Five minutes later Lenny had almost gotten through his struggle to explain what was weighing on him.
“I wandered around half of Manhattan yesterday telling myself I had no right asking for Sword to meddle in something that’s happened to a guy who isn’t one of our employees,” he said, seemingly out of breath. “That I had to let it go. Hell, I don’t even know Sullivan well enough to get his daughter’s name straight. Thought she was in first or second grade till his wife mentions she’s away at college. But then… Boss, you remember the old TV show, This Is Your Life? Since Mary Sullivan came into my office, it feels like my brain’s been taken over by the spirit of the host… what was his name…?”
“Ralph Edwards.”
“Right, him, and he’s been walking my past out in front of me. And I’ve got to admit, the one memory that keeps coming out from behind the curtain… well, you know the day we met… the night, that is… it was right here in New York. Times Square…”
“How could I forget, Len?” Gordian said. “You were, ah, quite the character. Decent salesman, too.”
“I was a screwed-up mess with an attitude, a minimum-wage job in a record shop, and a little knowledge of jazz,” Lenny said. “ ‘You want to bop, there’s Ornithology.’ Remember?”
A reflective smile touched Gordian’s lips.
“ ‘I’ll do it with Dizzy if you’ll give me Anthropology,’ ” he said. “I remember, Len.”
“Never can tell where you’ll find one of life’s little shoehorns.”
Gordian considered that one, smiled.
“The crossroads of the world would seem just the right place.”
“Yeah,” Lenny said. “I suppose it would.”
Gordian waited in silence.
“Boss, I don’t want to sound sappy,” Lenny said after a moment. “But the reason I called… I know you trust the people at Sword to decide where and where not to stick our noses. I know Noriko Cousins had solid reasons for taking a pass in this situation, and I don’t like making an end run around her. But twenty years ago you turned me around for no good reason I could figure, and probably none I deserved. You took a chance on me. And I think what I’ve carried away from it is that there are times when you’ve got to reach out just for the sake of helping. Or when something inside a person reaches out to something that’s inside you, and you know it’s only right to help. That if you don’t, you’re dropping the ball.”
Gordian thought in silence some more. It had been six months since he’d turned the daily responsibilities of running UpLink over to Megan Breen, which meant he probably wasn’t up to snuff on the doings of the Kiran Group or its parent company, Armbright Industries. But however unsaintly it might be, one of Sword’s regular, necessary functions was to compile and evaluate competitive intelligence on other tech firms… in blunter terms, shadow UpLink’s market rivals. Gordian was sure he did not need to remind Lenny of this, and wouldn’t have discussed it over the telephone anyway. CI was a vital, accepted part of business that every major corporation conducted, guarded against, and artfully pretended to know nothing about. The ethical and legal issues associated with it primarily arose when using information for strategic advantage crossed over to intellectual theft or sabotage, boundaries Gordian had always made sure weren’t overstepped.
So here came Lenny wanting Noriko Cousins — and now Gordian himself — to have Sword look into the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of a Kiran employee. Or poke around in a missing-husband case, however you chose to frame it. Either way, the first question that request had provoked in Gordian’s head was whether it violated any of his basic tenets for CI activity. And while he’d concluded it might not be a typical recon, it still fell more or less into his definition of what went with the program. Which left Gordian to decide if Lenny’s appeal warranted an allocation of corporate resources… either because he felt it was in UpLink’s best interests, or because he was ready to yield to it out of friendship.
Gordian remained thoughtful, watching Ash continue to shift around the stones she’d gathered inside the wheelbarrow. He wondered in a vague sort of way what was wrong with how they’d been stacked in the first place, then realized all at once that she was only fussing with them to give him a chance to talk on the phone. At about the same instant it struck him how much he wanted to get back to her. Then it occurred to him how much he also liked having to make a determination of some significance that concerned UpLink.
He turned his mind back in the direction of Lenny’s request, focusing in on his core justification for wanting Sword involved. What exactly was the point he was making?
That it’s the decent thing to do. Pure and simple. When you boil it right down, he hasn’t tried to convince me there’s any benefit in it for UpLink, or sell me on any other reason besides.
Gordian thought for another minute, feeling the warm sunlight press against his face. Then he nodded to himself and pushed off the outcrop.
“Let me get back to you in a day or two, Len,” he said. “I’ll make a few calls and start that ball of yours rolling in the meantime.”
Pete Nimec opened his medicine cabinet, looked inside, frowned, shut it, studied his bristled cheeks in its mirrored door, sighed, bent to open the cabinet under the bathroom sink, reached in, foraged through it a minute, frowned, shut it, stood to examine his weekend scruff of beard again, sighed, and then reopened the medicine cabinet for his fourth sure-to-be-futile inspection of its variously sized compartments.
Nimec hated having to rush around, and never more than on Monday mornings. Especially when his rushing seemed to lead nowhere.
The knock on his bathroom door came just as his lips started to take yet another stymied downturn.
He tightened the belt on his robe.
“C’mon in.”
A moment later Christopher Caulfield stood looking at him from the doorway. A month from his twelfth birthday, all four feet and change of him combed, scrubbed, and dressed, he was eminently ready for school.
Nimec noticed the kid’s bright expression, then saw the cell phone in his outstretched hand.
“Hey,” he said, his latest frown interrupted in progress. “Where’d you dig that up?”
Chris continued to beam.
“You know mom’s old wooden box, or whatever it is, with the drawers?”
“The one near the front door.”
“Nope, her other one,” Chris said. “On that sort of table thing outside the living room.”
“Aaah,” Nimec said. “I owe you, skipper.”
“Like enough for a half hour up in the dojo later?”
“Like you finish your homework soon’s you come home and we make it an hour.” Nimec gave his shoulder a squeeze. “Linda getting anywhere with my clean dress shirts?”
“She found a white shirt that only stinks a little in the other bathroom.”
“Won’t do.”
“That’s what I told her.” Chris looked at him. “No razor blades yet, huh?”
Nimec scratched the stubble under his chin with deepening self-consciousness.
“No,” he said. “I must’ve looked everywhere.”
Chris motioned toward the sink cabinet. “Down there, too?”
“Everywhere.”
“Bad news.”
“I know.”
“We’re gonna be late, Pete.”