“I want to thank all of you for coming in virtually without advance notice,” he said. “I don’t know how many of you lost friends or loved ones in Times Square last night. For those who might have, my profound condolences.” He paused and turned his gaze toward Megan. “Have you gotten any word from your brother and sister-in-law?”

A trim brunette in her late thirties, Megan looked at him with alert, sapphire-blue eyes.

“Not yet,” she said, “but that isn’t any reason to assume they were hurt. The long-distance phone lines to and from New York are choked.”

Megan’s unworried tone didn’t fool Gordian. He had once—long ago—made the mistake of thinking she was just another starched and stuffy executive clone cranked out by the Harvard Business School—in her case, one with an added sheepskin in psychology from Columbia. An executive clone who was apt to play mind games, then. That had been pure bias, a last prickly vestige of the blue-collar resentments that were the bulk of his familial inheritance. It had taken him years to discard his unfair, limiting preconceptions about those with upper-class backgrounds. Dan Parker had been the first to make him see things differently. Meg had taken him the rest of the way down the road.

In a sense, though, those stereotypical notions had worked in Meg’s favor when he’d originally employed her as a human resource executive/headhunter for the R&D divisions. He’d wanted someone who could make hiring and firing decisions in a detached, intelligent manner, and that she had done. But he’d also gotten an inspired thinker, and a trusted confidant, in the bargain. And that was something he hadn’t expected of her.

“Pete, you have people out east. You think they can do anything to help Megan find out about her relatives?” he said.

Nimec tipped his narrow jaw downward slightly, his tightly wound version of a nod.

“I’m sure they can,” he said.

“Good.” Gordian was quiet a second, his eyes moving around the table again. “I think we’d better do some talking about what happened last night. Ask ourselves why in God’s name anybody would want to do something like that. And who would be capable of it.”

“Turn on the tube, and you’ll hear the talking heads blathering about domestic terrorism,” Nimec said. “Present company excepted, Alex.”

Nordstrum was looking down at his eyeglasses, wiping their lenses with a cleaning cloth he’d pulled from a pocket of his herringbone blazer.

“I’m a part-time consultant for CNN and several other news-gathering agencies. They pay well and give me an opportunity to air my views. Not all, uh, talking heads warrant immediate disregard.”

Scull’s voice came from the video setup. “Watch your ass, Nimec.”