With each of them pursuing intelligence about the Brazilian situation through his own respective channels, Gordian's next order of business had been to contact Charles Dorset, the top executive at NASA. The call had had two purposes. The first was to inform Dorset of events at the ISS compound before news reached him from other, unpredictable sources whose accuracy might be questionable--the media being foremost on Gordian's mind. The second involved a slew of matters relevant to the Orion investigation, which Gordian was continuing to view as a separate affair for the present, although the close timing of the episodes in Florida and Brazil, and the fact that both would have damaging repercussions for the ISS program, made it impossible to avoid the possibility of some connection between them. While he was not about to jump to conclusions, he was also unwilling to push such thoughts aside. Distressful as they might be, the Machiavellian conspiracy to bring UpLink down the year before had been a costly and agonizing reminder that they were never to be ignored.

Thus, his final call of the morning had been made to Yuri Petrov, Dorset's counterpart at the Russian Space Agency, through a Sword translator, its purpose having been to keep him abreast of unfolding developments and strongly advise that security around the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan--and other RKS complexes in his directorate--be placed on heightened alert.

Right now, however, his phone had gone silent, giving him a chance to poke his head out of his study and sample the morning. Dorset had promised to get back to him within the next hour with word on an especially important issue, and Gordian had delayed heading out to the office until then, wanting to be certain he was absolutely free to take the call.

He looked over his plate, shifted around a forkful of eggs without raising it to his mouth, then decided to wait for Ashley's return before getting started on breakfast.

He sat back, noting that his daughter Julia had fared just slightly better than himself in working up an appetite. Across from him were the vestiges of her own half-eaten meal--a picked-apart blueberry muffin and a cold and mostly full cup of coffee. Tied up in knots, she'd rushed off for her first painful meeting with a divorce attorney just as he'd stepped into the sunlight, leaving her dishes where they were, and her grayhounds in his and Ashley's care. Actually, Gordian's exclusive care at the moment, since his wife had sprung up from the table and gone into the house to put a CD into the stereo, something that he could not for the life of him recall her doing in over twenty-five years of marriage, and which was particularly baffling because of the abruptness with which she'd abandoned him, her muffin, and her coffee to do it.