The problem was that he wasn't at all certain he ought to be doing that.

He tried to think it through even while gunning his engine, pushing to close the distance between them.

Having sent Newell for medical treatment and dispatched their prisoners to a holding area with one of the other units, his squad had been returning to their car when they saw the invaders hasten back into their own vehicle, pull it around in a screeching circle, and whip toward the fence. As the men who by chance were closest to them, Carlysle's team had launched off in pursuit... but the jeep had been pa.s.sing through the fence before Carlysle even got behind the wheel, giving it a good head start.

What troubled him was a simple question of authority. UpLink's host government had sanctioned the emplacement of an independent security force on the ISS compound, period. It was not prepared to have that force move about at will, engaging in what amounted to a small war. Carlysle was sensitive to that, and because he was a disciplined professional, could not close his eyes to the boundaries of his license to operate. If there had been no prisoners taken on the compound to hopefully yield information about the motives and objectives behind their raid, he might have been inclined to push those bounds and carry on the pursuit, calling in the Skyhawks for aerial support. But there were, and it was hard to justify going forward knowing the repercussions that might be expected as a consequence.

He gripped the wheel, his eyes on the taillights ahead of him. Stop or go, what was it going to be? With Thibodeau not answering his radio, the decision was his to make.

Producing another string of curses, he shifted his foot to his brake pedal and eased it down. The chase car lurched to a halt over the b.u.mpy road.

"Never mind that bunch, we're going back," he said to the man beside him. "There's a whole lot of pieces that need picking up at the facility, and n.o.body but us to do it."

Its engine throbbing, Kuhl's jeep shot through the gap in the fence at full horsepower, reversing the path it had taken into the compound.

Kuhl turned in the front pa.s.senger seat and saw the twin points of headlights in the darkness behind him. But they were a good distance away, and that distance seemed to be growing. Still, he wanted to keep his eyes on them.

The jeep plunged ahead into the jungle, bouncing over the road, vines and branches lashing its windshield, leaving behind long, drippy swipes of moisture. Soon the unbroken tunnel of vegetation around it was screening out the sky.

Kuhl watched the headlights steadily, convinced they were indeed becoming further off. Why might that be so? he asked himself. Certainly their position beside the jeep had given Kuhl and his three companions a jump on the security teams, who had dispersed from their own vehicles during the firefight. But that only accounted for his head start, not the absence of any concerted and determined pursuit. And what of the helicopters? Why hadn't they been sent after him?

A faint smile touched his lips. Even flight had its lessons, and it struck him that he'd just gained another bit of understanding about UpLink's vulnerabilities, limitations, and the dynamics of its relationship with the Brazilians.

It was knowledge he would have to carefully digest along with the rest of what he'd learned tonight.

Knowledge that was bound to be very useful as the next phase of the game commenced.

FIVE.

VARIOUS LOCALES APRIL 17, 2001.

THE BALD EAGLE LAUNCHED FROM THE TALL TREES downhill to their right, soaring above the old pilings at the marshy tidal band, its long outspread wings a serrate outline against the sky, the untinged whiteness of its head and tail feathers contrasting so strikingly with its blackish body they seemed almost like luminous, painted-on accents to guide the eye across its perfect form. downhill to their right, soaring above the old pilings at the marshy tidal band, its long outspread wings a serrate outline against the sky, the untinged whiteness of its head and tail feathers contrasting so strikingly with its blackish body they seemed almost like luminous, painted-on accents to guide the eye across its perfect form.

Megan watched it circle the pilings twice, rise gracefully on an updraft, and then swing out across the shiny waters of the bay. The sh.o.r.e below her was silent. Nothing moved amid the rushes. Nor was there any motion in the tangled scrub sloping off from the deck where she sat with Nimec and Ricci, a cup of strong black coffee on the table in front of her.

"It'll generally stay quiet for five, ten minutes after she's gone. Then you'll see the gulls, terns, and ducks come back, sometimes a few at a time, sometimes hundreds of them at once, like there's been an all-clear," Ricci said. "The eagles prefer eating fish to anything else, but when they're really hungry or nursing a brood, they'll make a meal out of whatever they can sink their talons into. Smaller birds, rodents, even house cats that stray too far from their backyards."

Megan reluctantly dropped her gaze from the eagle's path. Its sudden appearance had given her a thrill of excitement, but Ricci had promised an explanation for the ugly scene on the road, and she was more than ready to hear it.

She shot a glance across the table at him. "How about urchins?"

Ricci smiled a little. "Them too," he said.

She kept looking at him pointedly.

"I think Megan was offering you a neat little segue there," Nimec said from the chair beside her. "Might not be a bad idea to take it."

Ricci paused a moment, then nodded.

"You two want to go inside first?" He gestured toward the sliding door leading back into his house. "It's getting pretty brisk out here."

Nimec's shoulders rose and fell. "I'm okay."

"Same," Megan said. "I can use the fresh air after all the schlepping schlepping around we've done. To use an Irish word." around we've done. To use an Irish word."

Ricci sat there, his face showing not one iota of concern about the headaches he'd caused them. That irritated Megan, and she hoped the expression on her face made it abundantly clear to him. The schlep schlep she'd mentioned had included following his pickup for nearly an hour as he'd led them to a fish-smelling wholesale seafood market on a wharf at the foot of the peninsula, where they'd had to wait while he'd spent another hour hustling back and forth between one saltbox shed and another, haggling with buyers over the value of several large plastic trays he'd been carrying in the flatbed of the truck ... or more accurately the layers of spiny, tennis-ball-sized green sea urchins inside those trays, what he'd earlier referred to as his catch. And all that after she and Nimec had traveled three thousand miles across the country by air and ground, and the unexpected confrontation with the warden and deputy sheriff. she'd mentioned had included following his pickup for nearly an hour as he'd led them to a fish-smelling wholesale seafood market on a wharf at the foot of the peninsula, where they'd had to wait while he'd spent another hour hustling back and forth between one saltbox shed and another, haggling with buyers over the value of several large plastic trays he'd been carrying in the flatbed of the truck ... or more accurately the layers of spiny, tennis-ball-sized green sea urchins inside those trays, what he'd earlier referred to as his catch. And all that after she and Nimec had traveled three thousand miles across the country by air and ground, and the unexpected confrontation with the warden and deputy sheriff.

"I suppose," Ricci said at length, "you'd like me to tell you why those uniformed humps were on my case."

Megan watched him coolly over the rim of her cup.

"That would be nice," she said.

Ricci lifted his own coffee to his mouth, sipped, and then set it down on the circular tabletop.

"Either of you know anything about urchin diving?"

Megan shook her head.

"Pete?" Ricci said.

"Only that urchins are a specialty item in foreign seafood markets. I'd a.s.sume they can bring good money."

Ricci nodded.

"Actually it's the roe that's valuable. Or can be, anyway. You ever been to a sushi bar, it's what they call uni on the menu. The bulk of it gets shipped out to j.a.pan, the rest to j.a.panese communities in this country and Canada," he said. "Its price depends on availability, the percentage of roe in comparison to its total weight, and the quality of the roe, which has to be a bronzy gold color--kind of like a tangerine--if you want to fetch a premium. Those trays I unloaded had about two and a half bushels of urchins each and were worth almost a grand to me."

Megan looked at him. "If somebody had told me that when I was ten, I'd be worth millions today. My big brother and I would walk along the beach and collect them off the jetties in our plastic buckets. Then we'd fill the buckets with ocean water and try to convince our parents to let us bring them home as pets. My dad would tell us to get those d.a.m.ned sea porcupines out of the house."

Ricci smiled faintly.

"People have different nicknames for them around here, but they shared your father's sentiments till recently, when everybody heard about the Asian demand and got a yen for the yen," he said. "Before that, they were just considered nuisances. Most of the old-time lobstermen still refer to them as wh.o.r.e's eggs because they mess up their traps. Clog the vents, eat the bait, even chew through the headings and lathe to get at the bait. The nasty little b.u.g.g.e.rs have some sharp teeth to go with their spines."

"You gather the urchins yourself?"

"Harvesting's done in teams of at least one scuba diver and a tender, who waits above in the boat," Ricci said. "I like to do the underwater work alone. Take a big mesh tote below with me and pick the best-looking urchins. When a bag's full, I send up a float line so my tender, this guy named Dexter, can spot it and hoist it aboard."

"Tender?" Megan said. "Define, please."

"It's the diver's equivalent of a golf caddy. He's supposed to maintain the scuba equipment, look out for the diver's safety, make sure the catch doesn't freeze, and if time allows, cull the urchins. Something goes wrong, how he reacts can be critical." He paused. "That's why the profits get split down the middle."

Nimec raised an eyebrow. "I heard you mention a Dex when you were facing off with the deputy...."

"That's him," Ricci said.

"Didn't sound like your partnership's exactly rock solid."

Ricci shrugged.

"Maybe, maybe not," he said. "I'll get to that."

Megan watched him, warming her hands around her cup. "Is it always your job to bring the catch to market?"

He leaned back slightly in his chair.

"I'm getting around to that too," he said, and drank more coffee. "The urchins are found in colonies, usually in subtidal kelp beds. Once upon a time they practically carpeted the bottom of the Pen.o.bscot from the sh.o.r.eline on out, so you could scoop them up without dunking your head." He paused. "Past few years have been slim pickings. Overharvesting's driven the value of the catch up into the stratosphere, and made people so protective of their zones they're baring their teeth and beating their chests if you come anywhere close to them."

"These zones ... I presume they're demarcated by law."

Ricci nodded.

"There's a license that costs almost three hundred bucks, and with the conservation restrictions nowadays you have to wait your turn in a lottery to get one. When applying for it, you have to choose the area and season you want to dive in. Wardens inspect it very carefully. Tells them whether you're legal in black and white."

"Your trays were packed full," Nimec said. "Seems to me you're doing okay."

Ricci nodded again.

"Also seems to me that would get noticed fast during a period of decline in the overall yield. By other divers, buyers, and the warden if he's got his eyes open."

Ricci looked straight at him and nodded a third time. "You won't find a whole lot of guys who like going out as far, or down as deep as I do... especially not this time of year, when the water temperature can still drop near freezing and the currents are rough. But there are hundreds of tiny islets in the bay, a few of them within my diving area, and I hit on one that's got a deepwater cove where the urchin count's wild and wonderful."

Nimec looked thoughtful.

"Word got around," he said.

"Uh-huh," Ricci said. "When you're talking about a stake that's worth serious cash, and men who are having a hard time feeding their families, it's a volatile combination. There are resentments toward people from away that go back a long, long time and are maybe even a little justified. Back around the turn of the century, rich out-of-towners started buying up acres and acres of bay-front land around their summer mansions as privacy buffers against the fishermen and clam diggers they thought of as white trash. Stuck 'No Trespa.s.sing' signs up everywhere, restricting their access to the water that was their livelihood."

"Somebody twist the locals' arms to sell?" Megan said.

Ricci gave her a sharp look.

"Either you've never been poor, or you've forgotten what that can be like," he said brusquely. "Watch your kids starve through a Maine winter, and you won't need any other kind of arm-twisting."

She sat there in the brittle silence that followed, wondering if his reaction had made her feel guiltier about her remark than she should have.

"Dex and the warden cut some kind of deal?" Nimec said. The last thing he wanted was to get sidetracked.

Ricci turned his coffee cup in his hands, seeming to concentrate on the steam wisping up from it.

"Let's get back to whether it's usually me who drives the catch to market," he said at last. "I've been working with Dex for over a year and never went there without him before today. Guy likes wheeling and dealing, likes to get the wholesalers bidding. The whole thing from soup to nuts, you know?" He paused. "He also looks forward to having his cash in hand. But this morning he tells me something about needing to rush home to watch his kids after school. Said his wife had to work late and there was n.o.body else. The minute we pull the boat in, he's up and away."

"Happens when you're a parent," Nimec said, thinking he could have cited any number of comparable situations from when his own children were young and his wife was not yet his ex ex-wife.

Ricci shook his head.

"You don't know Dex," he said. "Ask him to recommend a local bar, he'll rattle off the names of two dozen watering holes from here to New Brunswick and tell you every kind of beer they have on tap. Ask him his kids' birthdays, he'd be stumped."

"So you think he arranged for you to be driving by yourself when you got stopped," Nimec said.

Ricci turned his coffee cup but said nothing.

Nimec sighed. "Was it the warden who pulled you over?"

"Yeah. Cobbs is one of those down-easters I told you about resents outsiders ... and just about everybody and everything else besides, but that's just his endearing personality. I move here from Boston, earn a decent buck, it's like I'm taking something away from him. Add that I'm a cop ... an ex-cop... and he gets even more bothered."

"He feels intimidated and threatened by you, and that translates into a sort of compet.i.tive hostility," Nimec said. "Common equation in places where they don't get much new blood. Especially when it's coming from the big city."

Ricci shrugged.

"There's all that, and with Cobbs it goes even further," he said. "He's a weasel and he's dirty. I'd heard stories about him from divers as well as lobstermen. Give him a skim of your profits, he'll let you operate without a license or outside your zone, even look the other way if you row out at night and raid somebody's lobster traps. Up until now, you didn't play along, he'd ha.s.sle you for the slightest infraction of the rules, but wouldn't actually squeeze anybody outright. The stunt he tried to pull on me takes him to a new level."

"Claiming he'd seen you dive outside your zone so he could confiscate your entire catch," Nimec said. "That it?"

Ricci snapped his pointer finger out at him and nodded.

"Like you said, times are rough," Nimec said. He exhaled, deciding to take another stab at a question Ricci had already angled past twice."I want to try this with you again... you think Dex and Cobbs have something going?"

Ricci stared at his cup, still turning and turning it in his hands. It was no longer steaming.

"Been trying to work that out in my own mind," he said in a hesitant tone. "Cobbs and his deputy dog were waiting for me on the road, and I doubt it's a coincidence that they knew exactly when I'd be driving out to the market, and what route I'd take. Also bothers me that the day they chose to pull me over happened to be the one and only day Dex wasn't around to keep me company."

"Wouldn't it have been better for him if he came along for the ride?" Nimec said. "To act surprised, I mean. The way it went down just makes him look suspicious."

Ricci moved his shoulders. "Dex is no genius. a.s.suming the worst about him, could be that he was only worried having to look me in the eye when I drove into their little setup. Or maybe he doesn't care what I suspect. Maybe with Cobbs he gets a better than even slice of the action, and all that matters to him is running me out of it."

"And out of town in the process," Nimec said.

Ricci nodded. "Like I said, a.s.suming the worst-case scenario. But right now that's all just for argument's sake."

They sat in silence for a while. Megan watched them, feeling strangely like an observer. She sensed the easy intersection of their thoughts, the unspoken communication of men who had done police work for much of their lives, and all at once thought she had an inkling why Nimec wanted Ricci for Max's position.

"Let's stick to Cobbs for the moment," Nimec said finally. "He's not going to just leave things as they are. You know his type. The way you embarra.s.sed him, he'll be twisting like a corkscrew until he can get back at you. And that's probably going to happen sooner than later. He'll lick his wounds, convince himself you got lucky today."

"I know," Ricci said.

"Being hooked into the sheriff's office, he'll think he can get away with whatever he wants. Your warning about getting in touch with outside agencies won't stop him. Far as he's concerned, they're a world away."

"I know."