Borderless Deceit Read Online Free PDF Page B

that it was paper. The paper years we have still.”
    The Czar sat motionless. He observed Jaime’s wry amusement. He saw her studying the perilously slanting pillars of documentsloading down his desk. Was she admiring so obvious a monument to dedication? A wave of happy memories about the good old paper days flooded over him. “There’s something comfortable about paper,” he said.
    â€œSpiritual, I am thinking,” answered the former Punjabi.
    â€œSpiritual. Yes. And there’s the smell. And the soothing sound of pages turning.”
    Had nostalgia invaded the Czar’s mind and turned it into mush? Paul Liu was tapping at his electronic notebook and entered that word.
Mush
.
Much mush
. Ernest Cousineau licked his pencil and jabbed the paper with three strong exclamation marks. Jaime continued her affectionate detachment.
    Two hepped-up clerics, you and Ranjit
, she said weeks later to Heywood, when there was a break in the action.
Did you guys practice that before? I mean, the wailing? It was wicked. Paper spirituality? Hey, pow!
    Slowly the veils came off the Czar’s plan. Calmly, stopping frequently, affording each man opportunities to query, he outlined the tasks ahead. One hour later, still clarifying details, Ernest undertook to send urgent messages to every corner of the world. “Program the fax machines,
n’est-ce pas
?
C’est facile
.” Paul Liu wanted precision concerning co-ordination on the flanks, that is, between acquiring replacement computers and new network design. Eric Berntsen, whose life’s calling was acquiring items that can never be obtained in sufficient quantities to satisfy the appetite of bureaucracy – he’d started off with pens and pencils, moved up to book cases, desks and dial telephones, and had recently arrived in the world of kilobauds, megaherz and gigabytes – offered to put the breakfast binder for des Étoiles together. He would do the editing, mesh the parts, conceive of an art work for the front cover. “There will be a title,” he said. “
The Phoenix Flies
– that’s what we’ll call it.”
    Ranjit Singh disagreed. “I am stating I am not so partial to birds, not in the title. But I would be most gladdened to see on the front cover a symbol of determination. A sword, I am thinking, and in the handle precious stones.”
    The Czar ruled that responsibility for the title would be his.
    Claude now. The engineer-in-chief had been biting his tongue. “It’s the peer thing,” he admitted. “Frankly, it bugs me.” He’d viewed it from different angles and concluded it was like having a rock sail down the ice with the other side doing the sweeping. “It ain’t gonna work, Irv. When the buggers on the opposition have to deliver what you do best, you’ll never draw to the button. You’ll find it bloody-well overshooting, or stopping short.”
    â€œLet’s think if there’s another way to skin that cat,” the Czar replied evasively.
    â€œIrv, for chrissake,” Claude sighed. “Put that one on the back burner.”
    Work plans, time frames, mechanisms for delivery, ad-hoc support teams, outside consultants: they agreed on the contents of the breakfast binder and a meeting to review it was scheduled before dawn next day. With military precision the recovery campaign was underway.
Jihad
, whispered Ranjit, eyes blazing, two fists out front grasping the diamond-studded handle of a virtual scimitar. His resolve, like the flames of war, leapt to the others, and pumped-up, they marched out single file, Claude whispering to Eric he’d be acting as deputy to the Czar until midnight because until then a few ladies required his presence first.
    Heywood said, “Stay a minute, Jaime, won’t you?” She stopped stashing away her PDA. Impish eyes looked up. “Sorry you had to sit through a seminar in basic