"Next question," she said. "If it was sabotage, do you have any idea who may be responsible?"

He thought a moment, then made a decision.

"I think we could very soon," he said. "Our outfit has a small satellite ground station in Pensacola. I'm getting flown there from Orlando by a corporate jet at four o'clock this afternoon. We're conducting an operation you may want to observe."

She chewed her lower lip contemplatively, holding the coffee cup, steam floating up in front of her face.

"I need to get home to the kids."

"It's a short trip," he said. "I'll arrange for the plane to take you back soon as we're finished."

Silence.

Annie took another drink from her cup, then lowered it onto the saucer.

"Count me in," she said.

NINETEEN - VARIOUS LOCALES APRIL 23/24, 2001

NINETEEN

VARIOUS LOCALES APRIL 23/24, 2001

IT WAS 2:00 P.M. PACIFIC DAYLIGHT TIME, APRIL twenty-third, in San Jose, California.

It was 5:00 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time in Pensacola, Florida.

It was 6:00 P.M. Brazilian Daylight Time in the central Pantanal.

It was 3:00 A.M. the following day, April twenty-fourth, in Kazakhstan.

The variations in dates and time zones made no difference to UpLink International's Hawkeye-I and -II hyperspectral high-resolution imaging satellites, nor to the relaying and data-processing equipment used to establish a real-time downlink to receiving stations in each locale--these only being machines, as Rollie Thibodeau readily pointed out to Megan Breen from behind a notebook computer on his hospital tray.

To the people involved in this synchronized monitoring operation, on the other hand, the whole process of coordination was a howling, troublesome bitch.

As Rollie was also free and quick to note.

Tom Ricci rubbed his eyes. Had it really been less than seventy-two hours since he'd left Maine, its deepwater urchin beds, and the reclusive life he had cultivated for over two years behind? Something like that, he guessed. So much mental and physical distance had been covered between then and now, it was hard to keep track. There had been the flight to San Jose, his meeting with Roger Gordian, the formal offer from Gordian to join UpLink in what had to his surprise become a position--its official title being Global Field Supervisor, Security Operations--that he would hold jointly with a guy named Rollie Thibodeau, who, if memory served, was the other candidate for the job mentioned to him by the high-and-mighty Megan Breen back in Stonington. There had been his acceptance of the offer despite reservations about working in partnership with Thibodeau, someone he'd never met, someone very much liked and preferred by Breen, a woman toward whom Ricci had taken an automatic dislike, which impression had seemed in his eyes to be a two-way street filled with bumps, potholes, and inevitable collisions. Only Ricci's fidelity to the commitment he'd given Pete Nimec had overcome his second thoughts about agreeing to the modified proposition in Gordian's office.