SUSSEX COUNTY, NJ

OCTOBER 7

"All I can say," Mercer Sinclair shouted, "is that there'd better not be any connection to SimGen! If I find out anyone here had anything to do with this, heads will roll, and I don't care whose body is attached!"

Luca Portero watched Sinclair-1 - his pet name for SimGen's CEO - pace back and forth in his two- toned CEO office before his panoramic CEO window. If this display was being staged to intimidate Luca or the two other men who made up the rest of the CEO's captive audience, it was failing. Miserably.

Luca glanced around. Abel Voss had his wide butt crammed into an armchair and looked as if he was listening to a weather report, and not a terribly bad one. Sinclair-2, Ellis, the useless Sinclair, was slumped on the sofa and staring out at the clear morning sky. As for Luca himself, he stood. He preferred to stay on his feet during these gatherings.

Sinclair-1 paused, so Luca used the break to offer something useful.

"I spoke to the Westchester County Sheriff this morning. They caught the guys - two of them. Didn't take much: They were drunk and had wrapped themselves around a utility pole getting away. Had an unused Molotov and a can of gas in their back seat."

Sinclair-1 pointed at Luca. "Who hired them? You?"

Luca only stared at him.

"I asked you a question," Sinclair-1 said. "And I'd better like the answer. Because if I don't..."

He let it hang, but Luca didn't believe in letting things hang. "You'll...what?"

Sinclair-1 might be CEO, but Luca wasn't going to allow anyone he didn't take orders from to threaten him. And he took orders from no one in this room.

Voss jumped into the tense silence. "I think we can be sure our friend Luca here had nothing to do with any attack on Mr. Sullivan."

"Can we?" Sinclair-1 said, glaring at Luca. "I've witnessed your problem-solving methods in the past, Portero, and this incident, I might say, fits right in with your M.O."

"We've all seen how he solves problems," Voss said. "And that's just my point. If we consider one salient fact here, I think we can be certain Mr. Portero did not try to incinerate Mr. Sullivan."

"And what would that fact be?"

"Mr. Sullivan is still alive."

Luca fought a smile as Voss winked at him. He disliked the legal profession as a whole and found fat people repulsive, but this lard-bellied shyster was all right.

Sinclair-1 considered Voss's words, then turned back to Luca and nodded. "I apologize."

Luca went on as if nothing had happened. "The men were a couple of Teamsters who as much as confessed, making statements to the effect that no way were they calling 'a bunch of fucking monkeys our union brothers.' As far as anyone can tell, they were acting on their own."

"Thank God they failed!" Voss cried.

Sinclair-1 nodded. "Damn right. Bad enough Boughton denies the declaratory judgment. All we need now is some asshole making a martyr out of Patrick Sullivan." He turned to Voss. "Which brings me to another point: Didn't you sit in that very same chair and tell me Boughton would be on our side? 'Our kinda guy,' was the way you described him. Someone who'd 'toss this case in two seconds flat.' Wasn't that how you put it?"

"I believe I did," Voss replied, looking uncomfortable. "But you see - "

"What I see is that he did just the opposite. What the hell happened? Did he have some kind of mini- stroke? What is hethinking ?"

"If you ask me, and you just did, I believe that ol boy's hearin the magic word that rings a bell in every judicial head:precedent ."

Sinclair-1 stopped pacing and did a slow turn toward Voss. "Precedent? You don't mean - ?"

"I do," Voss said. "Oh yes I surely do. Every judge dreams of having his name attached to a precedent- setting decision. This could be a big one. Might upgrade the legal status of sims to 'persons.' To that end any judge might be inclined to allow Mr. Sullivan more latitude than he'd ever normally tolerate."

Sinclair-1 lowered himself into the high-backed chair behind his shiny black desk. "Upgrade to...

persons," he said, sounding as if he was running out of air.

Luca suddenly felt a little tense himself. He was about to speak when another voice interrupted him.

"Yes, Merce.Upgrade  - as in closer to human."

The sound of Ellis Sinclair's voice startled Luca. Sinclair-2 rarely opened his mouth at these meetings. He turned to see the older brother's eyes blazing as he straightened from his perpetual slump, rising from dazed and listless to tight and focused. Luca couldn't remember the last time he had seen him like this, if ever.

Sinclair-1 glared at his brother. "If you can't add anything constructive, Ellis - "

"Upgraded close enough to human so that they can no longer be classed asproduct , asproperty . Think about that, Merce."

Luca was doing some thinking, and he knew that could mean the end not just of SimGen, but of so much more. A catastrophe. Yet Sinclair-2 seemed to relish the possibility.

"Now, now," Voss said. "I wouldn't worry about it too much. Nothin like that'll ever get past our appeal."

Sinclair-1 wheeled on him. "You said it would never get past Boughton!" he shouted. "What if the appellate court has visions of precedents dancing in its head too?"

"Feeling a little tense, Merce?" said the older brother. "Sims in court...an OPRR inspection team ranging across the campus." He waggled his finger in the air. "Mene mene tekel upharsin."

Luca stared at Sinclair-2. First he acts like he wants his own company ruined, now he's talking gibberish. What a loser.

But a glance at the CEO's enraged expression told Luca that maybe it wasn't gibberish. Voss too looked uncomfortable. Must have meantsomething . What language? Luca wanted like crazy to know what the hell Sinclair-2's jabber meant but couldn't reveal his ignorance. The words had a familiar ring, like echoes from somewhere in his childhood, but they remained tantalizingly out of reach.

Nobody was moving. Reminded Luca of one of those freeze-frame endings in a movie. Then Voss glanced at him. He must have sensed Luca's confusion.

"It's a Biblical prophecy, Mr. Portero. The legendary handwritin on the wall. Means you've been counted and weighed and found want in, and so God's gonna divide up your kingdom and hand over the pieces to your enemies."

"I knew that," Luca said, feeling his face redden. He remembered it now, from the Catholic school his mother had forced him to go to.

"Forget that nonsense," Sinclair-1 snapped. "We've got to take Sullivan out of the picture."

Nowyou're talking, Luca thought. "I'll talk to my people," he said. "If they clear it..."

Sinclair-1 shot him a hard look. "I'm not talking about your methods. We'll take him out without laying a finger on him." To Voss: "He's an attorney. Find out who his clients are. He works both sides of the labor fence, so let's see what unions and companies use him."

Voss was nodding and grinning. "I see which way this breeze is blowin."

"But let's not stop there. What's the name of his firm?"

"Payes and Hecht."

"Good. Make a list of their biggest clients. When you've put all that together, we'll sit down and see what arms we can twist, what favors we can call in."

"Right. We'll have his firm give that boy a choice: Drop the sims or we drop you."

Sinclair-1's smile was tight. "When we're finished with Mr. Patrick Sullivan, he'll wish to God he'd never laid eyes on a sim." He turned back to Luca. "That leaves OPRR. What's the status there?"

"Under control." Luca glanced at his watch. "I should be checking back with my office now."

Actually, his security force didn't need him. The OPRR team was being expertly corralled, and would see only what they were supposed to see. But he'd had enough of this meeting. And the knowledge that the luscious Cadman woman was somewhere on the campus burned like a flame inside him. Something about her had reached a deep, usually well-insulated part of him. He wanted another look at her, wanted to be in the same room, breathe the same air, catch her scent, brush against her...

"Maybe you should be checking a little closer," Sinclair-1 said. "I understand there was an incident yesterday."

Luca tensed. "What incident?"

"The OPRR point scout saw something she shouldn't have."

Damn! How had he learned that?

"She saw an unmarked truck, nothing more."

"She shouldn't have seen that truckat all ."

"And she wouldn't have if she'd stuck to her schedule. She was supposed to arrive at one. The truck was scheduled to be long gone before noon. But there she was making a stink at the gate five hours early."

"What did she see?" Voss said.

"An unmarked truck pull out of Basic's secure loading dock and head up the road. No reason for her to think it was anything more than a supply truck making routine deliveries."

He didn't mention her question about it heading for the airport.

"Lucky for us," the CEO said. "But what if something untoward had happened, say, an improperly latched rear door swinging open while she was standing there staring at it? What then?"

"I don't waste time worrying about things that never happened."

The CEO stared at him a moment. "Let's just hope that little incident does not come back to haunt us."

Luca said nothing. He also didn't want to mention the fact that the truck hadn't been completely unmarked. It had had a license plate. He wondered if Romy Cadman had noticed that. And if so, had she cared. He hadn't seen her write anything down, but that didn't mean she hadn't memorized it. But why would she bother? OPRR wasn't interested in trucks.

But they'd sure as hell have been interested in what that one was carrying.

Nothing to worry about as far as Luca could see. The truck had been driven aboard the cargo plane and whisked away to Idaho. The OPRR inspection was going by the numbers - his numbers. Everything under control. No sweat.

Although he wouldn't mind getting sweaty with their chief inspector.

He yanked his thoughts away from that warm little fantasy to the matters at hand. As he saw it, this Sullivan guy and the sim unionization thing were powder kegs. Let Sinclair-1 and Voss try to put Sullivan on the ropes their way. If that worked, fine. If not, his people would step in and settle the matter his own way. For good.

Either way, the future was not going to be a happy place for a certain shyster named Patrick Sullivan.