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“But we’re just getting started, Peter.”

“I’ve gotten you this far. The rest … well, the rest is up to you.”

Timmermans fumbled for his cigarette case in his coat pocket. “What the hell am I going to tell Cannondale? He’s going to go crazy.”

“No he’s not. It will take him about five minutes to get over it, Phillipe.”

“But we’ve been through so much together, Peter. Why now?”

“It’s no longer fun, Phillipe. The whole thing has been turned over to the suits, and look at the mess they’ve gotten us into. I’m finished, I’m done.”

“You’re making a huge mistake, Peter.”

“Maybe.”

Phillipe shook his head. “What will you do?”

“What I’ve wanted to do for some time – buy a ranch, raise some cattle, take up with an American girl with big hair. It doesn’t matter.”

“I think you’re crazy, Peter. I think you’re absolutely nuts. We’ve only just begun to capture people’s imagination about a world where time and space have no restrictions, a world where people can instantly communicate to anyone, anywhere on the planet in real time. Imagine that, Peter. Don’t you want to be a part of that?”

“I will be a part of that somehow, Phillipe. It’s inevitable. I just don’t want to work at Cheyenne anymore.”

Peter stood up and extended his hand. “Best of luck to you, Phillipe. Come visit.”

With that, Peter walked out of Phillipe’s office. He could hear the thud of Phillipe’s fist hitting the desk as he left, but Peter’s mind was already far away on a sylvan butte somewhere outside of Pinedale, Wyoming. He reached into his back pocket for the piece of paper that had been his touchstone since the first day he and Timmermans had talked about starting Cheyenne. He unfolded the paper:

“
There’s a place in the Wyoming mountains where time slows down, the air smells clean, the water runs pure and the people are down-home friendly. Boulder Lake Lodge is truly at the ‘end of the road,’ nestled in the foothills of the Bridger National Forest. Thick aspen groves and pine-covered hillsides set the stage for one of the finest vacations in the Wind River Mountains.”

Hayden poured himself a bourbon on the rocks from the hotel mini-bar and sat at the desk to examine the documents that he had photographed in Jagmetti’s office. Next to him was the tape machine that had captured Jagmetti’s phone calls.

Jagmetti’s records were pristine – dates, times, account numbers, phone numbers. Hayden wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but he kept digging. He saw references to Timmermans and Peter at Cheyenne – dates and times of calls. He saw a complete log of the satellite deal with Riga-Tech. There was even a list of paintings that Jagemetti had purchased in the past two years.

Hayden paused.
That’s odd
. It was a calendar entry. Jagmetti had apparently met with the European Commissioner for Competition, Sir Graham Eatwell. Nothing particularly strange about that, except that the subject of the meeting was listed as “Cheyenne/N-tel.” What did N-tel, the Dutch telecom company, have to do with Cheyenne, and why was the European Commissioner for Competition meeting with a random Swiss banker about Cheyenne? Aaron and Timmermans would love to know about that little nugget.

Hayden rubbed his eyes and got up to pace around the room. He carried Jagmetti’s calendar entries with him. There were several phone numbers. One of them caught Hayden’s eye. Next to it Jagmetti had scribbled “satellite.” How many satellite launches could Jagmetti be involved with? Hayden guessed not many. It must be related to Cheyenne. It was too coincidental. Besides, the entry dates were roughly around the same time that Cheyenne had purchased its satellite.

Hayden wrote down the number. He poured himself a little more bourbon and freshened up the ice. He began to listen to a few of Jagmetti’s taped conversations. It started off innocently enough – a couple of women, an old friend, social calendar calls. One conversation between Jagmetti and Zlotkov was comical. The communications gap was clear. Each got increasingly louder and repetitive as the call progressed.

Another call intrigued Hayden for its venom toward the United States. Jagmetti was sharing his thoughts with a business partner on why a new world order was beginning to bloom.

Hayden half paid attention to the next call and then fast forwarded. He stopped himself.
That was kind of interesting.
The caller had only identified himself by a number – his Swiss bank account number. Hayden rewound.

It was the Client. Hayden didn’t know it yet, but he had stumbled on Jagmetti’s mysterious Client – the one that only identified himself by his account number.

Hayden picked up the man’s accent immediately. It was Arabic. Hayden was good with dialects. The voice wasn’t from the Maghreb. It wasn’t from the Gulf. Egypt! The man was Egyptian. Jagmetti was kissing his ass on the call.

“Hello. Oh yes, very good to hear from you,” Jagmetti said. “It’s quite pleasant in Zurich today, thank you very much. And how about by you? … I see. The satellite? Well, it is operating quite nicely, from what I understand. Well, thank you very much. Certainly … not a problem. My pleasure.”

Hayden stopped the tape. He looked at the date of the call.
Cheyenne,
he thought to himself.
They’ve got to be talking about Cheyenne. But why is the Egyptian interested?
Hayden had no recollection of an Egyptian being involved with Cheyenne’s satellite deal. It had been all Riga-Tech. Hayden’s mind wandered.
Why an Egyptian? Doesn’t make sense.

Words like “satellite”, “GPS”, “Russians” and “Kuipers” rolled around in his head. And then “GPS”, and “Adirondacks.” Hayden remembered the news article that he kept in his speechwriting folder. He rushed to his leather workbag and fished for it. There it was. The piece pointed out that the signal coming from certain satellites travels 11,000 miles – so weak that by the time it arrived on earth a single Christmas tree light was about 1,000 times as bright. The article went on to say that the signal could essentially be altered by anyone possessing a jamming device that they could get off the Internet for $40.

Hayden’s eyes widened.
Jagmetti was in on it. Or he was a stooge. The Arab wanted to know when the satellite was going up so that they could hack into it! That’s how they knew. That’s how they were able to time it. That’s why I walked off a ridge in the Adirondacks. That’s why special forces guys were accidentally calling in air strikes on themselves.

Hayden’s mind raced. He looked at his watch and then reached for the phone.

There was a long pause. Then Benbow. “It’s me. I can’t talk on this line. Switch over to email. I need you to look into something immediately.”

“Got it,” Benbow said, hanging up.

Hayden turned to his computer, which was equipped with an encrypted email system. He began to type:

(Hayden) Been listening to our friend’s phone calls here in Zurich.

(Benbow) Good.

(Hayden) He told them.

(Benbow) Told who? What?

(Hayden) Whoever hacked into the satellite before it went up. Jagmetti told them when it would be launched.

There was a long pause before Benbow responded. Hayden could tell that he was digesting the information.

(Benbow) You sure?

(Hayden) Pretty sure. Can you trace a Swiss bank account number?

(Benbow) Not without some phone calls to the Swiss. Will take at least 24 hours.

(Hayden) It’ll be worth your while. Here’s the number. He’s Egyptian. Find him and you’ll find the money funding the GPS problem.

(Benbow) Is our friend still in Zurich?

(Hayden) Yes.

(Benbow) Keep an eye on him.

(Hayden) Of course.

Hayden logged off, turned off the lights in the room and walked onto the balcony. The sky was full of stars, and a satellite or two.

Hayden’s cell phone was ringing when he entered his hotel room. He had just been out for a run.

“He panned out,” Benbow said.

“The Egyptian?”

“Yep. He’s been on our list. Not a nice guy. He’s well-connected

in the region, including Yemen.”

“Not surprising.”

“No, but it’s one less ghost out there to chase.”

“What happens next?”

“If the Egyptians play ball, they’ll pick him up, but not until Delta

does what it needs to do in Yemen.”

“And Jagmetti?”

“Same story, although the Swiss will do it quietly.”

Hayden couldn’t help but think that once the headlines started flowing linking terrorism and Cheyenne, it would be the beginning of the end for the company. The principals had done nothing wrong on that front. How were they to know that terrorists had hacked into their satellite, but with attention would come increased scrutiny. It wasn’t going to happen for him and Michelle. He felt helpless. Damn, he was going to miss her.

“Ok, Benbow, you need me right now?”

“You got something better to do?”

“Yeah, I need to take a shower.”

Graham Eatwell craved a nice cup of tea. Tea – the great soother. Tea – the detoxifier and demulcent; the transporter of time, the talisman of thought.

How odd, Eatwell thought, that the sober act of boiling drinking water as a hygienic precaution in China 5,000 years ago would one day lead to the unrestrained practice of tea drinking – lots of tea, every day in great quantities by large populations around the world.

How heroic of the Portuguese Jesuit, Father Jasper de Cruz, in 1560 to filter tea from the Orient to Europe, where it would sell for over $100 per pound.

How absolutely civilized of the Dutch in the 17
^th
century to make tea a fixture of taverns, inns and restaurants.

How very American it had been for the smallish colony of New York, tea drinkers since Peter Stuyvesant and consuming more tea at one time than all of England put together, to eventually give in to the corruption of coffee.

The brown liquid warmed Eatwell’s insides and steadied his nerves. He felt lightheaded, as if he was going to be sick. And yet, he could not turn away from the TV.

The backdrop was a snowy Zurich. Jagmetti had been arrested. His alleged crime: aiding and abetting the terrorists that had hacked into the Cheyenne’s satellite.

It was not a small indiscretion. And the Swiss authorities, no doubt under tremendous pressure from the Americans, were going to great lengths to make an example of Jagmetti. Financial sins were normally taken care of discretely in Europe. Not this time. Someone in Washington had made a call to someone in Switzerland to demand that Jagmetti be given the full treatment.

Jagmetti’s crime was indefensible. He would fall hard, and his rolodex, and all of the names in it, would become the subject of great intrigue. Eatwell shook his head. How had his friend Kuipers, his dear friend Kuipers, led him to such a man?

Eatwell took a sip of his tea and cleared his throat as if he was about to say something, but there was nothing to say, nor anyone to say it to. Derek was in Antwerp for the weekend visiting friends. Bernard asked for the night off to take care of his aging mother. Eatwell, of course, let him go, but not before having him draw a bath. Eatwell had defended Europe, and for that he felt proud. Cheyenne had introduced a revolutionary technology to the world under his watch. But what a pyrrhic victory it had been. Hundreds of Cheyenne’s employees – Europeans – were about to find themselves jobless. A perfectly beautiful, homegrown technology had been soiled.

Yes, the American press painted Cannondale as a greed merchant, but it was also palpably pleased to throw what it characterized as European immorality into the mix. To make matters worse, the bargain that Eatwell had struck with Jagmetti was predicated on the understanding that Jagmetti would get information about Cheyenne’s technology into N-tel’s hands, yet there was little evidence that N-tel was making any effort to capitalize on it, at least from what Eatwell could tell. They seemed incapable of getting out of their own way.

What a waste. For all the risks that Eatwell had taken, for all the intellectual dishonesty that he had indulged in for the greater good of Europe, there were few signs that his efforts had altered much of anything. Cannondale was still rich, Europe was still playing catch-up, and America was still on top.

Eatwell finished his tea and set the mug down on the coffee table. His eye caught his father and mother looking back at him from a photo on the desk across the room. They were twenty-two when the picture of them was taken in the Lake District — so young, so optimistic. They had prepared him well for this world, and he had made them proud.

Eatwell walked to the bathroom and slipped off his robe. The sight of his sagging body in the mirror made him shake his head. He had never felt completely comfortable in it.

The smell of eucalyptus oil was intense. He always had Bernard add an extra capful when he drew the bath. Eatwell put his big toe in the water and pulled it back.
Perfect.

Next to the tub was a low, wooden table upon which Eatwell normally placed a cup of tea or a book. Not tonight. Tonight, he wanted to listen to the BBC World Service. He took the radio from the sink counter and drew the cord out, placing the radio on the table.

The heat in the water caused Eatwell to hold his breath for a second as he submerged his body. He loved that sensation. It reminded him of being a kid – of making that first leap of the summer season into the deep lake where they had always gone on holiday. He thought of his parents again, and of all the things he would have liked to have done.

Eatwell turned on the radio. They were playing the best of Alistair Cooke, who had died a few years back. He was delivering one of his Letters from America, as he had done with great affection since 1946. The older Cooke grew, the more his Letters wandered, but that didn’t bother Eatwell. It was the voice and the cadence, and the odd connections that Cooke made that had always hypnotized him.