They breamed invisible clouds of aerosol and never attributed the slight tickle in the nose or scratchiness at the back of the throat to anything more harmful than stirred up sidewalk grit. They scattered the microscopic particles with their shoe bottoms, ferried them on men* skin and clothing, and sent them out along countless routesof transmission with the money they exchanged and laUes. ,
.OR
jgljffefaeijype of porth on Rosita > that was the famed s pf UpLink International, far ffs largest corporate employer, the street sweeper kept moving in
When Roger Gordian’s daughter telephoned him on her way home from the courthouse, he didn’t know what to say. No matter that the proceeding’s outcome had been
12
BIO-STRIKE
i foregone conclusion or that he’d had months to prepare the news. No matter mat he was used to talking to business leaders and heads of state from everywhere on rcarth, often under hot-button circumstances that required ipiick thinking and verbal agility. Julia was his daughter, arid he didn’t know what to say, in part because almost everything he had said to her these past few months had ypfoven to be exactly the wrong thing, leading to more than one inexplicable skirmish between them. Gordian fed found himself having to consciously resist feeling like the parent of an adolescent again, prepared for every word he spoke to come back at him and explode in his lace. That would have been thoughtless, unfair, and corrosive to their relationship. Julia was a remarkably competent thirty-three-year-old woman who’d led her own life for many years, and she deserved better man stale, fatherly programming from him… difficult as that sometimes was.
“It’s over, nay divorce is final,” she had told him over her cellular. “The paperwork’s signed, and I should be getting copies in a couple of weeks.”
That was four long seconds ago.
Five, now.
His stomach clutched.
He didn’t know what to say to her.
Six seconds and counting.
His watch ticked into the silence of his office.
Gordian was not by disposition an introspective man. He saw his mind and feelings as fairly uncomplicated. He loved his wife and two daughters, and he loved his work. The work less. Though for some years it had consumed a greater share of his time than it should have, and the family had felt bumped to the sidelines. His
13
Tom Clancy’s Power Plays
wife, in particular. He hadn’t realized, then, how much. At first there was so much to be done, a decade of struggle building his electronics firm up from the ground. The importance of being an earner, a provider, had been fostered in him early in life. His father had died before the term quality time was coined, but it was doubtful Thomas Gordian would have been able to grasp the concept in any event. He’d been too busy adding thick layers of callus to his fingers at the industrial machine plant where he had pulled a modest but steady wage from the day he’d turned sixteen and quit high school to help support his depression-stricken family. For the elder Gordian, bringing home a paycheck was how you expressed your love of family, and that dogged blue-collar sensibility had taken deep root in his only son, enduring long after he’d returned from Vietnam , with thjc help of loan officers and a handful of far1 a limping, debt-ridden San : TiBChnoJogies for the giveaway
into a
m
tremendously suc- One after anorner, the in, and Gordian had worked ever to keep them coming. He had used the >gical windfall from his development of GAPS-
FREE advanced military reconnaissance and targeting equipment to propel his firm to the leading edge of civilian satellite communications, and rechristened it UpLink International.
He had earned. He had provided for his loved ones. He had made more money than he would ever need.
14
BIO-STRIKE
And so he’d gone ahead and found a new reason to
Ikeep working.
œ By die time his corporation went multinational-and Fortune 500-in 1990, Gordian’s thoughts had slung
tottward to pursue what his wife usually referred to as The Dream, based upon an idea as straightforward as his personality: Information equaled freedom. No lightning bolt of originality mere, perhaps, but his real inspiration had been in how he’d set out to draw concrete results frfl” the abstract. As head of the world’s most extensive civilian telecommunications network, he’d been in a position to bring people access to information, a currency with which he could buy better lives for untold millions, particularly where totalitarian regimes sustained themselves by doing the very opposite-choking off the gateways of communication, isolating their citizens from knowledge that might challenge their strangleholds of oppression. History had shown that radical government change nearly always followed quieter revolutions in social consciousness, and the old axiom that democracy was contagious seemed no less true for all the times it had been used as a political cheer line.
Again, Gordian’s triumphs went far beyond his expectations -but, ironically, the signals Ashley was sending from home about her own unhappiness weren’t getting through the bottleneck of humanitarian goals he’d continued to pursue. Not till she’d compelled his attention with words he would remember for the rest of his days.
“/ know that everything you’ve accomplished in the world makes a huge difference to people everywhere. I
| know it’s your calling, something you have to do. What
15
Tom Clancy’s Power Plays
/ don’t know is if I’m strong enough to wait until you’re done.”
Her words, those shattering, unforgettable words, had forced him to look into a deep mirror and see things about himself that were difficult to accept Far more importantly, they also saved his marriage.
He had been luckier man he’d even realized at die time.
“Dad, you still with me? I’m on the highway ramp and it’s pretty noisy-”
“Right here, hon.” Gordian tried to pull his thoughts together. “I’m just glad the worst of the ordeal’s behind you and mat you can get on with your life.”
“Amen.” She produced a sharp laugh. “You know what happened when we were leaving court? After evcrydung we’ve been through, all the legal sniping, all the i^finecs, he asked roe to have lunch with him. At ^'”^^’^pbce downtown we used to go to some-
id abruptly into silence.
his hand tight around the receiver.
dess-^had startled him.
of glass suddenly crack
said, “we were supposed to as born again singles over wine and
i heard the creak of his office chair as he [position. He, common noun, had once been referred to by name: Craig. Her husband of seven years. K was still unclear what had pulled them apart The divorce petition Craig had filed cited irreconcilable differ- no elaboration. Over the months she’d been
1”
BIO-STRIKE
1
tying with her parents, Julia had occasionally talked it their long separations because of his career, about loneliness when he was away on the job. He was a tural engineer, freelance, though most of his recent |assignments had been for die big oil companies. His spe- niche was the design of fixed offshore drilling and he’d often spent many weeks onsite, :ing construction. One month it was Alaska, the j next Belize. His absences surely contributed to their problems, but Gordian suspected there had to be more. If Julia was the one feeling neglected, why was it Craig who’d wanted out? Gordian hadn’t pushed for answers, however, and Julia had offered very few on her own to either him or Ashtey. She had claimed mere was no Infidelity, and they were trying to take her at her word. Bat why had she been so guarded with them? Were the reasons too painful to share? Or mighœ Julia herself still be in the dark? . .’-^ , . , Gordian shifted in the chair again. “What did you tell
“Nothing. I was too incredulous,” she said, “But wait, ft gets better. While I was staring at him, really dumbstruck, he leaned over and tried to kiss me. On the lips. I turned my head soon as I realized what he was doing, or trying to do, and it landed on my cheek. I had to stop myself from wiping it off. Like a kid who gets a wet from some ancient aunt or uncle she hardly knows.” ^ “And then?” i “And then he backed off, wished me luck, and we went our separate ways. God, it was just so awkward
squirmy.”
Gordian shook his head. “An overture toward putting the bad feelings to rest,”
17
Tom Clancy’s Power Plays
be said. “Ill-advised, inappropriate, and without any grasp of how you’d be affected. But I suppose that was his intent”
“He wanted die greyhounds as pact of the settlement, Dad. If I hadn’t been the one to sign that contract at the adoption center instead of him, giving me ownership in black and white, he’d have taken Jack and Jill away from me. There’s an overture I won’t forget”