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  With suit pants donned and belted, and feet comfortably placed in soft, glove leather Bally loafers, Dave unwrapped a fresh, starched white shirt. He put it on, and after some consideration selected from his tie rack a pale yellow tie with a blue motif. A full-length mirror backed Dave’s closet door. He pulled the door three-quarters closed so that he could study himself.

  Never learned how to knot a tie without a mirror, did you? his guardian angel asked.

  He looked himself over carefully. Not bad. Not bad at all. His waistline hadn’t changed since college. Forty-seven years old, but looking younger than that. Oh, you handsome dog, you’re going to live forever. Dave nodded as if in agreement. The daily jogging, the two nights a week workout with weights, no smoking but for an occasional and much prized cigar, a diet about which even Helen couldn’t complain, alcohol consumption that was modest by any …

  “Davy?”

  The questioning voice came from the office behind him — Bernie Levy’s voice, its gruff Brooklyn accent unmistakable. Dave glanced at his Rolex. 7:43. Traffic must have been light this morning. Senterex’s chairman and CEO was in the office well ahead of schedule.

  Dave shrugged on his jacket, nudged his tie knot imperceptibly to the left, and gripping his coffee cup, pushed open the closet door.

  “Yes, Bernie. What’s up?”

  Bernie was facing away from the closet. Dave didn’t see his gun until he turned around.

  2

  Here in the jungle there are two kinds of time — long time and slow time. Long time is what you usually get. You sit beneath a tree or in a hooch or in a field tent, or maybe you’re tiptoeing Indian file through the boonies, and nothing happens. Hours pass, and nothing happens. Then you look at your Timex and discover that it has only been five minutes since the last time you looked at it. Long time.

  The other kind of time is slow time. There’s a flat metallic snap, the receiver of an AK-47 chambering a round. Then there is fire and explosions and screams and the whine of bullets all around and each one aimed at you for unending eternity. And when, after hours of hot terror, and no little rage, the shooting stops, you come back from hell and glance at your Timex.

  Guess what? Five minutes have passed since the last time you looked at it.

  Slow time. The clock gets choked with molasses. Men weep at how slow the seconds pass. They are MACVSOG. Their shoulder patch is a fanged skull wearing a green beret. They are the hardest of the hard, the baddest of the bad. Nothing fazes them. They look at their watches. They weep.

  One afternoon, the smell of cordite and hot brass still fresh in the air, First Lieutenant David Elliot places his blued-steel Timex on a rotten tree stump, slaps a full magazine into his Model 1911A Colt .45 automatic, and blasts the watch to fragments.

  The pistol in Bernie Levy’s hand seemed preposterously tiny. Bernie was five inches shorter than Dave and twenty pounds heavier. His hands were large and fleshy. The gun was almost lost in his grip. It was nickel-plated. Dave was willing to bet that the grips were ivory. Small caliber, Dave’s guardian angel whispered. Twenty-five? Maybe a .22. Not much stopping power. Enough at this distance, though.

  “Bernie, why do you have …”

  Bernie looked exhausted. His eyes were red and ringed with dark smudges, as if he had been too long without sleep. His face, once all sharp and hawklike, had gone flabby with age. His jowls quivered with some emotion that Dave couldn’t read. How old is he? Sixty-three, isn’t it? Dave thought he should know precisely.

  “… a gun?”

  Bernie’s eyes were empty, the lids half closed. They looked reptilian, cold and empty. There was nothing in them at all. Dave expected to see something in them. He didn’t know what.

  “Why, in God’s name?”

  Bernie inched his hand forward, lifting the pistol.

  Holy Christ, he’s going to pull the trigger!

  “Bernie, come on, speak to me.”

  Bernie rolled his lips, tightening them and then loosening them. Dave watched his hand tense.

  “Bernie, you can’t. Not without saying something. Bernie, for the love of God …”

  Bernie’s shoulders twitched. He licked his lips. “Davy, this is … If I only had a choice … You don’t know, Davy … Bernie Levy blames himself, and God will not forgive. Davy, Davy, you can’t know how bad this makes me feel.”

  Oddly enough, Dave almost felt like snickering. Almost. “This is going to hurt you more than it will me, huh? Is that what you are trying to say, Bernie?”

  Bernie sighed and pursed his lips. “Always with the funny stuff, Davy, always with the wisenheimer spritz.” The hand holding the gun went tense again.

  Slow time. Though the coffee wasn’t scalding, it was hot enough. It seemed to take forever to reach Bernie’s face, his wide-open eyes. The coffee burned right into them. Bernie yelped. Dave took one, two, three steps forward, his left arm low and straight. It took him hours to do it, walking straight into the muzzle of Bernie’s wavering gun.

  He swept Bernie’s arm up, wincing at the pain in his bandaged hand. He drove a knee into Bernie’s groin. Bernie made a noise like a punctured tire. The pistol tumbled loose. Dave snatched it from the air. Bernie was bent forward, his head at Dave’s waistline. Dave brought the pistol butt down on the back of his skull. Hard. Twice.

  Bernie lay still on the floor. David Elliot stood above him, gasping for air, waiting for the clock to recalibrate itself to normal time, but most of all wondering what the hell to do next.

  * * *

  Corporate office life is not without its moments of excitement. There are villains and heroes, triumphs and defeats, and clashes of eager ferocity. Friendships are made, and later broken; hard words are exchanged; there are bitter rivalries, and even open animosity. However, political infighting, not the physical kind, is the stuff of executive conflict; only on television, and then only in the sillier kinds of programs, do business people pull guns on one another.

  Such thoughts, in a highly abbreviated form, flashed through David Elliot’s mind as he tried to regain his breath. He spun through the past few seconds, finding in them no clue as to why his boss, a man whom he counted as a friend, would come after him with a loaded firearm.

  Unless this was some sort of stupid joke.

  A joke? Uh-oh …

  Dave’s stomach sank. Then he glanced at the pistol. A baby Browning. No toy. No ivory grips either. He ejected the magazine. Eight rounds full. He racked back the slide. A bullet popped from its chamber and rolled to the floor. He picked it up. Hollow point, 25 caliber.

  No joke.

  What then? What could have driven Bernard Levy, whom Dave knew to be as even-tempered an executive as was ever born, to point a gun at one of his corporate officers?

  Nothing. There was no reason in the world that could account for it. The very morning of the previous day, shortly before leaving to tour the new Long Island acquisition, Dave had sat in Bernie’s office and reviewed a series of marketing reports with him. It had been a good meeting, warm and cordial, and had closed with Bernie endorsing Dave’s recommendations.

  There had not been a negative word. Not even a hint of one.

  Something earlier? Not likely. Dave ran a handful of Senterex’s two dozen divisions. He managed them smoothly, and the results were always as expected. There were no sources of conflict there.

  Not that he and Bernie always agreed. Bernie was a deal-maker, a grand conglomerator of the old school. He had come up from the streets of Brooklyn, the son of immigrants. With no assets other than nerve, a nose for opportunity, and a flair for canny acquisitions, he had built Senterex from the ground up.

  And Bernie still made acquisitions. He couldn’t resist them. They were his life’s blood. He loved finding smallish companies — sometimes marginally profitable, sometimes not — that he could buy on the cheap and then improve. Some he kept as part of the Senterex portfolio. Some he sold, but never at a loss. All fit his vision of financial synergy. Every now a
nd then other Senterex executives didn’t concur with Bernie’s acquisition targets, and argued with him. Dave himself had strongly challenged Bernie’s decision to purchase Lockyear Laboratories, and even more strongly resisted Bernie’s subsequent assignment of responsibility for the operation to him once the deal was consummated.

  But was that worth killing someone over? Never in a million years.

  Could it be something personal? Had Dave done something outside the office to affront Bernie, to insult him, to humiliate or betray him? Not likely. Bernie lived a quiet, almost wholly private life. Dave never saw him socially. Although their relationship was more than merely friendly, it was largely limited to the confines of the forty-fifth floor.

  Now Bernie wanted to kill him. Not a word of explanation. Just a gun, and mournful Bernie saying, “Bernie Levy blames himself, and God will not forgive.”

  “Hell, Bernie,” Dave whispered, although he was only speaking to himself, “if you want to shoot somebody, for Christ’s sake shoot somebody special. Not an ordinary schmuck like me.”

  Ordinary — David Elliot knew himself, knew precisely who he was, knew he was an ordinary man, devoutly committed to the ordinary predictability of an ordinary life. Sure, when he was young, little more than a boy off an Indiana farm, he’d wanted more than farm boys should — gallant deeds rewarded with medals and great renown. But he soon learned that those things came at a price. And so now, and for a very long time now, he was just an ordinary, ordinary guy. Hell, more than merely ordinary, he was a statistic. What is the profile of the average, upper-income corporate executive? David P.-for-Perry Elliot, that’s what. Two marriages, one divorce, far from religiously ardent, a fiscal conservative and social moderate, ethnically hybrid, physically fit, fond of football, bored by baseball, reads less than he should, watches more television than he should, is boringly monogamous and slightly prudish, is nonetheless occasionally tempted, works an average of fifty-six hours a week, worries about the stock market, complains about his taxes, doesn’t gamble, doesn’t take drugs, and doesn’t look forward to his annual physical exam. He vacations in the ordinary places. He socializes with the ordinary companions. He adheres to the ordinary codes. For twenty-five years, he’s devoted himself to ordinariness. He has positively embraced it, wanting nothing else from life than what is ordinary. It is how he defines the word “good.” He is, goddamnit, just an ordinary man and nothing more.

  So why, Bernie, why the hell did you try to kill me?

  David Elliot, an ordinary man, could conceive of no answer to the question.

  * * *

  Dave looked at his watch. It was 7:45 A.M. exactly. Two minutes. Slow time had ended. The thing to do, he realized, the only thing to do, was to get help. Maybe Bernie had suffered some sort of attack. Maybe brain damage or …

  … or whatever, his cynical angel growled. It’s irrelevant. My friend, you’ve just cold-cocked the pistol-packin’ chief executive of an $8 billion NYSE-listed company onto the floor of your expensively carpeted office. By definition, you now have problems that lie well beyond your competence as a businessman. Besides which, let me point out, you hit Bernie kind of hard. What happens if he is more than merely out cold? Like, for example … oh hell …

  Dave dropped the pistol into the pocket of his suit coat. He stepped out of his office, took one deep breath, and began to jog down the long carpeted corridor that connected his corner office with the rest of the executive suite. He was hoping that one of his fellow corporate officers had come in early. Or one of the secretaries. Or the receptionist. Or anyone.

  He got as far as the reception area at the end of the hall. Two cold-eyed men were standing there, just around the corner. As soon as they saw him, they began reaching beneath their jackets.

  David Elliot’s clock slowed down again.

  3

  Dave forced his face into a smile. “Good morning. I’m Pete Ashby. Can I help you?”

  Both men froze. The eyes of the taller one narrowed, studying Dave’s face.

  “Are you waiting for Dave Elliot? He’s usually the first one in, but I just walked by his office and his door is still closed.”

  The two men relaxed, but only slightly. Neither was as tall as Dave, but both were, by any measure, big—real big, the kind of big that makes you think of weight lifters, professional wrestlers, and jackhammer operators. The collars of their off-the-rack wash ’n’ wear shirts were at least size 18. Their suit coats, brown and grey respectively (and not, Dave observed, entirely natural fiber), were of the sort of loose cut muscular men prefer — albeit neither was cut loosely enough to disguise the silhouettes of their shoulder holsters.

  They don’t know you, pal. Lucky you. They don’t know what you look like. At best they’ve seen a photograph, and not a very good one. Stay cool, you may just be able to pull this off.

  The taller of the two, a square-faced man whose close-cropped hair was turning grey, spoke. “No, Mr. Ashley …”

  “Ashby, Pete Ashby. I’m vice president of engineering.”

  “Excuse me. Mr. Ashby, then. My colleague and I are here to see Mr. Levy.” There was a trace of the Appalachians in his voice — eastern Tennessee, western North Carolina, somewhere in the mountains. It was an accent that many found musical, but that made Dave’s skin prickle.

  “Bernie’s office is down the hall to your left. He usually gets in just about now. Do you want me to check for you?”

  The taller man flicked his eyes left. It was the first time they had left Dave’s face. “No need. He said he’d meet us here.”

  Dave felt sweat break out on his palms. The doors to the Senterex executive reception area were locked until 8:30. No one could get in without a key. “Can I get you some coffee or something, Mr.… ahh, I don’t think I caught your name.”

  “John.” There was a pause. The man didn’t like to give his name. “Ransome. And my colleague is Mark Carlucci. We are … accountants. We’re here … to go over the audit report with Mr. Levy.”

  Right. Coopers Lybrand is recruiting retired NFL linebackers to balance its clients’ books. That’ll be the day.

  “Pleased to meet you.” Dave observed that neither man offered to shake hands. “Now about that coffee? Let me get you some. We all have our own coffee makers on this floor. Most companies, you know, have a kitchenette or …”

  Shut up, shut up, shut up. You’re babbling. You’ll blow it.

  “… well, mine’s brewed up. I can …”

  “No thanks, Mr. Ashey.”

  That was your second try, you cunning bastard.

  “Ashby.”

  “Sorry. I’m terrible with names.”

  Dave’s mind was racing. The two men had to be involved with what Bernie had done — or tried to do — minutes earlier. There could be no other explanation for their presence in the executive reception room at this hour. But how were they involved, and who were they? The holsters outlined beneath each man’s suit coat told him … What? Were these guys cops? Mafia? The KGB? What kind of thugs had Bernie gotten himself involved with?

  “Well, I ought to get to work. Bernie should be here any minute now. So if you’ll excuse me …”

  “Certainly. Don’t let us keep you.”

  The reception area lay at the intersection of four corridors. Dave’s office, like those of the other divisional executives, was at the distant end of the south hall. Bernie’s suite was on the opposite side of the building, occupying the northeast corner and commanding the best view. The corporate staff officers — finance, legal affairs, human resources, and so forth — had their offices to the east. A short hall led west through double glass doors to the elevator bank.

  Dave started to turn west.

  Wrong, you idiot, wrong! You said that your coffee maker was on this floor. You said you were a corporate officer. You can’t go to the elevators.…

  He jerked himself to a stop. Both men were looking at him now. Their expressions had changed.

  Dave tried to improvi
se a smile. He didn’t succeed. “You didn’t happen to see a stack of Wall Street Journals by the elevator, did you? They usually leave them right outside the glass doors.” Weak, but it was worth a try.

  The man who called himself Ransome slowly shook his head. His eyes had gone flat.

  Dave nodded, and turned east. He walked across the reception room toward the hall. There was a small hot ache in the center of his back. He hadn’t felt that particular sensation for twenty-five years, not since he was on patrol in Indian country. Charlie’s here. Charlie’s got a gun. Oh my, now Charlie’s leveling his sights. He’s drawing a bead. He’s tightening his finger. Hey, man, Charlie’s getting ready to smile.…

  Every nerve in his body was on fire. Sweat broke out from his forehead and trickled down his cheeks. His throat scalded with rising vomit.

  In the hall now. Almost home free. Another ten seconds and you’re out of sight. He wanted to scream and run. He felt his knees quiver. The pounding of his heart was deafening. Keep cool. You can make it, same as you did in the old days.…

  There was a small nook two dozen feet down the hallway. It had been built to hold a photocopier that was never installed. As Dave passed it, he heard Ransome’s softly drawling voice behind him. “Oh, Mr. Elliot, there’s just one other thing.”

  “Yes.”

  Aw shit!

  4

  Dave hurled himself into the nook. His shoulder butted hard against the wall. Four ragged holes burst open in the plaster. Chalky fragments exploded into the air. The dust stung his eyes. He slid to the floor, fumbling Bernie’s pistol from his pocket. Two more holes opened. The only sound he heard was the thud of bullets tearing into Sheetrock. Ransome and Carlucci were using silencers.

  He tucked his feet back, seeking purchase against the wall behind him. He pulled back the slide on the small automatic and, as he released it, thrust himself forward into the corridor.