pete."

"Sure, but my point is that with Rollie's situation uncertain, we need somebody in charge down there--"

"I agree," Gordian said. "However, right now I'd prefer to have you in Florida as our liaison and advisor to the Orion investigation."

Nimec looked at him. "I thought you'd wrangled it so that Annie Caulfield was chosen to head the probe."

"I did. And I have complete confidence in her leadership."

"Yet you still want me me to keep an eye on things?" to keep an eye on things?"

"To keep me abreast of developments," Gordian said. "Furthermore, there are some people at NASA who may be in a snit about Annie's accession, so to speak, and I'd like to have someone in place to backstop her should she run into difficulties."

"Right off the top of my head, I'm able to name at least a dozen people in our organization who can do the job as well as I can," Nimec said.

"Only if we disregard your experience in identifying the characteristics of sabotage," Gordian said. "I hope it doesn't become essential, but we have to be ready just in case. Which is my third reason for wanting you at the Cape."

Nimec sat there for a moment of dead silence. Gordian's fixed expression told him it wouldn't do any good to contest his decision, that things would have to go his way whether Nimec liked it or not. Besides, he could present no logical argument; everything Gordian had said made perfect sense.

In spite of the logic and sense, though, all Nimec could think was that he was finally getting his due for Malaysia. That Gordian was expressing his concern about a replay of the cowboys-and-Indians scenario that had grown out of Nimec's tolerance of Max Blackburn's unauthorized investigation into Monolith Technologies a year ago. He could still remember Gordian's words when he'd found out about it. At that point it had been evident that Blackburn was in trouble. No one had yet guessed how serious it would turn out to be, but Max had disappeared, and Nimec had finally had to ask his employer's permission to go looking for him.

Yes, he could remember Gord's exact words.

"It's beyond me how you could have been part of something this reckless, Pete. Completely beyond me ... the two of you launched a caper that could have sunk us in quicksand. And very likely has ... "

Nimec breathed. Maybe it hadn't sunk them, but Max was dead, and he owned a share of the blame. Maybe, too, he deserved to be making reparations.

"Who you plan on sending to Mato Gra.s.so?" he asked.

Another dead moment.

Megan shifted in her chair.

"Gord's asked me to go," she said.

Nimec looked at her.

"I apologize." She averted her eyes for the briefest instant. "I probably should have told you sooner."

He was quiet.

"Pete, one more thing," Gordian said, breaking into the silence at what he thought was an opportune moment. "Have you heard from Tom Ricci? We can't afford to get hung up as far as the Sword position."

"He left a message on my voice mail this morning. I plan to return the call as soon as I get back to my office."

"No indication yet about how he's leaning?"

Nimec shook his head.

"He'd want to talk to me directly."

Gordian nodded. "I can see that."

Megan smoothed her skirt over her legs.

"Must be a guy thing," she half-muttered.

Gordian looked at her, raising his eyebrows.

"You haven't spoken to my wife lately, have you?"

"No," she said. "Why do you ask?"

Gordian looked at her another moment.

"Never mind," he said, and scratched behind his ear. "It's nothing important."

TWELVE.

CAPE CANAVERAL, FLORIDA APRIL 21, 2001.