This way, Ms. Shugak, Mrs. Podhoretz said. One of Mrs. Podhoretz‘s sensible shoes squeaked. She led Kate to the grand set of double doors, mahogany by the look of them. She knocked and said, Ms. Shugak, Mr. King, and stepped back to let Kate inside. The door closed behind her.

The man at the desk might have lost most of his hair but he hadn‘t changed much otherwise. He still had the same general build as a fireplug, his face was the same freckled square, he had the same baleful glare. The glasses had been updated, he‘d lost the aviator frames with the Coke-bottle lenses and replaced them with rimless. It made his eyes look bigger and his glare meaner.

Hey, John, Kate said.

He stood to shake her hand, a hard, dry, hot grip. Jack Morgan was a good man. I was sorry to hear he was gone.

Thank you.

He sat down again in his high-backed black leather chair. That was all she was going to get in the way of greeting or sympathy from John King, president and CEO of the Royal Petroleum Corporation, and that was fine with Kate.

You remodeled, she said, looking around the office. Nice.

What do you want, Shugak? he said, proving her point. I only agreed to see you because you said it was urgent and that it affected the company.

What‘s the price of a barrel of Prudhoe Bay crude lately, John?

The glare increased in wattage. Why the fuck do you care?

At their first meeting five years ago, when Jack had brought her to this same office so the president and CEO of RPetCo Alaska could look her over and decide if she was up to the job, she had learned that John King respected only those hardy souls who stood up to him. If he saw you flinch, cringe, or cry, he would bully you without mercy. Therefore Kate matched him attitude for attitude, saying in the same unyielding voice, How much?

Forty-two twenty-four, he said. Up two bucks from yesterday.

But down about fifty bucks from a year ago, she said.

Again with the increase in wattage. What of it?

Five years, Kate said, that‘s a long time as CEO.

What the fuck do you want, Shugak?

I made a few phone calls before I came here. There‘s an RPetCo shareholders meeting coming up, next month, isn‘t it? There are rumors that they‘re angry about the decrease in their dividend. There are more rumors that they‘re going to orchestrate a vote of no confidence in the corporation‘s officers.

You‘re awful goddamn knowledgeable about the oil bidness all of a sudden. No, she thought, I‘ve just recently acquired some experience in running a corporation. Big or small, the politics were bound to be much the same. So it follows that you‘d want to roll something out, some plan to increase RPetCo‘s share of potential resources, to convince the shareholders you‘re still on top of the game. I figure you‘ve probably already written that part of the speech, about how the recession‘s hurt us all and it‘s going to take a while to come back, and in the meantime RPetCo is making long-term plans to expand their presence in the resource industry.