Chapter 1

Thule Roemer was exhausted. He thought he'd known what exhaustion was last year when he was trying to graduate high school while juggling two romantic relationships and uncovering a conspiracy that, the more people dug into it, the bigger it got.

He'd been wrong. Exhaustion was being a small business owner and a B-List celebrity during finals week at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

As such, it was with something other than enthusiasm that he greeted the sight of a strange woman sprawled out on his bed.

"You're going to want to get up or move over," he said, trying to keep the irritability out of his voice as much as possible.

The girl opened one eye, then the other, "Who are you?"

"My name is Bart," he said. "But, you can call me Baby Bear. I presume you are Goldilocks."

Actually, the girl could not have looked less like Goldilocks. She had classically Chinese features. Currently, they were glaring at Thule in bland incomprehension. After a second, they softened.

"Oh," she said, sitting up. "You're Frank's roommate."

"I have that dubious honor," said Thule.

"He told me I could crash here," she said.

"How very generous he is to share my things so freely without a thought for himself," said Thule, his voice deadpan.

She rose, "He told me he had an empty bed in his room because his roommate never slept here."

Thule sat down on the bed, kicking off his sneakers, "He neglected the word 'almost' in that sentence. I crash here once or twice a week when I'm too tired to drive back to where I actually live."

"Hey," the girl said. "You're that guy on TV. What's his name? Thor!"

"That's me," said Thule, too tired to correct her. "God of Thunder." He lay down and closed his eyes.

"I'm Lin Xiao," said the girl.

"A pleasure to meet you," said Thule without opening his eyes.

"Were you serious?" Lin asked.

Thule opened one eye, "About what?"

"About moving over," said Lin. "I would rather not get in Frank's bed. He would probably get the wrong impression."

Thule opened his other eye, "If he comes in and sees you in bed with me, he's definitely going to get the wrong impression."

Lin shrugged, "That impression I don't mind him getting. Frank Rose's opprobrium doesn't bother me. His lecherous attentions would."

Thule closed his eyes again, "So, what are you doing in his room?"

"I needed a place to sleep," said Lin. "I'm stuck in a triple and my roommates won't shut up during the day. They believe it is their God-given right to deprive me of sleep because they sleep at night."

"How do you know you won't give me the wrong impression?" asked Thule.

"Look at you," said Lin. "You're too tired to even get through this conversation. If you're dangerous, I think MIT has done a fine job of neutralizing you. Besides, aren't you supposed to be a poster child for women's rights or something?"

Thule grunted. He was, in fact, the star witness in the trial of a notorious serial date rapist. As a result, he'd been approached by a number of national anti-rape organizations to use his likeness for fundraising purposes and agreed to let a couple of them do so. Of course, they didn't know that he'd blackmailed one of his current girlfriends into sleeping with him or handcuffed the other to his weight bench before they had a relationship. But, they might not have cared, so long as it wasn't common knowledge. In some things, appearance was more important than substance.

Besides, Lin had been right about one thing. Thule was much too tired to even know who was in bed with him. Wanting the conversation to be over so that he could get to sleep, he said, "Suit yourself."

He didn't know whether Lin took him up on his offer or not before he was asleep.

Thule woke to the sensation of his cell phone vibrating. A quick glance at the clock told him it was three p.m. He'd gotten four hours of sleep. It was by no means enough. He had his last two finals tomorrow and had gotten an average of three hours sleep a night all week.

He would have ignored it, but a quick glance at the number told him it was an international call. The country code said it was either his father or Marigold. As a matter of coincidence, they'd both wound up in the same country, halfway across the world, working on entirely different projects.

"Thule," he said, putting the phone to his ear.

"Hey, sweetie," said Marigold. "Did I wake you?"

Thule gave an affirmative grunt.

"I know how much you need your sleep, Thule. But, we need to talk."

Thule started to sit up, but realized there was someone curled up against him. He had a moment of cognitive dissonance. She was too small to be Dawn, but Marigold was in Ghana. Still half asleep, he had only a dim recollection of how she had wound up in his bed.

Still, of the many things MIT had taught him, the sanctity of sleep was near the top of the list. So, careful not to disturb her, he asked, "Is everything okay?"

"Nothing's wrong," said Marigold. "At least, nothing new."

Thule waited patiently for her to continue. As much as he wanted to get another couple hours of sleep, he didn't rush her. Marigold had seen how badly Thule needed sleep during the first half of the year. If she was pausing, she must really need to pause.

Thule braced himself for whatever was coming next. The summer before college, they'd spent nearly every waking moment with each other, often with Dawn, who they were both seeing. But, Thule had always considered the relationship precarious. He'd since discovered that such arrangements were not entirely unprecedented. But, no two people could seem to agree on what the protocols for such a relationship or even more complex ones were, except that everything was negotiable. And, while it had seemed like a good idea in theory, Thule had always considered the situation precarious at best.

Their first semester at college had been somewhat rocky. It had taken a while for Marigold to realize just how little time Thule had. MIT tried very hard to kill its freshmen with workload, hoping that students who were going to wash out would do it before they were too old and worn out to go somewhere else. On top of that, Thule had the trial to deal with and the media circus that surrounded it. That would have been bad enough. But, after the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, Thule had found that his plan for being a more or less silent owner of a small firm specializing in security services was not going to work. Suddenly, everybody was thinking about Security and Thule's name was in the news. He'd originally planned to meet with the people actually doing the work at the firm on Saturday mornings and handle the decisions that required his sign-off.

By October, his Saturday morning meetings were stretching to all-day affairs. Worse, he knew he was rushing some decisions because he just didn't have time to give them the thought they deserved.

Since then, he'd rearranged his schedule and his staff so that he could dedicate two hours a day to business matters. Those two-hour meetings occurred at the house Thule and Marigold were living in, forcing everyone involved to schlep out to Cambridge from downtown Boston.

But, the business had grown, seemingly every day. Their original office space had been barely enough to hold one hundred people. Counting field agents, Roemer Security Services employed almost five hundred men and women, about seventy percent of which needed a desk at any given time. And, that didn't count the two subsidiaries or the joint venture with Tarr. Anders Harter, who had been a great FBI agent, had turned out to be an even better business development manager. While investigating a completely unrelated deal, he'd come across a building where every one of the tenants was a struggling dotcom. By the end of 2001, he'd leased all twelve floors of the building, either directly from the owner or by buying up a distressed lease from a bankrupt dotcommer who no longer had any use for the space.

Even so, the company was again bursting at the seams. When the first office had become too small, the people who found themselves coming out to Cambridge every day unofficially set up a sort of satellite office in the house. There was no reason not to. Twenty people could have lived there and never interacted. When RSS had moved into what was now unofficially called the "Roemer Building," the ersatz satellite office had been shut down. But, as the new building had filled up, they'd come back one by one. Plenty of the original, vested employees were putting in sixty hour weeks or more by that point. A few of them now slept at the house several nights a week. Jake, who was in the process of a messy divorce, lived there more or less full time.

When Marigold left for Africa, Thule insisted that RSS pay her stepfather Jonas, who actually owned the house, a reasonable rent for the space they used. It wasn't another expense they needed, but Thule's sense of fairness wouldn't let him keep using the space for free and, besides, if things between him and Marigold went sour, he didn't want the company suffering too badly for it.

And now, she was on the phone and needed to talk. He hadn't seen her in almost six months. She'd dropped hints that there was a possible romantic link for her there. He hadn't been happy about that, but in between his having another girlfriend and not having time for either of them, he hadn't felt like he had much in the way of grounds for complaint. Besides, Marigold seemed determined to find out if the palace of wisdom really was at the end of the road of excess and there wasn't much he could do to stop her.

"Thule," she said finally. "I'm not coming back this week."

Thule felt his stomach drop. "All right," he said. "Are you coming back at all?"

She laughed, "Of course. Oh God, Thule. I'm not leaving you. It's just that the work here isn't done yet. The goddamned Pure Food League convinced the people we were trying to work with that starvation was preferable to planting genetically modified crops. But, they left before we were beaten. We've got permission to distribute the seeds in Burkina-Faso. But, there's so much work to do. I don't think Dr. Anton can do it without me. I just want to stay until spring. That would be September."

Thule sighed, "I can't say I'm happy with that. I was really looking forward to seeing you."

"I know," said Marigold. "I was looking forward to seeing you, too. But, it will only be until September. And, you said you would still be busy during the summer."

"Yeah," said Thule, "but I would only be busy. Compared to right now, busy is a vacation. We would have had hours together each day."

"Thule, this is important to me," said Marigold. "I hope you understand. I thought I wanted to be a doctor because I wanted to help people. But, that's one person at a time. This is millions of people at once and it's literally the difference between life and death."

"I know," said Thule, but he couldn't keep the disappointment out of his voice.

"Besides," said Marigold. "You'll have Dawn to keep you company. I imagine she'll be more than a handful for a few hours a day."

Thule shook his head and stroked his brow. Dawn certainly was enough of a handful to fill more hours in the day than he had. Still, he could hear a hint of strain in Marigold's voice, not at the mention of Dawn but on the words "a few hours a day." Thule had been stunned to realize how much free time Harvard students had. And, while Marigold rarely bridled at his inability to pay attention to her, Thule was always a little bit nervous to see what she got up to when left entirely to her own devices.

Everyone he talked to said that next year would be better. The trial would be over. The media would have some new darling to harass. Classes would be less rigorous. It was entirely possible that Marigold had saved their relationship some irreparable strain by going where Thule couldn't pay attention to her, even if he'd had the time to do so. But, he missed her nonetheless.

Every once in a while, Thule wished that he could behave like the nineteen year-old he was. For instance, right now, he wanted to rail against the unfairness of a fate that he had actually chosen every step of the way. Failing that, he at least wanted to pout. Instead, he said, "When will you be back, then?"

"In time to register for classes," said Marigold. "So, sometime around the first of September."

The girl curled up next to Thule chose that moment to mutter something in her sleep. Marigold asked, "Is Dawn there already?"

"No," said Thule. "That's just a squatter who moved into my dorm room while my back was turned."

"See?" asked Marigold, laughing. "You've found something to keep you busy already."

Thule scowled, "Believe me. That's the farthest thing from my mind right now. I just want to survive the next twenty-five hours or so and then sleep for a week."

Lin raised her head and looked down at Thule quizzically. Pointing at herself, she mouthed a question. Thule put his hand over the phone.

"Am I causing a problem?" Lin asked.

Thule shook his head, "Not at all. It's just a small misunderstanding."

Taking his hand off the phone, he said to Marigold, "Are there going to be phones where you'll be?"

"Part of the time," said Marigold. "We'll be working near the presidential offices in Accra for the next couple of days. Most likely, I'll be out of contact most of the time we're in Burkina Faso."

Thule sighed, "All right. Call me when you have a number you can be reached at. I'll get back to you some time this weekend."

Marigold laughed again, "I thought you were going to sleep for a week."

"No," said Thule. "I want to sleep for a week, but I don't think that's physically possible. Besides, I want to talk to you. I'll set an alarm for Sunday."

"All right, Thule. I have to get going. We've got a meeting with the agriculture minister in fifteen minutes. I love you."

"I love you too, Little Flower," said Thule. "Be safe."

When he'd closed the phone, Lin said, "I hope I didn't cause a problem."

"No problem," said Thule, sitting up and rubbing his head.

"Was that your girlfriend?"

"No," said Thule. "It was my florist. I just really, really like him."

Seeing the scowl on her face, he said, "Sorry. Sleep deprivation makes me pissy and sarcastic. Yes, that was my girlfriend. She's in Africa, saving the world."

Opening a cabinet over the room's single, long desk, Thule looked inside and muttered, "Crap."

"Something wrong?" Lin asked.

"I'm out of Tylenol," said Thule. "It's no big deal. I'm just getting a headache."

"I can run down and get some," offered Lin. "I need to stretch my legs and I'm not ready to hit the books again yet."

"Thanks," said Thule, reaching for his wallet. "Would it be too much to ask you to pick up coffee, too? I need to get back to work."

"Sure," said Lin. "Buy a girl a cup?"

"Of course," said Thule. "Where are my manners?"

As he handed her a twenty, Thule heard Lin's stomach growl emphatically. He said, "Uh, maybe we should just get something to eat." Seeing a conflicted look on her face, he added, "My treat."

"Your florist won't mind?" Lin asked.

It didn't take long for the conversation to take a turn that all conversations between MIT freshmen seemed to take.

"I can't remember the last time I wasn't tired," said Thule.

"At least we're almost done," said Lin. "They threw their worst at us and we're still standing."

"I'm sitting," Thule pointed out. "Standing might be a bit much. Are you done?"

"One more," said Lin. "Physics. You?"

"Two tomorrow," said Thule. "Physics and calculus."

"Ugh," said Lin. "What a double whammy."

"Not really," said Thule. "I took the calculus as a slough course. It's a slam dunk. I really haven't learned anything new in it."

"Damn," said Lin. "What high school did you go to?"

"Heh," said Thule. "I didn't learn it in high school. I had a personal interest in heuristic mathematics and Bayesian analysis."

"Wait a second," said Lin, her eyes widening. "You're Bartholomew Roemer, aren't you?"

Thule nodded, "Yeah."

"I hate you," Lin said, but she was laughing.

"Why?" asked Thule.

"My math teacher was obsessed with you. He was constantly talking about how you're this mathematical wunderkind. He made us all try to get our work published in peer-reviewed journals because of you." She glared at him mischievously, "You have a lot to answer for, mister."

"Just what I need," Thule deadpanned. "Something else to answer for."

"Wait a second," said Lin again. "You're Bartholomew Roemer, but you're also that guy on TV. Thor?"

"Thule, actually," he corrected her. "I'm afraid so."

"You're a celebrity."

Thule chuckled, "Yes, but they promise me it's not fatal. I like to think of it as the fifteen-minute flu."

"You're involved in the Vandevoort trial, aren't you?" she asked. "How in the hell do you manage it?"

"Like I said, I get very little sleep," answered Thule. "I'm also juggling a new business in the mix."

Lin let out a low whistle of admiration. Thule didn't know how to respond. He was saved from having to by his cell phone vibrating in his pocket again. Seeing it was from Matika, he answered.

"Hey, Thule," said Matika. "I hate to wake you, but..."

"Actually, I'm awake," said Thule. "But, I thought I said I absolutely could not handle business matters until after tomorrow."

"I know," said Matika. "And Helene threatened to choke me to death with my phone cord if I called you before then."

"And?" asked Thule.

"I have a cellular phone," said Matika. "Besides, I can take Helene."

Thule sighed, "I presume whatever you called me for must be important."

"You could say that," offered Matika. "We have a client who insists on talking to you directly. He really doesn't want to wait."

"He's going to have to," said Thule. "Or he's going to have to talk to somebody else. Jake has the same haircut I do. Just pretend he's me."