Yet for him the best of the gadget’s features was its Annie-Meter.
As he called it.
Nimec had set it shortly after leaving Houston for San Jose earlier that week. To be more precise, Nimec had set it fifteen minutes after Annie dropped him off at the airport, where she’d sent him on his way with a deep, sweet, shamelessly immodest kiss through her car’s open passenger door as he’d leaned in across the front seat from the curb… a kiss whose taste had lingered all the while it took Nimec to reluctantly pull himself and his carry-on bag from her car, turn through the terminal entrance, obtain his boarding pass from the clerk at the departure gate, and finally sit himself down in the passenger waiting area to fool with the watch’s push-button menu controls.
The Annie-Meter, so-called, looked to unknowing eyes like an electronic calendar. What you did with it exclusively, if your name happened to be Pete Nimec, was first scroll to the box around the date you left Annie, whenever you left Annie, and record the exact, official NIST time you made your generally romantic farewells. Then you went to the screen that allowed you to specify the expected duration of your time apart from her and entered that information, inserting a little check mark beside the ALARM option — which, thanks to shareware Annie’s son had downloaded from the Internet overriding the WristLink’s preprogrammed selection of beeps and musical tones, would sound a bleeping rendition of the Temptations’ “My Girl” on the day you were scheduled to see Annie again. Next up, assuming once more that you were Pete Nimec, was to open another dialogue box and checkmark the COUNTDOWN option enabling you to monitor, with a quick and convenient glance, the exact, official NIST number of days, hours, minutes, and seconds that were left until you got to hear that blessed melody. Finally you made absolutely sure both your farewell and return-to-Annie dates were highlighted in valentine red on the calendar, push-buttoned your way back to the device’s normal watch face, and that was that.
Nimec had last consulted the Annie-Meter riding the elevator down from his guest suite in UpLink’s reserved upper-story block, and noted he was twenty-three days, one hour, and an odd bundle of minutes from reuniting with his honey bun. Meaning that by the conclusion of the obligatory dinner reception, possibly sooner if it didn’t drag on too long, the number of days would be reduced to twenty-two and change. That was, he acknowledged, parsing things a tad. But as Tom Ricci had advised back when Nimec was entirely confident Ricci had his head on straight, you had to count your gains in small steps.
He entered the atrium now, joining the twenty-five or so attendees who’d gotten there ahead of him. All but one were men in suits, and half of those were UpLink corporate officials and high-level technical consultants focal to the fiber ring deal. The sole woman present was Tara Cullen, the project’s network operations manager… and a sleek, standout blond, as the thick cluster of smiling African delegates around her had clearly noticed. Nimec saw three or four members of his twelve-man security team interspersed throughout the crowd, lapel pins on their jackets — the triangular pins’ engraved and laminated design showing a broadsword surrounded by stylized satcom bandwidth lines.
Everyone from UpLink looked about as zonked as Nimec felt. He had wanted representatives from his Sword contingent at the gathering as a gesture of courtesy, but because they weren’t part of the business delegation had seen no reason to trot out the entire bunch. He’d thus asked for only a handful of volunteers, having allowed those who preferred to skip the festivities do so after their long, taxing haul from California. Starting tomorrow his group would have its work cut out conducting surveys of UpLink’s new onshore and offshore facilities and laying the groundwork for site policies, procedures, and equipment. Let them relax while they could.
Aside from a fleet of black-tuxed, white-gloved servers weaving about the room with trays of hors d’oeuvres and cocktails, the rest of the people Nimec scoped from the entryway belonged to the Gabonese welcoming committee: politicians and administrative appointees led by Etienne Begela, who Nimec’s well-studied contact brief tagged as bureaucratic head of the telecom regulatory agency in Port-Gentil.
Now Begela looked over at Nimec, excused himself from a group of UpLink executives he’d engaged, and approached with his arm outstretched.
Nimec went forward to meet him. The atrium was awash with sunlight even though it was almost seven in the evening. It gleamed off the silver trays and table settings and spilled through the glass-paneled ceiling onto exotic blossoming floor plants, which Nimec didn’t recognize in the least and which seemed almost too outlandishly tall and lush to be genuine.
“Monsieur Nimec, hello, it is a pleasure.” Begela pumped his hand, offered a huge white-toothed smile, and introduced himself in French-accented English. Nimec wondered briefly how the minister had identified him right off, then guessed one of the execs had pointed him out. Either that or Begela had been pretty good about reviewing his own background files. “I hope you are finding your accommodations satisfactory after such a lengthy trip, and would like you to know I’ve personally selected those hotel staffers who will be attending to your party throughout its stay.”
“I appreciate that,” Nimec said. “Everything’s great.”
And the hotel was very nice — elegant, in fact, Nimec mused. Though even a jungle hut and straw cot would have been agreeable to him after his latest marathon global traverse. This one ranked way ahead of SanJo- Malaysia on the all-time fatigue scale, and seemed a close runner up to SanJo-Antarctica. How many hours had it spanned? A glance at his superwatch would of course tell him to the exact, official NIST atomic minute, but Nimec had the sense that knowing the answer to that question would make him feel even more wiped out than he currently did. There had been the United Airlines charter out of San Jose airport — well, playing the name game again, Norman Y. Mineta San Jose International Airport, as the city council had rechristened it a couple of years back in honor of the former mayor — at six thirty in the morning the previous day. That had taken his group to their connection at O’Hare in Chicago, where they had boarded a UA international flight to Paris de Gaulle after a five-hour layover. Arriving in the glorious City of Light around seven the next morning after a full day of travel, they’d barely had a chance to toss back some Mc-Donald’s coffee and hit the terminal restrooms — which had been the high point of that little interlude, and no more glorious than visits to salles de bains the world over — before hustling aboard an Air France A340 for another seven hours in the wild blue yonder, and finally touching down at Leon M’ba Airport in Libreville at around five in the evening. From the nation’s capital they’d flopped onto a waiting Air Gabon Fokker 28 that had shuttled them to Port-Gentil, where they’d hustled into their rooms, and, each in his or her own dog-tired way, prepared for the banquet.
“When you’ve rested up, we shall have to familiarize you with our city,” Etienne Begela was saying now. “You’ll find it delightfully captivating, I’m sure. I’ll show you our government offices tomorrow, and can recommend places to shop, dine, even enjoy some sightseeing if the desire strikes. And I have people ready to assist your group in whatever other ways may be needed.”