Gordian glanced across the table at Ricci.
“And?”
“It’s him,” Ricci said. “No question.”
Gordian looked thoughtful.
“Got another thing in the works,” Thibodeau said into the momentary silence. “Might turn out to be important, gonna have to see.”
Gordian gave him his attention. “Let’s hear it,” he said.
“Wasn’t no small favor I used up with that friend of mine, but my whole nest egg,” Thibodeau said. “Besides wantin’ the picture, I asked to tap into Europol’s database of known terrorists. Took longer for him to swing that, but he say it could happen any day. I’m gonna run every at-large be a general match for Le Chaut Sauvage through that new Profiler system the techies been workin’ on, see if we get any hits.”
“The software’s designed to recognize suspects hiding behind full-face masks or disguises, even ones who’ve had plastic surgery, by comparing digital file images with each other and a checklist of hard-to-alter physical characteristics,” Nimec said. “When it started to look like the Europeans might open up for Rollie, Megan and I became mildly optimistic about getting some cooperation from domestic security agencies. We’ve been trying to convince them to let us input their intelligence tech.”
“Any luck?”
“CIA’s my albatross,” Nimec said. “I’m still being routed through channels.”
Gordian glanced at Megan. “What about the FBI? Have you gotten in touch with Bob Lang in D.C.?”
She nodded. “He’s sympathetic to my request, and I seem to be making headway.” A shrug. “We’ve arranged a face-to-face meeting for early next week.”
“Try to goose him along,” Gordian said. He jotted a notation on the yellow pad in front of him. “Meanwhile, I’ll place a call to Langley. We should stick to our game plan, at least as far as this aspect of the probe’s concerned—”
“That isn’t close to good enough.”
In retrospect, Nimec guessed Ricci’s interruption had surprised him less than the fact that he hadn’t spoken up much sooner. He’d been at constant odds with his colleagues over how the probe was being handled and had expressed his unhappiness to Nimec on a multitude of occasions.
Gordian turned toward Ricci, as had Nimec and everyone else in the room.
“What bothers you about it?” he asked in a level voice.
“I was asked to join this team because you wanted somebody to help retool it, make it more proactive, not tinker with the status quo,” Ricci said. “That was what I heard when I got the hiring pitch, anyway. And here we are talking about putting in phone calls to the Euros and feebs.”
Gordian regarded him steadily a moment.
“You believe we should be doing something different,” he said.
“A whole lot of somethings,” Ricci answered. “I think we need a special task force on the job twenty-four/ seven. I think it should have a separate command center with the capability to send rapid deployment teams after the people that hit us in Cuiabá and the Russian launch site. I think we have to be willing to dig them out from under rocks, pull them out of the trees, whatever it takes, wherever they’re laying low or being protected. They killed our people without provocation, and we’ve lost months that should have been spent running them down. We have to go on the offensive.”
Silence.
Gordian kept his eyes on him. He opened his mouth to speak, closed it. Rubbed his cheek.
“Well,” he said. “You certainly aren’t on the bubble about this.” He rubbed his cheek again. “I just wish you’d come to me with your feelings sooner.”
Ricci merely shrugged, but it was obvious to Nimec why he hadn’t. Whatever their disagreements, he and Ricci had been friends for many years. For Ricci to approach Gordian directly would have meant going over his head, and Ricci’s sense of personal loyalty would never permit that.
After a brief pause, Gordian looked around the table.
“Anybody like to comment?”
Thibodeau was quick to gesture that he did. Maybe too quick, Nimec would think in hindsight.
“We gotta be realistic,” he said, frowning. “Never mind the drain that kind of manhunt would put on our resources. Be hard enough gettin’ approval to patrol our ground facilities in foreign countries. By whose sanction we gonna have armed search teams operate across borders?”
“Our own,” Ricci said at once.
Thibodeau’s frown deepened.
“That might’ve washed when you was a city cop lookin’ to haul some gangbangers off the street, but not when you got to abide by international rules of law,” he said. “We can’t be goin’ anywhere we want, doin’ anythin’ we please.”
Ricci had fixed him with a sharp look.
“Like when you got yourself shot to bits playing Wyatt Earp in Brazil, that right?” he said.
The sudden tension in the room was palpable. Thibodeau stiffened in his chair, glaring at Ricci with open resentment and hostility.
“Knew plenty of tough guys in ‘Nam,” he said. His voice was trembling. “They either gave up their attitudes or choked on ’em.”
Ricci said nothing in response. He sat absolutely still, his face impassive, his eyes locked on Thibodeau’s.
Nimec hadn’t been sure what was going on between them but had felt deep down that it had little to do with their differences over the investigation. There had been scarcely a moment to think about that, however. He’d been afraid Thibodeau would lunge at Ricci and was watching him closely, preparing to haul them apart if that happened.
Fortunately, it never did, thanks to Gordian’s intervention. He had made a loud business of clearing his throat, breaking into the strained silence.
“I believe we should call it an afternoon, spend some time enjoying the fresh air,” he’d said in a deliberate tone.
Thibodeau had started to reply, but Gordian cut him short.
“Meeting adjourned,” he said, abruptly rising from his seat. “Let’s try to relax.”
And that had about finished it, or at least discouraged the hostilities from boiling over on the spot. And here Nimec stood topside two hours later, Ricci beside him at the rail, both men staring contemplatively into the blue distance.
What was Thibodeau’s problem, exactly? he thought. Why had Ricci provoked such blistering rancor from him, the Fish That Got Away notwithstanding? Pete had always known Thibodeau to be a grounded, fundamentally reasonable man, and it was hard to reconcile that with his mercurial outbursts. His mind once again insisted that the root cause of his behavior was as yet unspoken and unknown… which got him where insofar as being able to keep the show he and Megan had scripted from folding?
Nimec wasn’t quite certain — more or less standard for him lately, he supposed — but it had struck him that maybe part of the answer could be found in his recollection of another meeting, one that took place at UpLink’s corporate headquarters just over a half year earlier and ended on a note very unlike the crashing discord of today’s grand finale. It had been three, four days after Ricci had returned from his mission in Kazakhstan, something like that, and he’d joined Nimec, Megan, and Gordian to confer about the troublesome loose ends they’d been left to grapple with. At that point, their spirits had been anything but high, and it had been Ricci’s thoughts on the affair that had helped to bring them around.
Nimec glanced over at him now, remembering.
“Small steps, that’s how you count your gains,” he said quietly. “Those words sound familiar?”
Ricci didn’t move for several seconds. Then he turned toward him, the faintest hint of a smile on his face.