He sat very straight behind the wheel, his eyes on the road. “That won’t get you anywhere. It’s hard to put yourself in people’s shoes when such extreme circumstances are involved.”
She didn’t say anything. Outside, the repetitive sequence of gas stations and ramshackle shops had been interrupted as they came up on Lake St. George State Park, its wooded campgrounds extending up the rugged granite hillside on their left, the smooth gray opacity of the lake spreading out to the right. Wet and heavy with snowmelt, the carpet of fallen leaves along its near bank seemed lasting and immovable, wholly resistant to the wind’s attempts to sweep it apart.
“You obviously consider our appointment worth keeping,” she said finally. “Enough so you didn’t rush off to Florida.”
He shrugged. “The FAA and a half-dozen other federal agencies are already on-site, and that’s not counting NASA’s in-house people. Gord’s also pushing his agency contacts to let UpLink send in a group of its own technical personnel as observers. But a launchpad accident is altogether outside my area of expertise. At the Cape I’d just be in the way. Here I can get something accomplished. We—”
Nimec suddenly paused, clearing his throat. He had been about to say, We need to find a replacement for Max, and was grateful he’d caught himself before the words slipped out.
Before his recent death, Max Blackburn had been Nimec’s second in command in UpLink’s security division, a role that had evolved into his becoming the designated troubleshooter at their international facilities, particularly in hot spots where his covert skills sometimes became indispensable. But there was a high price to be paid for Max’s eagerness — even overeagerness — to put himself at personal risk. Max had not died peacefully in his sleep. Far from it, he had gotten killed long before his time, killed in a way Nimec still found difficult to accept or even think about. And in his efforts to avoid thinking about it today, he’d almost forgotten the rumors that Blackburn and Megan had been briefly involved in an intimate relationship.
Perhaps, then, the shuttle accident — terrible as it had been — wasn’t the only reason for her moodiness. No matter how delicately he tried to frame it, how convenient it was that neither of them had mentioned Blackburn’s name at any point on the way here, there was no hiding the fact that finding someone to take his place was the reason they had traveled to Maine. If Colonel Rowland’s shadow had been hanging over them since they’d left San Jose that morning, then so too had Max Blackburn’s.
“We need to shore up our end of things,” Nimec resumed, choosing his words with care. “Those new robot sentries we’re using at the Brazilian ISS plant are fine and dandy, but well-trained manpower’s the foundation of any security operation. We need to beef up our force strength and tighten the organizational structure there. And that really ought to go double for the Russians in Kazakhstan.” He paused. “I only wish Starinov wasn’t under parliamentary heat to keep us out of the loop. You’d expect our saving his skin a few years ago would help on that front, but it’s actually worked against us. Seems his government has made proving it can look out for itself a point of nationalistic pride. Typical paranoid Russkie thinking, you ask me. Give them another two centuries and they still won’t have gotten over Napoleon taking Moscow.”
“As if we’ll ever forget it was one of their politicians who ordered Times Square leveled at the turn of the millennium.”
“Not to be compared. Pedachenko was a rogue and a traitor to his own country. And last I heard, Napoleon wasn’t an American—”
Megan raised her hand. “Wait, Pete. We can get into all that later if you want. But there’s something you said a second ago… were you implying that you suspect the shuttle explosion wasn’t an accident?”
“No,” he said. “Nor do I see any cause to be suspicious. But I like to be ready.”
“And you honestly feel Tom Ricci’s the best person to get things in shape?”
Nimec paused again, no stranger to her skepticism in connection with Ricci.
“I appreciate your reservations and agree he’s a long shot,” he said. “But you ought to keep an open mind. At least meet the guy before ruling him out as a candidate for the job.”
She frowned. “Pete, I’m sure Ricci’s a good man, and if I wasn’t willing to give him a fair shake I wouldn’t be here. But if we’ve learned anything from Russia and Malaysia, it’s that UpLink’s global enterprises can put us smack in the middle of some incredibly volatile political situations. You and Vince Scull have both insisted we need to raise our security force to a higher level of performance so we can adequately respond next time we’re caught in the cross fire. I’m just agreeing with you, and proposing that someone with a less, shall we say, checkered background would be best qualified to implement the changes that have to be made.”
Nimec furrowed his brow. He’d heard her argument before, and certainly acknowledged that it had a degree of merit. But…
But what? Was he simply being mulish insisting that Ricci had what it took to help restructure a world-spanning organization that was, as Megan had suggested, increasingly coming to resemble the military in style and scope?
Surprised by his own doubts, Nimec gave the matter a rest and concentrated on his driving. The lake area behind him now, he made a left turn off Route 3 in the town of Belfast and got onto U.S.1 northbound, crossing the bridge that spanned the harbor inlet, then heading on along the coast. Here the roadside junk dealers were shuffled in with restaurants and summer resorts and had obvious upscale pretensions, their deliberately quaint shop fronts geared toward tourists rather than hardscrabble locals. Most had the word ANTIQUES hand-painted across their windows in ornate lettering. Many were closed for the winter. The motels, inns, and cottages were also battened down for the dregs of the season, their lawn signs wishing patrons a happy and joyful Christmas and inviting them back after Memorial Day.
They continued north on the coastal highway, talking very little for some miles, catching frequent glimpses of Penobscot Bay behind and between the tourist traps on the right side of the road — its shoreline extending in belts of jumbled stone and harsh wind-carved ledges, giving intimations of a primal wildness that seemed dormant rather than lost, capable of hostile reassertion. There was a constant sense of nearness to the sea, the sky swirling with gulls, the water refracting enough pale sunlight to lift some of the cloud cover’s gravid heaviness.
“It’s much different here from inland, isn’t it?” Megan said at length. “Still sort of forlorn, but, I don’t know…”
“Beautifully forlorn,” Nimec said.
“Something like that,” she said. “There’s a disconnection from the rest of the world that makes me understand why Ricci chose this place to hide out. If you’ll pardon my choice of words.”
“Nothing wrong with it,” Nimec said. “That’s exactly what he’s been doing for the last eighteen months.”