“Business isn’t what it was last time I came down to see you,” Ricci said.

“Wasn’t much, even then,” Glenn said. “Notch another win for the civil boosters.”

“You sound mad,” Ricci said.

Glenn tipped the neck of his beer bottle toward Ricci.

“Sounds like, huh?” he said with a faint smile. “Now I see how you earned your reputation for being an astute son of a bitch.”

Ricci watched him take a long pull of the stout. A tall, large-framed black man in his thirties, Glenn headed the bantam security crew at UpLink’s regional offices, established in a single renovated warehouse on the Embarcadero waterfront mainly to handle administrative overflow from its Sacramento data-storage facility.

“No reason you have to stay where you are,” Ricci said. “I could hook you up at SanJo. A command gig, worth a big pay hike. The rapid deployment team program needs somebody to pull it back together.”

A surprised look formed on Glenn’s face.

“I thought that was your baby,” he said.

“Had to put it down when I went into the field.”

“So I heard. But now you’re back, and I kind of figured you’d be picking it up again.”

Ricci shook his head.

“Decided I work better alone,” he said.

“Uh-huh.” Glenn looked at him. “It’s probably none of my business, but what’ve you been doing instead?”

Ricci shrugged.

“Catching up,” he said.

“Uh-huh.”

“Security rundowns.”

“Uh-huh.”

Ricci hesitated. He reached for his glass, rattled the ice cubes inside, but didn’t drink from it.

“And waiting,” he said. “Mostly waiting.”

“You mind me asking what for?”

“No,” Ricci said. “Just not sure I can answer.”

Glenn started to say something, appeared to reconsider, and sat listening to the music on the jukebox, a mid-tempo jazz instrumental carried along by a husky tenor sax.

“I’ve been hearing all kinds of news about Africa,” he said at length. “The hit on that supply convoy, other things besides. What the hell’s going down?”

Ricci rattled his ice cubes some more.

“Maybe it ought to be you telling me,” he said. “Since you hear so much.”

Glenn smiled thinly again. He waited.

“Truth is, I don’t know,” Ricci said. “I haven’t got all the facts yet. A lot of odd stuff’s happening over there. All kinds of questions floating around. But it’s only been a couple days, and so far nobody’s connected anything to anything else. They’re not even clear about what the attack was supposed to accomplish.”

Glenn exhaled, cigarette smoke streaming from his nose and mouth.

“I guess this makes the extravaganza aboard the oil platform a scratch,” he said.

Ricci shook his head.

“Gordian needs to get the Sedco deal done,” he said.

“How can they work out a security plan, decide what protective measures to take, when they don’t have any idea what to expect? Seems crazy to go ahead with it until they do.”